Rapture's Edge

by J. T. Geissinger

Gregor glowered at her. “Don’t be stupid, princess! I’m not letting you—”

  He broke off because out of the corner of his eye, he saw the picture on the television change to a scene in St. Peter’s Square, at the Vatican.

  Chaos.

  Thousands of people screaming, pushing, trampling one another. Wobbly video of blood-splattered cobblestones and toppled wooden barriers and scores of frantic police trying to direct and control the plainly terrified, surging crowd. A long, grainy shot of a balcony draped in crimson bunting, an empty window with a long streak of blood dripping down the panes.

  The caption read, “Christmas Day Slaughter at St. Peter’s Basilica—Pope Injured, Feared Dead.”

  When the picture cut to a replay of the earlier live broadcast of the pope’s speech, Gregor—a man who had seen many grisly, ungodly things, who had himself done many grisly, ungodly things—thought he might lose his bland hospital breakfast.

  Blood. So much blood. Great, arcing sprays of blood, almost comical in the sheer, unlikely volume of gore, like something from a Tarantino movie. A blur of black fur and claws and muscled sleek bodies, whiskered snouts with long, sharp white fangs tearing viciously into vulnerable human necks.

  Into arms. Into legs. All of which split apart in lurid bursts of meat and juice like overripe fruit, squeezed hard.

  Half a dozen black panthers had attacked the crowd at the Vatican during the pope’s morning address, and another had attacked the pope himself.

  Right there on camera. For all the world to see.

  He had Eliana’s hand in his; he gripped it so hard she said, “Ow, Gregor!” and tried to pull away. But it was as if his muscles had hardened to stone—he simply could not let go.

  She turned her head and followed his gaze. There was a beat before she recognized what she was seeing, and then, with a sound of strangled horror, Eliana leapt from the bed, tore her hand from his, and covered her open mouth.

  Gregor’s eyes followed hers and, in following, stuck. The expression on her face was indescribable—fear mixed with panic mixed with despair and revulsion—her features screwed into a grimace of such pure, animal horror she was almost unrecognizable.

  “No. No. No, no, no, no, no. Please, please no!”

  She whispered it over and over in low, choked shock, her face white, hands trembling violently, still covering her mouth. The whites of her eyes showed all around her black irises. Then Eliana reacted as if an invisible fist had swung hard and connected with her stomach. All the breath left her body in a startling, harsh whoosh, and she collapsed into the chair beside the bed like a discarded ragdoll. A sob that sounded like she was dying slipped from her lips.

  He looked back at the television. The image had changed to one of a handsome, dark-haired man, black-eyed and confident, smiling the most chilling smile Gregor had ever seen. He was odd and otherworldly in the same way as Eliana, and the fervor that burned in his eyes made Agent Doe look like a Girl Scout.

  The news announcer said, “The news media has received this prerecorded video from the unknown terrorist group claiming responsibility for the attack,” and the handsome man began—cheerfully, with veneration and pomp, as if delivering the commencement to a graduating class—to speak.

  “Merry Christmas, humans, and allow me to introduce myself. I’m your new God…”

  All the world fell away, and instant, encompassing agony arose to take its place.

  Eliana felt as if her skin had been peeled off with one sharp, violent tug and she was standing there raw and exposed, muscle and tendon and bone. Pain seared bright and blistering through her as if she were one giant nerve, scraped raw.

  The knowledge of what had been done and what would surely follow was instantaneous.

  Her people: hunted.

  Her colony: killed.

  Her dreams: dead.

  In one fell stroke, Caesar had sealed all their fates. There would never be recompense for this. There would never be forgiveness. There would be war everlasting.

  There would be extinction.

  The magnitude of it was breath-stealingly astonishing.

  A sound drew her attention away from the television, where Caesar was still speaking. It was Gregor, cursing, his face ashen, his gaze on the opposite side of the room, where a hand had appeared, curled around the fabric curtain. The curtain was whisked briskly aside.

  “Oh dear.” Agent Doe looked between the two of them. His one blue eye burned. “Am I interrupting?”

