Rapture's Edge

bullets to the windshield as they raced down the aisle. Swerving wildly, they ducked and screamed as the glass splintered into a spider’s web confusion of tiny cracks that surrounded four perfect holes, but didn’t shatter. Around a corner shots rang out again, but everything was a flying muddle of noise and motion in Eliana’s brain. All she could do was dig her heels into the floor mat, clutch the molded leather of the seat, and hang on.

With rubber laid on the cement in two long, black, wavering lines, they left that level of the parking garage —and the shooter—behind them. Inside Eliana flared a brilliant white hope, clear and crackling like a firework: They’d escaped!

Oh, so wrong. Laughably wrong. Hope, she quickly discovered, was not particularly helpful when there were over half a dozen trained killers gunning for one’s head.

Around two sharp turns they entered a double helix exit ramp collared by thick cement columns. Both sides of the ramp yawned open between parking levels, and like swiftly descending spiders, a trio of men scuttled with effortless leaps from level to level beside them, clinging briefly to the cement columns before pushing off, heading down.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” shouted Gregor, apoplectic. “Seriously! You’ve got to be kidding!”

“Watch out!” screamed Eliana as one of the suited spiders dropped to the ramp directly in front of them and raised his weapon. She sank down in the seat and threw her arms over her face, but then there was a bump and a sickening sort of crunch, and the gun-wielding assassin disappeared under the car.

“That’s right, asshole!” shouted Gregor gleefully, pounding his big fist on the steering wheel. “Suck on that!”

Eliana turned and through the rear window saw a crumpled figure tumbling lifelessly down the ramp behind them, arms and legs akimbo, limbs bent at awkward, unnatural angles.

They hit the bottom level of the garage in a sliding sideways spin, fishtailing as Gregor struggled to keep control of the wheel.

“There!” Eliana shouted over the squealing tires, pointing to a small neon exit sign that hung on the opposite side of the level.

Gregor tightened his hands on the wheel, the Ferrari leapt forward with a near-deafening roar, and Eliana was slammed back into her seat with the sudden propulsion. As they rounded the final corner, she was horrified to see not one but two assassins standing with spread legs and raised guns directly in front of the metal gate that led to the exit.

The closed metal gate.

“Glove compartment!” shouted Gregor. “Gun!”

“Now you tell me!”

With the press of a button, the compartment lid snicked open, and Eliana snatched up the gun. It was heavy and cold in her hand, sleek and utilitarian, and at that moment she thought it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen in her life.

Gregor rolled the window down, and Eliana leaned out, aimed, squeezed the trigger, and fired off four rounds…and the assassins didn’t even twitch.

“Where’d you learn to shoot a gun, the goddamn school for the blind?” Gregor screamed.

But then one of them sagged to one knee, lowered his weapon, and looked down, surprised, at the front of his white shirt, where a dark liquid stain had begun to spread.

The other one, luminous green gaze canny and unwavering, leveled his gun at Gregor in the driver’s seat and fired. Just from that single look—murderous, certain—Eliana knew even before Gregor jerked back and hollered that the bullet would hit its intended target.

A spray of blood misted the dashboard. The Ferrari barreled ahead. Gregor’s hands slid from the wheel.

They crashed into the metal access gate at full speed with Eliana twisted sideways, gripping the steering wheel, screaming at the top of her lungs. The assassin leapt clear at the last moment, still shooting, but everything had taken on a dreamlike unreality, color and lights flashing by at hyper-speed, sound warped slow and strange as if it traveled underwater.

The beating of her heart seemed like cannon on a battlefield. The coppery smell of blood hung penny bright and thick in the air.

The gate tore from its hinges with a violent, ear-splitting screech, and they blasted through it in a shower of orange sparks. It flew away overhead like a huge, warped bird, and jagged chunks of metal and plastic from the damaged hood and both shattered headlights followed it. Something heavy caught on the undercarriage and dragged beneath them, setting off an unearthly clamor as they hit the pavement again, breaking free of the garage, and careened down the deserted collector road that ran alongside the building.

“Gregor!” she shouted, frantic. “Gregor!”

Slumped motionless in the seat, he didn’t respond.

Eliana glanced in the rearview mirror just in time to see four more assassins appear in the quickly receding rectangle of the garage door, which glowed a ghostly white against the dark building and the night. Gregor’s foot was still pressed against the accelerator; she yanked hard on the wheel, and they spun around a corner onto a side street at breakneck speed, narrowly missing getting wrapped around a streetlamp.

Right before the building they’d left behind disappeared from sight, she saw all five dark figures in the rectangle of light transform in a violent eruption of black fur and sharp fangs and sleek, sinewy muscle that shredded their tailored clothing into a spray of black-and-white confetti that hung suspended for a moment before drifting slowly to the ground.

With savage roars she heard even above the strung-out whine of the engine, five impossibly huge black panthers leapt forward from powerful hind legs and took off after the car at a flat-out run.

It was five o’clock in the morning in England, the palest blush of dawn beginning to spread pink and lavender over the smoke-dark hills. Thrushes and sparrows had begun to stir in the dewed branches of trees and sing their first, tentative songs of the morning, and the fog that curled in thick fingers around trunks of pines and elms had begun to lift. All the little creatures of the woods were still abed, but in the village of Sommerley—quaint as a postcard, tucked back against the New Forest in a lush, green valley far away from the prying eyes of civilization —one creature was wide, wide awake.

She was pearl pale and feminine, a poet’s muse of golden hair and Mona Lisa smiles and quiet, effortless grace. Born a commoner, she was now a Queen, the most Gifted and powerful Queen her kind had seen in centuries. She could read a mind with a touch of her hand, she could change from woman to mist to lethal, cunning predator, among other things. She could even, when the mood struck, change into something that quite shocked and offended all her predator kin, and made her happy precisely because it did.

Cats thought birds were lesser creatures, silly creatures, good for only one thing: snacks.

But for the moment she was only a woman, sitting upright and breathless in bed, listening to the low, rumbling voice on the other end of the telephone.

“…and if you grant me this, I will agree to join the confederacy. I’ll agree to…your terms.”

Jenna had never met the man on the other end of the phone, but she knew him regardless. Celian, leader of the Roman colony, gave her husband fits.

She glanced over at that beloved husband now, sleeping on his back with one heavy arm thrown over his face, his muscular chest bare and gleaming in the pale morning light. His other arm was still wrapped around her naked waist; he hadn’t moved, even when the shrill ring of the phone broke the stillness of dawn.

Leander always slept like the dead after a long night of loving. Which meant he almost always slept like the dead.

“Tell me, Celian,” Jenna said, tracing a light finger down her husband’s chest. At her touch, he stirred and made a low sound in his throat, then sank back into slumber. “Why would this Demetrius—your brother, you call him—take it upon himself to do what he did? He must have known what the consequences of his actions would be. Help me understand why he would risk so much, for what appears to be so little.”

There was a pause, a cleared throat, another pause that felt pregnant. Then Celian said simply, “Love.”