Shadow Fall (7 page)

“Oh, please, no.” Tears slid down her cheeks. Her knees threatened to give.

“Then how do you glow? Why does magic obey you? How do you light Shadow?” His low voice was full of wonder.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she gasped.

Hot, slick teeth pulled at her earlobe. “Show me again.”

“Show you what?” she whined, insinuating her arms between them to push him away.

“Bridge our worlds.” His hand found her ass and he ground his pelvis against hers. “But you feel so good, I almost don’t want to go back.”

“Please go back,” she begged. “You don’t belong here.”

“I could stay a while longer, like this, with you.” He growled again. “Feels so good.”

“Go back.”

His other palm skimmed up her waist. He cupped her breast. “I’ll stay. I think I can bridge our worlds a little myself.”

Annabella’s next breath released in a frightened whimper, high and weak. A sound somebody else would make. Somebody who let bad things happen to them. Somebody who didn’t think to fight. Not her.

The realization was a spark of cold anger in her head that spread down her body to tighten her stomach. The muscles in her legs warmed with her new resolve. Trembling, she shifted slightly to fit her body to the wolf’s
just so.
He squeezed his approval. Then she brought her knee up fast and hard, with a lifetime of strength and technical accuracy behind it.

He yelped and recoiled, stumbling back a few clutched steps, hands at his groin. When he lifted his face, it was devoid of color, the faint veins around his eyes bleeding inky black with pain and surprise.

Annabella ducked out of her corner, but he blocked her passage to the door. “Somebody help me!” she screamed. They said she’d be safe here. Where was Rudy?

“Why did you do that?” the wolf ground out, straightening slowly.

“Stay back, or I’ll do it again.”

His eyes turned sad, confused. “But we could be so good—”

If he said “good” one more time, she was going to rip his “bridge” off him and shove it down his throat.

A light courtesy rap on the door, and it opened, Talia peeking her head in. “I’ve got your bag.”

Damn, not Rudy. Pregnant Talia. Annabella couldn’t have the one nice person in this place, and her babies, harmed because of her. “Get out, Talia. Now.”

The wolf’s head snapped toward the door.

Fear flickered over Talia’s features, a hand on her belly, but she didn’t run. Her expression hardened as she pushed the door open all the way.

“It’s the wolf, Talia, run!”

But Talia didn’t listen, her gaze fixed on the soldier. “You’re a creature of Shadow?”

“Yes,” he said, voice a murmured undertone. “What are you?” He drew the
you
out into a wolfish croon.

“Banshee,” she said.

Banshee?
What the freak was that? Nothing made sense, and there was no time for an explanation. Not with him prowling toward Talia.

“Wolf,” Annabella called sharply, “you want me.”

“And I’ll have you,” he answered over his shoulder.

The room darkened perceptibly, the shadows gaining substance and thickness, layering the room. The bed light dimmed to a faint glow. Annabella’s breath caught and held until her lungs screamed.

“Go back to Shadow,” Talia commanded. Darkness whipped and snapped around her, the room filling with a kinetic energy.

“No!” the wolf barked, the sound ripped from a human throat.

“I said,” Talia’s voice took on shattering intensity, painful to the ears, “Go back!”

The wolf staggered, contracting as if sucker punched, then burst into a splattered cloud of flickering darkness, like a swarm of chattering moths. The shadows gathered into a dark, dense pulse, then rushed past Talia to skim the hallway out of sight, blending in the deep patches formed by obstructed light.

Annabella’s mind blanked for a moment. Her body complained for air and she finally exhaled, grabbing the wall for support and gulping deep. She almost crumbled to the floor, but Talia beat her to it, her knees cracking with impact on the linoleum. Annabella darted forward to catch her before she fell onto her swollen belly.

“Oh God. Are you okay?” Annabella put her arms around her, thinking to get her to the bed, but Talia groaned. The floor would have to do until help came.

“Con”—Talia choked on air—“traction.”

Not good. Not with two months still to go. “Help!” Annabella yelled down the hallway. To Talia she said, “It’s going to be okay.”

Talia brought a hand up, fingertips scarlet with blood. Her gaze turned to Annabella, fear in her soul-filled eyes.

“Deep breaths,” Annabella said with an exaggerated inhalation and exhalation in case Talia had forgotten how. “You’re going to be fine.”

“My babies.”

“They’re going to be fine, too. You’re already in the infirmary.” Annabella eased her to sitting on the floor. “You’re probably just in for a nice long rest. And a whole lot of bossing from your husband.”

Talia smiled weakly. Her eyes darted down the hallway. “You said he was a wolf.”

“I thought he was.”

“Talia!” A man’s voice.

