J. Geissinger: Edge of Oblivion

warmed stone. A stocky, bespectacled man with a mouth like a dried prune approached and said something to her in Japanese, gesturing to his camera and his tiny, smiling wife standing a few feet away beside a low fence.

“Of course. Yes!” she said, without realizing she’d never held a camera in her life and had no idea how to operate one. Her confusion became quickly apparent, and the man, in broken English, gently showed her how to focus the lens and which button to push.

When it was done they were beaming and bowing and shaking her hand, and Morgan experienced a feeling so unfamiliar and strange it took her a moment to identify. Like optimism but stronger, a buoyant confidence and goodwill and sweet anticipation all rolled into one.

Hope. She felt hope.

The Japanese couple thanked her one last time and moved away, leaving her standing stunned and alone, awash in sentimentality for this new bud of feeling she’d glimpsed, which she knew without question wouldn’t live long.

And neither will you , a small voice whispered in her ear, if you don’t get going .

She stared up at the golden stone bulk of the Colosseum.

One look inside, she decided, just a tiny bit of sightseeing since she’d most likely never have the opportunity again, and then she’d figure out where to begin her search.

Starting off at a casual stroll, Morgan made her way across the greenbelt of grass and around the cobblestone-paved perimeter, wondering at how open it was, how accessible even with the iron gates. She could walk right up and touch it. And she did, running her fingers over cracks and bumps and warm, roughened stone, over a small, faded patch of blue-and-black graffiti on the inner curve of a graceful Ionic column, missed by whoever was tasked with removing it. She moved on, noting with no small satisfaction that she was alone and unwatched—practically free —in a foreign country, something that even two months ago would have been unthinkable, a total impossibility.

She couldn’t help the wicked smile that curved her lips, wondering what he had done when he’d discovered her gone. She hoped it involved a stroke.

Around a turn where the outer façade abruptly gave way to what was left of the shorter, inner amphitheater walls, she paused to look around. Few tourists were near this section, only a group of teenagers sitting cross-legged perhaps fifty yards away in a semicircle under the boughs of a gnarled fir tree, smoking something sweet and acrid that didn’t smell like tobacco. One of them snorted and punched another in the shoulder, and they all fell into fits of giggling.

She doubted very much if they’d notice what she was about to do.

The strappy heels she kicked off into a corner, though she hated the thought of leaving her favorite pair of Chanel sandals out in the open like sitting ducks. Then with one final, furtive glance around, she wrapped her hands around the cold iron bars of the gate, looked up, and began to climb.

Caught between fury, disbelief, and that same odd, fleeting admiration he’d felt at the hotel when she’d—almost—made a porter regurgitate his lunch on him, Xander watched the lithe, confident figure of Morgan scale the outer façade of the Colosseum like a spider advancing up a wall.

There were hundreds of people within shouting distance, hundreds more speeding by through evening traffic on the boulevard just beyond. She was totally exposed. Only one of them would have to look up to see the pair of long, bare legs, the dark hair like a brushstroke down her back, the white blouse stark as daylight against the night.

What was she thinking? Was she thinking? If any of the lingering tourists snapped a photo of her—worse, a video , nightmare of nightmares—they’d both lose their heads.

He’d seen Ikati executed for far less egregious offenses than this.

Secrecy. Silence. Allegiance to the tribe. That was all there was, for all of them, since the beginning of time, all that kept them safe against exposure, against discovery.

Evidently Morgan was done with all three.

For the third time since he’d made her acquaintance less than eight hours ago, Xander was spun on a wheel of emotion, from anger to amusement to surprise and beyond, all of it fighting for dominance at once. He hadn’t felt this— much —in nearly twenty years, since he was sixteen, deep in the throes of an agony so profound he’d never been able to speak of it again.

He darted out from beneath the gloom of the row of shaped cypress where he’d been standing, ran with long, silent strides to a stretch of wall where no tourists lingered, and pressed his body full against it. He exhaled, took a step back, and melted into the warm, scratchy stone.

“Wow.”

There was simply no other word to describe it.

Morgan stood in her bare feet at the very top of the uppermost arcade, looking down on what was once the sandy floor of the Colosseum. The floor had long ago been removed except for a re-

creation of it at one end. The structures beneath were now exposed, a two-level network of tunnels and crumbling subterranean chambers, winding and shadowed in the starlight.

A warm, light wind buffeted her body, swirled her hair into her eyes. Wanting to feel the rocky earth and tufts of green grass beneath her feet, she decided to go down and explore it. Just as she made a move to jump down to the next level of worn stone seats below, there came a voice, low and hostile.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

She froze. For a single, horrifying instant, she pictured herself in prison—human prison this time—locked away for trespassing on a national treasure. But then she turned and it was Xander, not one of the local polizia , renowned for their ferocity.

Morgan didn’t know which was worse.

“What do you think I’m doing, genius?” she said coldly, squaring her shoulders. “What I came here to do: search for the Expurgari.”

“Really?” he replied, just as cold. He appraised her with a slightly curled lip. “Because what you’re doing seems closer to sightseeing than searching.”

“You can read minds?” she snapped, folding her arms across her chest.

That curled lip of his drew back even farther, and she desperately wanted to slap the smirk right off his face.

“Doesn’t take a genius to figure it out,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “You’re practically hyperventilating with excitement.”

He put a slight emphasis on the word genius , and the urge to slap him grew exponentially stronger. Smug bastard. And she was not hyperventilating.

“And by the way,” he continued before she could reply, “let’s get something straight. You need to ask—nicely, which I know will present a challenge for you—for permission to leave the hotel. And if I grant that permission, it’s only on the condition that I’m coming with you. I need to know exactly where you are at all times, so in the future you’re not to go anywhere without asking me first.

Understood?”

Morgan had heard the term blood boiling on many occasions, but she suddenly, completely grasped its true meaning. Fire flowed through her veins, scorching hot.

“I’m not going to ask your permission for anything, ever,” she enunciated slowly. “But I’ll inform you that I’m going to go down there,” she pointed to the shadowed floor of the amphitheater, “to take a look around.”

Xander took a single step forward out of the shadows. His amber eyes burned like embers in the hard, dark angles of his face. Dressed entirely in black, he looked as if he’d been caught in an unexpected dust storm: a fine coat of pale yellow dust clung to his clothes and skin, even dulled the shine of his gleaming jet hair. She hated to admit it, but even dirty and angry, he was the most gorgeous man she had ever seen.