Rapture's Edge

Of all the places in all the world to spend a clandestine night alone, the Louvre museum in Paris is quite possibly the finest. Of course, to do so is illegal. Visiting hours are nine in the morning to six in the evening every day except Tuesday, with slightly extended hours on Wednesdays and Fridays. But for visitors with certain special abilities, visiting hours mean exactly zero. Because when you can vanish into mist and nothingness by the mere focus of your will, a great many rules and regulations applicable to others cease to impress you. It was one of these “special” people—beings, rather, or more accurately creatures—who happened to be contemplating a sculpture by Michelangelo titled Dying Slave at twenty minutes to three on one starlit, crystalline December morning, hours before daybreak and even longer before the tourists would begin to line up outside again. At almost eight feet tall, the dramatic, bone-hued marble sculpture of a naked man bound at wrist and chest was described by the plaque beneath as “the moment when life capitulates before the relentless force of dead matter.” Brilliant, mused Eliana Cardinalis as she stood before the statue, admiring the uncanny representation of that fleeting moment just before death. I know just how he feels. As naked as the dying marble figure she was so arrested by, she wasn’t cold or uncomfortable or in any way self-conscious. She was, simply, content. Alone—blessedly alone and free of the watchful eyes and whispers that normally followed her—her natural curiosity and good humor returned. She’d rambled through the cool, echoing corridors of the museum for longer than strictly necessary for the task at hand, but a pastoral Monet had called to her, then a fierce Caravaggio, then a glassed display of Egyptian funerary implements laid over woven palm leaves in a fascinating, ghoulish row. The canopic jars—ceramic receptacles for storing the inner organs of a mummy—had made her snort in disdain. Dead was dead, but her kin, the ancient Egyptians, wholeheartedly believed in life after death, a leap of faith Eliana found seriously lacking. Stupidly lacking. She knew from firsthand experience that leaps of faith were nothing more than acts of willful self-delusion. Nowadays, she operated on two simple principles: I’ll believe it when I see it and It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission. Both had served her far better than the blind faith of her childhood. Faith was a luxury she could no longer afford. But she hadn’t always been a cynic. Born and raised far below ground in a dark, sprawling labyrinth of incense-scented catacombs no human eye had ever seen, her education in the lore of ancient gods and secret spells, of rituals steeped in magic, had been thorough and effective. She prayed to all the old gods and left offerings of handmade lace and ripe fruit for the new, she lit candles in honor of dead ancestors, she watched with all her kin on the once-monthly Purgare nights as the silk-wrapped ashes of the unfortunates who didn’t survive the Transition bobbed slowly down the Tiber on balsawood planks until they vanished from sight around a sinuous bend in the dark river. She accepted all she was taught by her elders with the open-armed trust of childhood, because even at twenty-three when most would have considered her a woman, Eliana had been still in many ways a child. Then three years ago everything changed. Now, from necessity, she was all grown up. But she wasn’t thinking about any of that as she stood in silent contemplation of the Michelangelo. She was thinking she’d better get moving because the night guard would make his scheduled appearance around the far corner of the sculpture hall in exactly three minutes and seventeen seconds, and she had a painting to steal before he did. With a sigh of regret, she turned from the statue and made her way silently down the shadowed marble hall, enjoying the feel of the cool air on her naked skin. She rounded another corner and stopped abruptly as she caught sight of Canova’s famous statue. Erotic and beautiful, the marble work titled Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss depicted two mythological lovers ensnared forever in a passionate near-kiss. Seeing that—Cupid’s languorous embrace, Psyche’s sensual, pliant surrender—sparked an unwanted memory that pierced her heart, sharp as knives. Demetrius. Her stomach twisted into a knot. Heat made her face feel molten. Then abruptly, without sound or warning, the flesh and bone woman that was Eliana dissolved into mist. She didn’t even need to consciously think it anymore—Vapor—Shifting was as natural to her as breathing, as natural as the first time it had happened to her at thirteen years old when her cunaria had tried to force her to eat boiled eggs and she’d balked. One minute she was sitting at the polished stone table with her lips smashed together in disgust, the next—poof! Vanished. Only the strongest of her kind could Shift to Vapor, and so she was grateful, but to this day she loathed eggs. Vapor was only one of her many Gifts, but one that offered a precious benefit the others didn’t: escape. Now, relieved of the terrible burden of feelings, she floated in a ruffling pale gray plume for a moment, regaining equilibrium. Disconnected from a body, she was still herself—her mind remained, as did the strength of her will—but there was no heartbeat, no respiration, no emotion or digestion, just the lovely and calming sensation of freedom from gravity. Of herself, weightless as air. An applied thought—up—and she drifted toward the ceiling, far enough above the lovers below that they became slightly less offensive. She turned away and surged off through the vast darkness of the museum, a shimmering cloud of Vapor headed toward room 77 and the Romantic paintings, where one of her other powerful Gifts would come into play.