Sinner's Heart

Chapter 10

From his vantage at the window, Bram watched the street. Christ Church’s bell chimed the nine o’clock hour. The hour of business and industry—or so he’d been told, possessing neither the need to do business nor the impulse to industry. Good people walked the streets of London during the daylight hours. Silk weavers concentrated their shops here in Spitalfields, and, as the price of imported silk was exorbitant, the weavers were never idle. After all, England needed its finery.

But this morning, almost no one was on the street, walking to or from their workshops. A few men hurried past, gazes fixed on the ground, and one woman darted between two buildings, her shawl pulled over her head. Bram couldn’t hear the clicking of looms. A child cried and was quickly stifled.

Bracing his hands on either side of the cracked casement, he stared down at the avenue and felt the frown shaping a pleat between his brows.

“Something’s wrong,” he muttered.

“It often is,” answered Livia behind him.

A corner of his mouth turned up. Her mordant wit remained unchanged—yet he expected no less. A night’s pleasure would not alter the heart of her, no matter how searing that pleasure had been.

If anyone would have told him that his most intense sexual experience would involve a woman he couldn’t touch and who could not touch him, he would have laughed in disbelief and told his informant to keep drinking.

But last night . . . Nothing in the whole of his wicked, wayward life had ever equaled what he and Livia had shared. Even the thought of it now turned him molten. Sex had always been a purely physical action. With Livia, it had transformed into something far beyond himself, beyond the needs of the body, or the temporary cessation of sorrow.

Yet that pleasure couldn’t hold back the evil he could sense growing.

“It’s getting worse,” he said.

“John and the Dark One know you are no longer their ally.” Livia came to hover beside him, her radiance pale in the cold gray morning. “Of a certain, the balance continues to tip.”

His stomach growled. Smirking, he laid a hand atop his empty stomach. “The doom of the world may hang in the balance, but I need breakfast.”

She rolled her eyes. “Mortals and your appetites.” “You enjoyed those appetites last night.”

“Most assuredly.”

“There will be more.” Moving away from the window, he stepped close to her. If she had been flesh, at this nearness he would have felt the heat of her body, smelled the fragrance of her skin. “I will give you pleasure to rival the gods.”

“An audacious boast,” she said, tipping up her chin. Yet her eyes darkened further and she ran her tongue over her bottom lip.

He’d happily burn down half of London just to kiss her.

“Not a boast, but the truth,” he answered. “Whatever you experienced in your mortal life, any other lovers you may have had—I’ll make you forget them all. You’ll know only me.”

She stared at him for a moment, her lips parted. “I want nothing more.”

He reached for her, yet his hand passed through the curve of her neck. Acrid frustration welled.

Unconcerned with the demands of his heart, his stomach gave another complaining rumble. The last meal he had eaten had been a hastily bolted chop sometime yesterday afternoon.

“Go,” Livia said, smiling. “Attend to your quotidian needs.”

A thorough inspection revealed that nothing edible remained in the pantry. He’d have to go out to obtain something to eat.

“If I step out of doors in this,” he said, plucking at his torn and bloody clothes, “I’ll be dragged to Newgate as a suspected murderer.”

“The law may show leniency if you tell them you only killed demons.”

“Never mind Newgate. I’ll be hauled to Bedlam and be lucky if the visitors pelt me only with rotten vegetables.”

A search revealed a large chest shoved into the corner of a tiny room adjoining the bedchamber. Bram hefted the chest out of this small room. Setting the trunk on the floor of the bedchamber, he rattled the lid, and discovered it was locked tight.

“Could be empty,” he muttered, “or simply hold bedclothes. Though I could wear a sheet as a toga.”

Livia sniffed. “It takes more than a length of linen to wear a toga. However,” she added with an appreciative leer, “if you strip down to your smallclothes, you’d make a fine gladiator.”

He discovered he rather enjoyed being ogled. A thread of shadow worked its way through him, however. Once, he’d been a kind of gladiator, and gained scars both visible and unseen.

“I’ve a way to discover what’s inside,” she continued, kneeling down beside the chest. Seeing her on her knees brought to mind far too many distracting ideas and images—none of which could ever come to pass.

