Devil’s Kiss

by Zoë Archer

  Something flashed in Whit’s eyes, something she hoped was remorse. She caught a glimmer of the man she had known back at the encampment. Free of the Devil’s dark influence. Whit’s jaw tightened. Maybe it was not too late. Maybe he could stop this—

  “It will be so,” boomed the Devil. “I give the girl to you.” The creature clapped his hands, the sound unnaturally loud in the chamber, like the crack of a musket.

  Her head spun, everything dimmed and fell away, and Zora knew no more.

  Gone. The girl simply disappeared as if dousing a candle. Whit had seen many incredible things this night, yet Zora’s vanishing jolted him from his intoxicated haze of power. Even Bram, Leo, John, and Edmund exclaimed in surprise when the girl blinked away.

  “What have you done with her?” Whit demanded of Mr. Holliday.

  The elegant man held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Be at ease, Whit. Search your pockets.”

  Whit frowned, but complied. One pocket held his usual equipage—a pearl-handled folding knife, half a cheroot, some coins. But the other ... He pulled out a playing card, though none had been there before. Intertwined serpents were printed on the back of the card. When he turned it around he cursed.

  The card was the queen of diamonds. And the queen looked exactly like Zora. Same wide-set, dark eyes, same tumble of black hair, same lovely features set defiantly, as if daring someone—him—to meet her challenge. Whit stared at the card in his broad hand, amazed. It seemed so fragile, nothing but paper.

  He glared at Mr. Holliday. “She had better not be hurt.” A strange urge had made him ask for Zora, an urge he’d had to obey. Yet he had not anticipated anything like this. Perhaps she would be simply given over to his care. But this ... He pushed back at the shadowed thoughts and demands swirling through him. He wanted her, but would not harm her. Even a reprobate Hellraiser such as himself clung to a few tattered shreds of honor.

  “The Gypsy is perfectly safe,” soothed Mr. Holliday. “Merely held in a temporary suspension. She cannot free herself. That power is yours. To release her, all you must do is go to London and place that card upon your own card table. She is bound to the card and will not be able to move more than twenty feet away from it. And if you possess the card, she shall be yours for as long as you desire.”

  “Knowing Whit,” Bram muttered to the other men, “he’ll weary of her right after he tups her, then be back at the gaming tables fifteen minutes after.”

  Whit did not share Bram’s opinion. Zora was a complex woman and would hold him longer than any other woman had before. He knew this instinctually as if uncovering a hidden part of himself, a new sense receptive only to her.

  “For as long as you want to keep her,” Mr. Holliday continued, “the girl will be unable to lie to you. Ask her anything you wish, and she must answer truthfully.”

  Whit found himself smiling. Ah, but that was a good gift, for he wanted her secrets. Anything she could give him, he wanted.

  Carefully, he slid the card into his pocket, for it was a precious burden. He burned to get to London as quickly as possible so he might have Zora to himself. Away from the eyes of others. Only him and her, alone in his home. She was a wild thing, unbroken, and his dark blood blazed to think of the potential. Hell and damn, she would be delicious, exactly what he needed, what he craved. Now he had the power to make her entirely his.

  “My thanks, sir,” he murmured to Mr. Holliday, and bowed.

  “We all thank you,” added Leo. The other men added their voices to Leo’s, all of them bowing.

  Mr. Holliday beamed, the most munificent host, as he returned the bow. “It is I who offer you my gratitude. I am most eager to learn and discover this modern world, now that you excellent gentlemen have given me my long-denied liberty. As I am sure you are also most eager to explore the world with your new gifts.”

  The friends shared grins, each of them thinking of yet untapped pleasures and unmet ambitions, all of which they would soon come to realize. Whit felt the presence of Zora close, and the towering heights of anticipation. Her secrets would be his, and probability was also his to command. Part of him rebelled at the notion, but the shadowed voice within him smothered that rebellion. He told himself he could not imagine anything more wondrous or welcome. Just as his friends envisioned what their gifts would bring them.

  They had been growing weary of things so easily lately. That would not be the case again.

