“Anything?” he murmured, close behind her.
She held very still with her head cocked, as if listening. She looked left and then right, frowning a little, her chin lifted. Her gaze traveled up the soaring marble columns to the vaulted ceiling far above, and she paused, considering. Then she dropped her lashes and looked at the floor beneath her feet.
“It’s...odd,” she finally said. “There’s a faint echo of something. Almost like déjà vu. But I can’t put my finger on where it might be coming from. It’s like he’s everywhere. And nowhere.”
Xander was disappointed, primarily because he’d found only the same thing in his search the night before. It made him a little harsher than he should have been. He was really looking forward to getting his hands on this bastard.
“Well, that’s helpful. Maybe it’s
God
you feel.”
Her lips flattened. She turned to look him full in the face. “You,” she said, “are an unmitigated
ass
.”
He stared back at her, wrestling with the urge to kiss her again. Those damn
lips
—
“And you’re not trying hard enough,” he said, his voice tight. “If he’s close you should be able to find him, like you did yesterday. Just concentrate.”
“If it were that easy, I’d have found him already!” she said, exasperated. “Maybe it’s this building.” She wrinkled her nose at the lighted casket. “There’s too much weird juju in here.”
He had to admit the dead guy was giving off a really funky odor beneath all that careful casket sealant. And there was something else he couldn’t place, something unnerving, a whiff of ancient earth and dead air and cold, unlit corridors. It reminded him of a crypt. It also very inconveniently interfered with his own ability to sense his surroundings as fully as he normally did. Everything was oddly muted.
It had been the same last night. He’d waited for the sun to go down before attempting to infiltrate the cupola where the man in white had disappeared. The scent of Alpha was on the stone outside and the glass panes, even lingered like an afterthought in the air above the altar, but then it evanesced and disappeared altogether. But there was something, some indefinable energy, in the very walls of the cathedral itself, vibrating from the foundations...
It made no sense. None of this made any sense.
The only reason he could fathom why an
Ikati
would go anywhere near what many considered the holiest church in Christendom was total ignorance. Since the half-Blood Queen Cleopatra had incited the rage of Caesar Augustus in AD 30, the
Ikati
had been hunted and persecuted, had long ago retreated into silence and small, well-fortified colonies to survive. The situation worsened in the thirteenth century when Pope Gregory IX instituted the Inquisition. Along with heretics, cats were declared diabolical. That set the stage for massive, church-approved executions. Cats were witches’ familiars, associated with the devil, dirty animals not to be trusted.
Too bad for humans. Because by the time the Black Plague hit a century later, there were barely any cats left to eat all those disease-carrying, flea-infested rats. Half of Europe’s population was wiped out in just a few years.
“Maybe we should go back to the Spanish Steps and try again there.” Morgan looked hopefully toward the massive doors behind them that led outside into fresh air and sunlight.
She didn’t look completely recovered from whatever spell the Alpha had put her under; she was still a little too flushed. And if he was still lurking around somewhere, Xander definitely didn’t want to give him another chance to get inside her skull.
“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.
15
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
no
s 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.
“Get on that bus and get back to the hotel,” he growled, shoving her into the street, stopping oncoming traffic with one vicious look. He picked up speed and she ran along with him, breathing hard, finding her balance. The tour bus was only yards ahead. “Lock yourself in. If I’m not back by sundown, call Leander and tell him there’s a feral colony here, not just the one male we saw yesterday.
And then get the hell out of here. But wait until sundown, you understand?”
“A
colony
?” she sputtered, panting. They reached the bus and ran alongside it for a few paces.
Then she grabbed a bar at the back where a set of stairs rose to the second deck and hopped on. She turned and stared at him with huge, frightened eyes. Her hair swirled all around her face in the wind.
His nostrils flared. There was something darker in the scent that hit his nose, something even warmer and more spiced than her usual, natural perfume. His pulse, already pounding, responded to it as if he’d been injected with adrenaline. Every muscle in his body tightened, and he felt a sudden surge of aggression that was not related to the males they’d left behind.
Sweet Jesus, he knew that scent. He knew what his body was telling him.
And he had to get the hell away from her.
Right. Now.
He stopped running abruptly. He stood in the middle of the street with cars honking and people shouting at him and watched the bus drive away. Morgan clung to the brass rail as it bounced along, watching him with those huge green eyes, face flushed, legs long and bare beneath her slim black skirt.
“Wait until sundown!” he shouted. She nodded. The bus rounded a corner and disappeared.
“
Abiit cum femina
,” said Aurelio, staring hard at the colorful mosaic the two interlopers had just disappeared through. Though she was gone, he still had her scent in his nose, lingering sweet on the back of his tongue, and it was like nothing he’d ever tasted. Rich. Sensual. Arousing. His entire body ached with need.
A full-Blood female. New, ripe, and beautiful. No wonder Dominus wanted her.
“
Proin invenisti eam
,” answered Celian.
We’ll find her.
Though they could each speak several languages, when they were together, the brothers spoke only Latin. Still in Latin, he added, “You and Lucien go after her. I’ll take Constantine, Lix, and D for the male. Rendezvous at the sunken church at sundown, with or without.
Constat?
”
Everyone nodded in agreement. Celian was second-in-command, Dominus’s right hand, and in his absence Celian’s word was law.
“Be careful with that male,” Aurelio muttered, shooting Celian a dark look. “He’s trained.”
“And full-Blooded,” added Lix. He stood off to one side, examining the mosaic the two had disappeared through for clues. He raked a hand through his too-long black hair. “You ever hear of something like this?”
“Dominus will know what it means,” said Celian. Dominus always knew what everything meant. Which was why he was
Rex
.
King.
“Let’s get going.”
The brothers turned away from the mosaic of St. Processus and made their way back through the vast, echoing basilica to the main entrance, ignoring the gawking stares and whispers that traveled in their wake. Leading the group, Celian knew how menacing they must look. Not one of them was less than six five, and all were thickly muscled from years of fight training, boxing and swordplay and martial arts. Their chosen attire didn’t help, either: black leather, a lot of it, topped by long black trench coats that disguised an array of weaponry. He had a random thought that the male they had just chased would have fit right in with them.
A human woman gaped at him as he passed by, and he winked at her, lascivious. She shrank back against a marble column, pale, her hand to her throat. He smelled the sour tang of her fear sharp in his nose.
That’s right
, deliciae.
I will eat you for lunch.
The
Bellatorum
reached the main entrance of the church, then split up and went in opposite directions without another word.
Xander felt their approach like waves of stinging needles on his skin. Except there were fewer of them...four, he thought, concentrating on the energy they emitted. Only four now. Which meant they’d sent two after Morgan.
Shit. He was going to have to work fast.
He stepped out from the line of tourists waiting to enter the Vatican and looked right at the four males in black who stood silently on the steps of the basilica, looking around, testing the air with their noses. He was all the way across the vast, cobbled plaza, but they found him right away. Four dark heads swiveled in his direction; eight flat black eyes zeroed in on him with cold, calculated precision.
No one moved.
Then Xander flipped them the bird and all hell broke loose.
Instead of running after him—as he anticipated, as any
Ikati
trained to secrecy and silence, the tribe’s two cornerstones of existence, would have done—the largest male in the middle simply reached beneath his coat, pulled out what looked to be a Glock semiautomatic, and started firing.
The crowd split apart like stampeding wildebeests, screaming and shoving, pounding the pavement. Hundreds of bodies pushed in every direction, panicking, as more shots rang out over the courtyard. Perfectly still and silent, Xander stood in the middle of the chaos while a hurricane went on all around him.