Edge of Oblivion

recognition that there were three other Ikati males somewhere in this club hit all three of them like a heavyweight punch.

They looked up in the direction of the screams at the exact moment three huge, black animals reared up on their hind legs and set broad paws on the metal railing of the second-floor balcony.

Yellow eyes, unblinking; long tails, snaking back and forth; fangs exposed, white and sharp. One of them roared a challenge.

“Aw, shit,” said Julian. “I knew this was a bad idea.”

The music thumped, the lights flashed, and it didn’t seem as if anyone on the dance floor noticed what was happening up above until the bodies started dropping.

Suddenly there was a stampede. People couldn’t get away fast enough. Screaming and shoving, they formed a thronging mob that began to flow down the stairs. Some didn’t bother with the stairs and leapt clear over the railings, flailing, to land atop unsuspecting revelers below. It was chaos.

“We can’t Shift!” hollered Mateo over the music when he smelled Tomas’s intention as a gunpowder sting in the back of his throat. “If the Assembly finds out we Shifted in public—” Tomas sank to a crouch, baring his teeth. “Special situation. And rules are made to be broken.”

“No, Tomas!” Mateo shouted, gripping Tomas’s forearm. “No!”

Too late. Above the screams, the music, and the pounding of footsteps, a sickening crackle was heard as bone and tendon transformed, then the loud rip of fabric as it was shredded to pieces. On his other side, Julian Shifted as well, the most enormous of any Ikati he’d ever seen—his huge, wedge-

shaped head with its tapering nose and long, silver whiskers was above shoulder high to his own. He made a grizzly bear look like a Chihuahua. Clothing lay in tatters around his feet.

The three Ikati balancing on their forepaws on the railing above took it as an invitation. They pushed off with powerful hind legs and sailed over the second-story railing to land in a noiseless, menacing crouch only a few yards away on the dance floor that was now cleared of anything but the six of them.

In unison, the five panthers crouched, sprang, crashed into one another head-on in midair. They went tumbling over the floor, clawing and biting, their snarling loud and vicious enough to drown the music.

Then to his great horror, Mateo spotted a human female in the far corner of the club crouched beneath a cocktail table, holding something out in her trembling hand. His first thought was that it was a gun. He focused, then almost wished it was.

A small metal object, a glowing blue screen.

A phone.

A camera.

The entire thing was being filmed.

24

“Why do you suppose it is,” said Bartleby to Xander as they sat on the back lawn of the safe house in two folding chairs, “that you have kept me in your employ all these years?”

Xander sighed, feeling a lecture coming on. He stared up at the glimmering Milky Way peeking through rifts in the rolling, velvet dark clouds above. The cool tang of moisture in the air and the tingle of electricity that lifted the little hairs on his arms told him it was going to rain, and soon.

He said, “Because of your charm and good looks, obviously.”

But that wasn’t it. The truth of Xander’s loyalty to the doctor lay somewhere far darker.

Bartleby had been Karyo’s personal physician. In desperation—his mind unable to grasp that Esperanza was gone, really gone—Xander had called him on that terrible day so long ago, had watched through his tears as the doctor examined her, met Xander’s gaze, shook his head in wordless confirmation of the horrible truth.

He’d been kind that day, the only kind older male Xander had ever known, human or otherwise.

Since then the Syndicate had kept Bartleby as their own physician. He was trusted and respected and had saved their lives on more than one occasion.

Because he knew the doctor so well, Xander didn’t even have to look over to feel the sour look his old friend shot him.

“Wrong. Because I’m the only person who’s ever honest with you,” the doctor declared.

That definitely sounded like a pending lecture. Xander watched the neighbor’s beagle stare at him through a small hole in the back fence, fifty yards away. The dog was growling and trembling, and Xander had half a mind to get up from his chair and really give the dumb beast something to tremble about. “Don’t want to hear it, Doc.”

“I know you don’t want to hear it, Alexander, but the truth might do you a bit of good.”

Bartleby stood from the chair, stretched his arms overhead, rolled his neck back and forth.

Then he turned and stared down at Xander, his balding head crowned by a corona of stars.

“But first, a question.”

Xander braced himself.

“Are you in love with Morgan?”

He drained the last of the bottle of very fine scotch he’d been drinking for the last hour as they sat looking at the gathering storm and swallowed around the searing lump in his throat. “You’ve been watching too many soap operas.”

“Well,” Bartleby persisted after a moment when Xander said nothing more, “are you?”

“You’re a pushy bastard, you know that?” Xander grumbled and climbed to his feet. He tossed the empty scotch bottle at the back fence and was gratified to hear the beagle go yelping off into the night when it shattered against the wood.

“And you’re avoiding the question.” The doctor peered up at him through his spectacles and adjusted his bow tie. “Not that I blame you, mind you, but I think if you get some clarity on this issue it will make things easier for everyone involved.”

“Clarity,” he repeated disdainfully, drawing the three syllables out. “Now I know you’ve been watching too many soap operas.”

“My point is,” continued Bartleby, undeterred by Xander’s sarcasm, “that you can’t decide what you’re going to do until you are clear on what exactly it is you feel for this female of yours.”

“Mark,” Xander corrected, hard. “Job. Pigeon.”

“Mmmhmmm,” said the doctor.

“And there is no decision regarding what I’m going to do. I’m going to...”

What? He was going to what?

Bartleby raised his eyebrows, waiting. Xander made a cutting motion across his throat with a hand.

“Please,” scoffed the doctor. “You’re not going to hurt a hair on her head.”

“I don’t even want to hear your theory on why that might be.”

“Because you’re in love with her! Even your Blood knows you’re in love with her! Why don’t you just admit it!”

Xander sighed and massaged his temples. “You’re fired.”

“Again?”

It was a running joke between them. Xander had fired Bartleby at least three dozen times over the last twenty years. It never stuck. The old man had grown on him like a barnacle.

In what he hoped would be the final period in the sentence of this unwanted conversation, Xander turned and made his way back toward the house. A breeze rustled through the trees along the fence, a rumble of thunder rattled the windows. Just as he lifted his hand to open the back door, Bartleby said, “She asked me not to give her any more drugs.”

Xander spun around, shocked. “What? I thought you said it helped her. I thought you said she was in pain