  “If any of you have need of something,” Mr. Holliday went on, “simply say, Veni, geminus, and one of my attendants shall wait upon you.” He gave another sinuous bow, a movement of supreme, unearthly elegance, then patted the scroll he held. “Now I bid you all good evening, Hellraisers.” A smile spread across his face. “I shall see you all again.”

  In an icy mist, Mr. Holliday disappeared. The gilded room and the women within vanished, as well. Leaving the five men standing once again in the carved rock chamber, with only the skeleton and empty box for company. Their torches, lying upon the ground, burst back into flame and illuminated the chamber.

  For a moment, none of the friends moved. No one spoke.

  “Was that ... real?” whispered Edmund.

  Whit’s hand strayed to his pocket and found the playing card. He glanced at it and saw the image of Zora printed upon its face. A hum of awareness traveled the length of his arm, through his body.

  “Indeed, it was real,” he said. “It is real.” He returned the card to his pocket, then looked up at the dazed faces of his friends.

  “Felicitations all around,” Leo boomed.

  Everyone joined in, offering each other their congratulations on a job most splendidly done.

  “What shall we do now?” asked John.

  “What won’t we do?” Bram returned with a laugh like the bite of a whip. “For me, I shall find the most beautiful, virtuous woman in England and, with my gift from Mr. Holliday, persuade her to share my bed. Then thoroughly debauch her until she is the least virtuous woman in England.”

  “I must find Rosalind immediately,” said Edmund fiercely. “And make her mine at last.”

  “She is married,” Whit felt compelled to note. The state of marriage meant nothing to Bram, but Edmund had always tread a more respectful path. Or he had, before this night.

  Edmund’s eyes gleamed with fever. “Mr. Holliday said she was to belong to me, and I will have her, no matter what.”

  Whit wondered what Edmund’s vow might entail, for Edmund had never been a particularly violent man, never joined in when the Hellraisers brawled. But seeing the hectic color staining Edmund’s cheeks and gleaming in his eyes, Whit thought those days of passive calm were over.

  “I am for Whitehall,” said John. He curled and uncurled his fingers in his habitual gesture of contemplation, though there was something manic about his movements now, less controlled. “There are many men whose minds I would know, their plans and alliances. Soon, they will find me a most astute and”—he smiled tightly—“powerful ally.”

  “There are fortunes to be built,” Leo said. “My fortunes.” He added darkly, “And there are fortunes to be razed.”

  There were several men of genteel birth who had made it quite clear that neither Leo nor his commoner family were welcome in the rarified air of genteel society, Leo had railed bitterly to Whit and the others over predawn whiskey and cheroots. No mistaking the bloodthirstiness in his voice now, the need to punish. Those aristocratic men had no idea what awaited them, the beast they had thought chained now broken free from its restraints, intent on carnage.

  “And you, Whit?” asked Edmund. “What wondrous schemes do you intend?”

  “I must go to London posthaste,” Whit answered. Bram might ruin reputations, and Leo might trample upon the pecuniary fortunes of his enemies, but the dark voice within Whit demanded that he cut a wide and devastating swath through the gaming hells of London. He could win anything. Not just money, but prized possessions, property and heirlooms. He had Mr. Holliday’s gift of m
astery over odds. And he also possessed the gift of Zora. Soon, he would learn every one of her secrets. Her card tricks. Her fierce heart. He would have all of her, laid bare for his pleasure.

  Whit started toward the stairs that led out of the chamber.

  “Enjoy your Gypsy girl,” Bram called after him.

  Whit paused on the stairs and grinned at his fellow Hellraisers. “I shall. As we all should enjoy our newfound gifts.”

  “Now we are Hellraisers in truth,” said John, laughing.

  Whit smiled, though he did not laugh. “So we are.”

  “There are no obstacles in our paths,” said Edmund.

  “Godspeed,” Leo called.

  “God has nothing to do with this.” On that, Whit strode up the remainder of the stairs and emerged into the chilled night, utterly transformed from the man he had been only hours earlier.

