Edge of Oblivion

...”

He cleared his throat. “Love us all. ”

“More assassins,” Morgan said, a little more feebly than she would have liked. She closed her eyes. “How many of you are there, exactly?”

“Four,” said Mateo and Tomas together.

Could have been worse. At least it wasn’t four hundred. She glanced down at Xander, back up to them. “Where’s the other one?”

It was Mateo who answered this time. “Waiting downstairs with the car.”

“The car?”

His rough voice was tinged with something like amusement. “You didn’t think we were going to fly out of here, did you?”

A girl can only hope. “Okay. Let’s get this over with,” she sighed.

“Hop to, Doc,” Mateo said to Bartleby.

The doctor leapt into a blur of action. He snatched up his black bag and removed a large, wicked-looking syringe and a length of plastic tubing with pointed silver cannulas at each end. He threaded the tubing through the syringe, readied a small glass bottle that smelled like alcohol, a stack of white bandages, and cotton swabs, and set all of it on the table beside Xander’s still form. He snapped on a pair of thin latex gloves.

“On the table, if you please.” He motioned with an open hand to the long dining table. Morgan sat on the edge with as much dignity as she could muster in her bloodstained clothes with her bare legs dangling over the side like a child’s. She crossed then uncrossed her legs, noting with no small trepidation that neither Mateo nor Tomas was looking at anything but her.

She felt like an ant under a very large—very male—microscope.

“You should lie down,” said Bartleby gently. He made to lift a hand to her shoulder, but a low snarl from Tomas quickly divested him of that idea. His hand dropped to his side. His face went pink.

“Would you please lie down?”

“Is it really necessary?”

“You might find yourself a bit light-headed,” he said, glancing between Mateo and Tomas.

When he spoke again his voice was apologetic. “And it’s going to sting.”

She looked down at Xander, beautiful and unconscious and on the verge of death, and wondered if it would sting as much as a knife thrust between the vertebrae of her neck. The thought made the blood drain from her face. She lay down beside him in one quick motion. The doctor rolled up the sleeve of her blouse and swabbed her arm with alcohol.

“How long will it take?”

“Not long.” He carefully swabbed Xander’s arm, then repositioned it, palm up, trying to balance it on his hip. It didn’t work. “Hold it like this, if you would,” he said to Mateo. The assassin complied, silently, looming so large over the table he blocked out the orb of light from the lamp on the ceiling above.

She closed her eyes, breathed in through her nose, and tried not to think about the colossal stupidity of what she was doing.

There was a prick of pain at her arm, the bite of cold steel sliding into her vein, a pull as the syringe was depressed and her blood was pumped out of her body. Then nothing.

She spoke into the hush without opening her eyes. “Is it working?”

“Perfectly,” Bartleby murmured. “Just a moment more and it will hit his vein—” Xander gave a jolt as if he’d been electrocuted.

Her lids flew open. Beside her, his large body had jackknifed into a straining, muscled bow that both Mateo and Tomas were doing their best to subdue by wrestling him back down to the table.

“What’s wrong?” she cried, panicking. She sat up abruptly and was dizzy. “What happened?”

“It’s fine, it’s completely normal,” Bartleby soothed, reaching out to check the needle in her arm and the connection with Xander’s. He sent her an odd, sideways look. “It’s just your blood hitting his system. Please remain as still as you can. He’ll acclimate to it in a moment.”

And, as she watched in startled fascination, he did.

The muscles of his arm relaxed first. Then his jaw unclenched, his back, his legs. With a low moan that reverberated all the way through her body, Xander slumped back against the cool, polished wood and gave a long, shuddering sigh. Heat radiated out from him in pulsing waves as if he were engulfed in invisible flame.

Mateo and Tomas relaxed as well and blew out hard, relieved breaths. They gave each other one of the looks the doctor had just sent her, and she was abruptly embarrassed.

She’d overreacted. They thought she was a hysterical female.

“I’ve never actually seen it done,” Morgan admitted a little sheepishly. She was the only girl in a brood of five, and though her two sets of twin brothers were younger, they were—accorded by their gender—given far more leniency and privileges than she. Even though she was smarter, stronger, faster, as a girl she’d been almost sequestered because of her sex. Until her mother had died, and then she’d run wild...

She glanced up at them. “I didn’t think it would be quite so...dramatic.”

“It usually isn’t,” said Bartleby. A tiny frown rucked his brows. He shot a quick, furtive glance at Mateo. “It’s nothing abnormal, but that kind of reaction usually only happens with—”

“Check six, Doc,” said Tomas, hard. “Unless you want to end up looking like a bag of smashed asshole, this evolution does not require your input.”

Bartleby went white, swallowed, and sat abruptly down in one of the cushioned dining room chairs.

“Unsat,” Mateo growled back at Tomas. “We need him, so you’re going to ease up on that shit.

And keep your soup cooler clean in front of the ultimecia. We clear?”

Tomas stared at him long and hard as if he were contemplating the merits of strangulation versus a hard kick to the chest. Unblinking, Mateo stared right back. After a jaw-grinding moment, Tomas took a breath, stepped back, and said, “Clear as a fucking bell, brother.”

Morgan looked back and forth between them, wondering what Bartleby had been about to say, why Tomas didn’t want him to say it, and what the hell an ultimecia was. But she was too tired to do anything about it. And hot. The room suddenly felt like an oven. She lifted her hand to her forehead and was surprised to find it covered in sweat.

“Do you have anything in that bag for a headache, Doctor?” She rubbed her left eye. “I’m feeling a little...”

“Weak?” he supplied from his chair, peering at her from behind his round glasses with an oddly intense look. “Achy? Feverish?”

She nodded, frowning. How could he know that?

He stood and rummaged through the bag, came up with a digital thermometer. “May I take your temperature?”

The nod again, and he came to stand beside her. He brushed aside her hair, inserted the thermometer into her ear. In five seconds there came a beep. He withdrew the little plastic item and gazed down at it. His face went even whiter. “Oh, dear,” he said.

Panic began to churn her stomach to knots. “What? Am I sick?”

“No, no, nothing like that. You’re perfectly healthy,” he mumbled, distracted. He turned back to his black bag and deposited the thermometer within, then measured Xander’s pulse at his wrist and quickly took his blood pressure with a Velcro cuff around his bicep.

“What is it, then?” she pressed.

He glanced pointedly at Mateo and Tomas, then back at her, trying, it seemed, to communicate something crucial. “It’s just a little...” he coughed, “...female things, you know...I have something for it.” His face flamed bright, crimson red.

Morgan narrowed her eyes. Female things?

“Let’s get this show on the road, Doc,” interrupted Mateo, glancing at his watch. He pulled a phone from a pocket in his cargo pants and dialed a number. “We’re coming down in five,” he said to whomever it was that answered on the other end. “Keep frosty.” He snapped it shut and shoved it back into his pants, then addressed Bartleby. “Good to go?”