Edge Of Oblivion

3

Then all of a sudden the frigid, dark underground prison hummed with a pleasant snap of electricity that sent a wash of honeyed warmth over his skin in wave after perfumed wave. God, she was powerful. Feeling her Shift was like standing a few feet away from a lightning strike, just as electrifying, just as lethal. And she smelled of something warm and luscious, like maple syrup or brown sugar, only darker, finer, completely unlike his fiancée, who was scented of lilac and rosewater, girlishly sweet—

“Nathaniel,” a voice purred, feminine and smooth, as dark and delicious as her scent. It sent a rash of goose bumps crawling over his skin. He saw movement beyond the open cell door. A figure glided forward through shadows without noise, maneuvering with unstudied grace and sleek elegance. A hand on the doorframe, then a face that seemed to manifest from thin air, arched brows and huge almond eyes and lovely full lips curved into a small smile that might have been sadness or disdain. She stepped forward past the door and into his puddle of weak yellow light, and Nathaniel could not stop the gasp that parted his lips.

She was naked. Incredibly, perfectly, naked.

His mind wiped blank. The cattle prod lowered to his side. Random words formed in his mind then vanished, swallowed by pleasure and astonishment: lovely; full; curve; satin; slender; sweet; soft; want; yes, want—

“Nathaniel,” she said again, amused at his slack-jawed admiration. “The Williams boy. I remember you.” Her gaze flickered over him, uncomfortably keen, then she smiled. “You’re all grown up.”

His tongue would not work. He could not form a coherent thought.

“I’m unfortunately without clothes,” Morgan continued, turning her wrist in a slow, graceful motion to indicate her spectacular nudity. He tried to sputter out a reply, but she went on, ignoring him. “Would you be a dear and find me something nice to wear to my execution?”

The great hall of Sommerley Manor was noisy, crowded, and hot. The tall, lead-paned windows that lined the west wall were thrown open in their casements, letting in the heather-scented glory of an English country afternoon. A desultory breeze ruffled the ivory silk curtains but did nothing to cool the sea of bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder in the grand, gilded room.

Though the entire tribe had wanted to attend the proceedings, only so many would fit, so the Assembly had held a lottery. Feeling immensely pleased with themselves for both the turnout and the demonstration of faux democracy that so gratified the crowd, the group of fifteen men now sat pompous and preening on an elevated dais at the front of the room behind a long oak table draped in somber gray linen, nodding to the crowd and murmuring smug congratulations to one another.

Erected in the center of the crowded, cavernous room was a tall, evil-looking device atop a scaffold. A clever assembly of blood-darkened wood and shining metal and sharp, angled blades, the machine had been rolled in on a wheeled platform from its storage place in a well-avoided shed near the back of the property, once the gamekeeper’s storage shack. Now it housed a collection of macabre items such as this, racks and crushers and saws and garrotes, used not infrequently. Beside the machine stood a hooded executioner, hulking and silent.

Though well entrenched in the twenty-first century, the soul of the tribe had not changed in millennia. Neither had its Law, nor the punishment for those who broke it.

And colluding with the enemy exacted the direst punishment of all.

Beside the dais on their own platform were two elaborately carved mahogany chairs, cushioned and large. In one sat a man, handsome and leonine, wolf-eyed and silent, black-haired like the rest of his kin. His posture was relaxed except for the tanned forefinger of his right hand, which kept a steady beat against the polished arm of his throne, belying his inner turmoil. The throne beside him, toward which he sent a swift, occasional glance, sat empty.

His wife had refused to attend.

They’d been close, everyone knew, the new Queen and the traitor the excited crowd awaited. And the Queen had taken the betrayal particularly hard.

It was common knowledge also that the Queen had thus far refused to intervene or even offer an opinion on what was to be done in the name of justice. This was taken as a clear sign of her approval of the Assembly’s resolution, though it was well within her rights and authority to do exactly as she wished, even as far as granting a full pardon. She alone stood outside the Law that so tightly bound the rest of her kind; she alone was sovereign, even above her husband, the Alpha, strongest male of all the colony. Unlike the rest, if she wished it she could leave, or stay, or dance a naked jig atop the lighted ball that dropped on New Year’s Eve in Times Square, so many thousands of miles away. She’d come from the outside world and was free to rejoin it yet had elected to stay with her clan of secretive, Gifted people and her handsome, distracted husband, who now waited to watch an execution he approved of but did not wish to witness.

Because she’d chosen to stay, her people adored her. And because she had chosen not to intervene in their business, the Assembly had—grudgingly—begun to offer her their respect.

With a slow, majestic pageantry that swiftly silenced the gathered crowd, the ivory-and-gold-leaf double doors at the far end of the Great Hall swept open, and everyone turned, breathless, to look.

Until she actually saw what awaited her, Morgan had thought herself prepared for this moment. She had stupidly hoped it would be swift and relatively painless: the guillotine, beheading by sword, a firing squad perhaps. Something she could endure with dignity that would cause more pain to her psyche than to her body. Something poetic or tragic or morbidly elegant.