Rapture's Edge

gorgeous mottled purple.

She wasn’t his favorite, no. She wasn’t young, or pretty, or thin.

She wasn’t moving at the moment, either.

Standing at the end of the bed fully dressed, Caesar regarded her in the bleak fluorescent light of the bedside lamp. She lay facedown on the stained and rumpled coverlet, spread-eagle, naked.

He cocked his head, inspecting her with the cold, clinical calculation of a collector, of a connoisseur. There was good naked and bad naked and everything in between, but the worst was ugly naked, the kind where even a hospital nurse, used to seeing people steeped in shit and blood and vomit, would recoil.

This bitch was definitely ugly naked.

Angry red ligature marks marred her wrists and her ankles from where he’d bound her, and a splatter of blood decorated the fleshy, dimpled arch of her hip. Her back was dusted with freckles, soft as a sifting of cinnamon against her pasty skin. Her lank yellow hair—thin, he hated thin hair—lay in limp strands across the pillow and her face, hiding her eyes. Open? Closed? It didn’t matter. He didn’t want to see her eyes, anyway. He always liked to cover their eyes; it was only their screams he wanted.

This thin-haired whore had given those to him in spades. The plastic ball gag he’d cinched around her mouth and neck had done little to muffle them.

The hotel room was in the red-light district on the outskirts of Montmartre, seedy and glum, visited by a certain caliber of men who moved furtively through shadows, scurrying like rats. It reeked of sweat and piss and cigarette smoke, of pain and desperation. It was all Caesar could do to block it out. At times like these he cursed his heightened senses, one of the few differences between himself and those ratlike men.

Perhaps the only difference, if truth be told.

He lifted his foot and gave the lumpy mattress a sharp kick. The whore didn’t react, didn’t make a sound, just rolled slightly with the bed and then settled back a little too quickly to heavy, unnatural stillness. Her skin was beginning to show the faintest tinge of gray. Outside in the parking lot, unseen beyond the drawn drapes, someone screamed something unintelligible and slammed a car door. Off in the distance, a dog barked three times.

Yellow hair. Gods, he hated her hair.

Folded on an old rattan chair against a wall stained and peeling was a blanket, threadbare, patchy, and plain. Caesar spied it and allowed his gaze to linger, arrested, appreciating the only thing of beauty in the room. The color of it. The beautiful, saturated hue.

Indigo. He’d never really realized how beautiful that particular shade of blue was before.

His mouth watered. Another erection—much firmer than the one he’d inflicted on the whore—stirred to life in his pants.

Slowly, enjoying the anticipation, lust and rage simmering in his blood like a rising fever, Caesar crossed from the bed to the chair against the wall. He took up the blanket in his hands. He pressed it to his nose, his lips. He moved to the bed, where he stood over the dead prostitute and looked down at her, repulsed. But once he’d carefully arranged the blanket over her head—blocking out her face, her eyes, her ugly yellow hair, everything personal about her—he felt better.

He felt right.

He returned to his place at the foot of the bed and admired his handiwork.

He imagined the blue blanket wasn’t a blanket at all, but hair. Hair so thick and dark and lovely it could never be rendered plain by an indifferent cut, an inexperienced dye job.

Hair so midnight blue it mimicked the heavens and should be crowned with stars.

Hair like…his sister’s.

Mouth watering, heart pounding in his chest, Caesar began, slowly, to work open the buckle of his belt.

“Everything is arranged for the meeting?”

The man in the fedora inclined his head, murmured respectfully, “Ita, domine meus.”

Yes, my lord. How Silas loved the unchanging ways of the Church. Everyone spoke Latin, no one questioned authority, underlings knew their place. He’d refused to speak Latin since he’d left the Roman catacombs, but he supposed he could bend that rule today, this being a special occasion.

After all, it wasn’t every day you arranged to meet the pope.

“Excellens,” he answered, and the man in the fedora smiled.

Their meeting place was a tiny cafe with strong espresso, surly waitstaff, and an excellent view of the Place du Tertre, a cobblestoned square ringed by small shops topped with tidy red awnings. Strung through the bare branches of trees all around were tiny blue lights, and sparkling white along curbs and windowsills was a confectioner’s dusting of snow. In spite of the hour and the dropping temperature, the square still buzzed with shoppers and diners and row after row of artists with easels, hawking portraits to all the tourists. This close to Christmas everything stayed open late.

To the slight, smiling man in the fedora and cloak sitting across from him at the scrolled iron cafe table, Silas said, “The timing is very important. Just before his Christmas morning speech would be ideal. We won’t keep His Holiness long, of course. He has so many important matters to attend to that day.”

Silas sent a little nudge along with these words, a hint of agreeability that had the man nodding.

“Il papa is eager to meet you, domine meus. He had only the highest respect for your predecessor, and he knows the work you do is necessary to our Mother the Church. To keep her safe from the evil that would prevail were we not so vigilant.” His face darkened. “These devils are everywhere these days.”

Oh, he really had no idea. Silas had to work hard to keep a straight face. “Give the cardinal my warm regards, will you? Please thank him for arranging the meeting and for his service. He will be rewarded handsomely for his loyalty. As will you all.”

Again the respectful incline of the head. They exchanged a few more words, particulars of timing and travel, until Silas discreetly looked at his watch. Without needing to be told, the man knew the meeting was over and rose from his chair.

“Ire cum Deus,” he murmured as a farewell. He lifted his hand to tip his hat, and Silas saw the small, black tattoo on his inner wrist, a tattoo all his kind shared: a headless panther run through with a spear. The man turned and made his way across the busy square, and Silas watched him go until he slipped into the shadows between two buildings and was lost from sight.

Go with God. It had been their motto since time immemorial, three words spoken as a blessing or farewell or any number of things in between. Strange how fanatics always needed some kind of slogan. Silas played along with it, as had Dominus before him, as had all the nonhuman leaders of this decidedly human group of hunters.

Expurgari, they called themselves. The purifiers. What a laugh. Almost a thousand years since the Inquisition began and their little troupe of Church-sanctioned killers formed, and they still had no idea what kind of monsters really pulled their strings.

Soon, though. Very soon they’d find out.

He tossed a few coins to the table and rose, smiling languidly at the girl who rushed over to clear his plate. Plain as vanilla pudding, she blushed and looked down. Tempting, but he had no time to dally this evening. He had more important matters to attend.

He had a murder to plan, a revolution to lead, an empire to overthrow.

He was much too busy to get sidetracked now.

21 The Only Thing That Matters

It was the strangest place D had ever seen.

Vast and dark and cavernous, it was some kind of underground cathedral, a monument erected to exalt the