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Authors: Jacqueline Lepore

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BOOK: Descent Into Dust
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She was there—of course she was. I spotted her standing alone among the tall grass, her head tilted back as I’d seen her do before when she was conversing with the strange and dark creature that posed as her friend. “Henrietta!”

I yanked hard on the reins, rearing in the horse and bringing the trap to a sudden halt. Flinging down the leads, I leapt to the ground. Henrietta appeared deaf to my cries, standing unnaturally still, facing that horrible tree.

“Henrietta, what are you doing?” I took her by the shoulders as I knelt before her. “Everyone is looking for you. Why did you run off?”

She twisted away from my grasp, refusing to come with me. “Henrietta!” I said, for the first time using an impatient tone with her.

“Marius has come back to me,” she said. Her voice was small, frightened.

“No, no he is not here, darling. You need to come home. Come.”

She stood stiff as wood. I tried again to tug at her. Her eyes, sad and huge, lifted to mine as she whispered, “He is waiting for you, Cousin Emma.”

I bent, ready to sweep her into my arms. I was prepared to bear her away kicking and screaming if I had to, but before I could, I heard something behind me. The fine hair on the back of my neck stood on end and I turned slowly, hearing a low chorus of growls as I did so.

Wolves—three of them. These were not canines, not wild dogs or the howling beasts that sometimes venture too close to a campfire in search of food. These were terribly ugly, slavering, red-eyed, and sporting elongated teeth far more numerous than was natural. They bore down on us with their jaws gaping open hungrily.

“Henrietta, run. Run as fast as you can. Go back to the house. Now!” I was aware of one sprinting behind me, taking the angle that would have been our retreat. “Do as I say!” My voice was sharp, stinging the air with my rising panic.

Henrietta stared dreamily at me.

“Henrietta,” I said calmly, fiercely, “go to the trap.”

She did not move, entranced again with that horrible expression of agony on her face, as if she knew the battle was already lost. One of the wolves moved into place, cutting me off from her, and my breath caught in my throat, a ragged sob of fear.

But then I noticed that the three were ignoring her. All of their concentration was centered on me. Just me. As they tightened their circle, I saw how they deliberately stalked chillingly close to the child, and yet never so much as flicked a glance her way.

Henrietta began to weep, muttering through her tears. I heard a muffled “no,” and then a “please.”

I forced myself to turn away from her. She was not in danger. And, I realized with alacrity, I very much was.

I had no weapon. Whatever powers had taken possession of me previously seemed to have abandoned me, for I had not the slightest sense of calmness as I had experienced before. My hands did not itch for a weapon. My eyes did not dart with unnatural speed to track the creatures as they stalked, bony haunches jutting from mange-infested fur. I fixed my eyes on them, tracking first one, then another as they passed, spiraling closer, their leering grins baring rust-colored teeth.

I felt disoriented, and I thought:
He’s here. Marius is here, and he means to destroy me.

Henrietta still stood watching. She sobbed, pleading out loud for the attack to stop. I knew it was Marius whom she beseeched for mercy, because she knew he was here, too.

I thought that if I were torn to bits, she would see it. “Turn away,” I commanded her, not willing to risk a glance to see if she obeyed.

I faced the three demon wolves, narrowing my concentration. If I were to die, I would do so fighting. Picking one of the beasts, I watched it warily. It stared back at me, and I recalled suddenly how Mr. Fox had said Naimah had connected with animals. I realized I’d done something of the same thing with the snake attack, sensing their movements, knowing the intention in their primitive brain.

I dug for it, that connection, staring intently at the beast, and suddenly I felt it. Some instinct asserted itself. A glimmer, a trace…

The clawed feet—more catlike than canine—slowed. I punched out, and saw a ripple convulse its cadaverous frame. A movement out of the corner of my eye brought my attention to
another wolf just now stepping up with a trace of anxiety in its red eye. It watched me, and I reached for the bond again.

The wolf peeled back its jaw and growled, baring those horrible fangs. But I was not cowed by the display. I understood, somehow, that it was lashing back at me. It had felt me.

