Shadow Fall (21 page)

The wolf backed a pace, regarding her, then barked. It was a formless sound, but she understood the command.
Dance!

“I can’t here. I’m trying to find another way out,” she said, brushing away wetness on her cheeks. Custo had told her she needed to learn to control her magic. Now there was no time left to learn.

Anger rolled from the beast’s chest as she looked around the room. It was packed with stuff, leaving little space to move. No way out. The smell was metallic and dusty-old at the same time, but far better than the wraith cells. White sheets covered narrow panels closest to her, obscuring the boxes and crates beyond. Maybe if she climbed up, there would be an escape. Otherwise she was trapped. Custo and Adam would find her any second. And the wolf would attack.

Putting as much distance as she could between her and the snarling wolf, Annabella inched by one of the panels to get to a box. She climbed a couple crate steps upward, but couldn’t see anything other than more crates, and the wood didn’t look very sound. Where was the way out?

The wolf barked again, and she whipped her head around, fear trembling her body.

He was facing one of the larger panels. The sheet had fallen off.

Annabella angled her head to see what bothered him. It was a canvas, one of Kathleen’s, depicting the great Other-world of the Shadowlands.

Annabella scrambled down and ripped the coverings from the other panels. All were Kathleen’s art. A stack of three looked very similar to the ones that hung in Adam’s bedroom apartment. She inspected them closer; they were the same paintings. Had to be.

Why were they here? Why was Kathleen’s art shoved out of sight, locked in the bowels of Segue?

The wolf’s body pressed at her legs, urging her forward. Its tail brushed her thigh, its growl vibrating on her skin. A shudder ran through her at what was to come, her body tightening with deep apprehension…but not desire. The realization was quick and sharp. She didn’t
want
the wolf anymore, not that way. Not any way. She loved
Custo.
The wolf might have tricked her into going with him to Shadow, but he’d never be able to really reach her now. Not after the night she’d spent with Custo. The satisfaction of that knowledge gave her the strength to go on, though her stomach clenched, shakes mounting.

Annabella turned back to the large painting. It portrayed a shadow-laden copse, ageless trees stretching upward, exceeding the boundaries of the canvas. Though darkness saturated the area, the trunks, gnarled branches, and hanging purple leaves had their own illumination, a shimmer of magic imbued by Kathleen’s imagination and rendered by her brush. If Annabella allowed her eyes to lose focus, she could almost see the boughs moving.

Oh.

So Abigail
had
shown her the way out. The one with the least amount of violence, just as Zoe said.

Tears burned Annabella’s eyes; she didn’t want to go. Terror gripped her, white and cold. A part of her wanted to hide behind Custo or her mother, like a child. But it was her turn to take care of them. To do what was necessary.

The wolf’s growl grew louder, rolling toward the strike of his bark.

Hot, wet drops ran down Annabella’s cheeks. There was no need to dance; a medium of transport was right there. All that was required was a shift of perception, a mental blurring of reality and fantasy, and the trees took on depth, heady scent, texture. Shadow was always that close.

For Mom.
Custo.
And everyone else.

Annabella laid her shaking hand gently on the canvas, and yearned for passage. The gift for magic opened inside her, thrilling in her blood as it raced over her body.

An impulse glimmered bright in her chest, and she allowed it to propel her forward. The wolf was panting at her side. One moment she was at Segue, the next she was…

Custo leaned back in his chair and shook his head at Dr. Powell. “Gillian, you’re not telling the truth, not the whole truth. We have proof that you contacted someone outside of Segue.”

He wasn’t interested in her verbal answers; his concentration was fixed on the mental scramble of the doctor’s mind, which like her allegiance to the wraiths was confusing and backward.

He can’t know about…I was so careful…

He was not letting her go until he’d wrenched every last morsel from her mind. But damn, it felt good to sit in the same room with this woman and know her for what she was. The informant, the elusive insider. For her, he’d come back to mortality.

Custo leaned forward again, elbows braced on his knees, hands clasped so as not to shake the answers out of the woman. “Look, Adam trusts you with Talia. He’ll understand if you were manipulated or coerced into relaying information.” That was a lie. Custo was pretty sure Adam intended to see Dr. Gillian Powell locked up for the rest of her miserable life. He might even be tempted to throw one of those stinking wraiths a doctor bone. Give ‘em both what they want.

Dr. Powell’s lips pressed together, holding her secrets inside.

“How did you contact the wraiths?”

Talia’s phone.
“I just said I have never been in contact with the wraiths.”

Adam would have to search Talia’s phone records. “What do you stand to gain?”

The last cup of wraith immortality. Don’t want to die. Came too close once.
“I’ve answered that already. I refuse to answer again. I want a lawyer.”

