Demon's Bride

by Zoë Archer

  A thought leapt into Leo’s mind: What if Anne learned the truth about him? About the nature of the meeting he was about to have? What might she do?

  He shrugged. If Anne ever discovered his secret, she could do nothing. He was the one with the power. Even if someone believed her allegations—which they never would—she had no leverage and could not harm him. No, the bigger threat came from Whit.

  Within the book-lined room, he found Bram and John already there, illuminated by a single candle on his desk. Full night had fallen, and shadows were thick in the room, so that in the light of the candle, Leo and his friends appeared to be shades emerging from the Underworld.

  Leo locked the door, and made sure all the windows were closed, the curtains drawn. With actions deliberate and ceremonial, he poured five glasses of brandy and handed them to his fellow Hellraisers.

  “There’s only four of us now,” John said, eyeing the remaining glass.

  As if Leo, or any of their company, could forget. That was what this private meeting was about. Whit’s absence, and its tacit condemnation, howled like a cavern. Three months had passed since Whit had severed his ties with the Hellraisers, had urged Leo and John and Edmund to turn their backs on the source of their power. But Whit had been troubled, and misled. Especially by that Gypsy girl.

  Leo had the scar on his shoulder as proof of his erstwhile friend’s perfidy. Whit had made his choice, and no one had seen him these past months. Running scared, Leo supposed.

  Only to himself did he admit that he missed Whit, his company, his counsel. Leo could not step into White’s and see the hazard tables without thinking of Whit, for he had been a familiar figure there, wagering outrageous sums of money only for the thrill of risk. Gone now. All gone. Once inseparable, the five of them had been cleaved apart, never to be whole again.

  Whit was a danger, one that had to be found and contained. And Leo knew the best way to find him, but he required assistance.

  “For our guest,” said Leo. He drew a breath, then spoke. “Veni, geminus.”

  The candle guttered. Went out. The room became a black chasm, and the scent of burnt paper thickened in the air.

  By touch, Leo struck a flint, lit a tinder, and brought it to the candle.

  The doors to the study were locked, the windows shut. No one could get in or out of the room unnoticed.

  Yet now a fifth man stood before Leo and the others. As always, the man wore elegant, expensive clothing, and he glittered as he bowed.

  “Compliments, Hellraisers,” the man said, smiling and making his leg. “And compliments from my master, the Devil.”

  Chapter 2

  “The Devil?” Leo felt his mouth curl. “Your master’s usually more discreet with his name. Last we were informed, he preferred to be known as ‘Mr. Holliday.’”

  The geminus smiled. Or rather, Leo had the sense that the thing smiled, for try as he might, he had never once truly beheld its face. It was always ... blank, and Leo’s gaze kept sliding away from it, as though trying to find purchase on a slick incline.

  “He cannot resist a moment of theatricality, my master, and I am always obliging.” The geminus eyed the three other Hellraisers. “Good sirs, this is a rare occasion to be summoned before the entire company.”

  “Not the entire company,” said Bram tightly.

  At this, the geminus made a clicking sound of displeasure. “Our prodigal. Lord Whitney.”

  “Thus my presence here, and not at my own wedding.” The sounds of revelry could be heard only faintly through the door to the study, like vestiges of memory. “We need intelligence—the whereabouts of Whit. What can you or your master tell us?”

  “Very little,” said the geminus.

  “Bloody nonsense.” Cerebral as John usually was, he also possessed a temper of quick and biting ferocity, and it snapped from him now like a whip. “We’re to believe that the Devil himself—a being of unimaginable power—he and all his minions have not the means between them of locating one damned man?”

  “His Gypsy girl, too,” added Edmund.

  “Without a lick of magic between them,” Leo said.

  “Lord Whitney did surrender his power to manipulate chance,” the geminus conceded. “The Gypsy, however ...” It shrugged. “She can still manipulate fire. Her ability did not come from my master. The one who bestowed that ability on her is also the one who shields Lord Whitney’s location from my master.”

  “Damned mad Roman ghost,” muttered Bram.

