Rapture's Edge

by J. T. Geissinger

  With the phone still pressed to his ear, Demetrius ran down the hallway from the dining room at Alexi’s house, bolted into a bedroom, and slammed his hand against the power button of the television mounted above a dresser. The screen flickered to life, and it was on every channel, the gory details on instant replay, expert discussions and hysterical eyewitness testimony and outraged religious leaders and politicians screaming for someone’s head.

  And Caesar, smiling and laying out his plan for world domination.

  He’d always known Caesar was craven, but to see it made so clear was another thing. He made a wordless noise of horror that encapsulated both his disgust and his perfect understanding of what this would mean for all of them.

  “That’s not the worst of it, brother.”

  Every cell in D’s body froze, and he knew, he knew, even before Celian said it. He whispered, “Eliana.”

  “The Hunt’s got her. Leander called me just now—they’re taking her to Sommerley. They assume she and Caesar—”

  “No!” he hissed, flooded with fury, with anger at himself for letting her go and not following, with her for being so recklessly stubborn and blindly loyal, risking her life to see a “friend.”

  “I told him that. And he told me in no uncertain terms that I should kiss my colony good-bye. They’re going to make an example of us for any of the other colonies that feel like stepping out of line, and then they’re going to close ranks and go underground.” His voice darkened. “But not before she’s made to pay for the sins of her brother.”

  Demetrius gripped the phone so tightly the plastic case shattered and snapped in two with a crack. “I’m going to go get her.”

  In the background, he heard Constantine say, “Told you.”

  Celian breathed a long, protracted sigh. “Yeah. Thought you were going to say that. Which is why we’re on our way.”

  D realized he was on speakerphone; he heard road noise in the background, along with the low, somber voices of Lix and Constantine. Something had entered his bloodstream and was boiling up inside him, curdling him from the inside. “You won’t get here fast enough. It’s a thirteen-hour drive here from Rome, but only a few hours from Paris to Sommerley via the train. It’ll be too late by then.”

  Celian said, “They’re not taking the train from Paris, D. They’re flying. Leander sent his private jet. She’ll be there in just a few hours. Maybe less.”

  His private jet. Of course. Of course the Earl of Sommerley would have a private jet.

  Which meant that D had no other choice but to fly, too.

  With fury steeling his voice, he said into the phone, “Well, then, I’ll have to beat them there, won’t I?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he Shifted to Vapor and surged toward the open mouth of the fireplace on the other side of the room, letting the cracked phone fall with a tinkle of broken plastic to the floor.

  Alexi’s too-small white silk robe floated in a sideways drift down beside it.

  It was an uncomfortable feeling, but it paled in comparison to the other feelings Eliana had dealt with over the last few hours.

  With cold pressure against her skin and an electric hum that sent a thrill of pain surging down her spine whenever she pushed it too far, the metal links of the collar fastened around her throat held her just at the brink of the turn, primed but unable to Shift. The heated charge would build, and the flare that caught and sparked like gunpowder, and then the scent of smoke and honey that signaled the final moment just before transformation. But the charge faltered and then faded, leaving a hollow ache in its wake.

  No use. She was trapped.

  In more ways than one.

  The plane ride had been beyond grim. Ensconced in the burl wood and leather luxury of the private plane of the man responsible for her imminent death wasn’t the way Eliana had envisioned the last few hours of her life. Not that she’d spent much time envisioning it prior to today, but there you go. She was dressed in handcuffs and a single article of men’s clothing—again. She was surrounded by enemies and unable to Shift.

  Again.

  Three of the sleek assassins in suits had accompanied her on the trip. The one who’d captured her at the hospital—tall and stone-faced with a cool, shark-like beauty—and two more who’d met them in front of the hospital, waiting in a black sedan with tinted windows. They were at total odds with the camaraderie and code of honor of the Bellatorum.

  This obviously wasn’t a band of brothers. This was a hired group of killers, cold and unencumbered by ties like brotherhood.

  They didn’t look at her. They didn’t speak to her, or to one another, and their silence was more ominous than any threats or thrown insults would have been.

