J. Geissinger - Shadow’s Edge

She managed to disentangle herself and stumble away, hand to her mouth, both faint and furious, the lightning strike of images still burning in her mind. They were a jumble of carnality and tenderness and vivid color blurred by speed, pictures of her and him locked together in passionate kisses and even more passionate lovemaking, images of children that looked like the two of them combined and a few odd, fuzzy scenes of a great many people bowing down to her over bended knee that were quickly crowded out by the overwhelming flood of pornographic depictions of her lips saying yes as she was astride him, beneath him, arching against him in ecstasy.

Seeing her obvious shock at his split-second metamorphosis from benign to not, Christian’s lips twisted into a joyless smile. “Don’t mistake us for humans, Jenna. The Ikati are animals. And like all animals, we’re concerned with only three things: hierarchy, territory, and procreation.” That searing gaze traveled over her body, lingering, and when he looked into her eyes again her mouth went dry with dread. He opened his mouth and said, “But every time I’m close to you I can only think about one.”

Then he turned on his heel and stalked away, leaving her speechless and shaking in the cold, echoing hall.

“Another body has been found,” came the terse voice of Viscount Weymouth as Leander entered the fire-warmed confines of the East Library. He paused at the door and looked at the gathered men, every one gray-faced with fear, wearing the look of interrupted slumber: bleary eyes, disheveled hair, unshaven faces.

They all had wives and children, homes and livelihoods. They all had something precious to protect.

Leander hadn’t bothered to unpack or eat or even remove his traveling clothes. He’d come directly from the limousine. He knew they would be waiting, most likely been waiting for hours, and it was his duty to make decisions.

Swiftly.

With a shrug of his shoulders he was out of his heavy woolen overcoat. He slung it over a side chair on his way to take his place at the head of the rectangular mahogany table. He didn’t sit but gripped the carved wooden back of the Alpha’s chair, stared at the silent congregation, listened to the crackle of dry wood as it burned and the thumping, frightened heartbeats pounding against the ribs of the men of his tribe.

He nodded to Morgan as she came through the door and took her usual seat, then frowned as Christian, grim and tight-jawed with his blue Oxford unbuttoned halfway down his chest, followed only moments behind. Without glancing in Leander’s direction, Christian went to stand in front of the fireplace, crossed his arms over his chest, and stared down at the flames.

Leander turned his attention to Viscount Weymouth. “Tell me,” he commanded.

“Outside the Quebec colony this time, frozen stiff in a lake just beginning to thaw. They think it may have been there since winter.” The viscount slid a French newspaper to him across the long table. A blurred photograph showed the naked body of a man being pulled from the lake by a team of local officials.

Like the first body discovered in March outside the Bhaktapur colony in Nepal, this one was headless. What he couldn’t tell from the picture was if it had been burned too.

Leander did a quick calculation. Two bodies in a few months, possibly even less depending if they could establish a time of death for this new one. Both found very near an Ikati colony, both headless.

It was the indelible calling card of their ancient enemy, the Expurgari. Torture the victim, burn him alive, cut off his head. What they did with the heads, none of the Ikati knew.

But if they had been discovered, why not more victims? Why not a direct attack?

“Has the body been identified?” Leander asked, pulling the paper toward him, almost dreading to touch it. He squinted at the picture and read the caption beneath: Body of missing activist found in frozen lake near Mt. Tremblant.

“Yes,” Viscount Weymouth replied, frayed nerves ringing in his voice. “It was Simon Bennett.”

Leander felt the blood drain away from his face.

Bennett was a vocal environmental activist, fighting for tougher laws on pollution, championing clean energy and a move toward more earth-friendly life-styles, working to bring man and animals and the planet in harmony with one another. Working to stop overpopulation, stop wasting natural resources, stop the destruction of their mother, planet Earth.

Working, very vocally and in the public eye, to stop the habitat encroachment on the local population of cougars, lynx, and jaguars. Panthers.

Like Viscount Weymouth, both men killed were Keepers of the Bloodlines.

Leander slowly looked around at the faces in the room, faces he had known his entire life, men he had grown up with or looked up to as a young boy, as the son of the Alpha. Men he had sworn to protect once he became the Alpha himself.

If the Expurgari had obtained any information from these men before they were killed, if they had tortured these men who knew every secret of their colonies, every member within it, every location of their kind throughout the world...

He now felt the same seed of fear he saw on the faces of all these men plant itself firmly into the soil of his heart, take root, and push up an evil, dark leaf.

“Guard the colony. Take every precaution. No one comes in, no one goes out. Edward,” he said, turning to look at the pale face of Viscount Weymouth, “convene a meeting of the Council of Alphas to take place immediately, here at Sommerley.”

He drew in a long breath that felt like acid scoring his lungs and spoke the words that acknowledged their fears, that would change all their lives from this moment forward.

“They’ve found us again. Prepare for war.”

Jenna awoke slowly in a soft square of sunlight that poured like honey through the dormered windows into her second-story room. Eyes still closed, she inhaled a deep, cleansing breath, the scent of morning and freshly laundered cotton soft in her nose. She languorously stretched her arms and legs beneath the smooth sheets, curling her toes, flexing her fingers.

So comfortable, this bed, so large and deliciously warm. So pillowed with down and fine linens, she felt as if she had slept on a cloud.

It was quiet in the neighborhood today. No noise from the boardwalk, no garbage trucks rumbling over the asphalt in the early morning hours, no muffled conversations overheard through the thin walls of her apartment. The only sounds were the sheets sliding over her naked skin as she rolled onto her back and the warbling of a lone songbird, a pure note held high and trembling in the dewy, pink-tinged dawn.

The stillness was unbroken, idyllic, and very unusual...

A frown ruched her eyebrows. Was it a holiday? A Sunday? Why was everything so hushed?

Her eyes snapped open. A swath of shimmering fabric warmed by sunlight swam into focus overhead, saffron and apricot organza threaded with gold, folded and tied between four mahogany posts with heavy silk tassels.

Jenna bolted upright and stared around the room in a fog of confusion. She recognized nothing.

Walls painted coral and vanilla, overlaid in a delicate scroll of trompe l’oeil gardens, climbing ivy and jasmine in lavender and green. Furnishings at home in a palace: a French secretaire , a raw silk settee, hanging tapestries, carved wood chairs, and velvet pillows in disarray upon a divan. Soaring windows across the east wall coaxed in the early summer morning, suffusing everything with a flush of amber-pink radiance.

It took seconds of heart-stopping panic before her memory flowed back and she could breathe again.