The one inconvenience was his clothes. Anything he wore or held in his hands simply dropped to the ground as his body dissolved into mist. He’d never been able to take things with him as Vapor, but he had another utterly unique and powerful Gift at his disposal for that.
He’d come back for his clothes and knives later. Right now he had a runaway to catch.
In a sinuous, pale gray plume of mist, he rose into the air and caught the heated updraft of wind from the boulevard below. He used it to lift him, riding it until he was far above the Colosseum, far enough that anyone looking up would see what appeared to be a small cloud, if oddly swift. Beneath him Rome was laid out in glittering splendor, bedecked in shimmers of copper and gold. The streets were pulsing arteries filled with traffic, snaking away in all directions in streamers of red and white. Above him was the night sky, sapphire dark, dusted with stars.
And there, standing fixed on the sidewalk as pedestrians parted around her like flowing water around a rock, stood Morgan.
Even from this distance he saw her shock, her blank disbelief. She’d gone pale, almost as white as her blouse. She’d felt his Shift; that much was obvious. Had he lips he would have laughed out loud.
Yes, I can Shift to more than just panther, meu caro. I have my mother to thank for that.
He pushed through the atmosphere, up and forward, flying, easy as air, knowing without a doubt that at this exact moment she was cursing his name and recalculating plans. No matter. She could run, she could hide, but she wasn’t getting away.
Ever.
He kept well above as she turned and began to push her way through the throngs of chattering tourists and strolling lovers and elderly women in head scarves and sensible shoes heading out to evening mass. He felt curious and unhurried, the luxuries of self-confidence, and tried to keep out of easy sight as he tailed her, camouflaging himself with varying degrees of success around belfries and chimneys, in the foliage of trees. She kept looking up and behind as she ran but never stopped or even slowed her pace.
She went north, keeping to well-traveled and well-lit streets, darting in and out of churches and trattorias and coffee shops, entering in the front and exiting the back or some other side door, trying to shake him. It was amusing, and he found himself hoping it wouldn’t soon end.
He was having something like—fun.
Then she ran down a flight of steps into an underground entrance to the Metro and he began to worry.
He flashed down the steps behind her, startling a bunch of chortling pigeons on the rail into shrieking flight. He followed the sight of her bobbing dark head—easily identifiable from behind with that fall of shining dark hair that gleamed like sunlight on water, so different from all the others crowding around—into one of the sleek silver cars just as its doors were closing. He flattened himself against the ceiling, spread as thin as he could go around the fluorescent tubes that illuminated the car.
It was packed. Morgan was nowhere in sight.
“Terribly foggy in here,” remarked a white-haired man in Italian, squinting up at the ceiling from his plastic seat below.
“It’s your eyes,” replied his dour wife, waving a dismissive hand at him. “How many times do I have to tell you to get new glasses?” She fumbled around in a lumpy knit handbag, came up with an eyeglass case, and handed it to her husband without another word. Xander took the opportunity to slink away, molecule by molecule, over cold metal and hard gobs of dried gum, toward the rear sliding door.
Morgan wasn’t in the next car. Or the next.
He didn’t begin to really panic until the third stop, after he’d gone through every car on the line and hadn’t found her. Oddly, he found no scent of her anywhere except near the door where she’d entered. As he floated unseen overhead, listening to a pair of pimply teenagers argue the pros and cons of rap versus metal, it hit him.
Morgan had gotten on and off at the same stop.
As he waited for what seemed an eternity, spread thin as smoke against the graffitied tile wall on the Metro platform for the next car that would take him back to the Barberini Fontana di Trevi, Xander began to reevaluate the situation.
Morgan had always wanted a tattoo.
Nothing big, nothing that could be seen by the casual observer, and nothing silly. She wanted it to mean something, something special and soulful and not an idle decoration like a butterfly or a heart.
Not that she’d ever seen a butterfly or heart tattoo. Not in person. Those kinds of whimsies were not allowed in a place like Sommerley, where every duty was to the tribe. Your life and your soul and even your flesh belonged to them and them alone. A tattoo, to most of her kith and kin, would be an abomination. Something profane, something to mar their sacred birthright: beauty.
Something forbidden.
Which was precisely why she felt the need to get one.
“Buonasera,” purred the young man behind the glass counter, sizing her up with eager eyes. He was tall and stooped with greasy skin, hair that badly needed washing, and breath like he’d been on a three-day bender, which she could smell from where she stood. She smiled at him, pretending not to notice.
“Buonasera.”
The shop was small and lit by flickering fluorescent lights in vivid blue and yellow and purple that lent a night circus atmosphere, surreal and dreamy. Several leather chairs lined one wall; hundreds of sample tattoos lined the others. Aside from the man behind the counter, she was the only one in the shop.
All in all, it was perfect.
He moved out from behind the glass counter and came to stand near—too near. His gaze never lifted from the level of her chest. He said something else in Italian that she didn’t understand, a question.
“Tattoo?” She pointed to her right hip. “Here?”