As he watched, Livia stuck her head inside the heavy wooden box, disappearing up to her shoulders. She reemerged a second later. “Clothing,” she announced.

“If I were a housebreaker,” he said, “you would be extremely useful. I’d avoid all the empty coffers and plunder only those replete with treasure.”

She started when he rammed the heel of his boot against the lock. After a few solid kicks, the metal broke apart.

“Magic could have opened the lock more readily,” she said dryly.

“My way is more satisfying.” He lifted the lid of the chest then pulled out its contents. A man’s velvet coat and waistcoat, both musty, the embroidery along the cuffs and lapels frayed. Holding up the coat, he studied it with a frown.

“This was my father’s.”

“You and he were of a size,” Livia noted.

“He always seemed so big to me.” Yet, after Bram slipped off his torn coat and waistcoat and donned his father’s clothing, he discovered they fit. He strode into the other chamber, Livia right behind him. There, in the cracked mirror propped against the wall, he considered his shattered reflection.

“He’d wear this to church,” Bram said, staring at himself.

“Baron Rothwell always made an impressive figure, even when supposedly honoring a higher power. I’d look back and forth between him and my brother as we sat in our pew. Arthur seemed so small next to Father.” Bram shook his head. “That poor sod—I never envied him.”

“But Arthur was the heir, the favored one.”

He snorted. “Even better for me. I didn’t want to have to wear the responsibility and decorum of the title. All I wanted was to pursue my own desires.” He tugged on the sleeve of the coat. “Now I’m Baron Rothwell. Not the heir my father had wanted.”

The coat was of an old-fashioned style, its skirt fuller than the current mode, its cuffs wider, and the waistcoat was longer than modern fashion dictated. Aside from an odor of must and cedar and the unraveling embroidery, the coat remained in decent condition. His father had always demanded the finest quality.

“There’s a resemblance, as well,” said Livia. “Between you and your sire.”

“I don’t see it.” Father had been a formidable man who expected utter filial obedience. Bram remembered how cold his father’s blue eyes could look when he was defied—and Bram had seen them cold many times. In the rare moments when Bram had seen Father without a wig, his close-shorn hair had been black as night. Black as Bram’s own hair.

The mirror reflected him in jagged shards, a piecemeal man. A broken distortion of his father’s successor.

He turned away from the mirror.

“My belly is empty,” he said.

When he ventured out into the street, with Livia an invisible presence beside him, he realized it did not matter what he wore. No one looked at him, too busy hurrying to their destinations. An abrasive cold covered the city, the cobblestones treacherous and slick, people’s breath coming in white puffs as they hurried in and out of buildings.

Bram himself walked quickly down the street, making sure that no suspicious characters lurked in alleys or trailed behind him.

Is it possible John would know where you might be? Livia asked.

Doubtful. Even I’ve never been to the Spitalfields house until yesterday. Just knew its direction from correspondence. Can’t be too cautious, however.

Not anymore, she answered.

At a pie shop, Bram purchased two meat pies purported to be made of mutton. The pinch-faced shopkeeper wrapped up Bram’s food in old broadsheets, looking nervously at the street all the while.

The pies weren’t quite the fare Bram was accustomed to, but he’d eaten meat laced with maggots during a long siege in the Colonies. Suspect pie hardly bothered him.

“You’re my first customer today, my lord,” the pieman said. “Thinking of closing up shop after you.”

“Not a soul?” Bram asked.

The shopkeeper shook his head. “Hardly anyone out these days. Been an ill feeling in the city for a long while, but it gets worse by the hour.”

Bram muttered something inconsequential to the shopkeeper and set a handful of coins down on the counter. After buying a flagon of cider from a nearly empty tavern, he hurried back to the vacant house. Possibly John had eyes throughout the city, keeping watch, and Bram didn’t want to risk being seen in public.

In the bare parlor, he ate his meal quickly, crouched on the floor like a scavenger. Livia made troubled circles as she drifted around the chamber.

“John’s power grows,” she said, voice taut. “I feel it like a web spreading over the city, and beyond. The barrier between the underworld and this realm weakens. He’ll open the gate, and soon.”

