J. Geissinger - Rapture's Edge

“Alexi asked me where you’d gone.”

“Pfft. He was so draped in women, I’m surprised he even noticed I’d left.”

Mel’s mouth twisted to a rueful smile. “He always notices what you do, E.”

“Yeah, well, ancient history notwithstanding, I hope he doesn’t catch something from those catagirls he was with. They didn’t exactly look…virginal.”

Mel laughed, a decidedly witchy cackle that was at odds with her appearance. She was shorter and daintier than her lean, long-limbed friend, with beautiful waist-length black hair she wore in a French braid. Matched with her doe-like prance and a snarky, irrepressible sense of humor, Mel’s travel-size frame lent her the general air of a mischievous woodland creature, a sexy trickster elf who might lead you out of the forest to safety or right over the edge of a cliff.

In other words, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Though she was six years younger than her friend, and Mel was perfectly capable of defending herself, Eliana felt violently protective of her. She considered Melliane the sister she’d never had.

“Look who’s talking trash!” Mel cried in delight. Dark eyes dancing with mirth, she pointed a finger at her. “Pot, meet kettle!”

“Shut up,” Eliana answered good-naturedly, and then she froze as the sharp, unmistakable sound of flesh smacking flesh broke the stillness. It was followed quickly by a low moan, a growled admonition, and then eerie silence. Mel glanced over at the high stack of crates Caesar and his two companions had disappeared around, but Eliana didn’t have to look. She’d heard it all before, and it made her sick to her stomach.

“Let’s get out of here.” Mel’s pretty face had darkened. “I don’t want to stay for the freak show.”

Me neither, thought Eliana as they quickly turned and headed for another access tunnel that would lead them out of the catacombs and into the basement of the abandoned abbey where they slept. I already know how it ends.

“Caesar’s late again.”

Eliana absently poked the tines of her fork into the gelatinous yolk of the fried egg on her plate. It quivered and split apart, oozing over the porcelain in a spreading stain of yellow. She shuddered, disgusted. Chicken stillbirths. Who liked these hideous things?

Silas did, apparently, because he cut into his own with surgical precision and ate half of it in one bite. Mildly he said, “He’s sleeping in.”

This didn’t fool her; Eliana knew Caesar too well. Sleeping in meant sleeping it off. He’d spent another night carousing with the catagirls—new ones, ones who didn’t know his particular tastes—or at the infamous Moulin Rouge, where the girls were paid handsomely to cater to those kinds of tastes and the men who possessed them. It had been five days since she’d witnessed the ugliness at the Tabernacle, and he’d only made one of their morning breakfast meetings.

It was their long habit to take breakfast in the back garden of the DuMarne, the old, sprawling abbey they’d moved to when they’d decided to take refuge in Paris after fleeing Rome three years before. A beautiful ruin, cavernous and neglected but in no danger of being sold because of its historical value, it was the perfect temporary hideaway for their little colony. The access to the catacombs was an added bonus they all took advantage of; they were creatures of the underworld, after all, even more so than all the other human cataphiles who went there to cavort and hide from real life in the cool, succoring dark.

“Maybe if he didn’t spend so much time sleeping I wouldn’t have to spend so much time working,” she said. As it usually did when the subject was Caesar, her stomach tightened to a fist.

“You don’t like the fighting?”

She glanced up at Silas to find him staring at her in sharp-eyed assessment. His shoulder-length black hair, gathered in a neat queue with a slim leather tie, framed a square-jawed, imposing face that others described as handsome but she saw only as hard. And preternaturally intelligent; Silas never missed a thing.

He was a dozen years older than she, and she’d known him all her life. A servant before they’d fled the catacombs three years ago, he was now second-in-command to her brother, the Alpha, and had been invaluable to them both in the years since. He was utterly capable and loyal, and if she had the occasional strange vibe from him, she tried to dismiss it as nerves.

To be sure, her nerves were not what they used to be.

“The fighting is…well, it’s a distraction.” She shrugged. “And it’s just for show, no one ever gets hurt.” Egos were really the only thing that ever took any damage. In the weekly matches at New Harmony, she fought for money, not for blood.

Silas wiped the corner of his mouth with a napkin, still watching her intently. “So it’s the stealing you object to. You don’t like being a thief.”

She grimaced. “Of course I don’t like it, Silas. It’s dishonorable. Even a child knows stealing is wrong.”

He smiled at that, a faint curve of his lips that might have been either amusement or disdain. “You’re only stealing oil painted on canvas, Eliana. It’s hardly a stain on your morality. And in any case, the ends justify the means. Your father knew that. Sometimes we have to sacrifice our own…lofty ideals…for the greater good.”

He would consider honor a lofty ideal. To him, there was only one benchmark by which everything was measured: Is it useful ? If the answer was yes, regardless of the situation or ethical questions or opinions of others, it was adopted. She’d never known anyone more clinically pragmatic.

“The greater good of my brother’s fondness for beating prostitutes?”

Silas’s smile only deepened at the acid in her tone, the look of disgust on her face.

“Your brother’s little peccadilloes notwithstanding, he’s willing to do whatever it takes to see your father’s dream of freedom for all our kind come to pass. We all share the same philosophy; unfortunately, you are the only one with the Gifts to get us what we need.” His eyes softened, yet somehow grew more intense. “Believe me, I’d take the burden on myself if I could.”

Uncomfortable under his penetrating stare, she glanced away. “We have almost enough money now to finance the construction of the stronghold. Once that’s completed—”

“Then you’ll stop,” Silas said, reading her mind. The man really didn’t miss a thing.

How irritating.

“Then I’ll stop,” Eliana agreed, nodding. And do what, she wondered. Garden?

Again with that uncanny intuition, he said, “Perhaps then you could consider…” He trailed off, lowering his gaze to the plate of food on the table in front of him. He toyed with the half-uneaten egg. “Starting a family.” His voice was oddly neutral. “Taking a mate.”

“A mate ? You make it sound so romantic.”

A muscle flexed in his square jaw. “You’re too smart to think marriage is about hearts and flowers, Eliana. Perhaps for humans it is, but romance is a luxury creatures like us can’t afford. We have to be more clearheaded, look at choices through the lenses of logic, not emotion. Our continued survival depends on creating the next generation, especially now—”

“Seriously?” The fist in Eliana’s stomach started to burn. “It’s not enough that I steal and fight to support us—now my uterus has to support us, too?”

He stared at her, his eyes coal black and flinty. “Your uterus aside,” he said, deadly soft, “there is a war coming. Survival of the fittest is the only thing that matters now, principessa —”