  Chapter 3

  Zora’s head cleared, vision and sense returned. Yet what she saw next made her dizzy all over again. She knew only that one moment, it had been the middle of the night and she had been standing in that horrible gorgio chamber full of heavy gilded wood, a chamber full of reckless men and awful women. The Devil presiding over all of it.

  She’d had a dim sense of motion around her, as if she had observed movement on the bottom of the ocean. Voices had come to her, muddied, muted. The words had made little sense. Fleeting impressions of a horse’s hooves, land rushing past her, the open country being gradually choked by buildings, until she was in the thick of a monstrous, sprawling city. There had come a distant impression of entering very grand squares surrounded by massive homes. The horse’s hoofbeats had slowed, then stopped. She felt herself carried up a flight of stairs.

  Then, the next moment, she was in a room.

  Spinning around, she found herself not three feet away from Whit. He looked windblown, his mahogany hair coming loose from its queue, his fine hunting clothes travel-worn and rumpled. In fact, he breathed heavily, as if he’d been riding and then running at top speed. He stared at her with ravenous blue eyes—so different from the cautious attraction with which he had regarded her back at the encampment. Though he wore the same face and had the same long, strapping body, he was not the same man who had sat upon the ground, who had played piquet with her and playfully demanded her secrets at cards.

  This man standing before her was far more dangerous.

  She found herself instinctually backing up, until she collided against some furniture and could go no farther.

  “What is this place?” she demanded.

  “My home.” His voice was rough silk. He gave her a small bow. “Welcome.”

  Zora cast a quick glance around, assessing. This chamber she did not find half as revolting as the other beneath the ruin. The room in Whit’s home was smaller, yet the walls were paneled with rich, dark wood that reminded her of the forest. A fire burned lowly in the hearth, but there wasn’t a single cooking pot or tub of washing hanging over the flames. One small table held a chess set, yet the only real furniture in the chamber was a circular table surrounded by half a dozen chairs. Decks of cards were stacked upon the table. Everything in the room was of the finest quality, far more grand and sturdy than anything any Rom might have. The room smelled of strong drink and tobacco.

  Through the tall, velvet-curtained windows, the dawn cast pink light. It was still too dark outside for Zora to see exactly where she might be. Somewhere in a large city. Far from home.

  Because of Whit. The Whit who had been changed by the Devil’s dark sway.

  She whirled back to face him. “Let me go,” she growled.

  The wicked gorgio only shook his head, his eyes never leaving hers. “You are my guest.”

  “Your prisoner,” she snapped.

  He stood between her and the door, and she knew that he could easily catch and overpower her if she tried to bolt past him. So she turned and sprinted across the room, heading for the windows. The wood groaned under her hands as she pushed a window open—the room must never have been aired out, the atmosphere was so close and clinging—and as it opened, a cool dawn breeze flowed in to bite at her flushed cheeks. From what Zora could tell, the room was on the first story, which meant she could easily jump to the ground below. It wouldn’t be the first occasion she’d fled a gorgio’s home through a window. This time, she did not have a sack full of purloined silver over her shoulder.

  She did not care about stealth now. Gritting her teeth, she shoved the window open just enough for her to wriggle through. As soon as she had sufficient room, she put her hands upon the windowsill and vaulted over it.

  Or she tried. She slammed into a barrier, then stumbled back to land on her backside. From the floor, Zora glared at the window.

  She launched herself at it again. And found herself back on the floor once more, dazed.

  With more caution, she stood and approached the window. Brisk morning air wafted into the room, and a leaf torn from an elm tree drifted in, borne upon the breeze. Slowly, Zora reached out, trying to stick her arm through the open window. She could not. An invisible barrier marked the boundary between the inside of the room and the outside. She pressed her fingertips against it and found the barrier to be cold and unyielding like a wall of ice.

  Heart pounding, she snatched up one of the chess pieces and tossed it toward the window. The little carved bishop sailed out as if nothing stopped it. Zora stared, hardly believing.

