Edge of Oblivion

see every dewdrop on every blade of grass on the lawn outside from the window of her second-

story bedroom. She heard the fir trees humming with sap, she tasted rain days ahead, she felt the earth turn beneath her feet. All of nature came into brilliant, perfect focus, and she was at the very center of it all, a locus of awareness.

Then, on the morning of her fifteenth birthday, she finally Shifted to panther and discovered that in addition to strength and agility and sharpened senses, she could run so very fast.

She knew that even with the collar she’d still have that lightning speed. And there was no chance in hell Mr. Rules and Regulations would Shift to pursue her, because the Law expressly forbade them from Shifting in front of humans.

He’d have to follow her on foot.

She sailed through the warm evening air, suspended for a breathless moment—heart pounding, arms spread wide, hair snapping in a long, dark flag behind her—and landed on a patch of grass just feet from a stone bench where two lovers were locked in a passionate embrace. They broke apart with gasps and began to exclaim in startled Italian, but she ignored them and concentrated instead on regaining her equilibrium. The ground was hard and the jolt hurt like hell, but she knew no bones would be broken. A fifteen-story free fall really wasn’t all that bad; she’d once fallen twice as far from the top of an ancient, towering fir in the New Forest at Sommerley and barely been bruised.

Breathing heavily, still crouched on the ground, she looked over her shoulder and craned her neck to where she’d just been to see if he’d followed.

But he hadn’t. He stared down, a small figure in black awash in gold lights, alone at the top of the Colosseum, watching her with those canny amber eyes. Feeling strong and alive and free, she blew him a kiss, then took off at a run.

9

From the uppermost arcade wall, Xander watched as Morgan, in a truly astonishing display of impudence, lifted her hand to her face, puckered her red, generous lips, and blew him a kiss.

In spite of himself, he huffed a short, disbelieving laugh. He was Ira de Deus. Famed, feared assassin. Bringer of death.

No one— no one—had ever treated him with such disrespect.

His regard for her grew in exact proportion to his outrage. He’d never met anyone who’d dared take such liberties as this. She was cocky and defiant, definitely reckless, and seemed to care not a damn about his reputation or the very real and imminent possibility he would be the one to end her life.

She was...fearless. He’d never met anyone like her.

For a brief, deranged moment as he watched her rise from her crouch on the grass and sprint off barefoot across the boulevard, traffic screeching to a halt in both directions as she passed, he was held fixed by surprise and admiration and simply watched her run. She bounded graceful and fleet like a Thomson’s gazelle through the snarl of cars and taxis and Vespas, even clearing the hood of a red Fiat that didn’t stop in time in one graceful, long-legged leap.

His hand lifted automatically to the Ba Gua Zhang crescent moon knives sheathed in a slim leather scabbard at the small of his back, hidden inside his belt. Gifted to him by his capoeira master when he was just a boy, they were fifteenth-century throwing knives, folding and perfectly weighted, in pristine condition though frequently used.

He hesitated, then dropped his hand. Had it been anyone else, there would have been a blade protruding between those swiftly retreating shoulders by now. Deserters were a dire threat to the tribe, and he’d caught—or killed—every one he’d been sent to look for.

But it isn’t anyone else. The thought rose, errant, to needle him. It’s her.

Without bothering to examine exactly what that meant, he lifted his gaze to the sky and saw the twinkling stars, the fat, perfect pearl of the rising moon. Then he closed his eyes and let it rise to a burning peak within him, the writhing bright power of the Shift, ever there just beneath his skin.

Then, without noise or warning, he dissolved into mist.

It was the same every time, effortless as breathing, a mere focus of the will. As if an eyelid had been peeled back to reveal everything around him in vivid color from all angles, he perceived above and below exactly as he perceived forward and back. There was no impediment to his sight, though he lacked eyes through which to focus or even, for that matter, a head. He existed as a part of the very air itself, weightless, and moved through it by applied thought— up, down, fast, slow.

The one inconvenience was his clothes. Anything he wore or held in his hands simply dropped to the ground as his body dissolved into mist. He’d never been able to take things with him as Vapor, but he had another utterly unique and powerful Gift at his disposal for that.

He’d come back for his clothes and knives later. Right now he had a runaway to catch.

In a sinuous, pale gray plume of mist, he rose into the air and caught the heated updraft of wind from the boulevard below. He used it to lift him, riding it until he was far above the Colosseum, far enough that anyone looking up would see what appeared to be a small cloud, if oddly swift. Beneath him Rome was laid out in glittering splendor, bedecked in shimmers of copper and gold. The streets were pulsing arteries filled with traffic, snaking away in all directions in streamers of red and white.

Above him was the night sky, sapphire dark, dusted with stars.

And there, standing fixed on the sidewalk as pedestrians parted around her like flowing water around a rock, stood Morgan.

Even from this distance he saw her shock, her blank disbelief. She’d gone pale, almost as white as her blouse. She’d felt his Shift; that much was obvious. Had he lips he would have laughed out loud.

Yes, I can Shift to more than just panther, meu caro. I have my mother to thank for that.

He pushed through the atmosphere, up and forward, flying, easy as air, knowing without a doubt that at this exact moment she was cursing his name and recalculating plans. No matter. She could run, she could hide, but she wasn’t getting away.

Ever.

He kept well above as she turned and began to push her way through the throngs of chattering tourists and strolling lovers and elderly women in head scarves and sensible shoes heading out to evening mass. He felt curious and unhurried, the luxuries of self-confidence, and tried to keep out of easy sight as he tailed her, camouflaging himself with varying degrees of success around belfries and chimneys, in the foliage of trees. She kept looking up and behind as she ran but never stopped or even slowed her pace.

She went north, keeping to well-traveled and well-lit streets, darting in and out of churches and trattorias and coffee shops, entering in the front and exiting the back or some other side door, trying to shake him. It was amusing, and he found himself hoping it wouldn’t soon end.

He was having something like—fun.

Then she ran down a flight of steps into an underground entrance to the Metro and he began to worry.

He flashed down the steps behind her, startling a bunch of chortling pigeons on the rail into shrieking flight. He followed the sight of her bobbing dark head—easily identifiable from behind with that fall of shining dark hair that gleamed like sunlight on water, so different from all the others crowding around—into one of the sleek silver cars just as its doors were closing. He flattened himself against the ceiling, spread as thin as he could go around the fluorescent tubes that illuminated the car.

It was packed. Morgan was nowhere in sight.

“Terribly foggy in here,” remarked a white-haired man in Italian, squinting up at the ceiling from his plastic seat below.

“It’s your eyes,” replied his dour wife, waving a dismissive hand at him. “How many times do I have to tell you to get new glasses?” She fumbled around in a lumpy knit handbag, came up with an eyeglass case, and