Shadow Fall (5 page)

Custo opened the door and used one of the cartons as a doorstop. A phone warbled within the room. Probably that Adam he’d called earlier.

Oh, shit…her phone was still off.

Custo darted inside and left her to follow. She fumbled to get out her mobile phone and hit the power button. As it turned on and searched for a signal, she peeked in the room. The air was similarly stale, but the space was open, meticulously clean, and—thank goodness—furnished. Every corner of the place was brightly lit. A wraparound desk edged one wall, topped with a computer, the monitor blank. Another door led to a tidy modern bathroom. And beyond a gray partition, she spotted the foot of a low queen-size bed. One bed, huh?

He’d be on the floor.

“I swear it’s me,” Custo was saying into the phone. “Who else would know about the Shelby clocks?”

A pause.

“But I didn’t turn wraith. You know I would never—”

Another pause.

“Stranger things have happened, Adam. Hear me out.”

Custo dragged out a chair from the desk and sat. “We’ll be here. We’ll wait for you. And, uh, we’ve got a situation.”

He frowned again, and then lifted his gaze to Annabella. “Me and a friend. I’ll tell you when you get here.”

Annabella raised her eyebrows after he hung up. “Well?”

“Adam is on his way.”

Another crazy person. She leaned against the open doorway, sighing. “He thinks you’re a wraith?”

Fan-freakin’-tastic.
The past couple of years wraiths had been all over the Internet and occasionally on the news, though she had never seen one (or wanted to) herself. She didn’t know much about them except they were murderous, insane, and really strong. One Internet clip showed some wicked-looking teeth as well. But what they really were and where they came from, she had no idea.

Annabella sized up Custo. He was definitely crazy enough and strong enough. She didn’t want to think about the murderous part. At least his teeth seemed normal.

“He’s entertaining the possibility.” Custo stood and moved toward a cabinet. He rummaged inside a drawer and drew out some kind of anorak, which he dropped on the floor. He dug deeper and retrieved a pile of black clothing. “I want to grab a quick shower. Do you mind? I’ll answer all your questions when I get out.”

Her list was growing longer.

Annabella glanced around. The place was bright and the flashlight was heavy in her hand. No shadows here. Plus the message light was blinking on her phone. Probably her mom. “Yeah, okay.”

Custo disappeared into the bathroom, but he left the door cracked.

Annabella retrieved her messages. She had one strange hang-up—Adam, most likely—and, sure enough, a call from her mom. Annabella called her, soothed her worries—no mad dogs tonight, lied about an impromptu date with a cute guy, and finished with a “can’t talk now,” heavy with meaning. Her mom was so happy she was on a date that she agreed to hang up on the provision she’d get details later. That conversation would be interesting.

Annabella ended the call, done and done, then reconsidered and dialed her own number. The call went straight to voice mail. “I am out with a slightly imbalanced man named Custo, who…uh…might be a wraith. He is tall, about six three, well built, with green eyes and dark blond hair. He has taken me back to a place owned by The Segue Institute, whatever that is. He had the codes to get in anyway. It’s on the ground floor of a brick building near West Thirty-sixth and Fifth. Oh, and he placed a call to a man named Adam from my mobile phone. If I should disappear or wind up dead, start there.”

“Smart girl,” Custo said from the bathroom doorway. “Next time, get a building number, even if it’s next door or across the street. Or any identifying marker of some kind.”

“Well, you can’t blame me for playing it safe.” She pocketed her phone and stepped back, hitting the desk with her thighs.
Uh…Wow.
Custo in ugly, too-small clothes was good-looking. Custo in a form-fitting, long-sleeve black tee, each ripple of his body hugged by the soft cloth, was devastating. And she knew good bodies. He wore black fatigues, but she couldn’t help imagining him in ballet tights. She almost laughed: This man? In tights? Wouldn’t happen in a million years.

“I wasn’t blaming you, I was commending you. I like that you can think on your feet. I like that you had the foresight to get that flashlight. Must be awkward to lug around. I assume you have extra batteries?”

She tilted up her chin. “In my bag.”

He grinned at her, and she stopped thinking altogether. The smile finally reached his eyes, brightening them with humor. A superscary wolf was stalking her, and this man was
happy?

