Sinner's Heart

“Where are we headed?” she gasped.

He did not break stride. “To find a way out.”

“If this can happen, it will require an actual door.”

“Know of any doors?” All he saw were hills and more hills.

“No,” she panted. “Hold—the gemini use doors in the vault where they keep souls. The vault lies just beyond the Ambitus.”

“Then we need to find that vault.” He helped steady her when the ground buckled. The demons’ growls sounded as they too fought against the unstable ground.

“Your soul is in it,” Livia said. “But when the demons get hold of you, your soul’s also pulled into Hell.”

“Going there, anyway.”

“Not yet,” she shot back. “We can use your soul as a beacon, have it lead us to the vault. Use our thoughts to find them both.” She chanced a quick look behind her. “Concentration’s difficult.”

“Has to be now.” Bram kept his body moving, fighting to stay ahead of the demons as well as stay upright whilst the ground continued to reform itself beneath him. His mind and purpose, however, worked to find his soul’s presence.

Everything was chaos and darkness. The Devil had possession of his soul, yet Bram almost doubted it existed. But he felt Livia’s certainty, her belief in him, and, as they ran, he joined his thoughts with hers. Her presence filled him.

To his shock, he began to sense something. What was it?

“Yes,” she encouraged. “More.”

There—a gleaming warmth he instinctively recognized. His soul. A shock to feel it, when he’d been so sure it didn’t exist. But she’d brought him to it.

“Cleave to it, hold fast,” Livia urged.

Following the beacon of his soul, he pushed through the layers separating the worlds. The dead landscape around them drifted away like smoke. He sensed Livia’s own will, joining with his as they struggled upward, to the Ambitus.

Triumph surged when, just ahead of them, stone walls began to materialize from the darkness. Whatever it was, he and Livia had willed it into being.

And then they were inside.

Glancing around, he took in the chamber in which he and Livia stood. Calling it a chamber seemed too defined a word, for the heavy stone walls appeared to dissolve into twilight as they rose upward. Overhead, men and women drifted like autumn leaves. They skated across the surface of a too-large moon, their gazes searching, but vacant.

Bram turned his attention away from these shades and back to the nebulous chamber. The visible walls appeared thick, and large flagstones covered the floor. Along the walls were heavy wooden shelves. Upon the shelves, spherical objects rested. They glowed, these objects, brilliant, radiant. Replete with life. Simply to look upon them filled him with a bittersweet pleasure.

Souls.

“The vault of souls,” Livia murmured. “Where your geminus keeps its plunder. It steals them from unknowing or foolhardy mortals.”

“Stole,” Bram corrected. “The thing’s dead now. It can’t thieve anymore.”

The shelves were crowded with souls, some brighter than others, yet all of them painfully beautiful to look upon. The geminus had been busy, the foul bastard.

“There,” Livia said, pointing to the far end of the vault, where a heavy wooden door marked the only way out.

They hurried toward it. Passing the numerous souls upon the shelves, he felt their life and vitality reaching out to him, warm where everything else in this terrible place was cold. The souls promised strength, power, the living essence of humanity. Intoxicating.

As they hastened farther into the vault, they came upon a large, thick table. A silver salver rested atop the table. An object lay upon the salver. Its golden radiance bathed the table, surprising in its intensity.

His soul.

Bram approached it warily, with Livia trailing behind him. He scowled in disbelief when his eyes grew hot. His soul should have been a cold black slab of rock, or a sickly, viscous lump that oozed acid. But he never anticipated this . . . this lambent beauty.

Anger scoured him. Didn’t his soul understand that there was no beauty in him? Nothing good? How dare this thing shine like a little sun, insisting through its luminosity that he could be capable of decency and honor?

He was seized by impulse to grab his soul and throw it to the ground, crush it beneath the heel of his boot.

Livia neared the table with his soul, face alight with wonder. “This is yours,” she whispered.

He did not question how she knew. “Yes.”

An unfamiliar sheen gathered in her eyes as she stared at his soul. “You disputed its existence, but look how it shines.” She turned to him with an unexpected scowl. “Curse you for throwing it away so easily.”

The soul’s brilliance still felt like an indictment. He took no pleasure in it, only knew the chasm between what he might have been and what he was.

The stone walls of the vault rattled. They shook with a noise like thunder, and over this came the demon’s screams. They were trying to get inside.

“Come,” he said, “it’s time to get you from this place.” He tore himself away from his soul, pulling her behind him.

At last, they reached the door. He pulled on its handle. It refused to move. “Damned thing’s locked.”

He backed up enough to give himself room, then kicked hard at the door. It rattled, but did not open. Again and again, he slammed his boot against the door. The bloody thing must open—he had to get her free. As he did, he felt the glow of magical energy growing within him, fed by his fury.

“Yes,” she cried. “I can join our power.” Chanting, she lifted her hands. Between her palms grew a swirling eddy of light. It gained in size, growing larger and larger, until it spun around her, then twisted toward the door.

The walls began to buckle. Demon shrieks grew louder as their fists pounded against the stone. Soon, they would be inside.

“Damn it,” Bram shouted at Livia as he continued to kick at the door, “use all the magic we’ve got to get out of here.”

“I’ve not worked a spell like this before,” she said through clenched teeth. “It takes time.”

“Which we haven’t got.” The demons would never let her open the door. Bram turned from the door and drew his sword. “Finish what we started. Get yourself through. I’ll hold them off.”

Livia’s gaze locked with his. He saw she understood that this would be the moment of their parting. She started to reach for him, yet as she did, the spell weakened.

He moved back. They had touched for the last time. A sharp ache spread through his chest as he turned away to face the demons’ onslaught. They had shattered large fractures in the vault’s wall, and their long, cadaverous arms reached through to rake the air with their claws.

Bram readied himself for combat. He could never win against these demons. They were death itself. But he could gain Livia time.

Something gripped his arm, and he spun around in an instinctive attack. It was Livia. He stopped his blade an inch above her throat.

“Finish the bloody spell and go,” he snarled.

“I cannot work it on my own,” she fired back. “It needs more of your magic for completion.”

Cursing, he turned back to the doorway, yet he kept his sword unsheathed. “Tell me what I need to do.”

“Say with me,” she panted. A string of strange-sounding words curled from her mouth. “It’s the only way I might have a chance of breaking the door open. Both of us, working the spell together.”

He repeated the words, forcing himself to concentrate. Bloody hard to do when a horde of demons threatened, his every instinct to fight them rather than turn away. But even as he and Livia spoke in unison, the door glowed, and strained on its hinges.