Edge of Oblivion

faint, then closer, louder. The sound of the back door flying open, hitting the outside wall with a sharp smack that sent a tangle of sparrows shrieking from the branches of an elm into the morning sky. Heavy breathing, a long pause, then halting footsteps brushing light as butterfly wings over the grass and he was behind her. He stood there for a moment silently, and she felt the weight of his gaze like warm pressure on her back.

“What are you doing out here?” Xander murmured, his voice full of concern. “It’s cold. Come inside. Come back to bed.”

Come back to bed—just that was enough to make her waver. She set her teeth against the need it stirred inside her, the pain his proximity caused. The hormones of the Fever were bad enough, but her heart, oh, her heart...

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she mused, watching the orange sunrise, watching the sky lift from purple blue to amber to brilliant pink, translucent as a jellyfish. “When I was a little girl I always wondered if sunrises looked the same everywhere else. Like on a beach in Fiji, or someplace else I’d never see...would this look just the same?”

She sensed how he tensed, heard his breathing falter, just for a second. Then he came closer and knelt down behind her on the wet grass, the scent of spice and skin and maleness doing its best to tear her in two.

Without touching her, his voice very low, he said, “Tell me.”

God, to have someone know you like this. Without a cross word from her, without even a look, h e knew. It made her shiver with misery. A night of shared breaths and bodies and heartbeats, of wordless secrets passed between flesh, and hearts can knit and fuse together like two healing fragments of splintered bone.

Morgan wondered why her mother hadn’t warned her of this, too. Eviscerating this newly healed organ seemed a thing even more terrible than having a goblin devour your soul.

“What happened last night...this...thing...between us...”

She faltered, breathless, struggling. Xander’s hand pressed against her lower back, slid under her hair, spread warmth over the space between her shoulder blades. His thumb began a slow tracery of her spine, and she curled her bare toes into the wet grass. A ladybug landed on her instep and began a clumsy, zigzagging amble over her foot. It didn’t tickle; she felt nothing at all.

“This can’t end well. There are no happy endings for people like us, Xander,” she whispered, staring at the sky. “We both know that.”

It was a long, long while before he answered. His thumb kept a slow rhythm over her skin.

When he finally spoke he sounded older, and very tired.

“Yes.”

She was surprised how much that hurt, and what a relief it was he hadn’t tried to lie. She bowed her head and closed her eyes. He slid his palm up her neck and cupped the base of her head with his hand.

“But we have a while yet,” he said, softly pleading. “We have today, and tonight, and eight more days and nights after that. Some people live their whole lives and never get that much.”

She inhaled a long, shuddering breath, and then his hands were in her hair and his lips were on her shoulder, her neck, her cheek. She braced against it, trying not to crack, trying to push him away, but then he took her in his arms and clasped her against his chest and she broke, ashamed and enraged that there was nothing to be done about it all but cry.

“Let me go—I can’t—we can’t—” She couldn’t get it out, but he knew. He knew what she meant.

“One more day, then,” he urged, cupping her face in his hands. His eyes burned hot and desperate, brilliant as dying suns. “Give me one more day, just until the Fever breaks—”

“No! I’m already too—” He kissed her, hard, cut her off before she could say too far gone. I’m already too far gone. He kissed her as if it were the last time he’d kiss anyone ever again, and it muddled her brain and ignited the Fever until all her no s were crisped to ash in the inferno of her desire for him.

“One,” she panted, breaking away. “When the Fever breaks—”

“It will be over,” he promised, gathering her in his arms. “It will be over and we’ll never talk about it again.”

She was nodding, she was crying, she was trying to crush the horrible, rushing onslaught of adrenaline that made her heart pound and her blood boil dry.

Hope, she thought, delirious. You evil bastard. One more day, and then I’ll drive a stake through your fucking heart.

Xander put an arm around her back and another hooked behind her knees, and he lifted her off the grass in one swift move as if she weighed nothing, nothing at all. He brushed his lips against her forehead, tucked her against him, and ran back to the house with her cradled gently in his arms like a treasure, like something fragile and precious and fleeting, a broken-winged sparrow almost healed enough to fly.

Mateo was jolted awake by the loud, echoing clang of a metal door slamming shut.

Pain throbbed through his shoulder and back, the cold floor beneath him leached the warmth from his body, the sharp, acrid tang of alcohol and urine burned his nostrils. He opened his eyes and stared in blank incomprehension at his unfamiliar surroundings.

Cement block walls on three sides, a barred metal sliding door on the fourth, a cracked cement floor with a round center drain. Rows of glaring fluorescent lights shone down from the ceiling overhead.

His mouth went dry as bone.

He was in a cell. More correctly—a cage.

He leapt in one swift motion to all four paws and stood tense and bristling in the center of the square cage, testing the sour air with his nose, gauging the danger with all of his senses. Threads of faraway conversation flitted to his ears, disjointed words that were muffled by the low drone of an ancient air conditioner and the whir of a helicopter hovering unseen somewhere far above the roof. He picked out several words— astonishing, investigation, specimen, tests—noting the fact that they were in English but concentrating more keenly on the tone of excitement in the speakers’ voices.

The cage was bad enough, but that excitement boded even worse.

His gaze swept the sterile corridor beyond the narrowly spaced bars of the sliding door. He saw a stone floor, a few empty cages just beyond that were replicas of his own, and not much else. The full horror of his situation descended on him with breathtaking clarity, and he stood fixed, his mind a screaming tangle of memories, calculations, plans.

He remembered the three enemy Ikati males, he remembered the fight at the club, the chaos, the screams, the girl with the cellular phone, the police...his heart froze.

The police. Gunshots.

Julian.

Julian had been shot. He’d gone down on the dance floor in a spray of crimson blood while Mateo and Tomas snarled in rage and leapt at the shooter and the other Ikati males fled. They’d mauled the police officer beyond recognition, but there were others there, more shouting, uniformed humans with guns and batons and the Tasers that had ultimately brought him and Tomas down with jarring shocks from behind. He didn’t remember anything after that, and now there were only questions left to taunt him.

Was Julian still alive? Where was Tomas? What were the owners of those voices going to do to them?

Pain flared in his shoulder as he limped to the front of the cage. His arm felt nearly torn from the socket— one of those feral males had sunk his fangs into it and given a great, whipping shake of his head—but it would heal faster when he was in his natural form. Not that he’d be able to Shift back to human, even if he wanted to. The change wouldn’t come when there was any injury; even the smallest cut would prevent it. And he definitely wasn’t going to call the Shift while in captivity, even if he stayed here long enough to fully heal. His captors couldn’t see what he really was. His own life—

and that of Julian and Tomas—depended upon it. One of his kind had never— never—been taken alive by humans. He knew without question that should it come down to it, should he be unable to find a way to escape, he would have to kill himself.

If necessary, he would rip out an important artery with his own teeth.

He eased silently to the front of the cell, ears flat against his head, scanning the walls and ceiling for any