Neferet's Curse (House of Night Novellas #3)(39)

It had not taken him long to finish. Once spent he’d collapsed, his great, sweating weight pressing me down.

I’d thought I would die, bleeding and broken beneath him, and smothered by pain and loss and despair.

I had been wrong.

He’d begun to snore, great snorting breaths, and I realized he was fully asleep. I dared to prod his shoulder and, with a grunt, he’d rolled off me.

I hadn’t moved. I’d waited until his snoring resumed. Only then did I begin inching away. I’d had to stop frequently and press my hand against my lips to contain the wet coughs, but finally I was free of the bed.

The numbness of my body was gone, though I’d wished mightily that it would return. But I did not allow the pain to make me hesitate. I moved as quickly as my battered body would allow and pulled my cloak from the armoire. Then slowly, quietly, I gathered up the loose pearls, as well as the emerald clasp, and secreted them, and this, my journal, within the deep pockets of the cloak.

I left through the rear door. Though I couldn’t chance pausing beneath my willow, I walked my dark path one last time, calling the concealing shadows to me and drawing comfort from the familiar darkness. When I reached the garden gate, I paused and looked back. The full moon had illuminated the fountain again. Europa’s marble face was turned toward me and through my blurred vision it seemed as if the water from the fountain had turned to tears, washing her cheeks as she wept for my loss. My gaze went from the fountain to my pathway and I realized that behind me I had left a trail of blood.

I went out the garden gate that had allowed Arthur, and what I believed to be salvation, into my life. I would retrace Arthur’s steps. He would still be my salvation—he must still be my salvation.

The Simpton Mansion was not far down South Prairie Avenue. I’d been grateful for the lateness of the hour. I met very few people as I stumbled along the walkway, enveloped in the cloak I clutched tightly about me.

You might think that during that painful journey I would have been imagining what I should say to Arthur. I had not. My mind hadn’t seemed my own, just as, earlier, my body had stopped obeying me. My only thoughts were that I must keep moving forward, toward safety, kindness, and Arthur.

It had been Arthur who found me. I’d paused in front of the Simpton Mansion, leaning on the cold wrought-iron fence that decorated the boundary around it. I’d been trying to catch my breath and to order my thoughts into finding the latch to the gate, and Arthur, leading his bicycle, had burst from the very gate I had been approaching.

He’d seen me, and paused, in the darkness not recognizing my cloaked and hooded form.

“May I help you?” His voice, kind and familiar, had broken me.

I’d shrugged off the hood and, in a voice so damaged I barely recognized it as my own, I cried, “Arthur! It’s me! Help me!” Then a coughing seizure, more severe than all the rest, took my body over and I began to crumble to the ground.

“Oh, God! Emily!” He’d thrown his bicycle aside and caught me in his arms as I fell. My cloak had opened then, and he’d gasped in horror at the sight of my torn dress, and my broken and bloody body. “What has happened to you?”

“Father,” I sobbed, trying desperately to speak as I struggled to breathe. “He attacked me!”

“No! How could this be?” I watched his gaze go from my untouched face down to the wounds on my exposed br**sts, and to my ripped skirt and my blood-coated thighs. “He—he has completely abused you!”

I’d been staring into his blue eyes, waiting for him to comfort me and take me within to his family where I could be healed and where Father would, eventually, be made to pay for what he had done.

But instead of love or compassion or even kindness, I saw shock and horror in his eyes.

I’d shifted my body, covering myself with my cloak. Arthur made no move to keep me in his arms.

“Emily,” he’d begun, in a voice that sounded strange, and stilted. “It is clear that you have been violated, and I—”

I will never know what Arthur was going to say because at that moment a tall, elegant figure stepped from the shadows and pointed a long, pale finger at me, saying, “Emily Wheiler! Night has Chosen thee; thy death will be thy birth! Night calls to thee; hearken to Her sweet voice. Your destiny awaits you at the House of Night!”

My forehead exploded in blinding pain and I covered my head with my hands, as I trembled violently and waited to die.

Remarkably, with the next breath I drew, my chest loosened and sweet air flowed freely within me. I opened my eyes to see that Arthur was standing several feet from where I’d crouched, as if he’d begun to run away. The dark figure was a tall man. The first thing I noticed about him was that he had a sapphire-colored tattoo on his face that was made of bold lines spiraling from the crescent moon in the center of his forehead, across his brow and down his cheeks.

“My God! You’re a vampyre!” Arthur had blurted.

“Yes,” he’d answered Arthur, but had barely spared him a glance. All of his attention was focused on me. “Emily, do you understand what has happened to you?” the vampyre asked me.

“My father has beaten and raped me.” As I spoke the words, clearly and plainly, I felt the last of the sickness leave my body.

“And the Goddess, Nyx, has Marked you as her own. Tonight you leave the life of humans behind. From here on you answer only to our Goddess, our High Council, and to your own conscience.”