Edge of Oblivion (14 page)

They’d gone only a few blocks from the hotel in the taxi, and she didn’t have a map or speak Italian. She had money so she could hail another cab, but when she put a hand to her forehead to shade her eyes from the sun she saw, unmistakable and huge, the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica less than a mile away on the other side of the sluggish, winding Tiber.

She decided to walk.

It was a beautiful day, bright and sunny, and every bird in the city seemed to be singing sweet little melodies from the pockets of trees that were everywhere. She crossed the river over an arched stone bridge, mossed and dark with age, and made her way along the tree-lined boulevard, dodging pedestrians and leaping out of the way of insane Vespa drivers who all seemed to share the same death wish.

She passed fountains and ruins and one ancient, weathered fortress that turned out to be the emperor Hadrian’s mausoleum, topped by a massive, sword-wielding bronze angel. The city was a feast of art and architecture, all casually laid about in plain view for everyone’s enjoyment. She loved the vitality of it, the open green spaces and the ancient buildings and the sense of magic that permeated everything, even the air.

And Italian men
, she thought, eyeing one spectacular specimen lounging idly against a tree,
are pretty magical, too
. They dressed well. They moved well. They were tall and dark and elegant, much like her own kind. Even the slouchy, paunchy, balding ones had a certain
je ne sais quoi
.

The lounging dark-haired boy lifted his head, caught her looking, and whistled, low and husky.

His eyes burned. She looked away, kept walking, and tried not to think of other burning eyes, kohl-

rimmed, amber, and endless.

Xander watched as Morgan bypassed the noisy line of hundreds of people waiting to enter the Vatican, sashayed to the uniformed officer operating the metal detector at the entrance, and touched his arm.

The guard, smiling a glazed, faraway smile, led her away by the hand into a private side entrance. Xander rolled his eyes and snorted.

She was shameless.

But he wasn’t about to stand in line himself, especially with that metal detector and the knives concealed in his boots and belt, so he strolled around until he found a relatively unpopulated area—no easy feat—and backed himself against a soaring granite wall. He closed his eyes and concentrated, sending his awareness out, looking for the warmth and motion that would indicate the presence of people on the other side. There was nothing. He took a breath and pushed back.

The stone was cool and very old, much harder than brick or marble and harder to Pass through.

The drier, dustier volcanic tufa of the Colosseum had left a residue on his clothes and skin, but granite left nothing but a slight alkaline taste in his mouth. He concentrated on moving forward through the dense mass of it, his legs and arms and chest pressurized as if he were underwater. It was harder to breathe in this type of rock, too, and he didn’t attempt it.

When he came out on the other side he was in a small service corridor that was featureless and brightly lit. He inhaled, relieved to be free of the granite, and followed the corridor around to a set of double steel doors. He paused with his ears open beside them, listening, tasting the air.

People. Statues. Glass cases and bronze figurines and...mummies?

He opened the door and stepped into the room, making a swift inspection. It was an Egyptian collection of some sort, with sarcophagi and funerary urns and statues of various pharaohs and animal gods. He smiled at a beautiful basalt sculpture of the cat goddess Bastet in a lighted case and put two fingers to his forehead in salute. Then he moved silently through the chamber, ignoring the speculative glances of the tour group he passed on the way out.

He had Morgan’s scent again. Exotic dark muskiness and heated woman, unmistakable and utterly unique, overlaid by that floral perfume she’d applied this morning. Lilies, he thought, shouldering through the crowd. Lilies and lovely hot readiness.

He ground his teeth together and kept on through the adjoining rooms, finally clearing the Egyptian wing and moving through the picture galleries and the tapestries and the ceramics, the statuary and mosaics and oils, all the masterpieces he’d seen in the dark as he’d prowled through the same halls last night in search of any trace of the man in white.