“Everything is going to be fine now. I’d tell you to go ahead and bed down, but Adam will be here shortly. Good thing he was in New York. He could have easily been back in West Virginia…” Custo’s smile faltered. “…unless they abandoned that facility after the attack.”

“What facility? Who is Adam?”

“Adam Thorne. He runs The Segue Institute. It’s a research facility whose chief focus is the growing wraith population, though it occasionally extends to include other paranormal phenomena as well.”

“Wraiths again.” And paranormal phenomena. The guy was loco, but then again she was seeing imaginary wolves, so she couldn’t exactly point any fingers.

“Predators that look like you and me,” Custo explained. “But inhumanly strong and immortal. They feed on the souls of their human prey. I’ve been working with Adam to control their spread for…over six years.”

Sounded to her from Custo’s call that his employment was in question. She bit her tongue on that one. She didn’t seem to have very many options. “This Adam will look into my wolf?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“Tonight?”

“We’ll do what we can tonight. Segue has a significant intelligence operation, we should be able—”

Custo tilted his head, as if listening. Then he moved in a blur, grabbed her arm—the flashlight had her wrist twisting painfully—and pulled her behind him. “It’s going to be fine,” he said too calmly.

“Where is it?” Annabella’s heart jumped. She grabbed his waist to steady herself and peeked around his trunk, flashlight on, searching for the hulk of the wolf.

She couldn’t see anything but crates.

“Hold your fire. I am unarmed,” Custo yelled, “and I have an innocent woman here.”

So not the wolf. She kept the flashlight pointed at the door anyway.

Custo glanced down at her. “Don’t resist. I expected this. Adam is only being careful.”

“On the floor,” a gravelly male voice called back.

Custo nodded, as if he thought that was the right course of action. “Down,” he said. “They won’t hurt you.”

“But I thought—” She didn’t know what she had thought. Maybe that they’d be spending the night here. Maybe that he’d have some quick fix to her problem, like Jasper’s hot screw. Maybe that she’d be safe enough to rest so she could be ready for her performance. If she didn’t put her head down soon, she was going to fall down anyway.

“On the floor now!”

Custo pushed her to her knees as he lowered himself. “No sudden movements. Just lie on the floor. Everything is going to be all right.”

No sooner had her cheek touched cold linoleum than several pairs of black combat boots ran into view. One pressed on Custo’s neck, the tip of a gun at his head. Other boots had him at his arms, the small of his back, his legs.

“No, no, no,” Annabella yelled as her body trembled with fear and anger. This was a mistake. A mistake to share a cab. A mistake to trust a strange man. A mistake that might cost her
Giselle
. “He called
you!
He called
you!
”

Custo had the perverse nerve to attempt a smile at that, boot rubber in his face, but he remained silent, the rest of him still.

Rough hands hauled Annabella up from under her armpits. Her flashlight clattered to the floor. From the corner of her eye, she spied a soldier dumping the contents of her bag into a messy pile and dissecting her stuff. She was driven up against a wall, held with her arms twisted behind her. Whatever idiot was doing this to her probably thought the arm hold hurt, but he’d be wrong. She’d been dancing since she was four; flexibility was no problem for her. She could have gotten out of it if she wanted, but she took her cues from Custo.

Let it happen.

A hand roved her body, dipping between her boobs, as if they were big enough to hide anything. Then the jerk swept the juncture at her thighs. Totally humiliating. He located her mobile phone—didn’t take a genius to put a hand in her pocket. Then suddenly she was yanked back and propelled out the doorway. “If he twitches,” her captor called, “shoot him.”

“He was helping me,” Annabella said, finally getting a glimpse of the infamous Adam. Dark hair, chiseled face, clenched jaw. Might be good-looking if he weren’t such an asshole.

“I doubt that very much.” Adam directed her to a black SUV idling in front of the building.

The street was otherwise dark, shadows shifting with her quick glance. If she couldn’t have Custo, she at least wanted her flashlight, though she doubted Adam would run back in and get it for her. Someone inside the SUV opened the side door.

“No, you don’t understand,” she said, “he’s a little crazy, but I swear he hasn’t done anything wrong.” She tried to twist out of Adam’s cruel grasp while he propelled her into the vehicle.

“No,
you
don’t understand, Ms. Ames.”

