Devil’s Kiss

by Zoë Archer

  But his eyes. Heaven preserve her, his eyes. Though they were still that remarkable summer blue, warmth had drained from them, so they were now the chill reflection of sky. He stared at her, smiling a little, and the profound coldness in his gaze made her gasp.

  This isn’t right. This isn’t Whit.

  “I must thank you,” he said. “You have made my task much easier.”

  The geminus stood before her.

  Whit struggled to clear his swimming vision. His head felt light, his stomach heavy. A vertiginous sensation that mired him in nausea before his balance returned.

  Light. Light everywhere. After the darkness of the forest, he was blinded momentarily by the glare of dozens of candles. Heat pressed in on him, too, and sound reverberated around him in discordant crashes. Voices. Laughter. Shouting.

  He was inside somewhere.

  How did I arrive at this place? Where is Zora?

  Those thoughts fled from his mind, pushed away by a driving hunger. Zora was gone, but there were others around him. People enjoying themselves, unwary.

  Prey.

  Yes, prey. Blindness receded, replaced by hard clarity. Whit took stock of his situation. A low, timbered ceiling dark with smoke stains. Settles hunched along the walls, and tables crowded the floor. Red-faced men argued and laughed over their tankards. Someone sawed at a fiddle. The smell of wet wool, beer, and human bodies lay thick in the room. A chalkboard on a post by the front door showed tallies of who owed what for drink.

  Many of the patrons wore academic gowns and tasseled flat caps—these were not men, but boys, barely old enough to warrant razors scraped across their faces. When they shouted and guffawed, it was with the overly loud voices of freshly minted manhood. All of them so young. So vulnerable and open to temptation, easily led. Perfect.

  He tasted it like wine on his tongue: the potential for these new lives, their energy and possibility. Rich, heady, the flavors. Where should he begin? His body hummed with excitement and anticipation. Truly, sometimes beginning the hunt could be the best part.

  Or perhaps the hunt had already begun. A boy in a gentleman commoner’s gown stood beside him looking up at him with imploring eyes.

  “Do you speak truly?” the boy piped. He could not have been more than sixteen, his face still round with the lingering traces of childhood.

  “Every word,” he said.

  “You’ve no idea.” The boy shook his head. “Don’t know why Pater cares about university. Nobody else does. Fred Thursby was rounded up by the proctors five times this term alone, and his father didn’t threaten him with disownment.”

  Whit made a tsking sound. “Unjust.”

  “So I said, but he stops his ears.” The boy glowered with the righteous indignation accessible only to the very young. “Stops his purse, too. Not a farthing, not a shilling if I am taken before the proctors again. But I can’t help it, can I? I’m not a commoner, not a servitor.”

  After looking longingly at his carousing friends, the boy brightened. “But that won’t happen, will it?”

  “Not with my influence. I can ensure that no matter what you do neither the proctors nor your tyrannical father need ever know.”

  The boy actually giggled. “Most wonderful. Yet my tutor won’t give me my allowance, not until Lady Day.”

  “Shall we wager? If you win, I promise to give you the protection you need.” Whit pulled a pair of ivory dice from his waistcoat pocket and gestured to an empty table. They sat, the boy’s robes settling around him like dust from a grave. Grime had settled into rings atop the table’s surface, years of spilled ale collecting years of filth, until the table became a record of lost years and fallible, transient lives. The men who had created those marks were long eaten by worms, their names forgotten, with only aged circles of dirt as their legacy.

  “Shall we?” Whit asked again. “A simple game. Highest roll wins.”

  “I don’t have any blunt,” the boy admitted. “All my drinks are on credit.”

  “A small token will suffice.”

  “Such as this?” The boy rifled through his pockets and produced a small wooden bat, the sort used when playing trap-ball.

  Whit suppressed a smile. This boy was truly a child, as fresh and unsullied as morning.

  “Acceptable.”

  The lad placed the bat upon the table. “And I get your help keeping the proctors and my father at bay if I win. You go first,” said the lad.

