Rapture's Edge

Eliana shrank slowly to one corner.

The mother sighed—the heavy, defeated, I-never-signed-up-for-this-shit sigh of motherhood—dug through a large handbag slung over her shoulder, and produced a set of brightly colored plastic rings on a chain with bells. She dangled it over the boy’s head.

“Here, sweetie. Play with this.”

When the child snatched the rings from her hand and began to chew on them, instantly forgetting his fascination with the cloud of mist that was Eliana, she relaxed, profoundly grateful for short attention spans. The doors opened on the fourth floor, and mother and child disappeared down an empty corridor.

She took form for a millisecond as woman and pressed the button for floor six, then Shifted back to Vapor, drifted back up against the ceiling, and rode the rest of the way alone.

Once on Gregor’s floor, she found the nurses’ break room without too much trouble, and luck, for once, was on her side. Someone had left their uniform in a plastic dry cleaning bag slung over a chair.

Eliana smiled. She wouldn’t have to visit Gregor naked after all.

“Time for your sponge bath, Mr. MacGregor.”

Gregor opened his eyes, saw a somber Eliana in a nurse’s uniform and white hat perched on the metal rail at the foot of his bed, and wondered how a man of thirty-eight could survive a bullet to the chest but later die of heart failure from the simple pleasure of seeing a sexy woman in tight, fantasy-inducing clothing, mere feet away.

“Sweet Jesus,” he muttered, eyeing her. “Saint Nick was feeling generous this year.”

She tugged on the collar of the uniform, which appeared to be a size too small; she was bursting out in all the right places. “Better than a lump of coal in your stocking?”

He grinned. “I’ve got a lump all right—but sweetheart, it’s not in my stocking.”

This earned him a smile, small and wry. She slid off the railing and took a seat in the ugly green chair next to his bed. She had her hair tucked up under the hat, but a few messy strands escaped, blue-black and telling. He glanced at the door, at the two armed police officers still stationed outside.

“Not safe,” he murmured, and then glanced back at her. “Probably not too smart, either.”

“How could I stay away? You underestimate the power of your charm, Gregor. Also, you overestimate the intelligence of our friends, there.” She shot a dour look to the door. “They didn’t even look at my face when I came in.”

Gregor dropped his gaze to the low V of the white uniform, perusing the lush landscape of cleavage presented therein. “Can you blame the poor bastards?”

She sighed, but somehow it seemed unrelated to him.

“A nice rack can topple empires, princess. It’s just the way we’re built.”

Her look was one of pained disbelief. She said simply, “Men.”

He held his hand out. She took it. They looked at each other for a moment in silence while the television droned on softly in the background. It hung on the wall opposite his bed, and he used it as white noise to block all the sounds of sick people coughing and crying and calling for the nurses, for more morphine and better food. A hospital seemed to him one of the most depressing places imaginable. He hated it, but prison—he knew as a fact—would be even worse, so he was milking his stay for all it was worth.

“How are you?” Her gaze dropped to his chest, to the bandage visible above the neck of his blue gown which was changed every twelve hours by the lovely Lily.

“Been better,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’d forgotten how much gunshot wounds hurt.”

Her brows rose. “Forgotten? Am I taking that to mean you’ve been shot before?”

He made a dismissive noise and waved his free hand. “In my line of work, it’s par for the course. Your little friends, though—that was a new one. Can’t say I’d like to see them again anytime soon.”

“I’m sorry.” Her mouth twisted. “Had I known it would all turn out like this—”

“No apologies, princess. My life’s been a wild ride, and one I wouldn’t change a minute of. Including knowing you.” He reconsidered a moment. “Although if you want to buy me a new Ferrari, I wouldn’t object.” His voice soured. “Not that I’ll be needing it in prison.”

“Prison?”

At her look of confusion, he said, “Agent Doe. The German. He came to see me.”

Her fingers beneath his tensed. She whispered, “He’s not dead?”

“He is very much undead,” Gregor confirmed.

“And?”

“And you were right. They know about you. About your kind.”

Her black eyes burned. “How much?”

He considered that. “Enough to be problematic.”

“What did he say? What did he want?”

“He wanted me to fill in the holes in their information. He offered me a deal: squeal and stay out of jail.”

She dropped his hand and sat up rigidly in the chair, which he took to mean she assumed he had filled in the holes in their information. He glowered at her. “Seriously, princess— that’s insulting.”

She stood and began to pace, chewing her thumbnail, throwing worried looks at the door. She pulled the fabric curtain that hung from a rod on the ceiling around his bed, blocking the view of the door. “Tell me. Tell me everything.”

“Come here,” he ordered, pointing at the bed. “Pacing women make me nervous.”

Surprisingly, she complied without comment. Once perched on the edge of the bed, she took his offered hand and stared down at it.

He said quietly, “He—his organization—wants to round you up, confine you. The word zoos was mentioned.”

Her head snapped up with a gasp. Her eyes were wide and horrified. If they grew any larger, they would devour her face.

“He said his organization was above the police, and I heard him call someone. He asked for the chairman, identified himself as Thirteen, of Section Thirty. Does that mean anything to you?”

Pale and trembling, she shook her head.

He squeezed her hand. “I should have given you more guns. I have a feeling you’ll be needing them.”

It took her a long time to answer him. When she finally did speak, her voice was uneven and low. She spoke to their joined hands without looking at him. “Tell them to look in the catacombs. Tell them that’s where I said we lived—in the catacombs and the old abbey near the Sacre-Coeur in Montmartre—the DuMarne. We’re gone now, so it won’t matter, but there will be evidence we were there. It should be enough to keep you out of jail, make them think you’re cooperating. And I think…” She lifted her gaze to his, and it was utterly without hope. “I think this will be the last time we’ll see each other.”

Gregor glowered at her. “Don’t be stupid, princess! I’m not letting you—”

He broke off because out of the corner of his eye, he saw the picture on the television change to a scene in St. Peter’s Square, at the Vatican.

Chaos.

Thousands of people screaming, pushing, trampling one another. Wobbly video of blood-splattered cobblestones and toppled wooden barriers and scores of frantic police trying to direct and control the plainly terrified, surging crowd. A long, grainy shot of a balcony draped in crimson bunting, an empty window with a long streak of blood dripping down the panes.

The caption read, “Christmas Day Slaughter at St. Peter’s Basilica—Pope Injured, Feared Dead.”

When the picture cut to a replay of the earlier live broadcast of the pope’s speech, Gregor—a man who had seen many grisly, ungodly things, who had himself done many grisly, ungodly things— thought he might lose his bland hospital breakfast.

Blood. So much blood. Great, arcing sprays of blood, almost comical in the sheer, unlikely volume of gore, like something from a Tarantino movie. A blur of black fur and claws and muscled sleek bodies, whiskered snouts