  Its tone belying the studied indolence of its pose, the geminus pressed, “Has Valeria Livia Corva appeared to any of you of late?”

  All of the Hellraisers, including Leo, answered, “Nay.”

  “Can’t say as I miss her presence,” said Leo. “Hovering at my bedside, babbling at me to turn my back on the Devil and renounce my magic.” As though the words of an insane specter could possibly induce Leo to give up his gift of precognition. “I make my damned fortune investing in the future. And she thinks I’ll willingly give up my ability to see that future? She is mad.”

  “Power,” said John with a cutting smile. “No greater gift.”

  “Aye.” Leo had dreamt about power, obsessed over it. And the Devil had given it to him. “And because of that, here I am, with the elite of Society celebrating my wedding to a peer’s daughter.”

  Like hell would Leo willingly give up that power. To keep it, he would do anything.

  “The ghost has been absent, however,” noted Edmund. “Her strength’s diminished.”

  “My master senses that she is but gathering her resources after she depleted them in Manchester.”

  “You were there,” said Leo, turning to Bram.

  “Witness to part of it, nothing more.” Bram’s voice was as dark as the shadows. “Whit and his Gypsy wench, they destroyed a gaming hell belonging to Mr. Holliday. Whit and the girl barely escaped with their lives. I saw a chance, a final chance, to bring him back to the Hellraisers. Talked to him. But the bastard remained adamant. Wanted all of us to give back our magic, and to join him in the fight against the Devil.” The scorn in Bram’s words left no question as to how he felt about Whit’s entreaty.

  “You should have used your gift of magic,” John snapped. “Persuaded him to return to us.”

  “Don’t you think I wanted to?” Bram fired back. “But I’d used it on him in Oxford, when he gave Leo that souvenir.”

  Leo’s hand rubbed at his shoulder. The scar from the rapier blade had faded, but it would never disappear, nor the memory of the Hellraisers fighting Whit outside the Oxford tavern. The final break in their friendship, cauterized by the Gypsy girl’s fire and Whit’s steel. “You didn’t have to force him to fight us. He didn’t want to.”

  “Whit either stands with us, or he’s our enemy. There’s no middle ground. No possibly, no perhaps. Not when it comes to being a Hellraiser, and the power we have.”

  “Yet you didn’t use that power on Whit in Manchester,” John persisted. “It could have allied us once more.”

  Tightening his jaw, Bram glared first at John, then the geminus. “I can only use my ability once on someone. A limitation of which I had not been informed.”

  The geminus said, bland and mild, “The gifts my master has bestowed on each of you cannot be without boundary, else you may do yourselves a terrible injury.”

  “Considerate of your master,” drawled Leo. His own magic had its particular constraints, but he learned them quickly and made the necessary adjustments. In truth, Leo could not be overly critical of Mr. Holliday, for though there were restrictions to Leo’s ability to see the future, the benefits far outweighed the limitations.

  Leo knew one benefit: his wedding celebration happening at that very moment. He thought of Anne, his pretty, genteel bride, a woman he would never have had the temerity to talk to, let alone court and marry. Leo had grown up amidst the smell of leather and a single, smoky brazier filling a cramped little house. A saddler’s son. But Adam Bailey had posses
sed ambition, and his son had even more.

  The Demon of the Exchange. Even before he had received the gift of foreknowledge, Leo had earned this name. Fearless, ferocious, and uncompromising in his investments.

  He made the wealthy peers shake in their silver-buckled shoes. Just as he desired.

  His bride was afraid of him, too. He saw it in her eyes, the look of a woman confronting an animal she wasn’t sure was tame.

  He wasn’t certain he wanted a wife who feared him. It seemed a petty, mean way of conducting a marriage, the sort of thing a bully desired—exerting one’s might over a creature that constituted no threat.

  Anne could not possibly hurt him. But there were others who could.

  “How much danger does Whit pose?” he asked the geminus.

  “If any of you gentlemen see Lord Whitney, do not engage with him. Summon me or any of my gemini brethren immediately, and we shall attend to the matter.”

