Rapture's Edge

by J. T. Geissinger

  What if he knew everything?

  What if, as Silas had said, D’s Gift of Foresight had shown him a future in which he ruled the world?

  It couldn’t be discounted, no matter how much it sickened her.

  She didn’t want to believe it. She wanted to believe what her body told her, what her heart told her. She wanted to melt into his arms and let his heat surround her until she spiraled down into forgetting, into not caring what the truth might be.

  But she wasn’t that girl. She cared about the truth. The Truth, capital T. And she was going to get it, even if it killed her.

  “You’re not going back to sleep,” D gently accused, stroking a hand up her arm. She made a noncommittal noise and then sighed.

  He seemed to sense her inner turmoil, because his hand drifted over her shoulder, and he spread his palm flat over her chest, feeling for her heartbeat. It thudded against her breastbone, fast and erratic. She could almost hear him thinking.

  But he stayed away from anything too dangerous and said with a hint of a smile in his voice, “So you’re the invisible girl now. Pretty impressive, I gotta say. How’d that happen?”

  “By accident, I guess. I mean, living underground in permanent shadow all my life I never really had the need to hide from anything…” She faltered, and D’s arm tightened around her. Eliana guessed they were both thinking of what she had to hide from now. “Anyway, the first time I saw the sun was the day we left Rome. We were walking through an olive tree grove in Mazzalupeto when the sun rose over the horizon, and I was so scared I hid in this ruin of an old barn, in a horse stall. When Mel came to look for me, she couldn’t see me, even though I was standing right there, not three feet away.” She closed her eyes, remembering Mel’s panic and her own. “It took awhile to learn to control it. At first, I had to be scared to disappear. Then, later, I could just think of something that scared me. And now I can do it at will.”

  D lay there in silence for a moment, his breathing even, his chest warm against her back. “But your clothes disappear, too. When we Shift to Vapor, anything we wear or hold just falls to the ground. I don’t understand how—”

  “Because I’m not changing myself. It’s not a physical thing, unlike turning to panther or mist. I’m changing the light, the way it bends around me. So I keep my clothes. Best of all, I can do it when I’m injured, unlike Shifting. But there has to be shadows. I can’t do it in full sunlight, or even in brightly lit rooms.” She’d tried, she’d tried a million different ways, but there was something about all that light that spooked her, that made her shrivel inside. She never knew daylight could feel so violent.

  “Bending the light,” he repeated, his voice softly awed. He slid his hand from over her heart where he’d kept it while she was speaking and cupped it around her jaw. He turned her face toward him. He put his lips to her ear. “Do you have any idea how amazing that is? How amazing you are?”

  Her heartbeat picked up again. She was grateful he’d moved his hand. She shrugged off his compliment with a wryly spoken, “You already got into my pants, cowboy. You can lay off the sweet talk.”

  He chuckled, a deep rumble that reverberated through his chest. “You were always terrible with compliments. I see nothing’s changed.”

  Nothing’s changed? God, what she could have responded to that. She bit her lip to keep from saying anything. Then with a gentleness that made her stomach clench, D released her jaw and trailed his fingertips over the back of her neck and shoulders, tracing the outline of her tattoos.

  “This butterfly is beautiful. Blue and black, like your hair.”

  “Like my mood,” she corrected. His fingers stilled, and she amended that to, “My…usual mood.”

  She felt his smile. He stroked the place at the top of her spine just beneath the gentle bump of the seventh vertebrae, and she felt goose bumps form in the wake of his touch. “And what does this symbol mean?”

  “It’s the kanji character for rōnin,” she murmured, staring at the slender yellow flame across the room as his fingers paused their slow tracery. “They were samurai—”

  “Whose masters had died, leaving them adrift.”

  She wasn’t surprised he knew about the ancient warrior class of Japan; he seemed to know something about everything. She sighed.

  He said, “If a rōnin’s master was killed, the code of the samurai refused to allow their death to go unavenged, though they themselves must then commit ritual suicide for committing the crime of murder.” He was silent for a moment, contemplative, and then his fingers began to trace the pattern again, slow and light and almost…reverent.

