A pair of gloves and seven words, all harmless in themselves. Yet nothing in as long as she could remember struck such a raw chord of bitter resentment deep in her heart. The collar, now this. Did he really expect her to humor him and wear the gloves, voluntarily giving up the final Gift at her disposal? Leaving her defenseless, completely at the mercy of fate?
No. Her hands would remain bare, and God help him if he tried to force them on. As for dinner...she’d rather have dinner with the devil than with him.
She ignored the gloves, balled up the note, tossed it to the floor, and went down to the lobby, where she hailed a taxi and disappeared into the purple-blue haze of the warm Roman dusk.
From his position behind the spreading branches of a potted raffia palm in the lobby bar, Xander watched her go and won a bet with himself. Then he took the next cab and instructed the driver to follow her.
Morgan had no idea where she was going until she saw, ethereal and enormous and uplit in a vivid wash of gold, the jagged stone outline of the Colosseum. It was the hugest thing she’d ever seen, an ellipsis of pale yellow blocks of travertine and tufa the length of a football field with a three-story façade of superimposed arcades, arched hollows where enormous statues of gods and emperors had once stood. The dark hollows stared out over the city like rows of empty eyes.
“There!” she said to the driver, excited, pointing through the open window.
He glanced at her in the rearview mirror. He was graying and paunchy and utterly nondescript, but his eyes were like dark chocolate, liquid and sweet, and she saw the echo of the younger man he’d once been.
“Dove?” he said around his cigarette, pulling the two syllables out in a languid, sensual tenor that also belied his age. And made her appreciate his ambition.
“The Colosseum,” she said, hopeful. Surely that translated to any language?
“È chiuso.” He made a gesture with his hand that sent pale gray whorls of smoke rising in ghostly circles from the cigarette now held between his fingers. “Tour fermano a cinque.”
She recognized only one word of this languidly delivered answer, which was chiuso—closed. “It’s okay.” She gave him the international sign for approval: a thumbs-up. “Please—per favore—take me to the Colosseum.”
He shrugged and kept on through the snarl of evening traffic, several times barely avoiding hitting one of the dozens of scooters that whizzed by the taxi at lightning speed. They turned onto Via dei Fori Imperiali, and Morgan watched it grow closer and closer, a hulking giant erected right in the heart of the city nearly two thousand years ago. The cab slowed to a stop at the curb. This garnered a chorus of irate honking and shouts of “Spostati!” from the line of cars behind them.
“Grazie,” she said, the only other Italian word she knew besides please. She leaned over the front seat, touched her hand to the driver’s shoulder, and met his eyes in the rear-view mirror. “Grazie,” she said again, softer. He nodded, slowly, and she left him with a smile and the impression he’d been paid for the ride. And handsomely tipped.
Though denied access by locked iron gates, three times the height of a man, that closed off every arched entrance, throngs of people still strolled around the grassy perimeter of the Colosseum, talking, laughing, smoking, taking pictures in front of it. She felt like a tourist herself, awed and amazed, craning her neck to gaze up in wonder. She’d only ever been allowed out of Sommerley once, on a trip with Leander to Los Angeles, and that city was so elementally different from this one that trying to compare them would be like comparing water to fire.
But Rome. Oh, Rome.
Even the air was different here, warm and soft and filled with life, ripe with birdsong and honking horns, nearby laughter and far-off singing, heady with the scent of fresh-baked bread and sun-warmed stone. A stocky, bespectacled man with a mouth like a dried prune approached and said something to her in Japanese, gesturing to his camera and his tiny, smiling wife standing a few feet away beside a low fence.
“Of course. Yes!” she said, without realizing she’d never held a camera in her life and had no idea how to operate one. Her confusion became quickly apparent, and the man, in broken English, gently showed her how to focus the lens and which button to push.
When it was done they were beaming and bowing and shaking her hand, and Morgan experienced a feeling so unfamiliar and strange it took her a moment to identify. Like optimism but stronger, a buoyant confidence and goodwill and sweet anticipation all rolled into one.
