Текст книги "Sinner's Heart"
Автор книги: Zoë Archer
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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 19 страниц)
“Done it . . . three times.”
“Temporary impediments.” With one clawed hand and one human hand, he tore at the remaining pieces of mortal flesh clinging to his visage. A monster stood before her. “Too much evil exists in the world. The ground is fertile. So long as mankind persists, so do I. Even in your own heart, I’m there. In your greed, your pride. I am always part of you. Part of every mortal. And I will never. Be. Vanquished.”
With each of these final words, the vines around her tightened. Her vision dimmed and she felt something crack. No!If only she had a little more time. The spell was nearly finished.
The living cage around her abruptly loosened, and she fell to the ground. Body screaming with effort, she looked up, and nearly wept.
Bram was here. He’d blindsided the Dark One and thrust his sword through the Devil’s shoulder. It had been enough to break off the attacking vines.
He’d never looked more glorious, more deadly. The Dark One turned, and the sword tore from his putrid flesh. He slashed with his claws, and Bram used his blade to parry. Bram’s sword gleamed bright in the thick waves of heat. The Devil struggled to hold him back, flinging wave after wave of burning debris and conjured blades.
John stood on the other side of the portal, watching, clearly torn between staying in the mortal realm and going to the assistance of his master.
Bram countered the Dark One’s deadly attacks, but he couldn’t block them all. He bore each wound with grim endurance. Fury tightened his face, an anger she had never seen. Even the rage he had felt when fighting in the war, witnessing the wanton death and ruin—that was nothing compared to the wrath he showed now.
For all his strength and skill, his opponent was powerful, and he took wounds over his face and body. Yet he never relented, continuing his attack, sweeping and stabbing with his blade even as blood dripped from his face, his hands.
As she lay sprawled across the smoldering ground, Livia gathered the last of her magic. She hammered together the final link in the chain. With the last piece completed, the chain glowed to life, becoming visible. It coiled beside her, heavy and solid, forged from the strength of the blacksmith god. Thick shackles the width of an ankle were attached at each end of the chain.
She focused all her power, and the chain rose up like a serpent. Muttering a Gallaecian incantation, she guided the chain toward the Dark One. But her intended target kept moving, avoiding Bram’s attacks. She hadn’t the strength to chase the Devil, and the chain began to lower closer to the ground.
Bram saw her struggle, and renewed his assault. He backed the Dark One toward her.
Too occupied by Bram’s assault, the Devil did not notice the binding until it was too late. She fastened the shackle around his ankle.
Screaming in anger, the Devil clawed at the fetter. Yet she had done her work well, and the binding would not come off.
John hovered, hesitating, at the portal. He moved to cross the portal to help the Dark One.
As the Dark One struggled, Bram crouched beside her. Concern dug deep lines into his face as he carefully gathered her up. Her wounds must have been terrible, for as Bram gazed at her, his eyes took on a wet sheen.
“Tell me what I can do to help,” he said, hoarse.
She had reached the limit of her strength. “Take the other manacle. Fasten it to my ankle.”
His brows drew down in a sharp scowl. “Binding you to him.”
“Has to be. Need a mortal to bind him. Keep him imprisoned. In Hell.”
“Then I’ll do it.” He reached for the shackle.
“No.” She struggled to stop him, yet her arms refused to move.
“I goddamn love you, Livia,” he snarled. “So don’t tell me to trap you here in Hell. It won’t happen.”
“Someone has to anchor him.” The effort it took to speak made her dizzy. “Cannot let it be you.”
For a moment, he only frowned at her. Then his eyes narrowed, his expression turning shrewd.
“What—?”
He pressed a soft kiss to her forehead, then gently laid her down. She levered herself up, watching him as he stood and cupped his hands around his mouth.
“Know why the other Hellraisers turned against you, John?” he called toward the portal. “Because you were never one of us. Not truly. We pitied you. No one else would have you. Skulking around Whitehall like a beggar. An outcast.”
