Shadow Fall (15 page)

Custo had to think, and he couldn’t think when every conclusion he came to was open to outside commentary.

“Why don’t you come back downstairs, observe for a little while, work things out?”

“Don’t patronize me either.”

Luca held up his hands in surrender. “I’m just trying to help.”

Luca turned then and left him alone in the cell. Custo could hear the soft pad of his tread down the steps. Luca was leaving him alone with his thoughts, giving him the most space he could to process this new information and come to a decision, one that Luca felt had already been made.

Had it?

Custo had no idea. Luca was persuasive, but then, Custo had been unprepared for this conversation. He thought he’d be taken into custody. Had feared that all his work would be left undone, his friends unprotected. Now, it seemed, those concerns were irrelevant.

The bright little room was claustrophobic. Custo exited and headed to the stairs. Maybe he should watch in the control room a little bit. Get a sense of The Order in action, then make his decision.

He passed the armory, remembering the dagger. It would be his to use, a compelling point in The Order’s favor. Talia would be safe with the wraiths on the defensive once again. And the Shadow wolf? There had to be something in that glittering assemblage for him, too.

Okay: An apartment in the city, near Annabella preferably. A way to fight the monsters that encroached on his friends’ lives. And all he’d have to deal with was the occasional interaction with The Order. Custo could almost see Luca’s point.

If Custo was already going to fight, he might as well do so with the best tools, under the aegis of others like him.

He reached the main floor, hovering on the brink of change. Luca stood at the rear of the control room, his back to Custo. When Custo approached, Luca shot him a glance. “Decide already?”

Nearly. But still Custo hesitated. Something was bothering him, had been itching in his brain since the conversation started.

Right.
His mood darkened. “You said to Adam that the wraiths weren’t your concern at this time.”

Luca shook his head. “The wraiths are trapped in mortality; they aren’t going anywhere. Your Adam is doing an admirable job keeping them controlled while we fight active breaches in the barrier between the worlds. We have to repair them before any more dark fae can enter the world and wreak as much havoc as the one who created the wraiths in the first place.”

“But you fought the wraiths in the alley last night. What makes today any different?”

Luca heaved an impatient sigh, as if Custo kept missing his point. “We weren’t fighting the wraiths. That wasn’t our aim at all.”

“Uh…Looked that way to me.”

“Then you are still a fool,” Luca said. “We were fighting to save
you.
So that you can join us, add your great soul to our strength. There is more work to be done than you know. You are needed. Here. Now.”

“I can’t abandon my friends. I won’t.”

“Do you think the wraiths or the hunter are the only creatures to trouble the earth since Death cracked the universe open for love? Magic is again seeping into the world, and on the one hand we have art, beauty, and innovation with the makings of a great modern Renaissance—your Annabella is part of that, by the way—and on the other, we have every kind of dark fae testing the boundary to grasp the power of the mortal world. The repercussions go far deeper than the wraiths or a wolf on the prowl, and we are doing everything we can to stop it.”

“You said that magic is
again
seeping in the world. This has happened before?” Custo knew the answer before he’d finished phrasing the question. Of course it had happened before. Otherwise, where had all the stories, myths, and legends come from? The angel from Greece had said as much, too, that humanity had forgotten the old stories. Custo choked with the implications.

But the bottom line was…“You won’t fight the wraiths? What if Adam and Talia decided to quit?”

“The wraiths would probably grow bolder. More people would die.”

“And the wolf?”

“Similarly trapped here, and fixated for the moment on your Annabella. He is a lesser threat because, as a shape-shifter, he cannot hold his form indefinitely. Eventually, he will disperse into shadows.”

Custo had seen that effect himself, the wolf’s sudden contraction from beast to empty darkness. Problem was, the wolf could re-form again. “And in the meantime? What about Annabella?”

Luca’s face was expressionless.

Angry frustration burned in Custo’s blood. “So you won’t help.”

Luca met his gaze dead-on. “We are helping. You just won’t see it. This morning a little boy in China called a dragon—that’s right, a fire-breathing
dragon
—out of a storybook into mortality, and you want us to scour New York City looking for a wolf who will fade on his own?”

An exclamation within the command center set the angels in residence into a new flurry of activity.

Luca said, weary, “That would be Coyote, the trickster, and he just reassigned the flight numbers to all of the South-west’s airborne flights, and you want us to drop everything and hunt wraiths already pursued by Adam and world governments? Not to mention with Death abandoning his post, we have to guide the dead to our gate, or they would be lost to Shadow. We go where we’re most needed. We fight the best way we can. And we need your help.”

