by Zoë Archer
“Bram, if your estate is nearby, wouldn’t you already know about a Roman ruin?” Whit asked.
Apparently, this had not occurred to Bram. He frowned. “Must be a new ruin.”
The Gypsy girl, Zora, snorted. Whit found himself smiling.
“We should go investigate,” Leo said, ambling forward with John and Edmund trailing.
“No!” yelped Taiso. “Ye oughtn’t go there. ’Tis a place of darkest magic. The haunt of Wafodu guero—the Devil!”
“So much the better,” said Leo. “We’re Hellraisers, after all.”
Edmund and John chortled their agreement. “This place is getting deuced dull,” Edmund added.
Whit didn’t think so. Though he was uncertain whether the tantalizing Zora might share a bed with him, he wanted to stay with her longer, even if it meant simply talking. He couldn’t remember being so engaged in a conversation for a long, long time.
“It’s settled, then,” declared Bram. “We go to the ruin.”
Cheers of approval rose up from Leo, John, and Edmund. Bram fixed Whit with a stare that held far more strength than one might expect from his inebriated state.
“You’re coming, aren’t you?” Bram asked. The question verged on a command. In some ways, Bram styled himself the de facto leader of the Hellraisers, even though, as a baron, he ranked beneath Whit. Yet Whit had no desire to lead this band of reprobate men—he wanted only the thrill of the gamble—and so left the decisions to his oldest friend.
Yet it was all a ruse. Bram mightn’t say so, but he needed to have Whit with him during their many escapades, and if Whit refused to go, Bram would stay.
Whit looked at Zora, who watched the whole exchange with an incisive, speculative gaze. “What say you, Madame Zora?” he asked. “I could go to the ruin, where the Devil is rumored to reside, or remain here, with you. Shall we wager it on the flip of a coin or turn of a card?”
Her expression turned opaque. “The disease of your boredom has nearly claimed you if you can’t make decisions for yourself.”
He didn’t care for the edge of censure in her tone. Whit spent much of his time avoiding anyone who might reproach him, which was why he hadn’t seen his sister in nearly a year. It was not this Gypsy girl’s business if he liked to gamble. It was no one’s business but his own.
Resolved, Whit smoothly got to his feet. He hadn’t been imbibing at the same rate as his friends, so the world remained steady as he stood. “Let’s see where the Devil lives.”
Bram exhaled, as if holding a breath in anticipation of Whit’s answer. Seeing Whit make his decision, Bram grinned his demon’s grin, the same he made whenever he was on the verge of doing something truly fiendish—like that time he entertained an entire troupe of ballet dancers in his London town house.
Zora arose to standing in a sinuous, graceful line.
“A kiss for luck,” Whit said to her. He stared at her lips, the color of a rose just before sundown. He needed to know her taste, her warmth, when his own world felt so flavorless and cold. God, he wanted that, wanted her mouth against his, and the sudden strength of that want hit him like a cannon.
At that word kiss, her gaze went directly to his mouth. And heat and heaviness shot directly to his groin. Desire gleamed in her eyes.
Which she quickly shut away. Her expression cooled as her gaze moved up to his eyes.
“It would be a shameful thing to kiss you in front of my family. But I will wish you kosko bokht.” There was something almost sorrowful in her words, in her eyes, as she stared up at him.
He felt it then. An icy sense of premonition sliding down his back, like a cold hand tracing the line of his spine. Though he was not a superstitious man, just then some strange other sense of foreboding tightened his muscles and bones. He had the oddest desire to stay in the encampment and avoid the ruin.
“Time to ride, lads,” Bram commanded. He and the other men strode off to where a Gypsy boy had brought their snorting, impatient horses.
Whit laughed at himself, shaking off the sense of dread as he might hand a rain-soaked greatcoat to a servant. Nonsense, all of it. As he’d said earlier, this was the modern age, and the Devil and magic did not truly exist.
