Dougan. His father had paid to have his youngest son beaten to death in prison. Somehow, the lad had escaped, reinvented himself, and secretly reached out to Liam whilst simultaneously waging a war for supremacy of the London Underworld.
The sons of Hamish Mackenzie had been bred to spill blood. The Fates wove violence into their sinew like a gruesome tapestry, and brewed ruthlessness to pour through their veins.
When the king is dead … long live the king.
Dougan had written those words in lieu of a signature in the letter that bade Liam to do the one thing he’d always fantasized about.
Liam wrapped what remained of Tessa back into the dissolving cloak, and let the gurgling bog become her grave. As he watched the earth slowly claim her, he felt what was left of his hope, of his humanity, sink with her. A coal of hatred replaced it, igniting in his empty chest, fanned into an inferno by the rank and sulfurous breath of the devil himself.
Perhaps fantasy hadn’t just become a reality, but a necessity.
As he stood and stared across the emerald landscape interrupted by the jagged Kinross Mountains, Liam thought of his mother and how his father had broken her, both in body and spirit. He thought of his clan, the Mackenzie of Wester Ross, who toiled and cowered beneath their laird’s merciless iron fist. He thought of his brothers, both bastard and legitimate, none of whom was strong enough to withstand his father’s abuse.
So Liam often took it for them.
But who would be here to protect them now that he was off to war?
Liam had grown into a man, not only tall enough to look his father’s evil in the eye. His shoulders were finally wide enough to carry the weight of the numerous lashes that shaped the flesh of his back as though carved from brimstone by Satan’s own mallet and chisel. His fists were heavy enough to strike in kind.
He’d reported for his commission in Her Majesty’s Regimental Army. He’d used the fire in his blood to commit violent acts in service to the crown. Sanctioned by God and country.
It was his only way out.
But first, something had to be done about all of this.
The day had come.
Laird Hamish Mackenzie had wanted to craft a monster out of his son and heir. Someone like him. But monsters were mythical, the figments of superstitious imaginations and farcical stories of centuries past. Liam decided he’d be no monster. Nay, he’d do one better.
He’d become a demon.
CHAPTER ONE
London, September, 1878
Twenty Years Later
Take off your clothes. It wasn’t the first time Lady Philomena St. Vincent, Viscountess Benchley, had heard the command. She was the wife of a violent libertine, after all. But as she stared in wide-eyed incomprehension at the jowly Dr. Percival Rosenblatt, she was at a momentary loss for words. Surely he couldn’t mean that she was to disrobe in front of him. Only female nurses oversaw the ice bath therapy here at Belle Glen Asylum. To have a male doctor in attendance was all but unheard of.
“But, Doctor, I—I’ve been well behaved.” She took an involuntary step back, trepidation flaring in her stomach when she saw the tub, jagged chunks of ice bobbing on the surface as horrifically as shards of broken glass. “Surely I’ve done nothing to warrant this—this treatment.”
Treatment. A peculiar word. One with many meanings in a place like this.
“You’ve been at yourself again.” Nurse Greta Schopf, her self-proclaimed nemesis here at Belle Glen, stepped forward and grasped her wrist, strong fingers sinking into her flesh, yanking the loose sleeves to her elbow. The large German woman, clad in a uniform, a high-necked, somber gown with a white apron and hat, held up the fresh scratches on Mena’s forearm for the doctor’s inspection. “She’s also been at herself in … other ways, Doctor. We’ve had to strap her to the bed at night to stop her from her amoral compulsions.”
Mena gaped at the nurse in sheer disbelief.
“That simply isn’t true,” she gasped, then turned to entreat the doctor. “Please, she’s mistaken, Dr. Rosenblatt; it was another patient, Charlotte Pendergast, who scored my arm with her nails. And I swear I’ve never—” She didn’t want to say it, didn’t want the heat to flare in his wrinkled, murky eyes at the thought of her touching herself. Though, at this point, she’d do most anything to avoid the ice bath. “I’ve never once done myself harm … and I’ve likewise refrained from … any … amoral compulsions.”
She’d informed the doctor of this before, of course, in their initial sessions together. She’d confessed that her bruises and scrapes were not, in fact, self-inflicted, but inflicted upon her by her sadistic husband, Lord Gordon St. Vincent, the Viscount Benchley. In her first days as an involuntary patient here, she’d done all she could to emphatically deny any madness or lunacy or sexual misconduct, because it was the absolute truth.
In fact, she’d frantically confessed everything about herself upon her arrival here at Belle Glen Asylum, as she’d been frightened and utterly alone.
At first, Dr. Rosenblatt had reminded Mena of her father, doling out the milk of human kindness from behind his stately office desk. Possessed of a pleasant round face complete with chops and an extra chin, jolly red cheeks, and a portly belly, Dr. Rosenblatt seemed to be a mild-mannered, middle-aged professional gentleman.
She should have known never to trust her instincts when it came to others, especially men. Somehow she was always wrong.
Dr. Rosenblatt snapped open her file, reading it as though he weren’t the sole author of the lies contained within its depths. “You’re getting agitated, Lady Benchley,” he said in that soft voice, the one people usually saved for crying children and the insane.
“No!” she cried, louder than she’d meant to, as Nurse Schopf tugged her toward the bath. “No.” She schooled her voice into something more pleasant, more ladylike, even though she dug her feet against the tile floor. “Doctor, I’m not at all agitated, but I would very much prefer not to take the ice bath. Please. I—isn’t there something else? The electrodes, perhaps—or just put the mittens on me and send me to bed.” She didn’t want to consider the alternatives she’d just suggested. She dreaded the electrodes, abhorred the chafing little prisons locked about her wrists, rendering her hands useless for anything at all.
But she feared nothing so much as the ice baths.
“Please,” she entreated again, frightened tears welling behind her eyes.
“You beg so prettily, Lady Benchley.” His gaze never touched hers, but drifted lower, to her mouth and then to her breasts that tested the seams of her tight and uncomfortable black frock. “But, you see, I am your doctor and my first obligation is the treatment of your illness. Now, if you please, remove your clothing without further incident, or they will be removed for you.”
Nurse Schopf’s grip tightened on Mena’s wrist with bruising strength unusual for a woman. She pulled Mena toward the tub, securing her other hand around Mena’s upper arm. “Are you going to fight me today, Countess Fire Quim, or will you behave for once?”
Countess Fire Quim, it was a name one of the patients had given her that first awful day in Belle Glen. They’d been stripped bare in a room full of fifteen or so women, poked, prodded, deloused, and then doused with buckets of cold water. Someone had remarked on the uncommon shade of her red hair, and then on the darker shade of auburn between her legs. Mena had been called many cruel things in her life, most often by her family, the St. Vincents, and generally pertaining to her uncommon height or her wide hips and shoulders, but “Countess Fire Quim” was somehow the most humiliating. Especially when used by the nurses or the staff at Belle Glen.