“Do you or don’t you have a bullet in your belly?” Adam asked softly, with an unspoken you poor bastard tagged on.
According to Luca, presumably a trustworthy source, Custo did. Not to mention his gut on his left side ached like a motherfucker. So yeah, he wouldn’t be shocked to find a bullet in there.
Custo frowned. If he let the good doctor dig it out, he’d be incapacitated for a while, even with his rapid healing. What if the wolf infiltrated Segue again? What if the wolf were in the room now? What if the wolf chose that very moment to attack again?
What if…what if …what if…? That question was maddening.
“Or are you afraid of the needle?”
Custo gave Adam his best deadpan. Not funny. Besides, that was years ago and there were extenuating circumstances.
Adam shrugged. “You know you need to be in top form. Suck it up and let Dr. Lin take the bullet out. I’m not telling you what’s happened until you do.”
What’s happened?
Easy as 1-2-3, Custo reached with his mind, and Adam answered the question: Geoffrey, their suspected Segue traitor, had been found dead. Murdered by wraiths.
Custo scowled. He wasn’t surprised. He had known that ferreting out the traitor wasn’t going to be as simple as chasing the one that ran away. That left the twenty-seven in voluntary containment. He’d have to question them personally and see what he could uncover through more direct means. It had to be one of them; no one else was privy to their plans. With everything else going on, this one threat had to be eliminated, and soon.
They couldn’t sustain another wraith attack with the wolf on the prowl.
But first, Custo had to take care of himself. Luca knew it, Adam knew it, and he knew it, too. Surgery was damn inconvenient, but his wound was a liability. And no amount of cursing or ignoring the pain would change that fact.
Custo would have preferred Gillian, whom he’d known for years as an excellent physician, but she wasn’t leaving Talia’s side. Which was good; Custo didn’t want her pregnancy endangered because of him. He’d settle for Lin.
“Fine. We do it here.” Custo turned to Dr. Lin. He kept his voice low. “Nothing fancy, just get in and out. I heal remarkably well.” In case the man didn’t get it, he added, “Wraith well.”
“He’s not a wraith,” Adam countered, though Custo didn’t think it necessary. “But he does have an extraordinary healing capacity impeded by the bullet.”
Enough. Custo wanted this over. He grabbed the gurney, ignored his discomfort while he dragged it out of the startled nurses’ grasps—pussies with muscle—and positioned it perpendicular to the bed so he could watch Annabella during the slice-and-dice. He peeled off his shirt. His hands went to his belt and he dropped trou. The skin at his side was hot to the touch.
Leaping onto the table and wincing with a roar of pain at his side, he said, “Ready.”
The doctor and his crew were not.
“Now!”
Annabella whimpered and Custo bit back a curse. She had taken so long to settle down.
Adam came up alongside him while the doctor prepared. With a glance at Annabella, he said, “She seems better. Her color is good, and Dr. Lin tells me that she suffered no physical effects from the wolf’s attack.”
“She couldn’t stop shaking for a full hour.”
But yes, Annabella had been as shocked as he to discover that her skin was clear and smooth, unharmed. She’d commanded him to turn around while she checked out the more intimate parts of herself, and then sat grimly on the side of the bed making terrible, fear-based decisions about her life, none of which she’d uttered to him. He got the gist through his own means: if she stopped dancing, the wolf would lose interest in her.
At least she made a conscious effort not to call him Wolf anymore. Not to give him that power over her. Not to succumb to the seduction of Shadow. Even though she was withdrawn and quiet, she was holding her own in her head. Keeping up the fight.
“She’ll get through this,” Adam said. “Anyone can see how strong she is.”
But she was human, too, and scared. Only her iron-willed determination kept her grounded. Though there was an exception. “She said the paintings were moving.”
Adam’s brows came together.
“Kathleen’s paintings,” Custo clarified. “Annabella said they were alive, that the trees were swaying.”
Adam looked over at the framed images of the Shadowlands on the walls. “Was that just her perception, or were the trees really moving?”