His food consumed, Bram crumpled the grease-stained papers and threw them into the corner. A rat emerged from a hole in the baseboard, sniffing, then grabbed the paper and scuttled back into its den.

“We tried to find him at Wimbledon, but he sent his minions instead. Perhaps a more direct assault is necessary. I’ll go to his home.” Bram rose to standing. “Persuade my way inside. Then put this”—he gripped the hilt of his sword—“into his heart.”

Livia drifted close, her lips pressed tight. “We saw what John sent to dispatch his rivals. Imagine what guards his own home. Should you make it past his front steps, a host of demons will bar you further entrance. Your own gift won’t work against them.” She clenched her hands into fists. “Our joined magic isn’t reliable enough to take on someone as strong as John.”

“If you were flesh—”

“I’m not and never will be again.”

“But if you were,” he pressed, “would you have enough power to break John’s curse, bring the other Hellraisers to London? You had the power to raise the Devil when you were flesh—this should be nothing to you.”

“My magic draws its strength from living energy. Of which I have none.” She growled in frustration. “These are meaningless pursuits, these hypothetical questions. My body is lost to me, and so is the full strength of my magic. There’s nothing to be done. The task is impossible.”

“A dangerous word to say to me, impossible.” He stalked the chamber, keeping pace with his racing thoughts. “Where is your physical body?”

“Long since turned to dust.”

He wheeled back to face her. “I saw your memories. When you imprisoned the Devil, you stepped on the other side of the door to close it. You didn’t leave behind a corpse. The only bones the Hellraisers found in the temple belonged to a Roman soldier. But your body is out there, trapped somewhere. Between the realm of the living and the dead.”

“A place beyond the Ambitus,” she said, “making it irretrievable.”

“You don’t know that for certain.”

“I know that one cannot jaunt back and forth between this mortal world and the underworld. To regain my body, to bring it back—that is hopeless.”

A thought had begun to grow, spreading its roots through his mind, his heart. The very idea of it whetted him to a knife’s point. He felt sharp and thin as a blade, but expansive as imagination itself.

“There’s no hope for our fight if you stay this way.” He waved at the translucency of her form.

“We might battle,” she admitted with a scowl, “but never win.”

“And the world would go up in flames.”

Tense, silent, she nodded.

He understood now. What had been the smallest granules of possibility became tempered steel. He thought he might feel fear, or doubt. Yet the more he considered it, the more he understood its rightness.

This was who he had been before going to war. When he’d had purpose, and a belief in something larger than himself. Only now, he had lost his infantile optimism. He knew the world, now. It was a merciless place. Only savagery thrived.

He could be brutal. Brutality was part of him—he embraced it now.

Calm and purpose enveloped him. He felt a peace hitherto unknown.

Everything in his life had been leading him to this point. “I can secure our victory.” He took several steps back. His gaze never leaving hers, he said, “Veni, geminus.”

“You cannot,” Livia cried, but she spoke too late. The words had been said.

The smell of burning paper thickened the air. The light within the derelict chamber dimmed, as though a bank of clouds obscured the sun. Shadows congealed and then—

There stood the geminus. Bram’s double.

“What a hideous bastard,” Bram said.

The geminus glowered at him. “My master is displeased by your perfidy.”

“I don’t care,” Bram answered.

The creature opened its mouth to speak, then espied Livia. Its features tightened, fearful and angry. “Her. She has poisoned you, turned you against us.”

“Leave the ghost out of this,” said Bram before Livia could snap back a reply. “Disappear if you want, go slinking back to your master with tales of my whereabouts. But, stay, only a moment. I’ve a theory I want to test.”

In a movement too quick to see, Bram drew his sword and cut it across the geminus’s face.

The creature shouted, bringing its hand up to cover its wounded cheek. At the same time, Bram gave a small hiss. A slash of red had appeared on his face, precisely where he’d injured the geminus.

“It’s true, then,” Bram said with a grim smile. “Any wound you sustain also injures me.”

The geminus sneered. “Your Hellraiser friends learned the same. There is no harm that befalls me that will not also hurt you. A scratch, a bruise. To wound me is to wound yourself, whilst my master possesses your soul. Which he most assuredly does.”

