by Zoë Archer
These were not the simple cuts of a sword, not even the burnt and torn flesh of a bullet wound. Her skin was lacerated as if her arm had been pulled through a thicket of razors, and dark liquid seeped from the countless wounds. It gave off a rank, sulfurous smell, vaguely chemical. Poisonous.
That demon poison now invaded her body. He leaned closer still and felt the faint feathering of her breath against his ear. Too faint. Too shallow. His own breath came quickly, his pulse a riot.
God curse him, he didn’t know what to do.
“Clean the wound,” he muttered. Needing a voice, any voice, directing him, even if he commanded himself.
There was no water, but he had a flask of brandy he’d taken from his chamber at Whitston. It would have to suffice. He poured the brandy over her injuries. They bubbled and hissed, black ooze washing away. Zora did not stir.
“A poultice.” Yet he hadn’t her knowledge of simples and herbs. Perhaps if he scraped off the mixture she had used to dress his wounds ... No, he might have polluted it, if he hadn’t drained the mixture of its benefit.
A learned physician in his long full-bottomed wig and with an air of superciliousness would have her bled. Drain her of the poison.
Whit pulled a bone-handled hunting knife from his boot. Held the blade suspended over the tender inside of her arm. His hand shook. As ignorant as he was of simples, he knew almost nothing of proper medicine, had not trained in Edinburgh, as all the best physicians had. He could make the wrong incision. He might take too much blood, if such a thing was possible.
He could not cut her. Spilling her blood was an anathema.
Swearing foully, he stabbed the knife into the ground. The bone handle stuck up like a grave marker.
He gathered her up in his arms, cradling her. Stared down into her face as he brushed away strands of damp black hair. Her skin was pallid, and the dark fringe of her lashes trembled slightly as she battled the poison. Even in the depths of oblivion, she fought.
“What the hell do I do?” This powerlessness tore him apart, choked him with rage. The woman he had sworn to protect at all costs lay in a deathlike slumber, and actual death beckoned.
“No,” he snarled. “There is no forfeit. You’re mine.” She had been his the moment he saw her, just as she possessed him utterly.
Damn and hell. There had to be something. He dove headlong into the patterns and labyrinths of chance, seeing an answer there. But this was beyond the realm of his power.
The demons were creatures of darkest magic. Her cure would need its own magic. Aside from the other Hellraisers, he knew of no one with magical power.
He did. The mad priestess. She had not appeared for many days, but in Oxford, Bram and the others had complained of her haunting them. Surely she had not disappeared to some realm beyond. And if she had, then he’d drag her back from Heaven or Hell or some pagan place of eternity. If the ghost held the answer to healing Zora, he would cross this world or the next to find her.
“Livia!” He threw his head back and roared for her, his breath misting in the frigid air. “Livia! Show your cursed self!”
He waited, hearing his own panting, the wind moaning through the empty church. Nothing else. Peering into the darkness, he saw no ghostly glow. No coalescing shape of a Roman priestess.
Another shout proved just as useless and went unanswered.
There had to be a way of conjuring the ghost. It was not so simple as summoning the geminus, which proved all too ready to ferret them out. How?
A fragment drifted through his memory. Livia’s mournful words. The heat of them ... They draw me. Remind me of what I cannot have, what I crave. Flesh to flesh. The ghost had appeared when Whit and Zora had unleashed their passion for one another.
The thought of pawing at Zora whilst she lay insensate repelled him. Yet he needed the heat of desire to draw Livia from her cold, nebulous place.
Whit gazed down at Zora, held tenderly in his arms. He stroked his fingers down her cheek.
She looked like an effigy of herself, robbed of her fire, her essence. But he knew her—her shape, her feel. He knew the dark glow of her eyes and the sharp edge of her will. All of that, all of her was still here, within this fading form. Her breath, slight as it was, still warmed her lips.