“Is there a difference?” Custo answered. Annabella’s unique perspective breached Shadow regardless, making the question of reality irrelevant. Adam should get that by now.
“Good point. I’ll have them removed.”
A nurse wheeled a tray up to the bed and Adam stepped aside. A cold wash of something bitter-smelling was rubbed onto Custo’s abdomen. The pressure, though light, hurt.
Then the damn prick, which wasn’t as bad as Adam’s lifted, mocking eyebrow. Still not funny.
Custo turned his head for a much better view. Annabella, asleep.
***
Custo’s guts were wrapped, his belly on fire, as the first of the Segue soldiers entered the apartment under guard. He was held in the living room while Custo positioned two chairs in the corner of the bedroom, away from the still-sleeping Annabella. He wouldn’t allow so much as a screen between them, and he would end anyone who remotely twitched in her direction.
“All of them passed the fMRI lie-detector test,” Adam argued when Custo explained that he wanted to question each soldier himself.
Seemed Adam had gotten his hands on a new toy, a functional magnetic resonance imager, which was supposed to measure blood flow to the brain to ascertain truth from lies with more accuracy than the standard polygraph.
Custo wasn’t that impressed with the results. The traitor had to be within this group of soldiers; only they had access to the intel that placed Adam at the back of city center last night during the performance. Hence, Custo’s own round of questions.
“You can tell truth from lies?” Adam asked.
“Sort of,” Custo hedged. Not that he didn’t trust Adam with his little secret about mind reading. In fact, he didn’t know why he hadn’t brought it up before, except that mind reading made him intensely uncomfortable. The whole angel thing still didn’t sit right with him, and the telepathy made it worse. Reading thoughts was a handy tool, but he knew from personal experience how unpleasant it was to have someone else eavesdropping in your head.
Screw it. “I can read minds,” Custo said. “It came with the wings.”
He waited for anger, or at least annoyance, but all he got from Adam was, Huh, interesting.
Custo pushed harder at Adam’s mind. “It doesn’t bug you? Bugs the hell out of me.”
Adam smiled slightly, saying exactly what he thought. “I’m used to it. Or kind of. Talia can sense emotion when I touch her. She doesn’t get ‘thoughts’ per se, but she can guess them pretty easily based on how I’m feeling.”
“But I am not your wife, and I can read your mind.” Custo was incredulous. “That has to bother you.”
“Nope.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Adam’s smile grew. “Then read my mind and find out. You know me too well for me to really hide anything from you, regardless. Anything important, that is. Just stay out of my bedroom.” Adam’s smile hit his eyes. “Or don’t, if you need a few pointers in that arena. You never really could keep a girlfriend very long. I’ve wondered…”
“Oh, shut the fuck up.” But Custo was grinning a bit, too.
The knowledge was more than welcome. Talia, a child of Shadow, could sense emotion. Custo, a denizen of Heaven (however unwilling), could glean thoughts from people’s minds. The dichotomy made perfect sense considering the respective characteristics of each world. Magic and inspiration pervaded the Shadowlands, while order and deliberation represented Heaven. Mortality drew from
both. No wonder the battleground was Earth.
“Does she know?” Adam tilted his head toward the bed. The question was weighted with Adam’s opinion—he thought she should.
Custo ignored it. “Nope. She’s pissed at me enough already.”
“Chicken.”
Chi—? No. “She has enough to worry about without feeling self-conscious about something as intimate as her private thoughts.” Custo gestured to her. The woman had been attacked not hours ago. She needed a break.
“You like to learn things the hard way,” Adam said, with a sorry shake of his head.
“Look, I’ll tell her when I’m good and ready. When I think the time is right.”
Adam shrugged, saying, “Your call,” and motioned to bring the first Segue special operative into the room, but he thought, clearly and distinctly, but be careful or she’ll never trust you again.
