Edge of Oblivion

was male or female...

The three of them looked at each other.

“Where’s D?” Celian finally said.

“We, uh,” Lix shot a nervous glance in Constantine’s direction, “we didn’t want to tell you. In case Dominus found out—you wouldn’t get in trouble. Since you’ve just healed...from last time...”

Celian’s face hardened. “In case Dominus found out what, exactly?”

“D is with the principessa,” Constantine answered, and took a step back when the heat of Celian’s anger pulsed over him like a furnace with its door blown off.

“Eliana?” he hissed, eyes flashing. “What the hell is he doing with her?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” said Constantine, holding Celian’s furious gaze, “but I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

The scream came again, a high, sustained note of pain from somewhere far off in the darkness of the catacombs. All three of them froze, listening.

Celian said, “I have a very bad feeling about this. Be ready for anything.”

And with Lix and Constantine hard on his heels, he set off at a dead run toward the fovea and the high, wavering screams.

Running as fast as his feet would take him, Xander sprinted across the worn cobblestones of St.

Peter’s Square, heading directly for the portico of the basilica and the bronze masterpiece Door of Death, carved with images of a crucified Christ and the Virgin Mary ascending to heaven.

He Passed straight through it just as a pair of Swiss Guards leapt to stop him from their posts at the soaring marble columns that flanked the door. He heard their shouts from outside, growing fainter as he ran into the center of the vast, shadowed cathedral. Past the nave, past the baptistery, past the transepts with their haloed, blank-eyed statues of the founding saints in stone niches, his boots striking loudly over the elaborate inlaid floor.

He came to a sliding halt near the chapel of St. Sebastian, brought up short by a twist in his heart.

Here, sang the ghostly, lilting tune of the Blood tie that had drawn him across the city.

Panting, heart pounding, he slowly approached the chapel. It was as before when he and Morgan had tried, unsuccessfully, to locate the Alpha when he’d been inside her head. Lighted casket with the body of a long-dead pope beneath the towering mosaic of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, baroque paintings in the cupola and corbels, faint stench of decay and death.

Dark, disembodied tremor of feral Ikati everywhere.

He combed over the entire chapel, searching frantically, but there was nothing, no one, no hidden entry or secret passage or door, just that magnetic pull of their connection.

“Morgan! ”

He shouted it at the top of his lungs because he couldn’t think of what else to do. It fractured into a thousand parroted cries of her name that seemed to take on a life of their own, taunting his ears, mocking him as they reverberated through almost six acres of yawning space, bouncing off marble and glass and stone. He was so close; she was somewhere nearby, terrified, and he couldn’t find her, he didn’t know where to look, he had to do something—

From somewhere far beneath his feet, the faintest, faintest echo of a scream reached his ears.

Xander leapt back as if the floor had burned him. He stood staring down, arrested, his heart frozen solid in his chest.

On the floor in the middle of the chapel was painted a colorful coat of arms, surrounded by a circle of Greek lettering. It featured a pair of crossed keys above a golden shield that depicted the image of an olive branch– bearing dove with a trio of fleurs-de-lis. Floating above the shield was a crown.

And just above that, painted in bold strokes of black and gold, was the all-seeing Eye of Horus.

Xander dropped to his knees and pressed his shaking hands flat against the cold marble.

Beneath. Below. Underground. But—how?

The scream came again, and the how no longer mattered. All that mattered was Morgan, and she was somewhere down there, beneath his feet.

Just as a group of armed Swiss Guards burst through a side door near the entrance to the basilica, Xander closed his eyes, concentrated, and was swallowed like a stone dropped into water by the ancient marble floor of the church.

35

Someone far beyond the brimstone sea was controlling her muscles. Someone beyond the sea chanted a refrain of burn, burn, burn, and because of him she was smoking, she was blistering, her flesh had all melted away.

“Xander,” Morgan moaned, voice raw from screaming.

“Oh, yes,” said the demon controlling her body, stoking the fire that crisped her bones, “I imagine he’ll be along anytime now. Perhaps I should revive you a bit for your reunion.” He chuckled, a sound like red-hot pokers stabbing through her ears. “We wouldn’t want you to miss the unhappy ending, now would we?”

Suddenly the fire dimmed and she was ripped panting and coughing from the scalding brimstone lake to find herself chained naked—unharmed, all in one piece—to a rounded stone wall.

“Welcome back, Morgan,” Dominus said, smiling serenely. “And how are we feeling?”

The room spun. Dark and circular, it sported black walls so high the ceiling was lost in shadow.

It felt very much like being at the bottom of a well. A blood-spattered well, because all along the walls from eye level down were smeared dark trails of crimson, some old and flaking, some bright and hideously fresh.

The room was devoid of ornament save for a huge rusted metal rack drilled into the stone from which dangled a sadist’s collection of playthings. Steel and leather and wire whips, chains and pokers and saws, masks and knives and metal things she couldn’t name but recognized as implements of unspeakable atrocities nonetheless.

Morgan stared at the tools and the splatters of gore on the walls. Her mind began to clear. The enormity of the situation edged in.

“That was really a rhetorical question,” Dominus mused, stepping closer. “I won’t make you answer it.” He lifted his hand and very gently, as Morgan shrank back against the rough, frigid rock, caressed her bare breast.

Her wrists were shackled overhead with what felt like steel or iron; her ankles sported the same. But she was still able to move her body. And as he stroked her and watched her writhe, intently watched the disgust and fear and anger play over her face, Morgan realized he could have simply held her frozen in place with his mind. But the lust burning bright in his eyes told her that he found the physical display of her fear so much more arousing.

She stilled, closed her eyes, and swallowed back the vomit rising in her throat.

Fuck him. Fuck. Him. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of watching her squirm.

“Oh, Morgan,” he sighed, and she heard the exasperation in his voice. “Honestly, this is beginning to become tiresome.”

And he slapped her across the face with so much force she tasted blood.

“Touch her again,” shouted a furious voice from behind him, “and I’ll eat out your fucking heart!”

Morgan sobbed, Dominus spun around, and Xander leapt, snarling, from the shadows of the opposite wall.

Then everything happened at once.

With the force of runaway trains colliding from opposite directions, they smashed into each other and fell in a bellowing tangle to the floor, trading vicious punches, howling like rabid wolves, an unholy noise that reverberated through the room. They rolled over and over until they hit the rack of whips and knives and chains. With a terrible squealing shriek of buckling metal, the whole thing wrenched from the wall and came crashing