Custo was beyond caring. “If I can die in the mortal world, then the wolf can, too.” After all, the wolf crossed to mortality, too, when he fell to Earth.

A long pause wedged distance between Custo and Luca.

“Sure,” Luca said with a shrug of irritable defeat.

Custo’s heart throbbed in a quick burst of bloodlust.

“But,” Luca continued, waggling his head back and forth as if to argue a middling point, “as a shape-shifter, the hunter can return to a shadow-state, only to take on a live form again, man or wolf, uninjured. At least until whichever form is too difficult for him to hold.”

Custo’s blood cooled. Iced. So basically Luca was telling him that the wolf was immortal for the time being, while he himself could die. For the present, Annabella and anyone close to her would be at risk.

“There must be a way,” Custo insisted.

“You already know it,” Luca said. “The best way is to force him back into the Shadowlands.”

Custo took a last look around the high-tech, gleaming fortress for angels. He thought of the sharp weapons in their cases above, and the conditional access to them.

Luca had said that as an angel Custo had earned the privilege of choosing his path. Okay then. All this was very interesting, and he sure hoped the dragon didn’t burn up too many people. And he was near certain the well-trained people in the flight towers would see all those planes safely landed. But really, he’d made up his mind before he set foot in this crusty alley.

“I won’t abandon my friends.”

Chapter Thirteen

A
NNABELLA
was bent on keeping her equilibrium around Custo, but some things were easier said than done. Balance took practice. Her motivation: Self-preservation and, well, she was still angry, hurt, and humiliated. Good thing all three emotions, especially combined, were very useful.

She scanned the city street as soon as they hit pavement, not relying on the big protective men with her to spot Wolf first. Though she couldn’t see him, the small hairs on her neck told her he was near. Watching. Waiting. Following. Anger strangled her fear long enough to get her across the sidewalk to the street. Custo tried to take her arm, murmuring, “We’ll talk,” but she neatly avoided his grasp. There was nothing to say, and she could stay close enough for safety without his hands on her.

She opened her own door and sat in the front passenger seat of the car, relegating Custo to the back. The fact that the vehicle was still waiting in traffic had to be divine intervention. At least the tower was good for something.

As soon as the car was moving, Custo reported the gist of his discussion with Luca. Basically, the divine intervention stopped with the car. They were on their own.

“That’s not good enough!” Adam’s knuckles were white from his grip on the car’s steering wheel. It was the first time Annabella heard Adam raise his voice. The first time Mr. Control had come unglued in her presence. That vein on the side of his head looked about ready to burst.

Not that she wasn’t a little ticked herself. Seemed Custo’s cronies weren’t keen on helping her either. But the performance season was ramping up. Another chance to get her life back was days away. The next time she danced, she’d keep her head on straight and use that Shadow magic to push the wolf out of the world. Things would never be normal again, but she’d be off this roller-coaster ride and back to reclaiming her life. Custo could go do whatever angels did when they were done with their work—fly away?

Whatever. She just wanted this over.

“They won’t assist at all?” Adam pursued, though Custo had answered this question twice already.

“Luca says they have other, more pressing concerns,” Custo answered. “Shuttling the dead across the Shadowlands, active breaches in the barrier between the worlds, and the dangerous creatures that have crossed. Says you’re doing a bang-up job with the wraiths on your own.”

“So quit,” Annabella concluded on Adam’s behalf. “If you quit fighting, then they will have to deal with the wraiths themselves.”

“Talia can’t quit,” Custo said quietly behind her. “She straddles this world and the Shadowlands. And even if she could, she will always be a target because she destroyed the wraiths’ maker. Adam is in the war to the very end…and so am I.”

Annabella’s gaze darted between them, but Custo was looking at Adam, who took a deep breath and seemed to exhale a lot of his fury.

“I know,” Adam said, “and I appreciate everything you’ve already done. It’s just that Talia has been through a lot, and it pisses me off that help was available but not rendered.”

“So what now?” Annabella asked.

Silence.

Well, damn it, somebody had to make a plan. “Common sense says that we try again for Wolf with my next performance, and in the meantime, Adam stays close enough to Talia to protect her from the wraiths until she delivers.”

There. Done. She turned around and sat back in the seat, making a mental note to call her mother when they got back to Segue, too. Her mom would be freaking out over missing her at the theater after last night’s performance.

From the rear, Custo said, “Quit calling him Wolf. It’s driving me crazy. Names have power. Don’t give him any more.”

Fine.
The
wolf. What about the plan?

