Zoe Archer - Sinner's Heart

Here then, the reason why everything changed. The Hellraisers had gained their name through their misdeeds, but one night, several months ago, they became Hellraisers in truth.

My fault, all of this.

Shouts sounded from the house as servants came running to aid their master.

With a snarl, Bram released Colfax, then stalked away. He heard the marquess coughing, and the worried murmurings of the servants, wondering if they should call the constable. But Bram put Colfax behind him, and sank back into the night.

He did not know if he chased something, or if he was the one being hunted. His body churned with restless energy, setting his every nerve aflame with no means of smothering the blaze.

His muttered curse startled a sweep scurrying home. The boy stopped, nearly dropping his brushes. Face blackened with soot, the sweep’s round eyes appeared startlingly pure, the only part of him not coated with grime.

“You look like an imp,” Bram said.

The boy frowned. “What’s an imp?”

“A little demon that stokes the fires of hell.”

Painfully thin, clad in rags and barefoot, the sweep believed enough in divine intervention to cross himself. “Preacher says we aren’t to speak things like that. Tempts the Devil, he says.”

“Did you know the Devil is real?”

“A gent with horns and a tail, what lives under the ground?” The boy scratched his head. “Sounds crooked to me. But I don’t know nothing, so my master says.”

Bram took a step toward the sweep. “What if I told you that the Devil had no horns, no tail? That he looked and dressed like a gentleman, a gentleman with crystal-white eyes, and he called himself Mr. Holliday.”

“Funny name,” the boy said.

“He’s a whimsical creature, the Devil. Can grant you the means to have your deepest desire, but never tells you the cost. Not until it’s too late.”

Not so long ago, Bram would have disputed the existence of the Devil. Evil existed, yes. He’d seen it in the forests of America, heard it in the screams of the dying, smelled its rot as desecrated corpses decayed in the sun. But he’d believed that evil came from the hearts of men, not a creature that ruled a mythological underworld. He knew differently now.

Would this little child tempt the Devil? For all the harshness of his existence, he was still just a child, metaphorically unsoiled, even if coal soot covered him from head to toe. A precious, untouched soul. The Devil hungered for just such a meal.

“Way you speak,” the boy said, eyes round, “it’s like you know ’im.”

Bram’s mouth twisted into a kind of smile. “We’re in business together.” He tossed the sweep a thruppence.

The boy snatched the coin from the air, then clutched it close. “Thank’ee, my lord,” he piped. “If you got a chimney what needs sweeping—”

“Go on home.”

Immediately, the sweep scampered off, the darkness swallowing him. Perhaps Bram had deprived the Devil of one less soul tonight. He felt a perverse satisfaction in denying his patron.

Alone once more. Icy sweat filmed the back of Bram’s neck, and the familiar chasm opened up within him. He pushed himself into motion, into action, his long stride eating up the streets.

Several sedan chairmen hailed him—“Take you wherever you wish, my lord. Your pleasure”—but he needed to feel the ground beneath him, the movement of his body, driving away thought.

The streets he traversed grew more crowded. People thronged, voices raised, mingling together in a wash of jagged sound. A crowd milled outside the opera house in degrees of finery, yet even here tension wove through the atmosphere, as though a brawl might begin at any moment. Strolling whores plucked at his sleeve and threw bold glances like discarded ribbons. He ignored them, losing himself in the city.

“My lord, welcome back!”

Bram started, realizing that he’d taken himself without thinking to the Snake and Sextant. Smoke choked the tavern, both from the fire blazing in the hearth as well as the numerous pipes of its patrons. It smelled of beef, tobacco, beer and horsehair—the scents of a man’s haven. Customers crowded the heavy tables, bent over their chops and ale, jostling elbows, loud with the evening’s attempt at cheer.

But the laughter now was harsh, forced, and the patrons eyed one another with mistrust over the rims of their tankards.

Once, this place had been his refuge. Even it had become corrupted.

The tavern keeper came forward, wiping his hands on his apron, his jowls folded up into an anxious, welcoming smile. “Been too long, my lord.”

“Has it?” Bram’s answer was distracted, his gaze moving over the tavern in restless perusal.

“Aye. At least a month. Mayhap more. Began to worry, I did. My most esteemed patrons all vanish, as if they’d been spirited away.” The tavern keeper coerced a chuckle. “Folly, of course, and here you are now! There’s some blokes in your usual table, but I can shoo ’em off like flies from a carcass.”

Bram looked past the tavern keeper, toward the table where he and the other Hellraisers used to take their meals. The habit had been long-standing. A meal at the Snake, fortifying them for the night’s exploits, and then the exploits themselves: the theater, pleasure gardens, gaming hells, bordellos. The Hellraisers indulged in every privilege, even Leo, who was of common birth. The five of them had been inseparable. Had been.

Other men crowded the Hellraisers’ table tonight. Their clothing was less fine, their manners more coarse, yet, if Bram allowed the smoke to blur his sight, he could almost picture his friends seated there, and trick his ears into hearing them. John would be holding forth on some political invective, only to be calmed by even-tempered Edmund. Leo would divulge all the latest intelligence from the coffee houses—whose fortunes were up, whose were down—and Whit would lay bets on anything, even when a drop of ale might fall from the rim on one’s mug. And Bram would try to coax all of them to join him for a night’s debauch. It never took much to tempt them.

“I imagine your friends will be joining you shortly, my lord,” the tavern keeper continued, “so I’ll just clear those other lads out.”

“Don’t.”

The tavern keeper raised his brows. “My lord? It is your table, after all—”

“They won’t be joining me.”

“Ah, well, gentlemen will have their quarrels.” The man gave another forced laugh. “It will all set itself to rights, my lord. You wait and see. In the meantime, I’ve got a lovely place right here for you, all nice by the fire.” He waved toward one of the settles nearest the hearth.

Bram felt like the wood burning in the fireplace—black and blistered on the outside, inside carved away by flame. His familiar haunt only reminded him of privation.

“My lord?”

The tavern keeper’s voice followed Bram as he turned and left. Whit and Leo had disappeared from London, but Bram was the one in exile.

How did she come to this place? Valeria Livia Corva could not feel her body, was merely a shade, yet she was dragged through one man’s consciousness, as if her foot had caught in the stirrup of a runaway horse. She was jostled, careening, his thoughts as vivid to her as her own memories.

Time held no meaning, nor notions of space. This was the swirling vortex of one history, and she spun through the currents, without means of fixing herself in place.

Even her own memories were fragments. Temples, rites. An ever-present hunger for more and more power. The summoning of a great and terrible evil. A frightful battle, and then . . .

A millennium of darkness, trapped in the nebulous boundary between life and death. Madness. That had been her punishment—she remembered that much.