Edge of Oblivion

“Since you know everything about me, you should know I’m not yours,” she snapped.

Pain exploded in a white-hot firework behind her right eye. She stiffened and gasped.

Languidly Dominus unfolded himself from the divan. He came to stand beside her and slowly stroked a cold, cold finger down her cheek, watching its progress with glittering, hungry eyes.

“Aren’t you?” he murmured. His smile struck a note of pure terror in her heart.

Stand, came the unspoken command.

Without a breath of hesitation, her limbs leapt to comply, and she was on her feet, speechless and furious and terrified, her body a puppet to his invisible strings. The pain behind her eye radiated through her head, searing, blisteringly hot, and she had to bite her lip hard to keep from screaming.

Dominus began a slow circle around her, inspecting, smiling his malevolent smile. She was frozen, mummified, unable even to move her eyes to follow his progress. She felt a soft touch on her shoulder, a slight tug as his fingers combed through her hair, a gentle hand caressed her back. As his hand slid down to linger possessively at her waist, her skin crawled as if a thousand spiders were scuttling over her body.

“All of this is mine,” he murmured. “Your every thought, your every feeling, every muscle and bone and sinew in this perfect, beautiful body is mine. And from now on, it always will be.”

“No. ” Half whisper, half moan, it brought him to a standstill.

“No?” came his softly spoken challenge. The pain in her head gathered into a shrieking, howling monster with sharp, gnashing teeth that ripped and tore and shredded her flesh, a dragon devouring villagers and spewing fire inside her skull.

Dominus said, “You sound unconvinced. Perhaps a demonstration is in order.”

He grasped her by the wrist and lifted her arm away from her body, turned it in various positions until he found one he liked. Then with a murmured, “Stay,” he released it, took up her other arm, and repeated the same procedure, then angled her head. In a moment she was posed like a Renaissance statue in the posture he’d chosen, and she stood helpless in suffocating, blistering agony, buried alive.

“Venus in chains,” Dominus murmured, transfixed.

His gaze raked over her figure, ravenous, and he looked for a moment as if he would pounce on her and devour her whole. But he took several slow, deep breaths, and the rabid excitement in his eyes eventually dimmed. “Pain is a very powerful motivator, Morgan. Most creatures will do anything to avoid it. Anything at all.” He licked his lips, slow and deliberate. “Can you guess what I require from you in order for the pain to go away?”

Unable to answer, she made a high-pitched sound of terror that sounded like a mouse when it spots the cat in midleap.

“O-be-di-ence. ” He drew it out, lovingly emphasizing each syllable. “You will obey me in all things. You will do whatever I ask without hesitation or I will leave you standing here like this, in agony, until you rot on your feet. Which, I happen to know from experience, takes about three weeks.”

With an elegant gesture of his manicured hand, he indicated a pile of bleached bones jumbled in a huge, hideous white mess in one dark corner beside a basalt statue of the devil.

Her heart heaved. Sputtered. Started up again with a painful throb.

Dominus moved closer. “But I don’t want to do that.” His voice was tender now, stroking, and his eyes had grown soft. He touched a finger to her lower lip. “I have other things in mind for you. For us. Give me your word you will behave and I will release you, and we can begin again.”

“And in return?” she whispered, stalling. Sweat beaded along her hairline, trickled in a cold rivulet down the back of her neck. “If I agree to...obey...what will you give me?”

First he looked angry: his eyes flared; his handsome mouth drew to a hard, flat line. He dropped his hand from her face and made a fist at his side, and she braced herself for a punch. But then another emotion softened his face, and for a moment he looked younger, almost wistful.

“Are you negotiating with me?”

He sounded amused, amazed, but most of all intrigued.

“I would like to not rot on my feet,” she said, faint. “But I will if it means I have to sacrifice free will. I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees, which if you really knew me would be obvious.” She moistened her lips. “And because you don’t—that makes me think you might be full of shit.”

He inhaled a sharp, astonished breath. His mouth dropped open. His eyes, coal black and burning, popped wide. He stared at her in silence while the candles sputtered in a sudden cold breeze and the blood roared wild through her veins.

“No one has ever spoken to me like that,” he hissed, unblinking. A flush of crimson rose up his neck, and for a horrible, breathless moment, he did nothing at all.

Then—impossibly—he began to laugh.

It echoed through the vast chamber like a thing alive. It bounced off the walls and split into a hundred different laughs, each one darker and more sinister than the last. He sat back down on the velvet divan and gave himself over to it, head thrown back, eyes closed, white teeth shining in the gloom. In a moment his laughter tapered off and he composed himself and sat gazing at her with a finger rubbing his full, smiling lips.

“You amuse me,” he said, surprised. “I had no idea when I chose you that you’d be so...interesting.” And with a little flick of his hand, he released her from his control and the pain simultaneously vanished.

Morgan collapsed into the overstuffed chair, gulping air, fighting down nausea, hot and sour.

Her mind wasn’t working, her body wasn’t working. She had to think!

“Ch-chose me?” she managed.

“To help me infiltrate the other colonies,” he replied, matter-of-fact. “My people had been watching them all—well, the three I knew of—for years, looking for a weak link, for someone who didn’t fit, someone rebellious, someone, perhaps, who might want a little,” he waved his fingers, coyly searching for a word, “vindictam?”

Vengeance.

“But we could never find a chink in their armor. Until...you. And you were so ripe for the taking.” He smiled. “So much loneliness. So much anger. Turning you was hardly any work at all.”

An iceberg slid silently over her and crushed her with its cold, massive weight. Suddenly, horribly, she understood everything with a blinding, brilliant clarity, like sunlight reflected off snow.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he smiled wider, “I am your god, Morgan. God of vengeance, god of war, god of salvation, who will release our entire race from the oppression of man. It’s taken a lifetime of planning, but now all the players are positioned perfectly on the board and the Ikati will, finally, have checkmate. No little thanks to you.”

Her stomach heaved. The sudden, wretched knowledge of what he had done, of the part she had so willingly played, burned like poison in her throat.

“You—you planned this,” she sputtered. “You planned all of this! You set me up! ”

His smile grew dangerous. “You were an easy target.”

“You killed your own kind!” she shouted as blood flooded her face. “You had them tortured!

You worked with humans—”

“Destruction is one of nature’s mandates, as the Marquis de Sade so eloquently said,” he answered calmly, “and a king must be willing to sacrifice a few rooks in order to win a war. And as you know, lovely Morgan, we have been engaged in war since the beginning of time.”

She hated him, hated him with a ferocity that made her heart pound and her fingers itch to claw his eyes out. “You bastard! We’ve been hunted for centuries—forced to run—forced to hide—”

“Silence! ” he shouted, and leapt from the divan.

He began to pace in front of her, lithe and menacing, bristling like a caged animal. He ran an agitated hand through the mane of his silver-black hair.