Edge of Oblivion

sign of surveillance cameras. There were none, and nothing else modern either. This facility looked and smelled half a century old. It wasn’t a zoo, that much was clear, though a musty whiff of long-vanished primates emanated from moist cracks in the floor. Apes, he thought. Gorillas and orangutans. Other animals, too, living unseen nearby. A confusion of rodent and mammalian scents crowded his nose, but beneath it all there lingered a curious scent of decay. No, not decay, exactly, it was colder and more acrid, more like...death.

A jolt of fear rocked him with the realization that this was probably an animal shelter.

Judging by the smell of it, a kill shelter.

An angry, low growl rumbled through his chest. It echoed through the empty cage with an eerie, hitching twang and was immediately answered by another just like it, somewhere close.

Mateo’s heart went into overdrive. He called a greeting with a low, huffing chirrup and limped over the cold cement to the front of the cage. His gaze darted over the opposite cages until suddenly he saw at the far end of the long corridor a sight that eased his heart rate, if not the churning chaos of his mind.

The hulking black figure of Tomas stared back at him with fierce, storm-lit eyes from behind the narrow bars of his own cage.

Mateo made a soft, disgruntled whine low in his throat— can you believe this shit? —and Tomas answered back with a clipped chirrup of frustration. Claw marks scored a ragged, red path down the side of his tapering nose, but otherwise he appeared unhurt. He reared up silently on his hind legs and, long tail snaking back and forth behind him, tested the strength of the barred door with his large, padded paws. It rattled and flexed under his weight but didn’t give, and Tomas dropped back to the cement, growling his discontent. He began to pace back and forth in tight circles within the confines of the metal cage.

He was still pacing when the heavy door at the end of the long hallway opened and six white-

coated humans walked into the room.

28

The female reporter on the evening news was blonde and busty and sported one of those toothy, salacious smiles perfectly suited for television. In one hand she gripped a mike, in the other, a sheaf of scribbled notes her gaze kept darting to as she reported on the headlining story. She stood in the glare of halogen lights in front of a squat, redbrick building that was windowless and ringed with a tall metal fence topped with razor wire that lent it the menacing air of a secret government facility or a sanatorium. A crowd the polizia was trying to herd away from the television cameras had surrounded the fence, chanting something about animal rights, while two helicopters flew overhead, raking the scene with jittering floodlights that cut through the night like white lasers and sent leaves and dust and hairdos swirling in the wake of their whirring blades.

“The injured suffered everything from broken bones to concussions in the fray,” the reporter enthused, blue eyes sparkling, “and the police are not saying how these animals came to be inside one of the most popular and upscale dance clubs in the heart of Rome. Our sources are telling us there were three more panthers that escaped the scene and remain at large, but this hasn’t been confirmed by authorities. For now all we know for sure is that the three that were captured are being held under quarantine while the decision is being made whether to transfer them to one of the euro zone’s zoos or —because of the violent attack on the police officer—euthanize them.”

Her smile became positively blinding. “Back to you, Reuben!”

Dominus clicked off the television with a push of a button on the remote on his desk, and the library drifted into silence. Smiling, he sat back into his chair, steepled his fingers beneath his chin, and let his gaze slowly rove over the sparsely lit chamber. The corners were all in shadow, and so was the high arch of the ceiling above, just as he preferred. Though candlelight flickered dimly from the iron braziers along the wall, most of the room was a mask of twilight, sullen and gloomy, in exact opposition to his mood.

Euthanization. How perfect. How utterly sublime.

It was an inviolable law of nature that even the most glorious creatures had their Achilles’ heels. The wily fox had its eye-catching red coat, the swift hare had its tufted white tail, the grizzly bear was slow, the dolphin was trusting, the shark had to keep moving forward or perish.

For the Ikati, the weakness was even more profound. They could not Shift when injured.

Evanescence became permanence. Mutable became fixed. Camouflage became cage.

From behind him came the amused tenor of Silas. “It seems these interlopers won’t be a problem after all, my lord. Providence is once again on our side.”

Dominus didn’t turn or invite him forward out of the shadows where he’d been standing for the last hour and would remain indefinitely until directed to do otherwise. He merely pushed aside the empty bowl of lamb stew he’d eaten for dinner at his desk while watching the international news and spoke to the hulking alabaster statue of Horus—god of vengeance, god of war—set directly across from him, against the wall.

“Fortune favors the bold, Silas.”

And he had been bold, every day of his life. How thrilling that the culmination of all those years of boldness was so close to fruition. So, so close...

Dominus pressed a napkin to one corner of his mouth. “Has it arrived yet?”

“Not as of this afternoon, sire,” Silas murmured with real regret. “However, there is the possibility of a late delivery. The courier was told to wait as long as necessary.”

Dissatisfaction thrummed through him. He wanted the lab results before the Purgare. He wanted to be able to make an announcement that would lift all their spirits. He wanted to be able to tell everyone definitively when all their lives would change.

“Go and see if there is any word,” Dominus instructed, pulling a thick notebook from a locked drawer in his desk. He set it carefully on the blotter and ran his fingers over the fine linen cover, darkened with use and frayed at the edges. Leather would have been more durable, but he found the idea of his life’s work bound in the skin of a bovine corpse disgusting.

Silas murmured an acknowledgment and drifted silently to the door. Once there, he executed a low bow and straightened, allowing Dominus a clear view of the long, aquiline nose, the impenetrable black eyes, the small, secret smile.

Silas had good reason to smile. He alone knew the full measure of his King’s plans.

“And bring that new female you acquired yesterday to the fovea,” Dominus added, a flash of heat tightening his groin at the memory of the blonde tourist who had been snatched by one of the Legiones from a bar near the Pantheon. She looked a lot like the newscaster. Blonde. Busty. Stupid.

He wondered how loudly he could make her scream.

Silas bowed again and retreated silently into the opaque darkness of the winding corridor beyond the library. When he was alone, Dominus opened his notebook and began to write, his script fluid and precise: In keeping with the results of Dodd’s experiments with reproductive isolation, my calculations suggest a period of eight generations will be necessary to engender a permanent alteration in the gene pool to achieve speciation once the correct antiserum formula has been isolated and applied to the existing population. Further, through artificial insemination of stud-quality females and embryonic transfer to surrogate females we may concurrently increase the number of pure-Blood offspring, thereby exponentially expanding both breeding stock and pure-Blood subjects. In a matter of only a few generations, the enemy gene pool will be irreparably damaged and ultimately destroyed.

Along with their terrible legacy of war, ignorance, and unrelenting greed, Homo sapiens will vanish from the face of the earth forever.

Dominus set the fountain pen on the blotter, closed the notebook, and slowly exhaled.

And so their world will end, he thought with deep satisfaction, staring at Horus, just as T. S.

Eliot predicted. Not with a bang, but a whimper. And I will be the architect of it all.