“Spider venom?”
“Malach’s familiar is the white spider.”
Emma’s gut twisted with sudden icy horror. “It…it wasn’t a dream then? Back in London…” Oh God, she thought she’d imagined that horror! The awful red-eyed gypsy from her dream and the spider that had crawled out of his mouth and bitten her!
“It was no dream,” said Markus, as though she needed that awful confirmation. “The Nekromantis claimed you that night.”
Her hands shook as she raised them to her mouth. “The paralysis? The sleepwalking?”
“Black Magic. He was controlling you, casting his web and tightening the threads. But I broke the covenant and took you for my own.” The bones in his hands seemed to grow whiter as he fisted them. “I felt you belonged to me, so I gave you my blood that night you came to dinner.”
“The wine?”
He nodded.
“Then…then you saved my life!”
“Yes,” he said, “but I offer no pretext of love or selflessness.”
“No, of course not,” she replied, equally cold. “I know your reasons now: you were actuated by your lust for blood. The blood of the grail.”
“No!” The force of his denial rocked the foundations, though he had not raised his voice above a whisper. “I broke an ancient covenant with Malach—I disregarded his claim on you. It was not to slake my bloodlust or ambition, but because you belonged to me from the moment my eyes first beheld you. There was a recognition between us that I did not understand then, but you were mine to protect and I understood that much at least. I wanted to possess you.”
Emma had felt it too, that transendental inevitability that had drawn her to him from the first. She felt it still and knew that she always would—this recognition between souls. Change was indeed terrible and inevitable, but what she felt for him now, this overwhelming love, was ancient and everlasting. Death could never touch it.
“What about the prophesy in Vampyris?” She could never forget those awful last words: From the grail is darkness borne. “I am the Grail—from my womb will come the blight of mankind. Can you deny it?”
“Of course I deny it!” he snarled. “I care nothing for biased records and fear mongering prognostications. Prophesies and histories written by my enemies are like dust to me, and the words shall scatter, weightless, at the slightest breath of truth.” Then, just as quickly as his rancor had surged up, it ebbed. “Cleopatra’s life was chronicled only by her enemies in Rome, thus she remains forevermore the great whore of Egypt. And thus am I the great dragon that fell from heaven’s grace; the night adder cursed to stalk the darkness forever.”
That savored too much of biblical prophesies, and Emma was loath to revisit the sorcerous hallucinations she’d experienced after Tanith’s attack. She reminded herself again she was no harlot of Babylon—no symbol of corruption. Markus had convinced her of that much at least. She was merely plain and simple old Emma Rose: the morbid girl who’d fallen in love with a vampyre. What possible future was there to be had with a vampyre?
And how was she to make sense of Ana’s being the sister of a snake? Ana, who had been so good and kind to her—a witch. What was her familiar, she wondered? “So am I to understand that because you broke this ancient covenant, liberating me from this Nekromantis, Tanith and her sisters sought retribution?”
“Not exactly,” he said. Something in his expression raised a knot in her belly. “A bargain was struck soon after I claimed you for myself.”
“What sort of bargain?”
His face darkened. “Your sister’s life in exchange for yours.”
After the horror had sunk in, Emma hurled herself at his chest. “How dare you! You know I value my sister’s life above my own!” Her fingers were like claws as they raked his flesh. “You beast, you had no right! Where is Milli?! We struck the same bargain! My life for Milli’s! Give me back my—!”
Markus wrenched her claws away from his face. “What do I care for Milli?” he said, his words mingling with her ragged breaths. “She is nothing to me.”
“She is my sister! My own flesh and blood!” Emma tried to jerk her hands free, but the effort only brought her face closer to his. “If you truly love me then you must love all of me, even Milli.” She searched his coal black gaze. “Tell me my trust in you is not in vain.”
He released her. “Your sister is tucked away in a nunnery, as per your direction.”
“Then she is safe?”