I turned slowly, focusing on each of the beasts in turn. My head filled with images. Blood, tearing flesh. These were not mere wolves. These were Marius’s minions, animals transformed into flesh-eating monsters. I sliced through their gazes and into their minds, and I saw how to reach into them—as if pushing my hand through a curtain and tightening it into a fist.

I could smell what they did, my brain opening to a universe of scent beyond human capacity. I felt the thirst, the unholy thirst for human blood. My blood. Under their paws, the chalky downs was like dust, and I felt the softness of it as nails bit into ancient limestone for traction, as muscles coiled, readying for attack.

I thought,
I am Dhampir
. I remembered my suffering mother, and squeezed my mental fist until my body shook and I was sweating. I felt them. All of my will centered on their bloodlust, but in my mind, I pictured wolf tearing wolf apart.

Then it happened. Like puppets under a magic hand, they moved. I held on tight to my control as they yelped and reared. The sounds of an animal in great agony is something scarce to be borne, but I did not allow it to shake my concentration as their cries of pain rent the air. I pictured each strike, each tearing of flesh, and made it real.

“Emma! Emma!”

Sebastian’s voice came from a great distance. Like time sped up, it flew toward me, growing louder, clearer, suddenly bursting over me, bringing me back.

“Emma!”

I turned, and saw he had Henrietta in his arms. She had her face buried against his neck. She was not weeping any longer.

Dazed, I looked around me, and saw the three bloodied bodies in the grass. And in the tree, the dry, cackling cry of a lone crow scraped across the air.

There was no talking Sebastian out of what he had seen.

“You killed them,” he accused. “All three. They tore each other apart. They went mad—and you! You had a look on your face, Emma, such as I’ve never seen. You did it. Do not deny it!”

After we returned Henrietta to her tearful and grateful parents, I had not even had time to freshen up before Sebastian dragged me into the deserted conservatory.

“You must tell no one what you saw,” I said urgently.

“As if I would. I am astonishingly good at keeping secrets.” He leaned forward, a rabid look in his eye. “How long have you been able to do…that? And what exactly
was
that?”

“I do not wish to speak of it.” I attempted to leave but he blocked my way.

“Why not? I will tell you my secret.”

I smiled. “It is no secret. You are having an affair with Mr. Farrington.”

He was chagrined. “How the bloody…? I’ve taken such pains!”

“Perhaps it is only I who knows you so well, who sees it,” I admitted.

“This preternatural sense of yours is devilish. It must be related to what you did back there with those wolves.”

“I did not—”

He sighed and held up a hand to stop my lies. “This is not
the time or place for me to explain, but let us dispense with the denials and the rational. I am not unfamiliar with the realm of unnatural myself.” He sighed. “As for Mr. Farrington, it is ill-fated. He is set to marry. He has no stomach for the disapprobation of our kind. It is jail for some, you know. Which is an improvement over earlier ages, when we were burned alive.” He peered at me and added more feelingly, “I did not ask to be made this way, you know. I was born to it.”

“Then perhaps you will understand my explanation that what happened with the wolves—well, I, too, was born to certain abilities. May we agree to leave it at that?”

He considered this, then shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

“Sebastian,” I warned quietly, “I cannot speak of this.”

He studied me. “I have heard tales of people capable of amazing things in protection of a loved one. Mothers lifting heavy bales to free a trapped child, a father fighting a fire against all odds to rescue his family, that sort of thing. Whatever you did, you did it to save Henrietta.” His brows shot down. “Wasn’t it strange how they did not go for her? As if they did not even see her.”

“Yes.” I was carefully neutral in my tone. I myself was only beginning to understand, but I had realized that Henrietta belonged to Marius in some way—he had power over her and some mysterious, dangerous purpose that turned my blood to ice to imagine.

“God help us if anything happened to her.” Sebastian blanched at the thought. “Henrietta—I swear, Emma, that child is my heart. Would that it happen to me, or any of us, but nothing must ever hurt her. She is the best of us.”

The best of us.

And just like that, I understood at last.

Chapter Twenty-one

C
orruptio optimi pessima.
The corruption of the best is worst.

It was Henrietta. She, the best of us just as Sebastian said—the most innocent, the most pure of heart and kind of nature—she was in the eye of this. And the power of her goodness was the fuel for Marius’s evil.