John remained at the doorway, though he still did not cross the threshold. “The four of you were privileged to have my company!”
Bram gave an ugly laugh. “Tell yourself whatever lies you require. But the truth persists. Without the Hellraisers, you would have been another forgettable man, scrounging for crumbs of recognition. Forgotten. Hell,” he sneered, “you always had to pay for your quim. No woman would willingly spread her legs for you. Only your coin could make them endure your rutting.”
With a jackal’s snarl, John plunged through the portal, sword upraised. Bram stood ready for the attack. Their swords clashed, the sound ringing over the screams of the damned. Bram’s fury seemed renewed as he attacked. He and John fought, their bodies blurring with speed, the combat furious. Their fight circled the Dark One, who continued to tear at the shackle binding him.
Bram lunged and knocked away John’s blade. Yet John continued to fight, grappling for control of Bram’s sword. They each planted their feet in the ground, pushing against each other.
Bram held John steady, and threw her a glance. Now.
Shaking, exhausted and riddled with pain, Livia pushed herself up, onto her knees. She mustered the dim filaments of her strength. Wrapped her magic around the other shackle, and sent it straight to John.
It snapped around his ankle. Binding him.
Like the Dark One, he screamed and pulled at the binding. It would not open.
Livia felt herself topple. Before she hit the ground, strong arms wrapped around her and lifted her up. She did not care how much it hurt, all that mattered was being held by Bram, feeling the solidity of his chest and pound of his heart against her cheek.
He sprinted toward the portal. The Dark One screamed as he saw them running. More fire poured from the Devil’s hands. Bram dodged this attack, and kept his body between her and the flames.
Then they were on the other side, back in the underground temple, the coolness of the air a fresh torment.
“The door,” she whispered. It needed to be closed for the binding to work, yet she had no strength left. Even breathing cost too much. She turned her head to see John running toward the portal. If he made it back to the realm of the living, her spell would be rendered useless, John and the Dark One free to wreak devastation.
A whip of fire lashed out. It snapped past her and Bram, flicking through the gateway to Hell. The whip pushed John back, keeping him on the other side of the portal.
Livia stirred and looked over Bram’s shoulder. The Hellraisers all stood within the underground chamber. Each of them were battered, their faces and clothes covered in grime and blood. Yet they were all there. Zora wielded her lash of fire, using it to prevent John from crossing back. The whip carved patterns of light as it snapped, and Zora bared her teeth with the effort.
Anne stepped forward, raising her hands. A powerful, chill wind blasted through the chamber. The tempest roared toward the open portal. It gathered around the door itself and began to push the heavy stone shut. Whit and Leo pushed on the door, aiding Anne’s wind.
John and the Dark One both stared with wide, disbelieving eyes as the door swung closed. Horror blanched John’s face—and understanding. He stretched out, reaching for the door. But not in time. Just before the door shut, a look of utter despair crossed his face. He had lost.
The chamber shook as the door slammed shut.
“Must be . . . bolted,” Livia gasped. She held out her hands to Anne and Zora.
The women hurried forward and clasped her hands. Drawing on Anne’s cold, Livia employed it to create metal, which she forged using Zora’s fire. She shaped the magic into a substantial lock, which appeared hovering in the middle of the chamber. The Dark One’s new prison. This she fastened to the door’s bolt. It made a heavy clang as the tumblers slid into place.
Like dissipating smoke, the door vanished. The lock remained, and fell to the ground, but it and the chamber itself dissolved soundlessly. A scent of dry stone filled the air as the ruined temple also evaporated. Until everyone stood at the very edge of St. George’s Fields once more.
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 lookingat 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. Iwon’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 gueroimprisoned 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.”
Epilogue
Sussex, 1765
The morning rain had burned off, leaving the ground glimmering in the afternoon sunlight as though someone had scattered handfuls of diamonds. After the initial downpour, the day itself had turned fair, a crisp spring sky arching overhead, dazzling in its clarity.
