Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1), стр. 129
“We have…have to get away,” said Emma, her lungs straining. But she knew she could move no further and no faster than a trampled worm.
Milli whimpered obediently and began dragging Emma bodily away from the bizarre melee of wolf and witch. “Dear God…Emma, look.” Milli’s gaze was fixed not towards the monstrous combatants beneath the willow tree, but upon a different scene, though no less horrifying.
With much effort, Emma looked towards the opposite side of the pond. Atop the piled corpses of slaughtered nuns, Tanith stood, threatening, waving the severed head of Sister Margret. The witch hurled the head aside. The poor nun’s face, frozen forever in shock, flew to the ground and, with a dreadful thump, lumbered into the water and disappeared beneath the lilli pads and frightened toads. With another piercing screech, Tanith advanced on them, her glare murderous.
“Where…where is Valko?” Emma was cold. So cold. Every word she spoke was perfect torture.
Face white as a sheet, Milli aimed a shaking finger at the white wolf. “He…he…” She shook her head, ostensibly dumbstruck by what she’d seen Valko become.
I know, Milli. Emma gave a weak nod and closed her eyes against Tanith’s perilous, gnashing advance.
Valko no longer filled the constraints of human form—in his place was a creature with tapered ears and a long snout, its torso overspread with a thick, white pelt. Only his ripped britches still clung to the hairy thews of his transfigured legs, the rest of his clothing no doubt lay in tatters on the ground nearby. If he were not so terrible to behold, or not bleeding from his wounds, Emma might have found some little humor in the notion of a bipedal wolf in britches. Perhaps she might laugh another time: when they weren’t under attack, and she wasn’t dying.
The battle of beast and demon witch waged on, fierce and deadly. Emma could no longer distinguish the wolf’s snarling from the Nekromantis’s, nor could she see which of the two was the stronger. Every rending of flesh inflicted by wolfish teeth, the witch returned full force with those long, black claws so like surgeon’s knives.
Emma felt herself slipping, felt the air turn frigid in her punctured lungs, felt the world grow quiet, and felt her own watery breaths becoming ever shallower as her sister’s face blurred with vignetted shadows. Or was the sky grown darker? She was sinking into oblivion, slipping beneath the nebulous waters whence Sister Margret lay bodiless, enshrined in pond weeds and silt.
A rough jolt instantly stirred Emma’s eyes open again, pulling her forcibly back from those dark, surreal depths to which she’d sunk. But as she squinted up at the grey sky, she became aware that she was no longer moving, no longer being dragged. She was utterly alone. Milli was gone.
Emma tried to call out to her sister, but the air gurgled out of her lungs in wet gibberish. She flailed weakly, clutching at her wounds. Mary’s soaked linen was pasted to her chest. Oh, dearest Mary! Dead! Emma’s hand fell white and limp to the ground. It did not, in those final moments, escape her that this was the second time she had found herself flailing upon the tightrope between life and death. This time Markus was not here to save her. This time she could not break from the spreading maw of paralysis—that awful void whelming up through her brain like an opium fog.
Strangely, there was no more sound, just the beckoning dirge of total silence. All was deathly still as Emma stared, inert and helpless, her vision seething with spidery shadows. And within that shadowy frame, her sister appeared. Milli was struggling against Mina’s vice-like hold. From where had Mina materialized of a sudden? And why was the world suffocated in silence.
Milli thrashed and clawed at her captor, her mouth moving with unrestrained and soundless fury, her fingernails bloodied. Emma’s head fell to the side, her neck too weak to follow her eyes. Nearby lay Valko, naked but for his britches. His eyes stared from a human visage once more, but they were wide and unseeing, his chest all but torn to sinew and bone. Dead.
Emma tried to reach for Milli, but her arms bore no more life than Valko’s corpse; not even a twitch animated her fingers.
Poor brave Valko! The nuns were all murdered, heaped like unwanted carrion beneath the headless bulk of sister Margret. And poor Milli, now the only one left standing. Alone, alone, alone!
Emma felt her ebbing blood writhe and boil with helplessness, her lips gaping and foaming with wordless hatred as she watched Mina drag her sister away. When Emma blinked again, they were gone and Tanith appeared like a rearing serpent. Tanith whose face was veiled in dying shadows, the blood-soaked ropes of hair galvanized around her face like an uncanny halo of white snakes.
Every cell within Emma still flickering with life cried out and reached for Milli again and again. All in vain. Emma shut her eyes as Tanith raised her deadly hands. Talons so like her brother’s. Nay, her father’s. Her lover’s. Vile creatures, all!
Darkness settled over her, its wings outstretched, gathering like dusk. Ah, the chaos of blessed black wings come to snatch her soul away from its wretched mortal roots. She welcomed Death now; she knew him well. She willed her spirit to cast its anchor. Better that she died now than be made to watch Milli’s death unfold. Already her sight was fading. But the narrowing beam of light above her flickered suddenly as Tanith disappeared and a large shadow moved to blot the sky overhead.
Hades himself was come to fetch her away. She smiled at the darkness and sighed as her heart sputtered its last feeble beats.
Chapter Sixty
A Thousand Damns
Mina rushed towards the priory as fast as her paws would