Edge of Oblivion (33 page)

The thought of his big hands carefully arranging her things brought a prick of tears to her eyes, and she swiped at them angrily with the back of her free hand.

Stupid. Falling for an assassin. For
her
assassin. Incredibly stupid.

She shook her head, took a deep breath, and focused again on the necklace.

It had been coiled in a corner of one of the drawers, hidden beneath the glossy silk of a red chemise. It had to be what Xander had taken from the man in white that day on the street near the Spanish Steps. She remembered Xander’s kneeling down to search the clothing that feral Alpha had left behind when he’d Shifted to Vapor and disappeared over the rooftops, remembered the subtle flash of gold in his hand as he pocketed it. She’d seen that symbol somewhere else, too, she was
sure
of it, but where? Her mind, still heavy with the remnants of the Fever, refused to disclose it.

When she’d awoken, the Fever had been gone. Just...poof!...disappeared. Three days of the worst kind of hell and the sweetest taste of heaven, then done as if it had never happened at all. Except for a dullness in her brain that somehow vivid memories of Xander’s beautiful, muscled body—beside hers, over hers,
inside
hers—managed easily to penetrate.

She was exhausted. Mentally, physically, emotionally depleted. Though they’d shared something she’d never thought possible, she and Xander had made a bargain, fair and square. Their—

tryst? Dalliance? Mutual insanity?—was over when the Fever was over, which now it was. He was a man of his word and so would honor their agreement, but would she?

Gripped by a sudden, horrible vision of herself wailing and weeping at his feet like some pathetic castoff, hoping for some crumb of his affections, she felt a chill run down her spine.

She rubbed a clear circle in the middle of the steamy mirror and stared at her reflection.

Hope. Sweeter than honey and more heady than wine...her mother had been right. Hope was a drug that lured your soul right out of your body. How much of her soul had the goblins already eaten?

How much did she even have left?

She felt a sharp pain in her hand and looked down to find her fingers gripped so tight around the necklace her knuckles were white. She eased her shaking fist open and gazed at the necklace, at the little red dents in her palm. In a flash of something like defiance, she wrapped the chain around her neck and fastened the clasp.

The medallion slithered down between her breasts and settled there with an ominous, foreboding
chink
. Something in the sound snapped through her haze and brought her upright.

Creaking chains and ancient metals, echoing corridors and whispering voices, darkness and incense and moldering stone. What? What was it?

She stood fixed, on the verge of it, unable to breathe. Seconds went by, minutes, but...nothing.

Just that pale shadow of a memory, a skin-crawling brush of déjà vu. Suddenly she was cold, shivering. She rubbed her palms against her cheeks to get the blood back into them and reached for the towel to finish drying off from her shower.

As Morgan dried her body, as she dressed, as she moved around the darkened bedroom, tidying, stripping the bed, preparing to move all her things into one of the other unoccupied rooms, the medallion nestled heavy and cold between her breasts, and she was acutely aware of its alien weight, of how it never warmed against her skin.

The first bullet whistled by Xander’s left ear, missing his face by inches. A second followed quickly after the first and embedded itself into the wall a few feet behind him with a
thunk
that dislodged a fine spray of dust from the drywall inside; a third found its target and hit him directly in the chest.

He’d been prepared, so it Passed harmlessly through his body, but it still knocked the breath out of him.

Things were not going as well as planned.

Everything had been fine at the start. He’d Passed through the back wall of the facility after finding a spot where his senses told him it was safe—meaning deserted—on the other side. He’d held steady in the dark supply room he’d found himself in for just long enough to confirm the wires he’d cut in the fuse box out back were, in fact, the ones for the burglar alarm and motion detectors. He’d isolated Bartleby’s voice from a babble of others somewhere near the front of the building, which meant the doctor had been successful in gaining access and now had the attention of what Xander hoped was the majority of the other humans in the building. He’d wound his way through the maze of dark hallways and rooms toward where his nose told him Tomás and Mateo were being held, sensing nothing out of the ordinary. He’d found the two of them, unattended, locked in large cages in a well-lit room and had quickly freed them and led them back the way he’d come, Mateo badly limping and silent, Tomás bristling and growling low in his throat, dripping blood from a wound on his face.

