Shadow Fall (6 page)
The woman was here somewhere, too, her scent faint, yet threaded through the passageways she’d traversed.
She could get him back to Twilight. She could open the way to the never-ending forest. His running grounds.
A fighter stomped near, coming closer. A man, steamy and ripe with life.
The hunter bared his teeth, ears pinned, ready to strike.
The man walked the passage as if he belonged, his presence permitted everywhere in these caverns. Closer and closer. Fat with mortal juices.
This fighter could approach the woman. Perhaps he could compel her magic to open the way back.
The hunter sprang to take him.
The door retracted, and Custo stepped into the center of the cell—not too close to the opening as if to attack or escape, but not remaining on the far side, as if to draw Adam away from the door and the safety beyond.
Adam strode in anyway, the door grinding closed behind him. Custo could tell from the loose, but ready set of his shoulders that he was prepared to tangle, if necessary. Though they’d often handled wraiths together, Adam had taken on a couple of wraiths solo before.
“I’m not a wraith.” Custo sat on the floor to prove it. If he were a wraith, he’d be moving in for an Adam treat.
“An angel?” Adam’s tone was flat, concealing his true attitude.
Custo scratched his chin like a movie mob boss—an old private joke—and shrugged.
“From God?”
Custo winced slightly and dropped the act.
“Then from whom?” A touch of sarcasm there.
Custo cleared his voice. “I’m…uh…absent without leave.”
Adam frowned slightly, then sat on the floor and crossed his legs, mirroring Custo’s position, his gaze coolly assessing. “Let’s have it then. The story.”
There was too much and too little to tell, but at least he had an obvious place to begin. “Well, Spencer killed me.” Custo left off the torture part.
“I remember,” Adam said. His jaw tensed. Angry. But his mind betrayed nothing.
“What happened to him by the way?” Custo mimicked Adam’s surface composure, but he was angry, too. He had a score to settle.
“You mean you weren’t looking down from your cloud in the sky?” Full, bitter sarcasm now. Very angry.
“Doesn’t work that way.” Custo kept his tone deliberately light. “Did you kill him?” As far as Custo knew, Adam had never killed anybody. Custo didn’t think he could take it.
“Wraith beat me to it.”
Ah. “Fitting. He was colluding with them.” Spencer had been the SPCI liaison to The Segue Institute. SPCI, the Strategic Preternatural Coalition Initiative, was a covert government agency attempting to police the wraiths while Segue studied them, trying to discover the catalyst that changed them from human to monster. SPCI mostly mucked things up.
Custo drew a deep breath. “By the way, Spencer told me that you had another traitor at Segue. Another wraith collaborator. Someone you trust.”
Just like that, his message was delivered. A grasping knot of acute worry released. Adam had been warned.
How could you know that?
Adam’s mind asked, but he said, “When did he tell you that?”
So Adam already knew. That was good news.
“Before…you know…he offed me.” It was utterly galling that that Spencer piece of shit had killed him. No pride in that. “Have you had any suspicions about another traitor?” Custo asked, though he knew the answer from Adam’s mind.
Adam shrugged. “We’ve had some intel leaks over the past six months or so and lives lost because of it. Talia killed the demon who created the wraiths soon after you died. The remaining wraiths number in the thousands and are nested all over the world. For a while we were able to aggressively track and…
dispatch
them, but they’ve become better at hiding and coordinating their attacks. Their target is Segue—me and Talia, specifically.”
“Is that why you’re in these charming new digs?” Custo cast an eye around the unrelenting gray of his cell. “Not your style, Adam.”
“This place isn’t mine. It’s the U.S. Army’s, who has, by the way, become very cooperative with our efforts.”
Custo held up a hand to stop him. “Oh, please not SPCI. If there is one rotten egg, there are sure to be others.”
“SPCI was disbanded. The wraiths’ existence is public knowledge now, and we have full military support.”
Custo glanced down at his now-healed arm, trying to process this new information. Spencer was dead, a personal disappointment. The government had granted full cooperation, which was excellent progress. And the war with the wraiths was status quo. He flexed the muscle of his forearm and the crusted blood cracked.
Adam spoke his thoughts, exactly as they came. “So I have an unknown quantity in you…”
Custo smiled. That was putting it mildly. He brought his gaze back up.
“And a traitor within Segue.”