Annabella looked up to see Adam pelting down the hall. He was on his knees at Talia’s back before Annabella could blink.

“The wolf’s in Segue,” Talia gasped. “Gone for the moment.”

“Where are you hurt?”

“The wolf didn’t touch her,” Annabella said. “I think it’s shock.”

Talia shook her head, tearing. “I used Shadow, but I’m not as strong pregnant. I couldn’t completely banish him.”

Shadow again. Annabella had thought Shadow was a place, but now it seemed like more. Something that could be used, manipulated. It was a crazy conclusion, of course, but she’d seen it with her own two eyes: Talia had darkened the room, filled it with churning shadows that obeyed her, and then drew on a strange power when she had yelled at the wolf.

“Shhhh.” Adam put his mouth to her hair, obviously struggling for control. “Love, you’re going to be fine. The babies are going to be fine.” He shifted her in his arms and stood. Annabella backed away so he could carry Talia to the bed.

Beyond the room, Annabella could hear the shouts of people, a rising commotion in the entrance to the infirmary.

A doctor. Talia needed a doctor.

Annabella tore down the hall, grabbed the first person in a white coat. “We need a doctor for Talia.”

“I’m in research.” The man craned his head around. “Where’s Powell?”

“I’m here,” a female voice answered. A middle-aged woman dressed in slacks and a bright satiny-pink blouse stood abruptly from the behind the nurse’s counter. Annabella looked over to find Rudy collapsed on the floor, eyes open but fixed, sightless. Dead.

Chapter Six

C
USTO
paced his cell, his hands gripped behind his neck as he strained for control. Shouting wouldn’t help. Kicking at the steel and concrete door would accomplish nothing. Reasoning with the guards he detected outside his cell was useless. Their minds were fixed. Each one had resolved to follow orders. He expected no less; Adam only picked the best.

Custo groaned and leaned into a standing push-up on the door to expend some of his energy. If a wraith couldn’t break out, he sure as hell couldn’t. Heaven was a lot easier in that regard. With his mind he traced Adam and Annabella, caught them for a shred of a moment, but then lost them again in the maelstrom of humanity. Maddening.

Mind reading was a handy trick. It had helped him avoid all sorts of uncomfortable encounters in Heaven, and in theory, it should have made him all but invincible on Earth. The problem was twofold: Locating an isolated individual was difficult to begin with, but then, as soon as a shard of clear thinking cut through someone’s consciousness, it was swept away, flotsam in a tidal wave of other thoughts. Custo had barely caught someone’s inkling in his mind’s grasp before it was no longer relevant.

Of this he was certain: Something was happening. He caught two sustained, desperate resolutions in the sudden thought frenzy in the building. Annabella intended to defend herself, and Adam was determined to save Talia’s life. Both objectives were clear, edged with absolute purpose. Neither boded well, but taken together, something disastrous must have happened. Wraith attack? Wolf?

He dipped into another push-up, then thrust away from the wall.

“Let me out!” He could do nothing locked in this prison. “I can help!”

Time passed, serene, while painful tension gripped him.

He was sitting in a corner, head in his hands, when the door thudded and screeched, retracting. He leaped to his feet before the edge parted with the wall.

Adam stood beyond, a smudge of blood on the waist of his shirt.

“What’s happened? Are Talia and Annabella all right?” It took all of Custo’s will not to approach Adam, not to push him out of the way and find the women for himself.

“You’re an angel?” Adam’s voice was absent, hoarse. Desperation spoke.

Cold dread seeped into Custo. “I think so.”

“You were sure before,” Adam said, each word sharp and cutting.

“I was an angel in Heaven, but I left. I don’t know what that makes me now. Not really.”

“Damn it.” Adam put his hands on his head, shoulders hunched, staring at the floor as if it might hold answers. Custo touched his mind and found only a cyclone of confusion. Adam had no idea what to do.

“Let me try,” Custo said. Talia had to be in great danger for Adam to be so shattered. Custo remembered the babies, twins. What if he couldn’t help? What if he couldn’t save her? He wasn’t going to think about that, not with blood staining Adam’s shirt.

“And if you’re a wraith sent to kill her?”

“I’m not.”

“But what if you are?” Adam glanced at Custo’s now-healed forearm.

Custo let him look. “I’m not.”

“How can I know for sure?” Intensity lined Adam’s face. “Can you prove it? Please?”

“Is it so hard to trust me?”

“This is my wife were talking about.” The anguish in Adam’s voice brought Custo back to the night Adam’s parents had died, murdered by Jacob. If Adam lost another family, he’d lose himself, of that Custo had no doubt.

Gently, then. “I’m not asking you to choose between us.”

Adam’s mottled face blanched with feeling. “If you hurt her…”

“…then lock me away forever.”

