Edge Of Oblivion

37

“All right. We’ll come back tomorrow.” He made a move to take her arm, and she sent him a look of such frozen hostility it held his hand in place.

“I’m not an invalid,” she said.

He pressed his lips together to keep from smiling. “Clearly.”

“And you already know I’m not going to run away.”

“So you’ve said,” he replied, curt.

“Then why do you keep taking my arm whenever we’re walking?”

Because I like to touch you.

“Habit.” It was the first thing out of his mouth but not what he’d been thinking and obviously not what she was expecting, either, if her expression was any indication.

“So you’re a gentleman killer,” she said with soft scorn. “Did they teach you that at Assassin Academy? How to Make Nice with Your Prey One O One?”

He closed his eyes for just longer than a blink and found the memory of another soft, feminine arm he’d once loved to touch ready to torture him with fresh pain. Being around Morgan was peeling back the scabs on some old, nasty wounds, and he didn’t know what to do about it.

“My mistake. It won’t happen again.”

His voice was shorn of all emotion, but something dark moved within him, something angry and violent that needed an outlet. He felt the urge to fight, to beat something bloody, so keenly she sensed it and took a quick step back, blinking. He stared at her, cold as stone, then turned his back and walked away, out into the blinding bright sunshine of St. Peter’s Square.

And there, ringed around the base of the soaring granite obelisk in its center, stood six huge Ikati males, feral as wolves, staring right at him.

Adrenaline blasted like dynamite through his veins. Xander spun around, took four long running strides back inside the cathedral, grabbed Morgan’s arm, and yanked her hard against him.

“Run!” he hissed into her ear. He shoved her in front of him.

She yelped in surprise and slipped in her heels over the slick marble, but it didn’t matter because he was right behind her, shoving her forward, holding her up when she stumbled.

“Xander! What’s going on! What are you—”

He didn’t listen to a word she said, didn’t listen to the startled gasps of the people he shoved by, didn’t slow or look back to see if they were being followed. He knew his best—his only—chance of getting Morgan to safety was to move fast. Faster than them.

The two of them skidded around an enormous marble column, her heels clattering against the floor. She lost one then the other as he towed her mercilessly toward the great, golden papal altar where morning service was being held in the shadow of the colossal Baldacchino, a ninety-five-foot-tall bronze monument carved by Bernini.

He felt the Ikati males enter the front of the cathedral one by one, dark bursts of energy that stung his skin like needles.

Morgan felt it too because she gasped and stiffened, turning to look over her shoulder.

“No!” he shouted, pulling her forward. His shout splintered to a thousand nos that collided and crashed together overhead in the vast sunlit dome like the broken chiming of bells. The red-robed bishop conducting mass didn’t miss a beat—he looked about a hundred years old and was probably deaf—but several dozen worshippers turned in their chairs and craned their necks to get a look at the disturbance.

They flew by the worshippers, ran into the massive, semicircular, white-and-gold transept, skidded around red velvet ropes on stanchions erected to keep the public out of this off-limits area, and headed directly for the altar and its mosaic of the martyrdom of St. Processus.

“Hold your breath!” Xander shouted, towing Morgan behind him like a tug. Up and over the marble steps, across the altar, right to the wall with the colorful mosaic—

Morgan balked, panicking. “Where are you going? There’s no way out!”

But of course there was. “Just hold your breath!” he shouted again and tightened his grip on her hand. He hit the wall first and her shocked scream cut off into silence.

Cold, hard stone. Heavy, crushing weight. Hazy darkness and utter quiet and the feel of her hand in his, heat and softness and life among all the dead rock Passing through his pores.

And then they were through it.

They emerged onto a strip of grass along the busy street behind the cathedral, and Morgan fell to her knees, gasping and coughing. The sudden sunlight was blinding.

A double-decker tourist bus rumbled past. Xander, without giving her a chance to recover or start cursing at him, hauled Morgan to her feet. He had to put his hands under her armpits to get her moving forward because her legs seemed incapable of carrying her weight.