by Archer, Zoe
“Godfrey,” Walcote exclaimed. “What in God’s name?”
“Not God’s name.” John stepped over the prostrate servant, his gaze locked on Bram.
The two men faced each other, both alert, wary. Bram was tense as an arrow, confronting his erstwhile friend. He drew his sword.
The lines of battle were drawn, Bram on one side, John standing on the other.
“This is how friendship is rewarded?” John spat. “With basest treachery?”
“You know nothing of friendship,” Bram said. “Nothing of loyalty or honor.”
The scarf around John’s mouth could not stifle his harsh laugh. “Abraham Stirling, Baron Rothwell speaking of honor. Next, I’ll hear a woman talk of learning.” His gaze turned to Livia, and she tensed. “And here is the Roman slut who challenges me.”
She held Bram back with a warning glare, though he plainly wanted to ram his fist in John’s face.
“Who will defeat you,” she answered.
“No longer a ghost, madam? That makes it all the easier to destroy you. I shall delight in that. Never killed a woman before.”
This time, Livia could not restrain Bram. He feinted with his sword, and John dodged the blow. But as John reacted, Bram’s other fist collided with John’s jaw. John staggered back. As he did, his hat tumbled off, and his scarf slipped, revealing his face.
She pressed her hand to her mouth, whilst Bram cursed and Walcote gasped.
The markings of flame covered John’s face. Across his cheeks and forehead, surrounding his eyes. He was entirely enveloped in the Dark One’s mark, with only his burning eyes left clear.
Sneering, John tugged off his gloves and threw them onto the ground. The markings covered him there, as well, the backs of his hands, his palms. Every inch of exposed skin proclaimed him to be the Devil’s possession. If ever there’d been a shred of humanity left in him, it was gone now. With such fertile ground as his covetous ambition, the markings had spread quickly.
“Oh, John,” Bram said, mournful. “You poor bastard.”
Yet John only laughed again. “I’ll remember your pity, when your throat is beneath my heel.”
“What does all this mean?” Walcote cried.
“It means,” said John with an icy smile, “that you are nothing but a buzzing fly. One I will easily swat.” He lifted his marked hands.
Both Livia and Bram acted instantly. Bram stepped in front of Walcote, taking up a defensive position with his upraised sword. Livia spoke the final words of her shielding spell. Power rose like a current of light as she wielded the defensive magic at the same moment John hurled a bolt of dark power at the stunned Walcote.
John’s spell bounced off the defense Livia had flung up, then slammed into a wall. It punched a hole into the plaster. A killing blow, had it struck its intended target.
Walcote fell to his knees, furiously praying.
Livia would concern herself with this mortal later. She readied another incantation as Bram advanced toward John.
“This is but a skirmish.” John took several steps backward glancing cautiously between Livia and Bram. He muttered the beginnings of an incantation under his breath, then spoke aloud. “The final battle is on the horizon. Nothing will endure. Not you, nor your Roman whore, nor all the traitorous Hellraisers will survive.”
Bram struck. Yet before his sword pierced John’s chest, John vanished in a pall of acrid smoke.
In the stillness that followed, punctuated only by Walcote’s fevered prayer, Livia and Bram stared at each other.
“What devilry?” Walcote exclaimed, ashen-faced.
Sheathing his sword, Bram said, “The greatest devilry. Now get you far from here. Gather your family, your weapons, and go as quickly as you can to your country estate. Do not leave there until I give you explicit permission to do so.”
“Tell me what is happening,” Walcote pleaded. “I cannot understand any of this.”
“It is all very simple,” answered Livia. “Bram and I must stop hell on earth.”
Since turning renegade, Bram had abandoned the luxury that had been his birthright. He’d slept in a crumbling, abandoned house and an empty warehouse, and spent half the day in a decrepit Whitechapel inn. He had eaten the coarse, filling food of the lower orders. His meticulously tailored Parisian clothing had been swapped for his father’s musty castoffs. He’d had neither rest nor comfort. In truth, these past days he had lived more as he’d once done in the Colonies, a hardscrabble existence that pared away superfluity.
It felt more true than anything he had experienced since returning home, years ago.
As he and Livia briskly mounted the steps to his sprawling home, he felt a curious remove, as though stepping into someone else’s life.
The doors opened in welcome, spilling light out onto the street. Dalby, his steward, stood waiting at the top of the stairs, his polite disinterest barely disguising his curiosity. After several nights’ absence, the master had returned.
“Dalby,” said Bram, his arm around Livia’s waist as he guided her into the echoing foyer.
“A bath, my lord?”
“Two baths. And a hot meal for myself and Mrs. Corva. She’ll need fresh clothing, too.”
“None of the modistes will be open at this hour,” Dalby said.
“Then buy a gown from a neighbor. The key to my coffer is in a secret compartment beneath the second drawer in my desk. Lively, now.”
The steward bowed and hurried away—showing only a trace of surprise that his indolent master now spoke like an officer commanding one of his troops.
There would be talk, of course. How could there not? The master of the house had returned, looking like a brigand, talking like a soldier, with a strange woman in a secondhand gown on his arm. Whenever Bram had brought women home, they had been the polished jewels plucked from theater boxes, artfully beguiling, full of laughter.
