Chapter 11
The Rom seldom traveled at night. Their
caravans were too cumbersome—dozens of wagons, scores of tents,
horses and donkeys, families with children. It was easier to move
during daylight hours, when no one might accidentally get left
behind, and the hazards of poor roads could be navigated. There was
another reason, too, more than the coordination of transporting a
large band of people and animals.
Evil wandered freely after
dark.
Zora had long ago dismissed Romani
superstitions. There were so many, they cluttered up one’s life
like dusty bottles rattling on a shelf. Menstruating women were
mochardi, unclean, and
forbidden to cook or touch food intended for a man. To see a dead
crow in the road presaged bad tidings, and the traveler would have
to turn back. Countless others.
As she rode beside Whit through the
night, she thought of all the cautions against being abroad after
sunset.
Passing through a grove of willows, she
hunched her shoulders protectively.
Whit sensed her unease. He raised up in
the saddle, his hand straying toward the hilt of his sword. “What
do you see?”
“Shadows.” She pulled her cloak closer.
“Stories.”
“Fireside tales.”
“At night, willows uproot themselves
and walk the countryside. Frighten the unwary.” She glanced
cautiously at the branches. “I heard many warnings about swarms of
evil creatures roaming the dark, searching for victims, for the
incautious.”
He, too, looked up at the swaying
trees, his gaze assessing. “Any truth to those
stories?”
“Once, I thought baba’s reprimands were only to keep me stuck
beside the campfire. Now ... I wonder how much might be real.” A
shiver ran through her.
She thought of her fire magic and took
strength from it. Should anything happen, she was not defenseless.
Even before she had been given her magic, she had power. Perhaps
not physical power, but her mind was its own weapon, as sharp as a
blade. Still ... she liked knowing that she could summon fire when
necessary.
“The world has changed,” she
murmured.
“We have changed,” he said.
Whit’s hunting coat bore marks of
battle: tears, bloodstains, the singe on his sleeve. His snug
doeskin breeches were not new, his boots scuffed. Yet the set of
his shoulders, his upright confidence as he rode, even the tilt of
his jaw revealed him to be a born nobleman. This was her traveling
companion, the man she knew would battle beside her when more
danger inevitably arose.
She was Romani. Her mother gave birth
to her in a tent. She owned almost nothing, save for the gold
around her neck and on her fingers. Under normal circumstances, she
and Whit might meet once, briefly, before continuing on in the arcs
of their lives.
These were not normal circumstances.
Something was loose upon the world, something evil, and instead of
running from it, she ran toward it.
“Everything has gone mad,” she said,
“and we have gone mad, too.”
“Merely a different kind of
madness.”
“Maybe you were mad before,” she answered, “but I
wasn’t.”
He slanted her a considering gaze. “I
saw how you looked at me when I rode into your
encampment.”
It felt a thousand years ago, yet her
face heated as the memory returned with vivid clarity. Whit on
horseback, with his dashing friends beside him, all of them full of
barely restrained energy, dangerous, alluring. He, most of all. She
had not been able to take her eyes from him the moment he had
emerged from the darkness.
“I can’t deny I thought you
handsome.”
“You saw into me, but I saw into you,
as well. Admit it, you were on the verge of going mad from boredom
until I showed up.”
His insight alarmed her.
She was the one who read
faces, who saw what people tried to hide. This ... unsettled her.
“Rich gorgios don’t need
any more flattery.”
“You think of me as more than a rich
gorgio. Just as I think
more of you than a Gypsy girl.”
The heat and intensity of his words ran
like a dark caress down her spine. “I don’t need flattery, either.”
Miles had passed. The horses’ energy
was flagging.
“Damn,” Whit muttered. “The horses need
resting.” He surveyed the land around them. A few farm outbuildings
hunched at the crest of a nearby hill, but beyond that, the signs
of habitation were scarce. “By the time we reach a coaching inn
that might have horses, we’ll be dragging these animals behind
us.”
Clearly, he burned with impatience to
reach Oxford, but Zora knew horses well. The animals would run
until they were dead unless someone told them to stop. Given how
the horses’ flecked sides heaved, another hour at a punishing speed
meant they very likely would die.
He pointed to a lane leading off the
road. “We can follow the lane to that structure on the hill. If
we’re lucky, we might find a farmer and some willing hands to help
cool the horses.”
“The odds are yours to control,” she
noted.
He gave a humorless laugh. “I’ve
discovered limits to my gift.”
At the top of the lane, she discovered
this, as well. Not a house, nor a farm. Its conical roof revealed
it to be an oast house. She and Whit dismounted and, after they
discovered the wide double doors to be unlocked, peered inside.
