Shadow’s Edge

He would find her. He would find her because she was his mate and his queen and his future bride, and death itself could not keep him from her.

“Our defenses have been breached.” From his elevated position on the top step of the marble staircase that led to the massive iron doors of the manor, his deep voice carried easily over the gathered crowd. “Our secrets have been discovered. Our enemy is finally at hand. Every one of us knows what is at stake.”

The cold wind picked up, sending dry leaves skipping through the legs of the crowd. It lifted the hems of long skirts and jackets, flicked his dripping hair against his cheeks and jaw. The sky boiled slate gray overhead, choked with ominous clouds that dropped rain in slanting sheets to the forest. The trees poked up like dark claws into the wet bowl of the sky.

His gaze raked the crowd. “Let them come. We are Ikati. We have survived the eons, we will survive this.”

His lips curved into a smile, cold and beautiful. “We will slaughter them all.”

Nothing stirred. Nothing made a sound, and as far as she could tell, nothing breathed.

She was alone. For how much longer, she didn’t want to consider.

She lingered as vapor on the cool plaster ceiling of the small foyer for a moment, looking down and around at the heavy wood furnishings, the blood-dark Spanish tiles layered over the floor, the baroque mirrors hanging in groupings on opposite walls. Their gleaming slick surfaces reflected what meager light permeated the shuttered windows back and forth, so she glimpsed a thousand mirrors and dark rooms cloned over and again like in some awful carnival funhouse.

Except for the video camera mounted on a tripod in one corner of the living room and the computer and printer set on a massive oak desk in what appeared to be a study, the house had a sly, ominous, medieval feel. There was even an ancient-looking suit of armor propped up against a glass-enclosed steel case, the interior of which held an astonishing, comprehensive collection of antique weaponry.

The case engulfed one entire wall of the living room. It frightened her deeply.

Jenna crawled across the ceiling as slowly as she could toward the back of the house, her senses open for any sound or movement. Once she went through an arched doorway, she was in a long corridor, lined with closed doors on both sides.

The doors were lead. Though painted white to fool the eye, she felt the hard coldness radiating from them like black ice, slick and treacherous. The ceiling here was sprayed popcorn, rough and bumpy. She sensed nothing behind these reinforced doors, no heartbeats or warmth, no sign of Daria or of them.

She crept forward, rolling and gathering in as fine a mist as she could manage on the uneven ceiling, trying to be stealthy, trying to be brave.

The door at the end of the hallway emitted the faintest scent of copper and salt.

Blood.

Jenna slid down the door. She spread herself over first one jamb and then the opposite, chilled at once by its icy surface, trying to find a crack to slip through. There were none. This door was lead, like the others, every opening around it was tightly sealed.

She looked at the handle. She knew the door was locked, knew they wouldn’t be so stupid as to leave a key lying around, conveniently untended...

She hesitated, floating in midair for a moment of indecision, then Shifted back to woman. The Spanish tile felt unnervingly slick beneath her feet. She knelt down and peered through the door handle, then allowed herself a grim smile.

She didn’t need a key after all.

Jenna Shifted back to vapor and began, slowly, to sift through the keyhole.

Leander went alone to Jenna’s empty room to stand before the ruined window with the cold and the rain blowing in. Shards of glass and marble crunched like broken bones beneath his boots.

His men had their instructions, his colony prepared for war. They had been hiding for millennia, but had never forgotten how to fight.

They were Ikati. They were warriors. Fighting was in their blood.

And they would win. Even if he had to kill each and every one of the Expurgari with his bare hands, he would ensure that they won.

He lifted his eyes to the east, to the cold, sterile sun veiled behind storm clouds, and caught a trace of her on the wind.

She was still here, lingering like a ghost, her cool scent of winter roses and fresh air sparking memories of the softness of her skin, the shape of her breasts and hips, the intense pleasure of her body yielding to his.

It murmured to him in soft welcome, the scent of his beautiful panther girl, so vulnerable and reckless and brave.

Find me.

He summoned her through his memory. He closed his eyes and let her sink beneath his skin, the warm, feminine traces of her forming pieces to the puzzle of her disappearance. He opened his nose and his ears and his heart and let the animal take over, the great cat that hunted by night with its nose to the wind, that brought swift death with sharp fangs and claws, that lived ever long just under his skin, waiting and watching for the chance to blaze forth.

He inhaled deep and found her there, the female he claimed as his own.

Her scent was as potent to him as the day he first saw her, that initial, arrested moment he glimpsed her through glass doors, the burning heat of summer paling in comparison to the fire she kindled in his body, in his heart.

Then, it was compelling. Intriguing. Exciting.

Now it was an absolute necessity for survival.

Nearly a vibration, almost a tangible presence, her scent aroused something he could not name that lived deep within him, the part of him that was all animal, all hunter, and only that.

She was his. She belonged to him. And he would find her.

He breathed the ghost of her for a long moment, a deep, aching hunger eating a hole through his chest. Then the Alpha opened his eyes, Shifted to vapor, and surged out through the shattered window into the threatening sky.

28

The blood soaked through the white sheets in widening, erratic circles that went from brightest scarlet to claret to some grisly color near to coagulated brown. Jenna had never seen so much of it, all in one place.

She held little hope the source of it was still alive.

“Daria,” she whispered, reaching out to touch a finger to the cold, pale cheek. “Daria?”

She was naked, spread-eagled on the bed, her wrists and ankles handcuffed to the scrolled iron frame, her hair spilling in tangled dark rivers around her head.

Wounds marked every inch of her pale flesh.

Ugly purple and black bruises bloomed over her legs and arms, deep gashes sliced through the flesh of her thighs and abdomen, a trail of small black burns with ashy residue marred the tender skin around the nipples of both her breasts.

Cigarette burns.

Anger came up hot and hard to eat through her chest as she stared at the macabre scene, at Daria’s lifeless body so slashed and battered, at her face, white as death and covered in bruises and blood, yet still eerily, glowingly beautiful.

Daria’s eyelids fluttered. A small moan escaped her swollen lips.

Thank God. She was alive. Jenna sat gingerly on the edge of the bed and lifted Daria’s arm. It was so cold, her pulse was so weak.

“Get out,” Daria whispered, moving her head slowly and deliberately, grimacing in pain. She licked her