SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (81 page)

“We’re almost done here,” Custo said. “I know this is difficult, but these are all questions I must ask. Standard. I interrogated a unit of soldiers just this morning.”

She squirmed in her seat.

“What do the wraiths want?”

Dr. Powell examined her nails—
Talia’s babies. The wraiths want Talia’s babies
—then brought her gaze up with an innocent little no-idea shrug.

Custo turned his head to the side to hide his revulsion. The woman was a menace, worse than the wraiths, because as a person she should still have a shred of humanity. Talia’s babies were bound to be special, like Talia was, but to prey on infants was beyond obscene. To facilitate their capture was no less reprehensible. At least now the threat to Talia and her unborn children was revealed.

Custo gave the doctor a half smile. “When was the last time you contacted the wraiths?”

Yesterday.
Tower location. Had to tell wraiths.
But she said, “I have never initiated any kind of contact with the wraiths.”

Custo went very still, a mercury-cold fear creeping up his spine. “And why did you inform them about the tower?”

Dr. Powell set her jaw and folded her arms, locking herself down. Her eyes were full of suspicion.

Right. She hadn’t spoken that last part. He’d just screwed up. Shit.

Custo scrubbed his scalp to get the blood flowing. He needed to think, find a way to recoup. Probably have to double back to other topics and approach from…

An alarm sounded, deafening and painful as it echoed off the concrete.

Custo’s concentration broke. His gaze flew to the observation window, though he couldn’t see through that way. Then he sought Adam’s mind to find out what had happened.

But Adam wasn’t in the observation booth. He was outside of the holding area, thinking hard,
Annabella. Gone. Annabella. Gone.

Custo lurched off his chair, pitching himself toward the open door. He scrambled around the corner, and when he hit the main corridor, ran.

How could he have missed Annabella leaving? There’d been no shouts of alarm, no sounds of a fight. Those would’ve attracted his attention. Had she been overpowered? He’d been too distracted by the interrogation, the only thing, the only person, that could have absorbed him to the degree that he might disregard the rest of the world for a moment. One lousy moment.

He passed a soldier and shouted, “Dr. Powell. Hold her,” and kept running.

Each footfall sounded,
anna, anna, anna, anna,
in time with his laboring heart.

Custo reached ahead to Adam’s mind so he would be prepared to face the situation. Adam was near unintelligible, reminding himself that a man did not hit a woman.

Custo understood why when he entered the great cavern and found Adam arguing with Zoe. The yellow lift was lowering, a unit of armed soldiers responding to the alarm.

“You say the wolf was with her?” Adam asked, voice harsh.

Zoe twirled her hair around a finger. “Yep.”

“But you won’t say where they went?”

“Nope.”

Adam’s voice rose, sharp with anger. “Why? Annabella’s life is in danger.”

“Ya know, I don’t think I like your tone,” Zoe said while she closely examined the ends of her hair.

Custo wanted to strike her, too, but he clenched his hands and forced himself to gentleness. “Please. Annabella is everything to me. Tell me where she went.”

Zoe heaved a sigh. “What time is it?”

Adam answered a precise, “Seven fourteen.”

“I guess that’s close enough,” Zoe said. She looked at Custo, but pointed to a gray door. “She’s in there.”

Of course it was coded. Custo fought frustration while Adam tapped in a number.

The door opened. The light was on, the room packed with crates and miscellaneous storage, but empty of Annabella and the wolf.

In front of him, Kathleen’s paintings were alive, the Shadowlands vibrant, potent in every exposed canvas. The largest one depicted the dark forest, a hollow of undiluted danger throbbing with power. Like Shadow, the trees were shifting, changeable, the place where every uncertain traveler lost his north and disappeared.

At least she was with the wolf and not lost alone in the forest. Bitter, though, to hold on to
him
for hope of her safety.

Custo turned quickly to Adam. “The wraiths want Talia’s babies, but I wasn’t able to find out why. I do know that Dr. Powell told the wraiths about the tower. You have to warn Luca.”

Adam’s eyes cooled, his jaw flexed, but he gave a short nod. “Go get your girl.”

Custo was already reaching through magic, breaking the surface between the mortal world and the Other. Frightening euphoria swept over his body as his senses grew indistinct, his mind’s ability to reach and read others going dark.

