Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1), стр. 110

“One of you will die,” said the distorted voice with chilling certainty. “It is for you to decide who survives whom.”

Emma blenched, for the eyes, which had remained obscured until now, blazed blood red suddenly.

“The red dragon knows what you are. Why do you think he has kept you alive all this time? He means to fill your scarlet belly with his spawn! Kill him before your golden cup fills with abominations!”

“No!” But even as she cried out, Emma’s hands jerked with a thirstful itch. Stormwater lashed her face like a thousand furious slaps. “No! No!”

“You will.” Though the smile remained invisible, Emma heard it nonetheless. “Or join the heartless corpses that fill the London gutters.”

“The London slayings…they…” She shook her head. “They were his doing?” Despite her chattering teeth and the roar of nature, Emma’s words rang clear with dread. “That cannot be!”

“Can it not? Do you doubt his appetite?” Red eyes narrowed slightingly. “You who have slaked his every appetite.”

“No! Liar! Snake! He could never—”

“What do you think he was doing the night he rescued you? He was hunting! And where was he last night, hmm?” For a moment the eyes flashed crimson as they smote Emma’s midriff. “How you can stand to be the mother of his abominations, I don’t know. I am sure your estimable parents would be only too proud to know their eldest daughter not only bears the mark of the beast”—she aimed a rancorous glare at Emma’s neck as though she could see the bite—“but relinquished her own sister to the devil himself and has made herself his great harlot.”

“What?” Emma shook her head, her eyes flooding with stormwater. “No!”

“Then you shall become the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. You will bear the very spawn your Book of Revelation warns will blacken the sun and devour the world and all those as innocent as your young sister.”

“Enough, I beg you!”

“Or will you be as the woman clothed in white? The enemy of the Dragon. A white queen to save your race of lambs.”

Emma tried not listen, but Victoria’s skewed allegories constricted her heart. And for a moment she was back in London, listening to the rector, his eyes red with flame, his hair all about him while his finger shook at her with damning fury. Over and over, he blamed her for the blackened sun and the moon red with blood and the falling stars. “Stop! I will hear no more!” But the rector only laughed, his eyes suddenly reptilian, his tongue forked—whore of Babylon, he called her. “Enough!” she screamed. But it was too late and she had heard too much; the snake’s venomous sermon had found purchase deep in her heart. Even in the deprecating roar of the wind, she could smell the brimstone, hear the sky belching with fire, see the ocean churning with blood and death.

It was agony to love the Dragon and to know what he was; to know he bore her no love in return; to know that she was fain to die rather than kill him. Fain to die rather than bear his offspring. Fain to die for her sister. It was all too much!

Were it not for Ana’s revelations, she might have better withstood this attack—Victoria’s attack. But she was only a mortal, weak and fallible. There was far too much mounting evidence and testimony against Markus, to say nothing of the Book of Revelation itself.

“Kill him, Emma!” The voice was sharp as flint above the howl of the storm. No longer the rector’s voice but no less disgusting.

Emma answered it with a negativing sob.

“So you will conduce the fall of mankind instead? You selfish little wretch! The beast will eat your naked flesh and cast your desolate body into the fire!”

Emma keened and prayed and wept till her throat was raw with agony, and all the while the shadow watched with cold detachment. That she, Emma, could be the Dragon’s harlot! Just a vessel through which evil could be made flesh to smite the earth. Smite all as viciously as had been done to the women in London.

When Emma’s throat was finally hoarse and silent, though her eyes were drenched still in tears and rain, Victoria knelt down beside her. “His heart,” she said, stroking Emma’s hand with cold, wet fingers, fingers that were hardly fingers at all but claws—scaly and sharp like an animal’s. “He might not love you, but he trusts your weakness; that is your advantage.” The shadow stood upright, suddenly wary. It seemed to peer at the leaden sky. Another flash of red in the face where the eyes should be. Lightening streaked the floating hair with icy white. The storm was passing, dragging with it the pall of clouds in its wake, and dusk had by now completely snatched the fire from the sky. “Good luck, little white queen.” She pressed three cold kisses to Emma’s icy cheek in viperous succession. And then she vanished as though on a burst of white lightning—here one moment and gone the very next. But her voice, the command, lingered and echoed a second longer like smoke from scorched earth. “He is more powerful at night,” it said. “Wait till dawn, then kill him.” Kill Markus. Kill Markus. Kill Markus.

Emma lay still and prostrate, her head turned to the side. She filled her nose with the decay of leaves and earth and drenched roses. Her vision swam in and out for some moments thereafter and it was a long time before it cleared altogether.

“What are you doing?”

Emma peeled her lids open to see Victoria standing above her with a lantern. “Victoria?”

“You’re drenched through, you little fool. Are you determined to die of cold? I promise you, there are more pleasurable ways to die.”

Emma lifted her cheek from the wet earth and then proceeded to test her trembling limbs. She was so unsteady on her legs that Victoria, with an impatient