Edge of Oblivion: A Night Prowler Novel, Book 2

by J. T. Geissinger

  She made a little noise of longing in her throat. The male began to walk faster.

  There came the sound of heavy doors being kicked open, then light behind her closed lids that hurt enough to make her turn, wincing, and bury her face in the hard chest she was cradled against. Movement and breathing, her body swaying with his steps, the motion rhythmic and calming except for the pressure of her breasts against his body, the aching awareness of him and his beautiful scent like something she wanted to eat.

  Yes, taste him, her mind urged, churning. Taste all of him! He is what you need!

  She arched her back, slid a hand up around his neck, and opened her mouth over the column of his throat.

  Salt and musk and masculinity, heat and rightness, the throb of his pulse beneath her lips. He stumbled and cursed, yanked his head away, but she wanted more, she wanted to run her tongue over all his smooth, lovely skin, and then she wanted to bite him and straddle him and take him deep inside—

  “Touch me,” she whispered, arching into him again. His arms tightened around her. He made a low, rough growl deep in his chest.

  They kept moving.

  Faster now, down a set of stairs, another, the male breathing hard and nearly stumbling several times as he hurried along. Her nose was in his hair, her lips were on his skin, her teeth nipped at his earlobe, his shoulder, the soft spot between his collarbone and neck. It sent shivers through his body, delicious ripples of hard muscle that drove her own need even higher. She heard the sound of another door being kicked open, then there was cool darkness and she was abruptly deposited onto a bed.

  “Morgan,” a voice said, hoarse, and then she knew. His voice sent a wash of pleasure through her body, pure and sweet, like sunlit honey.

  He would help her, help ease the pain. Though he despised her, it was his job to keep her alive and well. At least for a while.

  “Xander.” She writhed against the mattress, reaching out blindly. “Please, Xander.”

  A sheet was pulled over her body; her wrists were caught and pinned. She fought against it; she didn’t want the sheet on top of her. She wanted him on top of her.

  “Morgan,” he said again, and this time he really sounded as if he were in pain.

  She managed to open her eyes, and he swam into view, hovering above her with his lips pulled back in a grimace and a fine sheen of sweat glistening on his brow. His eyes stared down at her, searing, molten amber rimmed in black lashes.

  He wants you! the animal inside her hissed, writhing to be set free. Take him!

  He’d pinned her wrists against the pillow above her head, and she knew she couldn’t get them free. He was far too strong for that. So she didn’t bother to try.

  In a single, swift motion, she arched off the mattress, stretched out her neck, and put her mouth on his.

  He moaned against her lips but didn’t pull away. He didn’t move nearer either. He just allowed her to kiss him, to suck at his lips and slide her tongue into his mouth, all the while holding her wrists down so hard against the pillow his arms began to shake.

  “I want you,” she whispered through frenzied kisses. “I need you.”

  “It’s just the Fever,” he groaned, his brow furrowed, his eyes half-lidded, watching her. “It’s the hormones. And the drugs. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “I need you,” she insisted, teasing her tongue in and out of his mouth. He turned his head away, panting, and she took the opportunity to put her lips against his throat again, to press her teeth into his throbbing jugular.

  The snarl that ripped from between his clenched teeth was like nothing she’d ever heard and sent a thrill of exhilaration zinging along every nerve.

  He surged against her, throwing the length of his hard body on top of her as that snarl kept coming, fierce and animalistic. He kissed her like an animal, too, all teeth and greed and rough intent, an Alpha taking what he wanted without restraint or apology, his hands all over her body, squeezing her breasts and bottom, tangled in her hair.

  She moaned and stretched full against him, lost, no longer herself but someone else, someone consumed in flame and flesh and pleasure, in the pounding pulse of two heartbeats, in the roar of desire like the swell of the ocean cresting over her, tumbling, crashing—

  And then with a horrified cry, Xander broke away.

  She was left breathless, spinning, every nerve like an open wound scraped raw.

  “Jesus,” he whispered, backing away toward the door. “I’m sorry, Morgan, I’m so sorry...”

