Shadow Fall (10 page)

“Jens here.”

“I’m on the fifth floor. She’s doing some sort of dance class.” As an afterthought, he added, “Adam here yet?”

“No.”

Custo hoped Talia wasn’t in labor. Those babies needed a little more time before they could handle this world.

“Everyone else checked in?”

“All except for Tommy,” Jens said.

Custo cursed. “Find him. Now.”

“Shhhhhh!”

Custo brought his attention back the dancers, who were staring at him. Annabella managed to roll her eyes from a very interesting upside-down stretch.
He’s gonna get kicked out,
she thought.

“Custo out,” he mumbled to Jens.

The class resumed.

The next fifty-five minutes were a revelation. Whatever fragility he might have attributed to Annabella shattered with the acute precision with which she “warmed” her body. The teacher, a fellow dancer, led the group through a series of rigorous exercises that outmatched any martial training he’d mastered, and then some. No show of tension betrayed the difficulty of the steps, though their feet were angled into tidy, unnatural positions. Their flexibility was nothing short of gymnastic, but the transitions between their movements had an ethereal fluidity that elevated mere training to art.

Annabella might not know the first thing about defending herself, but she was far from weak. She was flexible steel, personified. Her slight body, so trim and smooth, was primed for power. Not one ounce of ease remained on her frame, yet somehow she was still soft. Vulnerable.

“Annabella!” a pretty boy called to her. He had some muscle to him and moved with a cocky swagger. “You want to run through a few things?” His junk was straining his tights, but he seemed to revel in the effect,
yeah, look all you want,
which made Custo want to knock his mocking smile right off his face.

Annabella, breathless, walked over to him, wiping her forehead with her wrist. “Yeah. Sure, Jasper. Let’s hit the lifts first.”

The pretty boy, Jasper, had the nerve to put his hand on her inner thigh, an inch from paradise, and lift her above his head. Annabella soared upward while Custo bit back a snarl. Too high, too intimate, too…much the wrong man touching her there.

Custo probed Jasper’s thoughts, but they were all focused on the movement.

Jasper suddenly shifted, near dropping Annabella into a sweeping spin against his body, her arms embracing with a love-longing that made Custo’s throat tight. He’d have looked away, but he was rooted, hands clenching, ready to tear them apart.

Jasper glanced over to gauge Custo’s reaction, his stance cocky, his mind and body asking,
What do you think of that?

“Leave him alone, Jasper,” Annabella murmured. But Custo caught her own darted gaze, eyes bright with interest.

As soon as possible, as soon as Custo got her alone, he’d show her his version of the very same movements. Perhaps not as graceful, but infinitely more gratifying.

“Let’s do the
sissonne
crosses.” Annabella peeled off her shabby excuse for a sweatshirt and threw it to the side of the room. On her leotard, perspiration winged beneath her breasts, accenting her curves, while tiny droplets trailed down her chest, combining at the cleft of her cleavage.

Custo swallowed to wet his dry throat.

Annabella and the pretty boy moved to a corner. Jasper said, “Two, three,
and,
” and she leaped, his hands high at her waist. The resulting movement was antigravity, the perfect union of strength and grace, male and female. They moved like their bodies knew each other, knew the rhythms of breath and blood without any reference to thought. Annabella didn’t even have to look, and that pretty-boy bastard was there, holding her. Hands all over her body.

Custo was shaking, silent, by the time they finished their practice.

The curve of Annabella’s lips told him she was pleased with herself. Her mind was full of possibilities for the night, with him, should the performance go as planned. Custo was in complete agreement.

“What now?” Custo said, his hands itching to touch her. He had so much to do, but all he wanted to do was shut himself in the studio with Annabella.

“Now I get ready,” Annabella answered, sweatshirt flung over her shoulder. She sashayed out of the room, hips ever so slightly swinging. He wanted to turn her to face him, fill his palms with her backside, do his own lift, and demonstrate his own flawless technique.