Custo nodded, his grin widening. “No thanks necessary. I only escaped from Heaven, eluded a piranha mermaid with huge tits, and fell to Earth to save your sorry, purebred bottom.”
Adam gave half a chuckle, then sobered. “You’re not a wraith?”
“An-gel.”
Adam lifted an eyebrow. “Mermaid?”
“With huge tits. Bluish ones.” Custo cupped his hands a foot away from his chest to demonstrate.
Adam laughed outright. “And what was Heaven like?”
“Boring. Clean. Nice.” Custo shrugged. “You’d like it, but it’s not so much for me.”
Adam inclined his head. “Not for me either if Talia can’t go.”
Banshee.
“Oh? You’ve been busy.” Seemed Adam had fallen hard for his half-fae, half-human researcher. And yes, the laws of Heaven did bar the fae from entering. Could a banshee, able to rend the boundary between mortality and the Other-world with her scream, enter the gates of Heaven? Custo guessed it depended on which side of her heritage won out. Definitely problematic.
“I’m going to be a father—twins.” There was a deep pool of happiness in the simple statement, and then he sobered, eyes direct. “It’s because of her pregnancy that the wraiths are redoubling their attacks. Hunting us. I can’t afford to take any risks.”
“I want to help. I know what family means to you.”
I was there when your first one was ripped apart.
Silence stretched.
Finally, Adam cleared his voice, cleared the past, too. Custo felt the shift in his mind, could almost sense him packing away the memories, and let the matter drop. Some things were simply unbearable to revisit.
“I’ve got an extremely irate young woman in another cell. One Annabella Ames. She threatened to dismember me if I didn’t reunite the two of you. Colorful vocabulary.”
Atta girl. “We have to make certain she’s protected at all times.”
“That’s why we put you in here.”
Very funny. This was serious. “You know that trick with the dark that Talia can pull? The one she used to hide from the wraiths?”
Adam tilted his head.
“Well, I know what she was doing. She was thinning the boundary between mortality and the Shadowlands, pulling on the darkness there. And believe me, there’s a lot of darkness to draw from.” Custo paused again, giving Adam a chance to affirm or refute his statements.
Adam didn’t comment, vocally or mentally.
“Annabella can’t thin the boundary, but she can almost cross when she is dancing. She’s got some kind of magic to her—it’s…it’s…captivating.” The image of her glowing form moving among the darkened trees came to Custo’s mind. Exquisite. “Anyway, a creature from the Shadowlands, a wolf, tried to attack her. I got in the way, and somehow we both followed her back into the world.”
Adam’s brow furrowed. “So you want me to protect her from a wolf?”
“Us. I want
us
to protect her. And it’s a Shadow wolf.”
“How’s that different?” Adam pushed to standing.
Time to go. Hope Talia didn’t cave to her soft heart.
Custo followed suit. “It’s made of Shadow. It exists, thrives, in Shadow. We need to keep her guarded at all times.”
Adam signaled toward the slit and the lock on the door released with a deep click and scrape. Custo stepped forward, but Adam stopped him with a hand to his chest. “I’m not entirely convinced.” Adam’s tone and expression were stone serious.
What was it going to take? Although it seemed odd for a dead man, Custo was hungry. He wanted something to eat and a beer to wash it down. He wanted a chance to be alone with Annabella. See if her skin was as silky as it looked.
“You always had exceptional control,” Adam said. “I wouldn’t expect any less, but I can’t in good conscience let you out after a five-minute chat.”
“What kind of proof do you need?”
“What have you got? I don’t see any wings.”
“Myth.”
Adam smiled, glancing over his shoulder at the now-open door. “Talia would say that the truth has its roots in myth.”
That sounded like her.
Custo sighed. “I don’t know how to make you believe, and I don’t have all the time in the world like Jacob.”
Custo wanted to get back to living. Needed to get back to living. In fact, life-affirming acts were first on his to-do list. He’d been waiting for too long.
Adam leaned slightly forward. “Jacob is dead, as are hundreds of wraiths like him.”
“Shadowman?” Custo remembered the moment the wraith war started, the day Talia discovered her scream. The wraiths had attacked the West Virginia Segue compound. Escape was impossible. Until Talia…The sound was like nothing he’d ever heard before, beautiful and terrible, serene and shattering, contradiction unified. She’d ripped a hole in the sky through which Death entered, his scythe swinging, cutting scores of wraiths out of the world. She’d fainted before her father had reached Jacob.
