Rapture's Edge

by J. T. Geissinger

  More shocked whispers and shuffling, but no one challenged her openly. In the absence of Caesar or Silas, she was the temporary head of the colony and they had to do what she said…at least until one of them came back.

  “Bettina, please, help me.” Eliana slid her arms gently beneath Mel, who sagged against her, heavy, but then someone stepped forward. Fabrizio—universally called Fabi—was a gentle giant, one of the Castratus charged with guarding the harem in his former life, now charged with doing all the cooking for the tiny new colony; it was his eggs she took such pains to avoid eating every morning. How she wished that was the least of her problems now.

  “I’ve got her,” Fabi rumbled, his deep voice like a balm on her shredded nerves. He lifted Mel easily in his arms as if she were a child and cradled her body against his chest. Mel moaned, her eyes shut, her lips a terrifying shade of pale blue. The pulse at the base of her throat had grown faint.

  “Hurry. Hurry,” Eliana urged, moving to the door and waving him along. The gathered group parted to let them pass, and Bettina followed close on her heels, pressing the bloodied remnant of sheet against Mel’s chest to try and stanch the bleeding as they quickly made their way through the echoing, arch-ceilinged common room toward the back of the abbey. Behind them, the whispering crowd began to split apart into smaller groups, conferring.

  Eliana didn’t give herself time to wonder how many of them would actually be waiting for her when she got back. She had her own loyalists, but so did Caesar.

  So did Silas.

  To get to the back of the abbey where the main gates opened to the only access to a road, they had to pass through the old church, dusty and gloomy in the half-light of dawn that spilled down from the windows carved into the white-pink stone far above. There was an iron door set into the east wall in a niche adjacent to the altar. It was rusted and padlocked, but Eliana gave it a vicious kick and the lock and chain crumbled. The door swung open with an eerie groan, and they pushed through, heading for the weed-choked gravel driveway.

  And Geo was already driving up.

  Relief surged through Eliana, and she ran toward the black SUV, waving frantically, her boots crunching over the gravel. The headlights blinded her for a brief moment, and she lifted a hand, shading her eyes against the glare, and then pulled up short as her vision adjusted and her heart threatened to crawl right out of her throat.

  It wasn’t Geo behind the wheel of the SUV.

  It was Demetrius.

  He wasn’t smiling.

  D wasn’t surprised to see the look of stunned horror on Eliana’s face when he drove into the tree-lined gravel drive of the abandoned abbey. He wasn’t surprised the pulse had led him here. He’d long ago learned to trust his instincts, and the instinct had led him directly to this shadowed, abandoned place near the Sacré-Coeur as certainly as a homing beacon or the rays of a lighthouse cutting through fog.

  What he was surprised about was Melliane. A bloody, unconscious Melliane, cradled limp in the arms of the Castratus.

  He slammed the Range Rover into park and jumped out. “What happened?” he barked, staring hard at the Castratus. Fabi—he remembered past his shock. The man’s name was Fabi.

  It quickly became apparent Fabi remembered him, too.

  He snarled, “One more step, King Slayer, and your head will be auditioning for a spot on a new body!”

  Fabi glared at him with open hostility. He was big and solid, and D thought he’d give him a run for his money if he tried to get to Eliana, who Fabi had edged in front of in a display of protectiveness that had D clenching both his fists and jaw. The midwife Bettina, beside him, was even more openly antagonistic. She hissed a warning through her teeth the minute he stepped from the car and hadn’t let up since.

  “I didn’t kill Dominus,” he said flatly, looking only at Bettina and Fabi. Eliana, he saw from his peripheral vision, was trying to decide what to do. She was fingering something under her long coat that he suspected was a sheathed sword. He put up his hands in a show of surrender and lowered his voice, letting the tension ease out of his stance. “I’m no danger to any of you, but I can help Melliane—”

  “You won’t touch her!” Bettina stepped forward, hands curled into fists, hissing like a snake. “And if you think for one second we believe anything you have to say—”

  “It’s not me that’s been lying to you—”

  “So says the King Slayer, a man of his word, no doubt!”