How did he know her name?

“That couldn’t be Custo Santovari.” Adam’s eyes were flinty, his mouth cruelly twisted with strong emotion. “The Custo I know died over two years ago.”

Chapter Four

B
LOOD
ran off Custo’s arm into crimson splatters on the cold concrete floor of his holding cell. His forearm was a scream of pain from a deep diagonal slice through skin and muscle—a parting gift from one of Adam’s men, and a test: wraiths heal rapidly, humans do not.

Not that Custo had expected a welcome parade; Adam had to take all due precautions. Custo leaned against the cell wall—his butt was already going numb from his seat on the hard floor—and rested his lower arm on his knees in plain sight. His sleeve was bunched over his elbow. Easiest way to safely ID a wraith was to watch him regenerate, a bracing combination of nightmare and miracle.

Custo was more than a little curious himself. Did an AWOL angel heal rapidly, too?

A long two-inch sliver of thick Plexiglas broke up the monotonous gray of his prison. No way to get food in without unsealing the two-foot-thick steel-reinforced door. No place to piss. Aside from the metallic scent of blood, the air had a wet earth smell, as if he were underground, but laced by the peculiar funk of the walking dead. A wraith’s cell.

Custo knew the three Segue facilities in the northeastern U.S. by heart—he’d been involved in the construction of them all—but this place wasn’t familiar. Had to be new, and if it was new, then the wraith war continued and at least several months had passed since his death. Actually, since he’d picked up from Annabella’s thoughts a general awareness of wraiths, the threat had to be public as well. He did a little mental math. Probably over a year had passed. It made sense that Adam was so suspicious.

“I’m not a wraith, Adam,” Custo called. His voice bounced back at him.

As expected, no answer.

Custo stretched his consciousness to locate Adam. He was there, on the other side of the cell. Custo touched his mind: his friend was determined to wait out the test. Custo pushed harder, trying to unlock Adam’s deeper thinking, but as always, only immediate intent was discernible, and even that was unreliable. People changed their minds all the time.

He extended himself further and found Annabella, not far away. Her thoughts were a muddle. Probably scared, worried, angry. But safe. There was no better place for her than Segue, both for her protection and for the resolution of her problem. The sooner he settled the wraith question with Adam, the sooner he could put her at ease. He didn’t want her frightened any longer than necessary. She was feisty, which he liked, but too delicate to fight a creature of Shadow. He’d take care of everything.

An image flashed in his mind: Annabella wrapped around him while he was buried deep within her, the heat of their friction, hearts pounding against each other, his mouth on the apple of her shoulder, the sweet taste of her skin…

A sharp sizzle, white-hot, brought Custo’s attention back to his arm. Pain cleared his fantasy from his mind. He blinked hard and examined his wound.

The deepest layers of rent tissue were obscured by congealing blood, the gape in his skin cracking slightly like a wide, lipless mouth. The shallow edges of the cut, however, had gone from scarlet to pink as the skin came back together, sealing with the pucker of a scar. It was a miracle of millimeters, but Custo had no doubt he was healing—fast.

Shit.
His heart tightened like a fist.

Adam would have only one conclusion—wraith. And on the subject of wraiths, Adam had always been blindly resolute. Kill them, kill them all. Custo couldn’t blame him. Adam’s own brother, Jacob, had made the choice to become a wraith, trading humanity for immortality, then murdered Adam’s mother and father, fed on them to make himself stronger, and mocked Adam for being too human, too weak to stop him. Jacob should have known better, should have known Adam wouldn’t break and would never forgive the destruction of his family. The Segue Institute was born with a single clearly defined purpose—find a way to end Jacob.

The heat in Custo’s arm was now bone-deep, aching with the weave and knit of his flesh. The healing wasn’t nearly as fast as a wraith’s, who could recover in minutes from what should’ve been mortal wounds, but it far exceeded a normal man’s. Therefore, damn it, wraith.

Custo lifted his uninjured arm, licked his thumb, and cleaned away the dried blood at one edge of the wound. It was obvious now that he was healing supernaturally. No point hiding the truth.

He turned the closing wound toward the slit in the wall, so there would be no mistake. “I’m not a wraith, Adam. I’m—” He broke off. Still couldn’t say the ridiculous word out loud. He groaned inwardly and took a deep breath. Tried again. “I’m an
angel.
”

Silence. Not even a flicker of a question from Adam’s mind.