“Not exactly, no. I have broken trust with Malach a second time and, I assure you, there is no more bargaining with him. Tanith’s attack on you—on Winterthurse soil, no less—was rather a clear declaration of war.”
“I must go to Milli! She must be protected at all costs!”
He shook his head. The pall across his brow stilled her instantly. “I’m afraid it is too late for Milli—her fate is sealed.”
“But you said—”
“She has already been bitten, Emma! There is nothing I can do now to change her destiny.”
“Bitten?” Emma’s teeth nearly cracked against each other. “Was it Victoria? Did my sister drink the vampyre blood?”
“No, but—”
“Then there is still hope!” What was more, Milli did not die with the vampyre blood and venom in her veins.
“Emma, listen to me.” Markus held her fast when she would have leapt from the bed. “It was not Victoria that bit her. It was not vampyre venom!”
“Then you must give her your blood again!” She besought him with eyes swollen with tears. “You saved me from the witches, you can save her too!”
His fingers tightened painfully over her arms. “My blood is of little use against Valkolak venom; wehr-wolf venom, Emma! And the one that bit your sister did so under a black moon.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
The Incurable Heart
Markus released her, hating the way her eyes cut him.
“Bitten under a black moon?” Emma shook her head. “I don’t know what that means!”
“Milli was bitten by a black wolf.”
Her heart was like a furious drum beneath her breast. “You never mentioned wehr-wolves,” she said and threw her legs over the other side of the bed, as though to escape him.
He followed her with his eyes as she padded to the window, her skin aglow with moonbeams as she stood naked between the drapes.
“The howling,” she said, glaring out over the moors. This was followed by a strange laugh—desolate as the cold night. “The dogs, you told me.”
“Yes.” When he had mentioned the dogs as being the source of the howling her first night at Winterthurse, he had never imagined that things would escalate to this. And he hadn’t lied, not really—wehr-wolves were, after all, canids. At any rate, there was really no appropriate moment for a vampyre to warn a mortal of wehr-wolves.
Gabriel was to have kept his hounds leashed. Markus gnashed his fangs, frustrated. If only the youngest Rose had not been so stupid! Had she heeded the warning not to go outside at night, he’d not have to weather these glacial looks from Emma. Markus had been dreading this confrontation with her and he detested the guilt she evoked.
“Not quite a lie,” she said. Her thoughts appeared to be running in uncanny parallel to his own. “You have ever used your words carefully and cleverly, Markus.”
His jaw tightened. Would that she’d called him vampyre instead, he cared little for the way her lips dislodged his name. “My brother’s secrets are not mine to divulge.”
Emma turned around to face him. “What do I care for Gabriel and his secrets! He is nothing to me.” His own words thrown back with redoubled vehemence.
“Emma—”
“No more clever words! Tell me what is to become of my sister! Will she…will this infection kill her?”
Her tone rankled, but he could not deny her this embittered rage. “No. Though incurable, wehr-wolf venom is fatal only to mortals. Your sister is of a royal bloodline.” A seraphic bloodline t
hat had lain dormant for generations innumerable, each progenitorial Rose begetting son after son…until Emmaline and Millicent.
“Incurable,” said she with some relief, “but not fatal.” And then the blood drained from Emma’s face as his meaning became clear. “You cannot mean…?”
“Millicent will become the very thing that bit her.” His fists tightened against his sides as he watched her slide against the wall to the floor, her head drooping against her knees in abject silence. That he could offer her no comfort, that he felt helpless against her silent recriminations, only rankled all the more. “There is some small consolation in knowing that she now belongs not to Malach but to the the Valkolak clan; Gabriel and his sons will guard her against—”
“Guard her?” Emma jerked her head up. “Wehr-wolves guard her?” She was trembling with scorn. “She would not now be defiled if not for them!”
“She will be immortal and powerful!” And what was more, thought Markus, she would be cherished by the Nocturni; made royal! Black wolves were rare as it was and female Valkolaks rarer still. “Or would you rather her heart ripped from her chest and served to Malach and his Walpurgis bride?”