He reached out, requesting Zora’s hand, and after she slowly gave it to him, he bowed over it and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. Her eyes widened. Beneath his lips, her skin was silk and warmth; he barely resisted the impulse to lick her to learn whether she tasted as spicy as her spirit.
Their eyes met over their clasped hands. “Farewell, Madame Zora.”
“Be careful, my lord.”
“There’s no amusement in careful.”
“There is more to life than amusement.”
“If there is,” he answered, “I have yet to encounter it.”
She slid her hand from his, and her gaze also slid away.
“Whit!” came a chorus of voices from across the encampment.
He gave her one last, searching look, as if trying to etch her image on the metal of his mind. A silent entreaty for her to meet his gaze one final time. Yet she would not, staring fixedly at the ground, and the flickering firelight turned her into a distant gold and ebony goddess. He wondered if he might ever see her again. The thought that he might not filled him with an inexplicable anger.
He made one final bow, as sharply elegant as a rapier, then turned and strode off. Whit swung himself up into the saddle. Bram and the others kicked their horses into a gallop. Whit’s horse wheeled and danced in a circle as he took one last glimpse of the Gypsy encampment, of her, before he set his heels into the beast’s flanks. They darted off into the night.
The gorgios were gone, having left some hours ago. Yet Zora could not be easy, could not still the beating of her heart or whirling of her mind. She paced as everyone else in the camp amused themselves with music and stories. It had been a good night. The wealthy gorgios had thrown coin around like handfuls of dust, and the mood amongst the families was high and celebratory. Even the best day of horse trading and dukkering at a fair could not bring in as much money.
Zora alone could not enjoy the remains of the evening. She walked up and down the camp—careful to keep her path behind the men who sat around the fire, as custom and belief demanded. Amongst the Rom, it was considered dangerous for a woman to pass in front of a seated man, though no one explained the reasons why in a way to ever satisfy Zora. That had been her way, since her earliest years—Zora demanding why, and the answer: because.
“Sit, girl,” commanded Faden Boswell. “Ye make my head spin with yer to-ing and fro-ing.”
Zora ignored him. Faden claimed he was the king of their group, but he talked more bluster than he did enforce order. Everyone knew that Faden’s wife, Femi, held the reins of control and made the major decisions.
“She’s thinkin’ of her handsome gorgio,” teased Grandmother Shuri. “With the pretty blue eyes and deep pockets.”
“He is not my gorgio,” Zora said immediately, yet she knew the truth. She was thinking of him. Whit, his scoundrel friends called him. A suitable name for a man possessing much intellect, yet also ironic, for he squandered his wits on ephemeral pursuits. What drove a man to live from one game of chance to the next? He had wealth, privilege, friends—though those friends were as wicked as demons. Yet he staked his happiness on the brief excitement of the wager.
It troubled her. He troubled her, far more than she would like.
There was passion in him—and no true channel for that passion. Nothing that engaged him fully.
No, that was not true. He seemed very much engaged and passionate when he looked at her.
Zora suppressed the shiver of awareness that danced through her as she remembered him. Grandmother Shuri was right. The gorgio Whit was indeed a most handsome man, and extremely well formed. He might be a scoundrel of the worst order, but it left no toll upon his face and body. Tall, his broad shoulders admirably filling out his costly coat, his long legs encased in close-fitting doeskin h
unting breeches and high boots polished to brilliance.
And his face. She recalled it vividly as the firelight painted him a dark angel. Unlike other wealthy gorgios, he wore no wig but pulled his deep brown hair back into a queue. She imagined what his hair might look like loose about his shoulders, and knew he would appear a very incubus, sensually tempting a woman to wickedness. He had a square, strong jaw. A bold, aristocratic nose. Full lips. Dark, slashing brows above eyes the color of the sky at midday. Sharp, those eyes, and hungry.
Hungry for her. He made himself very plain. He wanted her for a night’s pleasure. And, God preserve her, she wanted him, too. That lean body. Those clever hands. But she’d spoken true. She was no whore, and would not take his coin in exchange for her body. Even if he had not offered to pay her for the privilege, Zora knew that such affairs with gorgios were dangerous for young Romani chis.
