Diva? Please.
She tucked a light scarf around her head—no way on earth was she getting sick this close to the performance season—and was ready to go.
The air outside was sharp with the smell of crisp leaves mixed with lingering exhaust, underscored by a medley of city scents—a trace of spicy food, beer, old newspaper, mellow sewer funk, and fresh laundry. She breathed deep for a hit of the city’s pervasive vitality, enough to get her back to her studio apartment. The sounds of distant traffic and sirens drew her into a brisk walk. The bus stop was only a block away. The sooner she was home, the sooner she could crash. She tightened her scarf under her chin and picked up her pace.
The darkened street wasn’t completely deserted. Streetlights and buildings splashed enough light to see clearly four blocks in either direction. A couple strolled ahead of her, and a group of chatty smokers—young professionals by the looks of their day-wrinkled slacks and shirts—loitered outside a lit doorway. Nothing any city girl would worry about.
The bench at the bus stop was empty. Annabella sat, crossed her legs, and looked down the street again. No bus in sight.
Her mind wandered back to rehearsal. Tense shoulders—that’s what Venroy had said. She’d try harder to relax. And he’d said to watch her arms. Maybe there was something off with her upper carriage altogether.
Stop. You’re obsessing again. She stood to distract herself and leaned against a lamppost.
Still, it wouldn’t hurt to watch old videos. She had Natalia Makarova’s Giselle. She’d seen the performance a million times, but never concentrating on shoulders and arms. Maybe—
Across the street, a dense well of shadow drew her attention. Something was moving in there. Make that prowling. A big cat, maybe. Or a dog. Or…or…
Her heartbeat accelerated. She deliberately looked away. This was not happening again.
If she had brought her iPod, she could’ve turned off her mind. Between Giselle and the creepy wolf hallucination from rehearsal, she was going to give herself a nervous breakdown.
She took a shuddering breath.
There was no need to wait at the bench all night. She could pick up the bus at the next stop. And she needed a bigger distraction. She grabbed her bag, reaching inside for her cell phone at the same time. She hit “1” and talk to call her best friend, who answered.
“Hi, Mom,” Annabella said. She shouldered her bag and lengthened her stride down the sidewalk, taking care to stay where the streetlights were brightest. Paranoid, but whatever.
“Oh, good,” her mom answered. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you. I need an extra ticket for your brother’s girlfriend. Apparently he didn’t break up with her, so now she’s coming opening night.”
Annabella’s footfalls echoed on the sidewalk. A chill slid down her spine, raising the hairs at her nape as her heart worked her up to a fast stride. She tried to outpace the niggling feeling that someone was stalking her, but glanced over her shoulder anyway.
Nothing there but motley shadows, and a block away, a pedestrian.
“Annabella?”
Oh. Brother. Girlfriend. Ticket. Right. “You think he’s going to propose to her again instead?”
“I really don’t know—” Her mom broke off. “Why are you out of breath?”
“Walking home.” She glanced across the street and almost tripped to a stop.
A patch of skulking shadow traveled the opposite sidewalk. The shadow kept to its own, black on black, and was easy to lose if she blinked.
“Bell, it’s late.” Concern filled her mom’s voice. “Get a cab. My treat.”
“I would, but I don’t see one.” She kept her gaze trained on the layered darkness, her body stone-still waiting for the next movement. Everything seemed to be shifting ever so slightly around her. The buildings, the street lamps, the metal garbage bins. She was totally cracking up.
“Honey, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s stupid. I had a rotten rehearsal.” But since she could tell her mom anything, she added, “And I think I’m being followed.”
“What?” Her mom’s voice rose. “Where are you? Can you find someplace safe?”
Damn it. Now her mom was worried. “It’s just a dog, Mom. A dog is following me.”
“Get inside.”
“Businesses are closed. I’m waiting for the bus.” Not a quarter of a block away was the next stop, an empty lit bench waiting. No shadows there. Annabella made for it.
“Is there anyone to ask for help?”
She glanced around. There was no one in sight anymore. Weird. It wasn’t that late. “Not really.”
“How can you be alone in the middle of New York City?” her mother demanded.
“I’m fine, mom. Don’t worry. The…uh…dog is staying on the other side of the street.”
Even as she spoke the shadows organized again into the unmistakable form of a black wolf, his eyes shining from the deep pitch of his rough, triangular face.
This had to stop. She had to get a freaking grip.
She dropped herself onto the bench and closed her eyes while her body quaked. There’s nothing there. Just a figment of my imagination. A part of her screamed danger! while the rest of her remained resolute. She was not cracking up, not now. They could check her into an asylum…after the gala.
“Annabella?”
She opened her eyes as the wolf began a slow advance across the street. Head lowered, ears pinned back, he picked his way through the darkest fall of shadow toward her. His growl was low with menace. His eyes were wild yellow, and locked on her.
“Mom, I’m scared.” She sounded three, instead of twenty-three, but she didn’t care. She crab-crawled upward to sit on the backrest of the bench. Her blood pounded in her ears as she clutched the phone like a lifeline. Her body loosened slightly, and she knew, tired as she was, that she could run if she had to.