  She heard Whit walking steadily toward her. With quick hands and no warning, she grabbed the chessboard and flung it at him. He whipped up his arm to block the game board, playing pieces flying in every direction. Taking advantage of his momentary distraction, Zora shot past him, heading for the door.

  He made a feint for her, but she evaded his outstretched hands, swift as a vixen. They called her that sometimes, her family: a fleet, cunning she-fox. She drew on that part of herself as she ran toward the door. Then she was at the door, flinging it open to reveal an elegant hallway. A brief surprise to find the door unlocked. In a moment, she understood why.

  Shoulder first she ran toward the doorway. And smashed against that same cold, immobile barrier. Her shoulder actually ached from the contact. There were no objects close at hand, so she tore off one of her rings and pitched it through the doorway. Just like the chess piece, the ring had no trouble leaving the room. In fact, it bounced off the hallway’s wall and then rolled down the length of the passage with a mocking, metallic sound. It had freedom. She did not.

  Whit’s footsteps sounded behind her, the heels of his boots hitting the wood with the finality of a drumroll before execution.

  “The Devil’s wickedness,” she snarled. She turned to face Whit, her body humming with fear and anger and the aftershocks of trying to throw herself against a magical barricade.

  She could hardly believe she lived now in a world where existed such things as invisible barriers and Wafodu guero’s magic. Yet it was true, they were real, and she had no means of combating them.

  “You are my guest,” Whit repeated, as if she had not just attempted to flee and everything that had just happened was merely a lull in conversation.

  “Until when?”

  “Until I am ready to let you go.” He advanced, and she would not allow him the satisfaction of intimidating her, no matter how much more height he had, no matter the coiled strength of his body or the burning intensity of his gaze. She stood her ground, tipping her chin to glare up at him.

  She braced herself for his touch. Yet he did not touch her. Only stood very close, close enough for her to catch his scent of leather and warm male flesh, to see the flecks of gold in his eyes, like coins at the bottom of a bright blue sea. This close, she saw the masculine splendor of his face, its bold lines. The tempting contours of his mouth. A series of tiny scars just at his temple, the lingering trace of a childhood battle with illness—which made him all the more human and real.

  He stared at her, and she saw a faint glimmering beneath the surface of h
is handsome face, a kind of distant puzzlement as if he were observing a beautiful yet brutal ritual. There, in those quick moments of wonderment, she saw him. The Whit she had known back in the encampment. Clever, quick of mind. Yearning. Desirable.

  He blinked, and that man disappeared.

  Now he was a villain. A beautiful villain.

  He reached toward her then. She recoiled. All he did was shut the door behind her.

  She retreated until the door pressed into her back. He advanced, closing the distance between them. His hands came up to brace against the door. The muscles of his shoulders and arms shifted and tensed, forming solid shapes beneath his coat. Sometime during the night, he had lost his stock, and he stood near enough for her to see the beat of his pulse beneath the corded length of his neck.

  Despite the enforced calm of his expression, his pulse throbbed in quick rhythm. He was not as impassive as he seemed.

  Her own heart was a galloping horse that ran all the harder at his nearness. Perhaps he wasn’t as lost as she had thought, for he might have done a dozen things to her, none of them good. Yet she saw in his eyes, in the press of his lips, a struggle within. Battling the Devil’s wickedness.

  Maybe there was a chance at freedom, for both of them. If so, she had to tame the creature living in her chest, must control herself. But, even amongst her own people, she was known as too fiery, too impulsive, and so her cheeks flamed and her breath came in gulps as she stared up at Whit.

  “’Tis your secrets I want, Zora.” He said her name in a husky whisper—the voice of the man she’d known back in the encampment—that shivered up and down her spine.

  “I don’t want to give them to you,” she answered.

  A corner of his mouth turned up, sly and sensuous. “You’ve no choice in the matter. Mr. Holliday—”

  “Who?”

  “I believe you called him Wafodu guero.”

  “Mr. Holliday,” she repeated. Her own smile tasted bitter. “Fitting for him to use a pleasant guise to cloak his evil.”