Livia’s face was solemn as a graveside angel, her mien irreproachably regal despite her shabby clothing. Left alone with Bram in the foyer of his home, she gazed at everything—from the polished floor to the crystals hanging from sconces—assessing and astute.
“A new perspective,” she murmured. “Seeing your home through mortal eyes.”
“It seemed smaller to me when I came back from the Colonies.”
She gave him a distracted nod, her gaze still in motion.
Restlessness gnawed at him. He wanted to run training drills, review strategies. Yet he knew they both needed refortification before the coming battle.
He offered her his arm. “Let us go up.”
It startled him, how the light pressure of her fingers on his arm could make his heart beat faster. He ought to be sated, ought to be inured to her touch—especially after the hours they had spent making love this very day. Yet it was as if those hours had never happened. He still burned for her, craved her.
They ascended the stairs together in silence. Here again was a new experience. He’d never brought a woman home with the intent to have her stay.
His home boasted several bedrooms, all of them ready to receive guests. Instead, he led her into his private chambers. An industrious, fast-moving servant had already lit the fire to dispel the chill.
She sank down into a wing-backed chair drawn beside the fire, her gaze lingering on the flames. Though he knew she was weary, she did not lean back or slump in the chair. Her back remained straight, her hands folded elegantly in her lap.
He wanted to stare at her, to see her bathed in the fire’s glow as she sat in his bedchamber. Trace the noble line of her profile, her unmistakably Roman features, and read the thoughts behind her dark eyes.
Instead, he pulled out fresh garments from the clothes press. Everywhere he moved, he saw the familiar furnishings with an outsider’s gaze. For all the sumptuousness of this room—the bed’s silk canopy, the warm smell of beeswax candles, the rosewood writing desk—it was cold.
Or it had been. Turning back to Livia, he revised his opinion.
She warmed it by her presence alone.
“You’d prefer the field of battle.” She continued to stare at the fire.
“It’s looming,” he answered. “Yet we wait here for baths and roast partridge.”
“We’re filthy and hungry.”
“And idle. I cannot like it.” He paced to the windows and stared out at the night. The stars burned like ice.
Her gown rustled as she stood and crossed to him. They both watched the evening sky, their bodies close, but not touching.
“See there?” She pointed at the sickle moon, rising above the rooftops. “How it gleams red?”
Indeed, as the moon climbed higher, he did mark the color—a febrile crimson staining its surface.
“John opens the gate between the Underworld and this realm,” she said. “He hasn’t enough power to open it completely, not yet. Had he killed his enemy, that man Walcote, his power would have grown. He could have forced the gate sooner. By thwarting him, we’ve bought ourselves a small measure of time. Not much time, though. He’ll find other means of gaining power, and when he has the gate wide enough, he will summon his army of demons.”
Bram swore, swinging away from the window. “Sod the baths and the food. We have to stop him.”
“Confronting him now would surely be our doom.” She tapped her fingers against the glass.
“You’re damned serene,” he growled, “considering that a demonic army is whetting their swords as we speak.”
Livia’s eyes blazed, and she whirled away. “Serene? How very mistaken you are. It’s taking my very last measure of control to keep from tearing this chamber apart.”
He did not feel assuaged. He was edge and temper and a furious, hungry energy. And all the while, a voice at the back of his mind dripped its acid whisper. It isn’t enough. Nothing you do will stop the coming doom. Even if she wanted your protection, you cannot keep her safe.
It was better when he cared for nothing and no one.
A scratch sounded at the door, and at his command, servants came trooping in. They carried a bathing tub and pitchers of steaming water. Bram directed them to place the tub by the fire, and fill both it and the tub in the closet adjoining the chamber. A footman and a maid also set trays of food upon a table. The room filled with the scents of sandalwood soap and roast meat.
“Very domestic,” Livia noted once the servants departed.
“Strange—that’s certain.” Bram stepped forward and helped remove her gown. He turned her around once the dress slipped to the ground, loosening the laces of her stays. Yet he was already at the door to the closet by the time she wriggled free of her remaining clothing.
He needed her too much. The sight of her nude body would push him past the limits of his discipline.
The scalding bathwater came as a welcome distraction, and he washed himself roughly, scrubbing at his skin as though he could wash off this new self. Too much was at stake. He could ill afford to allow himself to truly feel when he had so much to lose. Yet it could not be undone. For all her hauteur, her commanding ways and pride, the Roman sorceress had stripped him bare and bleeding.
He had died for her. Would do so again. The loss of his own life was nothing. But if the Devil’s threats came to pass, if he were to see her struck down—there would be no recovering. Even in death he would carry that loss with him, and the memory of her pain. And that would be his true agony.
Stepping from the tub, he dried himself and dressed in a shirt, breeches, and boots. When he returned to the bedchamber, he found her with her hair curling damply down her back, clothed in a slightly faded cotton robe à la française. Dalby must have found a neighbor willing to part with some garments for ample compensation.
His breath caught. Mine, he thought, gazing at her as she contemplated the trays of food. This possessiveness came from nowhere and had no precedent. Yet he wanted her to be his, in every way. Just as he wanted to be hers.
