Rapture's Edge

by J. T. Geissinger

  Silas chuckled a great deal.

  The one black spot in his otherwise great satisfaction with his Gift was its limitation. There were certain minds, certain hearts, too strong or closed or stubborn to be swayed. In Eliana’s case, he suspected it was all three, but she’d never been affected by the subtle pressure he sent her way, little nudges of intent sent out in invisible waves, gentle as a lover’s touch. No matter how he tried to influence her emotions, she would not be swayed.

  Her brother, on the other hand, was an entirely different matter.

  Caesar, his eyes lingering on the place where Eliana had disappeared beyond the wall, said, “Still playing hard to get, is she?”

  Impossible to get, more like. Silas was no fool; he knew she didn’t love him—would never love him. He knew also that she still pined for that knuckle-dragging warrior they’d left behind in Rome. But no matter. Love was for children and fools, and he was neither. Love didn’t play a part in his plan. Caesar, however, did.

  He said in a quiet, dejected voice, “Is it that obvious she doesn’t want me?”

  Caesar laughed, delighted. “Don’t worry, Silas. It doesn’t matter what she thinks she wants. She’ll be yours eventually.”

  Silas could almost hear the indulgent head-pat in Caesar’s tone. He said innocently, “If only I could be as certain as you are, my lord. She’s damned stubborn once her mind is made up.”

  Caesar’s laughter died. He gazed at Silas for a long moment, silent and still as a coiled snake, sunlight glinting blue off his black hair. “She’s only a female, Silas. She doesn’t get to choose her fate.”

  Silas raised his brows and blinked, the picture of breathless anticipation, and Caesar said, “Let her think she’s in control for now; it doesn’t matter. In fact, it suits our purposes. We need her content for the time being. But once we get to Zion, she’ll be yours. You continue to oversee the production of the serum and successfully carry off the little coming-out party we have planned, and I promise you, she’ll be yours.” He smiled, hard as stone. “No matter what she wants.”

  A smile crept over Silas’s face. Great Horus, manipulating him was almost too easy; the boy’s will was a weak, slithery thing, easily pushed aside. Truly, the two of them were no match for him and everything he had planned. Knight to rook, pawn to queen, it was all just a game, and one at which he excelled.

  He was already six moves ahead of them both.

  Knowing exactly what Caesar needed to hear, Silas said in a humble voice, “Your father would be very proud of you, my lord. You’re just as ruthless as he was.”

  In the morning sun, Caesar’s black eyes glittered with malice. “He was too easy on her. I trust you won’t make the same mistake. My sister requires…a firm hand.” They gazed at one another, and Silas heard loudly what had been left unspoken. His smile grew wider and more rabid.

  “I couldn’t agree more, my lord. I couldn’t agree more.”

  He looked forward to proving to them all exactly how firm his hand would be.

  The best thing about whiskey is the speed at which it works.

  “Easy, killer,” said Mel dryly, prying the silver flask from the death grip Eliana had on it. “Don’t make yourself sick.”

  Too late, Eliana thought. But she wasn’t sick from the alcohol. Leaning against the bare rock wall of the fighting amphitheater they’d ironically nicknamed New Harmony, Eliana let Mel take the flask and then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her gaze wandering around the shadowed space, she wondered aloud, “What’s a worse way to die, do you think? Eaten by a shark or burned at the stake?”

  Mel paused with her hand in midair, staring at her with one eyebrow cocked. “Ah. We’re in that kind of mood, are we? Let me guess…jerkass number one, or jerkass number two?”

  Eliana exhaled hard, and whiskey fumes seared her nose. “Both.”

  “Double-team.” Mel nodded sagely. “That’ll do it every time.” She looked down at the flask in her hand and then thrust it back. “You definitely need this more than I do.”

  “I’m pretty sure I finished it,” Eliana said mournfully.

