Zoe Archer - Sinner’s Heart

“In the Green Drawing Room, my lord.”

“I’ll be down directly.”

Bowing, the servant withdrew.

She tried to reach out to Bram, tried to speak, but with John so near, she became an empty shell incapable of words. Damn and hell, she had to keep Bram away from John. The other man’s poison would infect Bram.

“You’re still here,” he rumbled. “I can feel you.”

Don’t go to him, she tried to say. There’s still a chance.

She had no mouth with which to speak. No hands to grab hold of him. Rage at her helplessness burned through her.

He turned and strode from the chamber.

Bram strode through the darkened corridors of his home, with only a few lit candles flickering in the shadows. Stillness smothered the house, yet his heart beat loudly in his ears as he descended the stairs.

A lone footman stood outside the closed doors to the Green Drawing Room, candle in hand.

“No one disturbs us,” Bram said.

Bowing, the footman backed away. Bram stood alone in the corridor, his hand upon the door, his muscles and thoughts taut. How to face the man he once considered one of his closest friends? The man was now a murderer. Was he here to kill Bram as well?

In a fight, John would be no match for Bram. Yet there were new measurements of a man’s capabilities beyond physical strength. Bram himself had witnessed the Devil bestowing more power upon John, though what that power might entail was yet untried—upon Bram, at any rate. The Devil had tried to give Bram more power as well. The ghost had prevented it, however, stepping between him and the bolt of magic. Because of her, he possessed only his original gift.

She might be his savior. She might be his destruction.

He didn’t want saving, and his destruction was assured.

Something brushed along his neck, cool and electric. It moved through him in volatile waves. Her. He knew the feel of her presence, her force and purposeful cunning. He knew no living woman like her, and that was a blessing, for of a certain such women were created to rule the world.

He stared into the shadows, waiting for her to manifest. Yet she did not. She remained a formless, invisible energy swirling through the dark. Agitation thrummed through her.

Don’t go in there.

Her voice resounded in his mind, low and urgent.

“He’s one of my best friends,” he muttered.

Neither of us knows what John truly is anymore. Send him away.

“No.” For if there were judgments to make, he’d make them himself, not at the command of a long-dead Roman with a siren’s voice.

But—

He pushed open the double doors and stepped into the Green Drawing Room.

John whirled to face him. Aside from a slight disorder in his clothing, he seemed much as he always had, with his scholar’s sharp face, his lanky height that he had never grown into, as if he had more important and worthwhile things to consider besides the thickening of his body.

“Bram,” he said after a moment.

“John.” They stared at one another. Of the five Hellraisers, Bram and John were the most disparate, and had spent few hours alone together. Now they were all that remained, a strange irony. The rakehell and the man of letters. “How did you know to find me at home?”

“This is my final stop of the night. I tried all the familiar places first.” John glanced at Bram’s banyan. “You’ve been pulled from your bed. Are you alone?”

Livia’s presence clung close, buzzing and unquiet. Yet Bram answered, “I am.”

Frowning, John studied him, searching for something. “Certain? I might’ve sworn—”

“There’s only me.” He didn’t know why he concealed Livia from John. These were perilous times—no one could be trusted.

Moving further into the chamber, he went to a side table and poured himself a brandy. He silently offered a glass to John, but his friend shook his head. The most abstemious of the Hellraisers, was John.

“What are you doing here? I would have thought you’d be sequestered in the corner of some assembly, engineering a political alliance.”

“It is for that reason I’ve searched you out.” He lowered his voice, confiding. “I’ve come for a favor.”

Bram raised his brows. “You mistake me for one of your Whitehall power brokers.”

“There are more ways to gain influence than direct channels.” John offered a smile.

“I’ve never cared for subtlety.”

John chuckled, though Bram did not share in the laughter. “Direct as the point of a blade, as always. Yet you’ve your own means of persuasion.” He gave Bram a meaningful look, for he knew the specifics of Bram’s magical gift. “In truth, that is why I am here tonight. I need your persuasive talents to get inside a certain gentleman’s private study. Into a desk drawer in that study.”