  He stepped forward with a leer, two armed officers behind him, and every ugly, dark, wounded thing inside Eliana exploded to hideous life.

  Shifting is an elemental thing.

  Transforming matter—teeth to fangs, face to muzzle, legs to haunches—is a primal process that is acutely, fleetingly painful. It is real in a physical sense, but it is also a form of magic. And like all magic, it creates energy.

  Energy that can be felt.

  The moment the assassin Keshav felt the girl Shift to panther, he was leaning against the wall beside a vending machine in the hospital hallway, holding a cup of coffee to his lips. He and two of his team had stayed at the hospital, lurking in the background, prowling the halls, and the other two had staked out Gregor’s building. The assumption/hope that she would return to see her injured friend was all they had to go on because she’d disappeared completely once again.

  He was just about to take a sip of his coffee when the first shockwave hit him. He crushed the Styrofoam cup in his hand, spraying hot coffee all over his face and chest.

  A pulse of heat. A vibration. A release, like a spring coiled tight and then loosed, or a door blown open in a sudden wind. It was both shocking and exhilarating—she was so powerful it sent a surge of electricity crackling over his skin.

  He looked up at the ceiling—sixth floor, northwest corner—and then bolted toward the elevators in a flat-out run.

  “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

  Gregor screamed it, upright and red-faced in bed, his hands held stiffly out toward the two officers who had drawn their guns and were pointing them at the surreal scene in front of him.

  Agent Doe, flat against the wall, arms up, face contorted in a grimace of terror. The enormous black animal who had him pinned with heavy paws on his chest had its ears flattened, snout peeled back over glistening sharp fangs, and was snarling down at him.

  And it was definitely down. On her hind legs, in panther form, Eliana towered above him like Goliath to a one-eyed, whimpering David.

  The officers were shouting something, too, screaming in French for her to stand down while Gregor was screaming in English and French and every other language he knew for them to hold their fire.

  With the screaming and the television and the vicious snarl of the panther, no one heard the door open until it was too late.

  Whump. Whump. Both officers jerked, then silently crumpled to the floor. A man in a tailored black suit stepped forward over their bodies, holding a sleek black gun in front of him, fitted with a long, cylindrical silencer.

  “Shift back or die,” he said very quietly to the snarling panther. “Choose. Now.”

  The panther hissed savagely, digging its claws into Doe’s white shirt. Eight pinpoints of blood appeared, flowering out from where the tips of razor-sharp claws pressed through fabric into skin, and Doe let out a pitiful, choked sob.

  Gregor whispered, “Eliana.”

  The man with the gun put his finger on the trigger.

  Then the panther shimmered, losing shape, and turned to mist. Floating and ethereal, ruffling in a pale gray plume in the air, the cloud of Vapor hung there a moment too long for the man with the gun.

  His face never losing its cold concentration, the tone of his voice still so quiet and controlled, he pointed the weapon at Gregor and said, “Choose again.”

  Gregor’s heart screeched to a stop.

  This time there was no hesitation. The cloud of Vapor coalesced, contracting on itself, gathering and thickening
until it took shape as the form of Eliana, completely nude. Voice throbbing, she said, “Don’t hurt him,” and stepped around the bed, her hands held up in surrender. “Please. I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t hurt him.”

  The assassin’s cold gaze flickered over her. A muscle in his jaw twitched. Still with the weapon pointed at Gregor, he took something out of his coat pocket that glinted metallic silver. He held it out. “Put it on.”

  With shaking hands, Eliana reached out and took it, held it up. With the musical chink of metal sliding on metal, it spun in the light for a moment, twisting from her fingers.

  “Around your neck,” the assassin instructed with a jerk of his chin. Eliana complied, then folded her arms over her bare chest and stood before him with her chin up, waiting.

  Behind her, against the wall, a paralyzed Agent Doe lost his battle with gravity and slid silently to his knees.