“Your strategy would work if both the wolf and the wraiths act predictably, but I don’t think they will. It isn’t in their best interests. The wolf will try another way to gain access to you. And the wraiths are now aware that there are others capable of killing them. Because they are aggressive by nature, they won’t run and hide. They’ll attack first. And hard. We need to change things up if we are going to stay ahead of them.”

Well, crap.
Annabella looked over her shoulder to ask, “Then how…?” and whipped around to grip the dashboard when Adam made a sudden U-turn.

“Abigail,” Adam said. “She can’t help Talia, but she might be able to see Annabella.”

“See me?” Annabella asked. Adam made no sense.

“She’s…” Adam began, “I don’t know what she is. A visionary? A psychic? An oracle? Someone touched by the magic of Shadow, like you, but different. Abigail seethes with Shadow internally; you can see the darkness in her eyes, like there’s a storm in her mind. It’s sped her aging, taking decades off her life. She can foretell futures, what she calls possible futures because every choice changes the course of things.” He fell silent, then added, “I don’t know if she can help. The last time she saw a future for me, I wasn’t able to change a damn thing.”

Annabella wasn’t sure she wanted to know what had happened, not by the tone Adam used or the misery that pulled at his eyes.

“That was two years ago,” Adam said, his voice rough.

When Custo died.

Well, Custo was fine now, and Annabella had had enough of him and the doom and gloom. Any more drama and she was going to lose it. Any more fear and she was going to start screaming. Any more Custo and she was going to fall apart.

A little food wouldn’t hurt either. She could feel her blood sugar plunging. On an ordinary day, she was bound to get a little cranky. With all this insanity going on, the big men better look out.

“Maybe,” she said perversely, “this Abigail will see my name in bright lights suspended over a theater, you know, bigger than the actual name of the ballet I am performing in. Maybe with the word
incomparable
in pretty cursive nearby. Or maybe
magnificent?
” Now she was just talking to herself. “Anyway, that’s what I see when I look into my future.”

Adam slanted a humorless glance her way.

“Really big lights,” she added for Mr. Buzzkill.

She refused to peek over her shoulder at Custo again, though she felt him behind her like a warm sun on her skin. The sensation was impossible to block so she kept her gaze on the road, on the white license plates with their blue anagramlike letters and numbers. GKM rearranged could be gimmick, and SFR could be surfer, and AGL could be agile, but
not
angel. No matter how hard she tried, heat and comfort wrapped around her, embraced her. And she knew it was just as dangerous as the Shadow creature that stalked her.

The contradiction of Custo was pulling her apart and called for an exception in her once-a-year cheesecake rule. Just as soon as possible. And with whipped cream. She needed a binge and bad, the kind ballet rarely permitted her.

The building Adam stopped at was three stories high, one in a series of several similar buildings, on a seriously crap street that made her nervous in broad daylight. The brick was dulled to gray, except for the door, which was painted a clashing, crackling reddish pink. Litter clogged the gutter, and a couple of beer cans were lined up neatly against the building. Remnants of the night. A small sign was above the door, black lettering on a black background, so she couldn’t read it until she was standing in front of it.
AMARANTH.

Wasn’t that a flower?

Adam pounded on the door while Custo stood to her side. He didn’t try to hold her, for which she was grateful, though he kept shooting her sorry, troubled looks.

Yeah, well, deal with it.

“I don’t want you to worry about whatever she sees,” Custo murmured. “Adam said ‘possible’ futures. Just because he wasn’t able to change mine, doesn’t mean we can’t change yours.”

Her stomach had started to knot in spite of her determination not to worry. She lifted her chin an extra notch. “I’m not nervous.”

“Liar,” he whispered into her ear.

Adam pounded on the door again. “Zoe!” he shouted. “Open up!”

“I thought we were seeing Abigail,” Annabella said.

“Zoe’s her sister,” Custo answered.

Adam turned, a questioning look on his face.

Yeah, Annabella wondered, how did Custo know Abigail had a sister?

“Angel,” Custo answered them both.

Still didn’t answer the
how
part of the question, but before she could press, the red door was wrenched open from the inside.

A cartoon character of a girl stood in the entrance. She was part Japanese anime, part Goth, with inky black hair, a blunt fringe of bangs at her forehead, the rest parted severely down the middle and woven in lots of thin, long braids. Her black makeup, heavy enough for the stage, exaggerated her eyes, while the rest of her face was ultrapale. A tight black crop top bared her midriff to show her belly button, and she wore low-riding black skinny jeans that fit like tights.

“I won’t let you in,” she said, snapping her gum.

“Tell Abigail I’m here,” Adam said.