They’d slunk out of the facility and into the SUV without the slightest hitch.

Simple. Everything was so simple.

Until, on his way back inside to find Julian, Xander had gone past one locked steel door and stopped short, arrested by the scent of blood.

So much of it the air was stained by its thick, rust-and-salt pungency.

A muscle in his jaw twitched as he stared at the door. He knew that like many animal shelters in Europe, shelters in Italy had a no-kill policy. Unwanted animals weren’t euthanized; they were kept until adopted or sent to one of the many animal sanctuaries around the country. And in the case of animals that were mortally wounded or terminally ill, a cocktail of drugs was administered by injection for a quick, “humane” death.

So why all the blood?

He didn’t bother walking through the door. He just Passed his head and shoulders through and looked around. Though the lights were out and the room was plunged in darkness broken only by the eerie blue glow of computer screens and digital readouts, he saw and smelled everything with perfect clarity and was instantly overcome by a horror so overwhelming he could not move another inch to save his life.

It was a long white room crowded with thousands of cages of every size, stacked in orderly rows one atop another, to the ceiling. Some were empty, but the ones that were occupied contained misery the likes of which he had never seen.

Hundreds of snowy white rabbits were immobilized in a long row of black plastic shoebox-size cages along the north wall, their bodies pressed by the cage on every side, their heads stuck through holes in front, their pink eyes covered in weeping sores and bloody discharge. Beside them were the cats, cramped by the dozen in breadbox-size chicken-wire cages, electrodes implanted into their skulls and wired to overhead panels, pacing listlessly or lying dead-eyed and drooling in their own waste.

Along the opposite wall were the emaciated dogs huddled in the corners of their larger metal cages with every type of disfigurement: raw and bloody coats, missing limbs and eyes, open sores, no teeth, bleeding gums.

The monkeys were in the largest cages, reinforced with steel bars, like all the others barren of any food or water or even a soft place to rest their heads. With their old-man faces and keen, eloquent eyes, they were worst of all. As soon as he looked in their direction they all sent up a piercing, cage-

rattling shriek loud enough to scour demons from their nests. They began to jump up and down, flail long arms, batter the bars of their cages.

All the ones that were still alive, that is. Macaque and chimpanzee and owl monkey corpses—

skeletal and oddly human—littered the bottoms of cages, as worthless and forgotten as yesterday’s newspaper.

The scream that tore from him came from someplace deep down in his soul that he hadn’t known existed.

Death was a thing he was well accustomed to, a steadfast companion of his life for so many years it was as much a part of him as his own flesh. But
torture
...torture of thousands of innocent creatures so helpless they had no chance of escape, no ability to voice their misery and pain...this was something he’d never come face-to-face with, and his mind almost could not comprehend the evil of such a thing.

This was no animal shelter. This was an
animal testing facility
.

So humans could have their cosmetics, their perfumed soaps, their dryer sheets and sudsier shampoo, all of it paid for by the blood of millions of animals just as alive and aware and able to suffer as the keepers who mutilated and tortured them.

He ripped the solid metal door off its hinges and flung it aside. It collided with a loud, echoing crash against the corridor wall. The overhead motion-sensor lights in the testing lab blinked on, illuminating the horror in Technicolor while he ran like a madman through the room, roaring, smashing things, blind with rage. Banks of desks and computers and filing cabinets were destroyed, screw-top glass canisters in a tall, open cabinet exploded into sprays of caustic chemicals as a chair went flying into them, an island of square metal worktables in the center of the room sporting sinks and chain restraints crumpled like aluminum foil under his fists.