She might not have taken him to bed, but she had not wanted him to go, either. She enjoyed talking with him, the way in which he truly seemed to listen. He was not afraid or dismissive of her opinions, not like other men—especially Jem, her former husband. Whit’s mind was sharp, and he played the bored rogue, but she saw in him a yearning for meaning, for connection to something real, beyond the gloss and polish of his wealthy, wastrel life. She had that own yearning for herself, for a life away from telling fortunes and speaking in deliberate riddles. There had to be more than that.
There had been a palpable connection between her and Whit, which was indeed strange. Two people could not be more different. He lived trapped within walls, and she had the freedom of the road and the sky. He was a wealthy gorgio man of privilege, whilst she was a Romani chi who wore her wealth around her neck and upon her fingers. The sun and the moon. Yet the connection had been there, just the same.
She could not quite dismiss the disquiet she felt when he and his attractive, scapegrace friends decided to visit the Roman ruin. She might not adhere to the old folk beliefs of her family and the other Rom—it all seemed rather superstitious and silly to her, frankly—but something seemed deeply unsettling and wrong about the fact that the one gorgio who lived nearby had never heard of the ruin before tonight. Almost as if ... it had been hiding, waiting for him and the other men.
“Ach,” she growled to herself. “Enough of this.” She had grown weary of pacing like a cat and would divert her restless thoughts.
Zora threw herself down onto the grass and shuffled her tarot deck. She did not believe the dukkering cards could actually tell the future, just as she did not believe the lines on a person’s hand foretold anything. When she dukkered for the gorgios, she let them focus on the cards or their hands, while she actually read their faces, their postures and silent, subtle, unaware ways that revealed who they were and what they desired. Easy for them to think she had the gift of magic. But all Zora truly had was a knack for seeing people and telling them what they wanted to hear.
Still, dealing the tarot for herself usually soothed her. The proscribed patterns in which the cards were laid. The pictures printed upon their faces, older than history. Calming.
After shuffling the cards several times, Zora began to lay them out in the ten-card cross with which she was most familiar. She did not pay much attention, simply allowing her mind to drift as her hands moved, setting down the cards. When she did finally bring her attention down to the cards, what she saw made her gasp aloud.
Evil. A great evil is coming, unleashed by the five.
Zora shivered. The warning was plain, spelled out in the cards.
She shook herself. Yes, the tarot had its meaning, and she knew what each card was supposed to represent, but they were merely suggestions, not actual truth. Not genuine prophecy of what was to come.
She quickly gathered up the cards she had laid, shuffled them again, then laid them out once more in the cross formation.
Her breath lodged in her throat.
The cards came out the same. Exactly the same. The five of swords. The inverted knight of wands. Culminating in the fifteenth card of the Major Arcana: the Devil. Zora stared at his horned, goatish face contorted in a sinister grin, batlike wings outstretched, as he presided over two figures chained at his feet. A pentacle marked the ground where the chained figures knelt.
Coincidence. That was all it could be. She would prove it.
She scooped up the cards and shuffled them a third time. And for the third time, she set them out. By the time she turned over and placed the final card, her hands shook.
The same. Each and every card. Their meaning clear: A great evil is coming, unleashed by the five.
Her heart pounded, her palms went damp, and her mouth dried. She never believed it possible, and yet ... it was. The tarot predicted the future, a terrible future. Which meant—
Zora jumped to her feet. She ran to her family and the other families who made up their band. At her approach, the men stopped playing their fiddles and took their pipes from their mouths, and the women left off their gossiping. They all stared at her, and she knew that her face must be ashen, her eyes wide. She likely looked like a phantom.
“We have to stop them,” she announced without preamble.
“Who?” asked Litti, her mother.
“The gorgios who went to the ruin.” Her hands curled into fists by her sides as she fought to keep her voice level. “I have seen it. The cards have shown me. If we do not stop them, those five men are going to let loose a terrible evil.”