Hope. She felt hope.
The Japanese couple thanked her one last time and moved away, leaving her standing stunned and alone, awash in sentimentality for this new bud of feeling she’d glimpsed, which she knew without question wouldn’t live long.
And neither will you, a small voice whispered in her ear, if you don’t get going.
She stared up at the golden stone bulk of the Colosseum.
One look inside, she decided, just a tiny bit of sightseeing since she’d most likely never have the opportunity again, and then she’d figure out where to begin her search.
Starting off at a casual stroll, Morgan made her way across the greenbelt of grass and around the cobblestone-paved perimeter, wondering at how open it was, how accessible even with the iron gates. She could walk right up and touch it. And she did, running her fingers over cracks and bumps and warm, roughened stone, over a small, faded patch of blue-and-black graffiti on the inner curve of a graceful Ionic column, missed by whoever was tasked with removing it. She moved on, noting with no small satisfaction that she was alone and unwatched—practically free—in a foreign country, something that even two months ago would have been unthinkable, a total impossibility.
She couldn’t help the wicked smile that curved her lips, wondering what he had done when he’d discovered her gone. She hoped it involved a stroke.
Around a turn where the outer façade abruptly gave way to what was left of the shorter, inner amphitheater walls, she paused to look around. Few tourists were near this section, only a group of teenagers sitting cross-legged perhaps fifty yards away in a semicircle under the boughs of a gnarled fir tree, smoking something sweet and acrid that didn’t smell like tobacco. One of them snorted and punched another in the shoulder, and they all fell into fits of giggling.
She doubted very much if they’d notice what she was about to do.
The strappy heels she kicked off into a corner, though she hated the thought of leaving her favorite pair of Chanel sandals out in the open like sitting ducks. Then with one final, furtive glance around, she wrapped her hands around the cold iron bars of the gate, looked up, and began to climb.
Caught between fury, disbelief, and that same odd, fleeting admiration he’d felt at the hotel when she’d—almost—made a porter regurgitate his lunch on him, Xander watched the lithe, confident figure of Morgan scale the outer façade of the Colosseum like a spider advancing up a wall.
There were hundreds of people within shouting distance, hundreds more speeding by through evening traffic on the boulevard just beyond. She was totally exposed. Only one of them would have to look up to see the pair of long, bare legs, the dark hair like a brushstroke down her back, the white blouse stark as daylight against the night.
What was she thinking? Was she thinking? If any of the lingering tourists snapped a photo of her—worse, a video, nightmare of nightmares—they’d both lose their heads.
He’d seen Ikati executed for far less egregious offenses than this.
Secrecy. Silence. Allegiance to the tribe. That was all there was, for all of them, since the beginning of time, all that kept them safe against exposure, against discovery.
Evidently Morgan was done with all three.
For the third time since he’d made her acquaintance less than eight hours ago, Xander was spun on a wheel of emotion, from anger to amusement to surprise and beyond, all of it fighting for dominance at once. He hadn’t felt this—much—in nearly twenty years, since he was sixteen, deep in the throes of
an agony so profound he’d never been able to speak of it again.
He darted out from beneath the gloom of the row of shaped cypress where he’d been standing, ran with long, silent strides to a stretch of wall where no tourists lingered, and pressed his body full against it. He exhaled, took a step back, and melted into the warm, scratchy stone.
“Wow.”
There was simply no other word to describe it.
Morgan stood in her bare feet at the very top of the uppermost arcade, looking down on what was once the sandy floor of the Colosseum. The floor had long ago been removed except for a re-creation of it at one end. The structures beneath were now exposed, a two-level network of tunnels and crumbling subterranean chambers, winding and shadowed in the starlight.
A warm, light wind buffeted her body, swirled her hair into her eyes. Wanting to feel the rocky earth and tufts of green grass beneath her feet, she decided to go down and explore it. Just as she made a move to jump down to the next level of worn stone seats below, there came a voice, low and hostile.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She froze. For a single, horrifying instant, she pictured herself in prison—human prison this time—locked away for trespassing on a national treasure. But then she turned and it was Xander, not one of the local polizia, renowned for their ferocity.