Zora summoned her fire magic to investigate further.
“I don’t know when I will get
accustomed to that,” Whit said. A corner of his mouth turned up,
softening the hard edges of his face. Stubble darkened his jaw, and
hours in the saddle had pulled strands of dark hair loose from his
queue. He looked part aristocrat, part highwayman. A lethal
combination.
“Always be on guard around me,” she
said.
“Love, when I’m around you, there is no
danger of complacency.”
She did not like how easily he called
her “love,” nor did she like the spike in her pulse to hear him
call her that. To regroup her thoughts, she held her hand aloft
like a torch and appraised the structure.
No one was within. Light weakly
filtered in, revealing enough room for them to bring the horses in
from the cold.
The air inside smelled of bitter hops.
A few dried blossoms crunched underfoot.
Zora doused the flames around her hand.
Wordlessly, she and Whit removed their horses’ blankets and
saddles. The animals steamed, their hides glistening with sweat.
She swallowed her groan of frustration. They would have to wait
until the horses dried before putting the tack on again. Knowing
that Whit’s soul awaited them, less than thirty miles away, tried
her patience strongly. It had to be a thousand times worse for
Whit.
He made a tense, shadowed shape in the
darkness. Though he said nothing, she felt his restlessness, his
need to move forward, like an invisible flame giving off heat. Zora
watched his swift, efficient movements, unable to look
away.
The burning
brand, Livia called him. A perfect name, for he
blazed, and he scarred. However long Zora walked this earth, she
would always bear the unseen marks of his touch upon her innermost
self.
He stilled, and though darkness filled
the oast house, Zora knew he stared back at her. She felt his gaze
on her, that burning brand, and she turned away. She busied herself
with removing her horse’s bridle, then patted the animal’s velvety
nose as it eagerly released the bit.
Lucky
beast. It took so little to make a horse happy. Zora
supposed that if she spent most of her day with a metal bit in her
mouth, dictating her every move, she would relish having it taken
out, as well.
Being a Romani woman, she sometimes
felt as though she had a bit clamped between her teeth. Always
someone trying to control her, pull her one way or another. Whit
had seen that, when no one else had.
She handed her horse’s lead rope to
him. When he sent her a questioning look, she glanced meaningfully
over her shoulder toward the open doors. Outside. Privacy. He
nodded with understanding and a silent admonition to be careful. In
response, a flame enveloped the tip of her forefinger. He smiled,
but his eyes remained sharp with caution.
Once outside, Zora tended to her
personal needs. A nearby pump yielded water, and she did not mind
the water’s frigid bite upon her hands. Her stomach growled. It had
been many hours since her last meal back at the inn. She remembered
the suspicious looks she had received in the taproom, and Whit’s
unexpected fury on her behalf.
She spotted a shape a short distance
from the oast house and smiled to herself. Hearing Whit inside
walking the horses, cooling them, she slipped off noiselessly. Her
people could make a lot of noise, but they could also be very quiet
when necessary.
Moments later, she stepped back
inside.
Whit still did not speak, but his
expression indicated that he had been growing
concerned.
In answer, she held up her hands,
revealing several ripe pears. She tipped her head toward the
direction from which she’d just come. A pear tree grew nearby, and
she had helped herself. He made a low chuckle of appreciation.
Their fingers brushed as she handed him some fruit, and the contact
of skin to skin ran like liquid flame through her body. His
breathing hitched.
They had been clawing at one another
hours before. A simple, brief touch ought not to stir her after the
intimacies they had shared. Yet it did. Instantly.
She took back the lead rope for her
horse. They continued to walk the animals, cooling them, as they
ate their pears. The pears were sweet and musky, autumnal. An
unexpected pleasure in a night fraught with tension. When the fruit
had been consumed, Whit pulled a canteen from his saddlebag and
handed it to her. The wine warmed her throat, and watching her
drink from the canteen warmed his eyes. They traded it back and
forth, and if their hands touched more than once in its exchange,
Zora did not mind. Between the wine and these fleeting touches, the
night’s chill soon left her body.
When the horses were cool enough, they
secured the leads to a post supporting the roof. There was nothing
to do but wait while the animals rested. Whit went to the sacks of
dried hops stacked against one wall. He hefted a sack, then brought
it over and laid it upon the ground. He gestured for her to sit and
use the sack of hops as a cushion for her back. She sank down,
grateful. He eased to sitting beside her, stretching out his long
legs with a groan. A laugh escaped her.
