Zoe Archer - Sinner’s Heart

“Now,” she said through gritted teeth.

Bram stepped forward and took the straps from her hands. Muttering words in the long-dead tongue, he wrapped the straps around one edge of the net. He pulled hard on the straps, drawing the net toward him. As he hauled the energy nearer, he dug his feet into the ground and his body strained. The glare of red light covered him, casting a long shadow behind him so he appeared as a god of creation. Yet she kept her attention fixed on maintaining the net, continually repairing tears, re-knotting it when the strain threatened to rip it open.

By slow, painful degrees, she and Bram brought the energy closer, closer. And then, at last, with a groan, she pulled all of that seething force into the leather bindings held in Bram’s hands. The straps glowed with power.

Leo stepped forward. As he took the strips of leather, he hissed softly. He quickly wrapped the straps around his hands, binding them as a pugilist would wrap his hands in preparation for a fight. Clearly, he had ample experience doing precisely that. He flexed his hands experimentally, testing the straps to ensure their give. Bright red energy gleamed up from the leather, spreading up his arms.

He strode toward a nearby tree, then threw a punch right into the tree’s thick trunk. A splintering, shattering sound cracked through the silence. The tree shuddered and fell, its branches snapping, its roots torn up from the ground.

Leo stared down at his wrapped hands. When he glanced up at Livia and Bram, he wore a brutal smile.

“Fitting,” he said. “These spirits of Tyburn, they’re my people. We’re of the same low birth, the same status. And now the strength of their righteous anger is mine.”

“Nothing for me?” muttered Bram.

She slanted him a look. “You’ve power of your own. None needs to be borrowed.”

“Having more is always better.”

Turning back to the assembled ghosts, Livia said, “Be at peace now. Your fight is now ours.”

The spirits uttered soundless thanks. A moment later, they faded back into mist. The stillness that followed felt absolute, a thousand grasping hands had let go of their clinging hold, and the welcome oblivion that ensued.

Leo strode back toward the others, with a cautious Anne meeting him halfway. She lightly touched his wrapped hands, then stared at Livia.

“I think there is nothing you cannot do,” she breathed in wonder.

“You’re right,” Bram answered. He gazed at Livia with heat and pride.

Her heart expanded, growing to fill the vast, shadowed park, yet she dared not voice the truth—she could not guarantee them a victory. That lay beyond the compass of her power. All she could do was arm herself and her allies, and hope it would be enough.

Bram had led columns of troops through the forests of the New World. They had marched through ancient, unexplored woods, surrounded on all sides by cool arboreal shadow and unseen enemies. Crimson coats had made for bright targets in those green places, and the convoy of hundreds of men made an irresistible lure to their foes. Yet he and his fellow soldiers marched on in a show of force, unbowed by an enemy that conducted war in a most un-English fashion.

He and his brother soldiers had been proud, confident. They fought for king and country. Even when hungry, wet and exhausted, they marched on, knowing with the certainty of children that they—with their training and numbers—would prevail.

Bram now rode at the head of an army consisting of six. He had no idea the size of the enemy’s forces. He did not know how they conducted battle. He understood only that he must fight, and command his troops. He had to believe they would conquer their foe. No other alternative.

He did know that they would be badly outnumbered. Six against a horde of demons. And John, the possessor of tremendous power, and the Devil, himself. There couldn’t be greater adversaries.

Yet Bram wasn’t helpless, nor alone. Anne and Zora had impressive magic, Whit and Leo both wielded powerful weapons. Bram felt the quick energy of magic within himself. He felt the purpose and determination of his own heart.

Nothing, however, had the strength of Livia.

He glanced over his shoulder to see her riding just behind him, her shoulders back, eyes ahead. A warrior queen. The magical energy within him caught the resonance of hers, and hummed with life, as though hearing the call of its own mate.

Every muscle tightened in readiness. He wanted this battle. Needed it. Staggering odds be damned. It must happen.

The unnatural silence continued as Bram led everyone south. Every street stood empty, windows shuttered. London retreated into itself, sensing somehow the battle to come.

