Page 107 of Edge of Oblivion (Night Prowler 2)
“Sounds like it’s coming from the fovea,” Celian said, low. He hadn’t bothered with a shirt, and the huge muscles of his arms flexed as he shot a glance down the long, shadowed corridor winding toward the King’s chambers.
“One of Dominus’s playthings?” asked Lix. He ran a hand through his long, disheveled hair, following Celian’s gaze. “He just picked up two new ones this week—”
“That sound like a human to either of you?”
No. It most certainly did not. Human screams could never reach that pitch. But Constantine couldn’t tell if it was male or female...
The three of them looked at each other.
“Where’s D?” Celian finally said.
“We, uh,” Lix shot a nervous glance in Constantine’s direction, “we didn’t want to tell you. In case Dominus found out—you wouldn’t get in trouble. Since you’ve just healed...from last time...”
Celian’s face hardened. “In case Dominus found out what, exactly?”
“D is with the principessa,” Constantine answered, and took a step back when the heat of Celian’s anger pulsed over him like a furnace with its door blown off.
“Eliana?” he hissed, eyes flashing. “What the hell is he doing with her?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” said Constantine, holding Celian’s furious gaze, “but I’ve got a pretty good idea.”
The scream came again, a high, sustained note of pain from somewhere far off in the darkness of the catacombs. All three of them froze, listening.
Celian said, “I have a very bad feeling about this. Be ready for anything.”
&
nbsp; And with Lix and Constantine hard on his heels, he set off at a dead run toward the fovea and the high, wavering screams.
Running as fast as his feet would take him, Xander sprinted across the worn cobblestones of St.
Peter’s Square, heading directly for the portico of the basilica and the bronze masterpiece Door of Death, carved with images of a crucified Christ and the Virgin Mary ascending to heaven.
He Passed straight through it just as a pair of Swiss Guards leapt to stop him from their posts at the soaring marble columns that flanked the door. He heard their shouts from outside, growing fainter as he ran into the center of the vast, shadowed cathedral. Past the nave, past the baptistery, past the transepts with their haloed, blank-eyed statues of the founding saints in stone niches, his boots striking loudly over the elaborate inlaid floor.
He came to a sliding halt near the chapel of St. Sebastian, brought up short by a twist in his heart.
Here, sang the ghostly, lilting tune of the Blood tie that had drawn him across the city.
Panting, heart pounding, he slowly approached the chapel. It was as before when he and Morgan had tried, unsuccessfully, to locate the Alpha when he’d been inside her head. Lighted casket with the body of a long-dead pope beneath the towering mosaic of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, baroque paintings in the cupola and corbels, faint stench of decay and death.
Dark, disembodied tremor of feral Ikati everywhere.
He combed over the entire chapel, searching frantically, but there was nothing, no one, no hidden entry or secret passage or door, just that magnetic pull of their connection.
“Morgan! ”
He shouted it at the top of his lungs because he couldn’t think of what else to do. It fractured into a thousand parroted cries of her name that seemed to take on a life of their own, taunting his ears, mocking him as they reverberated through almost six acres of yawning space, bouncing off marble and glass and stone. He was so close; she was somewhere nearby, terrified, and he couldn’t find her, he didn’t know where to look, he had to do something—
From somewhere far beneath his feet, the faintest, faintest echo of a scream reached his ears.
Xander leapt back as if the floor had burned him. He stood staring down, arrested, his heart frozen solid in his chest.
On the floor in the middle of the chapel was painted a colorful coat of arms, surrounded by a circle of Greek lettering. It featured a pair of crossed keys above a golden shield that depicted the image of an olive branch–bearing dove with a trio of fleurs-de-lis. Floating above the shield was a crown.
And just above that, painted in bold strokes of black and gold, was the all-seeing Eye of Horus.
Xander dropped to his knees and pressed his shaking hands flat against the cold marble.
