Rapture's Edge

21

Frozen, he stared at the television and watched as the two gendarmes swiftly maneuvered her—limping—past a crush of shouting reporters and up a wide flight of marble steps toward the double glass doors of the entry to an enormous brick building. Just before she disappeared through the doors, she glanced over her shoulder and looked directly into the camera.

Wide-set doe eyes, liquid soft and black as midnight, stared at him. Through him. D’s heart stopped dead in his chest. He shot out of his chair and at the top of his lungs shouted the only word that came to mind.

“s**t!”

Despite this outburst, none of the other bar patrons chanced a glance in his direction. He came to this dive bar fairly regularly, and they’d more than once seen the huge, glowering, tattooed male beat someone to a pulp for no discernible reason and had learned to keep their eyes averted or risk a beating of their own.

“Nice,” said Constantine dryly as he drummed the fingers of one big hand on the scarred, sticky tabletop between them. His back was to the television. “Is that just a general observation, or are you experiencing some kind of emergency with your bowels?”

“It’s her! On television! It’s her!” D sputtered past numb lips.

Constantine closed his eyes for a second longer than a blink and sighed. “You’ve had about a liter of scotch, D. You’re seeing things. Why don’t you take a seat and we’ll—”

“Turn it up!” D shouted at the skinny bartender, silencing Constantine and launching the bartender into motion. He leapt over the counter and flung himself at the television as if his life depended on it. His shaking fingers found the volume knob, and as Constantine, frowning, turned in his chair to look, a female reporter’s modulated voice filled the dim, smoky room.

“…eluded authorities for the past several years in what has become the most infamous string of art thefts in France’s history. Some of the country’s wealthiest citizens and political figures have been victimized, including the prime minister himself, Francois Fillon, whose personal collection of original Picassos valued at more than five million euros was stolen from his home last year while he and his wife were sleeping.”

The picture changed to a scene of a grinning, middle-aged man standing shirtless and tanned with a glass of champagne on the glistening deck of his massive yacht.

“At this point it isn’t known if she was working alone,” the reporter continued as the picture switched back to the crowd milling around the front of the brick building, “but for now the thief known simply as La Chatte is in custody, and we imagine Paris’s beleaguered police chief is heaving a very loud sigh of relief that this protracted chase is over and the elite’s personal fortunes are, once again, safe. Reporting live from the Paris prefecture of police, this is Lisa Campbell with CNN International News. Back to you, Bob.”

D stood staring at the television long after Bob-the-balding-reporter had segued into another story. His breathing was erratic, his heartbeat was wild, and his hands twitched by his side, but all that was secondary to the storm of howling white that raged in his skull.

La Chatte. The Cat. Infamous, elusive thief.

Eliana, love of his life, source of his joy and his pain and three years’ worth of the kind of soul-searing agony he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy, was La Chatte. Now in police custody in France.

D’s big hands curled into fists at his side.

In spite of his bulk and the array of weaponry hidden beneath his long black coat, Constantine rose gracefully and soundlessly from his chair. “D,” he said sternly, reading what was plain on his face, “don’t even think about it.”

D’s gaze narrowed. Though most of their kind were beautiful to the point of being meaningless, Constantine—he of the glossy black hair and glorious cheekbones and long, feminine eyelashes—outshone them all. At the moment, D had a mind to wreck that perfect face with a devastating punch to the middle of it.

“Don’t you even think of trying to talk me out if it,” he snarled. He took a step back, and his chair skittered back across the faded checkerboard linoleum with a nerve-scraping screech.

“Celian won’t allow it,” answered Constantine. The subtle adjustments in his stance and the calculation in his eyes signaled he’d made the instant shift from brother to sparring partner. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d gone toe to toe, and it likely wouldn’t be the last. “And she’s wanted by the Council of Alphas—”

“f**k the Council!” D bellowed. Two humans sitting at a booth in the back stood up and made their way quickly toward the back door.

Constantine set his jaw and leveled him a steely, intense look that would have drained the blood from anyone else’s face. D, however, didn’t bat an eye. Very quietly Constantine said, “Think about this for a minute. If we’ve seen her on television, they’ve seen her, too, and they’re on their way. None of us are authorized to act on this, especially not you. And you know what happens if you go rogue, brother. They’ll take you out before the Bellatorum can even blink. You saw how serious they were. You do not want to get in the way of The Hunt.”

The Hunt. A group of eight of the deadliest hunters picked from the four other Ikati colonies, tasked with one thing: find the missing principessa, her brother, and the small group of loyalists who’d vanished with her three years ago, and bring them in to face the Council.

For interrogation. For elimination.

D’s heart twisted at the thought. “You think I’m going to let them touch her,” he snarled, every inch of him bristling, “you’re crazy! I’m going. Now.