THE ground rumbled beneath Annabella’s feet, bells clanging loudly in her mind. She held on to the sound with everything she was, lashed her heart to the story, and heaved, lifting the blazing orb of the sun to the horizon line.
Tell the story. Raise the sun.
Pink washed the sky, drowning out the diamond glow of the stars. A sudden, monstrous gale blew through the Shadow forest, denuding the trees of their leaves, the trunks rising like skeletons from the trembling ground in the wan glow of dawn. A keening wail lifted all around, the dark inhabitants quailing under the revelation of light.
Annabella clung to Custo’s solid shoulders to borrow his strength, sought his eyes for courage, and coaxed the hot sphere higher. Morning in the Shadowlands. Salvation.
Like a blotch marring the burgeoning blue, the wolf leaped behind Custo. The wolf’s rage crackled in the air and raised the fine hairs on Annabella’s skin.
The ground lurched, lost its solidity, churning under their feet. The Shadowlands, expelling them.
—doesn’t belong, doesn’t belong, doesn’t belong—
The three fell back to Earth, to Segue, and the confines of the open storage room in an airborne brawl, Custo gripping the wolf’s jaws.
The concrete was brutal, crushing, but Annabella rolled immediately to her feet—she could handle a little pain—and threw herself on the huge bristle of black grappling with Custo.
She wrapped an arm around the beast’s neck and used all her muscle to force the jaws away from Custo’s throat. Riding the wolf’s hump, she grabbed a fistful of coarse hair and yanked it back. The wolf smelled like a dog, dark and beasty and a little bit foul.
“Run, Annabella,” Custo ground out, red-faced, shaking with effort to restrain the crazed wolf.
“No,” she managed, locking on to the wolf’s back with her thighs. Thank God for pliés.
A shout brought her gaze up to the door. She ducked her head just as a soldier fired, hitting the wolf between the eyes. Adam must have been prepared for this very contingency.
More men filed in behind him, guns trained through the doorway, ready to unload on the beast. Custo reached out a hand toward them, and the soldier scuttled forward to hand him a mean knife.
Which the wolf knocked away.
Annabella scrabbled to get it and cut her fingers on the sharp blade before grasping the hilt in a slippery hand. She stabbed while she could, where she could, in his shoulder. The knife hit bone and glanced to the side, slicing across the wolf’s flesh and not down into it, hot red spilling across her arm before it cooled and evaporated into Shadow.
The wolf bucked and threw her, hard, into one of Kathleen’s paintings, cracking the frame and tearing the canvas. Stars of pain exploded in Annabella’s vision. A soldier dived for her, grabbing her arm to drag her out of the fray. She was passed into the concrete cavern, through a line of soldiers, and laid on the ground.
The soldier, a square-faced man whose eyes were too close together, demanded, “Is this your blood?” but he stalled in his examination, staring openmouthed at her face.
“I cut my hand,” Annabella answered. Not enough to take her away from Custo.
The soldier touched his ear. “Sir, we’ve got a medical emergency. Need immediate evac.”
“I’m not going anywhere. It’s just my hand.” And even that wasn’t too bad. She pointed in the direction of the storage room. “He’s the one who’s hurt!”
Another volley of shots echoed in the tunnel, battering her eardrums. She cringed, covering her ears, but the report kept ricocheting in her skull. To her right a masked soldier was donning a small tank of a backpack attached to an oddly shaped gun. Had to be a flamethrower.
“Yes, yes, yes,” she said, “fry him.”
“Ma’am, it’s not safe here.” The first soldier again. “You look very ill. You need a doctor.”
“I’m not going—”
There was a sudden shout, a break in the line of guards, and a cacophony of violent gunfire. Custo was pulled through, blood everywhere, his right arm hanging limp, bloody, and broken at his side. At least he was on his feet.
Now they could get out of here.
The gunfire let up. With a loud pause in the action, the soldiers fell back. Then the cavern was filled with a roar of tremendous heat and the smell of fire. The gunshots had hurt the wolf, but the fire would consume his body. That would give Annabella and Custo time to run while the wolf remade himself out of Shadow and pursued.