Custo sighed. “I know. I know. Sounds absurd. I don’t expect you to believe me when I don’t believe it myself, but there it is. The only way you’re going to know either way is to trust me. I’m asking you to trust me.”

Silence.

Jacob had loved to play games with Adam’s memories, to trick him into painful recollections of times when life was full and whole. Custo refused to do the same—to pull out their shared past to manipulate his friend. Not that Adam would be moved. He had learned to turn a deaf ear to the insidious ramblings of a wraith in a cell, the clever pleas for release, though the wraith had the voice of his brother or long-lost friend.

Dropping his arm back on his knees, Custo sighed. He could feel Adam’s presence on the other side of the concrete, a bright condensation of identity. Adam couldn’t afford mistakes. If the world were anything like it had been before, there was no way Adam could take a chance on him.

Adam’s mind came to a decision.

Custo brought himself to standing as the lock released on the cell door.

“I want a lawyer. You’ve got no right to hold me against my will!” Annabella yelled at the slit in the wall of her weird holding cell. It was worse than the prison cells she’d seen on TV—cold, nondescript gray, like an awful basement, with only a shitty folding table and a shitty pair of folding chairs. At least the room was somewhat lit. If she stayed near the door, she should be fine. The dim corner on the other side was out of the question. It seemed like the kind of place the wolf would hide. She wanted her flashlight to burn him out.

She slapped the palm of her hand on the table to make some noise. In the concrete room, the slap was like the report of a gun.

“Hello, damn it! I’m frickin’ exhausted in here!” Her voice was rough and shrill. She was terrified out of her mind, cringing at the least little thing. If she were getting sick from all this Custo crap, she was going to kill him. Kill that Adam bastard, too. She should have never agreed to share that cab. “I want a lawyer!”

Annabella dragged a chair around to the bright side of the table. The damn thing started to collapse into itself and she had to fight with the seat to get it properly unfolded again. She banged it on the floor when she got the seat open, and lowered herself carefully onto it.

“I. Must. Chill,” she said aloud. Obviously no one was listening to her. “I must chill. I must stay calm. I perform in”—she calculated the number of hours before she’d be onstage—“twenty hours-ish. I must keep it together. Deep breaths.” She inhaled until her lungs were bursting, then let out the air slowly. And again. Much better.

She glanced over her shoulder at the slit in the concrete. Screw it. “Get me out of here!” Her screech broke on
here,
the type of sound that shattered glass, but it didn’t do much to the concrete. She’d have to try harder.

This was
so
not happening. She looked around herself again.

“Maybe I’ve gone completely insane.” Sure seemed more plausible than any other explanation. “That’s it. I’m insane. This is not a prison cell; this is a padded room in some very low-budget hospital. I am not being hunted by a wolf—that’s only a manifestation of all my fears and stress. And that man Custo is…”…
my hottest fantasy come to life. See? Crazy.

Concrete scraped loudly against concrete. Annabella stood, knocking her chair onto the floor. The huge, thick door retracted. She felt her anger rising again. Whoever was responsible for her unlawful imprisonment was going to get an earful from her. And charges filed with the police. And a civil lawsuit for attempting to ruin her performance.

“I want some ans—” Annabella began. She broke off when the door finally retracted enough to reveal her jailer.

A short, very pregnant woman. If Annabella was exhausted, the woman looked ready to pass out. She was deathly pale, dark circles under her eyes, both aspects accentuated by white-blonde hair pulled back in a day-old ponytail.

Annabella fought to hold on to the outrage and obscenities she planned to hurl at whoever came through that door for kidnapping her and locking her in a creepy basement. Not to mention she was starving to death. She’d just danced for four hours.

The woman gave her a little smile.

“Oh, damn it,” Annabella said, surly. “Let me get the chair for you.” She turned to offer it, but, of course, the damn thing had fallen in on itself again.

The woman chuckled and waddled forward. “I appreciate it.”

“Well, you look ready to pop,” Annabella grumbled, getting the metal chair unfolded again. “Here.”

“Not for another two months. Twins.” The woman used the table to lower herself down. The metal door slid closed and locked with another loud scrape.

