Ember (Darkest London 0.5)

Something inside her knotted. “I don’t need that. I just need you. Laughing with me like always.”

“But you do. You’re more beautiful than any of the flash women promenading here.” His curls bounced as he tossed his head in the direction of the fine ladies and gentlemen strolling far off in the distance. The angry look in his eyes eased. “You know you are.”

“What does that matter?” she asked. “My face has never gotten me anywhere but into trouble.”

He smiled. “One day it will get us the world. With your beauty, and my brains, there is nothing we can’t do.”

“And if I lost my looks? If this all fades? What then?” She said it lightly, but a sudden feeling of fear made her breathless.

“My beautiful rose.” He touched her face again. Really, he had the most extraordinary ability to block out her end of the conversation when he got on a tear. “I don’t know why you won’t let me call you Rose.”

“You know why.” Her insides twisted harder. “I don’t like it. And it isn’t even my name.”

“It’s part of your name!” He leaned in. “Rose.”

“Don’t, Martin.”

She looked away and blinked up into the patchwork of sky and evergreen needles overhead. Nearly two decades of distance could not dim the pain of her grandmother’s long-ago words.

“We cannot continue to call her Rose,” Grandmother said. She had come to town after Mother's funeral, wanting to see for herself what had become of her stepdaughter's children. Miranda's mother had never liked the woman.

Miranda did not like her either.

“Why not?” Father asked in genuine confusion.

Miranda squirmed in her hiding place behind the Chinese silk screen in the drawing room.

“Have you paid no notice to the child?” she retorted irritably.

“Of course I have, Lillian. Only eight and she is a beauty. I’ve never seen her equal.” He laughed lightly, nervously. Grandmother always made Father nervous.

“I fear beauty is all she has. She does not possess Poppy’s common sense or Daisy’s gift for conversation. She’s odd enough as it is, what with…” Grandmother sucked in a breath.

Father made some noise of protest, while a black ink pagoda wavered before Miranda’s eyes.

“Enough discussion, Hector. I’ve set my mind to this. We shall call her Miranda. It is her true name after all. Remember, Hector, vanity is a sin. Miranda’s sins are great enough as it is.”

Miranda pressed her lips together and firmly shut out the memory. “Just do not call me that.” She ought to tell him why, but could not make her lips form the words.

Martin scowled but got to his feet easily enough. “Sometimes, I don’t understand you.” He held out a hand. “Have you any other orders for the day or may we go?”

She’d hurt his feelings. It seemed she was quite adept at hurting feelings. Miranda let him help her up. “No more orders,” she said softly, then kissed his cheek. “Just that.”

His expression turned warm. “Well ’that’ is very nice indeed.”

Chapter 3

Central Mexico, March 15, 1881

He was a shadow of himself now. Searching, searching, always searching. For a cure. Archer squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out the view of yet another desert. The urgency within him had not diminished, but had strengthened until it held his muscles in a tight bond. He craved to run, punch, slash, anything if only it would ease this need. But there was nothing. Nothing except to keep going.

So he was here, in a strange desert in Mexico, following yet another well -paid guide and a band of indigenous Indians in search of their holy land. His new guide, Michael Smith, was a conundrum. Unlike his other guides, Smith did not seem to have any agenda other than living from day to day. Hell, Archer might have paid the man half the amount, and Smith would probably have taken the job anyway. When Archer had first approached him, Smith was lounging in a seedy cantina, nursing his way through a bottle of tequila and playing chess with a Mexican Indian.

Warm air had drifted through the outdoor bar, bringing the scent of fried cornmeal and roasted chilies to Archer’s nose. The hum of cicadas mingled with the melancholy song of a lone guitar. As Archer had approached Smith’s table, the guitarist began to sing, as mournful and warbling as the desert coyotes that haunted the area.

The bar was nearly deserted. The only occupants other than Smith and his companion were the rotund barkeep lazing against the bar and a Mexican eating soup at a nearby table.

