Vampyre Bride ✔️

XXXII⎮Arcanum Arcanorum

The inn had already darkened considerably, the daylight nigh spent from the windows, and the hour she'd given herself had all too quickly flown away. Markus, she knew, would be looking for her—she perceived this the way a vampyre, she imagined, might sense the murmurous tenebrosity of the encroaching night.

"I haven't time for nonsense," said she, unnerved by Anna's uncanny and fearsome black eyes. "I know who I am. But what in Heaven's name are you?"

Anna's eyes instantly cleared of shadows as she leaned back, the iris' once more returning to their natural tawny hue. "I believe I answered that already—a watcher."

"A watcher of vampyres?"

"No, I watch over the Daughters of Man." She held up a peremptory finger when Emma parted her lips to question. "My kind are scholars and scribes; moreover, when necessary, we are protectors." She cast another leery glance at the fallen darkness lying at the fringe of lamplight that escaped the glazing. "I too am an immortal—"

"A vampyre!" Emma had know it the moment she'd seen the blackness flood Anna's eyes.

"Keep your voice down!" Anna hissed. "I am no accursed vampyre; I do not siphon from the veins of the living like a damned wyrm!" Another furtive glance at the window. "I am an unfallen watcher."

"You mean to tell me you're an angel too?"

"Yes, exactly. The Unfallen are known by our enemies as Irin, or witches, but amongst ourselves we are merely Egregoroi. Your lover too was once a watcher. When he ceased his watching it was to satisfy his own unholy purposes—to interfere with the natural order of mortals."

"He has already revealed his nature to me." Without hesitation, Emma had sprung to Markus' defense. Like, she thought belatedly, a wilting rose succoring the very worm feeding from her blighted stem. "You are only affirming his veracity."

Anna's mouth compressed grimly. "I shall hazard a wager, he did not tell you why he fell."

To that Emma could offer no response.

"Let me enlighten you then. As in the castes of man, not all angels were created alike. Some wield greater power than others, but with that endowment of power came the desire for more; the stronger the angel, it seemed, the more susceptible to mortal appetites; and, as it happened, the harder they fell. There were many watchers once, and those that succumbed to earthly decadence did so because they were covetous of man. They became ruled by man's lust and pride—the ravenous hunger for flesh and power fed their quickening pride to such magnitude that God cast his children from heaven for their trespasses and damned them to that same realm they had so desired to occupy and dominate."

"For what reason was Markus disgraced?"

"For interfering in the life of that which he was charged only to watch."

Emma pulled her watch surreptitiously from her dress, the feeling of dread gnawing all the more insistently the longer she tarried...and the deeper the darkness fell upon the streets without. She wanted Anna to expound further, but the watcher—with an unnatural and leery restiveness—continued on as though every word was a cumbrous weight upon her tongue threatening to drown her lest she unburden it with haste.

"When they were cast out of heaven, they forged for themselves a corrupted army. From blood and violence, their legion propagated. Your sister's friend, Victoria, is one such vile underling."

"Am I to believe that Victoria is his soldier?"

"His soldier and his child."

"His child!" Emma's hands flew to her mouth. "How can that be?"