Despite her eagerness to be on the road
and reach the geminus’s
vault in Oxford, her eyelids drooped. Weariness made her head
heavy. She caught herself nodding several times, and snapped awake,
but then fatigue would overtake her again.
Whit tugged on the edge of her cloak.
She glanced over, and he patted his shoulder, offering it to her as
a place to rest her head. Her brow raised. What about you?
He waved his hand. I’m fine.
For a moment, she hesitated. His frown
indicated that he would brook no refusal.
Her immediate response was rejection.
But then she hesitated. Maybe just this once, she would allow
someone to be in charge. It was only because she was so blasted
tired that she permitted it.
She edged closer and tentatively put
her head on his shoulder. She barely rested against him, more of a
cautious lean than a repose. With a growl of command, he wrapped an
arm around her, his large hand cradling her head, and pressed her
closer.
Arrogant
man! Yet, even though she bristled at his literally
heavy-handed attitude, and even though his shoulder was far too
hard with muscle to make a really comfortable pillow, her eyes
drifted shut, as if in secret alliance with him.
She started at the brush of his fingers
upon her cheek. She must have slept. Shifting slightly, she glanced
up through her lashes to find him watching her, their faces barely
inches apart. He scanned her face, his gaze like a possessive
touch, both tender and fierce.
His fingers moved from her cheek,
lower, to stroke her mouth. Only the smallest of movements, the
back-and-forth of his fingertips against her bottom lip, as if
testing its softness, its warmth and texture.
Her tongue darted out. Quickly. Then
retreated back into her mouth. But not before she tasted his flesh,
salty, and the lingering traces of pear juice that sweetened
him.
He sucked in a breath, as if
burned.
Some spell must have taken her, for she
could not move, could not breathe. She could only wait, staring up
at him. All that moved was her heart beating thickly in her
chest.
One of the horses snorted and shook its
mane, as if reminding them both that they needed to get back on the
road to Oxford. Where Whit’s soul was being held.
At the sound, the spell broke. Zora
rolled away and to her feet. Whit did the same. They stared at one
another in the dark oast house. A tremor passed through him, and
his breathing came quickly, as though he fought to keep something
inside. Whatever it was, he mastered it, and his breathing returned
to normal.
Once the animals were saddled and
bridled, she and Whit led them out to the pump. A bucket was
retrieved, and some moments were spent watering the horses. The
mounts could not be fed, not with more hours of travel ahead of
them, but their thirsts could be quenched.
At least
some of us are satisfied, Zora thought as she watched
Whit.
He sent her a look fraught with
understanding.
She mounted her horse. Whit strode away
and leapt into his own horse’s saddle. As he did this, she allowed
herself the indulgence of watching the flex and pull of muscle
beneath his doeskin breeches. Of particular note were his taut,
hewn buttocks, revealed when the tails of his coat flared up as he
moved.
Caught looking, she tipped up her chin,
refusing to be embarrassed. He gave her one of his slow, wicked
smiles that set fire to her very blood, then pulled his horse
around and set the animal into a gradual trot. She did the same.
They trotted away from the ruined house, down the lane and back
onto the main road.
It was only later that she realized
they had not spoken the whole time they had rested the horses. Yet
more surprising, the silence between her and Whit had been charged
... but not entirely uncomfortable. They had easily communicated
without words. No one, not even her closest kin, understood her
half as well as Whit did.
The thought troubled her. Here was a
man who readily admitted the darkness within him, who had tasted
sinister power and found its flavor to his liking. If this man
understood her so easily, as easily as she understood him, what did
that say about her?
She was not certain she wanted to find
out.
Whit consulted his pocket watch. It was
a battered thing, hardly the finest timepiece a gentleman of his
means might possess. Yet he owned no other.
His grandfather’s watch. The timepiece
was old now, the luster of its case long worn to dullness by the
hands of James Sherbourne, and his son, also named James, and
eventually his grandson, the latest James: Whit.
This was the watch he always carried.
Especially now, in the midst of chaos, it comforted him, somehow,
to feel the permanence of his family, of their lands and legacy,
manifested in one simple, rather battered object.
You will survive this. The
implicit promise offered by the watch. How far lost was he that he
gripped at the hope offered by a tiny arrangement of metal
parts.
He stared at the timepiece now, turning
its face in the last of the moonlight, as his weary horse walked
on.
“Dawn’s an hour away,” he said. He
slipped the watch back into its case and then into his waistcoat
pocket.
“Lil-engreskey gav is half mile
distant,” said Zora.
“What is Lil-engreskey gav?” He mangled
the pronunciation. Romani was not half as easy as
French.
