Sinner's Heart

Chapter 18

The giant rift in the ground had closed. Heaps of demon bodies lay across the field, yet already they rotted. Within hours, they would likely be nothing more than stains upon the grass.

Bram didn’t care. All that mattered was the woman in his arms. Her breathing was too shallow, her skin too pale. Burns covered her, angry and red.

“A physician,” he snapped, laying her down gently upon a patch of clean grass. “A surgeon. Fetch someone. Now.”

He did not see the exchanged glances between the others.

“There isn’t time,” Whit said, and Bram hated the pity in his friend’s voice.

“Then I’ll doctor her.” He tore off his coat and wadded it beneath her head. Glowering up at Anne and Zora, he snarled, “Tear your petticoats. I need to bind her wounds. Stop looking at me like that, damn it, and get to work.”

He poured through all he knew of field surgery. One could pull out a bullet, sew up a wound, and hope the injured soldier survived. But this . . . Horrible burns, and her breath rattled, as though a broken rib had punctured a lung. What could he do to help? He was no damned sawbones with an Edinburgh education. At best, all he knew was how to keep someone alive long enough to reach a surgeon. Yet even he knew she wouldn’t last that long.

He started when someone lightly touched his shoulder. Zora.

“There may be a way.”

“Anything.”

Zora knelt beside Livia. She motioned for Anne to sit at Livia’s head.

“And us?” asked Leo.

“Hope.” She turned to Bram. “Once I was poisoned by demons, and verged on death. Livia used her power to help Whit heal me. Partially. They gave me strength enough to see the job done, myself.”

He clung to her offer of tenuous optimism. “What do we do?”

A rueful shrug from Zora. “Let our instinct direct us. Lend her back the power she gave us, that she may find the rest of the way herself.”

Bram took Livia’s hand, careful to keep from pressing against her burns. Zora took Livia’s other hand, and Anne pressed the very tips of her fingers to Livia’s forehead.

There were more hands on his shoulders. Bram glanced up and saw Whit and Leo standing close. They wore similar looks of empathy, and he saw in their eyes, their faces, that they too had seen their women imperiled, and knew what Bram suffered.

Of all the deeds the Hellraisers had ever done together, all their revelry, the dissolution, even their moments of camaraderie—this was their truest moment. It bound them together in a way simple friendship never could.

His throat, already raw and tight, closed even further. He could manage only a nod, then turned back to Livia, lying too still upon the grass.

As Zora had suggested, he let instinct guide him. He closed his eyes. The magic remaining in him hadn’t the same potency as it possessed when Livia had been a spirit. But it had to be enough. And he wasn’t alone.

As he drew upon the glow of power within him, he felt it—the fresh surges of strength from Zora and Anne. For a moment, he rebelled. It was wrong to join his power with anyone other than Livia. Yet he knew this remained his one hope, and so he permitted their magic to unite with his. It formed a gold and silver radiance. He channeled this light into her, into all the recesses of her damaged, broken body. He sensed the raw pain of her wounds from within as the energy moved through her. This was a kind of intimacy he’d never known—and prayed to never experience again.

Faintly, faintly, the damaged tissues began to repair themselves, healing minutely.

It wasn’t enough. She could not survive, not at this sluggish rate of mending.

Magic alone couldn’t heal her. But he had nothing more.

No—that wasn’t true. He had love.

Once, they had shared thoughts, the ability to communicate without voicing a single word aloud. Even if he spoke now, he doubted she could hear him, sunk too deeply into the twilight between life and death. So he poured his thoughts into her.

You think I’ll allow you to slip away from me? That I won’t go chasing after you?

He snarled. If anyone thought him a madman for growling beside the terribly still form of his lover, he did not care.

I rose high in the army, and quickly. Know why? Because I never let anything go. I ran my prey into the ground. A fort that needed capturing? I took it. A supply chain to be cut off? I severed it.

It’ll be the same with you, love. I went to the realm of the dead for you. I shall do it again. And again. As many times as I must. I won’t let you go.

Stubborn witch, understand this—before you tore into my life, I was . . . I was more of a ghost than you. A shade of a man. Haunting this world but without sense enough to realize I wasn’t truly alive.

Then . . . you.

He searched through her body, the broken parts of her, feeling her suffering as though it was his own. No wounds he’d ever received ever pained him as much.

You gave me more life than I’d ever possessed. Domineering, imperious, proud. Foolish ghost that I was, I believed you were my punishment for a life of sin.

No man had such sweet punishment. No man was less deserving of redemption. And yet, you fought for me. When I had abandoned hope, you continued to believe.

I cannot . . . He struggled, for merely thinking these thoughts was an agony. I cannot live without you. I won’t. I love you. And to have you with me, I will tear this world and the next apart.

