by Zoë Archer
They both pressed their backs against the stone, panting, and waited. Men’s heavy footfalls sounded on the other side of the wall, and a dog’s frantic whine. Only when the pursuers’ angry shouts faded did Whit feel an infinitesimal easing of the tension gripping him.
The sky turned to ashes with the dawn, washing color from everything. The garden seemed made of stone plants and hedges, as cold and lifeless as the dry fountain that formed its centerpiece. Someone, whoever lived inside, had brought out a chair, but it had tipped over like an animal frozen in its death throes.
Only through force of will did he keep from stalking over to the chair and smashing it against the flagstones. Instead, he turned so that he faced the wall and beat his knuckles against the stone.
“It was there. Hell’s fire, it was there.”
“Another alehouse, maybe?”
“We were at the right place. I saw it. I felt it.”
“Perhaps the geminus wanted to trick us. Plant a false idea so we would chase at phantoms.”
“The vault is real.”
“Whit, your hands.” She tugged him away and made a sound of shock when she saw crimson dripping down his fingers. With a patch of her cloak, she dabbed at the raw, open flesh.
He did not want tender ministrations. Not when anger and despair turned his chest into a hot battleground. He swung away from her and paced the confines of the garden.
Damn and hell, he’d been so bloody close. With the opening of a single door, this entire nightmare might at last have begun to end. But, like everything the Devil promised, the rotten flaw consumed hope. Whit was no better than he had been the night he and the Hellraisers had found the temple. Worse. For the geminus had its claws in him now.
He wrenched his arm from the sleeve of his coat, then pulled at his waistcoat and shirt to reveal his shoulder and arm. In the pallid light of daybreak, he saw it. The flames that marked his flesh now engulfed his shoulder and twisted farther down his bicep, almost to his elbow. The Devil’s mark grew.
In three strides, he stood in front of Zora. He loomed over her and grabbed her wrist.
“Burn it.” He pressed her hand against his marked shoulder.
Her eyes went round. “What? No—”
“Burn it from my skin. Char my flesh. Get this damn thing off me.”
“It doesn’t work that way.” Her cool, steady fingers curled gently over the curve of his shoulder.
“You do not know.” He was hot and seething and her touch maddened him, yet he would not release her.
“I do know that Wafodu guero is not a problem with an easy solution.”
His laugh scraped his throat. “Setting oneself ablaze is not an easy solution.”
She winced. “If I thought it could truly help you, I would. I’d gladly take the torch to your skin.”
“And gain a measure of retribution.”
Her gaze turned fierce. “There are other ways I’d rather hurt you.” She pressed her fingers against him, then tried to pull free from his grip. “Let go of me.”
She scowled at him when he did not release her, and tugged harder. Still, he wouldn’t relent. They stared at one another, gazes locked.
“This will solve nothing,” she said.
“Fire with fire.”
She tightened her mouth. He thought she would refuse, but then the cool skin of her hand warmed, growing hotter and hotter. His shoulder blazed with pain, as did his hand grasping her wrist. Yet he continued to hold her tightly. The pain traveled in searing currents through his body. An extraordinary transformation from hurt into something else, something ... pleasurable ... playing upon his senses in a strange alchemy. Lead into gold. Pain into pleasure.
Heat of another kind pulsed within him. His cock thickened. She caught the shift from pain to arousal, and her breathing hitched, coming in shallow gasps.
Cinnamon stained her cheeks, and her lips parted. Here was another surprise: she was as excited as he. They continued to hold each other’s gaze, a contest of wills and a prelude to desire.
The thrill of risk heated him as much as her burning hand, if not more. A gamble, and his gamester’s blood craved it. How far would they take this? Who would submit first?
The acrid scent of his flesh burning drifted up.
“Whit ...” Her voice urged him to be cautious, yet her hand did not cool.
He let her go. They gasped at the release. She took a small step back, slowly lowering her hand. Their gazes broke apart as they studied his shoulder.