Both men looked up and kept looking as Archer passed. Perhaps it was their surprise, more than Archer himself, that had Smith lifting his head as Archer approached. Archer got the impression that Smith, while aware of his surroundings, didn’t give anything much regard unless he wanted to.

Smith eyed him not with terror or shock, but with a sort of thoughtful fascination.

“Good evening,” Archer said as he stopped before him. “You are Michael Smith, are you not?”

The American was said to have lived in Mexico since President Andrew Johnson had sent troops in to aid the Mexicans during the Franco-Mexican war back in ’65.

Smith, then a sergeant, had done his duty, then promptly deserted.

Smith’s thin mouth kicked up at one corner. “So my beloved mama tells me.”

Archer glanced at the man who’d been playing chess with Smith but now stared at Archer with unblinking eyes of black. Archer looked back to Smith. “Might I have a word with you?”

Smith gave a nod to his companion, and the man slipped off. Archer took the man’s seat as Smith leaned back in his creaking chair to appraise Archer.

He moved with the languor of an old man, yet appeared fit and trim. Pale yellow light from a swaying oil lamp overhead painted the man’s dun-brown hair a greenish color. “That’s quite a costume you got there, friend.”

Archer had tried to dress to fit in, donning shapeless togs of cambric and cotton just as Smith wore. But fitting in was an impossibility when one must always hide one’s face.

He’d made do with wrapping his face in linen bandages and pulling a worn, wide-brimmed hat down low on his head. His hands he’d kept hidden beneath thin leather gloves. At least it was dry and cool here, not like the humid hell of the Brazilian jungle. Archer would rather not remember that trip.

There were places of fear, and there were places of nightmares. The Amazonian jungle was the latter.

“Believe me,” Archer said, “it is better I wear this than show what hides beneath.”

Smith’s expression remained impassive. “What can I do you for?”

Archer resisted the urge to curl his fingers tight. “I’ve heard you can facilitate a meeting with the Huichol.”

Smith made a sound of amusement as he poured himself a glass of tequila. An empty, used glass sat before Archer, and Smith filled that, too. “What do you want with them?” Smith asked.

“I have heard they possess great magic.” He felt foolish even speaking the words, but desperation had a way of slashing pride to pieces. “Great enough to perform the impossible.”

Seconds ticked by. The rise and fall of song and the braying of a passing donkey filled the silence as Smith stared at Archer with an impassive expression. Archer

stared back, not flinching. Finally, Smith waved his hand, the smallest of motions, but a cut nonetheless.

“Can’t help you. You’ve been misinformed. Go back to England.”

“I’ll find another guide.”

“Who will get you nowhere.” Smith took a hearty swallow of his drink. “Even if the Huichol could help you, they won’t. Not some gringo outsider.”

“Perhaps they might consider my plight a challenge?”

“Doubt it, my friend.” Smith rubbed a palm over his night beard, the rasp audible. “What you got? Leprosy? The pox?”

It was Archer’s turn to laugh. “If only.”

Archer looked at the greasy glass before him for a moment, then grabbed it and downed the contents in one gulp. Viscous fire slid down his throat and spread in his belly. He kept his gaze on Smith but he knew the exits, knew how much time was needed to escape should Smith attack.

He moved his hand to the bandages. The linen gaped enough that Smith could see Archer’s face and what had become of it.

The man’s brows rose but he didn’t scare, Archer would give him that. He whistled low and long. “Can’t say as I’ve ever seen that particular malady.”

“Doubtless.” Archer smoothed the linen back in place.

He was thankful that Smith didn’t ask him how he’d gotten this way. He admired a man who knew when to keep his curiosity to himself.

Smith finished his drink, then stood. “Well, I’d best get packing.” Smith stretched in a lazy fashion, the joints at his neck and back popping in protest.

Archer rose and they were nearly eye-to-eye. “When?”

“We’ll meet here, an hour before dawn.”

Two days later, Smith brought him before the Huichol’s holy man to plead his case.

