Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1), стр. 130
In little more time than it took the cat to leap into the air, she was suddenly running on two legs again—two human legs—her cat pelt replaced by a manteau of red, billowing wildly behind her. Mina threw a furtive glance towards the east, her distorted shadow a long and ominous harbinger of Night’s imminence.
The half-lit moon had already bestirred itself above the horizon, its glare like a hot brand upon her back. “Hurry!” it seemed to whisper. But the exhortative murmur of dusk was not for her but for the beast that gave chase. “Hurry, she’s getting away!”
Every night that the moon’s glare narrowed, the black wolf’s strength and rage only swelled. When that eye closed upon the earth each month and swathed the night in total darkness, no witch in her right senses strayed beyond her doorstones. But even a half-lit moon was no benign thing.
The shouts and clamor, as Mina entered the churchyard, were positively terrific. No sight was more terrible and heart-wrenching, however, than that of Ana being booted to the ground, a blade sheathed in her heart. The raven witch belched her last painful cry and tumbled to the earth, nevermore to fly again.
Mina skidded to a dead halt. Malach’s ferocious roar vibrated in her heart and was echoed by Tanith’s enraged paroxysms. While Malach was still engaged in deadly battle, Tanith was free to vent her shock and rage upon a nun, severing the head clear of the shoulders with swift efficacy. But for Millicent, and the white wolf, all others appeared dispatched. Ahh, but there was life yet flickering in Emma, though her pallor was already fast turning grey. If they did not harvest the heart forthwith, its essence and power would be wasted. Mourning Ana must wait till the morrow, for the present belonged only to action and haste.
Tanith was already sprinting towards the wolfling girl, her flesh radiating with vengeful savagery. Mina knew all too well the annihilating fury of Tanith when she was allowed to fly into blind unbridled passion; it was much like Lilith’s—or so said her father. They needed the wolfgirl alive. Mina could not allow Tanith to get to the sisters first, lest she somehow damage their quarry in her blind rage.
Although Malach was obviously the more powerful of the two combatants, the wolf was proving a relentless foe. So Mina would get no help from Malach in controlling Tanith. Fortunately, Mina was the faster and could easily outpace Tanith.
The wolfgirl had dragged Emma halfway to the church gate by the time Mina reached them. She barreled into the pair with white-eyed ferocity. The ground itself leapt up at Mina’s command and sent the wolfling hurtling through the air. She fell some distance away from Emma. The shock of Mina’s attack seemed to have somehow revived Emma, for she groaned and twitched with some semblance of life.
“Tanith!” Mina hauled the wolfgirl up and held her fast as her sister arrived. “Cut out the heart before it stops!” She threw a nod towards Emma’s prone form.
“Gladly!” As Tanith passed the wolfgirl, she sneered. “And we shall be well rid of you soon enough.” With that, Tanith unsheathed her knife, still smeared with vestal blood, and stalked towards Emma. Roughly, she flipped Emma onto her back.
“No!” the wolfling snarled like a thing uncaged. In fact, so unexpected was the sudden force of the creature’s unleashed vehemence, that she bit Mina and then swatted her to the ground as though Mina were only a kitten.
Mina was so stunned by the blow that, by the time she gathered her wits and leapt to her feet, the wolfgirl was already pouncing onto Tanith’s back. The little cur wrenched the necklace from her bosom and thrust the dragon pendant into Tanith’s eye, it’s tail like a pike lodging deep in the socket. When she plucked the dragon out, so too came Tanith’s poor, red eye. It sat glaring singularly on the end of the dragon tail, its roots bloody and dangling uselessly like the fateful eye of Atropos.
The screeching that therewith ensued alerted Malach who, with a thunderous war cry, finished the staggering wolf at last. As he ripped the animal’s heart from its pulsing sinews, Mina wrestled the wolfgirl from Tanith who was clutching her empty socket and giving vent to such awful screeches that Mina feared it would only bring the black wolf the sooner. Then, quick as an adder, Tanith whipped around and struck the girl an almighty blow, her nails dragging deep, red cuts in the wolfling’s face.
“We have to go!” Mina shoved her knee into the girl’s back and snatched both the glaring eye and the dragon away, stowing them in her cloak. “Malach, we have to go!”
Her father whipped his head around, his eyes a feral white as he swallowed the rest of the white wolf’s heart.
Damn! Mina should have had the heart, for black wolf venom was deadly to witches! She could already feel the fever beginning to scorch her flesh around the bite wound. Damn beastly girl! But how could Malach have known she needed the white wolf heart to counter the wehr-wolf venom.
Her father said nothing as he knelt beside his fallen daughter, lifting Ana from the ground with careful attention despite his razor fingers.
“Father! The girl’s too strong!” It was all Mina could do to keep the creature restrained, and she had depleted much of her power, what with the constant shifting into her familiar, to say nothing of the sepsis in her blood and the earth magic she had summoned against the wolfling brat. “Help me, Father!”
Malach, newly invigorated by the heart of the Valkolak boy, readjusted Ana’s corpse so that his left hand was free. He threw out a blast of sticky white web at the struggling baggage in Mina’s arms. She jumped back at the last minute