  It won’t tell us precisely how dangerous Whit is. Nor that we should come into direct contact with him. Which means it’s truly afraid.

  “I’m keeping Rosalind,” said Edmund, fierce. “Whatever’s necessary, I’ll do it.”

  “Whitehall is almost mine,” John said. “Almost. But if I can’t read others’ thoughts, it could all be lost, like that.” He snapped his fingers, the noise sharp in the quiet of the study. “I’ll be no closer to a ranking Cabinet position than a damned pig farmer. I cannot have him, or any of you, compromise that.”

  Tension thickened in the room. Everyone glared at one another. Hell, they’d start scrapping with each other in a moment.

  “When the time comes, all of us shall do what is needed to protect our magical gifts.” Leo smoothed the scowl from his expression, and made himself smile. “For now, lads, be at ease. This isn’t merely a counsel of war. It’s an offer of thanks. For with assistance”—he nodded in turn at Bram, Edmund, John, and the geminus—“I was able to speed the process of my nuptials along, and bring sooner this happy day.”

  Bram’s ability to persuade anyone to do anything had enabled Leo to get a special license rather than go through the lengthier process of having the banns read. Edmund had used his wife’s distinguished connections to sufficiently pad the wedding feast with the wealthy and the powerful. John’s contribution had been the reading of Anne’s father’s thoughts, which, combined with Leo’s own intuitive ability to gauge people, enabled Leo to say precisely the right things to secure the hand of Lord Wansford’s daughter. And, of course, it had been the gift of magic from the geminus’s master that increased Leo’s fortune.

  His wife knew none of this, naturally. She had no understanding of his double life, nor the world in which she had now stepped.

  Recognizing the joint efforts to hasten Leo’s marriage, the hostility between the men slowly seeped away.

  Though Edmund had not the ability to read minds, he seemed to know the train of Leo’s thoughts. “How will you explain your markings to your bride?”

  Leo’s hand drifted to his back. “Markings?”

  Bram snorted. “No need for coyness, Master Bailey. You know we all have them.” He tapped his chest, just over his heart.

  Edmund absently rubbed at his hip, and John pressed his knuckles to his ribs. Each of them, it seemed, carried the mark in different places upon their bodies.

  The Devil’s mark. Images of flame drawn upon his skin. They had appeared on Leo’s back the day after he and the other Hellraisers had received Mr. Holliday’s gifts. The mark had been much smaller then, confined to the area between his shoulder blades. Day by day, however, it had grown. Increased by an unseen hand. Fortunately, Leo’s valet knew not to ask questions. Spinner was the only person who ever saw the markings. Leo was at all times careful not to bathe in the presence of others.

  But soon his wife would see him unclothed.

  “What say your courtesans and opera dancers when they see your markings?” Leo asked Bram.

  His friend offered a careless shrug. “Nothing, of course. They are too well paid to offer opinions. And those that do venture to speak believe the markings to be some vestige of my time amongst the Natives in America, a primitive means of adorning the body. I do not bother to correct them.”

  “Your new wife may act as my Rosalind does,” said Edmund. “She has seen the markings on me, naturally, but is far too decorous to speak of them.”

  Following Bram’s example, Leo shrugged. “In a way, Anne’s compliance has been purchased, like Bram’s opera dancers. If I give her no explanation at all, she must be content.”

  “A sensible way to conduct a marriage,” said John approvingly.

  “As though you would have any experience on the subject,” Edmund said with a shake of his head. He held his glass of brandy aloft. “As the only other married Hellraiser, I welcome Leo to the blessed state of matrimony.”

  “Better you than I.” Yet John smiled, and also lifted his glass. “Felicitations.”

  Bram did not raise his glass, however. “Does this mean you shall become as dull as Edmund?”

  “The dullard in question is every bit a Hellraiser,” Edmund said, scowling. “Merely because I refrain from sticking my cock in every available quim doesn’t signify I am any less of a Hellraiser.”

  “What’s the point of being a Hellraiser, then?”

  “Freedom,” said Leo. “And from that freedom, power.”

