Shadow Fall (12 page)

“Jasper’s been found? Alive?” Custo couldn’t believe it.

“He was out cold in his dressing room, but he will be fine. I told him that he had an amazing performance in spite of the drugs he was taking.” Adam shrugged. “It was the best I could come up with, but he’s taking congratulations now so I guess he’s decided to believe it. There’s a considerable ego on that one.”

Custo flicked a probing glance at Annabella. Her head was full of
my-fault
grief. “But someone died,” he said. “Who?”

Adam’s expression grew serious. “A man named Peter Wells, Annabella’s neighbor. I got a call from a contact in the NYPD, which is why I was late tonight. The police want to question her in conjunction with his murder.”

“Coincidence?”

“No,” Adam said, “I don’t think so. I’ve started a Segue inquiry, heard the preliminaries from the police report at the scene. We’re going to blame it on the wraiths and hush it up quick.”

“I’m going to be sick,” Annabella broke in. She made a grab for the garbage bin at her feet and dry-heaved.

Custo moved forward and stroked the column of her neck with the back of his fingers, then rested his palm on her shoulder and squeezed. “It’s going to be okay.”

“Not for Peter it isn’t,” she said and shrugged off his hand.
Don’t touch me,
she thought as she turned away and started to pack her makeup in her tackle box. With her hands trembling as bad as they were, she wasn’t making much progress.

“You have a team at your disposal to get her back to Segue,” Adam continued. “I’ll do the cleanup here.”

If only it were that easy. Custo backed Adam into the hallway. “Adam, I don’t know if I can. Someone is here to collect me, to drag me back where I came from. I’ll try to reason with him, but I don’t think he’ll listen. This is probably it for me.” He hated to ask, but he forced the words out anyway. “I may need you to take care of Annabella the best you can until Talia can destroy the wolf.”

Talia wouldn’t deliver for weeks. What protection could Segue possibly afford Annabella from a creature who could stalk her in the shadows?

Adam’s frown deepened. “Your…cousin?”

Here it comes.
Custo braced and nodded. Luca was a relation of some sort. Probably great uncle a couple times removed or some such.

“He asked me to give you this.” Adam handed over a crisp white business card, smeared at the corner with blood. In small lettering, it read
THE WHITE TOWER.
“He said to meet him there tomorrow morning, nine
A.M.”

“Luca’s gone?” Custo couldn’t believe it. No address on the card. Probably wasn’t in the phone book either. “And the rest of them?”

Adam shrugged. “They took off as soon as the last wraith was put down. Wouldn’t answer my questions. Wouldn’t acknowledge me beyond giving me the card.”

Just hours ago Custo had begged Luca for one more night, and Luca was giving it to him. Should he have begged for a week? A year? A hundred years? Would it have mattered? What an excruciating, horrible thought.

And an irrelevant one.

Custo had a single night, but no way to track the wolf. Annabella was well beyond her strength, emotionally and physically. And he couldn’t even lend his immortality to the wraith war, because he needed to be by her side in case the wolf returned.

He looked at the pristine, yet tainted card again. The White Tower. What kind of pompous name for a congregation of angels was that? This was exactly the reason he wanted nothing to do with them. Absolutely nothing.

Well, screw ‘em. He wasn’t going. He had a number of strikes against him already, what was one more? He’d lied a million times before; they should be prepared for it. He’d been a thief in his past life, too, always looking for an advantage. Well, he was going to steal every single moment he could. If he had to leave Annabella, she would know that he fought the sky to stay with her.

“He’s like you, isn’t he?” Adam asked, his intensity growing. “He and the others with him?”

“Yeah,” Custo answered. But he didn’t know what privilege permitted them to exist on Earth.
To exist on Earth.
He didn’t know how to apply, or if his escape from Heaven (or the circumstances thereof) made him ineligible. As always, his decisions were tainted with regret.

“I’d like to go with you tomorrow,” Adam said.

Of course he did. Big brother Adam always had to see things through.

“If nothing else,” Adam continued, “I’d like to see if they’d be willing to cooperate with Segue to fight the wraiths. I’d give anything for Talia to be relieved of that duty.”

Custo went cold. Talia. How could he have forgotten her? Talia had been saddled with an unimaginable horror. A life of rending the boundary between the worlds to force the crossing of the reeking dead.

