Page 34 of Edge of Oblivion (Night Prowler 2)
They’d gone only a few blocks from the hotel in the taxi, and she didn’t have a map or speak Italian. She had money so she could hail another cab, but when she put a hand to her forehead to shade her eyes from the sun she saw, unmistakable and huge, the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica less than a mile away on the other side of the sluggish, winding Tiber.
She decided to walk.
It was a beautiful day, bright and sunny, and every bird in the city seemed to be singing sweet little melodies from the pockets of trees that were everywhere. She crossed the river over an arched stone bridge, mossed and dark with age, and made her way along the tree-lined boulevard, dodging pedestrians and leaping out of the way of insane Vespa drivers who all seemed to share the same death wish.
She passed fountains and ruins and one ancient, weathered fortress that turned out to be the emperor Hadrian’s mausoleum, topped by a massive, sword-wielding bronze angel. The city was a feast of art and architecture, all casually laid about in plain view for everyone’s enjoyment. She loved the vitality of it, the open green spaces and the ancient buildings and the sense of magic that permeated everything, even the air.
And Italian men, she thought, eyeing one spectacular specimen lounging idly against a tree, are pretty magical, too. They dressed well. They moved w
ell. They were tall and dark and elegant, much like her own kind. Even the slouchy, paunchy, balding ones had a certain je ne sais quoi.
The lounging dark-haired boy lifted his head, caught her looking, and whistled, low and husky.
His eyes burned. She looked away, kept walking, and tried not to think of other burning eyes, kohl-
rimmed, amber, and endless.
Xander watched as Morgan bypassed the noisy line of hundreds of people waiting to enter the Vatican, sashayed to the uniformed officer operating the metal detector at the entrance, and touched his arm.
The guard, smiling a glazed, faraway smile, led her away by the hand into a private side entrance. Xander rolled his eyes and snorted.
She was shameless.
But he wasn’t about to stand in line himself, especially with that metal detector and the knives concealed in his boots and belt, so he strolled around until he found a relatively unpopulated area—no easy feat—and backed himself against a soaring granite wall. He closed his eyes and concentrated, sending his awareness out, looking for the warmth and motion that would indicate the presence of people on the other side. There was nothing. He took a breath and pushed back.
The stone was cool and very old, much harder than brick or marble and harder to Pass through.
The drier, dustier volcanic tufa of the Colosseum had left a residue on his clothes and skin, but granite left nothing but a slight alkaline taste in his mouth. He concentrated on moving forward through the dense mass of it, his legs and arms and chest pressurized as if he were underwater. It was harder to breathe in this type of rock, too, and he didn’t attempt it.
When he came out on the other side he was in a small service corridor that was featureless and brightly lit. He inhaled, relieved to be free of the granite, and followed the corridor around to a set of double steel doors. He paused with his ears open beside them, listening, tasting the air.
People. Statues. Glass cases and bronze figurines and...mummies?
He opened the door and stepped into the room, making a swift inspection. It was an Egyptian collection of some sort, with sarcophagi and funerary urns and statues of various pharaohs and animal gods. He smiled at a beautiful basalt sculpture of the cat goddess Bastet in a lighted case and put two fingers to his forehead in salute. Then he moved silently through the chamber, ignoring the speculative glances of the tour group he passed on the way out.
He had Morgan’s scent again. Exotic dark muskiness and heated woman, unmistakable and utterly unique, overlaid by that floral perfume she’d applied this morning. Lilies, he thought, shouldering through the crowd. Lilies and lovely hot readiness.
Snap out of it, soldier!
He ground his teeth together and kept on through the adjoining rooms, finally clearing the Egyptian wing and moving through the picture galleries and the tapestries and the ceramics, the statuary and mosaics and oils, all the masterpieces he’d seen in the dark as he’d prowled through the same halls last night in search of any trace of the man in white.
He followed her scent into the Sistine Chapel, which was very small, no bigger than the living room of their suite at the hotel, thick with tourists and uniformed officers who shushed the crowd at regular intervals and prevented photographs. He took a moment to look up and admire the work of one of their more famous kin, Michelangelo, and chuckled to himself. No one but the Ikati would ever know.
Down several narrow flights of stairs with crawling claustrophobia at the hot, pressing crowd, through a short gap in the buildings, and he was into the soaring majesty of St. Peter’s Basilica.
It was hushed and vast and eerie as a graveyard, dense with flickering candles and incense and whispers that echoed off the vaulted ceiling far overhead. Hazy sunshine spilled down like spotlights on the elaborate inlaid marble floor from the sixteen windows in the enormous dome above the altar, but here in the portico all was dim and silent.
He caught sight of a red blouse far ahead in the nave, a wave of dark hair spilling down a woman’s back, and quickened his pace. He threaded through a group of whispering tourists, went around a massive column, and she was abruptly there, flushed and panting, leaning stiff against the column with one hand at her throat and the other held out to stop him from coming any closer.
“Get away,” she whispered, hoarse. Her eyes were half-lidded, the pupils dilated so wide they nearly swallowed all the surrounding green, leaving only odd, flat black.
He froze, knowing instantly something was wrong. He cast out his awareness, opened his nose and his ears, but found nothing unusual. He stepped closer, and she let out a soft, keening moan that raised every hair on his body.
“No closer,” she insisted, oddly weak and breathless. Beneath her flawless café-au-lait complexion she was very pale. A sheen of sweat had formed on her brow.
“What is it?” he said, low, watching her eyelids flutter, the pulse beating wildly in her throat.
His danger sense grew to gnaw against his skin.
