He didn’t know where his legs took him this night, only that he must move, and keep moving, as if the hounds of hell snapped at his heels.

Turning a corner, he heard the shouts before he saw the men. Guttering lamplight revealed two figures locked in a fight. Knives gleamed in their hands and made metallic arcs in the air as they swung at each other. The men weren’t beggars or drunkards. Their coats were clean and of fair quality. Both had lost their wigs in the scuffle, so the weak light turned their shaved heads to bare skulls.

He knew these men. Lesser nobility, and brothers. Their thrown punches and jabs with their knives revealed that they meant to hurt each other.

“Goddamn son of a whore,” one snarled.

“You’re a liar and a rogue,” the other spat. “I’ll spill your guts upon the ground.”

In an instant, Bram stood between them, his sword drawn. His was no gentleman’s decorative blade. The weapon had seen use.

“The both of you, stand down.”

The two men stumbled backward, their gazes moving from his sword to his face and back again. He stood lightly, ready to fight.

“This isn’t your business, my lord,” one of the men panted.

“I don’t like seeing corpses in the road.” Only a week ago, Edmund had lay in the street, his blood pooling between the cobblestones. The sword that had pierced Edmund’s chest had belonged to John. They had been as brothers not long before. Bram had seen it all unfold, stood in horror and watched as one of his good friends killed the other. Afterward, he envisioned the scene over and over, and every time, he was unable to prevent the outcome. Edmund dead at John’s hand.

This, at least, he could stop.

“There’s two of us,” the other man said. “One of you. It could be your corpse in the street.”

Bram stared at them, unblinking. He raised his sword. “One blade is all I need to spill your blood.” If he couldn’t stop these brothers from fighting, then by God he would make them sorry for challenging him.

The men’s gazes moved to the scar that snaked down his throat. His daily reminder that he’d faced death, and survived. Bram was not easy prey.

Whatever the brothers saw in his face and stance, they didn’t care for it. Eyes wide, cheeks ashen, they both dropped their knives, then turned and scuttled away like roaches.

He waited a moment. Sheathed his sword, and walked on. Yet the seething fury within him continued to burn, stoking him, his whole body alight.

Where Bram went, he didn’t know. Only that all around him, the city seemed in chaos. Here, in genteel Mayfair, more fights churned on street corners. Glass from shattered shop windows glittered on the sidewalk and crunched beneath his heels. A night watchman ran from a mob.

This city is a runaway horse, careening toward disaster. As though something had been unleashed, something dark and wild, gnawing away at humanity, turning everything rancid and ugly.

You know the cause.

He stared at his jagged reflection in a broken window. Pieces of his face stared back. His eyes—when had they become so cold? His mouth—had it always been this cruel? Or had these changes come over him these past few months, ever since that night at the Roman ruin near his country estate?

It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

He stalked on. His steps slowed when he discovered himself standing outside the Marquess of Colfax’s mansion.

A smile curved his mouth. Several months ago Bram had challenged the other Hellraisers to a shooting contest, and they’d shot off the finials on the marble balustrade. Leo had been the winner, and they’d gone to celebrate his victory with a cadre of opera dancers and smuggled French brandy.

Bram now walked close and placed his hand on the chipped stone. The marble finials still had not been replaced. Neither had the memory.

The front door to Colfax’s home opened. Bram stared as Colfax himself came charging down the steps. Uncharacteristic rage twisted the marquess’s face. He’d always been the most genial of men—Bram had once accidentally spilled wine on Colfax’s velvet waistcoat, and the marquess had actually apologized for being in Bram’s way—yet now the older man barreled toward him with fury in his eyes.

“You think I didn’t know? You think I didn’t see?” Colfax jabbed his finger into Bram’s chest. “The lot of you, despoiling my property and laughing. Laughing! I watched the whole thing, and I didn’t do a damned thing to stop you. But I won’t tolerate it, d’ye see? Not any longer. The five of you will pay!”

The shock that had held Bram immobile snapped. Anger surged. Here was another sign that the world had gone mad. The five Hellraisers were no more, their friendship razed, and lunacy gripped the city. He still woke, sweat-drenched, from dreams of past madness, the shouts of dying soldiers and Indian war-cries ringing in his ears. And here they were again, his old demons—death, chaos, brutality. No matter how fast he ran, he couldn’t outpace them.

His hand shot out and wrapped around Colfax’s throat. He didn’t care that, as a baron, he was outranked by Colfax. All that mattered was the wrath that blistered within him.

The tirade abruptly stopped as Bram lifted the marquess up so that the older man’s feet left the ground.

“We should’ve gone on as we had,” Bram snarled. “But everything changed and fell to ruin. It didn’t have to.”

Colfax’s eyes bulged as he clawed at Bram’s hand. His gaze fixed on Bram’s wrist, and clouded with confusion.

Following Colfax’s gaze, Bram saw what appeared to be a drawing of flames tracing up his wrist and curling up his thumb. Yet it wasn’t a drawing. It was the mark of the Devil.

What had begun as a small image of fire just above his heart now encompassed the whole of his left pectoral and down his arm. The flames even traced down toward his abdomen. They grew nightly, and some day, he suspected, they would cover him entirely.

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.