Edge of Oblivion (18 page)

Constantine snorted and tossed his head, sending glossy jet hair spilling over his shoulder. He was, by all accounts, the most beautiful male of the kingdom. Some said he was even more beautiful than the
principessa
Eliana herself. Females swooned over him, and he took great advantage of it, but he had unswerving loyalty to his brothers and was always the first to put himself in harm’s way for one of them. Which was lucky for him, or else jealousy would have most likely made everyone hate his guts.

“At least I bathe,” said Constantine, taking a loud and pointed sniff in Lix’s direction.

“And you smell like a damn rose garden! Is that
perfume
?”

“Put a sock in it, ladies,” growled Celian over his shoulder. “Unless one of you wants to be the one to explain our situation to the King.”

That silenced them. No one ever wanted to be the bearer of bad news to Dominus. There was only a fifty-fifty chance your tongue would stay attached.

A few more minutes of walking through the silent underground labyrinth, and finally they arrived.

The corridor opened abruptly into a vast, soaring space decorated like the keep of a Gothic castle. There were no windows in this place, but there were Egyptian statues and ancestral portraits and beeswax candles in iron braziers dripping wax to the stone floor. There was chunky wood furniture and Persian rugs and a long table with carved high-back chairs that seated thirty. Red velvet sofas lined one wall; shining suits of armor flanked a massive glass case of antique weaponry.

In the center of the room sat an elaborate throne of dark wood with clawed feet and crimson cushions. Its back curved up to a high, sharp point, atop which perched a grinning human skull, cocked askew on a spike.

Upon the throne sat a man. He was large yet lithe and dressed in snowy white, as always, which contrasted with the burnished honey-bronze shade of his skin. From his neck hung a golden talisman on a chain: the Eye of Horus, symbol of the ancient Egyptian god of war and vengeance. Dominus believed himself the reincarnation of Horus, and all the warriors had the symbol branded on their left shoulders when they were indoctrinated into the
Bellatorum
.

“Gentlemen,” said the King. His deep voice carried easily over the distance between them.

“How fare you?”

“Well, sire.” Celian bowed his head. The others, lining up beside him, followed suit and remained silent.

“Well?” Dominus repeated in a questioning tone. In turn, the warriors each felt the sharp, fleeting sting of the King’s gaze upon them. “Indeed?”

Celian lifted his head and met his master’s gaze. “We four are well, sire,” he equivocated, “but as for Aurelio and Lucien, I cannot say. They did not return to the rendezvous point as agreed.”

All the candles in the chamber sputtered in a sudden cold breeze. Celian felt his brothers beside him tense and concentrated on keeping his own body relaxed, his breathing regular. The King thrived on fear and sensed it like a snake senses a mouse. If he hadn’t seen otherwise for himself, he’d have thought the King’s tongue was forked.

“The rendezvous point,” the King drawled, sardonic, lounging against the back of his throne with one leg crossed casually over the other. “Which means you split up.”

“The male escaped through the wall of the Vatican, sire—”

“Through the wall?” Dominus said, sharp. He sat forward, eyes glassy and hard like obsidian.

“You mean he evanesced, as we do?”

Celian took a measured breath, calculating. How to describe it? “I mean he moved through it.

He...melted. Into it. He’s impervious to bullets, too.”

The King’s black eyes did not blink. But they burned. By God, did they burn.

“Yes. I found that out myself. Very interesting. And inconvenient.” He paused for a moment, contemplative, then very softly said, “And the female?”

Celian was dreading that. The King had made no bones about his desire for that female.

“He took her with him through the wall.”

The King’s nostrils flared, but that was all. He still hadn’t blinked.

“We reengaged the male outside, but the female was gone. Aurelio and Lucien went after her, and we tried to lead the male in the opposite direction, but he didn’t follow. We circled back but lost his scent. And Aurelio and Lucien didn’t return at the agreed time.”

Celian knew it wasn’t his imagination that had the temperature in the room dropping by several degrees. Next to him, Lix shifted his weight from one foot to another.