Someone grabbed her under her arms, and Annabella was carried toward the yellow lift, though her legs worked perfectly fine. She’d have fought it, but Custo was at her side, his good arm slung over another soldier. The lift engaged and they ascended with agonizing slowness to the upper level.
“I need a helicopter,” Custo said. “Now.”
“Sir, you both need serious medical attention,” a soldier responded. He seemed to be the head of the unit, a little older, his buzz so short that he was shiny bald.
“I’ll heal on my own, and”—Custo shot Annabella a worried look—“I don’t think there’s anything you can do for her. She needs specialized care, and I intend to see that she gets it.”
That was the third time someone hinted that something was wrong with her. “What the heck is everyone talking about?”
Annabella caught a couple sidelong glances, but no one answered her. The lift screeched to a stop. One of those funny army-styled golf carts was waiting.
Custo helped her into the back bench and jumped in beside her, squeezing her hand to comfort, and shouted “Go!” to the driver.
Annabella blanched when she got a look at her arm.
Under the smears of blood, she was pasty-pale, with fine lines of black scribbled along the surface, like minute burst capillaries. She angled her head to get a glimpse of her face in the rearview mirror, and then wished she hadn’t. She’d officially joined the freak show.
The shape of her face was the same, her features recognizable, though speckled with blood, but the rest was just wrong. And ugly. The centers of her eyes, pupil and iris, were black, as in voodoo-witch black. Her complexion was waxy, way beyond the stage white of Giselle. And now that her adrenaline was tanking, her body had that getting-sick feeling, everything achy and extra cold.
She dropped her eyes. “What’s happened to me?” Was she going to die?
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” Custo said. He inhaled, then held the breath.
“What?”
“Did he hurt you? Did he…?”
She shook her head, fighting tears. “We only danced, but…I did kinda lose myself in it for a while. Until you came.” A thin trail of hot wetness skated over her cheek. “Am I going to be okay?”
“Absolutely. We’re going to The White Tower and we’re not leaving until Luca fixes you up. The Order must know a way to cure you. We’re not leaving until they do.”
Sudden fear knifed through Annabella. “My mother. The wolf will go after my mother.”
“Is that how he coerced you to go with him?”
Annabella nodded. “And he’ll follow through on his threat, especially now that I’ve run away from him. We have to get to her first.”
Custo caught her gaze with his. “I’ll send an extraction unit for your family, but we are going to the tower.”
“No. This is my mother we’re talking about.”
“Bella. Take another look at yourself in the mirror.”
Annabella kept her gaze on his face. She wasn’t budging.
He shook his head, no. “We have to find out what’s happening to you and if it’s reversible. My hunch is that the wolf will follow you, especially now that you are infected with Shadow, rather than make good on any threats to hurt your family. Remember what happened to Abigail?”
Annabella’s argument stuck in her throat. The memory of Abigail’s possession was vivid, horrifying, an invasion of body more complete than she could fathom. But she wanted her mom and brother safe and sound.
“Decision’s made, Annabella,” Custo said. His tone brooked no further disagreement. “We need to get you help before the wolf catches up with us. I don’t think we have much time.”
The army cart burst out of the concrete bunker. A helicopter was waiting, its propellers beating the air into a deafening hurricane of small debris that stung Annabella’s eyes. At Custo’s direction, the driver helped her inside, though she still didn’t need it. She looked like a freak, but she wasn’t helpless.
The helicopter lifted off before she was fully strapped in, nose angling toward the city. Annabella stared at the skin on her hands, while Custo yelled into a headset.
“Adam, repeat!” Custo’s forehead and eyes strained as he listened. He rubbed a hand over his face and told her, “I can’t get a clear signal.”
He asked the pilot, “What’s our ETA?”
“Seventeen minutes.”
Custo looked back at her. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine. The same.” Which wasn’t quite true. She was bitterly cold.