  “Please, Xander, don’t go, it’s all right,” she said, struggling to sit up. The room spun. She shook her head to clear it, but the drugs—the goddamn drugs—

  “I’m so sorry,” he choked again, then fled through the door and slammed it shut behind him.

  Morgan sagged back against the mattress, pain in her skull like needles driven through her eyes, in her body as if she’d been set to burn on a funeral pyre.

  “But it hurts...” she whimpered to the empty room.

  Then she passed out.

  If he were human, D would have had trouble hearing Lix over the thumping bass of the techno music that screamed from the overhead speakers in the VIP section of their favorite bar and nightclub, Alien. But unfortunately D heard him clear as day.

  “That’s bullshit,” said Lix, and knocked back another shot of Patrón.

  It was his fifth. He was just getting started.

  Watching Constantine disappear around a darkened corner on the far side of the room with a human female wearing a dress so short it was almost a belt, D sighed and ran a hand over his shaved head. “I’m telling you, Lix, there’s something weird going on with Dominus and that Servus, Silas. I just don’t know what it is yet.” He shook his head, frowning. “Something’s just not right.”

  He’d dreamed of it in bits and pieces, clues that hinted at nefarious plots and well-kept secrets, tantalizing but ever out of reach. Unlike the dream he’d had this morning that had arrived in full—though he’d edited it in the retelling, a practice he knew would get him killed if discovered—and the one that showed him the full-Blood female and her orange-eyed Alpha had arrived in Rome, he’d been getting morsels of something else over the past few months. Years, even, maybe. It was hard to tell.

  “Talk like that can get you killed, D. You better not mention that around any of the Legiones; they’re just dying to take us down a notch. They’re only soldiers because they weren’t Gifted enough to make Bellatorum, but they’re not stupid. One of them will turn you in just to earn a day off.”

  “Imagine what they’d do if they found out I was following him,” D said in a wry voice.

  Lix gaped at him. “You wouldn’t. You couldn’t be that stupid. He’ll catch you!”

  D had been spying on the King and Silas for several months now, trying to gain any kind of information that would satisfy the nagging feeling they were up to no good, but one glance at Lix’s horrified expression told D he shouldn’t have said anything. Not that he was going to stop.

  Though he should have been used to it by now, he hated feeling like a chess piece, a dumb cog in the King’s machine. He planned to keep searching until he found some answers.

  But to his brother he only said, “You’re right. I’m not that stupid. Bad joke.”

  Better to have Lix ignorant, anyway. It was safer for him that way.

  Lix relaxed back against the white leather booth and motioned to the hovering waitress for a refill of his tequila. “Jesus. Don’t scare me like that, asshole.”

  The waitress darted over from where she’d been standing at the bar, staring, and leaned over Lix. A fall of bottlered hair spilled over her shoulders; her large breasts almost erupted from her low-cut top.

  “Si, signore?” she breathed, fluttering her lashes.

  D rolled his eyes. Another human female throwing herself at a warrior’s feet.

  The Bellatorum were larger and different and far more dangerous than their human male coun
terparts, exuding a primal power that parted crowds wherever they went, and they didn’t care who noticed. Dominus himself didn’t care. The King required only that they keep the location of their lair a secret, but as far as Shifting or standing out in a crowd...

  “Humans are so stupid they can’t see what is right under their noses,” the King was fond of saying, “and even if the rare one does, all the rest will call him crazy.”

  D grudgingly admitted he was right. Though those werewolf rumors had persisted for centuries, mistaken as they were. It was common knowledge they originated from some drunk Greek of antiquity who had seen an Ikati Shift; as if a dog would be able to change its shape.

  He’d long ago tired of the attention. Yet the other Bellatorum hadn’t, so he found himself spending another night in this underworld playground, paroled from purgatory, watching the circus unfold.

  Lix gave the human waitress a dangerous smile. His eyes lingering on her décolletage, he licked his lips. “Alium,” he said, low.

  Her brows furrowed in confusion. Lix had forgotten he was speaking Latin, not Italian. He wasn’t thinking with the right head.

