Edge of Oblivion (25 page)

The first of the screams erupted from somewhere above them.

Even before the screams Mateo sensed it, and Julian and Tomás weren’t far behind. As they made their way across the dance floor, watching humans skitter away like frightened puppies before them, the stinging hot recognition that there were three other
Ikati
males somewhere in this club hit all three of them like a heavyweight punch.

They looked up in the direction of the screams at the exact moment three huge, black animals reared up on their hind legs and set broad paws on the metal railing of the second-floor balcony.

Yellow eyes, unblinking; long tails, snaking back and forth; fangs exposed, white and sharp. One of them roared a challenge.

“Aw, shit,” said Julian. “I knew this was a bad idea.”

The music thumped, the lights flashed, and it didn’t seem as if anyone on the dance floor noticed what was happening up above until the bodies started dropping.

Suddenly there was a stampede. People couldn’t get away fast enough. Screaming and shoving, they formed a thronging mob that began to flow down the stairs. Some didn’t bother with the stairs and leapt clear over the railings, flailing, to land atop unsuspecting revelers below. It was chaos.

“We can’t Shift!” hollered Mateo over the music when he smelled Tomás’s intention as a gunpowder sting in the back of his throat. “If the Assembly finds out we Shifted in public—” Tomás sank to a crouch, baring his teeth. “Special situation. And rules are made to be broken.”

“No, Tomás!” Mateo shouted, gripping Tomás’s forearm. “No!”

Too late. Above the screams, the music, and the pounding of footsteps, a sickening crackle was heard as bone and tendon transformed, then the loud rip of fabric as it was shredded to pieces. On his other side, Julian Shifted as well, the most enormous of any
Ikati
he’d ever seen—his huge, wedge-

shaped head with its tapering nose and long, silver whiskers was above shoulder high to his own. He made a grizzly bear look like a Chihuahua. Clothing lay in tatters around his feet.

The three
Ikati
balancing on their forepaws on the railing above took it as an invitation. They pushed off with powerful hind legs and sailed over the second-story railing to land in a noiseless, menacing crouch only a few yards away on the dance floor that was now cleared of anything but the six of them.

In unison, the five panthers crouched, sprang, crashed into one another head-on in midair. They went tumbling over the floor, clawing and biting, their snarling loud and vicious enough to drown the music.

Then to his great horror, Mateo spotted a human female in the far corner of the club crouched beneath a cocktail table, holding something out in her trembling hand. His first thought was that it was a gun. He focused, then almost wished it was.

A small metal object, a glowing blue screen.

A phone.

A camera.

The entire thing was being filmed.

“Why do you suppose it is,” said Bartleby to Xander as they sat on the back lawn of the safe house in two folding chairs, “that you have kept me in your employ all these years?”

Xander sighed, feeling a lecture coming on. He stared up at the glimmering Milky Way peeking through rifts in the rolling, velvet dark clouds above. The cool tang of moisture in the air and the tingle of electricity that lifted the little hairs on his arms told him it was going to rain, and soon.

He said, “Because of your charm and good looks, obviously.”

But that wasn’t it. The truth of Xander’s loyalty to the doctor lay somewhere far darker.

Bartleby had been Karyo’s personal physician. In desperation—his mind unable to grasp that Esperanza was gone, really
gone
—Xander had called him on that terrible day so long ago, had watched through his tears as the doctor examined her, met Xander’s gaze, shook his head in wordless confirmation of the horrible truth.

He’d been kind that day, the only kind older male Xander had ever known, human or otherwise.

Since then the Syndicate had kept Bartleby as their own physician. He was trusted and respected and had saved their lives on more than one occasion.

Because he knew the doctor so well, Xander didn’t even have to look over to feel the sour look his old friend shot him.

“Wrong. Because I’m the only person who’s ever honest with you,” the doctor declared.