Annabella watched Custo’s arm heal as they flew, the flesh knitting together from the inside out as the minutes ticked by. The bone looked straighter, too. She tried to control her shivers while she listened to Custo make a series of calls. Her mom had been picked up, and though spitting mad, was fine and in transport by her city’s police to rendezvous with a Segue unit, which would really piss her off. Her brother had likewise been detained by campus security. Annabella could do nothing but wait and hope they were safe.
“Oh. Hell.” Custo was looking out his window to the city below.
Annabella leaned over to see for herself, but couldn’t immediately make sense of the chaos. A narrow building was in near rubble, its street-side wall collapsed, the interior floors and rooms exposed. Great white pieces of stone littered the sidewalk and crushed two unlucky cars. Other cars were abandoned helter-skelter in the middle of the road as in a disaster movie.
The helicopter lowered, and people became visible: a line of army soldiers crouched behind debris, protecting the remains of the building, firing upon an encroaching armed throng who obviously weren’t scared of guns.
The helicopter banked toward a rooftop landing, and from this new perspective, the street became more familiar. The destroyed white building below had to be The White Tower, occupying the space of the alley where it once had been concealed from human eyes. Now it was in full view. The soldiers protecting it and the fallen angels were led by Segue, holding off the invading wraiths.
“Adam was too late,” Custo said.
“Or just in time,” Annabella answered, unbuckling her belt. “We’ve got to hurry.”
Custo put a staying hand on her arm. “I’m not taking you down there.”
“Ha! I’m not asking permission.” She opened the helicopter door and pushed against the wind, her hair flying in all directions.
Custo climbed out after her, expression fierce. “Annabella—”
She cut him off, lifting her Shadow-veined
palms for him to see. “There’s nothing down there scarier than what
the wolf will do to me. He’s got to be close behind us—nothing can
hold Shadow—and the next time he attacks we won’t have a
flamethrower to stall him.” She pointed to the melee below. “The
Order has answers and they need your help. I’m going whether you
like it or not.”
Annabella took off across the roof toward a set of red metal doors, and Custo had no choice but to follow. Joining the fray was madness, suicidal, something for him, but definitely not for her. Besides, they were on the wrong side of the fight; they’d have to cross through the wraiths to get to Adam and his defense of the fallen tower. And though it was plenty cool that he could kill wraiths with his hands, as he and the other angels had the night of the gala, there were far too many of them for him to take on alone. But Annabella wouldn’t think of any of that.
As always, she seemed determined to be a pain in the ass.
The doors opened to a flight of utility stairs, which led to an upper floor of the building, housing what appeared to be a series of small, independent businesses, little gold plaques to the side of their doors. They took the main elevator to the lobby. Custo avoided the main entrance and barged through a very sketchy-looking staffing business to exit out the rear to a parking lot off the main street.
He hid her behind a Dumpster and assessed the thick army of stinking wraiths held back by Adam’s gunfire. Had to be upward of a hundred converging on the Segue men defending the broken tower.
No way to get through. The wolf could catch up at any moment, and then they’d be beset on all sides. They had to keep moving. Maybe if they circled around—
“Who’s that?” Annabella nudged him.
Custo’s attention focused on where she pointed, a blind spot some ten yards from their location at the juncture of a low concrete wall and a building.
“He was right there a second ago,” she said.
Against the age-whitened concrete, a lash of rippling, smoky darkness whipped into existence, and a wraith was propelled backward from the press of the throng. Midair, the wraith halted, and though partially obscured by Shadow, Custo saw his head suddenly torque, and then the sack of wasted flesh fell to the ground. The kill was over before Custo could blink.
Two nearby wraiths turned at the sudden motion, teeth thick in their mouths. With a bloom and jut of Shadow, the lower jaw was knocked off one, and the other crumpled, head lolling after a blur of movement.
Darkness crawled across the lot. A third wraith suddenly threw himself onto a rusty stake.
One by one, wraiths were picked from the back of the throng.
Had to be Shadowman, come to Adam’s aid. And he’d said he didn’t care.