She strutted to her dressing room. Custo followed, biding his time.

As soon as the dressing room door closed, he had her up against the wall. His body pressed into hers, her heart pounding furiously against him as she held her breath. She was hot, sweaty, and musky with it. But her eyes sparkled up at him, waiting for what he would do next. He was close enough for her breath to brush his chin. Her upper teeth scraped her lower lip, plumping it. She wanted to be kissed.

She’d been showing off for an hour, powerful and loving every minute. She obviously wanted to revel in her high a little longer.

He didn’t kiss her. That was too easy, too expected, and they didn’t have time to finish anything the kiss would start, which she had to know. This was a tease, a flirty taunt to both tantalize him and see if she could trust him to pull back. She could, but since he wanted her so bad, there was no reason she shouldn’t want him back just as badly, just as acutely as he desired her.

Custo turned her to face the wall, trapping her in the confines of his arms. He held her tightly against him, her body just beginning to tremble, but he didn’t so much as flick the thin strap of leotard from her shoulder.

He lowered his mouth to the slightly damp column of her neck, to the spot that had set her off before and spoke against her skin. “I don’t know what the wolf did to scare you—you don’t seem nearly as scared now as you were a few hours ago.”

Her hips shifted in a feeble attempt to get away from him. Feeble for her; he knew her strength. If she really wanted to break away, he’d have let her.

“I’ll answer your questions, though,” he said.

“I didn’t ask—”

Custo tightened his hold to shut her up. “Yes, I want you. And, yes, it drives me crazy to see another man touching you and holding you.”

“He’s
gay.
”

“I don’t care. I want that privilege.” Custo exhaled a harsh breath, noting how her skin pimpled with goose bumps. He wrapped himself more fully around her to keep her “warm.” “But I won’t force you. I am not the wolf.”

She was utterly still now, hardly breathing.

“So think hard what you want when you look at me that way, when you sway those hips like that. I will take what’s offered and damn the consequences.”

Custo touched her mind and was surprised to find a very defined series of thoughts. She was scared he’d let go of her. Scared her knees would give. Scared they wouldn’t have a chance to finish what they’d started.

He was a little shaken himself, but he forced himself on to other pressing matters.

“We need to talk about tonight, review the security plan.”

Annabella was silent for a moment before answering. Finally, she shook her head. “No. I’m not going to think about that at all.” Her voice was raspy, and she gave a little cough to clear it. “I can’t, you understand?”

After seeing the mastery and grace of that dance class, he had to admit he did. Her focus had to be entirely on her performance. The rest was up to him.

Her weight shifted to her own feet, and he released her. He’d wanted to reassure her, show her that he had everything under control, to tell her that she could depend on him, but she was beyond that now. Had to be.

He attempted to follow her thought leaps. It was easier now that he was coming to know her better. She was retracing the steps of the story, and he could almost feel the veil between earth and the Shadowlands trembling.

By the time she sat at her dressing table, she was in deep concentration. He spent the next half hour checking in with his team—still no word from Adam—while Annabella transformed her girlish face into the ethereal appearance of a ghost. She pancaked her skin white. She lined her eyes black, adhering the lashes to her already thick, dark fringe. She shaded the hollow of her cheeks just so, then stood, holding her leotard over her breasts, and handed him a white-dipped sponge.

“Wipe me down, would you?” she asked his reflection in the mirror.

He didn’t know what she meant, but would do anything she asked. So he took the sponge.

“My shoulders, neck right into my hairline, and my back,” she clarified. Underneath her words was an implicit invitation. Among the complex movements of choreography filling her mind, she’d decided something.

Custo stepped close to her, their gazes locked in the glass. He couldn’t act on his desires, so he bent to his task and stroked her with the sponge. Her character was the ghost of an almost-bride, so he swept the color from her skin. He erased the pulse of life from the curves of her back and arms. He stroked the white across her shoulders to the dip below her graceful throat and the valley between her breasts.