Morgan didn’t know which was worse.
“What do you think I’m doing, genius?” she said coldly, squaring her shoulders. “What I came here to do: search for the Expurgari.”
“Really?” he replied, just as cold. He appraised her with a slightly curled lip. “Because what you’re doing seems closer to sightseeing than searching.”
“You can read minds?” she snapped, folding her arms across her chest.
That curled lip of his drew back even farther, and she desperately wanted to slap the smirk right off his face.
“Doesn’t take a genius to figure it out,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “You’re practically hyperventilating with excitement.”
He put a slight emphasis on the word genius, and the urge to slap him grew exponentially stronger. Smug bastard. And she was not hyperventilating.
“And by the way,” he continued before she could reply, “let’s get something straight. You need to ask—nicely, which I know will present a challenge for you—for permission to leave the hotel. And if I grant that permission, it’s only on the condition that I’m coming with you. I need to know exactly where you are at all times, so in the future you’re not to go anywhere without asking me first. Understood?”
Morgan had heard the term blood boiling on many occasions, but she suddenly, completely grasped its true meaning. Fire flowed through her veins, scorching hot.
“I’m not going to ask your permission for anything, ever,” she enunciated slowly. “But I’ll inform you that I’m going to go down there,” she pointed to the shadowed floor of the amphitheater, “to take a look around.”
Xander took a single step forward out of the shadows. His amber eyes burned like embers in the hard, dark angles of his face. Dressed entirely in black, he looked as if he’d been caught in an unexpected dust storm: a fine coat of pale yellow dust clung to his clothes and skin, even dulled the shine of his gleaming jet hair. She hated to admit it, but even dirty and angry, he was the most gorgeous man she had ever seen.
In a tone filled with dark threat, he said, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Well, obviously you’re not me. And going down there is exactly what I’m going to do.”
“No,” he replied, emphatic. “You’re not.”
Morgan pushed her windblown hair from her eyes and glared at him. “I’m not asking permission!”
“And I’m not making a suggestion. You’re not going anywhere but down those stairs”—he jerked his head, indicating the wide stone steps that led to the lower levels and the street—“and back to the hotel. With me. Now.”
His hands were empty and flexed open. He stood with his legs apart, knees slightly bent, weight on the balls of his feet. Fighting stance. She recognized it from years of fencing lessons she’d been forced to take by her father. His archaic ideas of femininity were probably surpassed only by those of this dust-encrusted Spartan glaring daggers at her.
“I didn’t realize Leander sent you along so you could irritate me to death.”
He smiled—grim, without a trace of humor or warmth—and answered in the most menacing tone she’d ever heard, delivered soft as silk. “Whatever works.”
Oh, oh, and oh. The flush of blood that crept up her neck to spread throbbing over her ears was hot, painfully so. She felt shamed and unsteady, unduly exposed, and knew without question he had aimed for exactly that.
Don’t let him see it! Don’t let him win!
“You’re lucky you collared me.” Her voice was steady, her face was composed, but everything inside was a riot of lashing emotion. The need to Shift ate through her blood like acid, but she was crippled by the damn collar. That’d he’d put on. She cocked her head and let her gaze travel over him. Measuring. “But I’ll bet...”
“What?” he prompted. His fingers flexed.
She smiled sweetly at him. “I’ll bet I’m still faster than you.”
A heartbeat before he recognized the challenge, then his expression changed, a microscopic shift from flat contempt to something more heated, closer to curiosity, or anticipation. “Don’t even think—”
Before he could finish his sentence, Morgan turned, took two long, running steps, and launched herself off the Colosseum’s highest wall and out into empty space.
When she was fifteen years old, Morgan Shifted for the first time.
