Pain shot through her scalp as her head was yanked up from the dirt with such brutal force that Emma thought her spine would snap. Through the screaming and the ringing in her ears, she heard an ugly hissing at her ear.
"I gave you a chance, harlot." Victoria tightened her claws in Emma's hair, giving the mass a sharp shake when Emma tried to pull away. "You will wish you had not disappointed me."
"Victoria! Let her go!" Milli rushed at the vampyre's back only to find herself dashed backward against the tree with no greater effort than was needed to swat a fly from the air. Stunned and sprawled like a broken doll, Milli watched in horror, her arm thrown up in a desperate plea. "Please, don't hurt her!"
"Hurt her?" Turning her murderous glare to Emma—a glare immersed in blackness—Victoria parted her lips in a vicious grin and chuckled. The clawed hand she had used to subdue Milli was now pressed to Emma's throat, choking and caressing, long nails poised over Emma's pulse. "I mean to kill her." With a growl of fury, she suddenly stabbed a long nail into Emma's neck and ripped the artery open.
"Victoria, no!" Milli screamed, horrified, clawing her way towards her sister. "No!"
Blood surged up like a geyser, staining Emma's gaping mouth and tongue. She was insensible to the pain, completely overmastered by panicked incredulity. It was all she could do to staunch the disgorge of blood from her torn artery with fumbling hands. Everything seemed obscured and drowned in crimson. Victoria was there one moment and then, the very next instant, she was gone with a howl of outrage. Her claws had been suddenly and forcibly removed from Emma's neck, her body expelled by the swift blur of a battering ram.
A violent peel of hatred reverberated through the yard—Victoria shrieked and spat her odium upon the head of whoever had wrenched her from Emma's bleeding throat. All of it—Milli's sobs, Victoria's caterwauling, Emma's throbbing ribs, and the ceaseless gush of blood—beat against Emma's brain like the wild black wings of chaos. But though the confusion of throes and wreckage, she descried Hawksmoor's face hovering into view.
"Emma!" Eyes blazing a feral red, as though his vessels had burst their ocular seams, he ripped at his cuff and sleeve and then pressed the shredded linen directly to her neck. "Hold fast, Emma, I won't let you die!" He reached over and pulled Milli to Emma's side, and with the cold detachment of a war physician, placed the girl's trembling hands firmly against Emma's neck. "Do not let go!" He might have said or done more for Emma, but his ministrations were suddenly cut short.
Roaring her vengeance, Victoria descended upon him, lashing at his throat with bloody talons. "You dare!"
"Are you mad?!" He threw her off, his voice much altered and guttural.
She roared her denial and attacked again.
"He'll kill you! Desist, woman!" Nicholas seized her throat and flung her off him once more, but she landed with hideous grace in the willow bough above his head and threw her black scowls down at him as she clawed the bark. "He will feel her panic and come for her. Save yourself and begone! He may still let you live if you let me save her!" Hawksmoor wiped at the seeping wound on his own neck and returned her scowl with blood-stained rancor. His eyes, unlike the vampyre's, were not besieged with blackened vitriol, but with glowing crimson.
Emma tried to speak, but Milli lowered her head and kissed her sister's brow, whispering for her to be still and conserve her energy.
"Give her to me!" Victoria screamed, but Emma could not see to whom she referred.
"To what purpose? You know he will hunt you down."
"Not in my father's house!" Victoria sounded her battle cry as she flung herself at Hawksmoor and tore at his face.
Into the fray came the unexpected shouts and cries of the brave and forgotten nuns, sister Mary leading the holy charge, her features marred by terror. All the while the two combatants fought on, snapping at each other with long teeth, one of whom was grunting, convulsing awkwardly, his shoulders snapping and popping, as he tried to fend the vampyre off.