He’d been too self-absorbed to track the direction of Adam’s thoughts, but it wasn’t so hard to guess their path. Adam had witnessed firsthand the ability of the angels to destroy wraiths without any threat to themselves.

Custo put a hand to his aching belly. An angel might risk pain and lingering discomfort fighting the wraiths, but little else. With Shadowman so clearly unwilling to help, what other recourse did Adam have? None. Adam needed the angels, and he needed Custo to help him find them.

The White Tower would be impossible for a mortal to locate on his own, even Adam with his untarnished heart and networks of information. For one time in Custo’s life, he was in a position to help Adam, to give him the connections he so desperately needed in his war against the wraiths.

Movement from Annabella caught Custo’s eye. She was using some kind of cream to wipe the makeup from her face. The skin under the white foundation was almost as pale. Her thoughts were a scatter of Peter, Jasper, and Wolf. The name Wolf was new, and Custo didn’t like it, as if Annabella and the animal had become something to each other.

Maybe the angels could save Annabella from
the wolf,
too. Why hadn’t they already? He’d like to have their response.

Custo cleared his voice, but his answer still came out tight. “I’ll let you know when I’ve located the tower. Might take some…doing.”

Adam nodded. “I need to go. I can almost smell the wraiths from here.”

“I’ll call you when I know anything,” Custo said. He’d probably be combing the city with his mind all night, searching for the bell-clear thoughts that marked a host of angels.

Not the way he wanted to spend his last night.

Adam left just as the hallway thickened with people. Custo closed and locked the door—no gushing visitors for Annabella—then turned to size up her condition.

She’d managed to get most of the white off her face, and the spider lashes were gone. Though wrapped in a robe, a tuft of white at her knees told him she was still in her costume. All those hooks and eyes were too much for her, and she wouldn’t have wanted to ask anyone else for help.

“Let’s get you back to Segue and tucked in for the night,” he said.

She nodded, passing a hand over her face, but he caught a hint of her face contracting with tears. She stood and removed her robe so Custo could help her out of her costume.

Applying his big hands to the little hooks, he considered what to say. It was pointless to tell her that she wasn’t responsible for Peter’s death. She’d only point out that it was because the wolf wanted
her
that he was dead. She might have been able to forgive herself if they’d managed to push the wolf back into Shadow at the end of the performance, but that effort had failed.

He’d have to try another approach.

“About five years ago—no, wait, it would be seven years now—” Custo kept his tone as flat as he could. He didn’t want pity. “It was after the first rumblings of the wraith war. Some international arms-dealing scumbag put a hit out on Adam.” He swallowed the stone in his throat and finished, “I hit him first.”

Annabella’s eyes widened in the mirror so that Custo could see the whites all around.

“His name was Heinrich Graf. I seduced his daughter into telling me his traveling itinerary, and then I made my move. But the first shot didn’t get him. No, my first shot got an innocent bystander. A doctor, murdered in the street. The second shot got Graf. Adam doesn’t know about any of this. I’ve been too much of a…
coward
to tell him.”

“Why are you telling me?” Annabella croaked.

The last clasp came undone and the back of her costume gaped open. “The difference between you and me is that I killed those people myself, with my own hands, by my own actions. You haven’t hurt anyone.”

Her eyes filled again. “I could have stopped him tonight.”
My fault.

“We’ll find another way. You know yourself better now.” Custo turned Annabella to face him.

She put a hand to her breast. “It hurts to breathe.”

“Try to remember that you were magnificent tonight. No, don’t shake your head. Don’t diminish what you have accomplished.”

“It was Shadow…it was the magic.”

“Annabella, that was
you.
That was all you.” Custo grabbed her hand. If he could give her nothing else before he was dragged away in the morning, he wanted her to be aware of her power. “The wolf didn’t learn
choreography.
The wolf took his cues from your imagination.”

“He was supposed to go back,” Annabella said.
But now he wants me, too.

“I don’t blame him for trying to take you with him.” Custo fisted his hands to remember the burn of the wolf in his grasp. “Your talent, your gift, is amazing.”