“The Rom’s name for Oxford. It means
‘book fellows’ town. We’ve Romani names for every city. There’s a
whole other country within England. A tiny country with its own
customs and language and names for places.”
“But it’s a country without borders,
without cities and a king.”
“We have our kings, and they are just
as useless as yours. As for borders and cities, those are things
only gorgios
value.”
“Values change.” His own, for example.
He had lived, not so long ago, only for the gaming table. The
winning of money and things—that had been his greatest pleasure,
his sole pursuit.
The stakes were higher now. What he
played for could not be counted.
He looked at Zora in the remains of the
moonlight. She stared back at him, boldly, for everything she did
was done boldly. If he licked his lips, he thought he could still
taste pear, and he remembered her tongue lapping at his finger. A
thick swell of desire coursed through him. It had not lost its
edge, but had somehow grown sharper, more ravenous.
He tightened his hands on the reins.
His time as the geminus
echoed through him in waves that flooded and ebbed. There were
moments when he felt controlled, balanced.
Then the geminus within him would surge forward. His
hungers demanded, wanted.
It had taken more strength than he knew he possessed to keep from
having her in that oast house, to fight the demon inside. Even now,
despite hours in the saddle and no sleep and tension everywhere
within him, he fought. To keep from pulling her down from the
saddle and taking her right there. To lay claim to everything she
was, everything she possessed, body and soul.
Before the demands overtook him, he
wrestled them back, clenching his hands so hard they ached. He had
no soul and would not feed upon hers—much as he
wanted.
Would this monstrous need to utterly
possess her vanish once he reclaimed his soul? He prayed it was so,
for his sake, and hers. Yet he knew that every moment without his
soul drew him farther and farther into darkness. Until there would
be nothing left of him, save malevolent hunger.
He kicked his horse to go faster.
Behind him, he heard Zora speaking the Gypsy language to urge her
horse on.
When the dark shapes of Oxford’s spires
and the Radcliffe Camera’s dome appeared on the horizon, he allowed
himself a brief sigh of relief. Soon. He would have his soul back
and sever his link with the wickedness seeping through
him.
They crossed Magdalen Bridge over the
river and headed into town. Stillness and shadow hung thick in the
streets. He had not been back to Oxford for more than a decade, and
the sights of its mullioned windows and Headington stone buildings
brought back ... not nostalgia, but half-remembered impressions of
someone else’s life.
He felt the geminus everywhere, a sinister web clinging
to the faces of the buildings. With a silent roar, the darkness
within him answered, nearly blinding him. Prey here, ready to be hunted. Take from
them.
Some servants, bakers, and dairymaids
wended over the cobblestones toward work. They have nothing of worth.
Yet the hunger shrieked at him as two
senior college fellows staggered toward him down the middle of the
street, their velvet caps with gold tassels listing over their
eyes, bright silk and gold lace gowns hanging off like molting
plumage. Noblemen lurching back to their chambers after a night’s
carousing in the senior common room.
He locked his thighs tight against the
saddle and made his horse walk around the drunk students.
But they would be so easy to take from,
to trick into betting more than they realized. Money,
possessions. A quick game of cards and he could ruin the young
men.
Fight
this. An icy sweat clung to his forehead and filmed
his back. Yet he let the students continue on.
“Yes,” he said once he and Zora had
passed the fellows. “That was me.”
He had continued that venerable
tradition after graduating university. At the least, he and his
fellow Hellraisers took carriages home rather than stumble about
the streets.
Those days, and the Hellraisers, were
gone from him now. What he had now was this monstrous, dark
hunger.
His pulse came too hard in his throat
to speak anymore. It was here. His soul was here, and the nightmare would
end.
But the exhausted horses moved too
slowly. When he passed a sleepy crossing sweep, he whistled at the
boy. The child immediately shot to his feet.
“Watch these horses.” He tossed the
sweep a thrupenny bit and dismounted. As he handed the reins to the
boy, Whit glanced up at Zora. “It will be faster on foot. You can
stay behind if you want.”
She shot him a speaking glance that
said under no circumstances would she remain behind. He did not
expect otherwise.
Once the horses were tended to, Whit
set off at a run. He couldn’t control his movements any longer.
Either find his soul or else give in to the predator within. Memory
and the dark energy of the geminus pulled him along. He sprinted
through the maze of streets, both wide and narrow, that wove around
the university. Dimly, he heard Zora’s light, running steps behind
him.
He ran past a gowned proctor patrolling
for errant fellows. “Oi there!” the proctor shouted. Then, “Beg
pardon, my lord.”