Following Livia’s instruction, he rode over Westminster Bridge. As he did, he felt himself breach a film of sinister power that sizzled across his skin. More heat danced across his chest, his arm, his abdomen. All the places where the Devil’s mark writhed over his flesh. As if anticipating the flames of Hell that would greet him after death, and eager to burn the meat from his bones.

He felt, too, the pitch in his stomach. The enemy was just ahead—so his soldiering sense declared, and it had never guided him astray.

The bridge came and went, and they rode to the very edge of a wide, dark field ringed with trees. He knew this place, as did the other Hellraisers. They brought their horses to a stop and looked out over the empty expanse.

“St. George’s Fields,” Bram murmured.

“Where everything began,” Livia said.

“Not the underground temple?” asked Whit.

Bram shook his head. “The breach between us—it was here it first happened. Here the Hellraisers took up arms against each other, and the Devil’s snare broke us apart.”

An ugly night. Whit had been the first of the Hellraisers to see the Devil’s gifts for what they truly were. They had brawled here, in this liminal place at the edge of London, raised swords and fists. Bram had been deep in his sins’ thrall. He’d wanted pleasure at any cost—even the loss of his closest friend. That night, in this place, they had become enemies.

“I see no one.” Leo scanned the field. The moon broke through the clouds, glazing the plain with pale, cold light. Not a single soul waited for them. Not John, nor the Devil. No armies of demons. An empty expanse, an ordinary field at the southern edge of London.

“They’re coming,” Bram answered. Tension knotted along his shoulders and in his gut, as it always did before a battle. Presaging what was in store.

“This is where Bram’s soul led us.” Livia studied the field like a general.

Zora said, “Perhaps we ought to—”

The ground shook, the air filled with a sound like rock being torn apart, and bestial screams. It rattled in Bram’s bones. The horse beneath him danced and shied, its eyes rolled back in fear. He fought to keep his mount under control, pulling tight on the reins. His focus wasn’t on the animal, however.

At the furthest edge of the field, the ground cleaved open. It shuddered and splintered as if a massive pair of hands ripped the earth asunder. A visible darkness poured forth from the fracture, bleeding outward, seeping poison into the night. Talons and clawed hands appeared at the edge of the widening crevice. They clutched at the dirt, dragging themselves up.

“Exalted gods.” Livia’s curse barely rose above the din.

Bram joined her in swearing. No other words came to him.

Demons clambered out of the torn earth, each one more vile and terrible than the last. They swarmed like pestilence, creatures wrought in the depths of nightmares. Some were formed in human shape, massive in size, with blister-red skin and claws the length of a man’s forearm. Others slid upon the ground, serpent-like, dragging themselves forward on stunted arms as their gaping fanged mouths gulped at the air. Winged creatures spilled out like flies from a rotting carcass, and though they had huge bodies and wings like beetles, they had men’s distorted faces.

Bram lost count of variety of demons that crawled and flew from the depths of Hell. He never suspected such an abundance, and the tension within him ratcheted higher as the foulest beasts he’d ever seen gathered at the edge of St. George’s Fields.

Some of the demons carried weapons—jagged blades that devoured light, ancient-looking pikes and short swords seemingly made from sharpened dragon teeth.

The creatures were massing at the other end of the field, shrieking in rage, seething with readiness to fight, yet held back as though waiting for something. More creatures were crawling up from the rift.

A thunderclap shook the plain once more, and there was John, mounted atop a beast that appeared half horse, half lizard. Its eyes of flame nearly matched the madness burning in John’s gaze. Even from the other side of the field, Bram saw the deranged fury blazing in his erstwhile friend. Moonlight gleamed over the flames writhing across John’s skin and on the blade of the sword he carried.

The demons that had managed to free themselves from the rift milled in disordered groups. John positioned himself in front of them, patrolling the line and chanting loudly. Summoning more creatures up from Hell.

His words broke off when he saw Bram and the other Hellraisers. A brief look of confusion crossed his face. He hadn’t been expecting them.

He schooled his features quickly. From the back of his cloven-hoofed mount, he stared at the Hellraisers and laughed. “Once I thought the Hellraisers invincible,” he shouted across the field. “Now I see them for what they truly are: a pathetic collection of reprobates. And their women,” he added with a sneer. “How did I ever count myself as one of your number?”