I stumbled to find Fox, then dragged him into the garden, into the shelter of that ridiculous Grecian folly, so that we would not be overheard.

But he was beside himself with anguish over the morning’s events, and spoke first. “I went to The Sanctuary first!” he protested as if I’d accused him. He grasped my shoulders. I guessed it was his own recriminations he answered. “She was not there.

I looked all over the area.”

“He must have hidden her until I arrived. It was me he wanted. He does not wish to harm her.” I told him of my conversation with Sebastian, and my new suspicion about how Henrietta figured prominently somehow into Marius’s plan.

He was pale as he absorbed this news. His fingers bit into my flesh. “Does he mean to make her a vampire on May Day, in this place where the power meridian furnishes great energy? Is that what this is about?”

I had thought of this as well. “She has to be willing, you said. If he wants her to live with him, she has to agree to it. And he might succeed. The poor child is confused and afraid.” I threw my hands out explosively. “Why does he want such a companion? Is he still human enough to wish for a child of his own?”

“Emma,” he said softly, collecting me to him to console me. I allowed myself one moment to lean into his strength.

“But why the attachment to The Sanctuary, the hawthorn tree?” he posed suddenly, his thoughts taking a turn. This logic brought me up short. I stared back at him, no answer at hand.

Speculation furrowed his brow. “What does this child have to do with Father Luke and the knights of his order? The Sanctuary, the hawthorn tree—none of that need figure into a plan to make a vampire child. And note the priest has shown no interest in Henrietta.”

This was true. But if Marius did not wish to make Henrietta as himself, then what purpose did he have for her?

Fox said, “There is one certain thing we do know. Marius wishes you dead, for you alone can stop him.”

Frustration rose within me. “How? How am I to stop him? How can it be this is left to me when I understand so little?”

But it had to be so. He had sent those vile wolves for me, the snakes before that. He had come for me himself, tried to
master me with his mind. It could mean only one thing: a fight for Henrietta—the best of all of us. I did not know how, or even why, but I did know, as clearly as I ever had known anything in my life, that she was in mortal danger.

I had a summons from Father Luke asking me to come to tea. It had begun to rain again, and the roads were awash with mud, but that did not stop me. I set out for Saint Michael in the Fields by myself, and stood in an icy, lashing rain and pounded on the door of the rectory. My summons went unanswered. Overhead, the dull murmur of faraway thunder crept across the downs like footsteps, and I thought—only for a moment—that perhaps this was another of Marius’s traps.

I lunged through the deluge to the church. It was open, as I had hoped. As I shook off the water beading on my woolen cloak, I noted the naked nail where my crucifix once hung. I regretted what I had done, but I did not think it was wrong. I would do worse if called upon. I wondered if there was an end to what I was capable of in defense of Henrietta.

I entered the nave. The growling skies shook the magnificent stained-glass windows. I wondered if Marius had whipped fury into the heavens, and then I thought—
I am glad.
The more he was thwarted, did that not bode all the better for me?

To my left, a flickering rack of candles illuminated a mournful Madonna painted in oils. I stared at her, thinking of my own mother. The sadness, as always, cut sharply, fresh as if I’d only moments ago learned of her demise. It might be blasphemous not to revile her, but she was my mother, and despite what she’d become, I loved her.

“You were caught in the storm?”

Father Luke emerged out of the shadows, as solid as the thick oak colonnade behind him. His dark hair caught the moving
light, and for a moment he looked like the painting of Saint Michael himself, the warrior with the ability to raise a mighty sword and strike the deadly blow to the enemies of Heaven.

He held out his hand to me in a conciliatory gesture. “Come. Let us go to my office.”

We dashed through the pelting rain to the back door to the rectory, and stepped into a cozy kitchen. Mrs. Tigwalt came in from what I supposed was the pantry, her brow furrowing in disapproval when she saw me.

“Tea, please,” the priest requested. “And a blanket. That first, I think. Mrs. Andrews is drenched.”

In the sitting room where he had fed me wine nearly a fortnight ago, he drew up a thickly cushioned chair by the fire. “Take off your shoes and come and sit.”

BOOK: Descent Into Dust
10.86Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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