The Devil’s pawn. It maddened him now—how easily he and his friends had been manipulated, how ripe they had been for the plucking. For all their claims of jaded sophistication, they had been no better than rustics at a fair, gaping in wonderment at a magician’s tricks as an accomplice lifted their purses.
He’d grown wiser since then. Humbler. Yet more certain. This was the moment he needed all of his wisdom and confidence.
Livia’s hand pressed between his shoulder blades, anchoring him.
They delved further down the stairs until they stood in the underground chamber. It looked precisely as it had months past. A large room had been carved out of the rock—walls, floor, and ceiling all made of stone. Torches set into the walls threw shuddering light. At one end of the chamber rested the skeletal remains of a Roman soldier still in his armor. The intervening months and exposure to air had hastened the skeleton’s decay. Bones had turned chalky, and the once-pristine armor had dulled, the leather rotting. Whoever that soldier had been, he’d given his life to guard the Devil’s prison.
The skeleton rested near a stone altar, and Bram heard Livia’s shaky inhalation as she beheld the place where she had performed her greatest sin.
They had both done much sinning in their lives. Here, ultimately, they must undo their wrongs.
John had no such intention. He stood before the altar, arms flung out with his back to Bram and Livia. Seething red light eddied around him. The chamber itself felt like an inferno, the air sizzling in Bram’s lungs and sweat dampening his back. John chanted in a foreign tongue, but his words stopped abruptly and he whirled to face Livia and Bram.
Any semblance John once shared with the man he’d been was gone. The shrewd scholar, who preferred long, arid discussions about politics to wine-soaked merriment, who never lost at chess and always held the box for the other Hellraisers at the theater—that man had vanished. He had always been a lean man. Now he appeared gaunt, as if the Devil’s power fed upon his very essence. His sunken eyes were glazed and hectic. And everywhere upon him twisted the marks of flame. Grotesque.
“You poor, sodding bastard,” Bram muttered.
Hate burned in John’s gaze. “It’s inexorable. The world you know will fall.”
“Spoken with the certainty of the doomed,” Livia answered.
John sneered. “How quick you are to decide who will emerge victorious.” The chamber shook and the sound of human shouts comingled with demon screams tumbled down the stairs. John smiled. “A lovely tune in three-part harmony. I’d never dabbled in music before, but perhaps I ought to take up composing. I call this melody,
Bram no longer felt the wound of betrayal, for this thing standing before him bore only the slightest resemblance to his old friend. All he felt now was cold fury.
He lunged at John. At the same moment, Livia threw a bright bolt of energy toward the enemy. John cut the air with his hand. Livia’s killing spell and Bram were thrown back. The ricocheting spell punched a deep indentation into the wall, whilst Bram stumbled backward, struggling to gain his footing.
All the while, the red light whirling around John grew larger and more frenzied.
“He means to pull more demons up from the underworld.” Livia spoke under her breath, just loud enough for only Bram to hear when he stood beside her. “Our forces aren’t strong enough to repel anymore.”
“Then we stop him before he goes any further.” He charged John once more.
John made a fist. He muttered an incantation. A sword of black flame appeared in John’s hand, and he narrowly blocked Bram’s strike. They crossed blades again. Heat burst from both swords, coursing up Bram’s arm, bathing his face. Sweat ran into his eyes. He knew he was the better swordsman, yet somehow John continued to parry his blows with an inhuman speed. John’s attack was equally fast, a blur of movement, and Bram grappled with keeping pace.
Bram hissed as the edge of John’s sword cut him across the thigh. A searing pain, unlike any wound he’d ever received.
“All those hours,” John said, derision seeping from his voice, “spent in that grim practice chamber of yours with those dummies and targets. Wasting time.”
“Won’t be a waste when I run this through your heart.” Bram feinted, a move that always drew blood from his opponent when they’d attempt to counterattack. But John seemed to know the gambit, even though Bram had never dueled with him before this moment. With a burst of unnatural swiftness, John evaded the feint and made his own attack, cutting Bram again. This time, the wound crossed his arm.
Bram and John circled one another.
“Besting me is hopeless,” John taunted. “Not so long as the Devil’s power courses through me.” He shook his head. “Simple Bram—led by your cock, not your brain. You’d never understand.”
“Fortunate, then,” said Livia, “that I do not have a cock.” Her gaze turned hard as obsidian as she spoke. “
A tolling like thunder, and then there stood the Devil himself.
And he looked furious.
The first time Livia had summoned the Dark One, she’d had to steal the power of a Druid priestess and an Indian slave. The ritual itself had taken careful planning, the spilling of blood—and wicked intent. She had not realized her mistake until far too late, the world turned to fire. But at the moment when she first beheld the Dark One stepping through the gate between realms, triumph had filled her, all her labors rewarded.
Appallingly simple, summoning the Devil now. Merely two words, and he appeared before her, his face contorted with rage.
Making the Dark One angry was never wise. This wasn’t the moment for wisdom. At the least, she now understood the significance of her actions.
“I should have slaughtered you,” the Devil spat, “all those years ago. Saved myself an infinite amount of trouble.”
“That would have been the intelligent thing to do.” Her mouth curled. “You do make some spectacularly poor decisions.”
“Impudent slut,” John hissed from where he and Bram fought on the other side of the temple.
Bram’s answering grin was vicious. “One of the many reasons I love her.”
The Devil smiled icily. “How pleased I am to hear that. It will only heighten your suffering when I paint these walls with her blood.”
Bram darkened, but before he could speak or act, Livia ran to the altar. She drew the Akkadian blade she held down her bare arms and across her palms, ignoring the answering pain. Crimson welled and dropped in thick splatters upon the stone. She smeared her blood, drawing her fingers through it to inscribe symbols on the altar. Symbols of eternity, and death, and the great immeasurable beyond.
It came so much easier now. She had learned a great deal, having paid a terrible price. Yet she did not need the Druid priestess, nor the Indian slave. Her own power was enough—fed by Bram’s revelation of his love for her. And she spoke the words, words from the very beginning of time, when a single utterance could call entire worlds into being. No one had taught her these words—she had discovered them herself, delving into the mists of eternity.
She continued to speak them now, painting the altar with her own blood.
Heat, unendurable heat, filled the chamber. A thunderous shaking. Livia staggered back as light poured from the wall just beside the altar. A massive door appeared, as though hewn from the rock itself. Images of serpents and horned beasts were carved into the door. There came a dreadful, shattering groan.
The door opened.
Hell lay just beyond.
It was the sound that struck her first. The screams of the damned. Fraught with unrelenting anguish. Souls without hope. It made her want to fling up her hands, cover her ears, yet nothing could block the noise of eternal suffering. The Dark One was inventive in his punishments.
Beyond the door lay a blighted, smoke-swathed plain, charred and lifeless. Plumes of yellow vapor drifted up from rifts in the ground. The sky was made of fire, and huge creatures swung through the air on leathery wings. And everywhere, everywhere, were the souls of the damned, naked, and bound. Demons presided over them,
