J. Geissinger: Edge of Oblivion

Wandering aimlessly off on her own as she almost always did, she found herself far away from the bonfire and the dancing in the town square and amid the dark cathedral of trees and crystalline silence of the woods. They came up on her silently as she was inspecting the bristled perfection of a pinecone hanging from a snow-dusted bough and knocked her to the ground with a shove from behind.

She didn’t have a chance to run or even get on her feet before they were on her, grabbing at her clothes, laughing and growling and egging one another on like the young savages they were.

She had a weapon, though. A sharp, double-edged letter opener, stolen from her father’s desk.

She was different but she wasn’t stupid. She’d noticed how they watched her.

After that they left her alone, Matthew and his two friends, one of whom had to wear an eye patch for the rest of his life to hide the gaping hole in his skull.

She stood now behind him, surrounded by the phalanx of guards, staring at the back of his head and wishing she had the unheard-of but very convenient-seeming Gift of Enemy Skull Exploding.

“Come,” barked Leander from behind the closed door. Matthew pushed it open. Not satisfied to merely enter the room with her trailing behind, he turned, grasped her by the arm, dragged her over the threshold, then released her abruptly, as if he’d been burned by touching her.

So of course she fell. Of course she did.

Caught on one of the heels of her shoes, the hem of her dress tangled beneath her feet. The delicate fabric gave way with a soft ripping noise, and she pitched forward, unable to throw her arms out for balance because they were cuffed tight behind her back. She fell to her knees on the cold marble floor with a bone-crunching jolt that startled a pained gasp from her lips, but just before she fell flat on her face, something stopped her.

A pair of hands. Strong and warm at her shoulders.

She was caught and steadied, pushed gently back to her knees, where she rocked, finding her balance. Then she lifted her head and looked up—

—into a pair of eyes, brilliant amber rimmed in kohl, that stared out from a sun-darkened face of such cold, savage beauty it sent a thrill of pure fear humming along every nerve. Adrenaline lashed through her body, primitive and chemical, and abruptly awoke the animal inside that bristled and hissed and screamed danger! at the top of its lungs.

He was huge—tall and thickly muscled, far larger than any of her lithe, sinewy kin—and had shoulders so wide she crouched in a pool of thrown shadows at his feet. His black hair, tipped on his wide forehead to a widow’s peak, was cropped close to his head. His clothes were black as well, simple and form-fitting, made for ease of movement. On his back was a pair of crossed swords, sheathed in leather scabbards. On his belt and boots were more weapons, gleaming wicked in the light.

But all this paled in comparison to the more imminent threat of his eerie, amber eyes.

They fixed on hers, unblinking, unfeeling, and she realized with another jolt that this man staring back at her in absolute stillness with that beautiful face and those scorching, firelit eyes wasn’t anything she’d ever seen before. He was alive, his body was alive, but behind that mask of perfection, there wasn’t a shred of humanity or mercy or kindness or feeling. There was nothing. He was dead.

Soul dead.

Next to the Furiant, he was the most terrifying thing she’d ever seen.

“Xander,” said a voice from her right. Leander’s, she supposed, aware on a molecular level of her thundering heart, her frozen muscles, the stranger’s gaze, which had dropped to the pulse beating wildly in the hollow of her neck. His nostrils flared with an inhalation, and for one wild, horrified moment, she thought he might lean down and tear out her throat with his teeth.

But he didn’t. He only lifted that piercing gaze back to hers and, in a motion of fluid, predatory grace, drew her to her feet. He released her and stepped back, never blinking, his attention never wavering, those piercing dead eyes never leaving her face.

“Xander,” Leander said again. “This is Morgan. Your flight for Rome leaves at one o’clock.”

Morgan was fairly sure the assassin was plotting the details of her death at that very moment, though he wasn’t paying her the slightest bit of attention and hadn’t spoken a single word to her the entire flight.

She chanced another glance at him from beneath her lashes. He sat still as death in a seat opposite hers at the front of the luxurious cabin, just as he’d been for the last two and a half hours, large hands spread over his muscled thighs, head tilted back against the seat, eyes closed. His chest rose and fell in a calm, steady rhythm, but she knew he wasn’t sleeping; his forefinger tapped a silent beat against his leg, and every once in a while a muscle in his sharp jaw would flex. She had the impression he was barely restraining himself from leaping from his seat.

Plotting her death. Definitely.

When Leander had spoken his name she’d known instantly who he was. What he did . Infamous throughout all four colonies of Ikati , Alexander Luna was called The Shadow or The Hammer or, in his native Portuguese, Ira de Deus , The Wrath of God. He was a killer, a very good one, sent on special assignments all over the world by the Alphas to track deserters or eliminate threats.

Or accompany convicted felons on needle-in-haystack hunting trips.

Killer or not, he was a beauty. All muscle and sinew and spare, hardened grace, he moved like nothing she’d ever seen, effortless fluidity and instinctual, unstudied prowess. He had a potent, menacing kind of charisma about him, the kind that drew the eye and held it, the kind that captivated the attention to contemplate the disparity of those sensual lips with that merciless expression, that soft, satin skin made for touching with the cold, burning threat of those dead amber eyes. He was carnal and elegant and forbidding, so forbidding even the air seemed to hold its breath as he passed through it.

A jolt of turbulence rattled the cabin, interrupting her study of him. Morgan gasped and stiffened in her seat.

As plush and comfortable as the buttercream leather seats of Leander’s private plane were, she’d soon rip hers to shreds if the turbulence kept up. She hated flying. She was a creature of the earth, born to slink through tall grasses and climb the sap-perfumed trunks of trees and laze sleepily in sunlit glens until her tongue was lolling and her fur was hot. Flying was for lesser creatures, for prey —the birds.

Another jolt—this one strong enough to dislodge her duffel bag from the overhead compartment and send it tumbling to the floor—and a sudden drop in altitude that sent her stomach into her throat. She clutched the armrests and closed her eyes, swallowing hard, willing herself not to throw up.

And when she opened her eyes again the assassin was sitting right beside her, staring into her face.

“What—” she blurted, startled, but before she could get it out, he reached over and grasped her wrist. He pressed his thumb and forefinger into the tendon from either side, not hard but not gently either, and the urge to vomit vanished.

“Oh,” she said, and then, “How?” because she couldn’t think of anything else.

“The inner gate.”

His voice was deep and soft, the accent indefinable. Between that, his sudden, molten proximity, and the cold fire of his unblinking tiger’s eyes, Morgan was abruptly speechless, and spinning. The turbulence , she thought. I’m dizzy from the turbulence. She made a little, wordless questioning sound and tried unsuccessfully to look away.