J. Geissinger: Edge of Oblivion

He inhaled a sharp, astonished breath. His mouth dropped open. His eyes, coal black and burning, popped wide. He stared at her in silence while the candles sputtered in a sudden cold breeze and the blood roared wild through her veins.

“No one has ever spoken to me like that,” he hissed, unblinking. A flush of crimson rose up his neck, and for a horrible, breathless moment, he did nothing at all.

Then—impossibly—he began to laugh.

It echoed through the vast chamber like a thing alive. It bounced off the walls and split into a hundred different laughs, each one darker and more sinister than the last. He sat back down on the velvet divan and gave himself over to it, head thrown back, eyes closed, white teeth shining in the gloom. In a moment his laughter tapered off and he composed himself and sat gazing at her with a finger rubbing his full, smiling lips.

“You amuse me,” he said, surprised. “I had no idea when I chose you that you’d be so...interesting.” And with a little flick of his hand, he released her from his control and the pain simultaneously vanished.

Morgan collapsed into the overstuffed chair, gulping air, fighting down nausea, hot and sour.

Her mind wasn’t working, her body wasn’t working. She had to think !

“Ch-chose me?” she managed.

“To help me infiltrate the other colonies,” he replied, matter-of-fact. “My people had been watching them all—well, the three I knew of—for years, looking for a weak link, for someone who didn’t fit, someone rebellious, someone, perhaps, who might want a little,” he waved his fingers, coyly searching for a word, “ vindictam ?”

Vengeance.

“But we could never find a chink in their armor. Until...you. And you were so ripe for the taking.” He smiled. “So much loneliness. So much anger . Turning you was hardly any work at all.”

An iceberg slid silently over her and crushed her with its cold, massive weight. Suddenly, horribly, she understood everything with a blinding, brilliant clarity, like sunlight reflected off snow.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he smiled wider, “I am your god, Morgan. God of vengeance, god of war, god of salvation, who will release our entire race from the oppression of man. It’s taken a lifetime of planning, but now all the players are positioned perfectly on the board and the Ikati will, finally, have checkmate. No little thanks to you.”

Her stomach heaved. The sudden, wretched knowledge of what he had done, of the part she had so willingly played, burned like poison in her throat.

“You—you planned this,” she sputtered. “You planned all of this! You set me up! ”

His smile grew dangerous. “You were an easy target.”

“You killed your own kind!” she shouted as blood flooded her face. “You had them tortured!

You worked with humans —”

“Destruction is one of nature’s mandates, as the Marquis de Sade so eloquently said,” he answered calmly, “and a king must be willing to sacrifice a few rooks in order to win a war. And as you know, lovely Morgan, we have been engaged in war since the beginning of time.”

She hated him, hated him with a ferocity that made her heart pound and her fingers itch to claw his eyes out. “You bastard ! We’ve been hunted for centuries—forced to run—forced to hide —”

“ Silence! ” he shouted, and leapt from the divan.

He began to pace in front of her, lithe and menacing, bristling like a caged animal. He ran an agitated hand through the mane of his silver-black hair.

“ They started this. They declared war on us. Are you familiar with the old adage ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer’? That is what the Alphas of my lineage have done since the Inquisition began in twelve thirty-one. My ancestors quickly realized that a church-sanctioned mass-

murder spree was a golden opportunity to infiltrate the bastion of human leadership and wreak a little havoc of their own, vengeance , if you will. What a wonderful excuse to kill humans! And in such imaginative ways!” He stopped pacing and turned to look at her. His voice dropped an octave, and his expression sent a chill of fear over her skin.

“And that is when the organization was first formed.”

“The Expurgari,” she whispered.

“The Purifiers,” he agreed, nodding. “At first the goal was only to kill as many humans as possible. Thousands were slaughtered, branded heretics, and the church never suspected a thing. They gave us gold, mountains of gold, for the wonderful job we did. We pretended to be their most devout disciples, when all we really wanted was to see their blood run in the streets. And it worked out perfectly...until, in our travels rounding up all their falsely accused, we discovered another colony of Ikati , living hidden in France.”

He resumed his pacing. “Up until that point, we thought we were the only ones. Our records only go as far back as the Roman soldier who brought back four strange, orphaned children from Egypt after Cleopatra was defeated by Caesar Augustus at the battle of Actium. But once the colony in France was discovered, the goal of the Expurgari changed.”

Morgan breathed, “There is no colony in France.”

Dominus stopped pacing. He smiled. “Not anymore.”

“Why?” Her voice broke. “Why would you want to wipe out an entire colony of your own kind?”

“I don’t,” he said, offended, then shrugged. “My ancestors were a little less big picture than I am, however. They didn’t like rivals any more than humans do.”

“But you’re killing the Keepers of the Bloodlines! You’re torturing women—the Queen of our colony—”

“Yes, that,” he said, sour, and returned to his position on the divan. He spread his arms over its scrolled back and fixed her with an intense, penetrating look. “That was a mistake, brought about by the idiotic leader of one of our less organized cells. Humans are so unreliable, but there’s so many of them and so few of us...they’ve been useful minions, for the most part, but what happened at your colony was not planned. He was supposed to take the Keeper, as you know, but unfortunately bungled the job and wound up with a female instead.” A wry smile crept over his face. “I understand your Alpha took care of him, however.”

Morgan moaned, squeezed her eyes shut, and dropped her head into her hands. It was worse than she’d ever thought possible, the worst thing she could imagine, a nightmare from which there would be no awakening.

She’d found the feral Alpha. And she’d found the head of the Expurgari.

They were one and the same.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered through her fingers. “I don’t understand.”

“My plan was never to destroy the other colonies, Morgan,” he said softly, as if to a child. “The Alphas, yes—there can be only one King, and that is me. I wanted the Keepers because they would tell me everything I needed to know about each colony, about the Alphas, the most Gifted Bloodlines, about their defenses and weaknesses and their more disgruntled members who might be convinced it was time for a change. And then I had to kill them, obviously, so they didn’t expose me.”

“But...why?”

She wasn’t looking at him, but she heard the smile in his voice. “Because we are going to come together as one, as it was always meant to be. We will combine our resources and infiltrate their gene pool and take back everything that was stolen from us so long ago. And then...we will rule the world.”

His voice dropped to a zealous whisper. “ ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ Such a lovely sentiment, don’t you think? The human Bible is full of little gems like that; their god is a petty, bad-