His head was bent, mouth at her ear, arms circling her waist when she spoke, her voice thin. “My costume is on the rack.”

He could feel her heart pounding in her chest—his was, too—and forced himself to take a step backward.

She reached to take the frothy white dress from a hanger, and keeping her back to him, her face to a bland corner of the dressing room, dropped her warm-up clothes and donned the costume. Her hands molded the bodice to her frame and she backed up to him again.

“Would you?” she asked.

The back gaped open, lined with matching rows of tiny hooks and eyes, too small for his hands. He did the best he could with his clumsy fingers and when he brought his gaze back up, found Annabella utterly transformed into an other-worldly bride.

Someone knocked on the door, calling, “Ready in five,” then moved down the hall.

“I guess this is it,” she said.

“Don’t worry about anything,” Custo said. “Just dance.”

She inhaled deeply and exhaled with a shudder. “Let’s go.”

From side stage, Custo could hear the rumble of the audience and the stray, discordant notes of the orchestra. The Segue team was either already seated or circulating until curtain.

Jens was on the opposite side of the stage. He’d simplified the Segue uniform to an all-black ensemble that might pass for stage crew. Only the jacket seemed unusual, but that couldn’t be helped. He had to hide his gun somewhere. Everyone was in place. Everyone was ready.

The orchestra went suddenly silent and the audience muted to a murmur, then a general hush. The music began, each instrument weaving an eerie thread of the story.

The other dancers, brides in death, comprised the first movement. Then the stage cleared with a bustle and Custo’s space was crammed with dancers heaving for breath, watching from the wings.

A new phrase of music began, mournful and romantic, and Annabella stepped into view, a maiden ghost, a wili. The light of the stage shifted slightly with her appearance, deepening with color, with compelling light, with magic.

Annabella.
There could be no doubt; she was born to dance.

She mingled with the other wilis, and then exited to the other side with the group while cocky, pretty-boy Jasper took the stage.

Gay,
Custo reminded himself. But he still didn’t like anyone touching her.

Custo peered across the way, trying to get a glimpse of her and caught only a bit of white tutu. Not good enough. There were at least a dozen dancers in white tutus—could be her, could be some other woman. He extended his mind to see if he could glean her well-being from her thoughts: a shoe ribbon was too tight. Her throat was dry. The shreds of thought surfaced in the cacophony of mental chatter coming from the thousands in the audience and did him no good.

He touched his earbud. “Jens, how’s Annabella?”

“She’s fine,” Jens answered. “Standing right here on her tippy toes to see over the—”

Custo’s earbud crackled. “Oh, shit,” Tommy’s voice cut in, breathing heavy, shouts in the background, cars honking, a crash. “Wraiths.”

Custo’s heart lurched. “Say again?”

“A group of them! It’s a trap!” A wraith screeched, high and painfully shrill in Custo’s earpiece. “He can’t hold them off for long.”

Annabella joined Jasper onstage where he grieved at her grave.

“Who? Who can’t hold them off forever?” But Custo already knew.

Onstage, the couple mirrored each other’s movements—Jasper, strong and earthy, Annabella, light and ethereal, both utterly unaware of the nightmare unfolding outside the theater.

“Adam. He’s out there alone.”

Chapter Nine

G
ISELLE’S
broken heart pulled her gaze to the dirt floor of the forest as she rose above from the freshly turned earth of her grave. She kept her hands folded on her breast, to hold the fragments of her love within her. Prince Albrecht would marry another, a royal lady, and not some peasant girl who knew nothing of the world. His betrayal killed her, yet she couldn’t help but love him still.

But she wasn’t a peasant girl any longer.

She was a wili, a ghost, and would dance forever.

Joining the host of other wilis caught in the midnight hush of the wood, Giselle tiptoed down the long diagonal sweep of dancers to bow to her wili queen, Myrtha.

Everything was as it should be, quiet and peaceful. Annabella’s body felt strong, ready for this moment, though a chill of anxiety had her nerves snapping. The sensation went beyond opening-night jitters, beyond nerves, to fear.