  She’d fled to the catacombs after her breakfast with Caesar and Silas, and she’d been prowling around for hours, hoping to find someone to spar with, thinking a good fight would lift her mood. No such luck. The candlelit corridors were all but deserted with the exception of the two of them. Mel had found her just a few minutes ago, kicking down a row of empty bottles someone had lined up along a crevice in the rock. Carved gargoyles leered down from the ceiling, staring with empty eyes, and all along one wall someone had painted a beautiful, cresting tsunami, swallowing cliffs and villages in Japan.

  Monsters and mayhem. It perfectly suited her mood.

  Eliana put her hands over her face, rubbed her throbbing temples, and sighed. “In my next life, I’d like to have a penis. Whoever wrote that song about it being a man’s world was spot on.”

  “Death wishes and penis envy. You are having a bad day.” Mel’s sarcastic voice gentled as she studied her face. “What happened?”

  “What always happens. Caesar happened.”

  Mel let it hang there for a minute and then very quietly said, “Eliana, you know you’re the reason we all left Rome, right?”

  She lifted her head and looked at Mel.

  “Not your brother, not Silas, not this shining great plan to live in the open with humans that you’re all so gung ho about. None of us cared about any of that. We left because you were leaving. You.” Her voice dropped even lower, to nearly a whisper, conspiratorial. “You’re the Alpha of this colony, Eliana, whether you realize it or not. Silas was just one of your family’s Servorum back home, even though he acts like he owns the keys to the castle now. And it’s well known that your brother is unGifted and…problematic. You could formally challenge him—”

  Eliana clapped a hand over Mel’s mouth and held it there, horrified. “Don’t you dare say it!” Though she’d hissed it as low as she could, her voice seemed amplified in the cavernous, echoing space. She had to take several long, deep breaths before continuing. “He’ll have your head on a stick in ten seconds flat if he thinks you’re conspiring to…to…”

  Her voice muffled beneath Eliana’s hand, Mel said, “You’re stronger than he is. You’d win.”

  “Shhh!”

  Mel shrugged. Above Eliana’s hand, her black eyes were solemn, but filled with challenge. “Besides, you’re the real breadwinner around here. He’d starve to death without you.”

  “Mel,” she warned, but before she could say more there came the sounds of voices and footsteps from one of the corridors that spilled into New Harmony. Someone was coming.

  Eliana stood and ran a hand through the choppy blue tangle of her hair. “Please, not another word!” Mel rose beside her, folded her arms across her chest, and made a vague gesture with her shoulders that seemed to say for now.

  “Butterfly!”

  Alexi, coming through the low archway of the access corridor, pulled up to an abrupt halt. Beside him looking around in awe at the graffitied walls and rows of stalactites that hung from the high, arched ceiling like monstrous rows of teeth was a girl in a short leopard-print miniskirt with teased blonde hair and a deep tan that appeared to be sprayed on. She had the kind of voluminous breasts typically seen on models in men’s magazines and long nails painted an alarming neon pink. Their hands were clasped together, but as soon as Alexi caught sight of Eliana, he dropped the girl’s hand as if it burned.

  Oh gods. Not today. Not now.

  “What fun!” snickered Mel beside her. “Ken and Hooker Barbie!”

  Eliana elbowed her in the side. “We were just leaving, slick,” she called out, edging toward the corridor behind them. She reached out and grabbed Mel’s arm, but she wouldn’t be budged. Clearly, she wanted to stay for the fireworks.

  The girl muttered to Alexi, “Who’s slick? And who’s she?”

  Another tug on her arm and Mel relented with a sour look
. “I’ve got five hundred on my girl for Friday night, slick, you in?”

  Alexi looked at Eliana. “I’m always in,” he said solemnly, and the double meaning couldn’t have been clearer.

  “Good luck with that,” said Mel under her breath, and then she smiled brightly and waved good-bye as Eliana dragged her off into the corridor.

  When Alexi and his flavor of the week were out of earshot, Eliana said, “You’re terrible. Stop baiting him, will you?”

  “Why? It’s fun to poke the bear and watch him dance.”

  “Be nice.”

  “Is he being nice by dragging every single low-rent skank in Paris down here to rub in your face? I think not. Therefore, he deserves everything he gets.” Mel made this pronouncement with a queenly wave of her hand. “God, it’s like he clones them or something.”