Zoe sneered and snapped her gum again. “She knows who’s here,
duh.
Been up since dawn waiting with her visions. Got herself all dressed up and everything.”

Adam planted a hand on the door to push it open; Zoe countered with her combat boot to the floor to keep the gap just so.

“But I’m not letting you in,” Zoe finished in singsong. “She told me you’d pound and pound until someone answered, so I came down personally to tell you all to fuck off.”

“Listen,” Adam grated, “what Talia did to you was necessary at the time. You are alive and well, so get over it and let us—”

“Abigail is ill,” Custo said, thoughtfully. “Dying.”

Zoe’s pale pout trembled. Her black eyes trained on Custo, wicked arched brows winging. “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, but forcing my sister to look into Shadow makes her even sicker.”

Annabella blanched. She didn’t want anyone made sick on her behalf.

Zoe’s gaze hit her, too, her sneer turning her eyes into twin crescents. “That’s right, you’d be killing her.” She looked up, as if thinking really hard. “Hmmmm…Now, should I let my sister’s killers in the door, or should I tell them to screw themselves? Hmmm. Gosh, it’s just so damn hard to decide.”

“Let me help,” Adam said. “Let me bring you both to Segue. I have resources that might be able to…”

Zoe’s sarcasm thickened. “Oh, I think you’ve helped quite enough, thank you.”

Annabella lifted a hand to placate the girl. “They’re here for me, and I am totally cool not bothering your sister about my future. I like to think that I make my own choices about my life, so I wouldn’t really want to hear my fortune anyway. It would kinda destroy my illusions, you know?”

Zoe’s black-kohled lids lowered halfway in an expression of acute boredom. Lovely girl.

“Okay, then,” Annabella said. She leaned her weight into a step back to get Custo moving. No way was she going to kill some dying psychic today. Time to go back to Segue and work on Plan B. Or, uh, C.

Zoe rolled her eyes again. “Okay, fine. She might have said something about going to the party tonight. There. We’re done.”

“What party?” Adam asked.

“I don’t know,” Zoe returned petulantly. “
The party.
You figure it out.”

Party, party, party…Oh, crap. Annabella had completely forgotten. “The reception for the company. It’s tonight. I’ll get out of it, say I’m sick or something.” If Venroy wasn’t already pissed at her, he was going to be livid about this. The new principal missing the start-of-the-season bash. Freaking fantastic.

At her back, Custo suddenly stiffened. Annabella felt his arm around her waist. It tightened as he lurched forward, then stopped himself. “Abigail is—” He halted for a second, his chest suspended midbreath. “—Adam, Abigail!”

“Move,” Adam said, as he slapped the door to the side and pushed Zoe out of his way.

“Stop!” Zoe shouted. “What the fu—?”

A scream from above cut the air, then strangled into silence.

“Abby!” Zoe screamed back. All bitchiness dropped from Zoe’s tone, leaving only gut-wrenching, frantic worry. She disappeared into the darkness after Adam.

Annabella tried to follow, but Custo held her back. “No, I think it’s the wolf.”

She bucked against the hard bar of his arm across her middle. “Then you’re the only one that can help. We have to go.” She tried to drop her weight to escape him. “You can’t let him hurt her.”

His hold tightened further, but Annabella could sense a hesitation, a moment of deep, conflicted thought.

“Damn it,” Custo said. “You stay with me.
Touching
me.”

“Yes! Fine!” Her head flushed with the return of circulation as he released her, only to take her hand and drag her through the underbelly of the building.

They burst into a large, windowless room. Its walls and floor were painted drippy black, and a bar took up the far wall, lit with eerie red light. They hurried up a scarlet runner that led to a slightly raised dais. Behind the stage was a short hall, papered with cheap, neon flyers announcing disturbing rocker bands.

Not her kind of club.

Up a narrow flight of steps and down a horror-movie hallway, they found Zoe and Adam crowding another doorway. Zoe was half in, half out, her face fearful, as if she couldn’t quite decide whether to go to her sister or run from whatever was in the room. Adam’s jaw was set with grim resolution.

Their expressions sent a vicious, electric shiver up Anna-bella’s spine that spread across the cold sweat dampening her body.

“Let her go,” Adam said to whoever or whatever was in the room.

“So,” a female voice trembled, as if in the throes of deep pleasure, “this is what it is like to be made flesh.”

“Leave her alone!” Zoe shouted with a painful warble, her love for her sister stripping her naked.

The fear in her voice resonated painfully within Annabella. Her throat grew tight in sympathy, even as her belly quailed against discovering what was in the room.