Sinner's Heart

understanding that, on his orders, the men would die.

Once, not very long ago, Livia had been comfortable with her role as general, rallying her patchwork battalion and prepared to sacrifice anyone and everyone to vanquish the Dark One. That had been before. Before Bram. With his touch and his words, his gaze and his will, he had altered the landscape of her heart. He’d died to bring her back to the realm of the living.

Which was precisely why she could not allow thoughts of failure to poison her resolve. This was the time of determination, confidence. If she did not genuinely feel these things, she must believe her own lie, else everything was lost.

“Waiting for John to act first will only see us scrambling to defend ourselves,” she said to the others.

“Aggression is the position of power,” said Bram with a nod.

“His is to be an army of demons.” Whit planted his hands on his hips. “We’ve no scouts to tell us where they are massing, which means we’ve no way to stop their advance.”

“The Rom always have their ears to the ground,” Zora said. “We trade information even more than we trade horses. I could try to contact my band, see if they’ve heard anything.”

“There isn’t time,” Bram said. “I saw the madness in John’s eyes, the flames on his skin. He tried to kill Lord Walcote in order to gain more dark power. The moon turns the color of blood—a sign, Livia tells me, of the gate opening between Hell and this world. He’ll act, and soon.”

“This very night.” Livia moved to the window and stared out at the moon she and Bram had seen earlier. The web she’d spun shook as if in a wind, but she couldn’t quite pinpoint a specific origin. She turned her thoughts over and over in her mind, gnawing on them like a wolf with a bone.

“Hell.” Leo growled. “They could appear right in the middle of Covent Garden, but we wouldn’t know until it’s too late.”

“If we went out in pairs,” Anne suggested, “we might comb the city and report back should we find anything.”

Bram shook his head. “We’d still lag behind. Livia’s right—we need an aggressive approach. Find him before he brings out his army.”

Turning away from the group, Whit picked up the fire iron. He jabbed it moodily into the logs burning in the hearth. “He’s got the Devil on his side. If John doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be.”

Livia straightened. “The Dark One hasn’t much power of his own. He’s a manipulator. When he wants something accomplished, he influences others to do his deeds.”

“Including give the Hellraisers magic,” noted Leo.

“A puller of strings,” Livia said. “With John as his puppet.”

“Where the Devil is,” Bram said, his feet braced wide, his hands on his hips, “that’s where we find John.”

A sound of frustration from Zora. “Wafodu guero isn’t forthcoming with his whereabouts. Tracking him will be just as difficult as finding that murderous gorgio.”

“He has something in his possession,” Livia said. “Something too valuable to risk to another vault, thus he keeps on his person.” She turned to Bram. “Your soul.”

His expression was sharp and fierce. “You’re capable of this.”

She nodded. “We’ll need silence, and seclusion, but it can be done.”

“What can be done?” Leo demanded.

“We must find John,” she said. “To do that, we have to track the Dark One. To do that, we must hunt him down—”

“With my soul as a beacon,” Bram finished.

Leo’s brows rose. “Damn—it’s possible to do that?”

“I’ve seen his soul a handful of times, and it guided us from the darkness of the other realm,” Livia said. “I know it as well as I know my own.” She felt Bram’s heated gaze on her, and she returned the look.

“Find Bram’s soul, find the Devil.” Whit gave the fire another jab, sparks rising up, then tossed the iron to the ground. “If it’s seclusion you need, we’ll give it.” He herded everyone toward the door. They swiftly moved out of the chamber, until she and Bram were alone.

He stood his ground as she approached him, his eyes fevered blue beneath his lowered lids. The other Hellraisers were prime specimens of masculinity. She recognized this, but from a distance. It was him, Bram, who ensnared her, whose presence she felt at all times. She sensed him, awake or asleep, alive or dead, and as she closed the distance between them now, she felt anew the twist in her heart.

“Convenient,” he murmured, his voice low. “That tracking my soul demands privacy.”

“It doesn’t.” She slid her hands up his chest. “Yet I don’t want an audience when I do this.” Raising up on her toes, she pressed her lips to his.

He growled into her mouth, and drank of her deeply. And briefly. A groan resounded in his chest as he pulled back. “I want nothing more than to kiss you for hours. But, damn it, we haven’t the time.”

“This is the spell.” She wove her fingers into his hair and pulled him down again.

He did not resist her. He brought his arms up to wrap around her, one hand pressed low on her back, the other curved against her throat.

She sank into the kiss, savoring him, feeling him. His heat and taste. His tongue stroked like velvet in her mouth, and she responded in kind with her own hunger.

Beyond the sensations, the sensual pull between them, she submerged herself in the essence of him. His unrelenting strength, and the core of darkness that would always be part of him. She had seen his memories, had felt his experiences, and though some of the threads connecting them had been severed, their silver echoes lingered, binding them together. From hellion child to Hellraiser man, she knew every part of who he once was and who he continued to be.

That essence of him never diminished, even when his actual soul had been torn from him. She felt its resonance within him, in the hot and demanding sensation of his mouth joined with hers.

Where are you? Where is your missing self?

And as they kissed, as desire rose up in her and the need for him, for all of him, words tumbled through her mind, summoning her power.

In her own language, long dead, she called out with her thoughts and with her innermost self. Let me find you, my heart, my love. From the shadows to the light, let me find you.

Here.

She jolted. The answer had come clear as a song.

Reaching out again, she searched.

Here.

She broke the kiss. Features drawn with desire, Bram gazed down at her. His hands were like hot iron as they held her close.

“I have found it.” She spoke in a husky murmur, her body alight with need. Need that could not be sated. Not now.

He did not look surprised that the spell had worked. Only nodded. Yet before he let her go, he tipped his forehead down to touch hers, and his breath was rough and labored over her skin.

“I wonder that I ever felt alive,” he said, voice a smoke-tinged rumble. “Until you.”

By slow degrees, he released her. With the fire blazing close, she still missed his heat, and fought the impulse to cling. She did not cling. She was whole and entire without him—yet so much better with him.

She went to the door to summon the other Hellraisers back into the chamber. Casting a glance over her shoulder, she saw that Bram had moved away from the fireplace, and now faced the windows, hands braced on the sill. His shoulders rose and fell, as if he still fought to regain his breath.

Whit, Zora, Leo, and Anne all drifted into the chamber. Each of them looked expectantly at her.

“The time to act is now,” she said without preamble. “The gate is open, the army of demons assembling.”

“Where?” Whit demanded.

“I know the place but not the name.”

“So long as you can lead us there,” Leo said, “names aren’t important.”