Free Brimstone Seduction by Barbara J. Hancock

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