On one side of her was the woodland backdrop; on the other, the black yawn of theater where the audience sat, voyeurs to Giselle’s tragic love story. Annabella looked up and strained her eyes beyond the side curtains of the stage: A bright angel stood beyond the false trees, his pale green gaze fixed on her. He was her hope, her protection. With him watching, her dance would be lighter, her heart would be lighter.

If Custo were near, she would be safe.

Giselle rose from her deep curtsy and began the series of arabesque turns that marked her advent into the Other. Heart hammering in her chest, she stirred the air, spun her magic, and reached for a world beyond her own.

“Where are you, Tommy?” Custo bit out the words, keeping his gaze fixed on Annabella. She was dancing in the center of the stage, surrounded by the other dancers. There was no sign of the wolf. Yet.

Custo strode to the edge of the curtain. Should he grab her now? Stop the performance? Abort the mission? Would there be a second chance?
Damn it.

“Why aren’t you in your seat?” Custo stretched his mind to locate Tommy, found him quickly, by the rear, ground-floor exits. Custo invaded his thoughts: the soldier had made up his mind to join the fray as soon as he signed off the call. But on whose side was Tommy going to fight?

Using Tommy as a reference, Custo pushed slightly outward to the mental press of the city. Looking for Adam was like looking for a known star, but in an alien night sky. Nothing familiar, then—

There. Adam, burning with single-minded determination to survive.

Tommy buzzed in Custo’s ear, answering, “I spotted a wraith and followed him rather than take my seat with the rest of the audience. Do you want me to pull the others from their positions?”

And leave Annabella unprotected and vulnerable?

“Recall only those in the back rows. Keep the stage surrounded and keep me apprised of the situation with the wraiths.”

Custo listened in as Tommy called soldiers by name and directed them to the back of the building.

“Move fast,” Custo added. Adam was out there. Talia and her babies needed him. If Adam died—well, there’d be one more angel—but a hell of a lot of good that’d do for the wraith war on Earth. Adam and Talia were mortality’s only hope.

From his position, Custo had only a partial view of the audience. They were rapt, attention on the stage, but a few rose and sidestepped down their aisles. He assumed others farther back were doing the same. It would have to do.

Jasper caught Annabella in the first of their high lifts, the one Custo had seen earlier in the studio, with Annabella supported high in the air at her hips. The movement looked effortless, but all things considered—wolf and wraiths—Custo wanted her two feet on the floor.

Wraiths weren’t in the plan, certainly not a coordinated public attack. They had to have been tipped off by someone inside Segue. The traitor. How had Adam survived so long with someone sabotaging every effort to fight?

Anger beat furiously through Custo’s system. He clenched his hands—the last time someone betrayed Adam, they hadn’t lived to regret it. This time would be no different.

A rustle behind Custo had him glancing back, but he saw only ghostly ballerinas in white waiting their turn to go back onstage.

The edge on his nerves had him looking closer, peering harder. There was no one unexpected, except…

In the blackest shadows, the figure of a man. He was dressed in black as well, his head covered by the hood of a sweatshirt, and bowed, difficult to see. His body seemed fit, a good 220 pounds and broad enough to have some muscle.

Not a stagehand. Not a Segue soldier.

Who was he? Custo extended his consciousness toward the man. Nothing.

He tried again, alarm sending a cold thrill of dread down his spine. His mind found only empty shadow, which left two possibilities: wolf or wraith.

Custo moved back, his stomach muscles tensing, his balance shifting to the balls of his feet, ready to fight. The dancers shuffled around him, filling his spot as he eased into the open area of the wing.

He was in full view of the man now, who had not so much as twitched. The stillness around him was uncanny, unnatural, a vacuum.

If fae reacted badly to the presence of angels, as Talia had, then the man was not the wolf, or he’d be cringing. More likely, he was a wraith, part of the assault on the building, lying in wait until a prescribed moment when he would attack.