  The assassin shoved the gun into the waistband of his pants, removed his coat jacket, thrust it at Eliana, and motioned for her to put it on. To Gregor he sent a glance that said, Move and you’re dead.

  When Eliana was covered, the assassin said, “The collar will prevent you from Shifting. Any attempt to escape and we’ll kill him, and you. Understood?”

  She nodded silently. The assassin grabbed her arm and yanked her forward, pushing her over the bodies on the floor.

  “Eliana!” Gregor’s voice cracked. His heart started up again with a painful throb.

  He couldn’t see her face, but as she was shoved out the door he heard her whisper, “Good-bye, old friend.”

  For a long moment, there was nothing but the sound of the television. His own breathing was a booming racket in his ears. Then, slowly and deliberately, Agent Doe leaned over and retched, gagging up a stream of yellow vomit onto the floor.

  Everything had gone perfectly.

  Getting in: perfect. The timing: perfect. Meeting alone in the pope’s personal study, just moments prior to his television broadcast: perfect.

  It had all gone so well…until it all collapsed into chaos in a horrible, unforeseeable turn of events that made Silas’s head swim with the improbability of it.

  It was he and Caesar and Aldo, Ottavio the Expurgari minion in the fedora and cape who’d arranged it all, bowing the introductions in hushed reverence to the Holy Father. The human pope was much more frail than Silas had anticipated—papery skin and a soft, rasping voice, spotted hands that shook more than slightly with age.

  His outfit was something, though. Silas had never seen a hat quite so elaborate, or ridiculous.

  He’d thanked them for their service to the church, thanked them for their years of dedication and sacrifice, assured Caesar that his father had been a holy warrior in the fight against evil, to which Caesar appeared confused, not knowing his father actually had anything to do with anything involving the church.

  Dolt.

  More energetic than he looked, the pope prattled on and on in his raspy voice, amusing Silas with his outpouring of thanks. Then even more amusing: a blessing, waved over their heads.

  How he wanted to laugh then. How he wanted to clutch his stomach and howl with unmitigated glee.

  But of course he did not. He only smiled and nodded, knowing that very shortly those benign, impotent blessings would be forever silenced when Aldo ripped off his face.

  They said their farewells and were ushered to an antechamber, where Silas neatly slit Ottavio’s throat. He died quietly gurgling, choking on his own blood with a very surprised expression that brought another smile to Silas’s face.

  Even though they know it’s eventually coming, death always seems to take people by surprise.

  The three of them waited until the pope’s address started moments later—broadcast live on television, it was also piped in over speakers throughout the papal apartments and the Vatican—and then they simply walked back into the room and began.

  There were no guards this deep in the inner sanctum. There was no need. Access from outside was carefully monitored and protected, but as honored guests, they had been ushered right in. So there was no one to give warning, save the two black-robed priests, assistants who repeated the prayer verses into microphones stationed just behind the window where the pope himself stood, overlooking the vast, gathered crowd, reading the opening blessing into his own microphone.

  They died first.

  Silas didn’t bother having Aldo Shift for that—the two assistants got the same, swift treatment as Ottavio had.

  It was only when the pope turned slowly away from the Plexiglas podium, turned and looked behind him in evident confusion when the assistants failed to respond to his verbal prompts, that Silas gave Aldo the go-ahead.

  He really wished he’d brought a camera then, because the pope’s expression—seeing a man he’d just blessed and thanked minutes before morph into a huge, snarling predator—was priceless.

  It took only seconds, but Aldo knew precisely what to do. He’d been well prepared.

  He leapt on the elderly pontiff, dragged him right to the edge of the balcony with his mouth closed over the scruff of his neck as if he were prey—which he was—knocked aside the Plexiglas podium with one sweep of a powerful paw, and dangled him half over the edge.

  His voluminous white robes, real gold thread glinting in the bright morning sunlight, fluttered in the cool morning breeze. The tall, elaborate hat toppled from his head and sailed down toward the crowd. Their gasp was collective.

  Then Aldo bit down and the gasps turned to screams.