Archer’s meeting with the shaman, as Smith called him, had been brief but effective. Facing the solemn Indian, he had taken off his linen entirely and revealed what he’d become. There was no fear or outright shock, and Archer soon realized that these holy men of the Americas were of a different philosophy than most men. They seemed to view life not as something filled with fear, but as filled with mystery and acceptance. There were few questions— mainly, what did Archer expect to find? When Archer said a cure, the shaman simply nodded and continued to gaze at him thoughtfully.

Now Archer was a week out on a pilgrimage to the Huichol’s holy land of Wiricuta. From what Archer could get out of Smith, it would be there that they would gain access to a portal to another reality. There, his questions would be answered. Any proper Englishman would believe the whole exercise to be both folly and madness, but Archer had taken a personal peek behind the velvet curtain of reality. He knew now that there were things that went far beyond the realm of traditional human understanding.

Forbidden to bathe, eat proper meals, or have a proper night’s sleep while on the pilgrimage, his traveling party was now a foul-smelling, hazy-eyed group. The hot, bright sun beat down on their backs, and heads hung low. Even so, a sense of peace and purpose filled these travelers. Like a balm, it smoothed out over the entire group.

As for Archer, aside from his smelling like a West End guttersnipe, the lack of sleep or food hardly affected him.

His body was simply too strong now, and any sense of peace recoiled when faced with his desperation.

“Ceremony’s tonight,” Smith said, breaking into Archer’s thoughts. The rivers of wrinkles spreading out from the corners of Smith’s eyes deepened as he squinted into the sinking sun. “You sure you want to do this?”

When Archer simply looked at him, Smith elaborated. “Some white men who do this don’t come back, you know. I think it’s because their orderly minds can’t comprehend what cannot be explained. So they go mad. Their body is fine, sure, but they’re never right in the head again.” He scratched the thick, grizzled stubble along his jaw. “Worse than dying if you ask me.”

And if a man couldn’t die? Had Smith any idea what hell that was? Archer refrained from asking.

“I’ll return,” he said. He’d do anything now.

Smith made a sound of black humor. “You had better. Or I’m leaving your ass here. I ain’t dragging no drooling Englishman all the way back from hell.”

London, April 18, 1879

There was a blister on Miranda’s foot that was likely the size of the English Channel at this point. Deep tremors had plagued the muscles along her back since she started out this morning. They would not end until she was safely shut within the walls of her own bedroom. Maybe not even then. It was getting harder and harder to ignore the fear and the guilt that came with stealing. Her pockets, however? Those were weighty and lined with gold watches, thick billfolds, and the odd bracelet or brooch. A fortune in a day. A good day.

And more than enough to send her to Newgate for years.

Ignoring the need to look over her shoulder, Miranda increased her pace as she strode down the fog-shrouded lane that led to her home. It was a right London particular today, the fog a thick, pea-green bunting that caressed one’s face with icy, foul hands. Fog that clogged the throat and nose and burned the lungs with each heavy breath. One could get lost in such a fog. Indeed, many a tourist did and was reduced to wandering for hours, waiting for the swirling mass to dissipate. As a child, Miranda had often wondered if such fogs were actually doorways to other worlds, and if one could simply walk away and find oneself somewhere else entirely. A nice thought. She smiled at the memory and turned the corner.

Her mind drifted back to another time, when the fog had not been as thick but she had been walking alone, her thoughts just as distracted. That night she had met Him. He had saved her from a pair of street roughs. A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold rippled over her skin and tightened her ni**les. That strange man of dark and shadows had a pull that drew her in still. Strangely, she had wanted to beg him to stay, or perhaps take her with him, wherever it was that he planned to go. Insanity. And yet…

She took a bracing breath. Guilt plucked hard at her heart because she could not ignore that a virtual stranger had talked to her, had looked at her as if he understood her darkest self. Why didn’t she feel that with Martin? He had been her friend all her life. She loved him. Being with Martin gave her a sense of place. He was her history, and would be her future. Why then did she continue to think of someone she would never see again when happiness was hers to grasp? Is this what they referred to as pre-wedding jitters?