The forest was endless, without trail or boundary.

How would he ever find her?

Shadow Fall: Chapter Nineteen

Dark forest surrounded Annabella. The crossing had changed her sweats to the long, classical tutu of
Giselle
, but whether that choice came from her or the wolf or some other Shadow power, she didn’t know. At least she wasn’t naked.

The wolf pushed her through the trees, the branches snagging like fingers at her tulle skirts until the netting hung in ragged shreds down to her ankles. The bodice was tight and far more ornate than it should have been for the peasant girl of the story. It was diamond-crusted and sharp, scoring her arms as the wolf ran her through the forest. Toward what, she couldn’t guess.

All around, the leaves chattered, the individual sounds collecting into almost-words that had Annabella looking over her shoulder, wary of what lurked in the deeper shades between the ancient trunks. She could make no sense of the rhythmic, running syllables.

—doesn’tbelong, doesn’tbelong, doesn’tbelong—

The air was thick with the scent of earth and plants, underscored by an exotic fragrance that confused Annabella’s senses and burned in her mind, making her exhaustion and hunger sharper, and an already bad mood, worse.

She hated nature. Hated dirt. Hated
hated
the crawly things that inhabited such places. But she would deal.

The wolf had gotten what he wanted—they were in the Shadowlands, together. She wouldn’t give him anything more, and didn’t want to. She belonged to Custo now. The wolf was trapped and that’s all that mattered. Everyone she cared about was safe.

—doesn’tbelong, doesn’tbelong, doesn’tbelong—

The hushed voices followed them into a clearing, a starlit meadow flickering with colorful butterflies, which burst upward when she and the wolf entered the field.

At the center was a tall and slender figure, nearly human, but not. She was pale as moonlight, with fine long hair past her waist. Her cat eyes were large and black, and she moved with a regal bearing and strange grace, her gown floating oddly around her. A queen. Her jealousy was palpable, barely suffering Annabella’s presence. Annabella could sense it like a dissonant sound or a bad smell or an ugly touch.

“She does not belong here, Hunter,” the woman said, her voice a sigh on the wind.

The wolf morphed into the figure of a man, naked, but covered in hair, and hunched, his snout shortened. Seriously not her type.

“She’s mine,” he growled. “My mate.”

Like hell, Annabella thought. But the loathing coming off the woman was too dense for open sarcasm, and the wolf seemed too defensive at the moment to annoy. Much smarter to keep her big mouth shut.

“She’s a danger to us all.” The fae woman’s gaze settled on Annabella, cold and piercing. “You know what she can do.”

“I’ll control her,” the wolf said.

“And if you can’t?”

“I will.” His tone was all confidence. “It will be so simple.”

Custo had called her the most difficult woman alive. She’d have to count on that.

The woman narrowed her gaze. “If you can’t, I’ll have your pelt. She doesn’t belong.”

—doesn’tbelong, doesn’tbelong, doesn’tbelong—

Annabella understood now. They, whoever “they” were, didn’t want her here. The fae woman feared and resented Annabella’s gift.
You know what she can do.

What can I do?
Under the right circumstances, as in a stage with costumes and a very appreciative audience, she could dance her heart out, maybe make something happen. Open a way. But that was a secondary, passive effect. She was in the Shadowlands. It wasn’t as if she could click her heels three times and say, there’s no place like home. First, she didn’t have magic sparkly red shoes, and second, the ice queen in front of her sure didn’t look like Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. Seemed pretty certain that she was stuck in Oz.

—doesn’tbelong, doesn’tbelong, doesn’tbelong—

Even if they didn’t want her here.

Only when the faery woman turned and moved back toward the dark trees, floating more than walking, did Annabella notice glimmers of midnight light following, as if attending her. A court.

Annabella turned back. Alone again with the wolf.

The whispers didn’t stop:
doesn’tbelong, doesn’tbelong, doesn’tbelong.
Maybe they would help her, eventually. If she could ever see them. Speak to them.