  “Now is not the time to argue about this—”

  “Go back to whatever rock you crawled out from under—”

  “Bettina—”

  “Don’t you dare speak my name!”

  D was beginning to lose his patience. He watched a rivulet of blood roll down Melliane’s bare arm, gather at the tip of one finger, and then fall and land with a soft plash to the gravel at Fabi’s feet. “I’m not here to hurt you—”

  “No, you’re just here to kill us!”

  D shouted, “If I wanted you dead you’d already be dead, woman!”

  Bettina’s jaw closed with a snap. Eliana stepped forward, put a hand on her arm, and stared at D with a strange look, dark and unfathomable.

  “He’s right, Bettina, Fabi. If he wanted us dead, we already would be.”

  Bettina shoved back a stray tendril of gray hair that had escaped from her bun and wrapped her arms around herself, glaring murderously at him. “Why are you here then, if not to kill us? What do you want?”

  Instantly, D’s eyes cut to Eliana.

  She stared back at him with that odd look, one hand flexed open at her side, the other wrapped around the hilt of the sword she’d been fingering moments before. It pierced him, seeing the defensiveness in her stance, that hand on her weapon. It cut him to the bone. Their eyes held, and though her face did not change, he thought he sensed a great tumult inside of her, a silent battle she waged against herself.

  “Fabi,” Eliana said finally, very soft, her gaze level with his, “put Mel in the back of the car.”

  Bettina gasped and Fabi took a step back. Still soft, still watching him, Eliana said, “He knows how to remove bullets, I can vouch for that. Mel trusts him. And we can’t take her to a hospital. So he’s our only option.”

  She sounded as if she wished she had another option—any other option—and the knife in D’s heart sliced deeper. Mel trusts him.

  Not her. She didn’t trust him. She wouldn’t defend him against their accusations.

  Why should she? he reminded himself. She didn’t know the truth because he hadn’t told her the truth. He couldn’t tell her, because he swore a Blood oath to defend his brother Constantine to the death, which—very, very unfortunately—included tragic misconceptions, present circumstances included.

  Like truth, honor is only a hollow platitude if it can be discarded when personally inconvenient.

  Or soul-killing, heartbreaking, I’d-rather-die-than-have-to-do-this hard.

  “Put her in the back of the car, Fabi,” Eliana said again, still with that terrible softness, that eerie look on her face. She said it again, sharper, when Fabi didn’t move, and the big male finally drew in a breath and relented. He stepped forward, bristling, the cords in his neck standing out, his eyes flinty cold.

  “I swear on Amun-Ra, Ma’at, and Sekhmet, if any harm comes to her while under your protection, I will dedicate my life to killing you. I will hunt you down like a dog, and you will die like one, too, with my sword buried in your gut and your lying tongue torn out and flung to the buzzards. Your name will be cursed for a thousand generations, and your soul will writhe on the end of Osiris’s spear for all eternity.”

  He spit on the ground to seal the curse and then turned his black glare back to D, whose brows had risen.

  To hide his anger and gripping indignation at the sheer crookedness of the entire situation, D lightly said, “Very elaborate, Fabi. Well done.” He gave a short, mocking bow and then rose and pursed his lips. “Do they even have buzzards in France?”
/>
  Fabi growled, and Eliana pushed past him to open the rear door of the SUV. She jerked her head—inside, now—and Fabi gently laid Mel on the backseat, murmuring to her when she moaned as he adjusted her legs.

  When it was done Eliana turned and gave Fabi and Bettina swift, hard hugs. “Gather the rest, as many as will come, and take them to the Tabernacle,” she murmured. “I’m going to send Alexi for you. You can trust him. Follow him and wait for me.” Her gaze flickered to D. “You’ll get word from me within a few hours. If for any reason you don’t hear from me, assume the worst. Take all precautions. Evanesco, like we planned, but find a new place. Someplace Silas—or anyone else—won’t think to look.”

  Evanesco. Vanish. D stood there, his heart like a stone in his chest, listening while his beloved gave instructions on what to do in case she disappeared, never to return.

  In case he disappeared her.

  Sick. He felt sick. He felt like breaking something. He felt like dying.

