Brimstone Seduction. Barbara Hancock J.

seen his terrifying grandfather afraid. Thomas Severne squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. His fingers tightened around John’s fingers.

      Then they stepped through the doorway.

      His arm was a white-hot agony most adults couldn’t have endured.

      His knees bled.

      But in those moments, as he passed through the doorway with his grandfather, every cell in his body screamed in pain.

      They came out on the other side, into a high-ceilinged chamber that had no end to his child’s eyes. His grandfather pulled him forward to a long pathway that stretched far out of sight between two rows of stadium seating filled to capacity with a silent, faceless crowd. John felt the weight of thousands of eyes. His grandfather ignored them. He pulled the tiny child at his side along.

      But they walked beneath those stares. Calm and slow. With only his grandfather’s tight grip to show that the calm was a lie.

      Thomas Severne was still afraid.

      To John, the dais they finally reached with its massive table was made for giants. But the men who sat along its intimidating length were normal-sized.

      They spoke.

      His grandfather replied.

      And then he was grabbed under his armpits by Thomas Severne and lifted high off the ground. He cried out at last. The move cruelly wrenched his arm, and it was almost a relief to shout. His grandfather didn’t care. The man at the head of the table came to take him. As he was lifted even higher, he saw the bronzed wings hanging on the wall above the Council.

      He’d thought of his mother and of angels, but not for long.

      The other men at the table rose and came to where their leader held him. They wore plain black clothes, but when they rolled up their sleeves and drew blades across their wrists, their blood was brilliant flame.

      He screamed and screamed.

      The Brimstone entered him though every opening in his skin. His pores. His nose. His mouth. That moment supplanted his nightmare of being thrown into fire.

      He choked on the hot coals of his breath turned to embers.

      That’s when he knew the men were not men. As he choked, he heard Thomas Severne laugh.

      His father had wept when he’d come home. But his training had begun. Grim came soon after, a dark gift that nonetheless soothed his pain.

      Levi Severne hadn’t saved him. But he’d tried. Where Levi had failed, John was determined to succeed.

      * * *

      His grandfather might have deserved to be completely consumed by Brimstone’s fire, but his father didn’t deserve the torture that lurked, waiting to claim him if his son failed to fulfill the contract before he died.

      He wasn’t sure how much time he had. His grandfather had signed his deadly deal just after the Revolutionary War. Levi Severne was only five at the time. Such a small boy. Innocent. But condemned by his father’s greed. His mind had started to fail when he reached two hundred twenty-five years old. The Brimstone prolonged their lives, but it didn’t hold off the price of age forever.

      Severne clenched his fists against the damnation looming so close to his father. The sun had gone behind a cloud, and Levi Severne had called for his nurse in a small voice that seemed to come from the boy he’d been so very long ago.

      He’d done his part. He’d hunted daemons for decades. He’d taught his son how to fight. He’d shown him how to handle the terrible burn of Brimstone in his blood. He’d taught him to look away from the walls of l’Opéra Severne as the burden of years and souls began to weigh him down.

      He’d tried to teach him how to hope. Levi had always been an optimist. He’d met and married a beautiful Southern belle, thinking he’d be free from the contract before they had a child.

      He’d been wrong.

      She’d died in childbirth believing his promise that her son would be saved.

      Severne didn’t believe in hope. He’d never allowed the softness of hope. He believed in perseverance, determination and pain. He would need all three things to save his father before his mortal body failed.

      And maybe one day he’d be graced with the ability to forget all he’d done.

      The nurse had come to check on her charge. She must have rushed out as soon as she’d heard him call. John was pleased by her quick response. The best that money could buy. Her tone was kind and patient as she responded to Levi’s fear of the darkened day and the shadows that stretched toward his seat from the bushes, which had given him pleasure only moments before.

      The nurse helped his father up with the aid of his cane, and the two slowly made their way toward the house. He resisted the nurse, though, forcing a pause beside the hydrangea bushes. Severne watched his father reach out and take a cluster of blossoms in his hand. Levi Severne pressed the bloom to his face and inhaled, but then he dropped the crushed flowers, and John could tell by the nurse’s consternation that the old man cried.

      The nurse urged Levi to come with her. She soothed him with soft assurances of safety. Severne knew from experience that inside, many lights and lamps waited to be turned on. All Levi’s caretakers knew the house needed to be aglow during a storm.

      His father’s fears would fade. His tears would dry.

      To be sure, John waited and watched until light after light came on. Even as fat droplets began to fall and sizzle on his skin, he waited. His temperature dropped, but he ignored the chill. He paid no attention to the wet seeping into his hair to run in rivulets down his face. He waited until he was sure the house was lit and his father snug inside before he turned and walked away.

      * * *

      Kat should have known she couldn’t be quicker on the draw than John Severne. She’d thought she would return the opera glasses before anyone missed them. But the next day when she climbed the stairs to the third-level balcony and quietly approached the box corresponding with the number on the porcelain handle, she found the opera’s master in the seat she searched for.

      She tried to halt her entrance in time to go unnoticed, but he rose to turn and face her. He’d heard her steps, or he’d felt her approach as she suddenly felt him. She’d tried to tune out the pull of his Brimstone blood, which followed her wherever she went in the opera house, but rather than helping her avoid him, it had placed her in a compromising position.

      He was both everywhere she walked and here, where she least expected to find him.

      “Where did you find those?” Severne asked.

      The box was small. It held only two seats. And the opera glasses were obvious in her hands.

      He didn’t seem to mind the close quarters. As the curtains she’d parted closed with a whoosh in her wake, he moved even closer while she tried to think of what to say.

      Was this his box? Were the glasses his? Why had they been in Victoria’s room?

      All those questions assailed her along with his nearness and the unusual appearance of his rumpled clothes. He wore a white oxford shirt and black pants, but his jacket was missing, his sleeves were rolled up and his tie was loosened.

      “They were on my sister’s bed. Left on her pillow,” Kat said. “I thought I should return them. She must have accidentally carried them away. I assume they belong to this box.”

      Below, dancers practiced for the ballet often omitted from performances of Faust by other opera companies. At l’Opéra Severne, the ballet was a favorite of fans. It represented the temptation of Faust by the greatest and most beautiful women in history that had been offered to him by Mephistopheles.

      So far, from what Katherine had seen of rehearsals, this version was suggestively choreographed while still seeming subtly playful in its eroticism.

      “This box is