  “He’s just…trying to get a rise out of me. Because he cares. It’s sweet, in its own sick, twisted way.”

  “Sweet? Are you serious?” she scoffed. “It’s a cheap, immature trick. He deserves to have his boy bits cut off for that kind of behavior.”

  “Mel,” Eliana warned, but her friend only laughed, a merry snort that echoed off the rock walls around them.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll leave his boy bits unharmed for the time being. But he’s on my list, E, along with a few other people who will remain unnamed.”

  She sent Eliana a dark, loaded glance, and she suddenly remembered the task she’d been assigned. “Speaking of those unnamed people, they’ve decided I should hit the Louvre tonight.”

  Mel stopped dead in her tracks, and Eliana turned, surprised, to look at her. The corridor they were in was dark and winding, filled with the sound of trickling water and long, crawling shadows, but Eliana could easily make out the dismay on Mel’s face.

  “The Louvre! Why there? That seems so risky!”

  Eliana sighed in agreement. “I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks so. As if I had a choice,” she muttered as an afterthought. “Anyway, security personnel can’t see me in the dark. Cameras can’t capture an image of me. Plus, I can Shift to Vapor if I need to. Really, what’s the worst that could possibly happen?”

  It was a rhetorical question, of course, and one Mel didn’t have an answer to, but as they turned and began the long walk back to the upper levels of the catacombs and the hidden entrance that would lead them into the basement of their abandoned abbey, Eliana couldn’t shake the dark, nagging feeling that, somehow, she was about to find out.

  Heart pounding, D shot up in bed and blinked into the cool stillness of the dark room, trying to regain his equilibrium. Trying, without success, to swallow around the cold, devouring terror that clawed at his throat. An echo of a scream died into silence off the curved rock walls as he sat there sweating and panting with the sheets rucked up around his waist, and D realized it must have come from him.

  The dream was the worst he’d had yet.

  Fighting panic, he dropped his head into his hands and concentrated on getting himself under control. Images still battered him relentlessly—gunfire, blood, men with weapons descending on the naked, terrified figure of Eliana crouched against a wall like a cornered animal. There was nothing he could do, but every nerve ending in his body screamed for him to do something.

  Because like the others before it, this dream was a harbinger of things to come.

  He swung his legs over the side of the cot and pushed off. Naked, he went to the footlocker at the end of the bed and pulled on the pair of black cargo pants and shirt he’d tossed there hours earlier. He laced up his boots and crossed to the dresser on the other side of the room that held the various weapons he always carried, laid out in a careful row on top. He strapped them on in the same order he did every time: Glock nine-millimeter on his right hip, kukhri—tip dipped in poison—on his left, push daggers in each of his boots, folding knives tucked into pockets in his pants. He was a walking arsenal and, as one of the king’s elite guards, had been most of his adult life.

  Not that there was a king to guard any longer, but that hadn’t reduced the threats to their colony. If anything, the king’s death increased the threats tenfold.

  He ran a hand over his head, his dark hair shorn so close to his skull it couldn’t accurately even be called a haircut, and grabbed the keys to his Ducati from the small wooden bowl where they were always kept. He needed a ride. He needed a drink, as well. Ignoring the fact that they were all basically under martial law and forbidden to leave the catacombs without express permission from Celian—once the king’s main enforcer, now the leader of the Bellatorum and de facto ruler of the colony—D had been making clandestine reconnaissance trips ever since Eliana had disappeared.

  He groaned aloud. Even thinking her name hurt.

  With a curse, he spun on his heel and made his way from the Spartan sleeping chambers the Bellatorum used into the chilled gloom of the main corridor of the catacombs.

  Fifteen minutes later he emerged in the shadows of the subterranean basilica of Domitilla that the Bellatorum used as their own special entrance and exit to the catacombs and came face-to-face with a pair of nasty-looking guards lounging against the ancient Doric columns. Young, muscular, and glowering, they sprang to attention and trained the sights of their automatic rifles on the center of his chest. D noted with no small satisfaction he was at least a head taller than both of them.

