“I think we hold it.” Adam still grasped his rejected business card in his hand. His jaw was set with fury.
“Custo will work everything out,” she said, though she wasn’t sure about anything anymore.
She’d thought he was in trouble because of her, but he’d left her midperformance. The blame was just as much his as it was hers. Except he was an angel and was supposed to know what he was doing.
He’d also known he might be leaving, and hadn’t bothered to tell her. He’d let her think that they’d banish the wolf together, when he’d intended to ask Luca to take over. He’d let her climb all over him—oh no, she couldn’t think about that. The mortification would burn her up.
Besides, sleeping with him was her fault. What had she been thinking? That he was gorgeous, that he desired her. Would be there to protect her. The fact that he looked and acted like a man made her forget that he wasn’t one. She’d gotten carried away by fear and fantasy.
Here, now, confronted by these many revelations, she had to face the truth: She’d met him less than two days ago. He was practically a stranger. And he was different from her, set apart from the normal flow of life. Not a man, an angel. Her humiliation was her own damn fault.
It was all right, though. The thought razored through her hurt.
Screw-ups were important; she’d figured that out about the same time she got her first set of pointe shoes. It was the key to her success. That’s how she learned to correct her balance, find her center, so the next time, she wouldn’t repeat her mistake.
The intense glare of the tower might’ve been blurring her vision, but she had her bearings now. She knew up from down. Regular human being from angel. Trust from betrayal.
She wouldn’t fall for Custo again.
CHAPTER 12
Custo’s shoulders tensed with aggravation as he stepped away from Annabella. He didn’t like to be away from her, especially when her mind was filling with hard questions. Bad things happened when he left her alone. Close calls that were his responsibility. He’d brought the wolf into this world, vowed to send the creature right back out again, and yet, he’d almost lost her twice now.
Except, she wasn’t alone. She was with Adam, and in a tower filled with angels. She couldn’t be safer.
The bustling room behind Luca promised some very interesting answers. Custo had glanced at Adam and touched his mind to see what he thought of the heavily armed men who’d passed the doorway beyond—was that curved blade a sword or a saber?—but Adam was insensible to anyone or anything but Luca. Annabella’s thoughts were circling the same questions over and over again. His last kiss, intended to answer at least one, had only compounded her confusion.
Her mind was racing, and inevitably she would come to conclusions not in his favor, but he had no choice but to follow, to investigate that glint of sharp steel.
His interest rose exponentially upon entering what appeared to be a slick, modern command center. One wall was devoted to enormous sectional screens that displayed shifting images of cities around the world. Satellite input was overlaid with changing numerical data. To the right, screens tracked a developing weather system, while on the left screens flickered quickly though television news broadcasts in multiple languages.
The men and women, angels, were variably busy around the room. All wore modern dress, some casual, some business-oriented, and still others wore combat gear as if they belonged in mortality. Several hovered over consoles, peering with concern into their screens. The thought-speak was rapid, direct, naming places of “breaches,” conflicts, and instructions to angels in place to resolve them.
Grid C34, a man called near the periphery.
Custo startled, but realized they were pointing at a condensation of digital blue dots on one of the screens, identifying a location on a landmass surrounded by islands. Greece.
Get me Athens, another answered.
Immediately, a central screen displayed the face of a middle-aged man, his black hair threaded with silver, wrinkles fanning out from his eyes and rounding his mouth. Yet in spite of these signs of age, under bushy, graying eyebrows, the man’s piercing gaze was unquestionably angelic.
An angel, aging? Custo definitely needed some answers.
With a sweeping glance, the man on the screen took in the whole of the control room, stopping on Custo. The prodigal son?
Attention in the room shifted briefly to Custo, a couple dozen all-seeing gazes zeroing in on his darkened soul. Custo felt his face flush with heat, but he clamped down on his irritation. “Not likely,” he said. No mind talk for him.
You’ve got another breach near the coast, a man said from the floor, ignoring Custo.
The man on the screen centered his gaze. We see it. Probably another one of the naiads trying to break through. Water is our most difficult medium. I swear, a week doesn’t pass when some fool isn’t tempted by the Otherworld and lost. Sex, riches, even food—with all the warning stories out there, you’d think humankind would learn a thing or two. But no, the stories pass into myth and the same mistakes happen again and again. Our thanks. The man on the screen blinked out.
Custo turned to Luca. “What is this place?”
Luca smiled. “This is The Order, one form of the service you repudiated so passionately in Heaven. The tower is our North American Continental Division. Let me show you around. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. Maybe you’ll even want to stay.”
Stay here? Custo didn’t understand.
“Yes,” Luca said. “The Order exists on earth to help humankind. Lately we’ve been most concerned about the escalating breaches between the Shadowlands and mortality.”
Custo took another look around. The place was charged with energy, intent, and work. The angels in the room had a forward momentum that echoed his personal restlessness. They were dedicated to a cause, tracking and fighting mythological creatures. It reminded him a little of Segue.
“This way,” Luca said.