He let his gaze rove down from her chest to her hip. “Sì,” he answered, not altogether steady, and moistened his lips. More unintelligible Italian followed, but she didn’t miss the undercurrent of suggestion or the way he looked at her bare legs.
She turned, went to the front door of the small shop, locked the door, and drew the shade. When she turned back to him he was staring at her with an amusing combination of terror and anticipation, wringing his hands together.
She walked toward him slowly, still with the smile. “Yes, this is your lucky night. Unfortunately for you, my unwashed friend,” she added, reaching out to touch his arm, “you’re not going to remember any of it.”
After the tattoo—which made her happy in the way small children are happy on Christmas morning—she strolled up Il Corso, the main thoroughfare back to the hotel. She was tired and hungry and sore from her earlier jump and from where the needle had pierced her skin. Who knew a hip could be so sensitive? All she wanted now was something to eat, a bath, and bed.
The gelato shop was charming, small like all the other shops on the Corso and still filled with people though the hour was late. She selected pistachio—large—and ate it with a small wooden spoon while she wandered, thoughtful, up the boulevard.
What was Xander doing right now?
She had no doubt of his fury. In his place, she’d feel the same. But she didn’t feel sorry for him. She thought he very much needed a bucket of water to douse the fire that was his ego. So sure of himself, so confident. So domineering. So irritating.
Though a tiny part of her was glad for the distraction. It kept her from thinking too much about the ticking clock of her assignment.
Perhaps she’d gone too far, though. If he truly thought he’d lost her, he’d be on the phone with Sommerley in a heartbeat, calling in reinforcements. She had no doubt she could escape him again, but a city full of Ikati, all intent on finding her, was another situation entirely. The thought gave her the chills.
She pressed on to the hotel at a quicker pace, tossing her empty gelato container in a sidewalk trash can as she went.
Nothing. He found nothing of her, not even a trace of her scent. Not at the Barberini Fontana di Trevi station,
not at the baroque masterpiece fountain of Triton plashing in the plaza above, not along the elegant and bustling Via Veneto, not in the shopping districts or the labyrinth of tiny streets built in the Middle Ages of the Piazza Navona.
She was gone. Vanished.
And she didn’t even have the Gift of Vapor to explain it, though she was collared and wouldn’t have been able to turn anyway. He flew high over the city, district after district passing by below in blurs of painted color, his fury with himself increasing with each passing second.
A known criminal. A threat to the tribe. A pawn of the enemy. How could he have let her escape?
When the light showed faintly green along the eastern horizon, he finally gave up. He flew back to the Colosseum and resumed his human shape, retrieved his clothes and crescent knives, dressed, then took a taxi back to the Hotel de Russie, all the while trying to figure exactly what he would say to Leander and the Sommerley Assembly.
So sorry, but I’ve lost the one person who could destroy us all. Oops?
Somehow he didn’t think that would be sufficient.
At the hotel he brushed past the bowing doorman and took the elevator to the top floor. Once outside the door to the Nijinsky suite, he didn’t even bother with the key. He just Passed through it, clothes and all, and came to an abrupt stop inside the marble foyer.
A softly breathing bump was burrowed into the king-size bed.
Someone was sleeping in the bed.
Just as the thought flashed over him and he reached for his knives, he smelled her, warm sugar and woman, and froze in disbelief.
She came back.
She came back.
It kept repeating in his head like a broken record, anchoring him to the floor with the sheer impossibility of it. Then another, even more confounding thought: Why?
Freedom was hers. She’d—inconceivably—outwitted him, she had the resources to orchestrate her escape to any far corner of the earth, but she came back. The relief that surged through him was cool and prickling, as palpable as rain. It was followed by a gripping desire to know exactly what made this dangerous, maddening, lovely woman tick.
Without making a sound, without turning on any lights, Xander crossed the elegantly furnished living room and went into the master suite to stand beside the bed. He stared down at her sleeping face for several minutes, just watching her. Her hands were folded beneath her cheek as if in prayer; her lashes made a silken black curve over her cheeks. Her hair spilled dark chocolate and mink over the pillows; those full lips, ever red even without lipstick, were soft and slightly parted. She looked beautiful and innocent and totally at peace.
He would be well within his rights to kill her now and not wait the two weeks.
No, he thought immediately. No. That body, that face, those plush ruby lips...no.
Then he cursed his own stupidity and wondered what the hell was wrong with him. She was a deserter! She was a traitor! She was...beautiful. Mysterious. Strong.
He closed his eyes, stretched his neck back, and hissed a long, quiet breath through clenched teeth. Then he retreated to the safety of a leather armchair, set diagonally across from the bed in a corner of the room, removed his knives from their sheaths at the small of his back, and settled back with one gripped in each hand, to wait.
When Morgan opened her eyes in the morning, Xander was standing at the edge of the bed, staring down at her with searing, molten eyes. Clutched in his hands was a pair of wicked-looking knives.
She sat up so abruptly the goose-down pillows slid off the bed. Even as she looked around wildly for something to stab him with—the pen on the night table, yes!—he was backing away, lowering his hands to his sides.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
He seemed to mean it because he retreated as far as the bedroom door before he put his hands behind his back and sheathed the knives at his waist. Then he stood there looking at her silently with his hands loose at his sides.