  Whit obliged, taking up the dice. They felt like miniature worlds in his hand, and he the omnipotent creator-destroyer. With deliberate negligence, he rolled the playing pieces. They tumbled over the wooden surface before coming to a rest, the pips showing that he had rolled a three and a two.

  The boy looked smug. Five was easy to beat. He scooped up the dice, gave them a shake, then cast them onto the table.

  Movement and sound reduced to the confines of the stained table. The lad bent forward, eagerly following the movement of the pieces. He could not see nor feel the patterns of chance being manipulated, altered. Why would he? The boy was only that, a mortal child with no understanding of the dark forces lurking beneath the surface of his mundane, ephemeral world. But it was a simple matter, merely the rearrangement of a few strands of probability, and it was done.

  The boy gaped at his roll. A four.

  Whit took the bat from the boy, then placed it in his own pocket. A simple gesture, yet not so simple. Bright, glistening energy surged through him. Delicious, made all the more so by its relative purity and unrealized potential. It did not matter the number of times the transaction occurred— each exchange filled him with power barely contained by the limits of his corporeal body. He kept his negligent posture in his seat, trained by millennia of service.

  The boy, however, slumped in defeat. “Damn me.”

  “Do not trouble yourself,” Whit said. “I may have won the game, but I shall do as I promised.”

  “Truly? You’ll take care of my father, and the proctors?”

  “Of course. You can go now, lad. Your friends are waiting.”

  A boisterous shout rose up from the settles, calling for the boy.

  The lad jumped up from the table, ready to join his companions, but did not yet go. His childishly ruddy cheeks turned even more red. “What you’ve done for me ... such a service ...”

  “Gratitude isn’t necessary. I would do the same for anyone. If any of your friends need assistance, they’ve but to say the word.”

  After bowing, the boy scampered off to sit with his cohorts. He beamed triumphantly as he lifted his pot of beer. Of course he felt victorious. The lad believed he had outsmarted his father and university discipline, and all it had cost him was a silly toy.

  A good beginning. Whit left the main taproom and wended his way through a narrow, dimly lit passage. Warped floorboards made traversing the hallway a hazard, but he had his footing secure. He stopped at a doorway on his right. Long ago, someone had made a perfunctory gesture toward decoration, for a framed print of Christ Church Cathedral hung beside the door. The glass was cracked, the picture askew. Indulging a caprice, he adjusted the picture so that it hung straight.

  He glanced around. No one else was in the hallway. He opened the door and stepped inside.

  The room was cavernous, far larger than one might suspect on the other side of the door. Its carved ceiling arched far overhead, curves disappearing into murky gloom. No windows. No other doors. Heavy stones comprised the walls, each stone wider than a man’s arm span. Neither black powder nor cannon could hope to shatter the stones.

  Shelves lined the walls and large, heavy tables filled the center of the room. The only source of illumination came from the few objects lined up on the shelves and upon the tables. They glowed brightly. All of them were newly taken.

  Through a variety of means, he had won them. Guile, trickery and deception, and his favorite method, gambling. Everything within this chamber belonged to him, and his master. Yet it did not matter how much the
room contained, the hunger for more never ceased. An appetite that could not be sated. He was as inexhaustible as his hunger, though, and pursued his prey relentlessly, continuously.

  He allowed himself a moment to simply enjoy the room and what it held. The sum total of his few days’ existence, its contents precious. The walls must have been thick. Everything in there needed protection. No place in the whole of this world could claim to be as secure.

  His vault.

  As he strode into the strong room, the sound of his boots on the floor echoed off the arched ceiling. Someday, these shelves would be crowded, but he had only recently begun his collection.

  He found an empty shelf, then reached into his pocket and removed the small wooden bat. He murmured two words—Veni, animus—and the toy changed. Its form became blurred as it shifted. A warm, clean glow filled his palm and bathed his face in its radiance. He smiled down at what he now held: a soul.