“Unfortunate,” the King said, with an edge like a blade. “So very unfortunate. Especially since I made my instructions perfectly clear.”

A chilled breeze stirred around their shoulders as the first spike of pain throbbed through their skulls. Only Celian remained still against it, having been subjected to the King’s excruciating Gifts many times before. Their lord and master didn’t actually read other people’s minds so much as
inhabit
them, and when he wished, his anger inhabited them as well.

In this case, the King’s anger felt like a fanged viper slithering around inside his head, spitting poison into his brain.

The others began, subtly, to fidget. D rolled his shoulders; one of them cracked. Lix shifted his weight again, and Constantine flexed his hands open and closed.

“
Facilis
,” Celian murmured. Easy, boys. Take it easy.

A cat, one of hundreds that ran wild throughout the catacombs, appeared from behind the throne, where it had been sleeping on the stone floor. Pure black and sleek, it was a perfect miniature for their kind in their true animal form. Except for its eyes, which glowed vivid yellow in the candlelit room. The
Bellatorum
—born in darkness, raised in darkness, trained to fight and kill in darkness—had black eyes, to a one. The cat rubbed its face against a leg of the throne, then jumped in one graceful leap onto the King’s crossed legs.

He began to stroke it behind the ears. It purred and settled into his lap.

“We will wait until midnight to see if Aurelio and Lucien return with what is mine,” said the King softly. “And if they do not”—he turned his burning black eyes to Celian and his lips curved to a smile—“I shall require compensation.”

Celian’s skin crawled. He knew what compensation the King required. One thing and one thing only bought atonement from the King’s displeasure: pain.

Pain would be his tithe for failure.

“Yes, sire,” he said, his voice very low.

A growl rumbled through Constantine’s chest, and the King smiled even wider. “Ever the protector, Constantine. And yet how you displease me with this show of concern for your brother.

Your fealty lies with me first, does it not?”

Constantine raised his head and met the King’s cold, cold eyes. “Yes, my lord.”

“Good. Because it will be you who will dispense Celian’s punishment if your other brothers do not return with the female.”

Celian felt Constantine stiffen and wanted to reach out and cuff him upside the head. Defiance could get him killed. He wasn’t worth it.

“As you desire, my lord,” said Constantine, slowly, anger darkening his face.

The King settled back into his throne, thoughtful, stroking the cat. He looked them over, one by one, calculating. “Consider yourselves fortunate, gentlemen. I am in good humor, as three males of age survived the Transition this week alone. We have several more
Liberi
who will soon be tested, and we have the promise of a new full-Blood female at our fingertips. Things are looking up, would you not agree?”

The warriors answered as one, their voices echoing in the stone chamber. “Yes, sire!”

Dominus chuckled. “And I am closer than ever to perfecting the antiserum. Yes, things are most definitely looking up.”

None of them knew exactly what he was talking about, but no one commented or questioned.

Questions were never allowed.

Dominus sighed and waved them away with a flick of his wrist. “Prepare yourselves, then. I will join you in the
fovea
at midnight.”

The brothers bowed and backed away toward the exit but stopped when they heard the King’s voice.

“And Constantine?”

He turned. “Yes, sire?”

“Make it the barbed cat-o’-nine-tails.” His lips curved into a smile, cold and red. He glanced at Celian. “I want to see blood.”

Three hours after Morgan made the call on Xander’s phone, she heard a sharp knock on the door of the hotel suite.

By then she had little hope the assassin would survive. His pulse fluttered fast as a hummingbird’s, then stalled out for seconds at a time, his skin was gray, and his breathing was weak.

And the blood. So much of his blood had leaked from his wound she thought there couldn’t be anything left for his heart to pump through his veins.

She’d crouched on the floor in front of him for as long as she could, with his blood-soaked shirt pressed to the wound, until her legs had cramped and she’d repositioned herself on the sofa beside him, ignoring the blood that seeped through her skirt and blouse from the sofa cushions, between her fingers from the gash on his stomach. She hadn’t moved since. Her mind refused to consider the implications of his death and instead kept up an endless loop of images of Xander since they’d met.