“Excellent,” said Bram, baring his teeth.

He plunged his sword right into the geminus’s heart. Livia stared in horror. No sound came from her mouth. She could not move, could do nothing but look on, appalled and terror-struck, as Bram sank his blade deeper into the geminus’s chest. The moment his sword had pierced the creature’s flesh, both he and the geminus gasped aloud. A wound immediately appeared on Bram’s chest, directly over his heart. It spread crimson and dark, staining the velvet of his waistcoat.

The creature gaped at the sword deep in its breast. It turned wide, stunned eyes up at Bram. “What . . . ? But you . . .”

“Yes,” said Bram tightly.

He hissed as he withdrew his sword from the geminus. Blood seeped faster, both from him and his double. Ashen, the geminus stumbled, then sank to its knees. It pressed its hands to its chest. More blood oozed from between its fingers. A mortal wound.

Bram swayed on his feet. His chest was bathed in scarlet, yet he wore a fierce look of triumph.

Livia rushed to him and tried to place her hands against the wound, but they passed right through him. She fought to locate her magic, seeking its radiance within that she might work some spell, any spell, to help. Yet the more she searched, the less she found, only a growing darkness. Fear unlike any she had ever known shredded her.

“Gods, what have you done?” she cried.

“What I . . . had to.” His face white, he listed, then went down hard on one knee.

Rage against her phantom stage threatened to choke her. She could do nothing, not even hold him up or touch him, comfort him. All she could do was watch as his leg gave out beneath him, and he toppled to the ground.

Dimly, she heard the geminus collapse onto the bare floorboards, as well. Yet her attention, and terror, held fast to Bram. She sank down, stroking her spectral hands over his pale forehead. His gaze never left her face.

“I can’t . . . I can’t stop this,” she choked.

“Don’t . . . want you . . . to stop it.”

“No.” She had no tears to shed. She had nothing but fury and sorrow. “There’s a way to save you. I’ll fetch a healer.”

He shook his head, a faint movement. “No leeches. Can’t be . . . saved. I have to . . . die.” Already, the brilliant blue luster of his eyes faded.

“Why?” she demanded.

“For you and . . . for me. Livia . . .” He reached for her, his hand cupping her face, yet contacting only air. “I . . .”

His hand dropped to the floor. His eyes stared up, glassy and vacant.

“Bram! Bram!”

He did not answer her. He was dead.

Livia screamed. A scream of rage and grief and helplessness. She did not care if any mortal on the street could hear her. She did not care if the heavens collapsed and crushed the world. She cared for nothing. All she felt was anguish.

Whatever loss she had experienced in the whole of her existence—watching the destruction of Londinium, the sacrifice of her life to trap the Dark One—these were but motes of dust compared to this devastating agony.

All the power she had ruthlessly hoarded, for what? She couldn’t help Bram, could not bring him back from death. She was as weak and useless as any mortal.

Her scream continued. It had no beginning, no end.

The walls rattled. Creatures that dwelled within them ran, scurrying for safety. And then—the windows exploded inward. Glass flew in every direction. It sprayed in glittering arcs.

Mortal voices exclaimed outside. Fleeing footsteps clattered over the paving stones.

Livia had no breath to catch. No need for air. She would scream and scream for all eternity, crouched beside Bram’s body, until the house crumbled, until he was nothing but bones, until time itself became ash.

The darkness of the Ambitus was absolute. Not merely the absence of light, but the absence of everything. Heat, cold, time, distance. Bram plunged through this emptiness, or it enveloped him, or he was part of it. He had no sense of anything but oblivion.

No—not true. He knew one thing: Livia. Her face, beautiful and hollow with mystified grief, as she looked down at him. He knew regret, too. For he would have done anything to keep her from such agony. Yet there had been one choice, one path.

Or so he hoped. This fathomless shadow, he had not anticipated it. This place was very different without Livia’s guiding magic and presence. He sensed a difference, too, for his body had died, severing him from the realm of the living

Was this it? Would there be no more? Had he thrown everything away for a chance that would never materialize?

I won’t allow it.

