Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1), стр. 111
“What on earth is the matter with you?”
She bent Victoria a narrowed look. “You don’t remember our conversation?”
“Of course I do,” said the vampyre, peering at her as though she’d gone a little soft in the head. “Come along, I shall have Skinner draw you a hot bath.”
“I can find my own way to the castle. Release me!”
“Don’t be tedious, you and I both know you’d fall flat on your foolish head if I released you now. Mind you, it would not sadden me a bit if you cracked your head open and spilled your brains.”
“I despise you, why are you helping me?”
“Because,” Victoria replied, “Markus disrelishes his supper cold and clammy.” She shot Emma an insidious wink. “Best warm you up by the fire before he returns.”
She ignored the gibe, for she became suddenly aware that she was carrying in her skirts more than just the added weight of mud and rain. She delved a hand into the deep pocket of her skirts and felt her fingers curl about something hard and keen-edged. A blade? One that had not been there before. However, she dared not pull it out to look. Not in front of Victoria. Or had Victoria put it there?
So heavy was the weight of its awful presence there that it bedeviled her gait and reduced her to some misshapen creature skulking furtively in the night. Past the black roses she moved, shivering beneath their sharp glares. They understood the blade’s purpose. Kill Markus. Kill Markus. Kill Markus. It was as if the roses themselves had taken up the hideous canticle of her strange vision. Kill Markus. Kill Markus. Kill Markus. Always in threes.
The jarring din of that song came to a sudden halt as she rounded the hedgerow. The lamps either side of the giant double doors glowed suspiciously as she and Victoria neared. Her sodden dress clung to her limbs, heavy as leg irons as she mounted the stairs. She slowed, her bones crippled with impending doom. Fear held primacy even over her desperate need to warm her flesh by the fire. Upon reaching the yawning stairhead she stopped altogether, unwilling to go any further.
“What now?” said Victoria, impatient.
“Leave me,” Emma replied. And there she might have stayed all night, frozen, had not the doors swung apart that instant and the flames guttered fearfully as the great dragon emerged from his lair.
Markus surveyed her from the doorway, his face thrown into shadow as he stood, unmoving, bestial in his stillness. The night air crackled and snapped with the force of his ire. All was silent. Only her heart sustained the morbid canticle—Kill Markus. Kill Markus. Kill Markus—heedless of the dragon’s discerning senses, as though to warn him of all that had transpired, and all that would betide by morning light.
“You heard her,” he said at last. His gaze transfixed Emma, but his command was directed at Victoria. “Leave us.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
The Sleeping Dragon
My Dear Mary,—Hic sunt dracones. Here there be dragons, Cousin.
A sermon I once heard back in London about great dragons and dark angels has lately imposed a great weight upon my conscience. Would that I had better understood then what I now know I ought to have guarded against. All the novels I have read ought to have warned me about such wicked things… And now I fear I too shall be cast into eternal darkness.
Emma.
When Victoria slipped away, Emma alone stood illuminated beneath that frightening Hadean glare. Though there was ample room to enter past him, she remained rooted, her gaze deflected up at the glimmering firmament—to the seat of grace from which he’d fallen. A realm to which she might never be admitted.
“What are you waiting for?” His voice was soft with menace.
“For absolution,” said she, lowering her gaze from Heaven with a melancholic shrug. “Or for God to dispatch a thunderstone upon my head.”
He considered her a moment before raising a sardonic brow. “Yet here you stand with impunity, my dark rose.” Then he too glanced briefly at Heaven. “It seems God has better things to do this night than smite you on my doorstones.”
The cold had by now thoroughly saturated Emma’s damp skin. She gave an involuntary shiver and wrapped her arms tight about her chest.
Her obvious discomfort instantly effaced what little calm Markus had been evincing thus far. His brow buckled beneath the substantial weight of choleric evident in his tone. “And why should He waste a thunderstone on you, hmm?” Markus ignored her shriek of fright as he snatched her up in his arms. “You are making fast work of dispatching yourself just fine without His intervention.” He then booted the door shut and marched her to his library and set her down by the hearth. The fire saluted her with hisses and sparks, its efforts so worthy that the heat it threw at her was such as to rival even Markus’s brimstone looks. It was with brusque energy that he began unfastening the buttons of her dress.
Suspicion stiffened her limbs and she promptly slapped his hands away. “If you think for a moment that I would—”
“Are you so determined to catch a cold and die just to spite me?” With an authoritative tug, the dress split down her back and swooned to the floor in a desultory heap. She was now only scantily covered in her clinging chemise and wet boots. Thankfully, the blade’s fall remained concealed beneath the slap of wet fabric.
She could not have felt more exposed than if she was standing in nothing but the flesh God gave her, but Markus appeared not to notice or, rather, not to care a jot about her nakedness. His attention was far from romantic in nature.
He pressed his palm to her brow. “You had better not do something so perverse as to contract an ague whilst I’m gone.” He then stalked directly from the room, threatening tea and a blanket on his return.
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