That definitely sounded like a pending lecture. Xander watched the neighbor’s beagle stare at him through a small hole in the back fence, fifty yards away. The dog was growling and trembling, and Xander had half a mind to get up from his chair and really give the dumb beast something to tremble about. “Don’t want to hear it, Doc.”

“I know you don’t want to hear it, Alexander, but the truth might do you a bit of good.”

Bartleby stood from the chair, stretched his arms overhead, rolled his neck back and forth.

Then he turned and stared down at Xander, his balding head crowned by a corona of stars.

“But first, a question.”

Xander braced himself.

“Are you in love with Morgan?”

He drained the last of the bottle of very fine scotch he’d been drinking for the last hour as they sat looking at the gathering storm and swallowed around the searing lump in his throat. “You’ve been watching too many soap operas.”

“Well,” Bartleby persisted after a moment when Xander said nothing more, “
are
you?”

“You’re a pushy bastard, you know that?” Xander grumbled and climbed to his feet. He tossed the empty scotch bottle at the back fence and was gratified to hear the beagle go yelping off into the night when it shattered against the wood.

“And you’re avoiding the question.” The doctor peered up at him through his spectacles and adjusted his bow tie. “Not that I blame you, mind you, but I think if you get some clarity on this issue it will make things easier for everyone involved.”

“Clarity,” he repeated disdainfully, drawing the three syllables out. “Now I
know
you’ve been watching too many soap operas.”

“My point is,” continued Bartleby, undeterred by Xander’s sarcasm, “that you can’t decide what you’re going to do until you are clear on what exactly it is you feel for this female of yours.”

“Mark,” Xander corrected, hard. “Job. Pigeon.”

“Mmmhmmm,” said the doctor.

“And there is no decision regarding what I’m going to
do
. I’m going to...”

What? He was going to what?

Bartleby raised his eyebrows, waiting. Xander made a cutting motion across his throat with a hand.

“Please,” scoffed the doctor. “You’re not going to hurt a hair on her head.”

“I don’t even want to hear your theory on why that might be.”

“Because you’re in love with her! Even your Blood knows you’re in love with her! Why don’t you just admit it!”

Xander sighed and massaged his temples. “You’re fired.”

“Again?”

It was a running joke between them. Xander had fired Bartleby at least three dozen times over the last twenty years. It never stuck. The old man had grown on him like a barnacle.

In what he hoped would be the final period in the sentence of this unwanted conversation, Xander turned and made his way back toward the house. A breeze rustled through the trees along the fence, a rumble of thunder rattled the windows. Just as he lifted his hand to open the back door, Bartleby said, “She asked me not to give her any more drugs.”

Xander spun around, shocked. “What? I thought you said it helped her. I thought you said she was in pain—”

“She is. And will be for the next two days.” He tipped his head back and looked at Xander through his bifocals. “But she said she didn’t want you to have any more excuses.”

Xander’s chest tightened. His lungs refused to expand or contract. His voice came low and wary. “Excuses for what?”

The doctor smiled. “For not finishing what you started earlier.”

Dear, sweet lord in heaven. He stood there, staggered, while Bartleby gazed at him, serene as Buddha, moonlight shining soft off his spectacles. A low rumble of thunder broke the silence, and somewhere off in the distance, a dog began to howl.

“Go on, then.” The doctor waved him away and sat back down in his chair. He stretched his legs out over the grass and tipped his head up to the sky just in time to watch the moon slip behind a thundercloud. “Go find clarity, my friend, and maybe with it you’ll find some peace of mind. After all these years, you deserve it.”

It repeated in Xander’s head like a broken record as he slowly made his way through the dark house, down two sets of stairs, to the bedroom level where he’d woken up early this morning. He paused at the landing, staring down the long corridor to the door at the end where he’d left Morgan—

fled her—his heart pounding so hard he’d thought it might break through his ribs and explode, killing him.

She was delirious. She was joking. She was just trying to get a rise out of him so she could torment him later about his stupidity.

Right?