Tremors of it had been surfacing for years. A flash of illusory pain in her bones, an unexpected sharpening of smell and hearing. All the Ikati had heightened senses from birth, but suddenly she was able to smell a bird on the wing from miles off and know if it was hawk or starling, suddenly she was able to see every dewdrop on every blade of grass on the lawn outside from the window of her second-story bedroom. She heard the fir trees humming with sap, she tasted rain days ahead, she felt the earth turn beneath her feet. All of nature came into brilliant, perfect focus, and she was at the very center of it all, a locus of awareness.
Then, on the morning of her fifteenth birthday, she finally Shifted to panther and discovered that in addition to strength and agility and sharpened senses, she could run so very fast.
She knew that even with the collar she’d still have that lightning speed. And there was no chance in hell Mr. Rules and Regulations would Shift to pursue her, because the Law expressly forbade them from Shifting in front of humans.
He’d have to follow her on foot.
She sailed through the warm evening air, suspended for a breathless moment—heart pounding, arms spread wide, hair snapping in a long, dark flag behind her—and landed on a patch of grass just feet from a stone bench where two lovers were locked in a passionate embrace. They broke apart with gasps and began to exclaim in startled Italian, but she ignored them and concentrated instead on regaining her equilibrium. The ground was hard and the jolt hurt like hell, but she knew no bones would be broken. A fifteen-story free fall really wasn’t all that bad; she’d once fallen twice as far from the top of an ancient, towering fir in the New Forest at Sommerley and barely been bruised.
Breathing heavily, still crouched on the ground, she looked over her shoulder and craned her neck to where she’d just been to see if he’d followed.
But he hadn’t. He stared down, a small figure in black awash in gold lights, alone at the top of the Colosseum, watching her with those canny amber eyes. Feeling strong and alive and free, she blew him a kiss, then took off at a run.
From the uppermost arcade wall, Xander watched as Morgan, in a truly astonishing display of impudence, lifted her hand to her face, puckered her red, generous lips, and blew him a kiss.
In spite of himself, he huffed a short, dis
believing laugh. He was Ira de Deus. Famed, feared assassin. Bringer of death.
No one—no one—had ever treated him with such disrespect.
His regard for her grew in exact proportion to his outrage. He’d never met anyone who’d dared take such liberties as this. She was cocky and defiant, definitely reckless, and seemed to care not a damn about his reputation or the very real and imminent possibility he would be the one to end her life.
She was...fearless. He’d never met anyone like her.
For a brief, deranged moment as he watched her rise from her crouch on the grass and sprint off barefoot across the boulevard, traffic screeching to a halt in both directions as she passed, he was held fixed by surprise and admiration and simply watched her run. She bounded graceful and fleet like a Thomson’s gazelle through the snarl of cars and taxis and Vespas, even clearing the hood of a red Fiat that didn’t stop in time in one graceful, long-legged leap.
His hand lifted automatically to the Ba Gua Zhang crescent moon knives sheathed in a slim leather scabbard at the small of his back, hidden inside his belt. Gifted to him by his capoeira master when he was just a boy, they were fifteenth-century throwing knives, folding and perfectly weighted, in pristine condition though frequently used.
He hesitated, then dropped his hand. Had it been anyone else, there would have been a blade protruding between those swiftly retreating shoulders by now. Deserters were a dire threat to the tribe, and he’d caught—or killed—every one he’d been sent to look for.
But it isn’t anyone else. The thought rose, errant, to needle him. It’s her.
Without bothering to examine exactly what that meant, he lifted his gaze to the sky and saw the twinkling stars, the fat, perfect pearl of the rising moon. Then he closed his eyes and let it rise to a burning peak within him, the writhing bright power of the Shift, ever there just beneath his skin.
Then, without noise or warning, he dissolved into mist.
It was the same every time, effortless as breathing, a mere focus of the will. As if an eyelid had been peeled back to reveal everything around him in vivid color from all angles, he perceived above and below exactly as he perceived forward and back. There was no impediment to his sight, though he lacked eyes through which to focus or even, for that matter, a head. He existed as a part of the very air itself, weightless, and moved through it by applied thought—up, down, fast, slow.
Edge of Oblivion: A Night Prowler Novel, Book 2 Page 6