Immortality? Was that still possible?

Adam had told him about the demon bile that granted living death in the guise of perpetually renewing life, a perversion of the Holy Grail. Seemed like there was still some left, scraped off the floor of the ship the
Styx
. Anyone would be tempted; who wouldn’t want to be young, to live forever? Apparently, Spencer had gotten to her at Segue, charmed her. Her brush with death had done the rest. She seemed to have overlooked how ugly the reality of the wraith alternative was.

“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?

Chapter Nineteen

D
ARK
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’t belong, doesn’t belong, doesn’t belong—

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’t belong, doesn’t belong, doesn’t belong—

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’t belong, doesn’t belong, doesn’t belong—

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’t belong, doesn’t belong, doesn’t belong—

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’t belong, doesn’t belong, doesn’t belong.
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—

Reaching toward the heaping basket, she noticed a set of doors beyond that came together in one great arch.

What was through there?

She forgot the fruit and rose, the simple movement thrilling her muscles, bones, her nerves that crackled along her skin. She exited into the forest clearing.

But where she was, and why she was there, she had no idea.

She didn’t feel right either. Her body had no weight, as if the air carried her in its subtle currents, eddies tugging at her and floating her skirts.

Forever midnight filled the sky. In the trees, soft glows flitted behind the tall trunks. She almost made to follow them, but her gaze was captured by a grave, heaped with flowers.

So sad. Whose?

She tiptoed forward, skimming along the grasses, to examine the marker.

Giselle.
The grave was hers.

Grief welled in her heart, and she crossed her arms over her chest. Love, life lost. An eternity consigned to an existence as a wili, haunting the night.

A sound behind her, and she turned.

It was Albrecht, her love, coming to bid her farewell.

Perhaps the stars would stretch the moment, and they could dance, one last time, until dawn.

A tree was stalking him, or Custo had passed that gnarled trunk for the third time. Either was possible, so he kept going, straining for any sound or movement that might lead him to Annabella. He saw only great, luminous forest stretching out of layered shadows and heard only hushed whispers taunting his course. What he wouldn’t give for a bagful of bread crumbs. He was getting nowhere, and sick to death of it.

“Annabella!” he called at regular intervals. If he attracted some other Shadow creature, he’d pin the thing down and demand directions, but except for the indistinct voices, the wood seemed unnervingly uninhabited.

Deliberately doubling back on his path, he caught his first flash of movement and leaped toward it, scrabbling over a root-bumpy rise for a better view.

He called through the trees. “Annabella!”

But instead he found a man dressed in mottled green-gray combat gear, armed and ready for action. Custo tripped to a stop. It was Adam, his face set in his I-know-what-to-do expression, eyes direct, jaw tight.

“What are you doing here?” Custo asked, half excited, half concerned. Adam was supposed to be warning Luca about the wraiths.

“I came after you to help,” Adam said, “and I found her.”

Custo’s heart leaped. Trust Adam to be able to navigate in these shifting woods. Anyone else and he wouldn’t believe it. “Show me.”

“This way.” Adam took off at a wary jog, careful to slow at blind spots along the way and test uncertain ground before moving forward.

Custo kept close behind. “How did you find me?”

“You were making a racket. Anyone could find you.” They moved deeper into Shadow, the variegated shades growing less distinct. Adam slowed marginally, but seemed to have no problem with the pressing darkness.

Which was good, because Custo could think of little more than getting to Annabella, and quick. And all he had to do was follow.

“Does the wolf have Annabella?” Custo asked. He could guess the answer.

“Yes, but I couldn’t get to her without help.”

They hit a deep ravine, and crossed via a thick, fallen tree trunk, a black void yawning on either side. Sweat dampened Custo’s body by the time they hit the forest wall again.

“How much farther?” Custo asked. If Adam were following a trail, Custo couldn’t see it.

“Just ahead,” Adam answered.

But “just ahead” seemed like more of the same passionless trees.

And damn if that one didn’t look exactly like the gnarled trunk from before.

The gnarled trunk.

Shock halted Custo in his tracks, dread icing the blood in his veins. The whispers rose around him and, out of the corner of his eye, he could see slender figures watching, darting behind the ancient trunks. They’d probably been there all along.

Adam pressed forward a few steps, then turned back. “What’s the matter?”

Custo swallowed hard. “What are you?”

He would have followed Adam for hours, forever even.

Stupid.

The man in front of him couldn’t be Adam. Custo should’ve known right away. Adam would have never stepped through the painting into the treacherous Shadowlands, leaving Talia and his babies behind. Not for anything or anyone. Adam was going to warn Luca about the wraiths, even if Luca had denied him aid before.

The whispers rose to loud chatters, like chirping cicadas hidden in the leaves, near deafening.