“Uh…” Annabella looked at the door, her body flushing with anger again.

The woman squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry. I’m Adam’s wife, Talia. We won’t be in here long. He’s spying on Custo now, but he checks on me all the time.” She sighed heavily. “All the time,” she emphasized with a roll of her eyes.

Annabella wrestled with the second chair. “Where is here? And why the hell am I being held hostage?”

“You’re not a hostage. And you are just north of New York City, at one of Segue’s holding facilities.”

“This is criminal.”

Talia shrugged. “The president himself has granted us the authority to apprehend and hold wraiths.”

“I’m not a wraith,” Annabella shot back.
The president?…of the United States?

“But you believe it anyway.” Talia flashed that tired smile again, pulling her hand back with a satisfied sigh. “Want to tell me why?”

Why? Like she’d have any clue why the world suddenly became crazy-scary. First the wolf, then the surreal encounter with Custo, and then the soldiers dragging them both away from that hideout in the city.

Talia lifted her eyebrows in friendly interest. “How about starting with how you met Custo?”

“How about letting me out of here?”

“Custo first,” Talia said. “Besides, I promised Adam that I wouldn’t release you from the cell.”

In spite of her anger, Annabella felt herself crack a smile. “But left out the fact you planned to join me?”

Talia shrugged again. “He’s a little distracted with Custo’s return, and I took advantage.”

“Will you catch hell?” The woman seemed so whipped already. It would be just like that SOB Adam to stress her out some more.

“Adam will want to yell at me so bad the little vein on the side of his head will bulge, but he won’t. Poor man has it tough these days.”

“Poor man? He frisked me! As in…
everywhere!
” Annabella lifted her brows to make sure that Talia got her meaning.

“Lucky. I wish he’d frisk me.” That tired smile again.

Annabella gave Talia a once-over. “Looks like he frisked you just fine seven months ago.”

Talia’s smile lifted further and lit her eyes. “He did at that. Our belated honeymoon to Paris was very good to us. Tell me about Custo before Adam gets back or someone tattles on me.”

Custo? What about a little freedom first? A little due process?

Annabella met Talia’s steady, weary gaze, and felt the last of her anger crumbling. “Oh, fine.”

She thought back to the moment she first saw him. It was only a flash really: The dress rehearsal had been typically good and bad. She’d barely started the final solo when the wolf appeared. She’d ignored the animal, figuring that if he were real, it was already too late to run, and if he weren’t, she didn’t have anything to worry about. She’d spotted Custo on the other side of her, hidden behind a bit of scenery.

“He came out of nowhere,” Annabella said. “One minute I was dancing alone onstage, the next Custo was with me, tackling my hallucination of a wolf.”

“I beg your pardon?” Talia’s brow furrowed. “A wolf?”

“Yeah. You’re not going to believe me, but I swear it’s the truth.” Custo believed her; maybe this woman would, too. “There is a huge wolf…in the city…that is made out of shadows, and he has been stalking me for two days.”

Annabella sat back in her chair and waited for Talia’s response. If the woman’s face showed one iota of disbelief, contempt, or amusement, then pregnant or not, she was going to get a piece of Annabella’s mind.

Talia’s face tightened, her mouth thinning. “Is the wolf made out of shadow, or does it exist in the shadows?”

Her serious expression had a chill sweeping over Annabella, prickling at her scalp as all the blood dropped out of her face. “He’s real?”

“It’s definitely possible.”

Two people believed her. Which meant the wolf was real and was stalking her. Annabella put her head on the table as the room spun.

“You’re safe here,” Talia said. Annabella felt a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

The hunter crouched in a corner of darkness, panting with fear. Foul scents of industry, sharp and acrid, filled the air. Foreign sounds jarred him, echoing in a world of harsh, cold gray. His claws scrabbled and scratched on a firmament of flat, unnatural stone. No trees, no magic. Just large, wide caverns upon caverns going deep into the earth.

Not his territory. Not his realm. He was the trespasser here.

The hunter braced in meager earth-shadow. A high whine scraped up his throat. Back. He had to get back.

Mortals clumped with heavy, telling footfalls. Controlled violence hummed in the air around them. Fighters, all. The bright man, the one who’d faced him in Twilight, was worse, but they’d caged him.