“I would rather have had her enjoy an ordinary life—a mortal life. One in which vampyres and witches and wehr-wolves did not exist! Would that I’d had the same for myself.”
He shook his head, regretting her plight. “Impossible, I’m afraid. The monsters of the world would never have allowed it, for you are neither ordinary nor are you mortal; everything is consequential and your fate was inevitable.” And that was her curse, the curse of Hermera, the lost daughter of his doomed sister. Whatever existence Hermera had eked out for herself, wherever she’d done so, remained a mystery to all. Her descendants, however, had not all been so fortunate as to remain undiscovered. For millenia, the Nocturni, both wehr-wolves and vampyres alike, had hunted Nephilim. So too had the Nekromantis and his brood of heart-eaters. The Nephilim were and had always been easy prey, as defenseless as the cattle they dwelled among.
“I might have forgiven you every slight against myself,” said Emma, dropping her head back down onto her knees, “but I cannot forgive you this. Milli has always been mine to protect and now…”
“And now,” he said, “she will be protected by all the Watchmen of the Night. Forevermore.” Markus knelt down beside her and would have pulled her into his arms had she not stiffened and turned away from him. “Malach has no claim to her now, my love.” A circumstance that consequently put Emma in gravest danger, for Markus knew the Nekromantis would seek restitution for the loss of Milli. “Can you not see that?”
“I see you are determined to vindicate your actions.”
“Emma…”
“Leave me, Markus.” She shoved his hand away from her. “Get out!”
For long moments he remained where he was, disturbed by the melancholic thud of her heart. Like a vampyre, she was cold, pale, and silent as stone. So very distant. He knew he would not reach her, not tonight. She needed time, and time was something an immortal had in plentitude.
Markus unbent himself and, with a parting bow, withdrew from his chamber. Not for any other creature, immortal or otherwise, would he have allowed himself to be thus evicted from his own chamber.
Below, in his library, he sat down at his escritoire to write perhaps the most important letter of his life. Words, the right words, were alluding him. An eternity passed before he finally dipped his pen into ink and began to unlade his heart upon paper, the lines flooding out like chaotic rills of black blood. Black blood that bled only for Emma. He loved her as he loved nothing else, and everything that he had done was all for the sake of possessing her. Possession and control was all that he knew; love was alien to him.
He had once believed that he loved Cleopatra, but he saw now that that love had been blackened with the stain of obsession. He had prided himself on his own fatal omniscience. And it had ultimately destroyed that which he had most cherished—he’d wanted to control not only Cleopatra but her destiny as well. And that obsession had nearly destroyed Emma too.
Emma was so like the rose in his wilderness that defied possession with the sting of tooth and claw. There was such beauty in her wildness and such strength in the roots that ran deep into the earth. So deep and everlasting that to pluck the rose was to kill it and destroy its beauty. But not before it too draws blood.
Markus snapped his pen with the force of sudden rage. He would let nothing destroy her—not Malach and certainly not himself. But the only way he could save her was to kill her; empty her heart of every last drop of mortal blood, devour her life with violence and venom, and then fill the empty vessel with his own blackened lifeforce. But what darkness would then fetch up within her heart? What would he have made of her after she awakened to the night? A monster like himself? A monster like Victoria? Or would she remain forevermore his beautiful, wild and unbroken Emma?
Markus knew now that he would rather die than kill her or change her. Better that she should be freed than be tainted by his darkness. If there was a way to free her from himself and from the Nekromantis, he would not hesitate to employ whatever power was at his disposal. Would that he was as omnipotent as he’d once thought himself to be.
Perhaps he might reason with Malach, find another Nephilim to take Emma’s place. But Nephilim were the rarest of creatures, and, at all events, Markus knew that Malach would demand something more powerful than a Nephilim to feed his Walpurgis bride; he had been twice insulted and there would be no chance for a third insult. The Nekromantis had his pride as, Markus supposed, he had his.
