Vampyre Bride ✔️

XVIII⎮Sentry In The Abbey

Had Mrs. Skinner not arrived with her chocolate the very next moment, Emma would have escaped the sooner, but as it was, she was forced to endure Winterly's bold scrutiny a while longer.

By the time she left him her nerves were fatally raveled, and desiring a moment to herself she made good her escape, fleeing directly to her suit where she threw herself on the ironed counterpane to mull her thoughts over as she stared at the ceiling. However, no matter the length of time she devoted ruminating over the mysterious castle and its enigmatic master, Emma felt no less confused. And no less disquieted by Anna's warning.

It was then that she finally decided to respond to the letter she had, at first, read with mistrustful eyes; now that she was not so sure that she wasn't more inclined to heed Anna's obscure warning.

"Your 'friends' are not who, or even what, you think they are."

"Well, I do not think them human." She had seen enough to know that there was certainly something strange about the Winterlys. And Anna seemed to know far more than she let on.

Not for the first time, she wondered what Anna had been trying to say. Taking a sheaf of paper from the writing desk, she penned her response and begged her friend for further intelligence, explaining that she was now ready to believe whatever Anna was ready to disclose.

The writing and sealing of her letter was only the work of a few brief minutes, and once she had slipped the note into her reticule, she resolved to walk to Whitby and have it posted herself.

First, though, she wanted to have a better look at the volume Anna had given her and carefully lifted it out from where it lay at the bottom of her portmanteau.

Vampyris. "But I don't believe in vampyres," she whispered. Her words, however, held no conviction. "Yes, you do," was the swift response that sounded in her own heart.

She ran her fingers hesitantly over the gilt lettering and the panel-stamped binding before she folded her legs under her and opened it up over her lap. The endpaper, like the rest of the book, was stained with age, almost three hundred years worth of oxidation.

It was here that someone had long ago scrawled a name, Antoine Leblanc, the letters bold and prominent, and the year that the book had been translated and transcribed from Latin into German.

The illustrations too had been meticulously copied by a masterful hand, the details exquisite and the colors vivid.

It was only logical to assume, she mused, that this Antoine Leblanc must have been an ancestor of Anna's husband, Monster Leblanc. Another watcher, as they called themselves.

The grimoire, for that was what it looked like, seemed to be a collection of legends represented in such a rational and official way that Emma felt it more a summary of reports than an anthology of myths. Whoever had scribed these reports was not a storyteller, but a ... watcher — a sort of journalist of the occult.

Finding herself captivated by the words, she was only vaguely aware that the book was imbued with incense, the fragrance steeped with exotic mysticism. As she turned each yellowed leaf the sweet smell of it became all the stronger, drawing her in all the more.

Her eyes scrolled hungrily over each brittle page and then halted abruptly over one particular image that was labeled with a single name: Lilith.

The woman, presumably Lilith, looked to be in a maddened fury, her red hair in wild billows about her face as she tore her way through bodies. In one hand she clutched a severed limb and in the other she held a fistful of hair still attached to a decapitated head.