Edge of Oblivion

He’d had the Gift of Foresight since birth, long before he was able to Shift to Vapor or panther, long before he realized what the dreams actually were. And though it was an incredibly powerful Gift —one he’d been careful to downplay just as he minimized his intelligence and maximized his ruthlessness because he believed that being underestimated and misunderstood put him at a distinct advantage with friend and foe alike—he hated it with every fiber of his being.

Because knowing exactly how and when everyone you loved was going to die was not a walk in the park.

Someone was dying in this dream, too, but not someone D loved. It was the strange male with the flaming orange tiger eyes Celian had fired on at the Vatican, the one who had so impressed the Bellatorum with his display of fearlessness and bravado, the one who had taunted them with lewd gestures and feigned boredom and a mocking smile.

The one who could walk through walls. Whose body filtered bullets like a fan filtered air.

In the dream a knife protruded from the male’s back, sunk hilt-deep between his shoulder blades. There was a great deal of blood, spurting from the wound and splattering over the black stone floor, running in tiny crimson rivulets over the fist clenched around the blade of the knife, the fist that twisted the blade and sent the male crashing to his knees with a bellow.

It was Dominus who had plunged the knife into the male’s back. Dominus who twisted it.

Dominus who stood grinning over the male as he collapsed sideways onto the floor and lay there, silent and still, leaking out his life in swiftly widening circles that pooled beneath him and glinted red in the candlelight.

The beautiful full-Blood female was there, too, chained naked to the fovea wall behind them where Celian had been whipped near to death at midnight when Lucien and Aurelio had failed to show up. Thrashing against the steel cuffs that held her wrists overhead, she screamed something he couldn’t make out, screamed with such force and anguish it sent a concussion like a detonated bomb through the room and buffeted Dominus forward several feet, knocking him off balance.

None of this surprised D’s dream self. Dominus always won. He always had. And clearly the male would have to die if the female was to be taken. Whoever he was, he was dangerous, and powerful, and wouldn’t give her up without a fight. She was obviously powerful, too; all you had to do was be near her to feel the unique, humming current exuded by the most pure-Blooded of their kind.

What surprised D was when a coldly smiling Constantine appeared behind Dominus, pointed a gun at his head, and pulled the trigger.

“D! D! Demetrius! Wake up!”

Lix’s voice pierced the dream like a dagger punched through skin. He sat up abruptly in bed and looked wildly around, weighing the darkness, feeling his heart like a hammer in his chest.

Everything was exactly as he’d left it when he’d fallen asleep—how long ago?—the six metal cots, the wood lockers lined at their feet, the bare walls, the spartan, undecorated space.

The catacombs where the Bellatorum lived and slept and trained were designed and decorated much like a military barracks, with sleeping quarters, dining quarters, armories, and meeting rooms, with training areas that included a gym, fighting arena, and shooting range. Because they were the elite of the King’s guard, they had more freedom and privileges than the half-Blood soldier class of Legiones who lived in the nearby chambers, but were given nothing in the way of luxuries that would make them soft.

So the blanket D had squeezed between his fists was scratchy and thin.

“What time is it?’ he said to Lix, his voice a harsh scrape in the quiet. He ran a hand over his head, breathing in deep to counteract the sudden dizziness—dreams like the one he’d just had took a while to recover from.

Crouched on his heels next to D’s low cot, Lix said, “Haven’t looked at the clock recently, but the Servorum are coming in. Must be close to dawn.”

Unlike the Bellatorum, who came and went as they pleased, the servant class was allowed out only at night. But at least they were allowed out: the chosen females of the King’s harem, the Electi, and the neutered males who guarded them, the Castratus, weren’t allowed to leave the splendor of their sprawling catacombs at all. Neither were any of the hundreds of offspring that lived with the Electi, offspring of various ages and strengths of Blood.

Only full-Blooded members of the Bellatorum, the Optimates, and the King’s close relatives—

with the exception of the principessa Eliana—were allowed to come and go at will.

D stood and yanked on the clothes he’d left folded atop the footlocker at the end of the bed. He laced up his boots and got his gear strapped on: Glock nine millimeter on his right hip, kukhri—tip dipped in poison—on his left, push daggers in each of his boots, other knives tucked into pockets in his pants. He looked at the two empty beds that belonged to Lucien and Aurelio, and his mouth tightened. He had a terrible suspicion they wouldn’t ever sleep there again.

“Where’s Constantine?”

Lix stood and crossed his arms over his chest, and D felt the other male’s anger like a burning weight in his own chest. “With Celian,” Lix answered, dark.

They exchanged glances. Celian was laid out facedown on a cot in the infirmary, bloodying towel after towel that was pressed to his mangled back. The cat-o’-nine-tails was infamous for its brutality—he’d be out of commission and in a lot of pain while the chunks of scored flesh grew together.

D said, “How is he?”

Lix shrugged. “Lost a lot of blood, but he’ll be fine in a few days, you know that. Celian’s a badass—”

“I meant Constantine,” D snapped, shrugging on his long overcoat.

Lix inhaled deep, then passed a hand over his face. He dropped both hands to his waist and exhaled. “He’s not talking.”

Which meant he was taking it hard, as he always did, as Dominus, of course, knew.

The King knew everyone’s weakness, and Constantine’s weakness was his brothers. He was more loyal to them than to their cruel King, and when they hurt, he hurt. Especially when he was the cause of that hurt. Like tonight, when he’d been forced to whip Celian into unconsciousness while the King watched, amused. Dominus had been measuring Constantine’s loyalty to him with gruesome tests like these for years, and D had wondered how long it would be before Constantine finally snapped.

D cursed under his breath, remembering the dream, the particular look on Constantine’s face as he pulled the trigger: hatred and deep satisfaction. Evidently he would snap, and soon.

“Had a dream,” he said to Lix, who sent him a wry smile in return.

“I know. That’s why I’m here.”

D looked up at Lix, his brows drawn together in question, but Lix only shrugged again, the motion not exactly nonchalant. “Dominus,” he said simply.

D realized with a cold chill over his skin that the King had sensed him dreaming, as he did when the dreams were particularly vivid. And now he wanted a full report.

“Shit,” D muttered, eyeing the arched corridor at the end of the room that led out to a mess hall and connecting tunnels beyond. Those tunnels, winding and dark, led directly to the King’s chambers.

“Just tell him the truth, D,” Lix said quietly. “Just tell him what he needs to know.”

He doesn’t need to know everything, D thought, ever the rebel, but aloud he said only, “Recte. ”

Right.

The antiserum that would allow half-Bloods to survive the Transition was almost perfect.

Dominus had been working on it for the past three decades, had in fact started the first experiments before he had earned his degree in cell and gene therapy as a young man. It had confounded him then more so than now, since he had almost solved the maddening riddle of exactly which component of human DNA warped the superior genetic characteristics of Ikati DNA. Because it so clearly did: over several thousand years of his race’s recorded history, only a tiny percentage of mixed-Blood Ikati