He followed her scent into the Sistine Chapel, which was very small, no bigger than the living room of their suite at the hotel, thick with tourists and uniformed officers who shushed the crowd at regular intervals and prevented photographs. He took a moment to look up and admire the work of one of their more famous kin, Michelangelo, and chuckled to himself. No one but the
Ikati
would ever know.

Down several narrow flights of stairs with crawling claustrophobia at the hot, pressing crowd, through a short gap in the buildings, and he was into the soaring majesty of St. Peter’s Basilica.

It was hushed and vast and eerie as a graveyard, dense with flickering candles and incense and whispers that echoed off the vaulted ceiling far overhead. Hazy sunshine spilled down like spotlights on the elaborate inlaid marble floor from the sixteen windows in the enormous dome above the altar, but here in the portico all was dim and silent.

He caught sight of a red blouse far ahead in the nave, a wave of dark hair spilling down a woman’s back, and quickened his pace. He threaded through a group of whispering tourists, went around a massive column, and she was abruptly there, flushed and panting, leaning stiff against the column with one hand at her throat and the other held out to stop him from coming any closer.

“Get away,” she whispered, hoarse. Her eyes were half-lidded, the pupils dilated so wide they nearly swallowed all the surrounding green, leaving only odd, flat black.

He froze, knowing instantly something was wrong. He cast out his awareness, opened his nose and his ears, but found nothing unusual. He stepped closer, and she let out a soft, keening moan that raised every hair on his body.

“
No closer
,” she insisted, oddly weak and breathless. Beneath her flawless café-au-lait complexion she was very pale. A sheen of sweat had formed on her brow.

“What is it?” he said, low, watching her eyelids flutter, the pulse beating wildly in her throat.

His danger sense grew to gnaw against his skin.

“He’s here.” As she said the words, her brows furrowed and she gasped, a little startled intake through parted lips. “Somewhere—nearby—” She choked off with another gasp. When Xander stepped closer she shuddered and moaned, arching against the column as if she were in pain.

“That’s it. We’re getting you out of here.” He made a move toward her, and she shook her head, vehement, hissing like a snake.

“No! Please! I’m trying to get him out! I have to get him
out
!”

He looked around again, wildly, searching and scanning, but detected nothing of that dark, violent scent and feel of the Alpha he’d detected yesterday. That greed.

“What the hell is he doing to you?”

She inhaled, long and shuddering, and looked up at him from beneath dark lashes, a concentrated look, full of heat and need and longing. “Everything,” she whispered. Her cheeks went a deep, flaming red.

With a cold shock of recognition that felt like ice water down his neck, Xander understood.

His capoeira master had once told him that the best way to win a war was to break the enemy’s resistance without ever fighting. There were better ways than direct attacks, ways to outthink and outmaneuver and outplan that were superior to engaging in a bloody, costly battle.

And a Gift like that of Telepathy—where you could insert yourself right into your enemy’s mind—might even make resistance impossible.

It might even make your enemy feel something so unthinkable as
desire
.

“What can I do?” he said, helpless, wanting to pick her up and carry her away to somewhere safer but not wanting to do anything to make matters worse. “I don’t feel him anywhere, Morgan. I can’t sense him—” She gasped and arched hard against the column. With her eyes closed and her head back, she bit her lip and made a low sound deep in her throat. His heart stopped. Then she put her hands into her hair and stretched back like a cat, thrusting her chest out so he saw with perfect clarity the outline of her full breasts, her nipples straining taut against the red silk.

He stopped breathing. Instantly, he got hard.

“Do something!” she pleaded, hoarse.

He told himself in the next moment that he was only helping her, that this was the best, most effective way to distract her and break the mind link, but even as he was telling himself these things he didn’t really believe it. He knew himself far too well.

In two quick steps he closed the distance between them, wrapped his arms hard around her body, put his mouth over hers, and kissed her.

And, unexpectedly, with heat and fervor and a passion that unlocked something deep within him he’d put away long ago, she kissed him back.

