Rapture's Edge (42 page)

Aldo was preoccupied; it was almost too easy to drive his blade down, two-handed, through the top of his skull. He released his prey with a strangled cry, and both Aldo and the pope slid, limp and bloody, to the stone balcony floor. Then Silas sheathed his knife and backed away, careful not to show his face in the open window. From what he could see of the crowd below, they were in full panic mode, scared witless not only by what had just occurred in the window, but by the coordinated attacks going on down below.

He turned around and let out a startled scream.

There in the middle of the floor, awash in his own blood, sat Caesar.

Staring at him.

Frowning.

He put his hand to the back of his neck, feeling around while Silas gaped at him in stunned incomprehension. He shook his head as if to clear it, spat to clear the blood from his mouth, and then, unbelievably—
impossibly
—climbed to his feet.

The clamor of shouting and booted feet stomping down the corridor in a rush distracted Caesar, who turned his head toward the noise, but not Silas, who was unable to move a muscle to save his life. A million different explanations flashed through his mind at the speed of light, a
million different questions, and always the answer flashing back huge and electric like a Las Vegas neon sign:

No. No. No.

A cadre of armed Swiss Guards burst through the antechamber door. Caesar was the first one they saw, standing in a pool of blood in the center of the room, the bodies of the dead priests at his feet, eyes and slit throats gaping. Silas was still by the balcony window, partially out of their line of vision, but Caesar might as well have had a bull’s-eye on his bloody shirt, the way the guards reacted.

They lit into him with a unified roar.

Showered in a hail of bullets, Caesar twitched and staggered back as the flying shards of metal bit into his flesh, ripped open his shirt, tore through his body. Blood sprayed from a hundred ragged wounds, and almost in slow motion he fell, arms flailing, a cry of anguish on his lips. He crumpled to the floor and lay unmoving.

In the aftermath: Hush. A lone ambulance siren, far out. The sting and gray haze of gunpowder in the air.

Then the unbelievable and the impossible took on the distinct taint of the
insane
when Caesar’s eyes, once again, blinked open.

He sat up abruptly, tore open his bloodied, ruined shirt, and watched in fascination—along with everyone else in the room—as dozens upon dozens of bullets appeared on the surface of his chest and abdomen, squeezed out of the wounds in his skin like seeds from the pulp of a lemon. One by one, they dropped to the floor with little
plunks
like the sound of pennies tossed into a wishing well, where they rolled, compacted and bloody, in little wobbly circles until falling still.

Caesar looked back up at the guards, several of whom had dropped their weapons and were crossing themselves in
horror. He smiled. He said, “Oops. Bet you weren’t expecting that.”

Then Silas sank to his knees on the hard wooden floor of the pope’s private study, and, for the first time in his entire life, he wept.

Demetrius knew even before the phone rang that something terrible had happened.

He just didn’t know how bad it would turn out to be.

As he stared down at the ringing cell phone in his palm, a premonition of disaster turned his blood cold. It was Celian calling, he knew from the number, and something made him hesitate before he put it to his ear and said tersely, “What’s happened?”

A moment of silence. Then, “You haven’t been near a television.”

The premonition turned into a cold and vile surety that felt like a hungry reptile slithering around in the pit of his stomach. “No.”

Celian said, “There’s been an attack. On the pope, and the people in St. Peter’s Square, during his Christmas morning—”

“An attack? What does that have to do with us?”

“It was
by
us.”

Demetrius stood there by the windows where Eliana had left him not fifteen minutes prior, stunned into momentary silence. “Us?”

“
Ikati
.” Celian’s voice grew hard. “Caesar.”

With the phone still pressed to his ear, Demetrius ran down the hallway from the dining room at Alexi’s house, bolted into a bedroom, and slammed his hand against the
power button of the television mounted above a dresser. The screen flickered to life, and it was on every channel, the gory details on instant replay, expert discussions and hysterical eyewitness testimony and outraged religious leaders and politicians screaming for someone’s head.

And Caesar, smiling and laying out his plan for world domination.

He’d always known Caesar was craven, but to see it made so clear was another thing. He made a wordless noise of horror that encapsulated both his disgust and his perfect understanding of what this would mean for all of them.

“That’s not the worst of it, brother.”

Every cell in D’s body froze, and he knew, he
knew
, even before Celian said it. He whispered, “Eliana.”

“The Hunt’s got her. Leander called me just now—they’re taking her to Sommerley. They assume she and Caesar—”

“
No!
” he hissed, flooded with fury, with anger at himself for letting her go and not following, with her for being so recklessly stubborn and blindly loyal, risking her life to see a “friend.”

“I told him that. And he told me in no uncertain terms that I should kiss my colony good-bye. They’re going to make an example of us for any of the other colonies that feel like stepping out of line, and then they’re going to close ranks and go underground.” His voice darkened. “But not before she’s made to pay for the sins of her brother.”

Demetrius gripped the phone so tightly the plastic case shattered and snapped in two with a
crack
. “I’m going to go get her.”

In the background, he heard Constantine say, “Told you.”

Celian breathed a long, protracted sigh. “Yeah. Thought you were going to say that. Which is why we’re on our way.”

D realized he was on speakerphone; he heard road noise in the background, along with the low, somber voices of Lix and Constantine. Something had entered his bloodstream and was boiling up inside him, curdling him from the inside. “You won’t get here fast enough. It’s a thirteen-hour drive here from Rome, but only a few hours from Paris to Sommerley via the train. It’ll be too late by then.”