  Eliana was sick with fear with what was about to happen.

  She knew it wouldn’t be quick, and it wouldn’t be painless. If the laws of this British colony were anything like the laws of her own, she’d be made an example. A traitor was the worst thing a tribe member could be, and the execution of one was savored. They would gather ’round and watch for as long as it took—hours, at the very least—until their sense of justice had been served or she died, whichever came first. And because she knew they would employ the most barbarous of torture techniques in order to elicit information, she’d been trying to steel her nerves by imagining the worst they could do.

  She would never tell them where the others were. Never.

  But they would surely have terrible ways of trying to make her.

  Suicide was the better option, but there had been no opportunity. And she knew that if she were somehow able to kill herself, Gregor would be made to pay in her stead.

  There was no way out. She was going to die—very soon.

  Sweet Isis, please give me strength, she prayed to the goddess of slaves, sinners, and the downtrodden. Let me not dishonor myself. Let me not beg.

  She looked out the window of the limousine that had arrived at Heathrow to collect them and watched as the landscape slid by, emerald rolling hills bisected with low stone walls and dotted with black-faced sheep, thatched-roof cottages and thickets of ancient trees spreading their boughs over arched bridges, everything green and glistening with the gray, misty rainfall that had tapered off only minutes before. She’d never been to England, and she’d never been this far out in the countryside, and the thought that her bones would be buried so far away from home brought a sheen of tears to her eyes.

  She wasn’t allowing herself to think about Demetrius. She knew that would start a waterfall of tears that could never be stopped.

  “We’re here,” said the driver from the front seat, and the air inside the car electrified.

  The car pulled to a stop outside a massive, scrolled iron gate. The gate was flanked on either side with rough-hewn stone walls—ten feet high and topped with barbed wire—which stretched as far as the eye could see in either direction. The driver rolled down his window, waved a hand at the stone gatehouse, and after a slight hesitation, the scrolled iron gates began a slow, outward swing.

  And Eliana’s heart began a frantic, hummingbird beat.

  Let me not beg.

  Upon seeing the traitor, Christian’s first thought was, Blue hair?

  As she was hauled out of the car by Keshav and shoved forward in bare feet over the groomed white gravel of the circular drive, hands cuffed behind her back, long legs bare, his second thought was, Is she naked under that coat?

  His third thought wasn’t actually a thought at all. It was more of a garbled impression of several things at once, all rendered unintelligible by the fact of his utter astonishment.

  She had her head down, eyes trained on the ground, but as she rounded the back of the car she lifted her head and looked straight at him, and Christian felt as if he would be knocked back off his feet.

  Her face—lovely, arresting—held an expression of such bottomless desolation it was like a hand had reached out and seized his heart. There was misery and grief but also an awful sort of steely
resignation, and beneath it all, a beautiful, haunting pride. It was clear she knew she was being led to her death, knew it would not be an easy one…and she was determined to face it with dignity.

  Admiration blossomed inside him.

  And the first, tiny pinpricks of doubt.

  Keshav yanked her to a stop with one hand curled hard around her upper arm. She stumbled and gasped, then bit the gasp back and straightened her spine. She lifted her gaze to his, and he was pinned by the force of it, by her air of magnificent doom, both heroic and tragic. He had the fleeting thought she could be the inspiration for an epic Greek poem about battle and betrayal and love. Chary and intense, she looked like someone who had spent years wandering the darkest depths of hell, met all its inhabitants, and been given a job counting the incoming dead.

  In a husky, accented voice, she said, “Are you the one who’ll do it?”

  Keshav made a move to drag her back, but Christian stopped him with a curt, “Wait.”

  She didn’t take her gaze from his. He’d never, ever seen eyes so black.

  “No,” he said. “My brother, Leander. The Alpha.”

  Something flickered in her black eyes at that, there and then quickly gone. It didn’t seem like fear…perhaps it was anger? Contempt?