The control center occupied the greater part of the first floor. Beyond, a wide spiral staircase led upward like a shaft of light to the sky, the architecture contemporary and modern. In Heaven everything had been both primeval and overwrought with the ages, every surface telling a story. But the tower was spartan, pristine. A vessel for light.
Custo stopped midstep as the solid wall of the tower grew transparent. The street below was bustling with all the staccato pump of the city, a direct contradiction to the clean quiet within the tower’s walls.
“They can’t see us,” Luca said.
Custo had figured out that much himself. “How’s that?”
“The same way we read minds, we’re able to manipulate perception. Dampen sensory acuity near the tower to the degree that only angels cross our threshold.” Luca waved a hand in the air to concede an unspoken point. “That is, until today. If it were anyone but Adam Thorne, you’d have been stopped on the street.”
And Annabella?
Luca didn’t answer but continued up the stairs. Custo forced his eyes from the view of the city to follow.
A wide archway had Custo stopping in his tracks again. An armory. Custo entered, awestruck. A glittering display of blades, cuffs, bows, and other oddly shaped weapons were mounted in white-blue glass cases along the walls. Blades predominated. Swords—some thick, some slender—and wicked daggers. To his left, a display of body armor. Was that a breastplate? He knew instinctively that these were not normal weapons; they hadn’t been crafted and honed by mortal hands.
Centered in the room were tabled exhibits. Slim drawers suggested more arms were tucked away. Curiosity had him stepping forward to ease out one of the drawers. Maybe he’d find the dagger shaped like a reversed trident, the dagger that had cut the wraiths out of the world last night.
The drawer opened soundlessly, but within lay varied tools, nested in molded blue velvet. Disappointed, he grazed a finger down the shaft of a raw-looking blacksmith’s hammer. The wood was shiny with use, the head blunt
on one side, rounded on the other. Not what he was looking for.
Custo’s mind began to turn as he shut the drawer again. That blade would be damn useful at Segue, in Adam’s hands. If Custo could get away from his guide for just a moment to search the room…
Luca’s eyes narrowed at him; apparently, there’d be no stealing from The Order.
Custo hated angels in his head for good reason. At the very least he should be able to contemplate a crime, if not attempt to carry it out. Was it any wonder he didn’t want to be anywhere near others of his kind? Get out of my head!
The only reason he suffered Luca’s company was that Luca didn’t try to sustain that annoying mind-to-mind conversation.
“What are these things doing in here when they could be put to good use?” Custo asked. In other words, I know someone who could kill an awful lot of wraiths if properly armed.
Luca raised a brow and answered the unspoken statement. “Adam will have to make do with what he’s got. The weapons stay within The Order. Join us and you can have your pick.”
“But then I’d have to be one of you.”
Luca laughed. “You are already. I don’t know why you fight it. Actually, I do, but I am hoping you’ll come around.”
“Don’t hold your breath.” To change the subject, Custo said, “I don’t see any guns.”
Luca leaned up against the entry, folding his arms. “There’s a tedious, ongoing debate about acquiring modern tools of war. Most of the younger members are for it, but the administration of The Order is still very old-school.”
“You’ve embraced technology in the control room,” Custo observed.
Luca shrugged. “Many make a firm distinction between using satellites for information gathering and using semiautomatic weapons for violence. One life taken by accident is one too many.”
Custo knew that from experience; it burned like the wound in his gut. Nevertheless, there was no denying the accuracy and utility of firearms when faced with a gang of wraiths.
“Over here,” Luca said, exiting the armory for another minimalist archway. “Let’s get that wound taken care of first. You can’t heal with that bullet shredding your guts.”
Custo followed, grudgingly. He’d have held back if his belly weren’t so sore. “You said it was killing me.”
The idea was more than bothersome. He didn’t know his limits—he didn’t know he had limits.
“It could,” Luca answered. “If you were human, you’d be long dead.”
The room they entered led to smaller, glass-walled spaces resembling a hospital’s operating room, banks of equipment tucked perfectly along one wall. Two white-smocked women were waiting near an elevated pallet. To the side of the bed was a narrow, utilitarian table with a tray of disturbing tools. And damn, a needle and syringe.
“I thought angels were immortal,” Custo said. He didn’t want to get remotely near that pointy thing. His belly didn’t hurt that much. “We’ve already died, and we heal spontaneously. How can I, can we, be killed?”
Luca made an openhanded gesture. “Because we are in the mortal world. Everything, everyone, here is…mortal. On Earth, you are a mortal angel, and as such, you will age and can be killed.”
That didn’t make sense. “Just last night, I was hammered by wraiths, even shot a couple of times, and today, aside from this nagging pain, I’m little worse for the wear.”
“Last night you were on the brink of death, and you know it.” Luca lifted a brow as if to dare Custo to dispute him. “Had we not come to your aid, you would have died. You sustained and healed from those injuries because you have a great soul, a soul capable of much good, or evil, as you so choose. But taxed enough, your body can and will die.”
Custo recalled debilitating darkness and the long wait for the welcome burn to signal healing. Yes, he’d come very close to something irrevocable last night.
“And what then?” Custo wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“You’ve already lost your life, so the only thing of yours left to give is your soul. You die a second time and you die forever. The choice to return to mortality is thus a difficult one, made with much forethought and deliberation.”
