The markings of flame covered John’s face. Across his cheeks and forehead, surrounding his eyes. He was entirely enveloped in the Dark One’s mark, with only his burning eyes left clear.

Sneering, John tugged off his gloves and threw them onto the ground. The markings covered him there, as well, the backs of his hands, his palms. Every inch of exposed skin proclaimed him to be the Devil’s possession. If ever there’d been a shred of humanity left in him, it was gone now. With such fertile ground as his covetous ambition, the markings had spread quickly.

“Oh, John,” Bram said, mournful. “You poor bastard.”

Yet John only laughed again. “I’ll remember your pity, when your throat is beneath my heel.”

“What does all this mean?” Walcote cried.

“It means,” said John with an icy smile, “that you are nothing but a buzzing fly. One I will easily swat.” He lifted his marked hands.

Both Livia and Bram acted instantly. Bram stepped in front of Walcote, taking up a defensive position with his upraised sword. Livia spoke the final words of her shielding spell. Power rose like a current of light as she wielded the defensive magic at the same moment John hurled a bolt of dark power at the stunned Walcote.

John’s spell bounced off the defense Livia had flung up, then slammed into a wall. It punched a hole into the plaster. A killing blow, had it struck its intended target.

Walcote fell to his knees, furiously praying.

Livia would concern herself with this mortal later. She readied another incantation as Bram advanced toward John.

“This is but a skirmish.” John took several steps backward glancing cautiously between Livia and Bram. He muttered the beginnings of an incantation under his breath, then spoke aloud. “The final battle is on the horizon. Nothing will endure. Not you, nor your Roman whore, nor all the traitorous Hellraisers will survive.”

Bram struck. Yet before his sword pierced John’s chest, John vanished in a pall of acrid smoke.

In the stillness that followed, punctuated only by Walcote’s fevered prayer, Livia and Bram stared at each other.

“What devilry?” Walcote exclaimed, ashen-faced.

Sheathing his sword, Bram said, “The greatest devilry. Now get you far from here. Gather your family, your weapons, and go as quickly as you can to your country estate. Do not leave there until I give you explicit permission to do so.”

“Tell me what is happening,” Walcote pleaded. “I cannot understand any of this.”

“It is all very simple,” answered Livia. “Bram and I must stop hell on earth.”

Since turning renegade, Bram had abandoned the luxury that had been his birthright. He’d slept in a crumbling, abandoned house and an empty warehouse, and spent half the day in a decrepit Whitechapel inn. He had eaten the coarse, filling food of the lower orders. His meticulously tailored Parisian clothing had been swapped for his father’s musty castoffs. He’d had neither rest nor comfort. In truth, these past days he had lived more as he’d once done in the Colonies, a hardscrabble existence that pared away superfluity.

It felt more true than anything he had experienced since returning home, years ago.

As he and Livia briskly mounted the steps to his sprawling home, he felt a curious remove, as though stepping into someone else’s life.

The doors opened in welcome, spilling light out onto the street. Dalby, his steward, stood waiting at the top of the stairs, his polite disinterest barely disguising his curiosity. After several nights’ absence, the master had returned.

“Dalby,” said Bram, his arm around Livia’s waist as he guided her into the echoing foyer.

“A bath, my lord?”

“Two baths. And a hot meal for myself and Mrs. Corva. She’ll need fresh clothing, too.”

“None of the modistes will be open at this hour,” Dalby said.

“Then buy a gown from a neighbor. The key to my coffer is in a secret compartment beneath the second drawer in my desk. Lively, now.”

The steward bowed and hurried away—showing only a trace of surprise that his indolent master now spoke like an officer commanding one of his troops.

There would be talk, of course. How could there not? The master of the house had returned, looking like a brigand, talking like a soldier, with a strange woman in a secondhand gown on his arm. Whenever Bram had brought women home, they had been the polished jewels plucked from theater boxes, artfully beguiling, full of laughter.

Livia’s face was solemn as a graveside angel, her mien irreproachably regal despite her shabby clothing. Left alone with Bram in the foyer of his home, she gazed at everything—from the polished floor to the crystals hanging from sconces—assessing and astute.

“A new perspective,” she murmured. “Seeing your home through mortal eyes.”

“It seemed smaller to me when I came back from the Colonies.”

She gave him a distracted nod, her gaze still in motion.

Restlessness gnawed at him. He wanted to run training drills, review strategies. Yet he knew they both needed refortification before the coming battle.

He offered her his arm. “Let us go up.”

It startled him, how the light pressure of her fingers on his arm could make his heart beat faster. He ought to be sated, ought to be inured to her touch—especially after the hours they had spent making love this very day. Yet it was as if those hours had never happened. He still burned for her, craved her.

They ascended the stairs together in silence. Here again was a new experience. He’d never brought a woman home with the intent to have her stay.

His home boasted several bedrooms, all of them ready to receive guests. Instead, he led her into his private chambers. An industrious, fast-moving servant had already lit the fire to dispel the chill.

She sank down into a wing-backed chair drawn beside the fire, her gaze lingering on the flames. Though he knew she was weary, she did not lean back or slump in the chair. Her back remained straight, her hands folded elegantly in her lap.

He wanted to stare at her, to see her bathed in the fire’s glow as she sat in his bedchamber. Trace the noble line of her profile, her unmistakably Roman features, and read the thoughts behind her dark eyes.

Instead, he pulled out fresh garments from the clothes press. Everywhere he moved, he saw the familiar furnishings with an outsider’s gaze. For all the sumptuousness of this room—the bed’s silk canopy, the warm smell of beeswax candles, the rosewood writing desk—it was cold.

Or it had been. Turning back to Livia, he revised his opinion. She warmed it by her presence alone.

“You’d prefer the field of battle.” She continued to stare at the fire.

“It’s looming,” he answered. “Yet we wait here for baths and roast partridge.”

“We’re filthy and hungry.”

“And idle. I cannot like it.” He paced to the windows and stared out at the night. The stars burned like ice.

Her gown rustled as she stood and crossed to him. They both watched the evening sky, their bodies close, but not touching.

“See there?” She pointed at the sickle moon, rising above the rooftops. “How it gleams red?”

Indeed, as the moon climbed higher, he did mark the color—a febrile crimson staining its surface.

“John opens the gate between the Underworld and this realm,” she said. “He hasn’t enough power to open it completely, not yet. Had he killed his enemy, that man Walcote, his power would have grown. He could have forced the gate sooner. By thwarting him, we’ve bought ourselves a small measure of time. Not much time, though. He’ll find other means of gaining power, and when he has the gate wide enough, he will summon his army of demons.”

Bram swore, swinging away from the window. “Sod the baths and the food. We have to stop him.”

“Confronting him now would surely be our doom.” She tapped her fingers against the glass.