  Then again, at over six foot five, he was at least a head taller than almost everyone.

  “Gentlemen,” he said calmly, looking first at one, then the other.

  One of them cleared his throat, a froggy sound that echoed softly off the crumbling stone walls. “Can’t let you pass, D.”

  D’s brows rose. “That so?”

  “Celian’s orders,” the other one offered apologetically. Restless, he shifted his weight back and forth between his feet. D smelled his anxiety, both acrid and musky, a hint of spice on the air, and made the instant assessment that these two were all sizzle and no steak.

  In other words, easy pickings.

  “You were at the training session the other night,” said D, eyeing the more obviously nervous one. He nodded, a curt affirmative, and adjusted his grip on his rifle. Little beads of sweat had broken out on his upper lip. “Enjoy it?”

  The guard glanced at his companion, and D continued. “Heard that soldier I knocked out is doing better.”

  “Which one?” said the other guard, smiling grimly. He was the bigger of the two, also nervous but determined not to show it, standing there with his legs spread wide and his square chin jutting out like a dare.

  Okay, thought D. You first, then.

  Before either one could react, D Shifted to Vapor, shed his clothes in a pile on the ground, reappeared behind the cocky guard, and tapped him on the shoulder. The guard spun around, right into the unleashed power of D’s fist. He dropped like a stone, and his rifle went clattering over the cracked marble.

  The other guard took one look at D’s massive, naked, tattooed form and promptly dropped the rifle. He held up both hands. “Just make it quick,” he said. “And do me a solid—tell Celian I put up a good fight, will you?”

  D almost smiled. He liked this kid. So instead of punching him in the face—which would leave him with a bruise blooming blue and purple over one side and probably a few crushed bones like his friend lying at their feet—he used an old standby…the sleeper hold. Steady, applied pressure to his carotid artery, and after a few twitches, the kid was out like a light.

  Just as D finished getting dressed again, he heard a noise behind him. He spun around and saw Constantine leaning against a marble column on the other side of the basilica, slowly clapping in mock applause. His expression was one of amused disbelief. He pushed away from the column and walked toward D.

  “Great show. I think Celian really needs to rethink his containment strategy.” When D didn’t answer, he said with exaggerated sarcasm, “Going somewhere?”

  D shrugged and crossed his arms over his
chest. “Stir-crazy. Needed to get out.”

  “Figured as much.”

  “You spying on me again, grandma?”

  Constantine chuckled. “Something like that. Mind if I join you?”

  D paused, examined the expression on Constantine’s face, and then said, “Not really a question, is it?”

  Now Constantine’s chuckle was wry, as was the smile that split his face. “You’re pretty sharp for a blunt instrument, you know that?”

  “Got all the looks in the family, too.” At that, they both chuckled. “Ladies first,” said D, gesturing toward the hidden door that led to the outside world and freedom. “And if I hear one word about a curfew, I’ll smack that movie-star smile right off your face.”

  “Good to know you haven’t lost your sense of humor, D. The thought of you landing a punch on me is seriously hilarious.”

  Constantine gave D a friendly shove, and D shoved him back, grinning. Then they both walked out into the starlit Roman night.

  Three hours and two bottles of Glenlivet later, D’s mood had sunk a notch below black.

  “You want to talk about it?” asked Constantine, watching D stare blankly at the empty glass in his hand.

  “When have I ever wanted to talk about it?” D muttered. The camaraderie from hours earlier had evaporated along with the scotch, and D was surlier than ever. He knew from experience that drinking only dulled the pain but didn’t numb it, and that ache beneath his breastbone would need something stronger to kill it than an eighteen-year-old single malt. A machete might do the trick.

  “So we’re just going to sit here all night and stare at the walls?”

  D glanced up at Constantine, and a hot flash of anger lit through him when he saw the pity on his face. “I seem to remember it was you who insisted on coming,” he snapped.

  “If I’d known your little pity party was going to be this much fun, I wouldn’t have.”