But if Jacob was dead, then she’d called on her father again.
Adam made a show of looking around the concrete hole, his face lining with pain and grim determination. “We capture wraiths, hold them here while we prepare, and then…”
And then Talia and her trumpet call for Death.
Adam exited without a backward glance.
I’ll do what needs to be done. I found a way to kill my brother. I can kill you, too.
Fisting his hands, Custo remembered. Shadowman had passed over the human men and women that day. Would he pass over an angel?
What about the angel who betrayed him?
A
NNABELLA’S
stomach growled while she waited for the two lovebirds to finish their spat and get her the hell out of the concrete prison. Tall, angry Adam made a good effort to keep his voice soft when it was obvious he wanted to shake Talia, whose very pregnant stomach jutted alarmingly from her middle. Two babies, and the poor woman still had a couple months to go. Wow.
Sure enough, the vein at his temple pulsed as he stared down at her. “What could you possibly be thinking?”
Talia postured back, nudging him with her big belly. “I’m pregnant, not an invalid.”
Annabella eyed the open door; maybe she could make a run for it.
“That’s not remotely the point, and you know it, Talia. Segue has protocols for a rea—”
“—protocols for
wraiths,
” Talia interrupted. “She’s not a wraith, so there is no need to keep her locked up.”
“You touched her?” Adam’s voice dropped a few octaves.
Annabella wondered what touching her had to do with it, but she wasn’t about to exacerbate the situation and ask.
“And what if she had been?” he pressed.
“She’s not.”
Adam closed his eyes, his lips silently forming the words,
one, two, three, four…
When he opened them again, the weight of his attention fell on Annabella. She took a step back.
“Apparently,” he said with effort, “you’re not a wraith.”
Talia grinned as if she’d won a battle and wrapped an arm around Adam’s waist. Annabella watched them in reluctant appreciation. They balanced each other. Dark, angry Adam and light, small Talia.
“Let’s get you comfortable for the night,” Talia said. “You have a big performance tomorrow and need your rest.”
Wait a minute…
“I’m not staying here.” They’d dragged her by force and stuffed her in an airless cell, and now they thought she was going to sleep in this hellhole? Nuh-uh. “No way. If you’ll kindly return my flashlight, I’ll head home.”
“If a creature of Shadow is stalking you, this is the safest place for you to be.” Talia’s eyes were tense with concern.
Adam’s steely gray gaze softened as well, and he shrugged somewhat reluctantly. “And your involvement with Segue may have made you a target for wraiths.”
“Great. So you’re saying that because I accepted the help of
your
friend, I am actually in more danger.” Freaking fantastic. “I want to talk to Custo.”
“That’s not possible.” Adam’s voice was flat and uncompromising.
“Oh, I think it is,” Annabella said, so livid a quaver entered her voice. She might not have the nerve to yell at the pregnant woman, but Adam could take it. “I want to see Custo, and I want to see him now.”
“He’s not safe.”
“He treated me a whole lot better than you.”
Adam’s eyes glittered. “Custo is in lockdown and will remain there. Wraiths are permitted no visitors.”
Frustration had Annabella’s body warming. “You seem like a smart guy, and yet you’re not getting it.”
Adam’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t care.
“He. Saved. Me.” She enunciated each word in case he was hard of hearing, too.
“Custo will remain in lockdown. You are welcome to stay here while we investigate your problem, but you are also free to leave.” Adam gestured toward the door.
Poor Talia. The man was impossible. Annabella turned on her heel to exit the cell. Free to leave? Well, that’s exactly what she was going to do.
“Stay,” Talia said, reaching out to catch her arm. “Just for the night.”
Annabella tried not to scowl at her. “I don’t want any of this. I want my old life back.”
“I don’t think there’s any going back,” Talia said with a slow shake of her head.
Obviously, Talia knew nothing about the power of avoidance. A lot of problems went away if Annabella ignored them and thought of something else, something better. It was a gift.
“One night,” Talia repeated.
Annabella took a deep breath and sighed, her rage and bluff evaporating into the air. She needed the sleep—she couldn’t avoid that. And if they could help her get rid of the wolf as Custo promised, then okay. She didn’t like it, but okay. “One night.”