The monkeys shrieked bloody murder all the while, the dogs howled, the rabbits began to scream and wriggle, desperate to flee, unable even to turn their heads to look in his direction. The cats, crouched and bristling, just stared at him, ears flat against their Frankenstein heads.

Heavy footfalls and shouting voices from down the corridor told him someone was on the way.

Multiple someones, most likely guards, most likely the armed ones who’d escorted Bartleby inside.

Through his rage, Xander gathered his wits and removed another of his disposable cell phones from a pocket in his pants. He took photo after photo, then switched the video function to record and panned the room.

“You’ll be out of here soon,” he promised the screaming animals, his voice raw in his throat.

“Just hang on a little while longer.” He repocketed the camera and spun around just in time to see three armed guards appear in the doorway. They froze when they saw him standing amid the chaos.

Like marionettes, their jaws unhinged in shock.

“
Fermo!
” one of them shouted after a moment of stunned silence. He hoisted the Glock .44 he’d drawn from the holster at his waist. The others followed suit. “
Fermo, o spariamo!
”

Stop or we’ll shoot.

“Be my guest, assholes!” Xander shouted, furious. Then he lunged at them.

They got off three shots before they toppled like bowling pins under the full force of his weight. They crashed to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. Cursing in Italian, one of the guards tried to wrench free of the stranglehold Xander had on his neck, but Xander bore down and felt bones snap with the brittleness of dry twigs. Slack-jawed, the guard fell still. The other two scrambled to their feet and started firing rounds into him, but when he leapt up, unharmed and snarling, they backed slowly away and started jabbering like frightened birds.

More running footfalls from somewhere far beyond the destroyed door. More faint shouts from unseen men. The monkeys’ banshee shrieks drilled into his brain.

Xander smashed his fist into the face of the second guard, and blood spurted from his shattered nose. He slid to the floor and toppled to his side, where he lay unconscious, still as a corpse. The last guard lunged at him, but Xander was too fast, his instincts too honed. Xander had him by the throat with one hand squeezed around his larynx before the man had taken a full step, then lifted him high, entirely off the floor.

The guard clawed at his hand, but his grip didn’t loosen. He tried to cry out but managed only a wheeze, eyes rolling, face beet red. His boots kicked out and met resistance: Xander’s shins.

“Where are they keeping the third animal?” Xander shouted. This bastard knew everything, knew what went on in this torture chamber, and turned his eyes away for the sake of a paycheck. “The panther that was separated from the other two! Where are they keeping him?”

The guard tried frantically to escape. His eyes bulged from their sockets, veins popped out along his neck. He gasped, trying to speak. Xander heard a choked
please
, and it enraged him so much he saw red as the final shreds of his restraint began to snap.

“Oh, I’m sorry, are you in
pain
?” Xander hissed. He jerked his head toward the cages of animals. “Should we pour some toxic goo in your eyes and see if that makes it better? Or maybe slap some corrosive chemicals on your skin that will melt it away? How about a little impromptu surgery where I implant something into your skull so I can study how your brain waves spike when you’re injected with a heart-stopping load of carcinogens?”

The guard took a swing, but Xander only leaned back, easily avoiding his fist.

“I’ve got everything I need right here to turn you into something from a horror movie, my friend, so you better start talking, and quick,” he snarled.

His lips peeled back over his teeth, his canines elongated as the Shift began to pound through his blood, heating cells, electrifying. With a sound like a faint exhalation, a fine nap of black fur sprang from the pores all over his body. Amost there,
so close
, only a slight twinge in his injured side held him back from fully completing the turn and tearing the man’s throat out with his fangs.

Yes
, the beast in him roared, clawing just under his skin, writhing to be set free.
Yes!

When he spoke again, his voice took on a deep, animalistic quality, coarse and barbarous, entirely inhuman. It rumbled through the room, echoing, and all the animals screamed anew.

The guard stiffened, mouth gaping in a silent scream. His face darkened to purple. He released the contents of his bowels into his pants with a loud, malodorous
plfflolff!