Rapture's Edge

him.”

The assassin’s cold gaze flickered over her. A muscle in his jaw twitched. Still with the weapon pointed at Gregor, he took something out of his coat pocket that glinted metallic silver. He held it out. “Put it on.”

With shaking hands, Eliana reached out and took it, held it up. With the musical chink of metal sliding on metal, it spun in the light for a moment, twisting from her fingers.

“Around your neck,” the assassin instructed with a jerk of his chin. Eliana complied, then folded her arms over her bare chest and stood before him with her chin up, waiting.

Behind her, against the wall, a paralyzed Agent Doe lost his battle with gravity and slid silently to his knees.

The assassin shoved the gun into the waistband of his pants, removed his coat jacket, thrust it at Eliana, and motioned for her to put it on. To Gregor he sent a glance that said, Move and you’re dead.

When Eliana was covered, the assassin said, “The collar will prevent you from Shifting. Any attempt to escape and we’ll kill him, and you. Understood?”

She nodded silently. The assassin grabbed her arm and yanked her forward, pushing her over the bodies on the floor.

“Eliana!” Gregor’s voice cracked. His heart started up again with a painful throb.

He couldn’t see her face, but as she was shoved out the door he heard her whisper, “Good-bye, old friend.”

For a long moment, there was nothing but the sound of the television. His own breathing was a booming racket in his ears. Then, slowly and deliberately, Agent Doe leaned over and retched, gagging up a stream of yellow vomit onto the floor.

37 Oops

Everything had gone perfectly.

Getting in: perfect. The timing: perfect. Meeting alone in the pope’s personal study, just moments prior to his television broadcast: perfect.

It had all gone so well…until it all collapsed into chaos in a horrible, unforeseeable turn of events that made Silas’s head swim with the improbability of it.

It was he and Caesar and Aldo, Ottavio the Expurgari minion in the fedora and cape who’d arranged it all, bowing the introductions in hushed reverence to the Holy Father. The human pope was much more frail than Silas had anticipated—papery skin and a soft, rasping voice, spotted hands that shook more than slightly with age.

His outfit was something, though. Silas had never seen a hat quite so elaborate, or ridiculous.

He’d thanked them for their service to the church, thanked them for their years of dedication and sacrifice, assured Caesar that his father had been a holy warrior in the fight against evil, to which Caesar appeared confused, not knowing his father actually had anything to do with anything involving the church.

Dolt.

More energetic than he looked, the pope prattled on and on in his raspy voice, amusing Silas with his outpouring of thanks. Then even more amusing: a blessing, waved over their heads.

How he wanted to laugh then. How he wanted to clutch his stomach and howl with unmitigated glee.

But of course he did not. He only smiled and nodded, knowing that very shortly those benign, impotent blessings would be forever silenced when Aldo ripped off his face.

They said their farewells and were ushered to an antechamber, where Silas neatly slit Ottavio’s throat. He died quietly gurgling, choking on his own blood with a very surprised expression that brought another smile to Silas’s face.

Even though they know it’s eventually coming, death always seems to take people by surprise.

The three of them waited until the pope’s address started moments later—broadcast live on television, it was also piped in over speakers throughout the papal apartments and the Vatican—and then they simply walked back into the room and began.

There were no guards this deep in the inner sanctum. There was no need. Access from outside was carefully monitored and protected, but as honored guests, they had been ushered right in. So there was no one to give warning, save the two black-robed priests, assistants who repeated the prayer verses into microphones stationed just behind the window where the pope himself stood, overlooking the vast, gathered crowd, reading the opening blessing into his own microphone.

They died first.

Silas didn’t bother having Aldo Shift for that—the two assistants got the same, swift treatment as Ottavio had.

It was only when the pope turned slowly away from the Plexiglas podium, turned and looked behind him in evident confusion when the assistants failed to respond to his verbal prompts, that Silas gave Aldo the go- ahead.

He really wished he’d brought a camera then, because the pope’s expression—seeing a man he’d just blessed and thanked minutes before morph into a huge, snarling predator—was priceless.

It took only seconds, but Aldo knew precisely what to do. He’d been well prepared.

He leapt on the elderly pontiff, dragged him right to the edge of the balcony with his mouth closed over the scruff of his neck as if he were prey—which he was—knocked aside the Plexiglas podium with one sweep of a powerful paw, and dangled him half over the edge.

His voluminous white robes, real gold thread glinting in the bright morning sunlight, fluttered in the cool morning breeze. The tall, elaborate hat toppled from his head and sailed down toward the crowd. Their gasp was collective.

Then Aldo bit down and the gasps turned to screams.

Caesar, standing beside him, laughed at the extravagant spray of blood. Silas turned his head and looked at him, said, “It really is funny, isn’t it?” and then plunged his knife straight through the back of Caesar’s neck. The tip emerged through his open mouth, slick and red.

Caesar didn’t even make a noise. He just jerked, once, and then when Silas yanked the blade out—with the wet suck of raw meat and a grinding of bone against steel—he fell to the floor, dead.

Aldo was preoccupied; it was almost too easy to drive his blade down, two-handed, through the top of his skull. He released his prey with a strangled cry, and both Aldo and the pope slid, limp and bloody, to the stone balcony floor. Then Silas sheathed his knife and backed away, careful not to show his face in the open window. From what he could see of the crowd below, they were in full panic mode, scared witless not only by what had just occurred in the window, but by the coordinated attacks going on down below.

He turned around and let out a startled scream.

There in the middle of the floor, awash in his own blood, sat Caesar.

Staring at him.

Frowning.

He put his hand to the back of his neck, feeling around while Silas gaped at him in stunned incomprehension. He shook his head as if to clear it, spat to clear the blood from his mouth, and then, unbelievably—impossibly—climbed to his feet.

The clamor of shouting and booted feet stomping down the corridor in a rush distracted Caesar, who turned his head toward the noise, but not Silas, who was unable to move a muscle to save his life. A million different explanations flashed through his mind at the speed of light, a million different questions, and always the answer flashing back huge and electric like a Las Vegas neon sign:

No. No. No.

A cadre of armed Swiss Guards burst through the antechamber door. Caesar was the first one they saw,