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.”
Tears ran down Annabella’s cheeks, her fight subsiding into steady, drawn-out tremors. “But what about the blood?”
“Under control.” He assumed, or Adam would have still been in a panic.
Annabella hiccuped. For all her trembling, she felt cold in his arms. “What if he comes back? The light didn’t work. I thought it would—light worked before, that time on the street—but it didn’t work in that room.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
He almost ra— Annabella stunted the thought. “A man came in my room in the infirmary. A soldier. He was acting all weird, but I could tell he was the wolf.”
“How?”
“The way he moved. His eyes.”
Custo nodded. “Continue.”
“He said he was the hunter and that you and I had trespassed in his territory and that he wanted a bridge back.” Then he groped me, would have raped me if I hadn’t nailed his disgusting stuff. Custo went hot, but didn’t interrupt as Annabella went on. “Talia came in, said she was a freaking banshee, and ordered the guy back to Shadow. ’Kay, then it got really scary, ’cause she made the room all dark. I hate the dark. And the hunter-wolf-guy exploded and uh, flew out the room. The whole thing is insane!”
Custo reviewed the details. “He said he was a hunter? I thought he was a wolf.”
“Aren’t wolves hunters?” Duh.
Custo ignored the thought-insult. “And he wants a way back to Shadow?”
The real question is, Annabella thought…“Why didn’t light hurt him? It has in the past.”
Custo could answer that. Before, the wolf was stuck in the Shadowlands. He stayed in the shadows because he had to. The divide between the worlds was inviolable. But in the brief altercation in the dark forest, when the three of them had clashed, the wolf had crossed over and fallen to Earth with Annabella’s return to her reality. Just as Custo had fallen and been reborn. Shadow would always be the wolf’s refuge, but he need not fear light on Earth. Not now that he was free.
All that was too much to explain, and Annabella was clearly too distraught to listen. The truth had taken Adam, his best friend and almost-brother, too long to believe, and they had a long history of trust. Annabella had no context to even begin the discussion. Angel? Banshee? Shadowlands? Custo settled for the simplest answer. “If he attacks again, I will handle him.”
She laughed derisively. “We don’t know what he looks like. He can change his shape. One minute a wolf, the next a man
, the next a bunch of shadows. And you think you can ‘handle’ him? I doubt it.”
“But he’s made of shadow?”
“Weren’t you listening? Light does not hurt him!” Her pitch went high and painful at “hurt him,” but Custo didn’t mind. If anything, an idea became clearer.
The more he thought about it, the more confident he became, his own panic replaced by new resolve. Talia had given him the answer. She was a child of Shadow, and she couldn’t bear how “bright” he was in his current incarnation—angel. The wolf was also born of Shadow. The wolf might be able to challenge him in the Shadowlands, its primeval territory. Might be able to attack and to kill, if angels could possibly die twice (a disturbing thought). But on Earth it stood to reason that the wolf would be as repelled, as pained by him as the banshee daughter of Shadowman. Perhaps more, since Talia was half human and may have had some level of hereditary protection.
“Annabella”—Custo wiped dark strands away from her eyes—“we weren’t prepared before, but we are now.”
“He can change his shape. What if he becomes a lion? Or, or, a tiger, or—”
“A bear?” Custo finished with a smile.
She hit him again. This time it hurt. “Don’t make fun of me.”
Custo sobered. “Next time we’ll be ready.”
Annabella fell silent, though her breath still shuddered with each draw and release. She swallowed hard, her chin quivering for a second before she controlled the reflex.
Custo wanted to draw her closer, to comfort her, but he allowed her to push him away. One thing he was learning about Annabella—she liked to stand on her own two feet. As much as he admired her for the show of strength, it drove him crazy. Would it kill her to let him hold her—really hold her—for two minutes?
“He wanted me, or us, to bridge our worlds. Is that more of the Shadow stuff you and Talia have been talking about?”
Custo gave a short nod. “I don’t know what Talia discussed with you, but for my part, yes. There are three worlds: Earth, the Shadowlands, and the Hereafter.”
Her face contracted in a grimace. “So the wolf is a ghost?”
“No. Don’t get ahead of me.” Custo reconsidered his approach. “The Shadowlands is a place of possibility, of imagination, of inspiration. Yes, people pass through there briefly upon death; Talia is part of that, with her banshee voice, able to manipulate Shadow and force others to cross, like the wolf. But the nature of the Shadowlands is much more than that. Humanity accesses it during daily life for inspiration and insight. It is the source of magic, a well for talent to draw from, like yours.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” She shook her head, denying everything that he was saying.
“Yes, you do. You of all people know,” Custo said. Her chin came up, but he continued, “The first time I saw you was in the Shadowlands. You were dancing, bright and beautiful, all magic.”
“I’m not magic.”
“Your talent is a kind of magic.”
She frowned, the sharpness of her gaze losing its edge as her thoughts turned inward.
“Why do you dance? How does it make you feel? What are you able to do that others cannot?”
The moment stretched. He tried to read her, but her mind was moving too fast, darting from one conclusion to another, her intellect traveling over the events and explanations, but never stopping in one place to realize it entirely. At last, she took a deep breath and exhaled, shaking her head. “So you’re saying my dance puts me in both places. That I was, in fact, in his territory.” Does that mean I can’t dance?