  They murmured together for a few more minutes, plans and assurances and parting instructions. Then with a final glare from Fabi and a teeth-baring snarl from Bettina, the two of them moved off the way they’d come, back toward the stone bulk of the old church, hulking and silent in the hush of early morning. Eliana watched them for a moment, worry pinching her face, and then she turned and looked at him, grim and resolute as if she were going off to face a firing squad.

  “Let’s go.”

  Then she opened the passenger door to the SUV and jumped inside.

  Moving slowly, feeling a little shell-shocked, D got behind the wheel and shifted the car into reverse. As they backed down the gravel drive, he said through clenched teeth, “You should know by now I’m not going to hurt you, Ana.”

  She stared out the window into the rising light of morning. She exhaled slowly through her nose. She muttered, “Demetrius, just looking at you hurts me.”

  After that, he didn’t much feel like talking.

  Alexi answered on the first ring. His “What?” was an annoyed, sleepy mumble.

  “I need your help.” Eliana tried to ignore the murderous glare D shot at her from the driver’s seat.

  There was a moment of silence followed by the rustle of fabric. She imagined Alexi sitting up in bed, sending a look to the unmoving bump beside him that would be his latest conquest. “Anything,” he said, low. “What do you need?”

  A sigh of relief escaped her. She hadn’t been entirely sure of him, but Alexi sounded instantly alert and sincere. Thank God for trustworthy ex-boyfriends. “I need a safe place to stay.”

  “Eliana,” he breathed, “yes. You can always stay with me.”

  “It’s not only me,” she equivocated. “There are a few people I have to…hide. Just for a few days until I can make other arrangements.”

  She heard his confusion in his voice. “What, like your family? What happened? Is everything all right?”

  “No,” she answered honestly. “Everything is the opposite of all right.” She swallowed, suddenly hoarse. “Mel’s been shot,” she whispered.

  “Shot!” he exclaimed. In the background, she heard another sleepy mumble, this one female. He covered the phone with his hand and muttered something sharp, then got back on the line. “What’s going on, Butterfly? Where are you?”

  Eliana cleared her throat. “I need you to go to the Tabernacle, Alexi. There will be people waiting there for you, ten, no more than fifteen—”

  “Fifteen people! What the—”

  “Just get there as fast as you can and bring them back to your place and try not to let anyone else see you. I’ve got to get Mel some help, but I’ll come as soon as I can, and I’ll explain everything then. Okay?”

  Another silence, this one weighty, then the sound of Alexi exhaling through his nose. “Okay. But this isn’t going to be like the usual Eliana where you come and go like the weather and I’m left wishing I had a barometer. I’ll go get your people, and you can stay with me as long as you need to, but as soon as you get here you’re going to have to level with me. You’ll have to tell me what’s going on, Eliana. And I want the truth. Deal?”

  “Deal,” she whispered miserably, because she really had no other option. She hung up after saying good-bye and looked back at Mel, white and silent on the backseat of the car. She reached over and took her hand, feeling for a pulse. It was there, but weak.

  “How far?” she asked D without looking at him.

  “Close.” It was clipped and hard. She glanced over to find him staring in cold fury at the windshield. They were going so fast the streetlights flashed by in a near-solid blur, headed back to the safe house where D had medical supplies and anesthesia.

  “Who is he?”

  Eliana let out a breath. She knew D would have easily been able to hear the entire conversation, sitting so close with his stupid, heightened hearing. He’d have heard the inflection in Alexi’s voice. The emotion…the intimacy.

  “He’s a friend.”

  “What kind of friend?” he growled. His fingers wrapped around the steering wheel so hard they turned white.

  “The best kind—one I can trust,” she shot back, because who the hell was he to interrogate her? Mister I won’t answer your questions, but you have to answer mine? Mister no, of course I didn’t kill your father the crazy lunatic, but oops, yeah, I was kind of standing over him with that pesky smoking gun?

  He didn’t speak again, but his rage was palpable. The final minutes to their destination seemed interminable, but they finally pulled into the driveway and a garage door slid open and shut behind them on silent, well-oiled automatic tracks.

