Devil’s Kiss (34 page)

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Authors: Zoe Archer

Tags: #Romance, #General, #Paranormal, #Fiction

BOOK: Devil’s Kiss
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Together, they hurried down the main stairs. Not a single person met them there, nor in the entry hall, where the marble floors rang with Zora’s and Whit’s departing footsteps. She winced at the sound.
He pulled open the heavy front door. Colder evening air stung her mouth and nose, but she paid it little mind. They hastened down the steps to the gravel drive.
“The stables,” he said tersely, and she followed him as he jogged swiftly away from the main house. As she ran, she did glance over her shoulder and barely suppressed a gasp. The house was entirely dark, not a single light appeared in any of the windows, yet she was certain that hunched, shadowed shapes moved from room to room on the second story. Where she and Whit had been not a minute earlier.
Whit led her to a long stone building, also unlit. Inside the stables, nervous horses chuffed and stamped in their stalls. She and Whit saddled two fresh horses, the task made difficult by the near blackness. He handed her the reins to his mount. He moved swiftly from stall to stall, opening the gates and urging the remaining horses out. The panicked animals cantered from the stables, disappearing into the night.
“Don’t know what’s happening here,” he said low, “but I won’t leave those beasts to be hurt or worse.”
She made a final adjustment to her mount’s tack before leading the animal out of the stable. They hurried out of the stable with full night descending. The moon had not yet risen. Everything was dark.
Shapes rushed toward them. The horses shied and whinnied in terror. The animals pulled hard on their reins and broke free. She lost track of them in the darkness. Whit drew his sword.
Zora reached for her fire magic. A weapon, and illumination. Yet she almost wished she could unsee the creatures that surrounded them now. They were an unholy mix between men and legged serpent. The creatures held the vague shape of humans, standing upright on two legs. Glistening scales covered their bodies, firelight tracing the jagged edges.
The heads and faces ... they were the most horrible. They had no hair, only more scales running in a ridge from the crown of their heads all the way down their bodies. Slits for ears and nostrils. Mouths full of yellow fangs. And each had a single, monstrous eye. Not a serpent’s eye, but a human’s, as large as a saucer and webbed with blue and red veins.
One of the creatures lunged. Whit struck back, parrying the blow with his sword. The blade only glanced off the demon’s scales.
Several creatures darted toward Zora. She pushed them back with a blast of flame, yet their bodies didn’t catch fire, only smoldered.
Whit attacked more creatures that circled close. His blade struck them all hard and true, but all he managed was to shove them back a little. None of them were cut or wounded, though the sword was sharp.
Three paces in any direction was all she and Whit would have before coming up against the encircling demons. Not nearly enough distance from the creatures. The demons showed no signs of retreat, waiting almost patiently for either Whit or her to make a move.
The foulest betrayal—surely Whit felt it, for this had been his ancestral home. Now defiled by the Devil.
“The horses.” She pointed to a hedge about fifty yards away, where the two saddled horses had stopped and nervously pawed at the ground. If she and Whit could just make it to the horses, they might have a chance of escaping with their lives.
Neither her fire nor his sword had enough strength to fight the two dozen creatures encircling them. Not on their own ...
“Give me your sword.”
He shot her a warning glance. “The pistol fires once. This is my only weapon.”
“Not for long.” She held out her hand.
Yet he hesitated.
“Trust me,” she said.
And just like that, the sword was in her hand. She couldn’t marvel at the fact that he did trust her so readily, so completely. All she had was this moment, when she drew deeply on the fire within her. She reached for it now, concentrating on the sword in her hand.
Flames raced down her hand, over the hilt of the sword, then covered the blade. She held it out to Whit. “It won’t burn you.”
“It’s
them
I want burned.”
He took the sword from her, gave it an experimental swing. The flaming blade cleaved a path of light and heat through the air. His smile was sharp, deadly, full of killing intent. With the blazing sword in his hand, his body coiled and ready, and his face hard, he was the scourge of the underworld—more terrifying than the creatures surrounding them.
In an instant, the stalemate broke.
Four demons rushed Whit. He stepped into the attack, striking in a fast series of slashes. The creatures shrieked as his flaming sword now cut into their bodies. One lost an arm. Another took a wound to the throat and fell to the ground, black blood pouring from its neck.
Whit snarled, darkly triumphant. He sent Zora a quick glance of thanks before turning his attention to a new group of charging demons. His movements came swift and lethal, tracing patterns of fire and black blood through the air. She once saw a stained-glass window showing Archangel Michael with his fiery sword. Whit was more beautiful, more magnificent, for he wasn’t glass, but real.
He wasn’t the only one who could fight. Rather than depleting her power, endowing Whit’s sword with fire magic had renewed it. As two creatures darted toward her, Zora lashed out with a bolt of flame. She cleaved them apart into stinking, smoking pieces, their bodies writhing in mindless death throes.
Yet there were more. Always more. Fast and thick on every side. They lunged forward, claws swiping, and she beat them back. Again and again. Her fire was strong, yet it could not reach far enough to take down more than a couple of demons at a time. They swarmed like locusts, the air filled with the sounds of demonic gibbering.
