Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1), стр. 117
He was silent a moment, as though deliberating. “There are many dark creatures that prey on innocence, Emma. Man is as bloodthirsty as the worst of Hell’s monsters. My kind are no exception.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, repulsed. “You kill in cold blood then?”
“The blood is never cold.”
“Did you or did you not slay those women in London?”
“I did not. Only a witch would leave a bloody mess and steal the heart. When I dine I do so cleanly and dispose of my kill with far more—”
“Yes, yes.” She raised a supplicating hand, lest he continue.
“What need have I for organ meat?”
“But can you not…dine like a civilized creature and subsist on the blood of livestock instead?”
“You would have me subsist?” The word dropped from his tongue like arsenic. “What man subsists on the blandness of water and turnips when he may feast on Madeira and Neck of Veal à la crème?”
“Blood is blood!”
At this, his lip curled in disgust. “One creature’s blood is not like another’s—water and wine, Emma. At any rate, I like to think I am ridding the herd of disease.”
“What disease?”
“Evil.”
She shook her head. “One evil act does not forgive another. Surely you need not kill to survive? Could you not just take a little blood?”
“Would you have me believe that you need not slaughter a calf for its flesh? That the beast might continue to frolic along without the loins you took for your supper?”
“You compare humans to beasts then? If that is so then you have fallen in love with your supper! What am I if not Neck of Veal à la crème?”
The chuckle that followed was without warmth or humor. “Ahh, but that has always been my dilemma, my sweet rose.” He leant over and kissed her smartly on the lips before she could turn away. “Come, come, you would not mourn a murderer hanging from a gibbet; I am no more evil than a hangman. Though my taste in bedmates is impeccable—” (that she was the brunt of this pun did not escape her) “—my palate is less wholesome.” When she only continued to stare bemusedly, he said, “I prefer my vittles sourced from among the unsavory.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I enjoy the taste of predators.” His smile widened. “The Newgate and Bridewell cages don’t whet my appetite, mind you, those inmates are wholly without spice. No, I much prefer the clever murderers and rapists that stalk the wilderness. Makes for good hunting, you know.”
“Criminals?” Well, that was unexpected.
“The more deranged the brains the better the flavor.”
Emma stroked her throat, grimacing. “Is that what occupied you the night I went to Whitby?”
He smiled. “I was enjoying the delicious company of a fat little magistrate with an unwholesome predilection for motherless little boys.”
“God Almighty! I hope you destroyed the beast!”
“I see you’re coming around to my way of thinking at last.”
She answered with a pained smile. Well, if she was to love her dragon completely then she could not harbor delicate sentiments; for him she would learn to accept and understand his own less than savory proclivities. “While I digest that information, I think we ought to return to the subject of witches.” Not that the habits of witches were any less unpalatable. “Why would a witch…eat…eat someone’s heart?”
“Because,” he said, “the heart is the seat of power—the life-force that sustains mortals and immortals alike; it feeds blood and flesh. And maleficium—witch venom. Black magic.”
“Ahh.” She recalled the conversation in London, at Winterly House, when Markus had explained how some venoms assailed the flesh, others the blood, and then there was that which assaulted the heart. How well she understood that now, especially the sorcerous venom that had infiltrated and poisoned her own heart. “Will the witch venom have any lasting effects? Is it like vampyre venom insofar as making one immortal?”
“They use it to toy with or control their prey when they wish it to be kept alive for a time; eventually, however, witch venom makes of the mind a gangrenous place—drives the sane to madness so that one is either committed to the madhouse or to an early grave. But my blood countervails even spider venom.”
“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