His breath—he would give it to her. He pressed his mouth to hers. She was quiescent, unresponsive, yet the feel of her lips against his was a bittersweet wonder. So faint, her breathing, and fading.
He kissed her. Gently, sweetly. She would not hear his words. This had to convey what words could not. A kiss unlike any he had given or received, that asked for only the aching joy of knowing another. His Zora. The meaning of his existence. He had been a shell before she came into his life. Without her ... there was nothing.
Holding her close, he fed her his breath, his heat. The world narrowed to only the touch of their lips.
Something flared through his closed eyelids. A glow. He raised his head and beheld a ghost.
Livia stood before him. Still clad in her Roman garments, she appeared more substantial, less transparent than before. And she gazed at him with eyes far less clouded by madness.
She stared at him, at Zora. Raw longing in her face.
“Here is passion,” she whispered. “Here is ... love.”
The word shot through him like the best kind of pain. “You came now, but not when Zora and I made love.”
“You two were alone in your passion,” the ghost answered, “but I was there, hiding in the sunlight.”
Disturbing, knowing that the priestess had watched as he and Zora had reveled in the most profound intimacies. He could not dwell on it now. “Help her,” he rasped.
Yet the specter’s attention wandered. She drifted away to stare at the walls of the church, and the empty trefoil window above the altar. “This place. The three-part god that crushed all others. But they could not know how much more lay beyond the bounds of their dominion. They have come to learn, as everyone must.”
“Damn you, none of your opaque madness! She’s hurt.” Dying. No, he wouldn’t think that. “I need your help.”
The ghost floated back toward him in the chancery, her expression remote. “Show me.”
Gently, Whit held up Zora’s wounded arm. Even in the dimness of night, he could see the dark poison staining her veins, black lace beneath the surface of her skin.
Livia curled her lip. “Foul is the work of the Dark One’s beasts.”
“You will help her. Cure her.” This was a command, not a request.
The priestess shook her head. “I am air and memories. Little can I do.”
“You gave Zora her fire magic. You cast the spell that made me trade places with the geminus. You can heal her.” Desperation and fury deepened his voice into a growl.
Livia frowned, considering. Whit could decipher expressions, no matter that Livia was no longer a living person. He saw the minutest change in her face, and leapt on what it might mean.
“There is a way,” he said. “Do not deny it, for I read it on you.”
“A possibility,” conceded the ghost. “The faintest chance.”
“Whatever it is, do it.”
“Some power is mine, yet I have no body, no corporeal form.” She drifted toward the chancery wall and stuck her arm straight through it.
“Tell me what needs to be done,” he answered at once, “and I will do it.”
She moved away from the wall and once more surveyed the ruined church.
“Priestess ...” He could ill afford her mind wandering.
“Silence,” she snapped. Then, a moment later, she pointed and spoke again. “Where the font once stood. Gather up the plants growing there now.”
Carefully, Whit laid Zora back onto the ground, then sprinted down the length of the church to stand in the nave’s entrance. Centuries earlier, a basin had stood there, filled with holy water and reminding the faithful of their baptism. Like everything once venerated within the church, the font was gone.
A faint stone ring on the ground was all that remained.
Within that ring grew small purple wildflowers. It seemed improbable that anything could blossom so late in the year, yet there they were. Whit plucked every last flowering stalk and brought them all to Livia.
“A bowl,” she said when he held them out for her inspection. “And water.”
His satchel produced a small silver cup, worked all over with a pattern of vines. “No water, but some brandy remains.”
“Crush the plants and mix them with the spirits.”
He was no apothecary, yet he did as she asked, pulverizing the flowering stalks with the handle of his retrieved knife. Green sap stained the white bone handle. This he combined with the brandy, swirling it all together in a pungent brew.
The ghost appeared satisfied with his handiwork. “Hold the cup between your hands. Do not let it go, do not drop it, whatever may transpire.” When he obeyed, she closed her eyes and let her own hands hover over the cup. For a moment, she was silent.