His burning tiger’s eyes rimmed in a thicket of black lashes, his wicked smile, the way he moved like a silent, deadly hunter, those scars all over his back. His tender, blood-lost expression when he’d said he didn’t blame her for letting him die.

That kiss.

That was the one that refused to fade, no matter how much she tried to push it aside.

So when the knock finally came, she was relieved. For about five seconds, until she opened the door.

There in the hallway stood three males. Two were obviously
Ikati
, big and glowering and exuding the kind of menace and power only a male of her kind did. One had dark hair to his shoulders and stormy, oddly colorless eyes; the other had hair trimmed short like Xander’s and eyes the exact shade of new grass. Both had guns drawn, pointed right at her face.

They flanked a third male, smaller, older, bespectacled—

—And human.

She didn’t have time to wonder about that because she was summarily shoved aside as they pushed past her into the room.

The human fell to his knees in front of the couch, dug a stethoscope from the black leather bag he’d carried in, and listened to Xander’s heart. He did a cursory physical exam with nimble fingers that were both gentle and sure: pulse rate, wound inspection, pupil dilation, lifting first one lid then the other to shine a pen-size flashlight into his eyes. The two
Ikati
performed a swift, silent sweep of the rooms and the terrace, looking behind doors, checking locks and exits. When satisfied no threats lurked inside, the green-eyed
Ikati
holstered the gun in the front of his waistband and went to stand over the doctor while he worked. He watched silently while the other male did a quick check of the two bodies that had lain on the floor for the past few hours. Gray and stiff, they were beginning to emit the faint, distinct odor of decay.

“And?” said the green-eyed
Ikati
. His voice was deep and gravelly.

The human adjusted his glasses and made a small, dissatisfied noise. Cottony tufts of white hair wreathed his head like a crown of miniature clouds. “He’s lost too much blood, Mateo. I’ve got to do surgery to get this piece of glass out and stop the bleeding, but we can’t move him to the safe house like this. He’ll die before we get him there.”

Mateo ran a hand over his head and cursed. The other
Ikati
male finished his inspection of the bodies and stood, surveying the room with those smoky mirror eyes. “I told you we should have brought a donor.”

“We didn’t have
time
, Tomás,” Mateo responded, sharp. “And where the hell would we have found one, anyway?”

“Excuse me,” Morgan said. Everyone ignored her.

“Let’s get him up on the table,” the human said, gesturing to the glossy mahogany dining table.

“I can work better up there. And I’ll need towels and blankets, and something for him to bite down on if we’re going to do the surgery here. A wooden spoon is good.”

“Um, gentlemen?” Morgan tried again. And failed again. The two
Ikati
took hold of Xander’s shoulders and legs while the human rushed over with his medical bag and began clearing the silk flower arrangements from the center of the table.

“Easy, watch his head!” the human man chastised as Mateo and Tomás laid him out on the table. Xander jerked and groaned when he was set down, but his lids remained closed. “Roll him on his side, like this,” the man said, working over him. “Gently, please. Gently.”

“Guys—”

“
Meu deus
, he’s lost a lot of blood,” Tomás muttered. He stood at the head of the table, looking down at Xander’s pale face, his blue lips.

“He’s strong,” Mateo said, by Xander’s feet. His face was as almost as pale as Xander’s, his jaw clenched tight. “He’s made it through much worse.”

Morgan cleared her throat. “May I just have a word—”

“He won’t last long without a transfusion,” murmured the doctor, peering at Xander’s bare lower back. “You’ll have to find someone local, and quick because he’s fading—”

“You let him die, and we’ll have your head, Bartleby,” snapped Tomás, bristling.

“Not helpful,” said Mateo, noting how the man blanched under the assault of Tomás’s anger.

He addressed the doctor directly. “There
is
no one local. There’s no colony in Italy, and obviously it can’t be either of us since his body will reject blood from another male. You’ll just have to find a way to make it work without—”

“Hello!”
shouted Morgan.