Talia broke out of Adam’s hold and moved to the door. “You’ll be comfortable in the infirmary. There are a couple of private rooms, and it is always staffed, so help is close. I doubt any wolf, Shadow or otherwise, could bother you there.”
Adam gestured,
ladies first.
Annabella exited the cell behind Talia to find herself in a long concrete corridor of several similar cells. Uniformed guards stood sentry at regular intervals, armor molding their upper bodies and helmets stretching down over their faces. Some kind of machine gun was held at their chests, ready to fire. Good thing she hadn’t tried to run. Where the hell was she?
“Don’t mind them,” Talia said over her shoulder as they walked the length of the passage. “They’re the good guys.”
Good guys, right. If those were the good guys, then the bad guys must be seriously scary.
The three of them came to an enormous retractable door made of riveted metal both wide and high enough to accommodate a vehicle. Adam tapped a coded panel at its side, and the door shuddered open, an earsplitting screech of metal on metal echoing through the space. Beyond, the corridor resembled a long, lit tunnel, like an industrial subway. Broken yellow lines on the floor dictated two-way traffic, though it was empty now. The concrete ceiling was high, yet the passage had a cavernous feeling, as if she were far underground. In spite of all the space, all the air, Annabella had to work to breathe against a mounting press of claustrophobia.
“The place was retrofitted from a government bomb shelter,” Talia said. “It’s built to withstand anything, which is great for wraith control, but I hate it anyway.”
“I think I hate it, too,” Annabella answered with a thick swallow. She was all about creature comforts—soft pillows, Egyptian sheets, warm colors, cuddly throws flung over the arm of the sofa, and knickknacks cluttering every surface. This place was as cold and harsh and empty as a grave. “You live here?”
Talia laughed, but it sounded forced. “Temporarily. The Segue Institute’s main facility is in West Virginia, recently renovated and very comfortable.”
Annabella doubted it.
They came to and boarded a massive yellow cargo lift, an open-air vehicle elevator. Annabella mimicked Adam and Talia, standing back from the edge and grasping the railing. Talia leaned into Adam’s chest, and the elevator rose slowly through an opening in the high ceiling to another floor.
Traffic on the upper level was brisk: a tram of sorts, engine whining, slowly transported crates of equipment. Tunnel pedestrians in lab coats walked with purpose, badges flapping at their waists and on their chests. Armed sentries stood post, as they had on the level below. Sweaty, muscled men in tanks and shorts jogged the length of the space, feet falling in perfect rhythm to an outlying soldier who set the pace.
Adam looked down at Talia. “You didn’t take a cart?”
“I felt like walking,” she said. “I’ve been sitting all day.”
“You
should
be sitting.”
“Don’t boss me.”
Annabella followed the bickering pair, turning from the corridor down a low, modern hallway, busy with a smattering of determined-looking people in lab coats and white shirts going about their work—whatever that was. Custo and Adam were right about something: She couldn’t see the wolf infiltrating this place. It banished imagination, even nightmares. The security of the codes, badges, and soldiers made the very idea of a Shadow wolf silly.
They came to a set of glass doors marked
INFIRMARY
and were about to enter when Adam was stopped by a harried man, who murmured something in his ear.
Adam listened, then turned back to Talia. “Mind if you get her settled? I need to take care of something.”
“Not at all. I’ll meet you back in our quarters later.” Talia reached up, grabbed his shirtfront, and brushed her mouth against his. Adam’s hand went to her hair and his nostrils flared as if he were inhaling her, and when he pulled away, the lines of stress on his face had lessened. The simple gesture made Annabella ache inside. However Adam and Talia might argue, there was something very real and solid about their connection. Not the fairy-tale brand of love, saccharine and schmaltzy, but the enduring kind. The kind that saw a couple through the ups and downs of life. It had been missing from Annabella’s parents, from any relationship she’d had the opportunity to examine, and she’d concluded it was a myth. But here it was. Now. In this soul-smothering basement bunker. Real. If ever a “true love” existed, this was it.
“Please don’t tire yourself out,” Adam said, tone long-suffering, and moved down the hall.
Annabella swallowed hard, packing away the newfound knowledge for examination later, and followed Talia’s waddle inside the infirmary. The sliding doors hissed closed behind them. Centered in the entryway was a long white counter, staffed by a tall and broad-shouldered male nurse. “Dr. Thorne, are you feeling well? Those babies giving you any trouble?”
