Anne Brontë Nightwalker

Chapter 53

I find them beneath a cone of moonlight.

They are all grievously wounded.

William. Santos. Emily.

Savannah!

My dear God.

The Granger girl is there, apparently unharmed yet slack against a tree, scarlet hair flowing down her shoulders like blood. Guilt snatches my breath away. No. No. NO! Of all the girls, not Savannah! I led her to him. Handed her over to Webb like a sacrificial offering.

She trusted me. The Grangers trust me.

Shame, hot and thick, fills me with nausea. How could I be so blind? How?

Santos lies still as death on the ground, his body tossed like a discarded afterthought, weapons in pieces. William is standing, staked to a towering red oak with a saber shoved through his shoulder, deep into the ancient tree. Webb, riddled with bullets, snarls at him like a rabid dog, straining toward his throat with dripping teeth, held back by the double-barreled shotgun William presses into his shoulder.

He fires.

Flesh and blood splatter the snow, showering William, spraying my boots. The blast hurls Webb onto his back. William cracks open the shotgun to reload, sliding in a shell, but it snags and tumbles to the ground.

Impossibly, Webb begins to rise.

His eyes are demonic, hate-glazed and blazing, a hell-brother in his full glory. Bone-white muscle, livid and gleaming, writhes beneath his flayed shirt like a shark's. Wrath streaks his face in slashes of lurid pink. The good doctor is gone. Hyde is here.

Eyes locked on William, Webb climbs to his feet.

Beside Santos, Emily lies weaponless, femur fractured mid-thigh, fighting to sit up. Bone juts out of her flesh in wet, broken shards. She sees me and motions me away with a bloody hand. "Hide," she mouths. "Go."

I stop before her, gazing down. "Is he alive?" I indicate Santos.

She nods weakly, taking tiny, shallow breaths. With her good leg, she tries to push me away. "Please, Anne, run."

Santos has a deep laceration across his skull. Fallen, he looks younger, vulnerable. Human. Even near death, his skin is earth colored. I remember how his blood smelled full of sunshine.

"Turn him," I order.

Understanding lights Emily's eyes. She bends to his throat like a dark Carmilla and piercing the flesh with her sharp teeth, she drinks long and deep. When I think she will kill him, she stops, bites her wrist hard and holds it to his lips.

Her heart-threaded blood smears Santos' mouth and she opens his lips wider with her fingers, letting it drip upon his tongue. Santos' lips twitch. He swallows. His hand moves to her wrist, grabbing and grasping it to him. In a flash, he is upon her, pressing her into the earth, sinking his teeth into her throat, tearing it open. She's too weak to stop him. He is drinking her, swallowing my sister, my greatest friend, before my very eyes.

Santos is killing Emily.

Why didn't I turn him? It should have been me.

Webb stalks his prey, smiling while William reloads. In a flash, he lunges for William's throat, hissing and spraying his face with blood. William slams the shotgun between them, holding Webb back, but unable to fire. A ring of crimson surrounds the two like a witches' circle as the sun begins its ascent. The heat and smell of blood crashes in my head, dropping me to my knees.

Webb's savage musk. William. Emily. Santos. Savannah's moontime is here, lancing the air with a clean, pure scent. The forest is full of blood. They will die before me. All my loves and friends and guardians overcome by brutality.

The night is here and there is no grace.

If this is my fate, I will seize it.

On hands and knees I crawl to the Granger girl, eyes locked on her, snow stinging my raw knees. A glimmer of hope lights her eyes. She believes I have always been there when she needed me. Her blue angel. Safety.

Oh, the hell her father will wreak.

I reach for her hand and grasp it, shocked by its soft, blazing warmth, then notice she's tied, hand and foot. Her tiny fingernails sparkle blue in the moonbeams. I rip her free and she clings to me, surprisingly strong for such a little thing.

"Miss Anne," she whispers fiercely. "I knew you'd come. I knew."

Yes, my darling. Death always comes.

I thread my fingers through her hair.

"Have courage, my sweet. I'm here. No fear, only love."

I pull her to the ground.

Daughter of Carnage.

I turn her head aside.

Grief Bringer.

I sink my teeth into her throat.

Death Walker.

I suck.

The blood is hot between her legs. I squeeze my knee between her thighs until I feel it slick against my open wound. My lips press her honeyed neck. All her descendants lay against my tongue and with piercing love, I drink them down, one by one by one.

I swallow her life and am born again.