  “Too bad,” she said. “You have a kind face. I’m guessing your brother the Alpha will really make a meal of it.” Her voice grew bitter. “They’re always the worst.”

  He wondered at her composure. In her shoes, he wasn’t sure he’d be quite so self-contained. “You’re not scared,” he said, and she blinked at him, surprised.

  Her composure slipped. She swallowed, a flush crept over her cheeks, and her eyes grew fierce with unshed tears. “Yes, I am,” she whispered. “But only of being weak. I can’t stand the thought of…breaking.”

  It moved him, this irrational admission of hers. This honesty. He fought the sudden urge to comfort her with some kind of platitude, but he knew it was useless.

  She would break. They all did, sooner or later.

  And—he sternly reminded himself, trying to push his doubts aside—she was a savage. They’d all seen the evidence of what she and her brother had done. They’d all seen the carnage, along with the rest of the world.

  He motioned with his chin for Keshav to take her inside the manor, and she was jerked away and led up the marble steps toward the iron-studded doors twice the size of a man. They swung open, and Christian turned and followed them inside.

  The air this high in the atmosphere was thin and cold, filled with ice crystals that bit at him and the occasional crosswind that blew him off course and threatened to tear him apart completely, but raw, ragged fear kept D going.

  Fear that he’d be too late.

  He’d found a fast-flowing, narrow air current that swept him over the English Channel in good time, but then it turned sharply east, when he needed to go west. He dropped out of it, lower, surging over steaming fields and rolling moors and small townships and villages, all of it a painted blur of green and purple and brown far, far below. He didn’t know his exact velocity, but he knew he’d never be as fast as a plane, and he hoped against hope that when he found her she wouldn’t be—

  No. He wouldn’t allow himself to consider the possibility. He was going to find her alive, that was all there was to it.

  Or God help them. He’d slaughter them all.

  The manor was vast and luxurious, a labyrinth of drawing rooms and music rooms and sitting rooms, everything lavished in silks and velvets and gilt. Eliana was led down corridor after corridor, past a dual staircase that wound up to the second floor, her bare feet touching cool, polished wood between the soft pile of the Turkish rugs placed everywhere, until finally she arrived at the entrance to a grand, gilded room. It was cavernous, outfitted with even more attention to finery than the rest of the place.

  And something else quite unique from the other rooms she’d passed: thrones.

  A matched set of them, two glossy, elaborately carved mahogany thrones with cushioned seats, set on a dais at the far side of the room.

  Her lips twisted ruefully. Back in the catacombs beneath Rome, her father had sat on one almost identical.

  The thrones were empty, but the long tables that flanked them were not. A group of men sat facing her in substantial wooden chairs of their own, arms crossed over cashmere sweaters or silk jackets, or hands spread on the fine linen cloth of the table or clenched into fists at their sides, each one with a face that didn’t bode well for the state of her health. Their expressions were uniformly hard, hostile, and grim.

  One at the end—a younger one, boyish and bookish with a lock of dark hair flopped over one eye, glasses he kept pushing up the bridge of his nose—looked a little green around the gills.

  Must be his first execution.

  They didn’t stand as she was brought forward, only watched her approach with eerie, vivid yellow-green eyes, lucent and piercing in the wan sunlight that slanted through the far windows of the chamber. They were the same eyes as the one she’d met outside, the brother of the Alpha, and they chilled her in exactly the same way.

  Her people’s eyes were the color of a tropical midnight, or the richest, loamy earth—dark but warm and full of life. These people’s eyes were clear and glacial, and they sliced through her like gusts of killing cold wind.

  They were wealthy and elegant and refined, but beneath all of that, they were killers, to a one.

  She lifted her chin. I am Eliana, daughter of the House of Cardinalis. The women of my lineage are lionhearted; I won’t be intimidated. I won’t let them see me beg.

  In a bone-jarring move that snapped her teeth together and elicited an instinctive snarl from her lips, Keshav shoved her to her knees in front of the men.