“Please.” He did not know he spoke aloud until he opened his eyes to see Anne and Zora watching him with pity. His voice was a broken whisper as he bent low, laying his head lightly upon her breast. The fabric of her gown grew damp, and he knew he was the cause. “As you fought for me, fight for yourself. For us.”

Beneath his cheek, her heart slowed. Stopped.

His own stopped with it. Pain the likes of which he’d never known tore through him. An animal sound ripped from his chest. Hazily, he felt the hands of his friends on his shoulders, trying to offer comfort. He shook them off, and clutched handfuls of her gown as he kept his head buried against her breast.

A faint beat under his cheek. It came again, stronger this time. Then once more. With each successive throb, her heartbeat strengthened. Until, at last, it came steadily.

Lifting his head, he stared down at her, but her eyes remained closed. The rattling in her lungs disappeared, and her breathing cleared.

“You’ve never yielded,” he rasped. “Not once. And you won’t tonight.”

Livia continued to lie motionless. Yet he peered closely at her exposed skin. The burns were mending, the skin fresh and undamaged.

“Light,” he demanded of Zora.

Flames appeared around the Romani woman’s hands, and she held them up to provide illumination. Bram allowed himself a shuddering exhale. Livia was healing.

He cradled her hand in both of his, watching, waiting.

The first streaks of pink and crimson appeared in the sky as she opened her eyes.

Her gaze immediately searched for, and found, Bram. “Is it . . .” Her voice was barely a whisper. “The door has closed?”

“Trapping the Devil and John together.” He brushed his mouth against hers, savoring the feel of her breath on his lips. “It’s done.”

She said in a thready voice, “Help me up.”

With infinite care, he curved an arm around her shoulders and eased her up to sitting, resting her back against his chest. The feel of her . . . he’d never tire of it.

She looked at the other Hellraisers, each in turn, and gave them a soft, exhausted smile. “All of you. No better allies.”

Whit said, “None of us had a better champion.”

Leo, Anne, and Zora nodded their agreement.

“The threat is gone, then?” Anne asked.

“Hell is John’s home now,” Livia said.

Frowning, Zora lifted her hands. “My magic . . . it’s gone.”

Anne’s gaze turned inward, then she looked at Leo. “Mine, as well.”

“The price of healing me,” Livia said.

Yet Anne and Zora appeared untroubled by this loss. “Seems a fair exchange,” Zora said. “You gave us our power, and we returned it when you needed it.”

“And we’ve fought and defeated the Devil,” Anne said. “That is why you gave us our powers in the first place.”

Zora murmured, “With Wafodu guero imprisoned again, there’s no need for our magic.”

“We’re ordinary women, now.” Anne smiled, rueful.

“Not ordinary,” Leo said.

At the same time, Whit said, “Never.”

Bram gazed at his friends. They formed dark shapes against the paling sky, a fragile, deep blue. The sun was rising higher. Soon, morning would arrive.

“We wore the name of Hellraiser once,” he said. “And it was a shameful thing. But we can bear that name again—with pride.”

Both Leo and Whit grinned, and though they bore passing resemblance to the pleasure-seeking scoundrels they once were, all of them had transformed. Honed by purpose into something sharper, better than they had been. And as Anne rose to stand beside Leo, and Zora with Whit, Bram understood that their true metamorphosis had come with the arrival of three extraordinary women.

Bram’s gaze moved back down to the woman he held. She looked bruised, weary, yet never more beautiful. She returned his look, her own dark and replete. Her fingers trailed along his jaw, down the length of his scar, and he minded her touch not at all. He soaked up the sensation.

She moved her hand lower and began to pluck at the buttons of his waistcoat. At his curious look, she murmured, “Let me see you. Whole and unmarked.”

It took some careful wrangling, with her still resting against him, but he managed to undo the top of his waistcoat and pull at the laces of his shirt. The first gilding rays of sunlight touched him, revealing the flesh across his chest to be free of any markings. Only a few old scars, and those had been honestly earned.

Her smile created a new sunrise within him. She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his chest.

He was vaguely aware that Whit, Zora, Leo, and Anne had all drifted away, leaving him and Livia some small measure of privacy.

Cradling Livia close, he brought his mouth to hers in a kiss that pierced him with its tenderness.

“A punishment?” she murmured against his lips. “That is what I am?”

“A sweet punishment,” he corrected.

“One you justly deserve.”

“Two inveterate sinners. We deserve each other.” They held each other, and he felt the sunlight warming them.

A small frown appeared between her brows. “I hope this doesn’t mean that from this moment on, we must be good.”

“If anyone can find a way to make being good wicked,” he said before taking her mouth once more, “it’s you and I.”