  His fingers clenched around the soul. Its warmth spread up through his arm and through his body. Strength flowed through him. To pick up and heave one of the giant tables would be an easy matter, as effortless as throwing a leaf. And that was merely his physical strength. With each new soul he claimed, his ability to gather more souls increased, drawing them to him with less and less effort on his part.

  Stepping back, he admired his work. Only a few souls, but there would be more. The spoils of desire.

  He walked farther into the vault until he came to his first and most valuable acquisition. The soul shone fiercely, almost aggressively. The Earl of Whitney’s soul. He picked up the token and felt a vivid surge of strength. A little sun, this soul, and such a crucial addition. Its energy fed him now, giving him the power to move onward and continue his important work. There was so much to do, but with this soul nourishing him, there was no doubt in his mind that he would emerge victorious.

  Zora lurched back, trying to put distance between herself and the geminus. The thing stared at her with Whit’s face, Whit’s body, and when it spoke, it used Whit’s voice. Monstrous.

  “Where am I?” It glanced around at the dark forest canopy.

  Her mind whirled. If the geminus had been summoned, it might know its location through the act of traveling—just as Livia had feared. But the spell had brought the creature there directly. It had no bearings, no means of learning her whereabouts. Her only consolation.

  “No words from the opinionated Gypsy? Such a change.” It stepped closer. “What is most impressive is the measure of your courage. None of us anticipated the fight you put up. Surely you had some training in magic.”

  She did not answer as she moved stiffly backward. Her bones were made of ice, freezing her from the inside out. Even back in London, when she had been kept prisoner inside Whit’s home, he never looked at her the way the geminus did so now. A butcher contemplated a carcass with more tender feelings.

  “How did you come by such power?” The geminus was all courtesy, speaking to her gently, politely. As though they weren’t standing in the middle of a forest, with dark, threatening night all around. She did not miss the way the creature draped one hand loosely upon the hilt of Whit’s sword.

  “No? Not forthcoming with the details?” It made a dismissive wave. “Whatever its origin, it shall not remain upon this earth long. Neither will you.”

  “Where is he?”

  “More importantly, where am I?”

  “Tell me where he is,” she demanded.

  “Lord Whitney?” The geminus shrugged. “I cannot say.”

  She struggled against panic. Whit could be in danger or hurt, and she was alone, without aid.

  “Cannot? Or will not?” When the creature did not answer her, she pressed, “Give it to me. His soul.”

  The geminus smiled its echo of Whit’s smile. “Child, they aren’t handed out like Christmas oranges.”

  “I’ll take it from you.” She waved the torch toward the creature, but it did not shy back.

  “Observe.” It opened its coat, revealing pockets sewn into the gray silk lining. To her trained eye, it was easy to see that the pockets hung flat and empty. Dipping its fingers into its waistcoat pockets, the geminus again came up with nothing. “You are welcome to search me, of course.”

  “Tell me where it is.”

  The geminus smiled. “What I find most charming is your belief that you can make demands.” Its smile faded, and its expression turned cutting. “But you prove yourself a danger, and that cannot stand.”

  It glanced down at the hilt of the sword as if just remembering the weapon’s existence. “This may prove amusing.”

  She jolted at the sound of steel drawn from the scabbard. Did the geminus truly mean ... ?

  Her answer came as the geminus swung its blade. Dropping her torch, she dove to the side and narrowly missed the slash. The creature not only had Whit’s shape and voice, but his skill with a sword as well. Whit’s expertise and athleticism made the geminus dangerous. She dodged behind a tree as it swung at her again. The blade’s edge cut into the side of the tree, sending pieces of bark flying. She had seen that same sword used against demons, knew what kind of damage it could do to living flesh.

  Gorgio men fought one another with swords, yet she had no similar weapon with which to defend herself. Not true. She did have a weapon. Her fire. She did not need to draw power from an existing fire; she found the power within herself.