The creatures wanted blood. Her blood, and Whit’s.
Not in a million sodding years.
“Throw me your powder!” she called to him.
Without taking his eyes off the three demons he battled, he snapped the leather cord of the powder flask that hung across his chest and tossed it to her.
“Gun, too?” he shouted back.
“Won’t need it.”
He
did
look at her then, briefly, questioningly, but the demons pressed closer and his attention returned to his own fight.
With her teeth, she pulled the plug from the powder flask’s spout. She gripped the flask and flung her arm wide, throwing an arc of gunpowder into the throng of demons. At the same time, she used her other hand to shoot a bolt of flame directly into the gunpowder.
A fiery blast split the air—and tore into a dozen demons in a wide, blazing scythe. The creatures howled as explosive flames ripped through them, shredding their bodies. Blood sizzled as it sprayed. Zora threw up an arm to shield herself from the force of the explosion. Dark drops splattered over her clothes, her face. Looking up, seeing the devastation she had wrought, she didn’t mind the mess.
With the demons temporarily stunned by Zora’s improvised weapon, Whit seized his opening. He cut a swath through the creatures trying to flank him.
They recovered enough to lash back with claw and fang.
A demon edged closer to Zora. She danced away, avoiding its talons, but her cloak caught on the creature’s scaled arm. The fabric ripped into tatters. It swiped at her again, and she winced as its wrist grazed her arm. Scales sliced into her. At once, pain boiled through her, hot and thick.
At the sight of her blood, the demons’ frenzy grew.
“Keep them at a distance!” she shouted to Whit. “Their scales cut like knives!”
He swore when he saw the ugly wounds on her arm. Fury rekindled, Whit launched into a series of attacks. He spun and slashed, cutting down creatures with calculated rage, carving a path of escape.
Pain was everywhere within her, clouding her eyes, burning her veins, but she wouldn’t give in. She sent another arc of gunpowder out into the remaining demons, set it ablaze. A blast of devastating fire. Half a dozen more fell, another half dozen retreated, cradling their wounds.
“Zora, now!”
She and Whit ran, dodging claws and scales. With the demons in hard pursuit, they sped toward the horses.
Her vision misted with pain, everything was a blur of sound and movement. She stumbled and fell to her knees. Strong hands pulled her up. Whit’s worried, blood-smeared face swam into her vision.
“Keep going,” she gasped.
He nodded, tight-lipped and grim. Whit’s grip was tight and steady as he held her hand. Until, at last, they reached their horses.
Zora tried to mount up, but her limbs were pain stiffened. Once, twice. An action as easy and instinctive as breathing became clumsy, foreign. Then Whit was with her. He swung up into the saddle, then pulled her up to sit behind him.
“Arms around me,” he ordered.
She managed to get her arms up and wrapped around him. He felt hard and solid, and she leaned against his broad back as one might lean against a stone battlement. He tied the reins of the other horse to the saddle and took the powder flask from her hand.
“Hold tight to me. All right?” When she didn’t reply, he said again, harder, “Zora. Answer. Will you hold tight to me?”
“Yes,” she said, but it came out slurred. Still, it was enough, for she felt him kick the horse into motion.
The world became small, the world became giant. She knew Whit’s strength, felt his taut stomach beneath her hands, the tight yet fluid movements of his body as he moved. He twisted in the saddle, striking down attacking demons with his flaming sword. The horse surged below her, and all around came the sounds of the demons hissing, shrieking.
Up ahead, in darkness, lay freedom. The demons were all earthbound, could run only as fast as a human. If she and Whit could make it far enough on their horse, they could outpace the creatures. But she felt them close behind, the force of their rage and need to kill.
Whit sheathed his sword as they rode beneath the large, outstretched branch of a huge oak. The moment they passed the tree, he turned in the saddle and threw the powder flask up toward the branch. He pulled his pistol, drew a breath, and fired. Smoke and a flash from the pistol’s breach, but a larger explosion from the powder flask. It caught the tree branch in exactly the right spot at exactly the right time. The thick branch came crashing down onto the pursuing demons. Only a few were caught beneath the branch, but the rest screamed and reared back.
“Lucky shot,” she mumbled.
He didn’t laugh. They rode deeper into the night, and the demons’ shrieks of frustrated anger faded.
Gone. Escaped. They had done it.
There was a rushing sound in her ears, and her veins felt full of burning pitch. Agony, everywhere. She closed her eyes to it, closed her mind. She just wanted to drift away where there was no pain. Where there was nothing ...
“Damn it, Zora,” Whit snarled. “You’re staying right here.” He grabbed her wrist and shook her.
She cried out, feeling as though the blood that coursed in her veins had been replaced with broken glass.
He hissed, and she knew her pain hurt him, as well. She wanted to tell him that it would be all right. If he just let her go, the hurting would stop. The darkness would be over, and everything would be sunlit rooms and massive beds and the wonder of their bodies and their hearts and nothing could get to them, nothing could pain them anymore.
She tried to speak. No words came from her mouth. She tried to tell him with her eyes, but they would not open. Her arms were locked around him as if in spasm.
Can’t move my fingers my hands can’t see can’t talk this is what dying feels like or maybe this is death and there’s too much to say and too much to do Whit Whit please Whit ...
They had fled the demons but she could not escape the darkness. It took her. The world disappeared.
Chapter 16
 