No one laughed. Everyone knew that Zora put no faith in dukkering or magic. Yet it was for that very reason that they all took her seriously now. In fact, looks of pure terror filled their faces and the firelight shining in their rounded eyes turned them glassy and blank. Zora stared at them, at the men, and they stared back.
Not a single man moved.
Impatience gnawed at her. She took a step closer. “Why are you all sitting there like frightened goats? Get up! You must ride after the gorgios and stop them!”
The men exchanged glances until, finally, Zora’s cousin Oseri stood up. Zora exhaled in relief, but her relief was short-lived. From the terrified expression on his face, it was clear Oseri had plans only to hide in his tent.
“The wafodu is too great,” he stammered. “The evil will hurt us.”
“So you are going to do nothing?” Zora demanded.
The men all shrugged, palms open. “What can we do against such powerful, bad magic?” someone bleated.
“Anything!” she shot back. But every last one of the men refused to move, while the women crossed themselves and muttered prayers.
There was no hope for it. With a growled curse, Zora turned on her heel and walked into the horse enclosure, but not before grabbing a crust of bread from the cooking area and slipping it into her pocket. It was said that bread held the Devil at bay, and she needed every bit of assistance she could scrounge. She also had her knife, tucked into the sash at her waist.
“Where are you going?” Zora’s mother cried.
Zora did not stop until she slipped a bridle onto one of the horses and then swung up onto its bare back. Once mounted, she trotted forward until she stared down at the trembling men and women of her Romani band.
“I’m doing what needs to be done,” Zora said. “I’m going to stop those lunatic men before they do something we shall all regret.”
Despite her fear, she kicked her horse into a gallop. She had never faced anything like this in her life, and had no knowledge of what awaited her. How might she prevent the evil from being set free? All she knew was that she must.
Atop a rounded hill, the ruin formed a dark, jagged silhouette against the night sky, like a creature rising from the earth. As the riders neared the hill, Whit felt himself drawn forward, pulled by a force outside himself. He did not know why he had to reach the ruin, only that he must, and soon. His companions must have shared the feeling, for they also urged their horses faster, their hooves pounding beneath them as thunder presaged a storm.
At the b
ase of the hill, all of the men fought to control their shying, rearing horses, trying to urge them up toward the ruin. None of the beasts would take the hill, though it was surely traversable by horse. The men alternately cursed and cajoled. Yet the horses refused to go farther.
“On foot, then,” grumbled Bram.
After dismounting, as directed by Bram, the men gathered up fallen tree branches. Bram used skills honed during his time fighting the French and their native allies in the Colonies and quickly made torches from the branches. He set them ablaze with a flint from his pocket.
“Don’t we look a fine collection of fiends,” drawled Whit. For that is what they resembled as light from the torches bathed the men’s faces in gaudy, demonic radiance.
At this notion, they all grinned.
“Shall we investigate, Hellraisers?” asked Edmund.
“Aye,” the men said in unison, and Whit felt almost certain he heard a sixth voice hiss, Yes.
They climbed the hill, using torchlight to guide them. The shapes of toppled columns and crumbling walls emerged from the darkness, gleaming white and dull as bones. Everyone reached the top and surveyed the scene. Whatever the building had once been, its glory had long ago faded, becoming only a shade of its former self. A strange, thick miasma cloaked the ruin, its dank smell clogging Whit’s nose, and it swirled as the five men prowled through the ancient remains. Examining a partially standing wall, he touched the surface of the stone. A cold that seemed nearly alive climbed up through his hand, up his arm, and would have gone farther had he not pulled back.
Their murmured voices were muffled by the heavy vapor, but Leo said, loud enough for all of them to hear, “What the hell is this place?”
“Appears to have been a temple,” answered John, their resident scholar. He crouched and brushed away some dirt until he revealed what appeared to be a section of stone floor. “See here.” He pointed to the ground as everyone gathered around. Holding his torch closer to the stonework, he indicated the faded, chipped remains of mosaic lettering. “Huic sanctus locus. ‘This sacred place of worship.’”