Adam grimaced, aging with the necessity of a decision, but Custo knew he’d made up his mind. Felt the harrowing leap of faith.

“Come on. And fast.” Adam turned and darted out the door, around the corner. Custo sprinted forward to catch up. He asked no questions while Adam cursed at a slow-moving security door. A small army green vehicle was waiting, bigger than a golf cart, but smaller than a commercial car, and before Custo was seated, Adam had it accelerating through a concrete tunnel. They drove onto a lift, and while the mechanism slowly elevated them, Custo caught sight of Adam’s white knuckles.

Custo tried to read the events from Adam’s mind, but it was moving too fast to discern particulars. He could feel Annabella drawing closer, which was some measure of comfort. “What happened?”

“Wolf.”

Custo’s own grip tightened. “He got in? How?”

Adam didn’t look over to answer. He kept his gaze fixed on the slow slide of concrete wall as they rose. “He somehow took on the form of one of my soldiers, who is now dead. The wolf then escaped after Talia…used her voice.”

Adam’s tone was flat, but Custo could guess what roiled beneath the surface. Segue was vulnerable. The lives they were responsible for—Talia, Annabella, all the rest—vulnerable. If the wolf could shape-shift, he could probably look like Adam or Talia or even himself and have them questioning each other more than they already were.

Custo reached for Annabella’s mind again and caught the trace of a thought—something about going home. He couldn’t sense her feelings, but knew she was scared. He had to ask. “Annabella?”

“Fine. Tough.” A grudging respect.

The lift jolted to a stop. “Talia?”

“In labor.”

Two guards flanked the entrance labeled
INFIRMARY,
and inside each doorway another grim-faced man was posted. Stance wide, guns at their chests, they were ready for literally anything.

Adam was moving fast, but Custo caught a few details. The place was anachronistic for a Segue satellite compound, ceilings too low for comfort. Fixtures outdated, but utilitarian. There was an age spot on the wall in the entryway where a circular clock once had been, and an odd, rounded sink circa the sixties was attached to the back wall. Definitely out of date.

Custo followed Adam down a hallway, stopping at an open door labeled “15.” Talia lay on her back, slightly tilted to the side, a white sheet pulled up to her waist. Her face was chalky next to the white-gold tangle of her hair. Custo had known her in his past life—she’d been a pale, pretty thing with intelligent eyes. There was something different about her now, or rather, different about the way he saw her. The pallor of her skin had a strange sheen to it, a black-light luminescence that made the tilt of her eyes less exotic-human and more, distinctly,
Other.
Looking at her now, on the flip side of mortality, there was no doubt she was fae.

Dr. Gillian Powell, a longtime member of Segue’s staff, examined a strip of paper printing from a machine to the left of the bed. Gillian was good, thorough. She’d stitched him up more than once in the Jacob days. She’d save Talia and the babies if they could be saved.

Talia winced, straining her head to the side as Custo came through the doorway after Adam.

“More contractions?” Adam asked as he rushed to the bed and knelt on the floor, eye level with Talia.

“They’d stopped, and I thought I had it under control, but now…” Gillian trailed off. She frowned at another machine, her mind saying,
That’s not right.
A rapidly blinking heart accompanied escalating numbers, but the doctor put her stethoscope to her ears and checked Talia out for herself.

Talia groaned, squeezing her eyes shut. “Too bright.”

Adam leaned in closer. “What is, honey?”

“Custo,” she gasped.

Custo took a step back. Suddenly this didn’t seem like such a great idea. A banshee and an angel in the same room—something about the combination felt inherently wrong. Fundamentally at odds. Maybe the barrier between their worlds was there for a reason. Maybe light and darkness were exclusive by necessity. Maybe he was hurting her.

Talia whimpered. Custo gripped the doorway. He wanted to help if he could. He was a goddamn angel. He should be able to do something. Ease her. Heal her.

Adam looked over at him, confusion and alarm on his face. “What’s happening?”

Talia shuddered and Custo backed into the hall. “I don’t know.” When she next groaned, he took himself out of the infirmary altogether.

In a long, thin, windy tunnel between two rooms, the hunter collected himself. The darkness deepened here, almost to pitch, and fed the slow reformation of his body. Shadow condensed, thickened, to form a twitching ear, a sharp claw, burning eyes. Air blew through the tunnel, rippling with the shudder of his new fur. He trembled, still variable, still weak, but growing.

Smell came first: bland and acrid, and over it all, the heady scent of a mortal woman, filling his Shadow mind. Then sight: the tunnel terminated near the top of a room, where a bright square patch gleamed, reaching like flame. And sound: a woman wept with choking sobs.