The flames marring his skin still twisted over his shoulder and down his arm. Damn. Yet a deep red mark remained, as well: the shape of Zora’s hand. She had branded him.
Only vicious restraint kept him from spending there and then like a boy with no control. Her mark on his flesh. Nothing had ever been as erotic as that darkening handprint.
He stared down at the hand-shaped mark. “If a sinner like me can pray, then I pray this scars.”
Her eyes flashed. She curled her hand in the folds of her cloak, as if sheathing a weapon.
Slowly, wincing a little from the pain, he righted his clothing, layer by layer. Until everything was as it should be, save for the sun of pain that glowed and throbbed within his shoulder.
A crash sounded nearby. He moved Zora to the wall, and they crouched behind it.
“Where is she?! Where’s that damned slut?!” A woman’s voice, shrieking. More crashes reverberated, the sounds of shattering ceramics and metal objects falling to the floor. “Out of my way! I don’t care what hour it is. That trollop is here.”
Whit stood and stretched up to peer over the edge of the wall. He did not see anyone on the street, but the noise continued. He glanced toward the town house, yet it, too, was still. Another smash resounded. It was close by, but where? He moved carefully to the side of the garden and looked over the wall that separated the yard from its next-door neighbor.
There was no one in the adjacent garden, but when he looked toward the town house, he finally saw the source of the commotion: the neighbors’ home.
Zora appeared at his side, yet she wasn’t tall enough to look over the wall. He wrapped his arms around her slender waist and lifted her just enough to see. Windows gave them a perfect proscenium for watching the scene unfold.
A woman of middle age forced her way into a bedchamber. The furnishings of the home and the disordered clothing of the women were of good quality—this was not the home of a fishmonger, nor was the female intruder a ballad-seller. A girl in servant’s drab tried to pull the intruder from the chamber, but she was too small to do anything but tug ineffectively on the woman’s waist.
The woman stalked to the bed and shoved the curtains open. The man and lady within, clad only in their nightgowns and caps, screamed.
“Vile whore!” the intruder shouted. She grabbed the woman in the bed by her hair and dragged her out. Screams the likes of which Whit had never heard from human or animal came from the nightgown-wearing lady as she clawed to free herself. “You may be in bed with your husband here, but it’s my husband you preyed upon, and in my bed.”
“Help me, Christopher!”
Her husband only looked on in terror, clutching the sheets to himself.
“Have you no shame, Arabella?!” the intruder screeched. “Are you so unsatisfied with Christopher that you must turn your filthy wiles on Philip?” She shook Arabella by her hair.
“A mistake, Maria. I never—”
“Deny it? Is this not your garter? And did I not find it in my husband’s bedclothes?” She flung a scrap of ribbon in Arabella’s face.
“It is mine, but ... but I have no idea how ...” She screamed as Maria shook her again. More shouting came from inside the house, the sounds of either manservants or a constable. Or perhaps Arabella’s errant husband, Philip.
Zora wriggled in Whit’s grasp. He obliged by releasing her, and the slide of her down his body was delicious. She mouthed the words, We have to leave.
They ought to. B
ut something rather vicious in him wanted to see more, to watch these respectable ladies tear each other apart. See the chaos unfold.
“Now,” Zora urged lowly. “Before someone spots us out here.”
He tore his gaze from the spectacle and nodded. Within a minute, they crossed the garden, and he and Zora were back on the street. The shouting and sounds of breaking furniture could still be heard. A maid carrying her brooms gasped at the foul language and hurried on her way.
The sun had risen higher, brightening the sky. Whit placed Zora’s hand on his arm as if they were merely out for an early stroll. But the day was anything but routine. He remembered the patterns of morning from his more clearheaded stumbles back to his chambers. Instead of the usual wagons bringing food to market, the craftsmen heading purposefully toward their businesses, and dairymaids with pails of milk balanced on their shoulders, the streets were oddly derelict. As if abandoned. Yet, from open windows fronting the lanes, the sounds of arguments and tears tumbled out.
“Seems Arabella and Maria aren’t the only ones caught in domestic troubles,” Zora murmured.
