Rapture's Edge

D. Lix. Celian. Constantine. Her father’s personal guard.

Her father’s traitorous assassins.

A thermonuclear urge to kill them all with her bare hands forced blood to her face where it spread, throbbing hot, to her ears and neck. It warred with a deeply ingrained, stubborn survival instinct that screamed at her in no uncertain terms to get the hell out of there while they were busy doing whatever it was they were doing. It seemed like the other three were trying to take D down, but why, she couldn’t fathom. It occurred to her that possibly D had gone rogue and killed her father himself without the knowledge of the others, but she dismissed that thought as quickly as it came, knowing the Bellatorum were like the musketeers—all for one and one for all and all that nonsense. If D had hatched a plot to kill her father, they were all in on it.

And this was her chance to get revenge.

Or—escape.

Which would it be? She couldn’t take them all at once, she only had the dagger—but their backs were turned, they were all distracted, she had the element of surprise—

Then something strange happened. In the middle of the snarling ball of fury that was the fighting warriors, D spotted her crouched there at the top of the stairs. Over the shoulders of the others, their eyes caught and, for one infinitesimal moment, held. Then he glanced to his right and glanced back at her, a look of intense concentration on his face, as if he were trying to communicate something crucial. Eliana’s gaze darted right, following his.

The sliding glass door in the family room across from them had been smashed. In its place was an enormous, ragged, gaping hole that led directly outside.

To freedom.

The bottom fell out of her stomach. She stared back at D, and he nodded once; then with a thundering bellow, he dragged all three Bellatorum down to the floor with him.

Eliana sprang to life.

In three long bounds she was across the room and through the smashed door, outside into a large yard of trees and grass lit ghostly blue by moonlight. She couldn’t Shift, but she could still run, and run she did, like the wind, never looking back, the snarls of the fighting males she’d left behind fading as she bounded off into the moonlit night, clearing fences, climbing walls, sprinting across lawns and streets and yards, her mind a viper’s nest of unanswered questions, writhing and twisting, spitting black.

D kidnapped her.

D fought his brothers.

D let her go.

What the hell was happening?

14 Faith

When the sharp knock came on his closed office door, Gregor didn’t bother to look up from the newspaper he was reading. News of the escape of La Chatte from the Paris prefecture of police— accompanied by vivid Technicolor pictures of the gorgeous thief herself and the half-destroyed building—was splashed all over the cover.

“Come,” he said absently, transfixed to the page.

Merck, one of the muscle-bound bouncers from the nightclub, poked his head in. “Got a problem, boss,” he said in his lisping, baby-doll voice that belied the true violence of his nature. He’d spent seven years in prison for murder before Gregor hired him.

“Not the goon squad again,” Gregor muttered, imagining Edoard and his minions at the door. They’d spent an entire day last week tearing up his building and had left in a snit when they hadn’t found anything worthwhile.

“Not exactly.” Merck’s voice held a hint of a smile. Gregor looked up from the paper to find the burly, goateed man staring at him with one of his bushy eyebrows cocked. His brown eyes sparkled with laughter. “Check out camera five.”

Gregor frowned and turned to the bank of video screens on the wall beside his desk. On them were displayed black-and-white images from the dozens of security cameras located all around the property, live-action feeds that showed the building in five-inch squares from every angle. Empty staircases and silent rooms, closed doors and corridors, the bobbing crowds in the nightclub…and one lonely, ill-lit back door near the Dumpsters at the loading dock, which featured the astonishing image of a drenched, shivering, half-naked woman, arms wrapped around her chest, wet hair plastered to her head, huge, dark eyes staring up beseechingly at the camera.

With his heart like a jackhammer in his chest, Gregor shot to his feet.

“Wouldn’t take no for an answer when we told her to piss off. Says she knows you.” Merck’s voice was carefully neutral. He never asked questions, passed judgment, or got involved in Gregor’s business, which was one of the many reasons he made an excellent employee.

“Christ! Jesus Christ! Take me to her!” Gregor barked, red-faced. Merck just nodded and stepped aside, swinging the door open with one arm as Gregor barreled through it.

One elevator ride, two flights of stairs, and three near heart attacks later, Gregor threw open the loading dock door, and a wet and weeping Eliana collapsed into his arms.

“Found me—kidnapped—ran—ran all the way here—” she choked off with a sob.

“Easy, lass,” he murmured, equally stunned by this new, vulnerable Eliana and by her almost nude body plastered against him. Barefoot, wearing what looked to be boxer shorts and a man’s T-shirt gone translucent with the water that soaked it, she was shaking, panting, clinging to him like a buoy in a storm-tossed ocean. He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her close, and murmured soothingly, “You’re all right now. You’re safe here, little chatte. Come inside. Come inside with me and let me get you dry.”

He glanced up at the stars twinkling in the mirror-clear night sky, frowned, and then pulled her inside. With her leaning heavily on his arm, Gregor made his way back through the darkened dock toward the stairs.

Gregor took her to a room buried somewhere deep in the building that was decorated with ivory carpets and silk-paneled walls and lit a fire in the cavernous marble hearth. He settled her into the comforting embrace of an overstuffed armchair near the fire and sent Merck for fresh towels. When they arrived and Merck had been dismissed after receiving quiet instructions to bring some dry clothes from Celine’s closet, Gregor spent several wordless minutes drying her carefully and methodically as one would a child from a bath, tousling her hair, wiping her arms and legs and feet, gentle and affectionate yet utterly chaste.

Just that simple courtesy filled her with gratitude.

When he was done, he tossed the towels on the end of the king-size, pillow-strewn bed. Eliana eyed the bed—and the large mirror mounted on the ceiling above it, and the nightstand beside the bed with a discreet gold plaque that read “treasure chest”—and tried not to think about what that was all about. He wound a plush cashmere throw around her shoulders, gazed down at her a moment, then settled his bulk in the armchair opposite hers, steepled his fingers under his chin, and said, “So.”

Eliana bowed her head and closed her eyes.

She’d imagined this moment for years, though of course never dreamed of quite these circumstances. Various scenarios had been considered and disregarded, and the longer she knew him the more she trusted him and wanted to tell him…but could she trust him with this?

So guess what? I’m a shape-shifter exiled from my colony of shape-shifters who live hidden in the catacombs beneath the Vatican. Oh, and there’s several more colonies of us hidden throughout the world. I’m not human, you see. Isn’t that great? Let’s have a drink!

Somehow she didn’t think it would go over.

But she’d come here. Here, not to the old abbey and catacombs with the rest of her exiled kin. Here, to the safety offered by a human who’d never denied her anything and had accepted all her