Six riders cantered across the fields. Three men, three women. With the weather so fine, they wanted to take advantage, and so an outing had been proposed. By tacit agreement, they knew precisely where they wanted to go. They had been to that particular spot before, and surely there were better, more picturesque views on the ancestral property, but this location held significance for everyone in the party, and so there they headed.
Their destination appeared no different from the rolling green fields surrounding them. Save for a small stand of elms, nothing distinguished this place. Anyone else would have passed it without further thought.
Yet the riders dismounted here. After hobbling their horses, they drifted around, picking their way through overgrown grasses and studying the ground as if it held long-kept secrets. Indeed, the ground didhold secrets.
“I still cannot fathom,” Leo said, “how a whole Roman temple and the hill it stood upon, vanished.”
Bram shrugged, looking out across the field. “Its purpose had been served.”
“The place is empty, yet we keep coming here,” noted Whit.
“We keep our memories close even as the land changes,” Zora said.
A shared, silent concurrence. This was where their transformation had begun. It was an ongoing process, every day revealing new truths, new discoveries.
One of Bram’s discoveries: love was not a finite thing. It could grow with each hour.
He watched Livia as she paced what had once been the perimeter of the temple. She had never grown acclimated to wearing stays, and in her gown of spice-hued sateen, her dark curls wind-tumbled, and golden light upon her skin, she looked both sensuously pagan and indisputably regal. No one moved like her, or carried herself as she did—confident, aware of her power, yet continually intrigued by her surroundings. Hers was an insatiable greed for knowledge, for experience, and he was at all times eager to gratify her.
As if feeling his gaze upon her, she turned and gave him one of her slow, heated smiles. They had been to this place on their own, many times. It was on his property after all. What the other Hellraisers did not know was that Bram and Livia had ridden out in the middle of the night and made love here, beneath the canopy of stars. A re-consecration of the site. Great evil had been done here. They reclaimed it, changed from a place of wickedness to a place of love.
He strode to her and took her hand. At all times he liked to touch her. A quick glance revealed that Leo and Anne walked together with their arms around each other’s waists. Whit and Zora strolled shoulder-to-shoulder, their fingers brushing in quick, eloquent meetings.
The marriage between a nobleman and a Gypsy had caused a scandal, but Whit cared naught for society’s opinion—after all that had been seen and done, the battles waged against true evil, gossip meant nothing. The temperate months were spent with Zora’s band, and when frost lay upon the ground, he and his wife found warmth at his estates. An unusual arrangement, but one that seemed to suit them.
He’d heard that Rosalind had been traveling the Continent, and that she was writing a philosophical discourse about the complex nature of love. Since being made a widow a second time, she’d taken lovers but refused all offers of marriage. Bram supposed that if any woman deserved her freedom, it would be she.
Now all of the remaining Hellraisers lingered at what had once been the site of the ruin, until the sun dipped and shadows lengthened. A chill threaded through the air and the new green leaves upon the tree branches shivered.
“Come, let us for home.” Livia’s voice was husky and low as she wrapped her arm around his.
He thought of the warmth of the fire, surrounded by friends, and the heat of the bed he and Livia shared. That he, who had sinned so grievously, could receive such gifts never ceased to astonish him. More proof that the world held mysteries he could never understand.
“Your humble servant, madam,” he murmured with a kiss.
“Never humble.” She cupped his face with her hands and returned the kiss. “Not my warrior.”
Once, Zora had spoken a Romani adage, and the words had embroidered themselves upon his mind. As he and Livia walked back to their horses, with the other Hellraisers trailing behind them, he recalled the proverb.
We are all wanderers on this earth. Our hearts are full of wonder, and our souls are deep with dreams.
Two years ago, he would have scoffed at such sentiment. Now, he held the words close, a man transformed.
With Livia beside him, he rode for home, and the brilliance of the sun upon the horizon could not match the light within his heart.