“Make haste,” Whit grated.
The ghost scowled, but did not open her eyes. After another pause, she began chanting, words in a tongue that might have been a dialect of Latin, words that he did not know or recognize. But he felt their power. Charging the air, firing through his every nerve. Wind billowed within the confines of the church, careening from wall to wall like a penned beast. The heavy stones shuddered, and Livia chanted on and on, her voice growing louder, her words faster.
Whit sent a quick glance toward Zora, but she lay as motionless as before. Only her hair and clothing stirred in the wild wind.
He turned back to Livia. The priestess continued her chanting above the shrieking wind. Her eyes opened. They burned with silver light, nearly blinding him with their radiance.
The mixture within the cup glowed, as well. It shone as brightly as Livia’s blazing eyes.
Then, as her chanting reached a crescendo and the wind screamed, the light in the priestess’s eyes flared, as did the light within the cup. The cup itself burned him. Whit could barely stay upright, buffeted by the force of the wind and the ghost’s power. Keep standing. Do not loosen your grip. This one chance ...
Silence. Stillness. As abrupt and forceful as the tempest that had preceded them.
The light from Livia’s eyes and within the cup faded away. The silver cup cooled in his palms.
“Tell me what to do with this.” He held up the silver vessel. “Put it on her wounds? Make her drink it?”
“Into her mouth.”
He eyed the mixture in the cup. “And this will work.”
The ghost offered a noncommittal wave of her hands. “Perhaps.”
“Perhaps?” He gritted his teeth, fighting for calm. “I do not need perhaps. I need certainties.”
“Either it will heal her, or be her final push into death.” The priestess sounded mildly concerned, as if she were discussing the outcome of a child’s game.
“I won’t gamble her life,” snarled Whit.
This snared her attention. “Would you gamble your own?”
“Of course,” he said immediately.
A small, edged smile curved her mouth. “Then drink. A sip only, and you will know. If you survive, then she shall, as well. If you do not ...” She gave a fatalistic shrug. “It may be that you will meet again in the next world. However, as the Dark One has your soul, the greater possibility is that you will journey one place, and the girl will go elsewhere. Many likely outcomes. Who knows how fortune will favor you.”
Fortune. He delved into the patterns of probability, only to find himself rebuffed, thrown back into the world as others knew it. Arbitrary, uncontrollable.
“The Dark One’s power will not help you here,” tutted Livia. “This hazard is all your own. What will it be, gamester? Will you gamble your life to save hers?”
He did not waste a moment. Whit lifted the cup and drank.
Everything hurt.
Her arms, her legs. Skin. Tongue. Her eyes were a merciless weight pressing into her skull. Her hair ached.
In slow increments, Zora tested every part of her, cataloging, measuring. She could find nothing that did not cause her pain. It inhabited her completely, and she wondered if she had ever known life without this unending hurt, or if she ever would know it again. It did not seem likely.
She drew a breath. Her throat ached and more pain spread in branches through her lungs.
This could not be death, could it? Death meant the end of pain. Death also meant that one didn’t need to breathe. Yet she did.
Alive, then. Vividly alive, if this agony tied her to life.
Her eyes opened. She bit back a cry, from both the torment of opening her eyes and the brightness of the sun.
The sun ...
She stared at it. The sky was a brilliant blue, cloudless, hard and cold as glass. Framed by crumbling stone walls. The sun glazed her with chill light. It seemed uninterested in giving off warmth, an unwanted habit it had discarded like drinking or gambling.
Whit. Where is he?
Turning her head sent swords of anguish through her entire body. She could not stop her moan, then, and to her own ears her voice was a weak and piteous thing.
Yet it was strong enough, for suddenly Whit was there, filling her vision. His face was taut, ashen, and deep lines bracketed his mouth. But he was alive, as was she, and to her eyes, no sight could be more welcome.
