She could not quite dismiss the disquiet she felt when he and his attractive, scapegrace friends decided to visit the Roman ruin. She might not adhere to the old folk beliefs of her family and the other Rom—it all seemed rather superstitious and silly to her, frankly—but something seemed deeply unsettling and wrong about the fact that the one
gorgio
who lived nearby had never heard of the ruin before tonight. Almost as if ... it had been hiding, waiting for him and the other men.
“Ach,” she growled to herself. “Enough of this.” She had grown weary of pacing like a cat and would divert her restless thoughts.
Zora threw herself down onto the grass and shuffled her tarot deck. She did not believe the
dukkering
cards could actually tell the future, just as she did not believe the lines on a person’s hand foretold anything. When she
dukkered
for the
gorgios
, she let them focus on the cards or their hands, while she actually read their faces, their postures and silent, subtle, unaware ways that revealed who they were and what they desired. Easy for them to think she had the gift of magic. But all Zora truly had was a knack for seeing people and telling them what they wanted to hear.
Still, dealing the tarot for herself usually soothed her. The proscribed patterns in which the cards were laid. The pictures printed upon their faces, older than history. Calming.
After shuffling the cards several times, Zora began to lay them out in the ten-card cross with which she was most familiar. She did not pay much attention, simply allowing her mind to drift as her hands moved, setting down the cards. When she did finally bring her attention down to the cards, what she saw made her gasp aloud.
Evil. A great evil is coming, unleashed by the five.
Zora shivered. The warning was plain, spelled out in the cards.
She shook herself. Yes, the tarot had its meaning, and she knew what each card was supposed to represent, but they were merely suggestions, not actual truth. Not genuine prophecy of what was to come.
She quickly gathered up the cards she had laid, shuffled them again, then laid them out once more in the cross formation.
Her breath lodged in her throat.
The cards came out the same. Exactly the same. The five of swords. The inverted knight of wands. Culminating in the fifteenth card of the Major Arcana: the Devil. Zora stared at his horned, goatish face contorted in a sinister grin, batlike wings outstretched, as he presided over two figures chained at his feet. A pentacle marked the ground where the chained figures knelt.
Coincidence. That was all it could be. She would prove it.
She scooped up the cards and shuffled them a third time. And for the third time, she set them out. By the time she turned over and placed the final card, her hands shook.
The same. Each and every card. Their meaning clear:
A great evil is coming, unleashed by the five.
Her heart pounded, her palms went damp, and her mouth dried. She never believed it possible, and yet ... it was. The tarot predicted the future, a terrible future. Which meant—
Zora jumped to her feet. She ran to her family and the other families who made up their band. At her approach, the men stopped playing their fiddles and took their pipes from their mouths, and the women left off their gossiping. They all stared at her, and she knew that her face must be ashen, her eyes wide. She likely looked like a phantom.
“We have to stop them,” she announced without preamble.
“Who?” asked Litti, her mother.
“The
gorgios
who went to the ruin.” Her hands curled into fists by her sides as she fought to keep her voice level. “I have seen it. The cards have shown me. If we do not stop them, those five men are going to let loose a terrible evil.”
No one laughed. Everyone knew that Zora put no faith in
dukkering
or magic. Yet it was for that very reason that they all took her seriously now. In fact, looks of pure terror filled their faces and the firelight shining in their rounded eyes turned them glassy and blank. Zora stared at them, at the men, and they stared back.
Not a single man moved.
Impatience gnawed at her. She took a step closer. “Why are you all sitting there like frightened goats? Get up! You must ride after the
gorgios
and stop them!”
The men exchanged glances until,
finally,
Zora’s cousin Oseri stood up. Zora exhaled in relief, but her relief was short-lived. From the terrified expression on his face, it was clear Oseri had plans only to hide in his tent.
“The
wafodu
is too great,” he stammered. “The evil will hurt us.”
“So you are going to do nothing?” Zora demanded.
The men all shrugged, palms open. “What can we do against such powerful, bad magic?” someone bleated.
“Anything!” she shot back. But every last one of the men refused to move, while the women crossed themselves and muttered prayers.
There was no hope for it. With a growled curse, Zora turned on her heel and walked into the horse enclosure, but not before grabbing a crust of bread from the cooking area and slipping it into her pocket. It was said that bread held the Devil at bay, and she needed every bit of assistance she could scrounge. She also had her knife, tucked into the sash at her waist.
“Where are you going?” Zora’s mother cried.
Zora did not stop until she slipped a bridle onto one of the horses and then swung up onto its bare back. Once mounted, she trotted forward until she stared down at the trembling men and women of her Romani band.
“I’m doing what needs to be done,” Zora said. “I’m going to stop those lunatic men before they do something we shall
all
regret.”
Despite her fear, she kicked her horse into a gallop. She had never faced anything like this in her life, and had no knowledge of what awaited her. How might she prevent the evil from being set free? All she knew was that she must.
Atop a rounded hill, the ruin formed a dark, jagged silhouette against the night sky, like a creature rising from the earth. As the riders neared the hill, Whit felt himself drawn forward, pulled by a force outside himself. He did not know
why
he had to reach the ruin, only that he must, and soon. His companions must have shared the feeling, for they also urged their horses faster, their hooves pounding beneath them as thunder presaged a storm.
At the base of the hill, all of the men fought to control their shying, rearing horses, trying to urge them up toward the ruin. None of the beasts would take the hill, though it was surely traversable by horse. The men alternately cursed and cajoled. Yet the horses refused to go farther.
