Page 94 of Edge of Darkness (Night Prowler 4)
“Exactly. And since they can smell where any live munitions are and avoid them, there’s no danger for their colony, but anyone else who might venture near—kaboom!”
There followed a long, tense silence. Ember held her breath, hoping neither of them could hear her thundering heartbeat through the phone line.
“Are you…taking care of it tonight, then?”
Leander sounded brusque, but beneath his businesslike tone, Ember heard the raw current of anguish. Taking care of it…she assumed that meant killing Caesar. Ember’s hands shook so badly it was difficult to hold the phone to her ear.
Christian made another soft exhalation. “No, tomorrow night. Everything is ready, but I can’t…I need one last day.”
Leander’s swallow was loud enough to be heard clear as if he’d uttered something. His voice very low, he said, “I understand.”
“No, actually you don’t.”
“Christian—”
“I’ve met someone.”
Those three words were blurted out, throbbing with emotion, and they took both Ember and Leander equally by surprise. There was a long, cavernous silence.
“A woman,” Christian began to explain, but Leander cut him off.
“Dear, sweet God in heaven, are you insane?”
He was obviously horrified—horrified and furious. The words were shouted, reverberating with condemnation.
But Christian was having none of his brother’s anger. He snapped, “Yes, I’m insane! Because sane people don’t frequently volunteer for suicide missions!”
And with that, the bottom fell out of Ember’s world.
She sank silently to her knees with the sheet clutched in her fist, frozen, blind, deaf except for those two words, repeating themselves over and over inside her mind.
Suicide mission.
Suicide mission.
Like the pieces of a dark, twisted puzzle, it all clicked into place. All the little things he’d said, hints of his plan and purpose, the research she’d done on the Internet, the look on his face, the look in his eyes when he told her she’d be taken care of for the rest of her life. Now it all made perfect, terrible sense.
He was here to kill the man who’d killed the pope, she knew that. But—according to eyewitness accounts from the Swiss Guard who’d attempted to gun Caesar down—he couldn’t be killed. He’d been riddled with dozens upon dozens of bullets and had simply revived within seconds with a smile.
So how did you kill a man who couldn’t be killed? Incinerate him in a super-heated fire? Melt him in molten steel? Blow him to smithereens in a huge explosion?
She didn’t know. But if a gun wouldn’t work, it had to be something far more violent, something that would obliterate all traces of a form that could simply regenerate itself when damaged.
“Anything that can be made can be unmade; it’s a natural law. Unfortunately, sometimes Nature needs a helping hand…and someone willing to get those helping hands dirty.”
Christian had given her this terse explanation when she’d broached the subject on one of their walks. By his dark tone and even darker glower she’d understood that was the end of the conversation, but then he’d sighed and stared off into the distant horizon. He took her hand and an expression of quiet melancholy settled over his features, replacing the glower. Then in a soft, haunting voice, he’d added, “Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the greater good.”
“Sacrifices? Like what?” she’d asked sharply, hearing something in his tone. He’d looked at her and smiled, shaking his head as if dispelling an unpleasant thought.
“Like being away from you when all I want to do is spend every minute by your side.”
He kissed her then, a soft press of his lips against hers before he pulled away, but it was enough to distract her. And his words were enough to flatter her into dropping the subject.
But now she realized the sacrifice Christian had been talking about…was him.
Whatever he had planned for Caesar, whatever mechanism he’d decided could kill an unkil
lable man, it would also take his own life in the process.