Near a vertical cement post, the Shadows came to a roiling stop. Only Death’s stern face was visible in its depths, expression pitiless, eyes stirring with deep black. He looked over to the Dumpster and spoke, his words clear though he seemed to only mumble across the distance. “Don’t trouble yourself to help.”
Sarcastic son of a bitch. Custo had jumped Heaven’s Gate to help rid the world of wraiths; if he could have been wrenching the necks, he would have.
“I can’t. I’ve got a human woman here,” Custo replied. He couldn’t, wouldn’t leave Annabella alone for a second. “She’s been infected with…something.”
Shadowman tilted his head, forceful gaze intent across the debris and cars in the parking lot, assessing. Custo would have guessed from context that he was examining Annabella, but she was hidden by the gang-tagged Dumpster.
“She’s lost anyway,” Shadowman concluded, returning his attention to the throng of wraiths.
Custo straightened. “Over my dead body.”
“Don’t be a fool. You’re already dead.” Shadowman’s darkness contracted, and he was revealed completely—tall, broad, strong beyond imagining, and cruel. His trench coat, black leather from the look of it, seemed to absorb light. With a wicked whip and twist of darkness, Death’s long hair was bound effortlessly behind him. “The body you now hold is a choice, made of your soul, and thus mortal. Be careful with it. She’s gone regardless.”
Shadowman left his cover, stalked up behind the press of the immortal dead, and tapped one on the shoulder.
The creature turned, opened its mouth, and got its neck broken for his hesitation. The nearest wraiths hurled themselves back from the presence of Death, trampling a few that fell to get away from the one being that could kill them, but wouldn’t die himself. At least Shadowman had killed a few before revealing himself.
The wraiths scattered, a good many pelting for the Dumpster where Custo hid with shivering Annabella. A wraith leaped over the Dumpster with a great hollow thump. Custo altered its trajectory and brought it head first into the pavement, then stamped its neck to the side. Dead.
Two others rounded the side. Annabella tripped one, was slapped back, which gave Custo enough rage to break its back with his knee, then its neck with a midair strike that nearly ripped its head from its shoulders. The second wraith missed Custo’s face and locked onto his shoulder with his teeth. It jerked when Annabella stabbed it with something, releasing him. Custo jabbed his elbow in the wraith’s face, crushing its nose, and hurled it over his shoulder to stomp its trachea, then break its neck.
They’d be safer in Shadowman’s wake. No wraith would get near enough to hurt them. Taking Annabella’s hand, he made a break for the tall, dark man parting the wraiths like Moses at the Red Sea. Bodies of wraiths littered the street, the smell so foul Annabella vomited as they passed the worst of it, but stumbled alongside of him.
Beyond was the white wreckage of the tower and the ragtag group of Segue soldiers who’d held the wraiths at bay. Adam was midcommand, organizing a triage to save what injured angels he could. He glanced over, noted Shadow-man, Custo, and Annabella’s presence, but continued with his work. Time was critical. A pitiful few others, angels, dug in the rubble for survivors. They called with their minds, seeking responses, but got only flickers of consciousness.
Hold on. Help is coming.
Custo wrapped his arms around Annabella as cold certainty ran through his blood.
The tower was a refuge no longer. No help for Annabella’s condition could be found there. The angels couldn’t save her when their brothers and sisters were buried, their mortal souls at risk.
In one minute, or ten, or thirty, the wolf would come again for Annabella. She was trying to hide her mounting shakes but not fooling anyone. Custo would have to fight him again. And again. Since Custo was mortal, the wolf would eventually prevail.
Which left…
Shadowman set his cold gaze on Annabella, and she visibly shivered.
“Please help her,” Custo said.
“Did your elders teach you nothing?” Death asked Annabella with disdain.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
Shadowman lifted a pitying smile. “Long ago, a girl such as you came into Shadow. Her name was Persephone, and she ignored warnings, as you likely did. She ate four pomegranate seeds, and in doing so, bound herself to spend a season each year in the Otherworld.” Death made a show of looking Annabella over. “How much did you eat at the hunter’s table?”