“You were so right to tell me not to trust myself, because I don’t.” She lifted her chin to meet his gaze, her eyes blazing, her thoughts begging,
Please don’t hate me.
“I want the magic he offers so badly that in another weak moment I might take him up on it. Even now I want to feel the magic of Shadow again.”
To go there with him.
“You have to promise me you won’t let that happen.”

“Annabella—”

The look in her eyes hardened to resolution. The fear clouding her expression cleared at last. No one had ever looked at him like that. Needed him like that. “Please. I don’t want to lose myself. I won’t if you’re with me.”

He’d been telling her to trust him from the moment he met her. Been telling her that he would be with her every step of the way. That together they’d push the wolf back into Shadow.

Now, Custo didn’t have the heart to correct her.

Chapter Eleven

C
USTO
tightened his arm around a sleeping Annabella and cursed the rising sun. Not that he could see it from Adam’s underground apartment, but since the digital clock read 6:40
A.M.,
he figured the damn thing was lifting itself off the horizon. Truth was, he didn’t want to move. His gut was still aching, wouldn’t fully heal, and he didn’t have time to have a doctor check it out—what could one do anyway?—before they left for the tower.

Instead, he’d spent his time the best way he knew how—keeping Annabella close while he could.

Her body was soft, fitted against his like a perfectly matched puzzle piece, her ass connecting with heat to his groin. She was supple and curved where she should be, though every bit of her was firmed with muscle. Almost every bit; his thumb had been stroking her rib cage under her breasts for the last twenty minutes. He didn’t dare reach higher, or he wouldn’t be able to trust himself. Only her hair, tickling his nose half the night and smelling of Talia’s fruity shampoo, had been irritating enough to keep his mind from picturing the creamy, raspberry-tipped mounds.

Oh, hell. The tower. Think of the tower.
No, that just made him want to have her more. The tower was a reminder that he was going away, probably forever.

Okay, then, cars. He pictured his first car, a stolen 1981 BMW 635CSI. Nice ride. Needed it for a date. Screwed the blonde from his university survey class in the passenger seat.

Annabella stirred. His dick tightened. The wound in his gut burned.

Who would have thought that mortality was Heaven and Hell combined?

He should be sainted for not having sex with Annabella last night. A monument should be erected in his memory for not accepting her invitation, exhausted though she was. Any other woman and he would have sated himself, and her as well, over and over again. He’d have screwed them both blind. Why not Annabella?

The trust in her eyes. Her belief that they would be seeing this nightmare through to the end together. How could he accept her confidence when he knew the very next morning he would betray it?

Somebody up there had better be taking notes.

Last night, he’d contented himself with stroking the long lines of her aching body, her front lounging on the many pillows littering the bed. His thumbs had worked the arches of her feet and had her sighing in relief. He had slowly ground the rocks of tense muscle from her calves. She’d shouted “ow, ow, ow” when he’d massaged the length of her thighs, then finally subsided into a grateful groan, wiggling her butt into his palms. The woman was not shy about her body, and with good reason.

As she drifted off, he’d watched her profile, her eyelids flickering in vivid sleep, and took sharp, smug satisfaction in knowing that the disjointed snatches of dream-thoughts were all about him. Not the wolf.

When the night deepened to utter quiet, he’d opened his mind to search for The White Tower. Its location had come easily, within moments. It was a beacon of calm order, a lighthouse in the confusing ocean of humanity. The only way he could have missed it before was because he was deliberately avoiding anything…angelic.

6:45
A.M.
Time to be up. He was pushing it as it was. They’d need to leave in a little more than an hour and there was a lot to do. Too soon he’d be turning himself over to Luca. He didn’t want to screw up Adam’s chances of getting help with the wraiths, and he had to make certain that Luca would take care of the wolf. How long the wolf required to regenerate, Custo had no idea. A lot was riding on this appointment.

Custo brushed away Annabella’s hair and kissed the spot behind her ear. He’d been planning to do that for hours. He turned his head, buried his face in her hair, and inhaled deeply. He’d found her too late, amid too much danger to know her—every slide of her skin, tone of her voice, draw of her breath.

“Custo?” she murmured…
so warm…touch me more…

“I’m here,” he said to cut off her thought, and therefore, the temptation. But he couldn’t help grazing his fingertips down to her smooth, tight stomach, memorizing her contours for later, when he faced the consequences of his actions. He barely managed to say, “We have to go soon.”