A fine time for revelations. At the very moment when I could lose everything.
“My first bath in a thousand years,” she said as he approached. “I nearly wept.”
He bent close to her and inhaled. “Laurel oil and sandalwood. An Aleppo soap I’ve specially made for me.” And now she carried his scent—the most primal marking. Yet beneath was the warm spice of her own fragrance, combining with his to create something wholly new, the joining of them together.
“There was a bay laurel grove at my family’s summer estate in Tusculum.” Her gaze held his. “It was always a relief to escape the heat of the day and lie in the shade, listen to the leaves whisper their secrets.”
“And what did they tell you?”
“That the world was far larger than I could imagine. That there was power beyond my sight.” Memories flickered behind her eyes, people and places Bram would never know, and he found himself greedy for even these pieces of her. “I stopped traveling to Tusculum once I became a votary, but I’d think of those laurel trees whenever the summer heat lay heavy in the temple.”
“We’ve a country estate in Sussex, my family. There’s a forest on the estate—hazel trees, alder and silver birch—but I wasn’t much for laying in the shade.”
“Too busy running wild.” She smiled.
Though spoke lightly, tension glinted like a buried sword beneath their words, and a sure knowledge that evil gathered and strengthened with every passing moment. She kept glancing at the moon, monitoring it.
They helped themselves to the excellent food—he took some gratification in that, to provide her at last with meals worth eating—and dined in silence. Officers did this, dining well in the hours leading up to the first shots of battle, as though determined to wring experience out of life right up to the end.
After their supper had been consumed, the trays and tub removed by the servants. They sat at the edge of the bed, expectant, silent.
He thought, the moment he had her truly in his bedchamber, he would be on her in a moment. Every part of him hungered for her.
Yet he did nothing more than take her hand, her fingers weaving with his.
“Love is a sickness,” she whispered. “It robs you of your strength, hollows you out.”
“Yes.” He laughed once, bleak and wry. “And here I thought I was immune.”
As Livia slept, laying atop the blankets, Bram went down to the music room and selected his tomahawk and favorite sword. He returned to his chamber and sat by the fire, sharpening the blades of both, all the while aware of the moon turning red. He considered his sword in the flickering firelight. All the battles he’d fought in the Colonies were nothing compared to what awaited him and his weapons now, his reasons for fighting so much greater.
Soft footsteps in the hallway alerted him. He leapt to his feet and pulled open the door.
A footman stood there, hand upraised as if about to knock. The servant’s clothing was rumpled. He must have been roused from sleep, and he blinked at Bram—and his unsheathed sword.
“What is it?” Bram demanded.
The servant lowered his hand. “Forgive me, my lord. There are a number of people below. I said they should return on the morrow, but they were most insistent. Lord Whitney, Mr. Bailey, and two ladies. Well, one is a lady. The other is . . .” He coughed, embarrassed. “A Gypsy.”
“Put them in my practice room, and tell them I’ll be down presently.”
Clearly, the servant had not expected this response. He stared at Bram in confusion.
“Go!” And with that, Bram closed the door.
He turned to find Livia awake and already out of bed. In the half light, in her pale gown and with her expression so grave, he nearly mistook her for a spirit once more.
“They’ve come,” he said.
She nodded, grim. “It begins.”
A thought scraped at the back of his mind. Once they set foot outside of his bedchamber, their time alone would be at an end. The tempest would grab hold of them. No stopping until the storm burned itself out, at which point, they
would either remain standing or be razed like trees.
They met each other in the middle of the chamber. She stared up at him, full knowledge of what was to come in her night-dark eyes. When he cupped the back of her head, her hands gripped the fabric of his shirt, her fingers digging into the flesh beneath, gaining purchase.
His mouth found hers, her hunger matching his own. They were not gentle or tentative. This might be the end, an awareness that gave their kiss its desperation.
It could not last. The world would not stop in its inexorable rotation. They had to break apart, and so they did, as the fire muttered.
Bram strapped on his sword and tucked the tomahawk into his belt. It had seen considerable use. Soon, its blade would be red—or whatever color demons bled. For all his experience on the battlefield and in the blood-soaked forests of the Colonies, he realized he had no idea what to anticipate in this upcoming confrontation. Such a challenge once excited him.
He glanced over toward Livia, stepping into her slippers. No, he did not fear what lay ahead. He wanted it here, now, and done.
They walked out into the corridor together, putting behind them the idyll of seclusion. Neither he nor Livia faltered in their steps and they went down the stairs, her on his arm. She moved with confidence, as if clad in Caesar’s armor.
He and Livia entered the practice room. The Hellraisers waited for them.
Four pairs of eyes turned to him and Livia as they stepped into the chamber. Even though he had seen Whit a short while ago, it still gave Bram pause to behold his old friend here again in his home. They had spent many a midnight here, carousing or in companionable drink. Yet they were not the same boyhood friends as they had been. They weren’t even the men they had been half a year ago. They—and the world—had irreversibly changed.
Zora hovered close, her gaze chary as she eyed the walls and ceiling as if they might collapse.