  Heat gathered inside her. Flames curled around her hand. She leapt out from behind her cover and sent a bolt of fire hurtling toward the geminus. It spun to the side, avoiding the flame. But the edge of the fire caught its arm, and it hissed in pain as a smoldering cut crossed its bicep.

  Its grimace shifted into a smile. “By all means, burn this mortal body. As long as I possess Whit’s soul, whatever damage inflicted on me also injures him.”

  She stared at the geminus, horrified. It might be speaking lies, but was she willing to take that chance and hurt Whit?

  It swung again.

  Damn and hell. She could only leap away and do nothing to defend herself. Her mind worked frantically as she kept sidestepping and dodging the geminus’s strikes. What could she do? How could she fight this thing?

  She couldn’t, not without risking Whit’s life. Leaving her with no recourse, no means of attack or defense. The flames around her hand vanished, useless.

  The forest, which had been dark and threatening moments earlier, now became her only means of defense. When the geminus lunged toward her, she dove to the ground. As she rolled, she scooped up a handful of earth. The geminus whirled around. Springing up, she threw the dirt into its eyes. The double might be a minion of the devil, but dirt and twigs in its eyes temporarily blinded it like any creature, just long enough for her to dart into the woods.

  She ran into the dark. Branches scratched at her face and pulled at her cloak and skirt like ravenous ghouls. Shadows engulfed her, and the sounds of her own labored breathing and snap and crash of broken branches filled her ears. Behind her she heard the noisy approach of the geminus as it pursued. The fact that it did not try to conceal itself made her blood even colder. It did not care if she knew it was coming—her fate was inevitable.

  How long? How long until the geminus tired of this game and used its magic against her? The devil knew what kind of power it possessed.

  Her eyes burned and her body ached from its countless lashings. No way to attack, no means to defend or hide herself. Curse that mad ghost to leave her here alone without answers or help.

  More than Livia, she needed Whit. His presence and his strength. The goodness she knew existed within him and his warrior’s spirit. Despite the tumult between them, she could not truly doubt his honor or determination. She felt herself reaching out to him, wherever he was, stretching toward him like a ship reaching for the shore.

  “Whit!” His name sprang from her instinctively. It did not matter if she shouted and gave away her location, for the geminus knew where she was regardless. She cried out again.
“Whit!”

  Somewhere out in the large, dark world, he had to hear her. Or else she was lost.

  Whit felt a sharp tug in the center of his chest. Something pulling at him. His palm rubbed circles over his breastbone, seeking to ease the sensation, but the feeling did not stop. It wasn’t precisely pain, yet it drew on him—hard. A bright hand curled around his heart, the touch distant but also unbearably intimate. Again, it tugged, and he staggered back.

  What black sorcery is this?

  Glancing around the vault, he looked to the souls upon the shelves as if they could help him. His prizes, his treasure. They did nothing. As he stared at them, his vision dimmed. The glow of the tokens faded. No, they did not fade, but his greed for them did. The claws of his hunger for more released. Rather than wanting to devour them, when he looked upon the souls, pity and shame inundated him, a flood of unexpected compassion.

  No! How ... ?

  The pull came harder now. He gasped, sinking to his knees. His hand scrabbled with the buttons on his waistcoat, pushing them open, then the same for his linen shirt beneath. Looking down at his chest, he cursed. Warm radiance centered over his heart, the size of his fist and as luminous as one of the souls upon the shelf. But he had no soul of his own. What was happening?

  A voice rang out. A woman’s voice.

  “Whit!”

  No one was in the vault with him. Only he had access to it.

  The voice called his name again. He recognized that voice. It knotted tightly into his mind, his being. Longing rose up within him, a yearning to be with the woman. She alone possessed the answers. She had fire and spirit, and he needed that, needed her. Not the souls upon the shelves, but her.

  He gasped once more as the pull gripped him harder, warmth enveloping him. Around him, the vault faded, receding from his senses. Everything plunged into darkness.