Immersed in the darkness of the Ambitus, he felt a sharp tug. Drawing him downward. It felt like talons on his legs, trying to sink into his flesh and drag him away. He sensed something’s immense hunger, a ravenous demanding of more and more, and the promise of pain. It waited for him, wanted him. The time had come for the bargain to be fulfilled. What had begun months ago in a ruined temple now saw its realization. For such a man as he, there was no alternative.

He was being dragged down into Hell.

Fury and fear tore through him. Not fear of punishment, but that he wouldn’t succeed in his goal. He’d killed himself for a reason.

He had to break free of this relentless pull. Had to reach her. Everything would be lost if he failed.

He fought. Using his every ounce of strength and will, he fought. He kicked free of the grasping claws, grappling with the clinging shadows. Scaled arms thrashed against him, and he battled back, straining his power to its utmost. Yet it would take more than this to break away from the covetous grip of Hell.

Livia. He must get to her. It was for her that he ran a blade through his heart.

Summoning her face in his mind, he recalled her voice, her very essence. The unstoppable force that was her. It was a wonder he had resisted her for as long as he had, for she had a will as unbending as his own. More so, in truth. Yet even if he could not match her for resolve, his own was formidable, and he used it to shove back at Hell clutching at his heels.

The grip on him loosened. A howl of outrage sounded as he pushed away.

The amorphous darkness receded. Not fully—he was still mired in shadow, but shapes began to emerge, distinct forms. Form and distance solidified, including his own.

Shadows shaped themselves into rolling hills steeped in dusk. A continuous wind swept across the hills, smelling of loam and freshly dug graves. Isolated stands of trees dotted the hills. Shapes crouched upon their branches, larger than birds. Yet it was too dark for Bram to distinguish what, exactly, the crouched things were. A lace of rivers threaded through the landscape, glinting dully beneath a mist-shrouded evening sky. As he watched, the rivers shifted like snakes, and the hills undulated as if they were waves. They made soft groaning sounds.

Human figures roamed over the rippling hills, searching, directionless. Shadows and distance hid their faces. But everywhere he looked he saw these restless forms, and heard their voices upon the wind, speaking words without meaning, the rise and fall of human yearning tumbling over the knolls.

This was humanity’s deepest mystery and greatest fear. The realm of the dead. The place no one could avoid.

Yet he sensed that these shadowed, unstable hills were but one aspect of the hereafter. He could sense its enormity, far beyond the limits of mortal understanding. He had already felt the tug of Hell—felt it now—and this place held a fraught tension, as though in a perpetual state of uncertainty. Neither the reward of Heaven, nor the torment of Hell.

Torment which awaited him. He had pushed back Hell’s claws, but they wouldn’t be held in abeyance forever. They would find him again. Not a matter of if but when.

One thought propelled him forward—find her.

Dried grass crackled under his feet as he ran. The tree branches were bare as bones. Nothing lived here, nothing thrived or grew. The sky overhead remained empty and without the possibility of light. No sun would ever rise. No stars would emerge, and the moon would never climb over the shifting horizon. The things in the tree branches muttered from their perches.

The ground shifted beneath him as he ran. He struggled to keep his footing, staggering like a drunkard but always moving forward, impelled by his need to find Livia. He held her image fixedly within his mind and heart—thoughts of her had helped free him briefly from Hell’s grasp. He must use her as a beacon now, her light guiding him in this vast wasteland.

As he ran and the hills moved, faces emerged from the shadows, people pressing forward. They glowed as they neared. Upon their bodies they wore clothing from every era, from his own time back to coarse tunics and woad. Upon their faces they wore expressions of loss and bewilderment.

He shuddered inwardly. To be trapped for eternity in this half existence, neither rewarded nor punished, but perpetually adrift, stripped of hope. Not unlike the life he had been leading since his return from war. A shade of a man in eternal suspension.

He had purpose now.

Bram did not linger. He sped on, holding fast to thoughts of Livia, sensing the hungering presence of Hell at his back.

He willed the moving hills, commanding them with his determination. I shall find her.

As though responding to his thoughts, the hills buckled, forming an even darker vale where the shadows thickened and a twisting stream ran along the valley.