He was being careful, meticulously so. Adam just couldn’t appreciate how difficult it was to respond to only verbal dialogue when the internals were much more telling. Like with the sequestered Segue soldiers—a couple of pointed questions, and bam, they’d have their traitor.
“Watch and learn,” Custo said to Adam.
The soldier took a seat in front of him. He had a dark buzz, a swirl of tattoo inking out of the collar of his t-shirt.
“What’s your name?” Custo had it on a card in front of him.
“Lieutenant Michael Joseph Parnham, Third Division, Segue Spec Ops.” But in his head he said, Mike.
Time to get down to it. “Are you working in collusion with the wraiths?”
Mike straightened. “No, sir!” His thoughts echoed his exclamation, No, sir!
Annabella stirred. Hell, she was bound to wake up with twenty-odd soldiers going in and out of the room. But Custo wasn’t about to leave her alone. It had to be this way.
“Are you aware of anyone working in collusion with the wraiths? And keep your voice down. Yelling your answer doesn’t make it any more or less true.”
“No, sir.”
“Have you ever passed information outside your authorized unit?”
“No, sir.” Except for that one time I told Jeni about going overseas because I promised her I would let her know if I was leaving the country, but she left me anyway for an accountant because she wanted to have a baby and a minivan and a pretty house with a…
This guy wasn’t the traitor.
Next?
Annabella sat up during the third soldier’s interrogation, after which Custo called a temporary halt. Adam was right—her color did look much better, though she kept her lips pressed tightly together, her body tense, startling easily. Still wouldn’t eat.
She was debating in her head whether to call Venroy and tell him she wasn’t going to the party, or to save herself the discomfort and blow it off altogether. She was leaning toward the latter, a very bad sign. She’d already discarded the impulse to call her mom.
A little more than twenty-four hours, and they’d come full circle. She was preparing to give up her dance. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t Annabella.
“What time is the party?” Custo asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” she answered. “I’m not going anyway.”
Custo had been undecided until that moment, even though Abigail-the-psychic had said they should attend, per Zoe’s report. He didn’t like the idea of taking Annabella out in public again. Segue wasn’t safe either, but at least they had the home-field advantage. The defeat in her eyes, however, was as perilous as the wolf itself. She had to live her life, revel in her accomplishment with dance, or the wolf’s offer would become that much more tempting, her desire for Shadow that much more acute.
“We’re going,” he said.
“Custo,” Adam said, “I don’t know that…” …going to the party is the best course of action at this time.
“No, Adam,” Custo said. Making allowances for her fear would only sap her energy and have her doubting herself more.
Adam shot him a look. You said it yourself. She’s been through enough today.
Custo deliberately hardened his tone. “She doesn’t have the luxury of wallowing in her self-pity. She needs to go to the damn party. She needs to find her spine again. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.”
Annabella raised fear-stricken eyes. Custo watched her fear transmute to recrimination and anger, but she didn’t say anything. He touched her mind: Her thoughts were full of murder, but not for the wolf. She wanted to scratch Custo’s eyes out.
Good. There was fire in her yet, though there was little chance he was ever going to get to touch her again. To move inside her. If that sacrifice weren’t angelic, he didn’t know what the hell was.
“Besides,” Custo said, “the wolf wants to take you away from the life you’ve fought so hard to build. It would be one more victory for him if you didn’t attend the reception. As one of the lead dancers, the reception would be in your honor, yes?”
He saw the delicate muscles of her jaw contract as she clenched her teeth, but she nodded, yes.
Her gaze darkened, and Custo knew that she was thinking about what he’d said. He felt the right decision form in her mind.
“Then we go,” Custo confirmed. “We don’t have to stay long.”
“I don’t have anything to wear,” she said, voice thick, “and I’m not going home for my dress. I’m never going back to that place again.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Adam said. “Custo, do you want my tux?”
After Peter’s murder, Annabella was definitely going to need a new place to live.
“Custo?”
The tux. “The shoulders will be a bit tight, but it’ll do,” Custo answered by rote. It was an old joke between them, and a lame effort at lifting the mood.
