Vampyre Bride ✔️

XXXIII⎮The Watcher In The North

Emma hurried from the wharf like a thief, the light from the inn beckoning her back. She stumbled along the cobbled alley, blackened under the starless night, back to Church Street whence she'd instructed the driver to wait for her.

A terrible north wind howled along the Esk, drowning even the roar of the waves that battered the jetty scars, its icy breath rushing up the river as though Boreas himself had come down from the mountains of Thrace, wings billowing like storm clouds, to snatch her up. Even the creeping fog appeared like the hiemal harbinger of his formidable temper. The god of the north wind—the winter god. Winterly. A premonitory fear rippled across Emma's cold flesh as she threw a furtive gaze to the sky behind her.

Owing to the perilous cold that saturated the night, and perhaps to the late hour as well, she was not surprised to find Church Street deserted even of Whitby's nocturnal denizens. What did alarm her, however, was that her vampiric coachman was nowhere to be seen. Emma gave a wretched sneeze and pulled the cloak tight around her neck lest the cold bite her with invisible fangs. As it was, she felt it drain the warmth from her numb fingers; felt it tear chilblains into her cheeks with icy nails.

Shivering, Emma began the long walk back to the castle, determined not to die this night—leastwise not of the cold. Or if she must, she thought, let it not be like some forsaken indigent on the roadside. And why was this, of all nights, the blackest? She lifted a wary scowl to the welkin, silently cursing the clouds that smothered the moon like a valance.

At the sudden awful caw of a raven, like as not disturbed by her muttering, she shrieked and fell. It gave another reproachful complaint from its shrouded espial and then all was quiet once more. Too quiet. She had not yet moved from where she'd frozen on the road, where her legs had buckled beneath her. She dared not. Even the raven had ceased its frightful prattling. Evil bird!

There came a soft thud behind her, accompanied by an ominous ruffling. Emma held her breath, but could not turn to look over her shoulder for fear that even that small movement—the rustle of her cloak—would interfere with the sound of impending danger. All the creatures of the night seemed disposed to still themselves, even the blasted crow, so that she might listen to whatever hunted in the darkness.

Again she let out a wild shriek. And this time it was not for nothing. Iron fingers had appeared beneath her legs to swoop her from the ground, and thence into the night. Her screams died in her breast as her hair, loosened by the violence of the wind, whipped about her face. She was soaring up into the sky, clutched within the talons of Winter incarnate.

"Release me!" Her cries were swallowed by the brume that hung over the city.

Nevertheless, Winterly heard her. "Do not tempt me, woman." His voice was thick with the sibilance of cold rage.

She bit her tongue and dug her claws deep into his greatcoat, cowing under the violent flapping of his demoniac wings. He held her pressed firmly against his chest as he cleared the lofty mist that lay like cobbled silver beneath a breathtaking moon. Emma gasped with the sight of its empyrean splendor; basked in that pulsing, heavy glow, and, for a moment, forgot her terror. In all her life the moon had never appeared so large and infinite. The stars—her ladies in waiting—glimmered across the vast swell of woolen wisps that stretch thick across the sky. Here, above the world, so close to heaven, there existed only she, the stars, the moon...and Markus.

Braver now, under the reassuring warmth of the moon, Emma shifted her gaze to the vampyre in whose arms she was suspended. His eyes glittered like obsidian, boring into the very depths of her troubled soul. She hastily broke the contact and, instead, watched as the castle spires loomed through the clouds, jutting like black fangs.