  “It’s about loyalty,” she whispered into the dark. “It’s about sacrifice. And honor. It’s about living for something beyond yourself and having the courage to die for what you believe in.”

  “Yes,” he murmured, and very gently pressed his lips to the nape of her neck. “It is.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that. There seemed to be a deeper meaning to his agreement, and she knew the irony would not be lost on him that she wore the symbol of the rōnin on her skin and he was the man on whom she had pledged vengeance, yet here they were, entwined together in a bed in which they’d slept after making love. She still felt like killing someone, only now she wasn’t sure if it was him, herself, or the next person she laid eyes on. Maybe all of the above.

  Irritated now, she said, “How did you find me? At the catacombs?”

  Another low chuckle. “Dreamt it.”

  Her heartbeat accelerated—did that mean he knew exactly where the rest of them were? About the abbey, the entrance from the catacombs?

  D stirred behind her, nuzzling his face into her hair. “Followed a bunch of guys into the catacombs from a manhole cover hidden behind a crypt in the Montmartre Cemetery. Had no idea where I was going, just got a starting point, and then they showed up.”

  To hide her sigh of relief, she pretended to yawn. “And those assassins that are after me…who sent them?”

  “I told you, they’re a group assembled from the other four colonies—”

  “But who sent them, exactly?”

  There was a pause, and then D said, “The Queen.”

  “Queen?” whispered Eliana, astonished. “They let a woman lead?”

  “There have been others before,” he murmured, tightening his arms around her. “Marie Antoinette, Cleopatra—”

  “No!”

  “It’s rare, but when it happens, an Ikati Queen is far more powerful than any male Alpha. They say this English Queen can Shift to anything she likes, not just panther—”

  “No!” Eliana sat up in bed, the sheets rucked around her waist, and stared down at him. He stared back, shadowed eyes and corded muscle, heat rising from his naked body in delicious, heady waves. He reached up and swept his thumb, very lightly, across the apple of her cheek.

  “Whether they realize it or not,” he murmured, gazing into her eyes, “women are always more powerful than men. The only reason males are bigger, physically stronger, is because we’re made to protect and serve the more valuable sex: females. Nature bestowed on them the ability to conceive and give birth. Only females grow life inside their bodies. Only females bring it forth. They’re made to create and nurture life. There’s nothing more powerful, more necessary, than that.”

  Heat suffused her cheeks. When his look became too intense, too probing, she dropped her gaze to the covers. We’re made to protect and serve.

  “And now this powerful, can-shift-into-anything Queen wants me dead.”

  “They haven’t read your father’s journal. They don’t even know it exists, so what you read is for your eyes only. But they know he was the leader of the Expurgari, and they believe you—or your brother—have taken his place. They’ve been hunted by this group for hundreds of years, their leaders have been killed, their people tortured. She herself was apparently tortured. You know now what Dominus planned to do…we’ve been on the brink of war with them since you left. They
don’t fully believe none of us knew what your father was doing, but we’ve given them enough concessions to hold them off. For now.”

  So because of her, the entire Roman colony was in danger. But why, if the Bellatorum wanted to keep peace with the other colonies, hadn’t they let the Queen read her father’s journal, thereby proving Dominus’s guilt and their own innocence?

  The serum, a little voice inside her head whispered. They want it for themselves.

  A chill ran over her skin. She pushed the thought aside, but it kept swimming back in front of her eyes, resolute, damning. She watched D’s face carefully as she asked, “Do they know about the serum?”

  His expression did not change. His voice remained neutral. “No. As I said, they never read your father’s journal, and as far as the Bellatorum know he never developed it, just tested it successfully.” His eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”

  She stared at him for a long moment, her stomach in knots, her heart beating frantically against her breastbone once again. “Why wouldn’t you show them the journal, Demetrius? If it could prove you’d done nothing wrong?”