“Got one backstage,” Custo said, alerting the Segue team. “Look for others.”

Wraiths by definition were obscenely strong and couldn’t die, characteristics that drew thousands of people to relinquish their humanity for eternal youth.

A series of “all clears” came from the rest of the Segue team inside the theater.

The fight was outside, except for this one lone wraith. Coincidence? Custo didn’t care. The monster was getting a bullet to the head, then dragged out for transport and a lengthy wait in a cell until Talia delivered and could scream him to death.

In his peripheral vision, Custo marked the doorway that led to the outer hallway. He reached for his gun, not to fire—the report would disturb the performance—but to add stability to his fist. Then he’d force the wraith out and plug him in the hall. Several times.

The dancers aligned again, a commotion of silent white. In a blur they streamed onto the stage.

Custo stalked closer to his target, noting the subtle rise of the wraith’s chest as he took an unnecessary breath. Strange. Why wasn’t the monster moving? Why wasn’t it ripping the air with its shriek?

Then his head came up, the hood dropping to reveal his face.

The blood in Custo’s veins abruptly reversed its course. Not the wolf. Not a wraith. Those angry black eyes belonged to Death.

“Oh God,” Custo said.

“Ironic you should call on Him now,” Shadowman answered with a dark smile. He shifted away from the wall to standing. The planes of his face freckled with minute black splotches, burns, which fell in dust to the floor as the skin beneath rapidly healed.

The fae were harmed by angels, yes, but this was the lord of the fae, who had stood at Heaven’s Gate too many times to count.

Shadowman advanced, and Custo stumbled backward, glancing quickly at the fae forest growing around Annabella, her gift blooming to the night.

Custo raised his hands to hold Death at bay. “An angel has already come for me. I’ve agreed to go when this is done. One night is all I asked.”

“I am not concerned with the work of angels. Why would I be? I am nothing to them.” Shadowman’s voice was low, menacing. “I want only you. You who deceived me.”

Custo planted his feet, flexed his strength to keep him in one spot. “I had to get out of Heaven. I had to return to Earth. Lives depend on me. Please, I have to stay.”

Shadowman stalked closer. “How many souls, do you think, have pleaded before me? I have refused pain and anguish the likes of which you cannot begin to imagine. Spare me your sad tale of woe; I have heard far worse than yours and remained unmoved.”

But…“One of the fae, one of your own kind, threatens that dancer. She is vulnerable, innocent. But look what she can do!”

Custo looked over to the woman weaving magic not ten paces from his position. Annabella glowed with the intensity of her gift.

A sneer curled Shadowman’s lips. He didn’t deign to look at the stage. “My Kathleen painted the unimaginable vistas of the twilight Shadowlands, and she still passed
beyond,
as all must do. You want to help your woman, yet you contrived to keep me from mine.”

“I never said Kathleen was in Heaven,” Custo argued.

“We can argue the subtleties of deceit on our way. I’m sure you know more on that score than most of your angelic host.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Custo said, loud enough to get
shhhh
ed by the stagehand near the curtain. “She needs me. I won’t desert her.”

“I think you will.” Shadowman laid a hand on Custo’s shoulder. At the point of contact, burning cold spread through his body as filaments of Shadow threaded into his system, mingling with his blood. His nerves spasmed, and his marrow curdled when touched by the dark, shady tendrils.

“Come,” Death said.

Custo fought the compulsion, his limbs, heart, and brain rebelling with every cell of strength. But still he moved forward.

“You should know,” Death added with a mean slide of his eyes, “that I would not have any power over you if your soul wasn’t dark and shadowed already. In the strange, ordered chaos of the universe, this is your choice.”

Dark, shadowed, even ruined, yes. But not my choice.
Custo tried to deny Shadowman’s hold, but still moved a single step, then another. Custo’s own hand reached out to open the side stage exit, and though his eyes strained for one more glimpse of Annabella, his legs carried him away from her.

