Whit had been silent, but as they entered the forest, he spoke. “The world is not so easily divided into heroes and villains.”
“No,” she said. “Not so easily divided.”
Deeper they went. The woods were not particularly dense, but night made the shadows thicker and the path soon disappeared. Darkness engulfed them. Zora glanced over her shoulder and could still see the lights of the inn, and hear the laughter and voices within. When the trees swallowed the last of the light, she had no choice but to face forward and peer into the darkness. Her prattling had done nothing but make her feel silly and small. Anything could be lurking in the shadows, and she had been fool enough to let whatever was out there know she was coming.
She could just make out Whit at the lead, his wide shoulders and straight back. From the sound of his horse’s hooves, he was not that far ahead, yet the distance between them felt huge. If something happened to her, could he reach her in time? She had her fire magic—and hoped it was enough.
The horses shied. Zora fought for control of her mount as she reached inside herself for the flame of her magic. Whit’s sword hissed as he unsheathed it, and dull moonlight glinted off its blade.
Livia flickered into being, standing in their path. The horses’ panic grew. Both Zora and Whit grappled to bring their animals under control while the ghost stared at them coldly.
Zora felt the horses’ fear, shared it. To be trapped between the mortal realm and the infinity of death was profoundly wrong, a state in which no one should ever dwell. Would Livia remain trapped as a ghost for eternity, watching the world change around her, but never being a part of it? Denied human comfort, human touch? The possibility horrified Zora. She patted and soothed her horse as a means to calm herself.
Livia turned and sped away.
Quickly, Zora and Whit dismounted and secured their horses. They trailed the ghost yet deeper into the forest. The night was thick around them, and Zora found herself keeping close to Whit, her eyes on his broad, strong shoulders.
Finally, Livia stopped in a small clearing, with Zora and Whit facing her. “Now. Before I am dragged back into nothingness ...” She turned to Zora. “The girl of fire. She shapes the spell.”
Before Zora could protest that she knew nothing of creating actual spells, the ghost fixed her barely lucid gaze on Whit. “Something from the brand, as well.”
“Tell me what I must do,” he answered.
“
Geminus
. The dark self. Feed the spell with something of the body.”
“Blood,” said Whit.
“Blood,” echoed Livia. “Hair. Seed.”
There was a very long pause. Finally, Whit said, “Hair it is, then.” He pulled a small knife from his boot and quickly cut a lock of hair from his queue.
“The fire must burn,” the ghost intoned.
This was Zora’s part. She shut her eyes and reached for the source of fire within, a strange inward spiraling. At the encampment, she had the campfire from which to draw, but now she had to locate its heat and strength inside herself.
“The girl must make haste,” Livia cried, her voice thinning as she dimmed.
“The girl is trying,” said Zora through clenched teeth.
“You’ve the power, Zora.” Whit’s words were grave but assured. “All along it has been in you.”
She steadied herself, focusing on the gleam of flame that burned inside her. Yes. There. It illuminated the darkness, beat back the shadows. She reached for it, her hands cupping together. Heat filled her and the space between her palms.
“Yes,” said Whit.
Opening her eyes, Zora saw flames gloving her hands. The forest’s gloom retreated as firelight painted trunks and branches. She glanced at Whit, and he, too, was bathed in light. He did not smile, but his eyes shone with admiration. The flames in her hands burned brighter. She expanded with power.
This is mine. This is me.
Urgency gathered Livia’s scattered mind. “In the fire, now!”
Whit strode forward and dropped his shorn lock of hair into Zora’s hands. The acrid scent of burnt hair rose up as the lock swiftly burned. At the same time, Livia chanted in that strange language, her words coming faster and faster until they blended into formless sound without end.
With a gasp, Whit suddenly doubled over. He toppled to the ground, his body rigid with pain.
Zora fell to her knees beside him. The flames surrounding her hands vanished. Darkness engulfed them. She gripped his shoulders, trying to ease the tremors of pain that rocked through him. His face contorted as he struggled against an unknown, unseen agony.
“Livia, what is this?” Zora cried. “What do we do?”
But no answer came. The ghost had disappeared.
Chapter 10
Zora held Whit’s shoulders as he writhed. As she knelt beside him in the darkness, she felt how agony tightened his features, his long body, his eyes shut as if to block out the pain wracking him. Most frightening was that he made almost no sound, just a barely audible groan through clenched teeth.
Damn that mad ghost, leaving Zora without any means of helping Whit or knowledge of what was happening to him. Seeing him in such pain tore at her own heart, made worse by her complete helplessness.
Perhaps there was a canteen in his satchel. She didn’t know what a drink might do for him, but it was better than the nothing she offered him now.
She cursed. The satchel remained with the horses. If she went to retrieve it, Whit would be alone. She could not abandon him, not for a moment.
The tremors harrowing him suddenly stopped. Her pulse stuttered as Whit went lax beneath her hands. Was he ... ? No. He breathed. Deep, even breaths. He groaned softly, coming back from that place of suffering.
Thank God
. Relief turned her bones to jelly.
She brushed back strands of hair clinging to his damp forehead. “Whit,” she whispered. “What do you need? Are you well?”
“Perfectly well,” he said after a moment. His voice sounded oddly distant, and darkness cloaked his expression.
“What happened?”
“Something quite extraordinary.” He moved to get up.
“Don’t tax yourself,” she admonished. “You’ve just gone through ... I don’t know what ... but it scared the hell out of me.”
Despite her warning, he rose to standing. Against the inky night sky, he made a large shape of deeper shadow. “No call to be frightened. Everything is exactly as it should be.”
Unease plucked at her. She needed to ensure that Whit truly was unharmed by that horrible seizure. Kneeling, she gathered some twigs and bound them together with a vine. She found the gleam of fire within herself, nurtured it like one might tend a smoldering ember. This was not the heat of battle, but deliberate intent. It took her a moment to grasp the fire.
Concentrate
. A quick spark of triumph when flame appeared on her fingertips, and she touched them to the torch. The twigs were dry and caught quickly, flaring.
Red engulfed her vision as her eyes adjusted to the light. She stood, her legs unsteady beneath her, and turned to Whit.
He looked exactly the same as he had a few minutes earlier. Same sharply handsome face, same lean strength. Even his clothing remained unchanged: dark green coat, plain doeskin waistcoat and breeches, cuffed boots that came to just above his knees. His hair had come undone from its queue, fell around his shoulders.
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.