  His head tilted to one side on the pillow. Something changed in his face. A hardening, a slight closure that indicated an awareness of her distrust, perhaps, she couldn’t be sure. There was a new hollowness in his voice when he spoke, a new tightness around his mouth.

  “I’ve read that journal, Eliana. Over and over and over, searching for some kind of clue as to where you might have gone when you left. There wasn’t any, of course, but what your father planned for you…your brother…all the terrible things he did and wanted to do…that’s not something I would ever let anyone read. That’s not for anyone else’s eyes. Especially theirs. The other colonies can take their threats and go straight to hell—I’d never let you be humiliated like that. Never.” His voice darkened. “There are some secrets we should take with us to the grave.”

  Oh, what those words did to her. If she was conflicted and confused before, this was the cherry that topped her triple-scoop ice cream sundae of confusion. The words seemed sincere, but the tone he spoke them in and the look on his face seemed…what? Odd, if nothing else. Protection is the motivation he claimed, her protection, and she might have believed it, but for that final sentence that held a strange ring of prophecy. There are some secrets we should take with us to the grave. And for that oddness in his manner, which might have been hurt at her disbelief.

  Or might have been fake hurt, intended as a diversion.

  Killers enjoy creating diversions, Eliana.

  Even now, Silas’s voice echoed in her head.

  She slowly lay down and pressed her back against the hard expanse of D’s chest, avoiding his eyes, avoiding the sudden tangle of flying chicken feathers that were her thoughts. “I see,” she whispered, not really seeing anything at all.

  He lay behind her, tense and silent, until he let out a breath and dragged the blankets up around them and pulled her tight against his chest once more. They lay like that for a long time, until she felt his breathing grow more regular, his heartbeat more slow. When she was certain he was almost asleep, she whispered into the dark, “Do you really believe males are made to protect and serve females, or is that just pillow talk?”

  He mumbled something, and she turned her head to hear him better. “If you hadn’t already worn me out, woman, I’d serve you right now.” He chuckled softly. “But it’ll have to wait ’til morning. I’ll show you exactly how a male should protect and serve his female in the morning.”

  But when morning came and D stretched and opened his eyes, the bed was empty, the sheets beside him cold.

  Eliana was already gone.

  Mel awoke with a start to the feel of a hand clamped over her mouth.

  She bolted upright in bed, a scream strangled in her throat, but let out a huge sigh of relief when she saw it was only Eliana, crouched beside her bed in the dark, pale and wild-eyed with a finger to her lips like some kind of mute, blue-haired ghost.

  “What are you doing, crazy person?” Mel hissed. “You scared the hell out of me!”

  “Get dressed,” came the urgent, whispered response. “Wake up the others and go down to the Tabernacle and wait for me. I’m going to go see Alexi—”

  “Alexi? What? You are crazy, E, it’s the middle of the night—”

  “We need to get everyone out of here, and Alexi’s place is big enough for all of us.” Her voice darkened. “Most of us.”

  Mel stared at her, long and hard, through the shadows of the room. She smelled Eliana’s fear and rage like the sour tang of food left out too long in the sun, and something else that surprised and pleased her in equal measure: the dark, spiced musk and masculine power that could only be Demetrius.

  “Tell me what’s happened. I know you saw Demetrius.”

  Eliana started like she’d just jumped from behind a door and yelled, Boo! Mel said, “I spent a lot of time crying on his shoulder, sweetie. I remember exactly what he smells like. Spill it.”

  Resigned to the fact that Mel wasn’t going to budge until she knew what was going on, Eliana let out a frustrated sigh and dragged her hands through her hair. She sat beside her on the bed and closed her eyes. “He brought me my father’s journal. I read it, and it was…bad.” Though a whisper, her voice grew hard, harder than Mel had ever heard it. “It was worse than bad. Your hunch was right, Mel. Nothing is what it seems.”

  Mel didn’t know what to say. The way she was talking, just the way her lips shaped the words, gave her pause. “And…and Demetrius? What about him?”