  “Bring him water,” D said to the waitress in Italian and waved her away.

  “Gratias, matrem,” Lix said sarcastically, then shouted after her swiveling derriere to bring him another tequila as he’d originally asked. He turned back to D, his expression sour. “Who shit in your cereal?”

  He didn’t bother answering. Tense, he leaned back against the booth and stretched his arms out. His gaze darted over the sweating, gyrating crowd on the dance floor below.

  “Ah,” said Lix, drawing D’s gaze back to his face. The long-haired male was nodding. “I get it. You saw Eliana today. You’re always in a piss-poor mood after you see the principessa.”

  D sent him a baleful glare but didn’t respond.

  “She likes you, you know,” Lix said, smiling.

  Now D spoke, and his voice was like flint. “Shut up, brother.”

  Unperturbed by the hostility that pulsed from D like another beat of the music, Lix shrugged. “I’m just stating the obvious. You should make a move on that before one of those sissies of the Optimates mates her and she’s out of commission forever.”

  “Speaking of talk that can get you killed,” said D pointedly, glaring at Lix.

  Though the Bellatorum could have any female they liked and were highly sought after as breeding partners for unmated females, females of the Supremus—the King’s direct relatives—were strictly off-limits, on pain of death. And his only daughter...D shuddered to think of the punishment that would follow if it were discovered he’d bedded her. Or even kissed her, for that matter.

  Lix made a face at him and stretched his legs out under the table between them. “Maybe Aurelio was right after all. You ever think of that? Maybe it is better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

  D’s expression soured. “Forgiveness? Like the forgiveness Dominus granted Celian? Because that kind of forgiveness I can do without.”

  It was Lix’s turn to scowl. He sent a glance over his shoulder to the corner Constantine had disappeared around. His voice low, he said, “I thought he was going to make Constantine kill him.”

  D shook his head, ran a hand down the back of his neck, and squeezed the tense muscles there. “Constantine would kill himself before he’d do any lasting damage to one of us, which the King knows. So making him whip Celian is all just part of his...”

  Sickness, he didn’t say. Cruelty. Insanity.

  “...thing. And Celian heals faster than anyone. He’ll be up and around in a few days.”

  But in the meantime, Constantine would punish and anesthetize himself in any way possible, including getting drunk, getting into fights, and having rough, anonymous sex with human females. As he did every time the King played one of his sick games on him.

  For the thousandth time D wondered what the hell it was all for, anyway.

  Lix sat forward in the booth, crossed his arms over his knees, and said, “You think Lucien and Aurelio are coming back?”

  D met Lix’s intense gaze. The music pounded, lights strobed, bodies swayed and writhed.

  “No.”

  Lix didn’t even blink. “Me neither. So what do we do about it?”

  D watched as Constantine reappeared around the dark corner of the nightclub, disheveled and grim, looking as if he’d just attended his own funeral. The human female stumbled after him, weaving shakily through the crowd. She headed to the bar and collapsed onto a barstool, trying in vain to adjust her demolished clothing. “We don’t do anything,” D said with a slight emphasis on the first word.

  “Because?” Lix said, surprised.

  Constantine moved closer. Though he was so beautiful Michelangelo could have modeled the David after him, a feeling of darkness moved with him, the subtle chill of death. The crowd parted to let him pass, shoving one another in their hurry to get out of his way.

  “Because this situation is going to take care of itself.”

  Lix’s face clouded, then cleared. “Your dream—that’s right. Dominus killed that male in your dream.” He sat back. “Not that it makes me feel any better. I’d like to get my hands on that bastard myself.” His gaze searched D’s face. “Did you see anything else? Anything before—or after?”

  D shook his head and avoided Lix’s gaze. He just couldn’t chance the King’s finding out about his treason during one of his regular trips through Lix’s brain.

  He’d learned how to hide things. He’d learned how to tuck things away into small, unseen places in his mind, places the King never bothered to go. There he kept his fantasies of Eliana, the visions of her soft body and soft eyes and soft mouth, there he kept his suspicions of her father, there he kept the snippets of dreams he edited, those dreams that hinted at terrible things to come.