“Five more minutes.” She groaned, turning in his arms to face him, her eyes half lidded, and cuddled deeper into him.…
want more…

More time to sleep or more…?

She answered by twining a leg around his, knotting him close, pelvis to pelvis. She had to feel him rock-hard against her. The sensation was painful in its bliss, perfect in its fit. His blood filled with hungry greed, pounding out lofty intentions. He tilted his head back for clean, sane air. Didn’t help.

…wants me bad, too…why doesn’t he…?

A better man wouldn’t have his hand up her shirt. A better man would’ve never gotten into bed with her in the first place. A better man would have slept on the hard floor like a damn priest.

But he wasn’t a better man. He was a bastard.

Annabella nuzzled closer, grazing her mouth against his neck. He clenched his jaw—there was a reason he couldn’t sleep with her, but he had to think real hard to find it. All he could feel was warm, willing woman, the
boom boom boom
of his blood.

…touch me…why won’t he touch me…?

Oh, right. Because of the wraiths and the wolf, and a woman who trusted him to keep her safe when he was about to leave her. He tried to push her away, but ended up grasping her hips to bring her closer.

…oh, please, yes…

When she nipped him with her teeth, his control cracked. He skimmed his hand up again to cup her breast, stroking his thumb over the peaking nipple. Mouth dry, he barely managed to be lucid. “We leave in an hour, and I have to meet with Adam.”

That was probably the most heroic statement he’d ever made. If it wasn’t worthy of some wings, nothing was.

“Too soon,” she pleaded. “Let’s shut the world out for a while.”

“I…oh hell, don’t do that…Bella, please…” But her hand was already down his sweatpants. No blood was left in his brain at all. His last coherent thought:
Screw it.
He was going to Hell for sure this time anyway.

With an abrupt shift, he had her on her back. The burn in his side barely registered. It was hardly important considering the much more insistent ache in her grip. Her damn T-shirt got twisted around her chest. She released him so that he could kiss his way up her belly. He pried the cloth from her body and went facedown in the dip between her breasts, growling with dark satisfaction.

Annabella laughed out loud and seized his head by the roots of his hair. “If you don’t kiss me soon…”

His mouth destroyed the last of her sentence, capturing her soft lips with his. Tasting her. He found her thigh and urged it up around his waist. Didn’t take more than a tug and she had her legs around him, her exquisitely honed muscles pulling his hips down to hers. He resisted; any more friction in that area would probably disappoint them both.

The kiss started soft, but with an
ugh
of impatience at the back of her throat, she bit his lower lip to take the action deeper.

Custo pulled back, paused, forehead against her cheek while he strained for air. Wrestling with Annabella was well worth the ticket to Hell, but he didn’t want to rush it. Levering from his elbows to his hands, he ground out, “Anna, slow down or this won’t be good for you.”

She scowled like a spoiled brat, her legs tightening around him to lift her hips off the bed. “You’re the one who said we had to hurry,” she snapped back, color high on her face and her breasts. “I’ve wanted you since you freakin’ hijacked my cab. Now hurry.”

He’d wanted
her
since he saw her dancing in the Shadowlands. All sleek and ethereal. She was a carnal, earthy woman now, and the devil in him liked her better for it.

“That’s it,” she said, fed up…
have to do everything myself…

Her hands went back to the waist of his pants, trying to simultaneously push them and his boxers down his hips from her ridiculous angle. Impatient, demanding woman. She wasn’t making much progress; something was in the way.

He touched her mind, though it was obvious what she wanted. He caught an image of her straddling him, speared by him, arching like a glistening bow, every strand of trained muscle taut, her hands braced on her splayed knees.

Okay, he was flexible…they’d do it her way.

He shifted to give her better access to his pants. The pain in his gut stabbed him and he tumbled to the side, but he clamped down on his reaction before she could change her mind. He had to be on his back anyway, so it was all good.

“Shirt,” she commanded, tugging the cloth up at his waist. He didn’t mind the sharp jab when he sat up to pull it over his head. Not with that wicked, purposeful gleam in her eyes. He jerked the last of his sweats off himself.

No going back now. The only thing that mattered was this moment. Touching her, he was alive again, one last time. No, alive for the first time ever.