Her scent teased the air, wound up inside his nose, luring, tugging him forward. The energy of her Fever throbbed in exquisite, crackling pulses over his skin. Knowing exactly what waited for him behind that door, he wondered if this was God’s way of punishing him for everything bad he’d done in his life. It definitely felt like punishment.

A little moan from behind her closed door, and again he thought he would die. Desire flamed in him, hot as the sun, consuming. A noise like tremendous static roared in his ears.

His feet moved him down the hall.

He placed his open palms on the closed door and stood there with his arms braced against it for seconds, minutes, what seemed like hours, fighting against every raging instinct in his body.

You will not do this. You will maintain control. There’s no going back from something like this, there’s no good that can come of it
—

The low moan came again, and his will began to fracture. He put his hand on the knob and slowly turned it.

The scent that slipped from the open door was so heady and overwhelming he was rocked back on his heels as it hit him in wave after wave of perfumed beauty. Ferocious, the animal inside him hissed and writhed to be free.

Xander pushed the door open farther. When he saw what was inside he froze.

The room was in shambles. Broken things lay scattered across the floor: a lamp, a yellow vase, a flat-screen television that had hung above the narrow credenza. A framed oil had been shredded to pieces, tossed to a corner. The bedsheets were in disarray, the satin comforter lay in a rumpled pile at the foot of the bed...the bed itself was empty. Frantic, his gaze darted over the darkened room. Morgan wasn’t on the floor, in the chair, anywhere he could see—

From the adjoining bathroom there came the sound of running water, followed very quickly thereafter by a loud crash.

He bolted across the room, threw open the bathroom door, and came to a skidding halt beside the sink. She was crouched on the tiled floor of the shower—naked, shivering, knees drawn up to her chin—as water poured all over her, poured all over the shards of frosted glass that lay scattered around her.

The shower door was demolished. Ragged bits of glass stuck out from the metal frame like shark’s teeth. A few of them fell tinkling to the tile.

“Morgan!” He frantically searched for blood, for signs she’d been hurt. “What happened? Did you fall? Are you—” She glanced up at him through dark lashes, and her agonized look punched an aching hole into the very center of his chest.

“It h-hurts less if I b-break something,” she said, teeth chattering.

The relief that washed over him was so strong he had to close his eyes for a moment to manage it. “You did this on purpose.”

He opened his eyes to find her nodding into her knees, her dark hair fanned over her shoulders and back, dripping wet. “S-stupid d-
door
.”

Steam curled up in feathered wisps from her shoulders, and as he reached in to turn off the faucet he was shocked to realize the water pouring over her was ice-cold. The steam came from her
skin
.

She was burning up.

“You need the morphine,” he growled, reaching for one of the towels that hung on a rod beside the sink. He knelt beside her and carefully draped it over her shoulders.

She pushed it away. “Water,” she said, her voice cracking. “I need cold water.”

Reaching an arm up to the faucet, she made a move to stand but staggered. Before she could fall Xander had her in his arms, had her—shivering, wet, and burning—pressed against his chest. He kept his eyes on the ruined door as he maneuvered them past it, avoiding jagged glass and the view of her naked breasts, both inches away. He snatched the other towel from the rack and awkwardly tried to pull it over her while she squirmed in his arms.

God, the fragrance of her—the
heat
—

“Stop fighting me,” he said through clenched teeth.

“
You
stop fighting
me
!”

“Jesus, woman. You’ll be the death of me!”

He carried her, writhing, to the bed, where he gently laid her down atop the sheets. The towels were still covering her—mostly covering her—but he quickly shook out the comforter and laid it over her wet body. She kicked it off.

“Too
hot
,” she moaned, writhing.

He stood there above her with his hands laced behind his neck—as if that could keep them from reaching for her—while she tossed and thrashed and begged him to put her back in the shower to cool her off.

It wasn’t cold water she needed. Xander knew what she needed. It was the same thing every female in her Fever needed in order to ease the pain.