  D burst from the car as if it had coughed him out, opened the rear door, and gently picked up Mel in his arms. She was deathly pale and limp, blood soaked through her shirt and splattered all over her neck and arms. Without looking in her direction, he snapped, “Hot water. Fresh towels—you’ll find them in the bathroom on the second level. Bring both to the third level bedrooms. Then stay the hell out of my way.”

  He disappeared through the garage door into the house, leaving Eliana standing alone beside the car, shaking, blinking back tears, and swallowing the sob that was caught in her throat.

  Aldo knew where Caesar was even if the others had no clue. Their lord and master was where he always was when he went missing—with some degenerate whore.

  This time it was two.

  Though it was well after sunrise when most people were getting ready for work or making breakfast for their families or doing one of a million everyday things one does in the early morning, Caesar’s whoring adhered to no particular schedule. Neither did his drinking, or his predilection for unprovoked cruelty. One of the women lay stunned on the bed, bleeding profusely from the nose, the other cowered in a corner of the room, sobbing, and Caesar himself was standing in the open doorway, naked, reeking of alcohol fumes.

  “You dare disturb me?” he said imperiously, glaring in black-eyed, thin-lipped displeasure at the sight of Aldo, who’d knocked on the door of room 9 where the terrified clerk had told him Caesar checked into when Aldo had snarled a warning right into his face. He’d gone to Caesar’s other favorite haunt first, a seedy hotel a few miles from this one, but that place had been closed due to a murder a few nights before that the police were still investigating.

  Caesar drew himself up to his full, imposing height. “What the hell do you want?”

  He wasn’t quite slurring. Not quite. Aldo wished he would cover himself; it was unnerving to be standing so close to a naked man. Especially a drunken, naked king. He could reach out and tap him on the breastbone if he wanted.

  “Your sister, my lord. She’s told the colony Silas is a traitor and a liar. She’s rounding them up and preparing to leave for—somewhere. I don’t know where. I thought you’d want to know.”

  Aldo had never seen anyone sober so quickly. Caesar’s eyes, slightly glazed only seconds before, sharpened and took on a sinister, predatory edge. He stiffened, hissed in
a breath.

  “Where’s Silas?”

  “I don’t know, my lord. I didn’t see him, but your sister…it appears your sister has cut off one of his hands.”

  Caesar recoiled with a gasped exhalation. He recovered, muttered, “That bitch,” then snapped, “Wait for me,” and slammed the door in Aldo’s face.

  It wasn’t two minutes before he reemerged, dressed and radiating anger, his eyes a deadly, flat black Aldo had seen on many, many occasions, right before something terrible happened.

  Caesar said, “Let’s go.”

  They found Silas in one of the old outlying buildings on the abbey property, a crumbling, mossy stone structure that had once been used as an infirmary. Seated on an upended milk crate next to a small fire he’d built in the middle of the bare floor, he was shirtless, sweating profusely, and pale as a sheet. On the arm missing a hand, he’d tightly tied a strip of fabric—torn from the discarded shirt that lay at his feet—just above the elbow as a tourniquet. How the hell he’d managed to tie a tourniquet with one hand was a mystery Caesar had no intention of unraveling.

  Below the tourniquet the flesh had turned a waxen, lifeless gray. There was a trail of blood from the door to where he was sitting, and a crazy splattered pattern of crimson drops zigzagged back and forth across the bare room, a visual map of where he’d been since he arrived. Smoke from the little fire gathered against the vaulted wood ceiling was funneled off toward rotted gaps in the boards in long white fangs.

  In Silas’s one remaining hand, he gripped a dagger.

  “My lord,” he greeted him, stronger than Caesar would have thought for someone missing an important body part. But Caesar couldn’t look at Silas’s face, because the bloody stump of his missing hand held a hypnotic, almost sensual appeal. He couldn’t wait to get a better look at it. He and Aldo moved closer.

  “Your sister,” Silas began, but Caesar interrupted him.

  “Yes, I know.” He finally met Silas’s eyes. “She’s always been unreasonable.”

  Silas exhaled, strangely relieved. “She’s seen Demetrius—”