Celian said, “They’re not taking the train from Paris, D. They’re flying. Leander sent his private jet. She’ll be there in just a few hours. Maybe less.”

His private jet. Of course. Of
course
the Earl of Sommerley would have a private jet.

Which meant that D had no other choice but to fly, too.

With fury steeling his voice, he said into the phone, “Well, then, I’ll have to beat them there, won’t I?”

Without waiting for an answer, he Shifted to Vapor and surged toward the open mouth of the fireplace on the other side of the room, letting the cracked phone fall with a tinkle of broken plastic to the floor.

Alexi’s too-small white silk robe floated in a sideways drift down beside it.

It was an uncomfortable feeling, but it paled in comparison to the other feelings Eliana had dealt with over the last few hours.

With cold pressure against her skin and an electric hum that sent a thrill of pain surging down her spine whenever she pushed it too far, the metal links of the collar fastened around her throat held her just at the brink of the turn, primed but unable to Shift. The heated charge would build, and the flare that caught and sparked like gunpowder, and then the scent of smoke and honey that signaled the final moment just before transformation. But the charge faltered and then faded, leaving a hollow ache in its wake.

No use. She was trapped.

In more ways than one.

The plane ride had been beyond grim. Ensconced in the burl wood and leather luxury of the private plane of the man responsible for her imminent death wasn’t the way Eliana had envisioned the last few hours of her life. Not that she’d spent much time envisioning it prior to today, but there you go. She was dressed in handcuffs and a single article of men’s clothing—again. She was surrounded by enemies and unable to Shift.

Again.

Three of the sleek assassins in suits had accompanied her on the trip. The one who’d captured her at the hospital—tall and stone-faced with a cool, shark-like beauty—and two more who’d met them in front of the hospital, waiting in a black sedan with tinted windows. They were at total odds with the camaraderie and code of honor of the
Bellatorum.

This obviously wasn’t a band of brothers. This was a hired group of killers, cold and unencumbered by ties like brotherhood.

They didn’t look at her. They didn’t speak to her, or to one another, and their silence was more ominous than any threats or thrown insults would have been.

Eliana was sick with fear with what was about to happen.

She knew it wouldn’t be quick, and it wouldn’t be painless. If the laws of this British colony were anything like the laws of her own, she’d be made an example. A traitor was the worst thing a tribe member could be, and the execution of one was savored. They would gather ’round and watch for as long as it took—hours, at the very least—until their sense of justice had been served or she died, whichever came first. And because she knew they would employ the most barbarous of torture techniques in order to elicit information,
she’d been trying to steel her nerves by imagining the worst they could do.

She would never tell them where the others were. Never.

But they would surely have terrible ways of trying to make her.

Suicide was the better option, but there had been no opportunity. And she knew that if she were somehow able to kill herself, Gregor would be made to pay in her stead.

There was no way out. She was going to die—very soon.

Sweet Isis, please give me strength,
she prayed to the goddess of slaves, sinners, and the downtrodden.
Let me not dishonor myself. Let me not beg.

She looked out the window of the limousine that had arrived at Heathrow to collect them and watched as the landscape slid by, emerald rolling hills bisected with low stone walls and dotted with black-faced sheep, thatched-roof cottages and thickets of ancient trees spreading their boughs over arched bridges, everything green and glistening with the gray, misty rainfall that had tapered off only minutes before. She’d never been to England, and she’d never been this far out in the countryside, and the thought that her bones would be buried so far away from home brought a sheen of tears to her eyes.

She wasn’t allowing herself to think about Demetrius. She knew that would start a waterfall of tears that could never be stopped.

“We’re here,” said the driver from the front seat, and the air inside the car electrified.

The car pulled to a stop outside a massive, scrolled iron gate. The gate was flanked on either side with rough-hewn stone walls—ten feet high and topped with barbed wire—which stretched as far as the eye could see in either
direction. The driver rolled down his window, waved a hand at the stone gatehouse, and after a slight hesitation, the scrolled iron gates began a slow, outward swing.

And Eliana’s heart began a frantic, hummingbird beat.

Let me not beg.

Upon seeing the traitor, Christian’s first thought was,
Blue hair?

As she was hauled out of the car by Keshav and shoved forward in bare feet over the groomed white gravel of the circular drive, hands cuffed behind her back, long legs bare, his second thought was,
Is she
naked
under that coat?

His third thought wasn’t actually a thought at all. It was more of a garbled impression of several things at once, all rendered unintelligible by the fact of his utter astonishment.

She had her head down, eyes trained on the ground, but as she rounded the back of the car she lifted her head and looked straight at him, and Christian felt as if he would be knocked back off his feet.

Her face—lovely, arresting—held an expression of such bottomless desolation it was like a hand had reached out and seized his heart. There was misery and grief but also an awful sort of steely resignation, and beneath it all, a beautiful, haunting pride. It was clear she knew she was being led to her death, knew it would not be an easy one…and she was determined to face it with dignity.

Admiration blossomed inside him.

And the first, tiny pinpricks of doubt.

Keshav yanked her to a stop with one hand curled hard around her upper arm. She stumbled and gasped, then bit the gasp back and straightened her spine. She
lifted her gaze to his, and he was pinned by the force of it, by her air of magnificent doom, both heroic and tragic. He had the fleeting thought she could be the inspiration for an epic Greek poem about battle and betrayal and love. Chary and intense, she looked like someone who had spent years wandering the darkest depths of hell, met all its inhabitants, and been given a job counting the incoming dead.

In a husky, accented voice, she said, “Are you the one who’ll do it?”