He knelt beside her. His gaze moved across her face. Fierce joy gleamed in his eyes, eyes that were warmer and more blue than the sky overhead. His lashes were spiked. Wet.
“Whit,” she said, yet it came out barely a whisper, and the effort of speaking cost her. Sound moved in painful ripples through her muscles.
“Zora. Oh, God, Zora.” He bent forward, his forehead touching hers as his eyes closed. The feel of his skin against hers was agony. She did not want him to leave.
Warm drops trickled onto her face. Not from her. Him. Salty against her lips. His hands caressed her hair, face, arms. This was too much, and she cried out in pain.
He snatched his hands away.
“Forgive me, forgive me,” he murmured.
“Nothing to ... forgive.” She tried to look around, but to move meant a fresh wave of anguish. “What ... ?”
His hands hovered above her, as if, being unable to actually touch her, he dared allow his hands as close as possible.
“We escaped the demons. You were injured. Poisoned.”
It came back to her in pieces, shards of a broken nightmare. His estate. Demons. Fire. Flight. And the venom that spread through her body, dragging her into a half-world of darkness, neither dead nor living. She should not have survived. Yet she did.
Whit saw the question in her eyes. “Livia. Her doing.”
“And yours,” Zora whispered.
He looked away. That was when she noticed it. Dried blood in the corners of his eyes.
Slowly, her hand came up. She felt it in piercing darts through her arm, but she pushed herself on, until the tip of her finger touched the outer corner of his right eye. He started at her touch, and his own hand came up to rub away the dark flecks collected there.
“Had to test the antidote,” he explained after a moment. And that was all he would say.
But she read people, just as he did. She saw in his silence what had transpired. The bodily suffering he had endured to make sure the antidote was safe. Blood crusted beneath his fingernails, dark crescents proving that whatever he had borne had been beyond understanding.
For her.
Her own eyes heated, and she could not blink fast enough to clear away their dampness.
He would not linger on the subject. “You must be hungry. Thirsty.”
The thought of eating anything sent a wave of stomach-churning pain through her. “Water,” she croaked.
He pressed a silver cup to her lips, and though the water was cold and sweet, she could barely swallow it. Most of the water dribbled from her mouth, but sh
e was too exhausted and hurting to care how feeble she must look.
“There’s a spring not but a dozen yards from here.” He gently dabbed at her lips with a scrap of linen. “I think that’s why this church was first built. It must have been an ancient sacred spring. The church followed, supplanting the pagan.”
He spoke as if testing what it might be like to talk about meaningless things. His voice was hoarse, unused.
“How long ... ?”
“Two days.”
She absorbed this, shocked. For two days she had lain like this? And he had watched over her the whole time. As the geminus consumed how many souls?
“The geminus ...”
“To hell with the geminus.”
His words were fierce, but they made her smile. As much as she could smile—which wasn’t a great deal.
“Either we’ll find the damned creature,” he said, holding her gaze, “or we won’t. But understand this: I will never leave you.”
Her body was filled with pain, yet it was distant, someone else’s suffering. “Never ... would I have ... guessed.”
“Guessed what?”
“You and I. This.” She clasped his hand with hers, ignoring the agony, feeling only him. “The odds ...”
Blue, his eyes. Impossibly blue. Impossibly warm. His hand, steady and strong. “Were great. They still are. Precisely how I like them.” He lightly pressed his lips to hers, profoundly tender.
She wanted more than a soft kiss, but her body would not allow it. “I need this ... sickness gone ... from me.”
She struggled to rise up, prop herself on her elbows. The lingering poison tore through her with razored claws. She fell back, shaking, as much from pain as from frustration and anger.
“Rest, My Lady Firebrand,” he said gently. “That is what you need.”
“Not rest ... but action,” she insisted. Summoning all her strength, she held up his hand. Upon his skin were images of flame, marking him as the Devil’s possession. “Wafodu guero ... has something of mine. And I’m ... taking it back.”