Shadowman’s tone was as awful as Annabella’s expression, and Custo almost intervened. But she lifted her chin, returning the bastard’s cold glare, and said, “I think I started with the chocolate, and then an éclair, no wait—” She inclined her head dramatically to remember, then continued, all brat, “I think I hit the comfort food first, some cheesy au gratin delicious dish I can’t name, but my mom would probably love the recipe if you wouldn’t mind getting it for me—”
Custo grabbed her hand to shut her up, but she brazenly continued in Death’s face, “And then the chicken pot pie, with the best spring peas I’ve ever—”
“Point is she ate the wolf’s food,” Custo cut in. “Could be worse, right?”
“Look at her. She’s bound to Shadow, and yet as a human, even one with a gift to draw from Shadow, she cannot tolerate it indefinitely. Eventually she will weaken, and the wolf will overtake and possess her.”
“Is there a cure?” Annabella asked.
“He has to release you,” Shadowman said, “but I don’t know why he would with your power. I think he’d bring you to heel”—her chin went up again—“or let your body die, and keep you from passing into the Hereafter.”
The set of her jaw and the intensity of her black eyes told Custo she’d use every atom of her contrary spirit to make her submission miserable for the wolf. If she had to go, she wouldn’t go easy.
Custo was ready to beg. “Is it in your power to help her, to force his cooperation? Can you kill him?”
“The hunter is elemental, immortal. I can order him back to Shadow, but Annabella would eventually have to follow. He set out to capture her, and that’s exactly what he has done. There is no ‘cure’ for a choice. Even one so seemingly insignificant.”
So, better to fight now, when Annabella was at her strongest, than to run and be hunted again and again until they wished for an end. Any end.
“I like a good fight,” Adam said, coming up beside Custo. Adam was already beat to shit, his pretty, aristocratic nose swelling under blackening eyes.
Luca joined them. His face was scabbed with blood, eyes heavy with losses from The Order’s ranks. I’m with you, too.
Hell of a way for Segue and The Order to come together, but at least some good was coming out of the nightmare.
Annabella was shaking her head. “This is between the wolf and me. Has been from the beginning. I can do things with Shadow. Magic. I can make him hurt.”
But eventually he’ll overpower you, Custo added mentally to himself. Not good enough.
There was no way he could bear Annabella submitting on her own, alone. At the very least, he’d be by her side, even if it cost his embodied soul. It wasn’t worth much without her anyway. They’d fight, and they’d pay for their mistakes together, in blood and pain, which was nothing new for him.
But they couldn’t win.
Last time he died, he had nothing to lose but his regrets. This time…everything.
Someone had to win.
Adam had Talia and their babies. Custo couldn’t allow him to help, and in so doing invite more loss and misery into the world. Or Luca, whose end would be as final as Custo’s.
And Shadowman?
“I tricked you once,” Custo said, “and I am sorry. Is there anything I can do to make it right before…he comes?”
“I can’t exactly trade you to Hell now, can I?”
No. “Other than that.”
Shadowman’s eyes slanted to the ruin of the tower. To the arsenal now littering the white stones. The weapons would have to be carefully tucked away until The Order could rebuild.
“I need the hammer,” Shadowman said.
“Take it,” Custo said.
Death’s nostrils flared. “I would have already, if I could touch it. But I need an angel to hand it to me.”
Luca bumped Custo’s arm. “No. It’s forbidden. Don’t add this mistake to the others.”
“Who are you to talk?” If Luca had listened to Adam in the first place, the tower would still stand. If the hammer would bring Kathleen and Shadowman together, then so be it.
Custo climbed the steps of rubble and found the hammer in the dust, the same one he’d handled in the tower’s armory. The shaft was solid, a dark wood rubbed smooth by handling. One side was wide and blunt, the other a rounded knob. A blacksmith’s tool. Custo had no idea what Death would do with such a thing when there were some awesome blades littering the area, and he didn’t care.
When he turned back, his heart stopped.
