At the threshold, Emma was confronted by the familiar, devastating gleam of Markus's Hadean glare, mirror-like—monstrous—in the low light. Though there was ample room to enter past him, she halted and deflected her gaze up to the glimmering firmament. To the seat of grace from which he'd fallen.

"What are you waiting for?" The heat of brimstone pervaded each of his clipped words.

"For absolution," said she, lowering her gaze from Heaven with a melancholic shrug. "Or for God to dispatch a thunderstone upon my head."

He considered her a moment. After a pause, in which he raised a sardonic brow, glancing briefly up at Heaven, he said, "Yet here you stand with impunity, my dark rose."

The cold had by now thoroughly saturated Emma's damp skin. She gave an involuntary shiver and wrapped her arms tight about her chest. Her obvious discomfort instantly galvanized all affected calm—what little he had been evincing thus far—clear from Markus's features.

His brow buckled beneath the substantial weight of his choleric. "Why should He waste a thunderstone on you—" Markus ignored her shriek of fright as he snatched her up in his arms "—when you're making fast work of dispatching yourself just fine?" He then booted the door shut with a curt slam and marched her to his library. There they were met with a hearty fire licking feverishly at the logs, its efforts so worthy that the heat it threw at her, when he set her down by the hearth, was such as to rival even Markus's ire. It was with brusque energy that he began unfastening the buttons of her dress.

Suspicion stiffened her limbs and she promptly slapped his hands away. "If you think for a moment that I would—"

"Are you determined to catch a cold and die just to spite me?" He paused only to glower at her. Then, with a peremptory tug, the dress split down her back and glided to the floor in a desultory heap so that she was now only scantily covered in her clinging chemise and wet boots.

She surreptitiously turned her ankle just enough to impede his view of the booted weapon. She could not have felt more exposed than if she was standing in nothing but the flesh God gave her, but Markus appeared not to notice or, rather, to care.

"You had better not do something so perverse as to contract an ague whilst I'm gone." He turned from her with a growl and stalked directly from the room, threatening tea and blankets on his return.

As soon as his footsteps were heard no more, she fell into action. Searching frantically about her, Emma seized the dagger free of her boot. She really could not say how long his domestic errand would occupy him. In spite of her haste and flurried movements, however, she could not very well ignore the glaring discovery, upon pulling her weapon from its sheath, that the blade was forged not from iron but from blackened wood! A hardwood blade with a killing edge so sharp, or so her bleeding thumb attested, she was obliged to shove the injured digit into her mouth, lest the smell of her blood summon the vampyre all the sooner.

Her next act was to rush, extempore, towards Markus's formidable armchair, all the while wary and listening for his returning footfalls. One last glance at the door satisfied her she was yet alone, so she buried it, deep and secure, between the upholstery and cushions. Without, she hoped, impaling the armchair in her haste as she had done to her poor thumb.

Emma had quite worked herself into a fever fit by the time Markus materialized at the door. She was now not only cold and still shivering but had, on a sudden, also begun to feel quite nauseous. The sight of her thus wracked with tremors, if it could be believed, only further provoked Markus's temper.

He set the tea tray down with a clamor and, with the blanket still over his arm, stalked towards her and cupped her cheek with a surprisingly gentle touch. His eyes tightened with suspicion. "What have you done? You look ill."

She stammered a negative and tried to move away from him.

Markus held her firmly in place as he probed her eyes. "Your pallor was not so wan a moment ago." He turned her face this way and that, employing his keen nose and hands and eyes searchingly. "Have you harmed yourself? I warn you, I am in no mood for games tonight."

"No!" She brought her palms down hard against his chest for emphasis. "I have done nothing to harm myself except catch a cold!" Yes, that was it—it was a trifling cold and that was all. Though it was strange indeed to think how quickly it had beset her.

Markus's brow contracted with dubious furrows. At length, he released her and betook himself off to the wine cabinet. "It seems you require a palliative other than hot tea."

He stood now where the shadows chased back the firelight, his movements obscured to mortal eyes. She heard, rather than saw, the claret being poured, the silvery notes becoming deeper as the goblet was filled. He lingered there a moment more, and in that moment there was unnatural stillness. When he returned, it was with a gilded goblet brimming with dark wine—the same goblet he had denied her the night of the masquerade.

"Are you quite sure you've done nothing to harm yourself?"

"Nothing," she affirmed.

"I know when you are lying," said Markus, setting the goblet on the table beside his armchair, "which is how I know you are being truthful now." There were lines of frustration about his mouth nonetheless. As he came back towards her, he lifted the blanket from his armchair. "I do, however, smell an intrigue and I cannot abhor being confounded." He stood before her now, his nose flaring, curious. "Take off your chemise."

There was only a momentary impulse to defy him, but it was swiftly quelled, for she was now feeling quite unwell and unable to summon a combative spirit. What did it matter? He'd already seen all of her, and she was not so naive as to think her chemise an effective shield against her nakedness. The fire was, after all, quite illuminating in that regard. Strangely, there was a drowsy sort of fever of a different kind suddenly blooming low in her belly as she carefully divested herself of the wet chemise. A harlot to the very core, was her weary thought as she returned his gaze, acknowledging the swell of unwelcome lust.