“Excellent plan,” she said, heart thundering, “because standing over a sleeping person while holding knives is very nonscary.”
No response. The way he looked at her, searching and burningly intent, brought the blood to her cheeks. She pulled the sheets up to her chin and stared defiantly back.
“You came back.” His voice was different than yesterday. Just as grave, but softer somehow.
“I never left,” she answered, cross. “I just...I just...”
He cocked his head in a sharp, birdlike movement that brought to mind a raptor she’d once seen hunting a white rabbit in the New Forest. It hadn’t ended well.
She stood, pulled the sheet from the mattress, and wrapped it around her body. She wore a camisole and panties and nothing else and suddenly felt very exposed. “I’m starving. I think breakfast is in order before we get started.”
He frowned at her as if she were speaking in a foreign language and let his searing gaze drift over the sheet, puckered to folds in her fist. “Started,” he repeated, his voice gone husky.
The blood in her cheeks flamed hotter. He looked starving, too, but perhaps not in quite the same way she was. The thought unnerved her. “With our little mission here.”
He blinked. His gaze traveled back to her face.
“Finding the Expurgari,” she articulated when he still didn’t speak.
One of his eyebrows lifted and, surprisingly, so did one corner of his mouth. “Oh. That. I thought you might have meant get started with gloating.”
Her lips quirked. “I think I had my fill of that last night, while I was...” getting my tattoo, she almost said, but thought better of it. Her free hand drifted down to trace the sore flesh on her hip, and his eyes followed the movement, avid. “Sightseeing,” she finished.
They stared silently at one another. Outside in the pink flush of dawn, church bells began to toll, beautiful and melancholy. Sunlight streamed pale gold and glittering through the slit in the silk curtains to pool on the carpet between them, so bright it almost hurt her eyes.
“Are you going to run away again?” His voice was oddly courteous. It made her suspicious. Perhaps he was having a laugh at her expense.
“Only if you leave any more rude notes,” she shot back, then swept around the end of the bed, headed for the bathroom. She paused at the door and looked back at him over her shoulder.
“No,” he said, quite serious. “I won’t.”
“Well, good then.” She still wasn’t sure if he was mocking her. But the way he looked at her was not mocking at all. His expression was at once grave and faintly confused, ineffably curious. And...hungry.
A surge of heat passed between them, bright as danger. It made her take a step back, beyond the bathroom door. The marble was a cold shock beneath her feet.
“Ah, do you mind if I...?” She gestured to the shower, being careful not to allow her hand to shake.
“Of course,” he said, inclining his head. He stepped back, too, into the living room. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
That, she thought, firmly closing the bathroom door, is exactly what I’m worried about.
Morgan was under much better control by the time breakfast was served.
The café was quaint and sunny, situated directly across from the Keats-Shelley Memorial House at the base of the Spanish Steps. It boasted an excellent view of the terraced garden staircase with its fuchsia riot of ruffled azalea beds, the imposing Renaissance bulk of the Trinità dei Monti church perched at the top, and the tourists that flocked past on the Piazza di Spagna like so many chattering, exotic birds. It was Xander’s choice; he had guided her to it with one hand held lightly under her elbow the entire four-block walk from their hotel.
They sat now in silence in the shade of a white umbrella, looking at everything but one another.
The aproned cameriere came with their demitasse cups of espresso and departed with a bow.
“So. What is your plan?” Xander took a sip from the tiny porcelain cup. In his big
hand it looked like a child’s thing, small and easily breakable.
“I rather hoped you had one.”
Morgan shifted in her chair, settling better against its cushioned back, and lifted her own cup to her lips. She swallowed and tasted heaven: a tiny dose of coffee so fine and strong and sweet it was nearly dessert, topped with a creamy fluff of foam. “God, that’s good,” she said. She finished it in one long draught and sighed in pleasure.
Beside her, Xander smiled. “You don’t have espresso in England?”
“Tea,” she said. “Very fine tea, but nothing at all like this. This is—” She struggled for a moment until he supplied the perfect word.
“Decadent.”
He turned his head to look at her, and the sunlight behind his head caught in his dark hair and haloed it with blue flame. It struck her again how beautiful he was, how savagely graceful, at once mythic and menacing. There was something oddly doomed about him, too, an air of weary sorrow like the memory of too much sin.
Like a fallen angel, she thought, and had to glance away.
“It’s better than what we have in Brazil also.”
She glanced back at him, watching as he drained his cup and set it down, every movement elegant and spare. He looked up at her, rested his elbow on the arm of his chair, then rubbed one finger across his full lips in a slow and thoughtful gesture that also managed to look profoundly erotic.
“Our espresso is grown at lower altitudes, in nonvolcanic soils. Italian blends are more refined.”
“Why does the altitude make a difference?”
“Like wine grapes, only coffee beans grown at high altitudes in rocky, inhospitable soil produce the best fruit.”
She lifted an eyebrow.
Edge of Oblivion: A Night Prowler Novel, Book 2 Page 7