“On foot, then,” grumbled Bram.
After dismounting, as directed by Bram, the men gathered up fallen tree branches. Bram used skills honed during his time fighting the French and their native allies in the Colonies and quickly made torches from the branches. He set them ablaze with a flint from his pocket.
“Don’t we look a fine collection of fiends,” drawled Whit. For that is what they resembled as light from the torches bathed the men’s faces in gaudy, demonic radiance.
At this notion, they all grinned.
“Shall we investigate, Hellraisers?” asked Edmund.
“Aye,” the men said in unison, and Whit felt almost certain he heard a sixth voice hiss,
Yes.
They climbed the hill, using torchlight to guide them. The shapes of toppled columns and crumbling walls emerged from the darkness, gleaming white and dull as bones. Everyone reached the top and surveyed the scene. Whatever the building had once been, its glory had long ago faded, becoming only a shade of its former self. A strange, thick miasma cloaked the ruin, its dank smell clogging Whit’s nose, and it swirled as the five men prowled through the ancient remains. Examining a partially standing wall, he touched the surface of the stone. A cold that seemed nearly alive climbed up through his hand, up his arm, and would have gone farther had he not pulled back.
Their murmured voices were muffled by the heavy vapor, but Leo said, loud enough for all of them to hear, “What the hell is this place?”
“Appears to have been a temple,” answered John, their resident scholar. He crouched and brushed away some dirt until he revealed what appeared to be a section of stone floor. “See here.” He pointed to the ground as everyone gathered around. Holding his torch closer to the stonework, he indicated the faded, chipped remains of mosaic lettering. “
Huic sanctus locus.
‘This sacred place of worship.’”
“Worship of what?” asked Leo.
“Bacchus, I hope,” said Bram. He gazed critically around the ruin, the torchlight turning the sharp planes of his face even sharper, his black hair blending with the night. The light gleamed on the scar that ran along his jaw and down his neck, a souvenir from his military service. “It’s dull as church up here.”
“What were you expecting?” said Whit. “It’s a
ruin
, not a bordello.” He thought of Zora, her refusal to take his money in exchange for a night in his bed, and wondered if he would ever see her again. He decided he would, and planned to return to the Gypsy encampment on the morrow, though he did not know how pleased she might be to see him.
Bram made a noise of displeasure and paced away, kicking aside a few loose rocks in his impatience. Whit, John, Edmund, and Leo all exchanged rueful smiles. Of all of them, Bram pushed the hardest for yet greater depths of debauchery, as if continually trying to outpace something that chased him.
The friends broke apart to drift separately through the ruin. Whit ambled toward a collection of five columns that had all toppled against each other, barely standing but for the tenuous support they gave each other. Fitting, he thought. He found himself possessed by the oddest humor, a moody melancholy that sought some means of release. Too late he realized he should have placed a wager with Leo as to what the ruin might have once been. The opportunity was gone now. Perhaps there was something else here upon which he might gamble. Leo had not gotten to a sixth cup of wine back at the Gypsy camp, so that bet could not be won or lost.
A gleam at the base of the leaning columns caught his attention. He slowly neared and peered closer. Yes, something dully metallic appeared on the ground. As he edged closer, he saw that the metal was, in fact, a large, thick rusted ring, the size of a dinner plate. Whit thought at first the ring simply lay in the weeds. A second ring, exactly the same, lay some three feet away. Closer inspection showed the rings were attached to something in the ground. Whit crouched to get a better view.
“Come and have a look,” he called to his friends.
The men assembled around him, and the light from their collective torches revealed that the iron ring was affixed at one end to a large, square stone block. Whit handed his torch to Edmund and cleared away the rocks, weeds, and debris that nearly obscured the block, with Bram and Leo assisting. Soon, the block was completely uncovered. It was roughly three feet across and three feet long, with a metal ring set at each end.
“Looks like a door,” said John.
“If it’s a door,” Bram answered, “then we should open it.” His voice sounded slightly different from normal, a deeper, harsher rasp.
At once it seemed to Whit to be not only the most sensible thing to do, but the most essential. A burning need to see what was behind the door seized him, as strong as any need to gamble. He gripped one iron ring, and Leo gripped the other after giving his torch to Bram.
“On my count,” said Whit. “One, two,
now!
”
Both he and Leo pulled with all their strength. Whit’s muscles strained and pulled against the fabric of his shirt and coat, against the doeskin of his breeches as he dug his heels into the ground and fought to wrench open the heavy stone door. He grunted with exertion through his gritted teeth.
Pull, pull!
He had to get the door open.
Bram, Edmund, and John shouted their encouragement, their eyes aglow with the same fevered need to breach the door.
A deep, heavy wrenching sound rumbled up from the ground, as if the very foundations of the world were being rent asunder. Whit and Leo pulled harder, encouraged by the sound. Inches of stone emerged up as the stone slab rose in clouds of dust. Suddenly, with a final growl, the stone broke free from its earthen prison.
Whit and Leo heaved the block to one side, and it thudded on the ground, barely missing John’s toes. But John didn’t complain. He, like the other Hellraisers, was all too captivated by the sight of the opened door.
A black square, the doorway, and through it the scent of long-buried secrets came wafting up. It wasn’t a damp smell, rather hot and dry, the scent of singed fabric and burnt paper. Whit grabbed his torch from Bram and thrust it through the doorway in the ground. The firelight illuminated precipitous stone stairs that disappeared into the gloom.