“Bring her to me, damn it,” he growled.

“Bram—?”

He swung around. There, breaking free from the gloom on the other side of the stream, a woman in a saffron tunic appeared. She stepped nearer.

Her form . . . was solid.

It was her. He had willed her to him. And there she stood. Livia.

Bram stared, seeing Livia for the first time as an actual woman. Not a ghost or the hazy shape of her memories, but alive, and entire.

Her skin was olive-hued and burnished, her hair an opulent brown. And her eyes. Dark and sparkling and wise beyond measure. Wicked, too. Hers was a wisdom not limited solely to the mind.

When he saw grass flatten beneath her sandaled feet as she approached, his heart pounded. She did not glide or hover, but walked, her lush hips hypnotic beneath the silk of her gown. They stared at each other, he on one bank of the stream, she on the other. The stream itself was less than six feet across, so that, when he looked upon her, he could see the rise and fall of her chest, the wonderment that parted her lips.

“You are truly here?” Disbelief and hope tightened her voice.

She sounded different, as well. Her words came from actual breath, and were far richer and more potent than he could have believed.

“I’ve come for you.”

“No one leaves this place.”

“You will.” He held out a hand for her.

He could only reach as far as the middle of the stream, his arm outstretched, his hand open and waiting.

For a moment, her gaze moved back and forth between his hand and his face. Then, slowly, she reached for him.

His breath refused to come as he watched her stretch out her hand. For so long he had wanted to touch her. To feel her skin against his. He’d never wanted anything more.

And then, at last, her fingers touched his.

The contact of skin to skin roared through him like a lightning storm. Only the brush of her fingers against his, and the pleasure was so acute he fought to remain standing.

Her fingers moved down the length of his, until their palms met, and they clasped each other’s wrists.

He felt her pulse beneath his fingertips, and his throat ached. He tore his gaze away from the sight to look up at her face. Her eyes glistened.

Yet this was not enough. Still holding tight to her wrist, he stepped into the stream. Icy water flowed around his boots, and the rocky bed was slick, but he barely noticed. He pulled her toward him.

She gasped as she plunged forward, splashing into the water. And gasped again when their bodies met.

The stream twisted away, leaving them standing upon the ground. This, too, shifted beneath them like a restless animal.

He didn’t notice. He felt her, touched her. His mind stilled. His heart raced.

The length of her body pressed against his, warm and firm and living. Her arms were around his shoulders, pressing him tightly to her, and all he could do was simply feel her. In this vale of death, he knew only the sensation of Livia touching him and her in his arms. Made all the more wondrous and agonizing because it was their first and last time they would ever feel one another.

She pulled back enough to gaze up at him. “There is only one way to reach this place—death.”

“You did not die to come here.”

“But you did.”

He nodded once, brief and clipped.

She clenched his shoulders. “Gods. Why?” Her throat worked. “Why would you doom yourself?”

“If one of us needs to be alive, it must be you.”

“Don’t you understand,” she cried. “They will come for you. The demons. They’ll drag you to Hades. There’s no escaping them.”

“I’ve already felt them at my heels. If I can outrun them a little longer, long enough to get you back to the realm of the living”—he smiled faintly—“then everything is as it should be.” He threaded his fingers with hers. “It was my intent to find you and bring you back. I’ve accomplished one of those goals. Now it’s time to realize the other.”

“Nobody has ever returned.”

“You will.”

“But you shall not.”

He remained silent.

“Damn you,” she choked, pressing her face against his chest.

He held her close, cupping the back of her head. If they could only stay like this. If only they had more than this moment. It would have to sustain him for what was to come.

And so it would.

Bram tensed as screams like rusty knives punctured the quiet. Even the creatures perched in nearby trees muttered in fear at the sound.

“Flee,” Livia urged. She held up her hand, and glowing energy danced between her fingers. “I’ll attempt to hold the demons back. You might conceal yourself, find some other realm in which to hide. Please. I cannot watch them drag you away.”

He stepped back, her fingers still threaded with his. “I’ll run, but I’m taking you with me. I will see you back amongst the living. And then . . .” He made himself grin. “Hell will have to contend itself with a true Hellraiser.”