“I’m not here for me, Rudy,” Talia answered. “I’m here for Ms. Ames. She needs a private room and a good night’s sleep. Can you help us accommodate her?”
“Fifteen is open,” Rudy said. He looked at Annabella. “Do you need a sleep aid?”
She hadn’t thought of that. Maybe taking something was a good idea. A sleeping pill could put her under for eight to ten, and then she could wake refreshed and ready for the biggest day of her life. Without it, her rest was bound to be rotten, all things considered.
“Yeah,” she said. “Is there something light I could take? Knock me out, but not put me in a coma?”
“I’ll see what I can do. Fifteen is right down there.” Rudy gestured down the hall. “Do you need anything else for the night? Contact solution or any personal items?”
Annabella looked at Talia. “Not if I get my bag back.” Which incidentally had an old, smushed chocolate brownie protein bar in there. Some dinner.
“Of course. Adam would be thorough.” Talia heaved a big sigh. “You go on down to your room. I’ll make some calls and have it delivered right away. We’ll have you tucked in and asleep in no time.”
“Thanks,” Annabella said. The word felt funny in her mouth. Why on earth was she thanking her? For returning the bag they had confiscated when they kidnapped her? Crazy. But then again, Talia had shown her nothing but kindness. And what about Custo? Was there any kindness for him?
Annabella shook her head to clear her thoughts. She was too tired to think, and there was nothing she could do anyway. She’d sleep and then deal with everything tomorrow. She turned and made her way to the room with the number “15” on a flap above the door.
She gripped the lever and entered. The room was small and tidy. A hospital bed fitted with white sheets was centered on the opposite wall, a beige blanket folded across the end. Another door, kitty-corner to the entry, was ajar, the gleaming edge of a toilet promising a private bath. Nothing fancy, but clean.
Okay. She could rest here for one night. Rudy, the linebacker-turned-nurse, wouldn’t let anything get past him. Maybe this was the best solution after all.
The console above the bed had an overhead light, and Annabella moved forward to find the switch to turn it on for a little extra protection. As she was fiddling with the switch, the door closed behind her.
Her sleeping pill? Her bag?
She turned and found a soldier. His hair was buzzed, jaw square. Bulging arm muscles, bronzed by the sun, were displayed by a tight army tank. He wore baggy camo pants tucked into black boots. No bag.
When he didn’t say anything, she was forced to ask, “Yes?”
He cocked his head at a sharp, oblique angle, chin tilted slightly downward. Gaze fixed on her.
Maybe the guy was confused. “Rudy, the nurse out front, assigned this room to me,” she explained.
The soldier took a predatory, silent step forward. Light from the bed lamp broke over his features, softly highlighting old acne scars across his cheeks and his yellow eyes.
A chill skittered over Annabella’s skin as her heart fluttered. She let her hand fall on the hospital bed railing and pressed the call button for the nurse.
The soldier took another stealthy step, shoulders slightly hunched as he approached.
Her heart clutched hard over two gulping beats before accelerating into a rush that pounded in her head. The soldier was familiar, but her mind refused to recall how.
He sniffed at the air. “I can’t smell so good now.”
Annabella flattened herself against the wall and console, and the light cascaded over her shoulders, bright at the edges of her vision. Her consciousness sparked at last, though she had known from the moment she saw him. “Wolf.”
He skulked forward again, upper lip curling to bare teeth. The yellow of his eyes became consumed by black, the irises swallowed by deep and shifting shadow.
“Who—? How—? I don’t understand.” Hysteria rose like bile in her throat.
“What are you?” the wolf asked, his voice soft, husky, and low, rumbling from his chest. He tilted his head again, moving in closer.
Annabella gripped the bed railing, torn between climbing over it and staying beneath the light, her place of protection. Not so much protection anymore—the wolf now stood in the dim illumination of the room. “What are
you?
” she asked back.
He considered her question.
“I am the hunter.” He bent his head to the exposed skin at her neck. “You and the other one trespassed in my territory.”
She craned her head away, but he brushed his cheek there anyway. Nuzzled, his hot breath in her hair and curling around her ear.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What do you want from me?” Sobs clogged her question. Though her body was painfully tense, a deep shudder had her trembling beneath him.
He groaned, almost a growl, before answering. “This body wants to be inside you. To fill you. Is that where you keep your magic?”