  Even in the dark, Mel could see the heat suffuse Eliana’s face. She chewed on her lower lip, then, in a motion so out of character it spoke volumes, hid her face in her hands.

  Mel clapped her own hands together silently in a pantomime of glee and bounced up and down on the mattress. “Oh my God, you did it! Tell me everything!”

  From behind her hands Eliana scoffed, “What are you, twelve?”

  Mel was too busy swooning to care about the acid in her tone. “Was he gentle? Was he rough? Was it over too fast? Oh my God, I hope it wasn’t over too fast, he’s soooooo hot—”

  “He told me he loved me.”

  This was said with so much pathos, such bleak hopelessness, she might as well have just said, He told me to burn in hell. She stared at Eliana, who had dropped her hands to her lap and was staring at them as if she’d never seen them before, as if her own ten fingers were strangers, not to be trusted. Something huge and ugly seemed to be growing in her, an evil, cancerous blossom of rage or despair, flowering slowly to life.

  “Why is that bad? What exactly happened?”

  Weary, weary, Eliana answered, “He’s lying about something, Mel. I don’t know if it’s that, or if it’s about what really happened the night my father died or what, but he’s hiding something.” She paused, said more softly, “They know about the serum. I can’t help thinking…”

  “No,” was Mel’s instant reply. “Not him.”

  Eliana turned her head and looked at her with the kind of glassy eyes you see on victims of natural disasters or wars—shell-shocked, darting. Haunted.

  “That’s what I thought about my father. That’s what I thought about Silas, and my brother, too. Apparently being a good judge of character is not one of my Gifts. In fact, I think we can safely say I suck at it.”

  Mel took her friend’s cold, cold hand and squeezed it in her own. “I can assure you my perceived awesomeness is bona fide, however, so you’re not totally hopeless.” The ghost of a smile was her only answer before Eliana looked away. “What did you find out about Silas?”

  Eliana’s face hardened again. The expression reappeared too quickly and easily, as if it were a default setting and every other look that crossed it just a transient visitor. It was eerie, and Mel didn’t like it at all.

  “He’s a traitor and a liar, and very soon he’s going to become well acquainted with the edge of my sword.” She hissed a breath throu
gh her teeth, then stood and looked down at her with those glassy, shell-shocked eyes. Only now they burned. “That’s why we have to get you and the others out of here, quickly and quietly. Don’t take anything, just get everyone rounded up as fast as you can.”

  “A traitor?” Mel whispered, hand at her throat. She stood, the bare stone floor a jolt of cold against her bare feet. “What has he done?”

  Eliana stood and went to the wooden chest at the end of the bed where Mel kept her clothes and began rifling through it. She pulled out a jacket, pants, shirt, boots, and threw it all on the bed. “What hasn’t he done, is the real question. If you looked up the definition of evil incarnate in the dictionary, his picture would be next to it. Right next to my father’s. Get dressed.”

  Mel pulled on the clothes as fast as she could, her heart pounding like a hammer. “So what are you going to do?”

  “We’re going to get you all someplace safe, and then Silas and I are going to have a little talk.”

  “Or,” said a voice from the doorway, “we could talk right now.”

  Eliana and Mel spun around in unison, and horror descended on her, thick and hot, like a blanket dropped over her head.

  In the darkened doorway stood Silas, robed in black. Radiating menace, he looked back and forth between them with a little unnerving smile, fingering the gun in his hand.

  The gun he now raised and pointed directly at Eliana.

  This is what love was to the warrior Demetrius:

  Years long as lifetimes of yearning, a yearning so sharp and terrible and unrelieved it was like a sword of heated steel permanently embedded in his chest. Love was stolen glances and smothered hopes and vivid, illicit dreams that taunted him upon waking and the cold, unrelenting fear of discovery that followed him, sly and clinging like a shadow, during all his days and nights. Because if, somehow, the love that burned inside him like a swallowed sun was discovered by the wrong person, his life would be ended as swiftly as two hands clapping, and the flame that had sustained him for as long as he could remember would be snuffed out like a wick between wetted fingers.