J. Geissinger - Rapture's Edge

Of all the places in all the world to spend a clandestine night alone, the Louvre museum in Paris is quite possibly the finest.

Of course, to do so is illegal.

Visiting hours are nine in the morning to six in the evening every day except Tuesday, with slightly extended hours on Wednesdays and Fridays. But for visitors with certain special abilities, visiting hours mean exactly zero.

Because when you can vanish into mist and nothingness by the mere focus of your will, a great many rules and regulations applicable to others cease to impress you.

It was one of these special peoplebeings, rather, or more accurately creatureswho happened to be contemplating a sculpture by Michelangelo titled Dying Slave at twenty minutes to three on one starlit, crystalline December morning, hours before daybreak and even longer before the tourists would begin to line up outside again. At almost eight feet tall, the dramatic, bone-hued marble sculpture of a naked man bound at wrist and chest was described by the plaque beneath as the moment when life capitulates before the relentless force of dead matter.

Brilliant, mused Eliana Cardinalis as she stood before the statue, admiring the uncanny representation of that fleeting moment just before death. I know just how he feels.

As naked as the dying marble figure she was so arrested by, she wasnt cold or uncomfortable or in any way self-conscious. She was, simply, content. Aloneblessedly alone and free of the watchful eyes and whispers that normally followed herher natural curiosity and good humor returned. Shed rambled through the cool, echoing corridors of the museum for longer than strictly necessary for the task at hand, but a pastoral Monet had called to her, then a fierce Caravaggio, then a glassed display of Egyptian funerary implements laid over woven palm leaves in a fascinating, ghoulish row.

The canopic jarsceramic receptacles for storing the inner organs of a mummyhad made her snort in disdain. Dead was dead, but her kin, the ancient Egyptians, wholeheartedly believed in life after death, a leap of faith Eliana found seriously lacking.

Stupidly lacking.

She knew from firsthand experience that leaps of faith were nothing more than acts of willful self-delusion. Nowadays, she operated on two simple principles: Ill believe it when I see it and Its better to ask forgiveness than permission. Both had served her far better than the blind faith of her childhood.

Faith was a luxury she could no longer afford.

But she hadnt always been a cynic. Born and raised far below ground in a dark, sprawling labyrinth of incense-scented catacombs no human eye had ever seen, her education in the lore of ancient gods and secret spells, of rituals steeped in magic, had been thorough and effective. She prayed to all the old gods and left offerings of handmade lace and ripe fruit for the new, she lit candles in honor of dead ancestors, she watched with all her kin on the once-monthly Purgare nights as the silk-wrapped ashes of the unfortunates who didnt survive the Transition bobbed slowly down the Tiber on balsawood planks until they vanished from sight around a sinuous bend in the dark river. She accepted all she was taught by her elders with the open-armed trust of childhood, because even at twenty-three when most would have considered her a woman, Eliana had been still in many ways a child.

Then three years ago everything changed.

Now, from necessity, she was all grown up.

But she wasnt thinking about any of that as she stood in silent contemplation of the Michelangelo. She was thinking shed better get moving because the night guard would make his scheduled appearance around the far corner of the sculpture hall in exactly three minutes and seventeen seconds, and she had a painting to steal before he did.

With a sigh of regret, she turned from the statue and made her way silently down the shadowed marble hall, enjoying the feel of the cool air on her naked skin. She rounded another corner and stopped abruptly as she caught sight of Canovas famous statue. Erotic and beautiful, the marble work titled Psyche Revived by Cupids Kiss depicted two mythological lovers ensnared forever in a passionate near-kiss.

Seeing thatCupids languorous embrace, Psyches sensual, pliant surrendersparked an unwanted memory that pierced her heart, sharp as knives.

Demetrius.

Her stomach twisted into a knot. Heat made her face feel molten. Then abruptly, without sound or warning, the flesh and bone woman that was Eliana dissolved into mist.

She didnt even need to consciously think it anymoreVaporShifting was as natural to her as breathing, as natural as the first time it had happened to her at thirteen years old when her cunaria had tried to force her to eat boiled eggs and shed balked. One minute she was sitting at the polished stone table with her lips smashed together in disgust, the nextpoof!

Vanished.

Only the strongest of her kind could Shift to Vapor, and so she was grateful, but to this day she loathed eggs.

Vapor was only one of her many Gifts, but one that offered a precious benefit the others didnt: escape. Now, relieved of the terrible burden of feelings, she floated in a ruffling pale gray plume for a moment, regaining equilibrium. Disconnected from a body, she was still herselfher mind remained, as did the strength of her willbut there was no heartbeat, no respiration, no emotion or digestion, just the lovely and calming sensation of freedom from gravity. Of herself, weightless as air.

An applied thoughtupand she drifted toward the ceiling, far enough above the lovers below that they became slightly less offensive. She turned away and surged off through the vast darkness of the museum, a shimmering cloud of Vapor headed toward room 77 and the Romantic paintings, where one of her other powerful Gifts would come into play.

A Degas was the prize tonight. Not too famous, not too large, it would still command a good price on the black market and wouldnt be too easy to trace by the authorities, or too hard to remove from the wall.

Contrary to popular belief, museum security systems are typically some of the worst. Unlike the movies, which would lead one to believe a field of invisible lasers and infrared cameras are de rigeur, the reality is closer to the sorry duo of underpaid, badly trained security personnel and mechanical gates. Most jewelry stores are far more secure, as are all banks; Eliana knew this from experience.

And for a woman who could not only dissolve into a wisp of air but who was ableeven betterto become invisible in the cover of shadow while still retaining a physical body that could lift and carry a painting, the temptation of stealing into buildings that were closed, locked, and legally verboten became too great.

But that wasnt the primary reason. Money was the primary reason. Crass, yes, but she needed money to continue her fathers research, and her people needed to eat, so shed resorted to using her Gifts as a way to avoid starvation.

It wasnt as if they were going to start feeding on humans, after all, no matter how much her brother, Caesar, tried to convince her it was their birthright, and that the sorry creatures were quite tasty.