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?"

"He nourished his pet from his very veins and from his blood his child was born a new creature. A vampyre."

His creature. These revelations had so filled her head already that Emma felt her skull rending in protest. "For what possible reason does his pet want my sister?" Other than what was obvious.

"For the same ignoble reasons that your vampyre desires you. You are a Daughter of Man. They lust after the flesh as well as the blood."

"So it is merely the want of...flesh and blood that actuates her."

"Notwithstanding your sister's mortality, blood is all Victoria may ever hope to take from her. In your case, however, the stakes are far greater for Winterly was far more than merely just a watcher before his downfall." Anna's face hardened gravely. "You are perilously out of your depths, my child. It is no mere vampyre that you have allowed into your bed but the devil himself."

"I thought—" shuddering with fright "—you said that Gabriel was the worst of them."

"They are the triad—devils all. Gadreel, Kassiel, and Arakiel."

And who is Arakiel?! The heat of the room seemed to press in on Emma, and the blood rushed from her head in dizzying whelms. She began to shake. Unable to speak for the fear clawing at her chords she turned a leery eye over her shoulder and, sensing no danger there just yet, transferred her gaze to the hearth, searching the shifting flames for the diabolical answers that evaded her.

The watcher eyed her carefully. "He isn't there," said she, having noticed Emma's cautious backward glance. "He cannot know your whereabouts."

"I could find you anywhere..."

"Not unless he'd first sipped from your veins. Yet you say he has not. You see, I have trusted you with my life, Emma, for if they find you they find me too."

Horror-struck by the belated and awful disclosure, Emma tore her eyes from the fire. Why had that vital detail not been disclosed before he'd glutted himself on her flesh?! She'd been such a fool to trust him! A fool that had, unwittingly, endangered a friend. A wretched fool who had given the fiend the means to track her; who'd all but handed her own sister over to him. No letter had yet arrived from her cousin, Mary, it was too soon for that, so she had yet to ascertain the wellbeing of her dear Milli. Better still, Emma cursed herself silently, she had given of herself, her virtue and her heart, to the devil, and all the while he had likely gloated to his brothers and congratulated himself on what an easy conquest she'd been; what a witless morsel she'd proved herself to be. Finally, her tongue unfroze itself. "You mean to tell me that Victoria can locate my sister at will whatever the distance?"

"Until death..."

"My God, what have I done?!" Emma gasped.

"You are only human, child. No match for a dragon."

"What do I do now? How shall I save my sister?"

"By saving yourself. And by listening closely for I will tell you how to kill a god."

Emma face blanched still further. "Is he a god or a devil, make up your mind, Anna!" Was that even her name?

"He is both and neither. Betwixt and between. Kassiel was one of the four Cardinal Angels—the Gods of the Four Winds they were. He was the watcher in the north, the midwinter star, and his twin sister, Sariel, was the watcher in the south"

"The summer solstice star?"

"Ay. Moreover, she was, at one time, the holy grail."

"My God!"

"After she fell she was known only as Lilith."

"I know that name!" The puzzle pieces were slowly falling into place, and her sanity, conversely, slipping away. "The riddle in Vampyris—I cannot recall the words exactly, but there was mention of a grail!"

"Indeed, she embodied all the aspects of the moon and the cycles of nature's fertility; she was worshiped as a deity. And therein lies your legacy, Emma. But let me explain: Sariel's fall, like her brother's, was the result of a forbidden and mortal love. Nephilim, you see, are the result of such blasphemous couplings—children of gods and men. They are unnatural; forbidden; and smitten at infancy. They defy the laws of natural order. All the monsters of the earth, werewolves and such, are in some way, relicts of the Nephilim scourge that escaped the blades of Heaven."

"But what has Sariel to do with me?"

"From all that I've gathered about you, dearest Emma, I believe you to be a carrier." She patted Emma's trembling hand apologetically. "Yes, I know, there's much to grasp."

"It is like drinking from a waterfall!"

"Emma, I truly wish we had the luxury of time, but even immortals bear the strain of its implacable advance. Nevertheless, I shall endeavor to expound more clearly. A carrier, you see, is a vessel. Like a grail or a chalice. The descendants of Sariel are carriers—"

"What are you saying? That I am a damnable chalice?!"

"Yes."

"But how can that be?! You said the Nephilim were dispatched at birth!"

"Sariel was cunning and more powerful than most of the watchers sent to terminate her propagating horde. Even Michael, as powerful as he is, could not stamp out the pestilence. She would not have allowed it to be so. For millennia there have been legends of Nephilim, and for centuries they've been sought by the watchers on either side of the battle lines—sought by both the forces of light and dark for they are the grey that slips between the worlds and connects us all. We no longer seek to destroy them for not all are evil, but we have undertaken to ensure that those, such as yourself, do not fall prey to the darkness that stalks them."