Where, no doubt, important and confidential documents were kept. “You want a housebreaker, not me.”

The corner of John’s mouth curved, the most he could provide for a smile. “Your way is so much more elegant. It’s a simple matter of persuading one of the servants to let you into the study.”

“Bribe one of them.”

“All the servants in this household are nauseatingly virtuous. Come now, Bram, we’re friends, you and I. There’s no need to dissemble about your own virtue. I’ve seen you seduce married women right out from under the noses of their husbands.”

“If a woman is under her husband’s nose, he’s got her in the wrong place.”

Bram felt, rather than heard, Livia’s amusement. Then her voice within him. The worst kind of scoundrel.

Oh, he answered silently, but I’m very good at it.

So I’ve witnessed. I myself found it far more entertaining to be wicked than respectable.

This intrigued him, but John’s words brought his attention back to the room.

“Will you do it? It is a very small favor, but it would be an immeasurable assistance.”

Bram only stared at John. “We’ve not seen one another since Edmund’s burial.”

The heavy velvet curtains suddenly became fascinating, for John fixed his attention on them. “A sorrowful day.”

“As of now, I’m the only Hellraiser you haven’t tried to kill.” He took a drink. “That might change. I may wake up with your rapier in my heart.”

Shaking his head, John said, “This is precisely what Leo and Whit want—division between us. But we two, together we’re the strongest of all. So much power. We can have anything we desire, anything at all.” He stepped closer, the light from the fireplace paring his face into sharp yellow planes. “Mr. Holliday’s gifts were twofold—we were given power, and we also learned which of us were weakest.”

“Whit and Leo weren’t weak.” Bram had known Whit for most of his life, long before either of them had seen the world’s true face, full of ruin and loss. They had stalked the streets of London together, haunted its glittering ballrooms and smoke-shrouded gaming hells. When Bram had returned from the Colonies, unable to do much beyond drink and fuck, Whit had not judged him. He’d given Bram acceptance, when Bram could not accept himself.

“No?” John scoffed. “Even with the power they were given, both were misled by women. That Gypsy girl, and Leo’s insipid wife. No man of strength could be so deluded by a woman.” He smiled. “Not you, Bram. You know exactly what women are for—bedding, and nothing else.”

Fool, Livia fumed in Bram’s mind.

Bram took another swallow of brandy. “So my cock makes me strong.”

John seemed to make the decision to be amused. “How marvelous that you are so little changed.”

Was Bram the same as he’d been before? He barely recognized his reflection in the water of his washing basin. The face he knew, but what was beneath it, that had been irrevocably altered. Witnessing one friend murder another tended to do that.

“It’s not usual,” Bram said, “for a man to attend the funeral of the one he killed.”

John’s face tightened. “The damned fool stepped into the path of my blade.”

Not enough regret, whispered Livia. Not nearly enough.

“The blade that was meant for Leo.”

This, at the least, John did not dispute. “He’d turned against us, turned his back on the Hellraisers. He could not suffer to live.” His voice was cold and hard as frost.

“This is Leo we’re talking of. The man you once carried home on your back when he’d been too fuddled with drink to walk. You and he used to debate for hours about phenomenally dull finance policies.”

“That was before.” His mouth hardened. “We’ve learned valuable lessons since then.”

“I was never much for education.”

Stepping closer, John said, “Bram, think. Consider everything we’ve been given. You and I aren’t like the others. We won’t fall to the wiles of females. We know how to use our gifts to our best advantage. With our abilities, anything we want can be ours, anything at all.”

“I’ve already got what I desire.”

“Yet you could have more.” His eyes burned like coals. “Mr. Holliday’s power is great in me. All thoughts are mine to read, from the limbless beggar to the mightiest lord.”

“Tell me what I’m thinking now.” In truth, Bram wished John would, for his own thoughts were tempestuous and made for rough navigation.

John made himself look rueful. “All minds but the Hellraisers’. Those are illegible to me.”

Perhaps that was for the best. He felt Livia close, agitated and angry.