J. Geissinger: Edge of Oblivion

He knew there was only one way they could ever be together. Only one thing would cure what ailed them, and he couldn’t bear to think of it right now. Because the therapy would most probably kill the patient.

She took pity on him, he thought, because she sighed and then fell silent. “All right,” she said after a moment. She pulled away from him and stood, smoothing her sweater, pushing back a strand of choppy dark hair from her face. Without looking at him she said, “Back to Hades, then.”

He stood. With a swift glance in his direction, she turned and made her way to where the bike was parked, and he followed her, silent. She waited for him to swing his leg over the seat and start the bike, then she grasped his arm, stepped astride, and settled in behind him.

On the long, cold ride back to the sunken church, Dominus couldn’t help the feeling that though he was happier than he’d ever been, something, somehow, was about to go terribly wrong.

The first of the screams echoed faintly down the long corridor just as Constantine pulled himself out of the nubile young female and collapsed, naked and panting, beside her on the pillow-strewn bed.

He listened for the sound again, that far-away, poignant scream of anguish, but it didn’t come, and he thought he must be imagining things. Living in the land of evernight had a way of doing that to you.

It’s too damn pink in here , he thought, irrationally irritated, looking around at the ultrafeminine decor used throughout the harem. He’d been here for over four hours, and he was sore and chapped and badly dehydrated, itching to get away from the overload of pastel. Even the damn ceiling was hung with blush fabric, sheer, gossamer panels that drifted overhead like rosy clouds and fell down to shroud the oversize bed. He felt stifled, a little panicky, as if staying one second longer in this cotton-

candy room would cause his own skin to become stained pink.

What was wrong with him? He’d just enjoyed the most energetic female he’d had in years, the cream of the King’s crop, so to speak, still lying beside him in a sweaty stupor, but he felt no satisfaction. He felt, actually, like getting up and tearing something to shreds.

He’d been feeling like that a lot lately. Especially every time he laid eyes on Dominus.

“That was amazing,” the female purred. He realized without regret that he didn’t know her name. She rolled lazily to her side and rested her hand on his chest. “Fancy another go—” But before she could finish, Constantine jerked upright in bed and spat, “Quiet!”

She huffed indignantly and pulled away. “Asshole,” she muttered, rising from the bed in a snit.

She pushed through the panels of fabric, bent, and snatched her gown from the floor, where he’d left it, torn hastily from her body, hours ago. “You Bellatorum think you’re so special—”

“ Quiet , I said!”

There it was again. The scream. He hadn’t imagined it after all.

“What the fuck?” he whispered, eyes trained on the arched doorway on the far side of the chamber.

The bedroom, used only when the King made a visit, was one of several clustered together around the central hub of the harem where the Electi lived in boring, sumptuous leisure. Lix and Celian were in the two rooms beside his, and as he leapt from the bed and pulled on his pants, he heard Celian’s voice from the doorway, dark as the corridor outside.

“Constantine.”

“Yep. Coming.”

He finished dressing and left the room without a backward glance. Lix and Celian, both radiating tension, were already dressed and waiting in the narrow corridor for him.

“Sounds like it’s coming from the fovea ,” Celian said, low. He hadn’t bothered with a shirt, and the huge muscles of his arms flexed as he shot a glance down the long, shadowed corridor winding toward the King’s chambers.

“One of Dominus’s playthings?” asked Lix. He ran a hand through his long, disheveled hair, following Celian’s gaze. “He just picked up two new ones this week—”

“That sound like a human to either of you?”

No. It most certainly did not. Human screams could never reach that pitch. But Constantine couldn’t tell if it was male or female...

The three of them looked at each other.

“Where’s D?” Celian finally said.

“We, uh,” Lix shot a nervous glance in Constantine’s direction, “we didn’t want to tell you. In case Dominus found out—you wouldn’t get in trouble. Since you’ve just healed...from last time...”

Celian’s face hardened. “In case Dominus found out what, exactly?”

“D is with the principessa ,” Constantine answered, and took a step back when the heat of Celian’s anger pulsed over him like a furnace with its door blown off.

“Eliana?” he hissed, eyes flashing. “What the hell is he doing with her ?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” said Constantine, holding Celian’s furious gaze, “but I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

The scream came again, a high, sustained note of pain from somewhere far off in the darkness of the catacombs. All three of them froze, listening.

Celian said, “I have a very bad feeling about this. Be ready for anything.”

And with Lix and Constantine hard on his heels, he set off at a dead run toward the fovea and the high, wavering screams.

Running as fast as his feet would take him, Xander sprinted across the worn cobblestones of St.

Peter’s Square, heading directly for the portico of the basilica and the bronze masterpiece Door of Death, carved with images of a crucified Christ and the Virgin Mary ascending to heaven.

He Passed straight through it just as a pair of Swiss Guards leapt to stop him from their posts at the soaring marble columns that flanked the door. He heard their shouts from outside, growing fainter as he ran into the center of the vast, shadowed cathedral. Past the nave, past the baptistery, past the transepts with their haloed, blank-eyed statues of the founding saints in stone niches, his boots striking loudly over the elaborate inlaid floor.

He came to a sliding halt near the chapel of St. Sebastian, brought up short by a twist in his heart.

Here , sang the ghostly, lilting tune of the Blood tie that had drawn him across the city.

Panting, heart pounding, he slowly approached the chapel. It was as before when he and Morgan had tried, unsuccessfully, to locate the Alpha when he’d been inside her head. Lighted casket with the body of a long-dead pope beneath the towering mosaic of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, baroque paintings in the cupola and corbels, faint stench of decay and death.

Dark, disembodied tremor of feral Ikati everywhere.

He combed over the entire chapel, searching frantically, but there was nothing, no one, no hidden entry or secret passage or door, just that magnetic pull of their connection.

“ Morgan! ”

He shouted it at the top of his lungs because he couldn’t think of what else to do. It fractured into a thousand parroted cries of her name that seemed to take on a life of their own, taunting his ears, mocking him as they reverberated through almost six acres of yawning space, bouncing off marble and glass and stone. He was so close; she was somewhere nearby, terrified, and he couldn’t find her, he didn’t know where to look, he had to do something —

From somewhere far beneath his feet, the faintest, faintest echo of a scream reached his ears.

Xander leapt back as if the floor had burned him. He stood staring down, arrested, his heart frozen solid in his chest.

On the floor in the middle of the chapel was painted a colorful coat of arms, surrounded by a circle of Greek lettering. It featured a pair of crossed keys above a golden shield that depicted the image of an olive branch–bearing dove with a trio of fleurs-de-lis. Floating above the shield was a crown.