Milli’s sacrifice was now out of the question entirely. Gabriel would never sacrifice one of his own, not even for Markus, and especially not for Emma; Milli was after all now an unwitting member of his brood, thanks to William’s idiocy. No creature, save the triumvirate of Cardinals—Malach, Gabriel, and himself—was more valuable, more powerful, than a Valkolak. And Markus was almost certain that Malach would demand no less than a Valkolak prince in reparation. Something Gabriel and Marbod would never allow.
So what was to be done? Markus threw down the broken pen and sat back. Nothing. There was nothing to be done now except bide his time both with Emma and with Malach. He would set his watchmen to guard the former and to watch the latter, though the Nekromantis was as wily and evasive as any night crawler; so too were his slithery daughters. Whatever happened to Emma, the choice must be hers. No matter what the cost, she must be allowed to control her own future, even if that meant he was to be evicted from her life as easily as he had been cast out of his own chamber tonight. It was all he could do for her now, that and protect her from whatever distance she would allow. Hopefully his letter contained the words that had been so lacking from his tongue tonight. It was with hope that he folded the pages and sealed them, hope that she might some day forgive him his arrogance and pride.
A prickling sensation along his nape drew him suddenly from his letter and he swung around to glare out the window. It was not dawn peering in through the glazing but something no less invasive. Markus stalked to the window and used his keen night vision to scour the heavy darkness crouching beyond the glass with feline stealth. He smiled, sharp and threatening. Whatever—or whoever—was watching Winterthurse tonight, could watch in vain, for nothing could enter here without his invitation. And nothing would get by the wolves. Gabriel, Marbod, and Arminius had returned to their respective backwoods schlösser, but William and Nicholas were still haunting the moors. No serpentine little witch would get by them tonight.
With a humorless snort, he left the window. Perhaps he might somehow entreat Emma to lock herself behind these walls forever and save him the trouble of brooding after her like some lovelorn hound. And yet to cage her was impossible too. He sighed, deep and long. No, she was not his to possess; not anymore. He knew what he had to do.
Markus removed his signet ring, took up the sealed letter, and left his library to head upstairs.
; Chapter Fifty-Six
The Cat and the Raven
Mina’s hackles were still raised in alarm when the master of Winterthurse left his library. His wings bristled loudly behind him and there was a letter clutched firmly in his white fingers. She’d camouflaged herself behind the drapes and had nearly died of fright when he’d come to the window, as though he’d sensed her watchful presence. But that was impossible. A witch’s aegis was all that stood between herself and her enemy’s wrath; if not for her mask of magic to disguise her scent, Markus would have torn her to shreds. Invisibility was a witch’s greatest defensive talent, and tonight she’d also daubed herself in Devil’s Bane for good measure.
Notwithstanding that little episode in the armory, as well as that little faux pas in Emma’s chamber when she’d been caught off guard by Victoria the night of the ball, Mina had been careful to stay invisible. She was just Milli’s obstreperous little cat and nothing more. The housekeeper had been the trickiest little devil of them all, yet Mina had managed to remain undetected even by that wily old tick. But tonight, when Markus had turned that diabolic smile towards the window, Mina had felt her organs wither. And then he’d left the window as unexpectedly as he’d come.
Her claws were still impaled in the hardwood as she listened to his retreating footfalls. She had known not an ounce of peace nor a moment of slumber since entering this hellish place, what with Gabriel and his black hounds in residence. Markus was monster enough without the added weight of his diabolical brother at his side. At the sound of a soft tap at the window, she nearly leapt out of her fur, her mind so consumed by the violence of those bestial violet eyes she had avoided above all others.
But it was only Ana. Gabriel, she reminded herself, had returned to his moldering mountain fastness. The raven peered down at her sister, small black eyes impatient and insistent.
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