The wolf was padding slowly across the street, his bunched shoulders rolling with the stealth of his advance. The wolf barked once, and Annabella fell to her knees.
“Hunter,” Death said, “there is no need for that. You’ve leashed her already.”
Custo leaped down from the white rubble as the wolf morphed into an almost-man, naked, hairy, potent, and vicious. His body was built for power, muscles thick and corded. His expression was feral, but had lost that rabid craze that had cost him the fight at Segue. He was back to cunning, to searching out and exploiting weakness.
He’d set traps, and one had sprung. He was here to collect his prey.
Custo helped Annabella to stand and, handing Shadow-man the hammer, said, “I won’t let you have her.”
“You can’t stop me,” the wolf said. To Annabella, he barked, “Come.”
The blackness of her eyes seemed to throb, the thin lines on her skin growing thicker. Annabella swayed, but obstinate as ever, said, “No.”
“Come!”
Annabella blurred, the Shadow within her hazing toward the wolf in obedience, but the rest of her was rooted in the rubble. Custo put his arms around her waist. Her slim frame trembled, every trained muscle overriding the compulsion of Shadow.
How long could she keep it up?
An hour? A day? And yet, what else could she do but refuse and endure? She’d fight until her body broke. Annabella was made of willpower, had honed it, like her body, for most of her life. She was by nature a fighter.
“Come. Now,” the wolf growled across the war zone that was the street. His disgusting stuff was getting hard as if he anticipated dominating her.
Rage pounded in Custo’s head. He put Annabella behind him. That monster would not touch her while Custo was living.
Annabella reached around Custo’s body to flip the wolf the bird. God, Custo loved her.
Adam’s thoughts filtered through Custo’s worry. I’ve got six guns trained on him, waiting for your signal.
To fight the wolf with conventional weapons was to prolong the inevitable.
Luca added, I can think of three of The Order’s blades that would cut him out of the world.
That might take care of the wolf, but what about Annabella? The Shadow was making her ill. She’d have to return to the Otherworld eventually to survive, and the wolf would be waiting for her.
No. Shadowman had stated the only possible way: the wolf had to willingly release her. But what circumstances would compel the beast to do such a thing when Annabella’s power was almost in his grasp?
The wolf needed a better offer.
Custo slanted his gaze toward Luca. “You said my presence on Earth, my body, was a choice?”
“No.” Luca shook his head. So he’d thought it, too. You have no right to offer your body, your great soul, to a dark fae. Annabella would give him free access to Earth, but with you he could breach Heaven.
Hence, a better offer. It was a simple solution: Convince the wolf to release Annabella in exchange for him instead. A mortal for an angel.
A sharp pinch brought Custo’s attention to Annabella. Her eyes were huge in her face, the lines of her skin like old, cracked china.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking,” she said, her voice strained with threat, “but I know I don’t like it.”
Custo had to smile at that. The world needed someone with her kind of spirit, her talent, her light. He would not stand by and watch her grow dim.
To Luca, he said, In my body, the wolf would be mortal, as I am. Adam has six guns at the ready and you have three swords to choose from. Kill him as soon as he overtakes me.
You’d be giving him your soul.
Custo had given his life for Adam. He’d easily give something as inconsequential as his soul for Annabella. And all he’d have to do is control the wolf within his body long enough for Adam or Luca or even Death to do what needed to be done. To kill him—gunshot to the head ought to do the trick—and thus kill the wolf. There was a way after all.
Decision made, sweet peace swept over Custo. He kissed Annabella on her head and then forcibly guided her to Adam for safekeeping.
Her feet were damn stubborn. “What are you doing?” she cried, resisting him.
The wolf growled, lips peeling back from canine teeth. “Annabe—”
“Forget her,” Custo interrupted over his shoulder. “I’ve already had her anyway. Find yourself a more faithful mate.”
“I’m going to be sick,” Annabella said as Custo delivered her to Adam’s hands and left her without a backward glance—better that way—to approach the beast.
“I want her power,” the wolf answered.
Custo shrugged. “Release her, and you can have mine.”