"H-how can you b-be sure that I am...a carrier?"

"Kassiel has shown interest in a 'mortal' only once before. Her name was Cleopatra. I believe you know her story?"

"This is all too much!" She clutched desperately at her head.

"Yes, and you are late already, but I have more to say and so you cannot leave. The Egyptian queen carried the blood of Sariel in her veins. A daughter born on a rare full moon of a summer solstice. A special kind of Nephilim who carries a very distinguishing mark over her womb—the crescent moon. The mark of the chalice. A mark I believe you carry."

No! Emma shook her head, horrified anew. No! No! No!

" 'She whose golden light gives life ceases late to crest the sky.To fill the moon with summer's fire and earthbound cast her eye. There to crown the sanguine grail that for longest night doth wait. And there unleash Death's ternion hounds with blood of the lunate'. Does that sound familiar, Emma?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"Markus Winterly is the midwinter star—'the longest night'. He cannot find out what you are, if he hasn't already. However, his interest in you would suggest that he knows as much as I feared. You must find a way to escape him at all costs. You are the 'blood of the lunate' and must never let him drink from you. Never lie with him again, do you understand me?"

"Pray, I must know" —forcing the lump in her throat down with painful deglutition— "what exactly is the purpose of a carrier?"

Anna's brow furrowed bemusedly as though it were obvious and Emma ought to have ciphered that much. "The vessel through which he may propagate the earth. You, Emma, carry the blood that may nourish his spawn."

"The blood of his sister! Is not that incest?!" she cried.

"Only insomuch as it is incestuous to believe that your father is related to your mother by blood...for they are both the children of Adam and Eve, are they not? No, my dear, blood, as you understand it, connects only beasts and mortals. Watchers were not begotten from mothers and fathers, or males and females. It is nothing so simple, nor so complicated, as that. It is only after a star falls that it takes an earthly form; before that moment nothing so inconsequential as gender or race can define it."

"But you are female, and unfallen, are you not?"

"Ay, but I am bound to earth nonetheless. Not as a fallen, you understand, but as the antithesis of one. God demands balance in all things—for every dark there is a light and for every good there is evil. When the angels fell into darkness there followed soldiers of heaven to counteract the chaos—the unfallen. The polar opposite to a vampyre, but, as I said, still bound to earth and, therefore, no longer defined by the laws of heaven."

The room had, by this time, grown quiet for most of the inn's patrons had migrated whence they planned to take their slumber. To her dismay, Emma's watch confirmed that she had tarried for a dangerous length of time.

"I must go!" she gasped as she stood abruptly from the chair.

"Wait!" Anna snatched her arm to stay her hasty flight. "You would return to him after all I have told you?!"

"He has my sister! I must play by the rules of his game or forfeit her life. That, watcher, is all I care about at present."

"And I—" standing to her full and imposing height "—care about the wellbeing of the thousands that might perish if your cup bears his fruit."

"How can I know who to trust?! In point of fact, I have known him far longer and more intimately than I have known you. Who is to say it isn't you who is the deceiver?"

"Oh, Emma." Anna gave her head a tragic shake. "I believe you are wise enough to know when the truth is spoken."

As to that, she could not say for certain that Markus had ever lied to her. Verily, it was only omission that she felt him guilty of. Was the former as loathsome as the latter? Perhaps.

"I shall let you go," Anna continued. "But heed me well on two accounts—do not lie with him again; and if by some misadventure you find yourself too weak to resist him, do not, for God's sake, let him drink your blood! Secondly, I exhort you, escape him. And if you cannot...then you must kill him. But I warn you, it is almost impossible to kill a vampyre let alone a Fallen Cardinal."

"And if he forcibly drinks from me?"

"He will not," she said confidently. "The Dragon takes pleasure in the seduction; takes pride in his mastery." Anna's eyes wavered startlingly between black and gold. "Play his games if you must, Emma. For your sake, I hope you win."

"Win against one such as he?" She had no such conceit. "I'd be mad to even hope for that."

Anna was thoughtful a moment. "It would not be the first time he was bested, have faith."

"I am not strong enough."

"Oh, but you may yet find the strength you need. And even you, especially you, may kill a god. That god particularly."

"How?" said she, still struggling to pull her arm away from the watcher. But the creature was impossibly strong and her endeavors remained futile. "How would you have me kill him?"

"Attack him where he is most vulnerable."

"And where is that?"

"The heart." With that, Anna released her and slipped away into the night.