  “The groom speaks good sense,” John said. “And with that, I urge a truce between Bram and Edmund. We cannot afford any more dissention in our ranks.”

  Leo and the other men murmured in agreement.

  “Then lift your glass, Bram,” said John, “and wish Leo happy.”

  With a grudging smile, Bram did so.

  Leo turned to the geminus. “The other glass is for you.”

  “You are all kindness.” It bowed. “But the gemini do not partake of mortal food or drink.”

  “Just take the damned glass,” growled Bram, “and join us in a toast. Don’t have to drink a bloody drop.”

  “Of course, my lord.” The creature was all solicitousness. “I am most eager to bestow my congratulations.” It took the remaining glass.

  “To Leo,” said John.

  “And Anne,” added Edmund.

  “May you each receive precisely what you deserve.” This, from Bram.

  “Good God,” said Leo, “what an ominous toast.”

  Edmund hastily amended. “May you grow rich in wealth and happiness.”

  Leo grinned. “I am rich.” In money, at any rate. Happiness would come ... later.

  “Richer, then.”

  The geminus had its own offering. “My master’s favor upon you and your new bride.”

  “To the bride and groom, Mr. and Mrs. Bailey.” With John’s words, everyone brought their glasses together. The sound chimed through the room like a brittle dream.

  As the brandy was downed by everyone but the geminus, the creature asked, “My master would like to know when you anticipate returning to the Exchange.”

  “Bloody hell,” sputtered Edmund. “The man is but hours newly married. Mr. Holliday cannot expect him to work. Not so soon.”

  Leo raised his hand. “Peace, Edmund.”

  “But you haven’t even left for your bridal journey—”

  “There isn’t going to be a bridal journey.”

  “Why ever not?”

  Leo shrugged. “Anne never asked for one, and I am disinclined to be away from business for so long.”

  Shocked, Edmund turned to Bram and John, looking for reinforcement.

  “I am happily wedded to politics,” said John. “The bachelor state is all I shall ever know.”

  Bram’s mordant look made plain his feelings about the nature of matrimony.

  Lacking support, all Edmund could do was splutter his indignation. He shook his head and poured himself more brandy.

  “Why should the Devil care whether or not Leo is at the Exchange?” John asked the geminus.<
br />
  Again, Leo felt rather than saw the creature’s cold smile. “The further building of Mr. Bailey’s fortunes is always a concern of my master. And,” it added, “my master does enjoy it greatly when Mr. Bailey compromises the fortunes of others.”

  “On that matter,” said Leo, “your master and I are in agreement.” For the pleasure in amassing wealth paled beside the lurid glow of bringing down those who held themselves superior to him. He could buy their estates and have surplus in his coffers, yet all the aristocracy saw when they looked at him was tannery dye staining his fingers. No matter that he’d scrubbed the discoloration away over a decade ago. No, he was nothing but a laborer, a saddler’s son, and thus undeserving of the honor of their approval.

  His body felt the familiar charge of energy when he contemplated whom he might destroy and by what means. Better to be the Demon of the Exchange than the Upstart Peasant.

  He had money. He had an aristocratic wife. And he had magic bestowed upon him by the Devil.

  And when the noblemen who sneered and spat came crawling to him on their bellies, pleading for loans, for mercy and compassion ... he would laugh and kick them away, his boot in their faces, and tell stories to his father’s headstone.

  We’ve beaten them, Da. It was beautiful to see. Beautiful.

  He would not waste precious time on something as inconsequential as a bridal journey. What was a tour of the Lake District compared to the destruction of a thousand years of privilege?

  Anne anxiously scanned the drawing room. Still no sign of Leo. He had been sequestered in his study with his friends, and the guests began to notice. Of greater concern to her was his expression—dark and preoccupied. Something weighed on him. But what, and why on this day? She asked no one for answers and none came.

  Falling back on years of schooling, Anne made herself circulate through the wedding feast, smiling and murmuring nonsensical pleasantries. A great deal of wine had been drunk, and the guests grew boisterous as the night deepened.