  “Silence!” one of the men at the table commanded. Older, gray-haired, and pompous in formal, outdated clothing that included a brocade vest and cravat, he stood, and Eliana let her snarl subside to a low, warning grumble in her chest.

  The one who’d stood glanced at Keshav behind her and nodded. Without warning, pain speared through her and her breath was knocked from her lungs as he kicked her, hard, in the kidney.

  She fell forward, gasping, tears of anger and humiliation burning her eyes. She rested her forehead on the cool wood floor for a moment to regain her balance. The air was frigid on the backs of her bare legs.

  I won’t beg. I will not.

  The pompous one spoke, and his British accent somehow managed to make him seem even more arrogant than his posture and expression attested.

  “I am Viscount Weymouth, Keeper of the Bloodlines. I will be in charge of these proceedings, and if at any time your answers do not satisfy me, I will order Mr. Keshav to administer another motivational little prompt, and another, until they do.”

  There was a pause. “Do you understand?”

  Eliana said to the glossy parquet floor, “No. I thought I was supposed to be silent. How can I answer your questions if I’m supposed to be—”

  There came another kick, this one more vicious, to the ribs.

  She moaned with the pain and would have curled into a little ball around it, but she was roughly dragged back to her knees by a hand fisted in her hair. She couldn’t right herself, though, because pain had absconded with her motor skills—and her ability to breathe. She gulped hoarse, hacking breaths, waves of agony radiating through her like fire. The only thing that held her upright was the fist in her hair.

  She tried to go to the place of peace and relaxation in her mind where she went when she did her daily katas, but it was no use. Adrenaline and fear lashed her with the crack of a bullwhip, and it was no use.

  “Attempts at humor,” intoned Viscount Weymouth, “will not be tolerated.”

  Eliana heard Mel’s snarky reply in her head: Evidently.

  “What the bloody hell is this?”

  Eliana looked toward the shocked voice. From the door beside the end of the table, the Alpha’s brother had appe
ared, and he now stood staring at the viscount in livid, unblinking outrage.

  Unapologetic, the viscount looked at him down the end of a long, aquiline nose. “It was agreed that I would oversee—”

  “You weren’t granted permission to begin without us—and you weren’t granted permission to touch her!”

  They started going back and forth, the brother outraged and Weymouth sputtering indignantly, the other men at the table throwing one another restless looks, deciding, it seemed, whose side to take.

  Gods, how she loathed politics. She’d seen it since she was a little girl, the posturing, the pandering, the currying of favor done at court. There was always an intrigue and a scandal, a secret to be kept, a deal to be made. There was always a bully, always someone who felt loftier than their station, and always—like Weymouth—a climber in the bunch.

  Finally, apparently sick of the discussion, the brother turned his attention to Keshav and spat, “Unhand her! Now!”

  Perversely, that made her want to smile. She’d forgotten there was always a courtly knight, too. Then she felt another pang of regret that he wasn’t the Alpha. She’d bet anything his brother wasn’t half as knightly as he.

  Keshav released her as if she burned. She fell forward again, but this time the brother was there to catch her. He steadied her, let her rock back onto her heels, and when she was ready, gently pulled her to her feet. He kept his hand, warm and steady, under her arm.

  “A chair,” he directed to Keshav, between gritted teeth.

  A chair was produced posthaste, and she sank into it with a whispered word of thanks.

  Then the air in the room seemed to shift, a swift, snapping-to of attention that swept toward the door the brother had appeared through. Fighting a wave of nausea from the acute pain in her back and side, Eliana glanced up and froze.

  The Alpha. It had to be him.

  Dressed in the palest pearl gray button-down shirt and black slacks that showcased the lines of his lean, muscled physique, he might have been anyone, except for this:

  He was ferociously beautiful.

  Shining black hair that brushed wide shoulders, classical features, a mouth that seemed a little too sensual for a man. Piercing yellow-green eyes like the others, dusky skin like them, too, and there was something else that set him apart, something about his posture that screamed power. Even just standing still in the doorway he exuded a rapacious energy, violent and wild, that pulsed outward from him like a bubble, encompassing everything around him.