As Whit and Zora moved down the street, they passed three arguing men. These were not students in the middle of a drunken brawl, nor rough country men in homespun and mud-stained boots. The men were clad in the sober, well-made clothing of staid tradesmen. Yet their faces purpled in rage as they yelled and shoved. A professor in his robes and old-fashioned, full-bottomed wig stood in the middle of the arguers trying to keep order. To no avail. The fighting men continued to hurl insults and accusations at one another.
“The man in the middle is Dr. Hammond,” Whit murmured as he and Zora moved past. “He tried to teach me philosophy. Now he’s mediating brawls between respectable burghers.”
A fragment of the doctor’s lectures popped into Whit’s mind. “Malitia unius cito fit maledictum omnium. Publilius Syrus.” At Zora’s blank expression, he translated, “ ‘One man’s wickedness may easily become all men’s curse.’”
His heart stuttered and he stared unseeingly at the roofs of Oxford, the homes and university buildings. Much of the university had been built hundreds of years ago, at the direction of monarchs and clergy, monuments to enduring legacies.
“It’s all so damned fragile,” he said.
Zora gazed up at him, understanding written plainly in her eyes. The chaos—the geminus had created it. Wherever the geminus went, destruction followed. Even here, this seat of learning and reason.
Good men like Dr. Hammond could not hold back the tide of ruin. Futile—a single, brittle leaf trying to dam a flood. But it had to be held back, for the alternative was too appalling to contemplate. Devastation on an incomprehensible scale.
He stopped walking.
“Are you all right?” Zora peered up at him with a frown of concern.
“It cannot continue.”
She nodded with understanding, yet she couldn’t know the full weight of the burden. It was his to bear.
But where was the geminus? Ever since he had switched places with the creature, he’d felt its presence, the echoes of where it had been and its forward trajectory. Staring at the venerable buildings of Oxford, he did what he hated to do: reach out with his inner self to connect with the geminus. Its traces were everywhere in the town—smears of filthy energy he felt rather than saw—but went no farther.
“It’s not here.” He scowled. “The geminus’s traces are here in Oxford, but the geminus itself has just vanished.”
“Perhaps it’s gone for good.” But even she did not sound convinced.
“Gone from this town, but it will turn up somewhere and wreak more devastation.” He knew this with a terrible certainty. “Yet where the creature will next appear, that eludes me. In this quest, we are lost.”
Chapter 12
Zora woke alone. She lay in darkness, staring up at the ceiling. Glimmers of lamplight flickered across the beams as people crossed back and forth outside. There were shouts for fresh horses, for ale and food, for passengers to hurry up with their meals before the coach departed without them. The sounds of gorgio life seemed more familiar to her now, and it felt like the last time she heard Romani had been years, not days, past. She had left the tiny country she called home and traveled as a stranger in an unknown land.
Another inn. This one in Lil-engreskey gav, Oxford. With no trace of the geminus, they could not move forward. Even if they had a trail to follow, both she and Whit were exhausted. They had needed food and rest.
She pushed herself up and sat on the edge of the bed. Once again, she had slept away the day, and night had already fallen. A candlestick perched atop the nightstand, so she touched the tip of her finger to the wick and lit the taper. She smiled at how familiar her magic felt to her now, as though it had long been part of her and only now could it come forward.
At the washstand, she poured herself a basin of water and quickly cleaned herself. A small mirror hung above the washstand. She undid and then braided anew her hair. As she did, she caught sight of the bed’s reflection, and Whit, asleep in a chair. His sword lay across his lap.
She had offered him use of the bed. They could sleep beside each other. His eyes had blazed, his jaw clenched tight, a sinister intensity radiating from him.
“I do not trust myself,” he had said through clenched teeth. “Now get into bed.”
She had taken one look at his face and done exactly as he demanded.
He battled something. Ever since he had switched places with the geminus, a burning shadow clung to him. Unmistakable hunger smoldered in his gaze, especially when he fixed it upon her.