Custo had jumped Heaven’s Gate in a mad dash for the trees.
“Since the second birth is traumatic and painful, angels descend into the comfort and safety of the tower, to be cared for until they are strong enough and world-oriented enough to function without calling human attention.”
He had endured the rebirth on a city sidewalk, naked and terrified, and then mugged some poor slob for his clothes and cash.
“Afterward, each mortal angel is assigned a task, a mission to complete for the benefit of humanity. Usually something small and manageable. And then another of greater difficulty and another, until the angel elects to return to Heaven, preferably long before sustaining mortal harm.” Luca finished and made a show of waiting on Custo’s next question.
But Custo was still stuck on the first. “So you’re saying that I can die.”
Luca’s mouth twitched. “Will die, yes, if you remain long in mortality or don’t get that bullet out of your side.”
The table was ready, needle waiting.
No, no, no. “I’m fine for now.” Translation: Someone else at Segue could dig the bullet out of him. His friends were waiting below, and he wasn’t so keen on submitting himself to the tender mercies of the women in white.
You’ll be asleep. Won’t hurt a bit. The message came from the brunette.
“Don’t talk in my head,” Custo said, near growling. “And no thank you. I’m fine.”
“You like to court disaster, don’t you?” Luca said. “Very well, as always, it’s your choice. This way…”
They made another circuit of the wide stairway, ascending to the level above. Instead of the wide archways of the floor below, this upper level had several corridors branching off the landing. Luca stepped down one and opened a door, revealing a simple, colorless bedroom with a bathroom en suite. “Quarters,” Luca explained.
The room was little more than a cell. “I’m not a monk,” Custo argued.
Luca gave a long-suffering sigh. “Like I said, you like to court disaster. Your choice. These rooms are temporary anyway. Most get lodgings near their station in the world. Limits the coming and going from the tower, reducing the possibility of discovery. If you work in the control room, you stay here; if you’re in the field, you get your own place.”
So he could be part of The Order without actually having to put up with any of the Host. That was a consideration, especially if he had access to those weapons. There had to be a catch.
“No catch,” Luca said. “Service. Dedicating yourself to the well-being of the world, a nonissue because you already have. You wouldn’t be here, in mortality, if you hadn’t.”
Custo shook his head in denial. He was here on Earth because he’d jumped the gate and made a break for it.
“But why did you jump the gate?” Luca asked.
“Because no one up there would do anything.” Custo’s heart beat hard with sudden anger. “A war was going on and no one would fucking listen to me.”
“How many times did I come to you during your vigil at the gate? Think about that and answer me this: who wouldn’t listen?” Luca tilted his head with subtle irony. “You’re listening now. Join us.”
Custo couldn’t believe what he was hearing. All he’d been through. Pissing off Death. Diving into the Shadowlands. His uncontrolled crash to Earth. Bringing the Shadow wolf with him.
“You always did like to do things the hard way,” Luca observed.
“Stay out of my head.”
Custo had to think, and he couldn’t think when every conclusion he came to was open to outside commentary.
“Why don’t you come back downstairs, observe for a little while, work things out.”
“Don’t patronize me either.”
Luca held up his hands in surrender. “I’m just trying to help.”
<
br /> Luca turned then and left him alone in the cell. Custo could hear the soft pad of his tread down the steps. Luca was leaving him alone with his thoughts, giving him the most space he could to process this new information and come to a decision, one that Luca felt had already been made.
Had it?
Custo had no idea. Luca was persuasive, but then, Custo had been unprepared for this conversation. He thought he’d be taken into custody. Had feared that all his work would be left undone, his friends unprotected. Now, it seemed, those concerns were irrelevant.
The bright little room was claustrophobic. Custo exited and headed to the stairs. Maybe he should watch in the control room a little bit. Get a sense of The Order in action, then make his decision.
He passed the armory, remembering the dagger. It would be his to use, a compelling point in The Order’s favor. Talia would be safe with the wraiths on the defensive once again. And the Shadow wolf? There had to be something in that glittering assemblage for him, too.
Okay: An apartment in the city, near Annabella preferably. A way to fight the monsters that encroached on his friends’ lives. And all he’d have to deal with was the occasional interaction with The Order. Custo could almost see Luca’s point.
If Custo was already going to fight, he might as well do so with the best tools, under the aegis of others like him.
He reached the main floor, hovering on the brink of change. Luca stood at the rear of the control room, his back to Custo. When Custo approached, Luca shot him a glance. “Decide already?”
Nearly. But still Custo hesitated. Something was bothering him, had been itching in his brain since the conversation started.
Right. His mood darkened. “You said to Adam that the wraiths weren’t your concern at this time.”
Luca shook his head. “The wraiths are trapped in mortality; they aren’t going anywhere. Your Adam is doing an admirable job keeping them controlled while we fight active breaches in the barrier between the worlds. We have to repair them before any more dark fae can enter the world and wreak as much havoc as the one who created the wraiths in the first place.”
Bad Boys of the Night: Eight Sizzling Paranormal Romances: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set Page 33