Custo reached for her arm, but she pulled it out of his grasp, leaving his own extended, palm raised and empty. “Annabella…”
But she took a step back. “First the wolf, and now you. Where do you get off touching me? Getting all familiar? I don’t know you from Adam. Not really. You offered me a safe place to sleep and so far—”
He had to interrupt her before she made a drastic decision. “This is still the safest place for you.”
“Way I see it, nowhere is safe anymore,” she said, voice rising. “I can’t even dance.”
“Of course you can. But now you know that you need to master the magic as you would any other movement. Now you know why the greats were the greats, and that you can be, too.”
She put her hands over her ears and gripped her head. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore!” I can’t.
Custo swallowed back everything he wanted to say. The words burned in his throat just as his arms burned to hold her. He held his hands up in surrender. No more tonight.
She dropped her arms. “Now is there a frickin’ bed in this place for me or not?”
He tried not to smile at her tone. “Yes. Adam has let us have his apartment while he’s with Talia.” Obviously, Custo would be sleeping on the floor his first night back.
He signaled the door to open and glanced out. The guards were in place. Everything still. No wolves waiting. He’d have liked to put his arm around her—they’d fit so well before—but he resisted the impulse. Annabella came up beside him, also peeking out into the tunnel. Her lips pressed together, probably summoning her courage, and then she stepped outside the lab.
“Elevator?” Custo asked the guards.
The guards led the way and would be stationed outside Adam’s place for the night.
As they neared a conventional pair of silver sliding doors, Custo felt a hand on his elbow.
“Wait,” Annabella asked, expression again filled with confusion, “what were you doing in the Shadowlands?”
Considering her last request, Custo went with the truth. “I was crossing them, heading back to Earth.”
She stopped midstep before boarding the elevator, frowning while she tried to figure out what’d he said. He wasn’t about to offer an extended explanation, not after she’d plainly said she didn’t want to hear it.
“The Hereafter?” she asked.
Custo nodded, pulling her inside. “Heaven. I’m your guardian angel.”
CHAPTER 7
Annabella ran, a pack of wolves snarling and snapping at her heels. Her mind’s eye saw them clearly, though she didn’t dare look back: bristling black fur, yellow eyes, sharp white teeth too long and jagged for any mouth—wolf or otherwise. Her heartbeat and footfalls combined to form a gallop of sound, the rhythm of the chase.
Somebody help me! she sobbed through gasping chokes of air.
But the forest was silent. She sprinted through widely spaced trees—no place to hide—their great trunks rising like columns to hold up the nonexistent sky. Where was the sky?
She pushed her body harder, faster, channeling all her fear and strength into her stride. She felt the distance between her and the wolves lengthen. Felt their interest suddenly shift, the pack swarming on a rise, ears pricked.
Saved?
Then, an infant’s cry, a new-world wail made with a lusty first breath. A second cry signaled the twins’ birth.
Annabella tripped and fell, gouging the earth, and turned her head in time to see the wolves alter their direction, a river of furious black rushing down the hill, making for the innocents.
No! Here! Not the babies. But she had no voice.
She clawed a tree trunk to stand and lurched to follow, but her muscles had hardened, betraying her, blood chug-chugging through collapsed veins. She pushed forward, crested the rise herself when a mother’s scream pierced the air. A banshee’s scream.
“Annabella!”
A low voice filtered through Annabella’s darkened consciousness, but she refused to wake. The babies, my fault.
“Annabella!”
She felt herself gathered in a warm embrace, heat pouring into her shaking limbs.
“You’re okay. It’s just a dream,” a rumble of a voice told her. “Wake up, Annabella.”
The nightmare went gray, diluting, spreading into the absent sky. Her heart still pounded. Her throat was raw.
Annabella cracked
an eye and gazed dumbly at the gray-blue wall opposite her. The solidity was mundane, real. Yet a trio of imaginative paintings hung in the center of the flat expanse. Black tree trunks stretched across the foreground of the canvases like a wicked gate, but beyond was a magic swirl of indistinct figures, dancing. If she let her eyes blur a little bit, the picture seemed to move. The composition evoked ghostly Giselle, but was more mysterious than mournful.
Annabella triple blinked her bleary eyes. Where was she?
She shifted in place, turned to find Custo holding her. He smelled fresh, like soap and shaving cream, and his hair was spiky wet. He leaned against the headboard, her body across his lap. He smiled down at her like a lover who had beaten her to the shower.
“Morning,” he murmured when her eyes focused on him.
She was tempted to curl into his chest and borrow the tempo of his heartbeat, slow and steady. His arms felt like the safest place in the world. So strong. A lick of desire had her core tingling as he nuzzled her neck.
“Everything’s okay. You’re awake now,” he said.
And it all came crashing back: the dress rehearsal, Custo, the cab ride to some storage basement, her subsequent capture and imprisonment in that frightening cell. Sweet Talia, and her babies. The wolf.
Nothing was okay. And nothing ever would be again.
The world as she knew it had turned upside down. Monsters were just as real as she was. A nightmare stalked the shadows of her life. And the man holding her was not human. Or at least not anymore.
Angel.
Annabella sat up and slid off Custo’s lap. The shadows in the corners of the room seemed to throb.
He let her go, and his expression sobered. “What time do you need to be at the theater?”
What on earth was he doing cuddling her like that? He was a frigging angel, for crying out loud. She’d stopped going to church a long time ago, but she was pretty sure getting intimate with an angel was a one-way ticket to hell.
Angel. The whole thing made her head ache.
“The theater, Annabella? It’s past noon already.”
Bad Boys of the Night: Eight Sizzling Paranormal Romances: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set Page 25