Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1), стр. 86

Chapter Forty-One

A Deal With The Devil

Wings! Emma stood transfixed. She ought to have guessed that even a dark angel might still possess his wings. They dwarfed the room, their empyrean luster gleaming gem-like across indurative black feathers. They were truly beautiful and frightening to behold.

Milli’s shrieking filled the room. When he finally lowered them, she quietened down.

At the carpal bends were vicious-looking black barbs that jutted out from his steely plumage. They looked like horns when the wings were tucked behind him. The wings bore nothing of a bird’s fragility; these were weapons that might very well cleave a man’s skull!

“I want to go home!” Milli sobbed into her hands.

Home seemed an impossibility now. Where could they run that these fiends could not find them? One had to die to enter heaven which seemed the only escape. Assuming, of course, Emma would be admitted there at all.

“Home? That is now quite out of the question.” Victoria went to take Milli’s hands, but the girl balked. “My dearest Milli, am I not still your loving friend?”

“A friend,” Emma seethed, stepping between the vampyre and her sister, “would not have so ‘lovingly’ availed herself of ‘dearest’ Milli’s lifeblood.”

Victoria’s hellish glare swung towards Emma and instantly transmuted into something entirely more sinister. The whites of Victoria’s eyes were suddenly engulfed by inky shadows that stretched out like black veins from each iris until all was black from one corner to the other. “You dare accuse me?”

At the sight of Victoria’s vampyre eyes, Milli was overcome with hysteria. She dug rigid fingers deep into Emma’s arms and backed away from Victoria.

Winterly gave an impatient growl. “Do cease your theatrics, Victoria.”

Victoria faced him with a pointed look aimed at his great wings. “I was merely following your example.”

“Markus,” Emma’s voice was almost inaudible, but to the vampyres it rang out like a clap of thunder. It had been a calculating step on her part to use his name against him, the name he’d urged her so often to use. “You mentioned some sort of ownership earlier…” She spared a brief glance for her sister, not wanting to upset Milli more than she already was. “But you never said who has lain claim to me.”

“I would have thought that obvious,” he replied, dropping his gaze to the dragon and the gold chain that encompassed her throat. “My sigil imports to the nocturnal world to whom it is that you belong.”

“But I will never truly belong to you unless it is by my own will.” She filled her lungs. “So let us strike a bargain.”

“A god,” said Victoria, “does not make bargains with a—”

“Go on,” said the master, silencing his sister—or whatever she was—with an imperious hand.

“My life in exchange for Milli’s. I will remain here with you, so long as my sister—” she shot Victoria a fleeting look “—is no longer used as a comestible. She must be removed from this place and taken to the Priory Church of Holy Virgins.” Where, she hoped, Milli would remain inviolate upon sacred ground, under Sister Mary’s watchful eye. “These are my terms.”

He stroked his jaw a moment. “Consider this carefully, Emma, I do not strike bargains lightly.”

“You cannot do that!” Victoria rounded on him. “The girl is not yours to—”

“I know,” he answered coolly.

“The consequences, Markus—”

“Are mine to weigh, and my commands yours to obey, now leave us.”

Victoria bristled under his glare, but finally she acceded with a stiff bow of her raven head. Her eyes narrowed to slits as they settled on Emma. “This obsession,” she said to Winterly, “will end as the one before.” She shook her head. “All this for a termagant with a homely face and a shrewish tongue.”

“I said leave us.” Winterly’s scowl turned black.

At last, Victoria withdrew from the library like a miasmic shadow. The entire room was now engulfed in chilling gloom, dusk having chased the sun from the sky. Only the fire was unaffected by the cold and crippling disquietude. It lurched along the logs with fiendish vigor.

Markus stalked to the casements and flung them wide to admit the night air and the whispers of the gloaming. “Come, Millicent.” He held an imperious hand out.

But Milli shook her head, overmastered by her fear of him, her tongue having long since ceased to function. It was left to Emma to guide her trembling sister to the waiting vampyre looming atop the window-seat. But this was all too much for Milli—she dropped to the floor again. Emma caught her sister’s shoulders and sank down gently under the added weight so that Milli’s head came to rest on her lap. She took a moment to run her fingers through the flaxen locks. Though Milli was no longer bloodless, her countenance still bore an awful want of color, such as could only be imposed by crippling terror.

It was easier this way, Emma decided. She had not the heart to force Milli into the arms of the very creature that had struck such terror in her, nor the stomach for teary farewells. She couldn’t bear her sister’s heart-rending sobs. Not now that her own heart was in fearsome throes. “Her life is more valuable than my own,” she said.

“That is a matter of opinion.”

She watched as he lifted Milli’s senseless body from the floor. “Guard her well.” His jaws hardened irritably as Emma removed his dragon sigil and then fastened it instead around her sister’s neck. “To the priory,” she said, placing one last kiss