Suddenly, the trees reached their boughs into the sky like great skeletal grasping hands. Annabella threw her arms over her head, crouching, and only stood when she realized that the branches formed an arched ceiling. She stood in a wide, open room, a medieval hall of a fairy-tale castle. The trunks became the walls around, adorned by great murals depicting the first act of
Giselle
. The peasant girl is wooed by Prince Albrecht, though he was already bound to marry another. Giselle dies, becoming a wili, when he breaks her heart by honoring his first engagement. Not exactly a romantic story.

“Dance with me,” the wolf said, shifting. Now he wore Prince Albrecht’s costume and looked ridiculous. He had Jasper’s face again, too.

Whatever face he wore, Annabella knew him for what he was and had danced with him for the last time.

Annabella wasn’t about to playact his fantasy. She looked away.

“You loved me once.”

She didn’t dignify that with a response. She’d been performing at the time, the Shadows making her judgment questionable. Her judgment was just fine at the moment.

“What about now?” Jasper morphed, took on height and broadened, and became Custo. Annabella’s heart tripped in her chest.

A low-down, dirty, rotten trick. Very wolfy. But at least her anger got the best of her fear. She dared to ignore that, too.

“You will forget him,” the wolf said. “Memory doesn’t last long here. Eventually you will be mine.”

Not going to happen. Not in a million years. She already belonged to someone, and she wasn’t giving him up in her heart. This new reality she would endure, moment by moment, until…Until what? The end of the world? Until the little voices said, “exit this way”? Didn’t matter. They were both in for a long wait.

The wolf bowed like a prince in a ballet, like Albrecht, and then split into creeping darkness, his shadows, leaving her alone.

If he meant to scare her, he got it wrong. Alone was wonderful. Alone she could think, steel herself for what was to come. She hoped he left her alone forever.

She blinked, and a banquet was laid before her, the rich table filled with every kind of delicious food she could conceive.

She double-blinked. The food was still there.

The feast before her was every holiday dinner, roasted meats and their accompaniments, as well as great baskets of perfectly ripe fruit—oranges, pomegranates, thick bunches of grapes. These were circled by baked delicacies, her favorites, the rich, creamy desserts she forbade herself for dance. Napoleons, éclairs, and, hooray!—cheesecake. The smells were tantalizing, intoxicating.

Annabella’s mouth watered, her belly ached, and her body complained with deep fatigue.

The spread looked so dang good.

But it was
his.
She wasn’t touching the food. Something wasn’t right about it.

Except, her mouth watering…the immortal fae might not need to eat, but she was human. If she didn’t eat, she would die. And she wasn’t quite ready to cross that boundary yet. The Ice Bitch had openly acknowledged that Annabella was dangerous. Could do stuff. And the freaky voices seemed to agree.

Maybe there was hope yet.

So how was she supposed to keep her strength when she was hungry? How could she fight the wolf with her blood sugar plunging? Low blood sugar always made her cranky and weak. How could she be ready for anything if she did not eat? She needed nutritious sustenance.

Annabella reached for a chocolate nub, but the whispers stopped her.

The voices were faint, timid, and many layered.

—persephonee persephonee persephonee—

They made no sense this time. Annabella popped the chocolate into her mouth. The morsel melted in delicious ecstasy, the texture smooth as velvet, the taste dark like sin and sex. It made her tingle all over. Why had she been dancing all her life when she could have been eating?

The voices whined, redoubling, as if in warning.

—persephoneee persephoneee persephoneee—

Annabella didn’t care. Could they say, “delicious”?

She dipped a finger into the edge of a napoleon and licked the cream. Scrumptious. Her heart was thundering in her chest, a pleasurable coolness crawling over her skin. The silvery sensation hit her blood and had her cells singing, her vision slightly blurring. Yeah, baby.

—persephoneee—

What she needed was a fork and a plate. No sooner than she thought it, they appeared, the utensil made of heavy gold, the plate edged with it.

—lost lost lost lost lost lost—

Annabella set to work. The feast was delish, every taste decadent. And no matter how much she ate, she never became full, another happy wonder of the magical dinner. She worked her way down the table and finally collapsed—
almost
satisfied, but not quite—in the large chair at the end. The cool air on her skin grew cold, icy, prickling over her scalp. Her mind dulled pleasantly with the glut of food, though that fruit still looked sweet and luscious. Maybe one more bite—