Her gaze darted to his and then held, her body wavering as she saw him, really saw him. This wasn’t just sex. Couldn’t be. Not when he traded the last of his honor to be with her before facing the angels.

Her expression sobered and Custo touched her mind. He had to know what she was thinking.

…in too deep…in way too deep…

So on some level she understood. Her thoughts went silent as tension hardened the long, supple contours of her body.

Why discover Annabella now, when he was past any hope of a life with her? Why now? He could think of only one answer: For all the order of the Heavens, there was no reason, just madness. It shouldn’t be this way.

Annabella’s breasts rose and fell with her labored breath. Her eyes were shiny, worry slowly darkening the blue of her irises.

Custo shuttered the thoughts that had revealed his ragged soul to her. She shouldn’t have to see that. Not her. He was no good, but she didn’t have to know it, at least not for another hour.

Besides, his blood was greedy. If there could be no reason, then they would be all feeling, all heat and sensation, and banish the rest. He was about to grab her waist and pull her down on top of him, to stroke and coax and tempt her demanding, delicious mood back to dominance, when the darkness of her eyes transmuted to raw lust, overtaking his own thoughts.

Damn, he liked her so, so much.

She extended one smooth leg, sliding onto him. She submerged him in her tight heat, her glorious body sheening with effort, arching with the satisfaction of deep contact. His hands gripped her hips to control their rhythm. He meant to go slow, really he did, but the sight of her above him and the mindless, rising drumbeat of sex drove him to rock her faster. To stroke her to high pleasure, then electric white ecstasy.

A charged bolt of shattering intensity shook them both, cracking, wrecking, sundering. His soul was in pieces, but as long as it was Annabella’s doing, he really didn’t care.

Heaven help him.

Wolf skulked in the deep, fallow shadows of the apartment.
They
were in the bedroom. In the bed. Together. Melded.

Wild yearning bristled his pelt and had him panting with harsh, bitter need. Yeasty scents had his Shadow-magicked body shuddering with the human emotion. It tainted his animal mind, filled his breath with new sharp words as his thoughts advanced to a darker, covetous violence.

The woman was
his.
She belonged to
him.
Hadn’t he just shown her what they could be together? Hadn’t he fulfilled her brightest dream?

Wolf drew his lips back over wet teeth, a growl rolling in his chest. That bed should be soaking with red. Annabella’s soft body on her knees, back arching for him.

But he could not enter. The angel-light banished him. He was not strong enough yet. Not nearly strong enough to break their carnal communion. Mortality was diminishing him, darkness slower to amass his form, Twilight’s Shadow less ready to feed his re-creation. His rebirth required
time,
the bane of human existence.

If not for his name,
Wolf,
the process would have been interminable. A name.
Wolf.
Power.

And she had given it to him. She had to know that she belonged with him. That together they could do great things, that
he
could exceed her every fantasy. She had to know.

And if she didn’t, he would show her.

Oh, hell. What had he done?

Custo didn’t have to reach in her direction to perceive the thoughts tumbling around her head. She kept telling herself to
relax, stay calm, to chill
—so her emotions had to be all over the place. He really should explain things now, tell her that he was leaving. Face her hurt and give her the opportunity to curse him to his face.

Custo patted Annabella’s hip. “Better get up and get ready. I’ll check in with Adam.”

She frowned up at him, her bare skin rosy beautiful. “You’re not telling me something.”

That he was leaving her at her most vulnerable? That he was turning her scary wolf problem over to someone else? She’d never forgive him.

Custo managed to lift one side of his mouth. It was the best he could do. She’d find out soon enough. “Big day.”

Annabella rolled her eyes, but crawled out of bed, magnificent and easy in her naked skin. She knew she looked good—slender, yet subtly curvaceous, sculpted by her art. That awareness had his blood heating again, his hands twitching to touch her. She stood and her breasts pinked slightly under his scrutiny, but she made no motion to cover herself as she padded to the bathroom, her ass sweetly swinging side to side. She glanced over her shoulder, eyes sparkling, to see if he was watching, then turned back, making the motions of knotting her hair behind her head to show her body off to its best advantage. Custo shifted in the bed to follow the siren, but a jab of well-deserved pain in his side reminded him about the day.