Time spun away, sound faded out, everything ground to a standstill. Her hands were in his hair and his were on her soft curves, her jaw, the dip of her waist. She arched into him, soft and lush, and he thought he’d never felt anything so fine as her and this and the sweet warmth of her mouth, of her tongue on his, gliding and sensual and wantonly demanding.

More
, her body said, straining against him.
More
, her soft mouth said, hungry.
More!
that little mewling noise in her throat demanded when he pressed his pelvis to hers and she felt the full length of his arousal, throbbing hot.

And he wanted to give her more. In that moment he wanted to give her anything and everything —whatever she asked for, whatever would quench this aching burn in his chest and the roaring in his ears and the poison eating through his blood, poison he’d had his first taste of the moment they’d met.

He wanted to be inside her. He wanted to hear her moan his name. He wanted—

Suddenly she broke away.

She stood there staring at him, blank, panting, her arms still tight around his neck. Then, with a horrified cry, she skipped back and slapped him hard across the face.

“Son of a bitch!” she cried, distraught.

He worked his jaw where she’d hit him and tried very hard to concentrate on the fact that she no longer seemed to be happy about the kiss. Inside him, his desire for her
pounded
.

“You do realize that’s not my name,” he said drily.

“What the hell do you—how could you—what the hell were you
thinking
?”

That last bit was shrieked, and the cathedral’s vaulted marble ceiling conducted it, splintering it into an echoing symphony that shattered the silence in the vast halls all around them. Startled exclamations and muttered reprovals came from various angles, but he ignored them.

In spite of the uncomfortable strain against the front of his pants and the horrifying realization that perhaps it wasn’t
him
she’d been thinking of when they shared that passionate kiss, Xander kept his voice carefully neutral and businesslike when he answered.

“You asked me to help—”

“I didn’t mean like
that
!”

“And because I couldn’t sense him anywhere nearby, that was the most expedient way to break the link. Otherwise I would have gone after him.” He cleared his throat. “Obviously.”

She was shaking and flushed and clearly free of whatever spell she’d been under. With her rigid bearing and glittering eyes and flustered distraction, she was utterly lovely. She was also
pissed
.

Right now he was very glad for that collar.

“You’re trying to tell me you knew that would work?” she asked, dubious. She crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes at him.

He crossed his arms as well, rose to his full height, and coldly gazed down his nose at her. “Of course. Why
else
would I kiss you?”

Her nostrils flared. She tossed her hair back over one shoulder with a shake of her head. “I see,” she said, regaining a little of her fractured poise. “Am I that repulsive to you?”

He paused, regarding her with a look he knew was mercilessly forbidding, willing himself to do the right thing and be done with all this foolishness. But he couldn’t bring himself to say it. He couldn’t make himself say
yes
.

She took his silence as an affirmation anyway and went even redder. “The feeling is mutual, Ace.”

He sent her a grim smile and sidestepped that. “Let’s get back to business, shall we? Do you feel him now?”

She swallowed hard and looked around. “No,” she said, low. “It’s broken.”

“And when you first felt”—he floundered for an appropriate word—“when you first felt the connection, where were you?”

She jerked her chin to a nearby chapel, decorated with mosaics and statues, featuring a prominent wood, stone, and marble altar that housed the lighted, ghoulish remains of a dead pope in a crystal casket.

“I want you to come with me over there, and if you feel anything—anything at all—we’re going to leave and I’m going to come back alone. Understood?”

She didn’t answer. She wasn’t looking at him, and he wondered if she ever would again.

“Morgan,” he said more softly, trying a different tactic. “Are we agreed?”

After a moment, she jerked her head up and down: yes.

Progress. Good.

He opened his palm to the chapel. She went before him, hesitating only when she drew near the altar.

It was topped with eight taper candles in bronze holders, just in front of a massive mosaic depicting the martyrdom of St. Sebastian. There were pink marble columns and corbels with carved cherubs and gold leaf slathered on every available surface.