Emma's concern, however, was not for his difficulty but for the danger to her cousin. If Emma had had the strength to sit up and cry out, she'd have somehow forestalled the nuns' valiant endeavor, vain as it was; albeit, her warnings would still have come too late. With the speed of a hawk, Victoria dove from the perch she'd made of Hawksmoor's shoulders—his jacket ripping as his torso bulged with brawn and hair—and soared through the air like a daemon. She struck Mary's head clear from her neck in one powerful sweep of her talons. The poor nun's face, frozen forever in shock, flew to the ground and, with a dreadful thump, her head lumbered into the pond. The churchyard filled with screams as the nuns, and Milli, watched Mary's body crumple limply to the ground.
Whatever Hawksmoor had been before, he no longer filled the constraints of human form—in his place stood a creature with long ears and a sharp snout, its torso overspread with a silver pelt. Only his britches still clung to the hairy thews of his transfigured legs, the rest of his clothing in tatters on the ground. If he were not so terrible to behold, she might have found some little humor in the notion of a bipedal wolf in britches.
The battle of beast and vampyre waged on, fierce and deadly. He latched his fist into Victoria's hair and swung her away from the other nuns who were kneeling beside their fallen sister, heedless that their panicked screaming was only whetting Victoria's bloodlust anew. Milli's fingers on Emma's throat tightened as she watched the bizarre melee, frozen, her grip in danger of choking her sister outright. Although, perhaps it was not the pressure of little Milli's hands that threatened to stifle the air from Emma's lungs but her dying heart, too weary to beat, that no longer roused itself enough to nudge her brain awake.
She could no longer distinguish the beast's snarling from the vampyre's, nor could she see which of the two was the stronger. Every rending of flesh inflicted by wolfish teeth, the vampyre returned full force. Every swipe of his back talons, she sidestepped, feinting easily, before attacking with equal fury.
Emma felt her conscience slipping, felt the air turn frigid, felt the world grow quiet, and felt her agonizing breaths rasping ever louder as her sister's face blurred with vignetted shadows. She was sinking into oblivion. But a rough jolt instantly stirred her eyes open again, pulling her back to earth with its force. She struggled to see past the gathering webs, and when, finally, she did it was only to find that Milli had disappeared.
Emma tried to call out to her sister, but there was no answer. She flailed weakly, clutching at her throat. Finding the soaked linen still stuck to her wound, she pressed her palm against the trickling rill as firmly as her waning strength allowed. At length, however, her hand dropped with exhaustion, falling, white and limp, to the ground. It did not, in those final moments, escape her that this was the second time this week she had found herself wavering at Death's gate. But this time Markus was not here to save her. This time she could not break from the spreading maw of paralysis—that awful void whelming up through her brain like an opium fog.
Strangely, there was no more sound—just the beckoning dirge of total silence. All was deathly still as Emma stared, inert and helpless, her vision seething with spidery shadows, as Milli struggled against Victoria's vice-like hold. She thrashed and clawed at her captor, her mouth as wide as a Bow Bell, her tongue lashing with fury. On the ground, at Milli's feet lay Hawksmoor, naked but for his britches. His eyes stared from a human visage once more but were wide and unseeing, his neck all but torn to sinew and bone. Dead.
No! How could he be dead? How had the world turned on its head? She tried to reach for Milli, but her arms bore no more life than Hawksmoor's corpse. Poor useless Hawksmoor! The nuns too were all murdered—her fading vision had not spared her that—and all heaped like unwanted carrion atop their headless sister.
No! Though her voice was long since drained of power, she felt her ebbing blood writhe and boil with the agony of wasted life. Her depleted wellspring foamed and frothed with the last dregs of life, sputtering with hatred as she watched Victoria drag her sister away. When Emma blinked again they were gone. No! Every cell cried out and reached for Milli again and again. All in vain. It was with hopeless tears that she shut her eyes, the blood and tears coating her tongue. The darkness was now swift upon her, its wings outstretched, gathering quicker and quicker around her. Numb and defeated, she welcomed Death; she willed her spirit to cast its anchor from this ruined and earthly flesh.
Yet the narrowing beam of light above her seemed to flicker suddenly as a large shadow moved above her. Hades himself was come to fetch her away. She smiled at the darkness and sighed as her heart sputtered its last feeble beats.
The End
Just kidding ;)