His eyes lowered from the unhealthy flush of her cheeks, down her body in a sweeping glance until finally they came to rest upon her sodden boots. What a ridiculous sight she must have presented! But his smile was, for the nonce at least, devoid of mocking sharpness, curling almost guilelessly. Only a temporary smile, to be sure. Even so, one that surely must have first won Cleopatra's love all those centuries ago, for its poignant beauty nearly stopped Emma's heart altogether. She felt raw tears dim her vision of a sudden, and averted her head, for fear he'd see the love welling hot and rampant from the very naked depth of her soul. Behind the reprieve of closed eyes she felt the coverlet descend over her chilled shoulders. Next it was folded, snug across her chest, and then she was lifted up and settled securely on his lap as he seated himself in his armchair by the fire. His fingers quested carefully through her tangled locks, pulling the pins out one by one and scattering them haphazardly beside the goblet. The wet mass was soon lying splayed across the side of her back where the fire could better perform its duty. Next he unlaced her boots and peeled off her stockings, as though she were a sleepy child, and left the articles bestrewn by the fender to dry.

"I wish you will not be so kind," said Emma, discomforted by the undragon-like care he was taking of her.

"What an odd request. Now I know you for a lair, for I have seen how you unbend under a certain kind of touch. No, I think you take great pleasure in my...kindnesses."

"Yes." A headache had by now made its presence known, a cannon fire shattering her brainpan from within. "Yes, and for my pleasure I must wear the harlot's scarlet shame."

"If you are determined to speak only nonsense then I wish you will not speak at all." HIs eyes pressed hard upon her, but, after a silence, he asked, "Have I ever treated you as such? Where is the coin I paid you for my pleasure?"

"You have bestowed jewels—a bracelet!"

"Which you saw fit to give away." He held her gaze, becoming pensive. "What will appease you? What will you wear instead of your shame? A ring perhaps? Will my hand in marriage do the job?"

"Do not tease me!" How cruel his humor was!

His mouth flattened as he lifted and held his hand to her brow suddenly. A brow that, like the rest of her, had become a veritable furnace. "Your fever is worse." He reached for the goblet and pushed the stem into her reluctant hand. "Drink."

"What is it?"

"A panacea."

She pressed her lips together as she glanced at the wine cabinet where he had lingered in darkness far longer than it might have ordinarily taken to fill a goblet. "What is it really?"

"Drink it," he answered instead. "It will cure your fever."

She glanced down into the goblet. The claret looked far thicker and darker than was natural. "Blood then." She met his eyes, searching, but he said nothing further. It was answer enough, and she was feeling too wretched to decline his...thoughtfulness. "Will I have more of the...blood memories?"

His eyes dropped pointedly to the contents of the goblet. "I gave you only what is necessary to temper the fever."

Emma nodded and proceeded then to take a tentative sip from the golden cup, wary as the first drop warmed her tongue. The claret was as fragrant and rich as she remembered it, wholly without the metallic taint of blood to sour its bouquet. She took another sip, this one a far more confidant effort. "When you drank my blood, did you...?" She paused for a minute, flushing at the remembered intimacy the thought convoked. "What secrets did my blood impart?"

"None. The blood memories are a consequence of the dark gift. We are made vulnerable by the act, so, consequently, we take great care when sharing our lifeblood. It is done but rarely, if at all."

She wondered how many times he had given of himself.

There was such a look of burning intensity on his face, the firelight dancing mysteriously across its hard plains, that it quite threatened to rob her of all breath. "If I could know all you guard in the vaults of your mind," he said, "I fear you would have no blood left to quench my curiosity." 

Emma dropped her gaze and allowed him to tuck her head securely beneath his chin, fearful that he'd see the deadly secrets lurking in her eyes.

"Keep your secrets if it gives you ease," said he. "They are safe from me; safe for tonight at least. Now sleep."

She must have fallen into a fitful sleep, for when she awoke again her skin was damp in the aftermath of her strange fever. Though her lids had sprung apart as the last wisps of her nightmare vanished into the grey light, the rest of her body was as still as the grave. The hearth was cold and the room was bestirring with murky violet. All too soon dawn had arrived to preface the dreadful deed that weighed so heavily on her conscience. As terrible as the dream had been, she'd have much rather relived it a thousand times than proceed to the next act—perhaps her last mortal act on earth.

And what exactly had she dreamed? What had it meant? Through a clouded lens, she had watched the lurid dream unfold, like an extraneous entity, as her hands had mixed and handled strange and pungent liquids from a vast array of vials and dirty beakers spread before her on an onyx floor. A seething adder had lain coiled in a basket at her ankle, its venom lately milked from its fangs. Beside the basket had been the warm and foaming remains of a servant girl, eyes sightless and milky. In fine, a scene of horror and despair, the air fetid with death. Fat tears had ran unchecked down the face of she that had poured the evil brew into a golden bowl. The bowl was thence lifted to blood red lips—lips trembling with silent sobs—and, somehow, Emma had felt the stranger steel herself against the agony to come.

The pain in Emma's lungs was a swift reminder that she had lain all this time, reliving the nightmare, without drawing breath. The suspenseful realism of the vision had so affected her that she had not, at first, remembered where she was, nor with whom it was she had spent the night. The scent of cold woodsmoke and of Markus's unique and thrilling musk at last coaxed her return to the here and now. To the frightful prospect of murder.

She lifted her head with the leadenness of a rising fog, careful lest she waken the dragon, her movements painstaking. The nearer her fingers crept towards the hilt, the louder the shadows whispered their warnings, and the faster the torrents fell from her eyes. The furor of her heart seemed so deafening that it stilled her hand again and again, terror-stricken. However, Markus remained a dormant mountain beneath her, motionless, his lids sealed against the quickening dawn. Her clammy fingers clenched round the hilt as she fought to ignore the bile gathering hot and acrid in her mouth. Every nerve in her body revolted, and every new tear was a warm invective. She hated herself! Despised the hand that raised the stake and poised it above his ribs.

But there it stayed, the black tip couched a hair's breadth from his heart. The hush in the library was absolute, but inside her brain a voice was screaming! Stop! Her voice.

And in that resounding moment of silent hesitation, the vampyre opened his eyes.