Whit rode on, searching for shelter. The night and empty road stretched out, limitless, treacherous. He needed to find somewhere safe, somewhere he could tend to Zora’s wounds. He refused to think of her as a dead weight. She was injured. Unconscious. He would hunt down a refuge and nurse her back to health. No other option existed. He shut his mind down to anything else.
The demons did not give further chase—his one consolation, when all others were gone. Lights flickered in the distance, signs of habitation. Once, he might have ridden toward them, believed they offered safety. He trusted nothing now. Not the promise of security. Not himself. Only Zora. And she lay quiet and motionless against his back.
Rage and fear the likes of which he’d never known pulsed through him. The demons had hurt her. Badly. And in the shadow of his ancestral home. The basest desecration. He vowed that he would hunt down the rest of those creatures, flay them as they yet lived, then give them the rare privilege of choking on their own intestines.
A shape emerged from the darkness. Riding closer, he discovered it to be the ruins of a church. He remembered the place from some of his youthful ramblings. Crumbling stone walls rose to pointed gables, and black, empty eyes stared where round windows once admitted heavenly light to the worshippers within. A relic from the time of England’s papacy. The roof had long ago vanished. No one would be inside.
Outside the arched doorway, he pulled the horses to a stop and swung down. Zora was a still, slight weight in his arms, her head lolling back to expose the fragile pulse in her throat. She had always been fire and strength—had fought the demons like a warrior queen—but as he carried her into the church, he felt the vulnerability of her body. The terror frosted around his heart, piercing that muscle with spikes of ice.
He strode up what had once been the center aisle of the church. The wooden pews had either rotted away or been carried off by looters. Weeds poked through the remaining pavers on the ground. Beneath his boots were patches of long brown grasses. Above his head, stars shone cold and distant.
The nave was empty. His toe connected with something that went flying. It shattered against a transept wall. A bottle. Acrid fumes of spoiled wine spilled out. He vaguely remembered coming here as a youth to drink wine pilfered from Whitston’s cellars. So the church had not always been deserted. But tonight, only Whit and Zora took shelter here.
A brazen sinner such as he finding sanctuary in a church. The irony might have made him smile, could the muscles of his face move into any form other than a grim scowl.
No stone floor remained where the altar had been. Some particularly idolatrous image must have adorned its surface and had not survived the purging. Wild grasses now composed the floor. Kneeling, Whit carefully laid Zora down. A brittle, autumn scent rose up from the ground.
He pulled off her torn cloak, tugged the laces of her bodice to loosen it. She lay still and compliant as he pulled up her sleeve. Ugly wounds scored her arm—black, foul gouges marring her dusky skin. Bending closer, he cursed his lack of light, but to strike a flint might attract unwanted attention. He had to make do with his imperfect vision. What he saw made him curse again.
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.

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