  Caesar, standing beside him, laughed at the extravagant spray of blood. Silas turned his head and looked at him, said, “It really is funny, isn’t it?” and then plunged his knife straight through the back of Caesar’s neck. The tip emerged through his open mouth, slick and red.

  Caesar didn’t even make a noise. He just jerked, once, and then when Silas yanked the blade out—with the wet suck of raw meat and a grinding of bone against steel—he fell to the floor, dead.

  Aldo was preoccupied; it was almost too easy to drive his blade down, two-handed, through the top of his skull. He released his prey with a strangled cry, and both Aldo and the pope slid, limp and bloody, to the stone balcony floor. Then Silas sheathed his knife and backed away, careful not to show his face in the open window. From what he could see of the crowd below, they were in full panic mode, scared witless not only by what had just occurred in the window, but by the coordinated attacks going on down below.

  He turned around and let out a startled scream.

  There in the middle of the floor, awash in his own blood, sat Caesar.

  Staring at him.

  Frowning.

  He put his hand to the back of his neck, feeling around while Silas gaped at him in stunned incomprehension. He shook his head as if to clear it, spat to clear the blood from his mouth, and then, unbelievably—impossibly—climbed to his feet.

  The clamor of shouting and booted feet stomping down the corridor in a rush distracted Caesar, who turned his head toward the noise, but not Silas, who was unable to move a muscle to save his life. A million different explanations flashed through his mind at the speed of light, a million different questions, and always the answer flashing back huge and electric like a Las Vegas neon sign:

  No. No. No.

  A cadre of armed Swiss Guards burst through the antechamber door. Caesar was the first one they saw, standing in a pool of blood in the center of the room, the bodies of the dead priests at his feet, eyes and slit throats gaping. Silas was still by the balcony window, partially out of their line of vision, but Caesar might as well have had a bull’s-eye on his bloody shirt, the way the guards reacted.

  They lit into him with a unified roar.

  Showered in a hail of bullets, Caesar twitched and staggered back as the flying shards of metal bit into his flesh, ripped open his shirt, tore through his body. Blood sprayed from a hundred ragged wounds, and almost in slow motion he fell, arms flailing, a cry of anguish on his lips. He
crumpled to the floor and lay unmoving.

  In the aftermath: Hush. A lone ambulance siren, far out. The sting and gray haze of gunpowder in the air.

  Then the unbelievable and the impossible took on the distinct taint of the insane when Caesar’s eyes, once again, blinked open.

  He sat up abruptly, tore open his bloodied, ruined shirt, and watched in fascination—along with everyone else in the room—as dozens upon dozens of bullets appeared on the surface of his chest and abdomen, squeezed out of the wounds in his skin like seeds from the pulp of a lemon. One by one, they dropped to the floor with little plunks like the sound of pennies tossed into a wishing well, where they rolled, compacted and bloody, in little wobbly circles until falling still.

  Caesar looked back up at the guards, several of whom had dropped their weapons and were crossing themselves in horror. He smiled. He said, “Oops. Bet you weren’t expecting that.”

  Then Silas sank to his knees on the hard wooden floor of the pope’s private study, and, for the first time in his entire life, he wept.

  Demetrius knew even before the phone rang that something terrible had happened.

  He just didn’t know how bad it would turn out to be.

  As he stared down at the ringing cell phone in his palm, a premonition of disaster turned his blood cold. It was Celian calling, he knew from the number, and something made him hesitate before he put it to his ear and said tersely, “What’s happened?”

  A moment of silence. Then, “You haven’t been near a television.”

  The premonition turned into a cold and vile surety that felt like a hungry reptile slithering around in the pit of his stomach. “No.”

  Celian said, “There’s been an attack. On the pope, and the people in St. Peter’s Square, during his Christmas morning—”

  “An attack? What does that have to do with us?”

  “It was by us.”

  Demetrius stood there by the windows where Eliana had left him not fifteen minutes prior, stunned into momentary silence. “Us?”

  “Ikati.” Celian’s voice grew hard. “Caesar.”