Finally understanding, born of walking human steps and stroking exquisite skin: Mortal. Woman. Magic. A harsh, vicious longing twined with his new awareness, stoking his animal hunger and transmuting it into something else, something almost human, and thus unbearable.

The hunter wanted it all.
Mine.

Now, how to get her?

Custo raised his head as Adam approached. He’d been sitting on a stack of crates and, God help him, praying. Not that he expected an answer; he’d been an utter fool.

“So you’re an angel,” Adam said. He was stating fact, echoing the realization in his mind, not mocking, not questioning. Finally. “You deserve it. You were…
are
the best man I’ve ever known, after my father.”

Custo steeled himself against the unwarranted comparison. What could he say to that? Adam didn’t know about some of the bloody things he’d done. Couldn’t possibly guess what he was responsible for. “I’m sorry I endangered Talia, your children, Segue. I had no idea that the wolf would or could follow.”

“Gillian gave her something to stop the contractions.” Adam sat heavily next to him. “It’s working for now, and her heart rate dropped when you left the room. She’s on strict bed rest and will be until she delivers.”

Custo nodded. The contractions had stopped. He had to repeat it a couple of times to himself before the anxiety in his blood, heavy and poisonous as lead, thinned enough for him to breathe.

“I think I hurt her by just being in the room.”

Yes,
Adam agreed. “I would appreciate it if both you and Annabella would stay away from her until this is resolved,” Adam said slowly, without recrimination. “I don’t want to stress the pregnancy more than it has been already. Talia told me to say hi, by the way, and not to beat yourself up about being so ‘shiny.’ Her word, by the way.”

“Of course. Annabella and I will go, find somewhere else safe.” He braced his hands on his knees. He definitely couldn’t stay at Segue. His very presence endangered Talia. Light against Shadow.

“That’s not necessary. Segue is the best place for the two of you, and you know it. It’s a big place.”
Plenty of room.

“And if the wolf comes back in the meantime?”

“We’ll fight.” Adam gave him an exhausted half smile.

Custo cleared his throat to ease the tightness there, but guilt and worry still strangled him. “Can I see Annabella now?”

Adam waited a beat, gaze meeting his. “Yes. I stuck her in the lab, under guard. She’s pretty shaken up. I haven’t had a chance to question her, so I’ve only had Talia’s side of the story. Call me when you get Annabella’s. I’ll assemble a research team.”

“In the time I’ve been gone have you seen anything like the wolf?” Custo rose and followed Adam to a set of doors on the other side of the concrete tunnel.

“Paranormal phenomena have jumped dramatically in the past eighteen months. Hauntings and poltergeists mainly, but here and there I’ve heard of incidents that are
Other.
Something like the wolf was bound to happen. Feel free to access my files. I’m not leaving Talia’s side for a while, so you can sleep in my place tonight—we’ll get something fixed up for the two of you tomorrow. Our living quarters are two floors up. I have the whole floor.”

Fitting back into Adam’s life, just like old times. It didn’t feel right this time either.

Adam tapped a code into the security panel. The door slid open and Custo immediately spotted Annabella. She’d risen from a stool at a brushed-steel worktable in the center of the room. Her eyes were swollen, mascara smudged in a line out to her temple, and her nose was pink. When she saw Custo, she let out a harsh sob, ducked under the table, and crossed the room as fast as her stagger would allow.

Her mind was full of jumbled words…
hunter, territory, bridge, banshee.

Custo opened his arms, ready to take her in, to comfort her, to promise to protect her from further harm. She approached, arms likewise extended, but instead she shoved him into the door. Hard. Knocked off balance, Custo nearly fell, but caught himself, palms flat on the glass.

“You said Segue was safe!” Annabella’s eyes were wild, her face flushed. “You said these people knew how to deal with scary shit! You said I could get some sleep. Sleep!” She broke into a hysterical laugh that turned into a sob.

“Shhh…” Custo recovered and wrapped his arms around her in an attempt to restrain her, but she bucked against his hold. Her body would fit perfectly, amazingly in the circle of his arms if she’d just calm down enough…

“Don’t fucking shush me!” She hit his chest with the heel of her hand, yet clutched his shoulder for support. “Talia—
Talia!
—had to save me.” Tears ran freely down her face. She swiped at her eyes and sniffed. “This place is frickin’ Fort Knox and a pregnant woman had to save me.” Her expression hardened. “If that woman loses her babies, I swear I will kill you.”

Custo glanced over at Adam, who met his gaze.
Good luck,
Adam thought. He gave a short nod and exited the room. The guards followed, though Custo was sure they’d be on the other side of the door.

Alone now, Custo shifted his grasp on her, controlling Annabella’s jerking body at her hips. “Talia is going to be fine. Her contractions have stopped.”