It got a weak smile out of Adam at least, and a clap on the shoulder. Annabella turned sullenly away and climbed back on the bed. Adam brought over a laptop for her to pass the time during the soldier interviews. She downloaded a movie, Dawn of the Dead, so the sound of soft screams filled the room while Custo worked.
A more effective “screw you” he couldn’t imagine. Very well played.
Twenty-four interrogations later, Custo was beyond perplexed. He’d asked questions from every angle, but a more straight-up, true-blue batch of men he’d never seen.
He was stumped, and he was man enough to admit it. He had to have missed something somewhere, but he’d have to think it through before taking another approach. And it was getting late.
A garment bag hanging on the bathroom door presumably held their clothes for the evening. A glance at his watch told him they’d better hurry if they were going to make the party.
Custo showered quickly, stripping off the now unnecessary bandage, while Annabella put on her makeup at the sink.
When he got out, Annabella used the open shower door to shield herself while she dressed, though he knew she had no problems whatsoever with modesty, notwithstanding the fact that he’d seen all of her lovely body just that morning. But okay, he could take it.
Adam’s tux, classic in cut, was indeed a little tight across the shoulders, a fact Custo would point out at the first opportunity, but it looked good.
Annabella stepped out, devastating in a cobalt blue sheath, her skin a glowing contrast to the deep color and her rich hair, styled in a loose twist. Her eyes were luminous, her painted mouth set both to bitch and pout. When she turned to exit the room, she revealed a backless v that stopped at the last dimple of her spine, her supple, smooth body exposed, the cloth hugging at her waist and hips.
Custo’s fingers itched to skim down her skin, to shed the fabric from her shoulders, to loose her hair, and graze the column of her neck with his mouth. That he couldn’t made him deeply regret pissing her off quite so much.
It promised to be a hell of a night.
***
A slash of Wolf’s claw shredded the bedsheets. Rage and want consumed him, blurring his vision until the hard lines of the room
doubled, colors and edges shifting around him as his legs stumbled for purchase on the too-soft mattress. Pungent scents layered the room. Woman. Angel. Blood. And numerous other mortals, all masculine, but difficult to distinguish individually.
The sources of those thick, driving smells were gone now. The woman, too.
Shadow had offered him back to the world too late, too reluctantly, with too little substance to catch her and press his advantage. A little sooner and he could have compelled her acceptance, when she was too frightened and weak to fight.
Thus his own shadows betrayed him, but they had ever been variable, inconstant, like the shifting boughs of Twilight.
Wolf shook out his pelt. He had his form now. And the woman might not choose to use his name, but she could not take it back.
What he needed was to set a trap. Not a cage like those on the lower levels of this massive structure, housing the life-charged corpses humankind called wraiths.
No, he needed a human trap fitted to a human heart.
And the banshee mother had taught him how.
CHAPTER 15
Annabella got another round of applause when she entered the reception. She smiled and bowed, this time with only a slight inclination of her head. She was seriously done with bowing. It was way overrated.
The reception was held at the extravagant Upper East Side penthouse of one of the ballet company’s patrons. A champagne affair for the start of the season. The hosts boasted the kind of wealth her family had never dreamed of knowing, and they weren’t subtle about it. An enormous, colorful blown-glass dewdrop of a chandelier warmed an entrance hallway several times larger than Annabella’s studio apartment.
Talk about crossing over into a different world.
Custo’s hand was warm at the small of her back, like he was her date or something. She’d be damned, however, before she’d lean against him and get another of his remarks about her lack of spine. A nightmarish snakelike shadow had slid all over her today; the man could do with a little sensitivity.
Annabella’s faith in the abilities of Segue or Custo to get rid of Wolf was rapidly diminishing. It would be much worse if he got a hold of her the way he’d gotten a hold of Abigail. Unimaginably worse.
Bad Boys of the Night: Eight Sizzling Paranormal Romances: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set Page 36