  There he kept his fear.

  It was the fear that kept him awake nights, bathed in sweat, his body rigid and his mind a churning inferno. He didn’t know exactly what was coming, but he knew something was, something vast and dark and cold that felt like oblivion. And now that the two full-Blood Shifters had arrived just as his dreams foretold, he felt an unseen clock ticking down to zero hour.

  But to what? What?

  “I need a drink,” said Constantine, who had arrived to stand dead-faced and hulking beside their table.

  D was about to open his mouth to speak but froze, the breath stolen from his lungs. Constantine and Lix froze as well; then all three turned in unison to look down at the dance floor below as the crowd parted to let three enormous, muscled males pass.

  Ikati. Strangers.

  Enemies.

  The three strangers looked up at them just as Constantine said, “On second thought, a fight will do just fine.”

  “A bar?” complained Julian from behind the wheel of the Maserati he’d stolen in Monaco. He, Tomás, and Mateo were randomly driving through the dark, rainy streets of Rome, making a game of seeing how close he could come to pedestrians without actually hitting any of them.

  He was fairly sure that nun on the Via Veneto would survive.

  “It’s a nightclub, not just a bar,” grumbled Mateo, staring out the window at the buildings flashing by. He still wasn’t over the incident with Xander, though it had been a good twelve hours prior. Those seven words were more than double what he’d spoken all day.

  “And a good one at that,” added Tomás from the back-seat. “I heard Angelina Jolie was there just last week.”

  “Please,” sneered Julian, steering the car around a corner so fast the two right-side wheels lifted a few inches from the ground. He narrowly missed crashing into an elderly couple crossing the street. “She’s too busy making movies to hang out in bars.”

  The car fishtailed as Julian overcorrected. Mateo and Tomás were thrown against the windows. “Do they even have food in a bar?” Julian continued, unperturbed by the curses that were being hurled at him. “Answer me this: What is there in a bar
that I’d be interested in? Do I dance? No. Do I drink? Well, okay, yes, but I’m not paying twenty bucks for a shot of watered-down whiskey. Do I like loud music? No. The only thing I’m going to find in a bar is—”

  He stopped speaking abruptly, but it wasn’t the Vespa he’d just clipped with the right front fender, sending its helmeted driver into a tailspin that launched him over the handlebars and off onto the grassy strip beside the road.

  He stopped before he could say women.

  The only thing to be found in a bar was human women. Lots of them. Like the one Xander had loved so long ago. The mere mention of which had caused the entire day to turn into a steaming pile of shit.

  “He’s got a hero complex,” muttered Mateo to the window, knowing exactly why Julian had shut up so quickly. “Always looking to save the damsel in distress.”

  But in reality, she hadn’t been in distress until she’d fallen in love with Xander.

  It was a tragic tale, a cautionary tale, one still whispered about in their colony in Brazil, though of course never to Xander’s face. Esperanza had been the bright, captivating daughter of Karyo, their capoeira master, whom Xander had gone to live with at six years old when his father remarried and his dead wife’s offspring was banished from his new wife’s sight.

  The five of them practically grew up together, there in that joyless compound and its morbid array of weaponry. No one ever knew what happened to Karyo’s wife or if he’d even had one; no one cared. The Ikati cared only that their human pet kept his mouth shut and kept churning out trained killers like the ocean churns out waves. And so he did. Karyo was a brilliant teacher. His students were brilliantly Gifted. Everyone was brilliantly pleased.

  Everyone except Xander and Esperanza, who, as the years progressed, in between his grueling training and her schooling and subsequent betrothal to an older man she’d never met, had somehow found the time to fall in love.

  It was said later that it had been inevitable. Take a damaged, wrong-headed boy like Alexander Luna—warped beyond repair by his father’s savage beatings, beatings that were soon transferred to his wife when he saw how quickly Xander toed the line when his mother’s pain was used as a deterrent—and put him in the path of temptation, give him a taste of forbidden fruit, as it were...what did anyone expect?