The proctor exclaimed in surprise when
Zora sped past. Whit rounded a corner, Zora following him, and they
left the proctor behind.
Whit came to a stop. Zora skidded to a
halt beside him. They stood together outside an alehouse,
the alehouse. It was a
freestanding building, two stories, squat, with a listing chimney.
A sign hung from its post, depicting a painted bird perched atop a
swayback horse. The Grouse and Nag. He’d thought it a very clever
name when he was a callow boy. Not a trace of humor touched him
now.
“Doesn’t look as though they’re open,”
Zora said quietly. The narrow windows were dark, and no sound came
from within—no music, no laughter.
He strode to the door and pushed. It
rattled on its hinges but did not open. Damn. He thought the odds were his to
control, but not this cursed night. His fist came up to pound upon
the door.
Zora’s light touch on his sleeve
stopped him. “No need to wake the house.”
“I have to get inside.” His voice was a
growl.
“A moment.” Then she slipped away into
the shadows.
He scowled at the place where she had
just stood. This seemed a badly timed moment to sneak off somewhere
for God only knew what reason.
The hell
with it. He lifted his fist again to hammer on the
door but stopped in midgesture as he heard the bolt sliding back.
The door opened on a creak and Zora’s face peeped out at him.
Before he could mutter his surprise, she grabbed his sleeve and
pulled him inside.
She shut the door as quietly as she
could and slid the bolt back into place.
“Your fire magic,” he
whispered.
Her smile was a silver gleam. “No magic
but the wiles of the Rom.”
They stood in the main taproom, and the
room was just as he had seen it during his time as the
geminus. But the settles
were empty, and no one sat at the tables over pots of ale. The fire
had gone cold and dead. A thick smell of people, smoke, and spilled
ale filled the dark room. Stronger than this, though, the
geminus’s black energy
choked the space, choked him.
“It was here, then,” she said
softly.
“I ... it ... stood there.” He pointed to a spot in
the room. “And made a bet with a fellow no more than a boy. He
didn’t know what we gambled for. I took a token from him—the pledge
of the boy’s soul.”
“And after?”
But he was already walking. Vaguely, he
knew he ought to have removed his boots so he’d make less noise
upon the floor, yet he could not wait any longer. He paced through
the taproom and entered a cramped corridor. Just as he had seen, a
few doors lined the passageway, and on the wall hung the cracked
print of Christ Church Cathedral. It’s
here. I will be whole and free soon.
He turned to face the door leading to
the vault. Zora appeared beside him. With his hand upon the
doorknob, he took a deep, steadying breath. Opened the
door.
And stepped into a tiny
storeroom.
There were shelves lining the walls, to
be sure. He saw this in the illumination from the flames
surrounding Zora’s hand. But the shelves held cider jugs, ceramic
canisters, and a bowl full of candle ends. No gleaming souls.
Further, not only was the room not stone, it was plaster, and hardly big
enough to accommodate Whit, let alone Zora, wedging
in.
His jaw clenched, hard.
“Maybe it’s one of the other rooms,”
she suggested.
He shouldered past her and pushed open
the door across the hallway. All he found was a wet larder, reddish
brown meat hanging from ceiling hooks like sinners in eternal
torment. Flies stirred as the door opened before settling back down
again in black clumps.
The final door opened into a
bedchamber, where an old man started up from his bed at Whit’s
entrance.
“Who’s there?” the man shrilled.
“Murder! Thief!”
Before the old man could yell the house
awake, Whit and Zora fled. She doused the flames around her hand as
they sped down the hall and through the taproom. He slammed the
bolt open and they ran off into the coming dawn, leaving shouts and
confusion behind them.
Yet as Whit ran, confusion clung to
him—and fury. Damn hell
bastard.
Noises of pursuit followed. Men, and a
dog. As a nobleman, he could easily intimidate his way out of a
situation, or offer enough financial inducement to have the
constabulary look the other way. His name and title might shelter
Zora, but there was always the chance that some zealous magistrate
would use her to set an example, and that, Whit could not
allow.
He and Zora approached a wall. He
vaguely recognized it, another reminder of his youth, when the
proctors had chased him from some unsavory tavern and he had needed
a means of evasion. The wall stood some two feet taller than him—it
had seemed higher back then. Before Zora could protest or utter any
word, he clasped her waist and all but threw her over the wall. She
recovered quickly, managing to control her fall down the other
side. He braced his hands atop the wall, pulled himself up, and
vaulted over, into a small courtyard garden behind a town
house.
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. But 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.”