Custo could breathe, but he couldn’t speak.
What do you want with me?
he asked with his mind. His skin tightened with the thickening web of Shadow; he could almost feel himself grow dim as it leached vitality from his core. Somehow he didn’t think Death was going to deliver him to Heaven a second time, not that he ever belonged there.

The music of the ballet suddenly muted with the close of the heavy door. The melody of the story was gone. Only the whine of the strings and the burr of the bass lingered.

“We made a bargain once,” Shadowman said. They strode the back halls of the center, their footfalls hitting the floor in perfect time. “I intend to use you in another.”

Custo made to respond, but couldn’t even grunt. Shadow choked him. By now Jens had to know that he was gone. He’d adjust the coverage for Annabella, or maybe…maybe stop the performance because of the wraith attack.

Custo’s hands cramped, so he knew he’d been reflexively trying to grip them. Even the clamoring beat of his heart was yoked in Shadow.
Where are you taking me?

“If my Kathleen is not in Heaven, then she must be…elsewhere.” Death’s voice lost its loose sarcasm and took on bitterness. “She doesn’t belong there.
I
broke the laws of Faerie, not her. I used my power to cross. What justice is served by sending her there?”

Custo had no choice but to remain silent. He didn’t know anything about justice anyway.

“There is no justice,” Shadowman concluded. “So I intend to make another bargain, this time with Hell. A simple trade, like ours at Heaven’s Gate. You, for my Kathleen.”

The Shadow kept Custo from shaking involuntarily. They reached the back doors that led to the street. From inside, Custo could hear a wraith screech, gunfire, screams, among sirens.

Shadowman slapped his hand against the door and stepped out into the melee. Leashed, Custo followed at his heels, the fetid stench of wraiths blowing up his nostrils, into a scene of chaos illuminated by the overcast hover of clouds reflecting city light back on itself. The street was unofficially cordoned off by abandoned cars. Bodies, human and wraith, littered the area. A cluster of wraiths had made human shields of two Segue operatives, while several other wraiths crouched like spiders on the building walls, ready to strike.

Adam, his back to a building on the other side of the street, his face crusted with blood, whipped to aim his rifle at Shadowman and Custo as they exited. The wraiths let out a quailing chorus, cringing from Death.

In the past, Shadowman had cut down the wraiths with great sweeps of his scythe. His duty for all time was to render the dead out of the mortal world, and none were more dead than the immortal wraiths. The smell alone was proof of that. Custo had witnessed Death’s coming before, called by his daughter’s banshee scream, at the West Virginia location of Segue. Shadowman had struck with a father’s vengeance then, but he didn’t seem to give a damn now.

Death descended the concrete steps, and Custo was compelled to follow.

Adam lowered his gun slightly. “Custo?”

Custo couldn’t answer. Adam would know what to do for Annabella. Adam always knew what to do.

“Custo!” Adam repeated, louder. When he didn’t get an answer a second time, he transferred his attention to Shadowman. Custo caught the dawn of realization on Adam’s face.

“Shadowman, stop!” Adam glanced sharply to his side at the wraiths cringing from Death.

Shadowman halted and shot Adam a pained look. “Every moment I linger here is a moment of pain Kathleen endures in Hell.”

“I need Custo to help me fight,” Adam said.

“I need to trade him for Kathleen,” Death returned, icy.

Adam’s gaze flicked to Custo’s face, but Custo knew Adam could read nothing from his Shadow-webbed expression.

“I’m sorry for her. For you,” Adam said, looking back at Death. “But I cannot fight this war and protect Talia at the same time.”

Custo noted the slow descent of a skinny female wraith dropping to the pavement at the corner of a building near Adam, but obstructed from his view.

“My daughter can protect herself.” Shadowman turned, dragging Custo along.

“She can’t do
anything,
” Adam shouted after him. “She’s pregnant. Every time she touches Shadow, every time she uses her voice, she risks both her life and the lives of our twins. We are besieged until she delivers.”