With him asleep, she could admit it to herself: that hunger and shadow called to her. She stared into her own eyes reflected back at her in the mirror. Her other self—the one who craved power over others, who yearned for dark pleasure at any cost. She no longer knew who she was, only that each moment the world changed anew, and she with it.
She turned and studied him as he slept. Even in slumber, that dark edge shaped him. He was just as volatile as she, yet, for all that, he remained her constant in the midst of uncertainty, perhaps because of his unpredictability. In some bone-deep way, she knew him. All his faces, all his facets. As he knew her. And they both needed to undo or stop the damage wrought by the geminus, before it spread like sickness to other towns, other cities. Before it was too late to regain Whit’s soul.
His eyes opened. His body tensed. Instantly alert.
They held each other’s gazes for a long moment. She kept very still, like a fox waiting for its hunter to move. Suddenly, he stood, secured his sword, and left the room.
Shaking, she washed, using the basin and ewer. The water was cold enough to steal her breath, but she used its chill to cool her heated blood. She doused the candle and left the room. The carpets and gleaming lamps in the hallway testified to the inn’s quality, far better than that of the inn of the previous day. The quality of patron was better, too, as evidenced by the many curious, suspicious, or outright hostile glances she received as she went downstairs.
Whit was not in the dining room. Those who sat in it hunched over their sausages and chines of mutton, their glasses of wine and bowls of green soup, moodily sawing away at their food and speaking no more than necessary. A peculiar tension hung over the chamber, evidenced by the sideways glances being exchanged, and mutterings like a river on the verge of flooding.
A woman in a server’s apron and bearing a tray walked past. Her eyes flicked up and down Zora. Open hostility soured her expression. “Didn’t know we let filthy Gypsies in.”
“Insult me again,” Zora urged softly, “and you’ll wake up tomorrow with a gourd for a nose.”
The gorgie’s eyes widened. “That’s not possible.”
“Are you willing to take that chance?” She waved her ring-covered fingers at the serving woman as though conjuring up a Romani curse.
“No,” squeaked the gorgie, clapping her hands over her nose.
“I’ll be
watching you with my third eye, reading your mind, so if you even think another insult, I will know. And act.” She waved her fingers again, and the serving woman fixed her gaze on the floor.
With a regal nod, Zora glided outside.
As she crossed the torch-lit yard of the inn, she felt it again, that tension and disquiet hovering over the town. She heard it, too—the sound of many voices raised in restless humor, arguments and accusations flung like so much pottery to shatter upon the walls of empathy.
She darted to the side as two ostlers in the yard actually threw punches at one another. Briefly, she debated trying to separate them but decided the safest course of action was to stay out of their fight. In her experience, fistfights never lasted long. Hopefully, the ostlers would burn themselves out faster than they could hurt one another.
She found Whit inside the stables, in the stall that accommodated his horse. He had removed his coat and stood in his shirtsleeves, tacking up the horse to prepare it for anticipated departure. He wanted to leave, and soon. Yet she kept silent, watching him at work, the strength of his body and play of muscles beneath his shirt. Lamplight lined his clean profile in gold.
She shifted, and he turned at the sound.
“I haven’t felt the geminus’s pull.” Whit growled a curse. “It’s gone, the bloody vault is gone, and I’ve nothing. No direction.” He looked grim.
She muttered her own curse. Livia was nowhere to be found, and the mad ghost had been their only source of information, jumbled and rambling as it had come. Now she and Whit stumbled in darkness trying to solve a riddle without fully knowing the question.
The ostlers’ fight outside grew more heated as someone slammed against the stable door. Whinnying in alarm, Whit’s horse tossed its head, but the lead rope tied to an iron ring in the wall kept it from rearing up.
Whit murmured to the animal, soothing it, even as tension hardened his shoulders. “It’s been like that, according to taproom gossip. A near riot on Broad Street. Students smashing the windows of coffeehouses—these were commoners and servitors, not noblemen or gentlemen commoners. Half the populace is in the street; the other half is barricaded in their homes.”