“I’m calling the police on the other line.”
Annabella’s eyes teared at the urgency in her mom’s voice. She shouldn’t have called home in the first place, shouldn’t have put her mom through this. The wolf crossed the midline of the road and she started to shake. A roaring sound filled her ears. This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.
“Honey, it’s going to be okay.” Sure enough, her mom released a tirade of demands in the background. “Where is the dog now?”
“It’s…uh…” Fear choked her answer. The wolf ambled closer, his paws silent on the pavement. As he drew near, she perceived that the blackness of his coat was instead a variable absence of color. The thing lacked substance, like a nightmare, and yet his intent was palpable enough.
“Honey?” Her mom’s voice was high and harsh, frantic.
A scream built up in Annabella’s throat, gathering into a tight kernel of fear.
But the wolf stopped there, at the edge of a circular pool of streetlight. He snarled into a series of sharp barks, loud as cracking thunder, but did not cross into the halo of light. The barks hit her like blows, but she kept her seat. Didn’t run off into the dark.
The wolf satisfied himself with a slow prowl around the perimeter of the glow, his gaze fixed on her. Waiting.
If she could have wrapped the lamplight around her like a cloak, she would have. As it was, she fully intended to stay on this bench all night, until the sun rose and burned away the monster.
“Honey!”
“I’m here.”
“The dog?”
Wolf. “Mad, I think.” Her voice shook her words to pieces. “I’m not going to move. Or breathe. Maybe it will leave me alone.”
“Oh, honey.” Now her mom was crying.
“I’m sorry, Mom.” The tears in her voice matched her mother’s. The wolf finished its first threatening lap. “I should’ve taken a cab. I promise to take a cab from now on.”
Her gaze followed the animal as it started a second circuit, somewhat larger to take him farther from the street bench.
The high-pitched sq
ueal of a bus’s brakes told her why. The bus had arrived, hissing to a stop, its interior bright as day. Salvation.
“What’s that?” her mom asked.
The bus’s door folded open. Annabella laughed as tears spilled down her cheeks, and she stepped from streetlight to safety. “The bus. I’m on the bus.”
“Oh, thank you, God,” her mom breathed into the phone. “You’ll be okay now?”
With every light on in her apartment and a good night’s sleep. “Yeah, I think so.”
She glanced out the window onto the darkened street as she took her seat, searching for signs of movement. I hope so.
CHAPTER 2
Angels. Custo couldn’t stand them in his head, picking up his thoughts and casting theirs his way.
From each one, understanding, acceptance, and a convoluted explanation of how they were related to him through such and such crap ancestral line. One big happy family. He wanted to tell them all to piss off and leave him the hell alone. With all the fluid mind-speak going on, he was certain his opinion was more than clear.
The barrage of mental dialogue intensified near the elaborately carved marble passages of the Halls of Memory, each subtle detail telling the story of the world. Would it kill them to use their mouths to speak? Their incessant nonvocal histories and orations on the meticulous ordering of the universe made him want to knock the serene expressions from their faces. Who could possibly give a damn about creation when there was a war raging on Earth?
Humanity against the wraiths. A traitor within Segue, the world’s only defense against the immortal soul-suckers.
But no amount of asking, shouting, or begging for aid would move them. Each passing moment was a moment wasted.
So Custo kept as far from the halls as possible, haunting the gate, waiting for that cold bastard Shadowman’s return. Except, as often as Death approached, Custo had yet to catch him before he was gone again. Like the angels, the dark fae hadn’t listened to his pleas when he died. And now Death was quick when delivering his souls, too quick thus far for Custo to catch and convince.
Yet there had to be a way.
Custo climbed the white stone steps of the gate’s outer wall, his fingers grazing the intricate carvings that decorated the massive boundary between the Shadowlands and Heaven. Some talented, very patient soul had rendered the ivory stone into a complex latticework interspersed with miniature carvings of animals, flora, and the faces and forms of generations upon generations of people, young and old, happy and despairing.
A growing warmth in Custo’s consciousness alerted him that his lookout on the wall was already taken. He stretched his mind to isolate the identity and intent of the individual before he turned back and went the other way. He was really not in the mood…
Oh. His heretofore unknown cousin, Luca, come to babysit him again. Could be worse.
Custo joined Luca, leaning against the stone ramparts above the rambling expanse of the Shadowlands. His vantage looked down upon the diamond white shore, beyond that, the wide gray channel, and farther still, the Shadow forest with leaves dark and changeable as nightshade. The Shadowlands’ only constant was the tempting question, What if…?
Any moment now, Death would be back. From this angle and altitude, Shadowman’s small boat would be visible. Custo’s ticket out of here.
“Go away,” Custo said.
Luca chuckled. “I thought you might want company.”
“You know I don’t.” He had to get out of here. To find a way to return to mortality and warn Adam. Beleaguered by the wraith war, Adam wouldn’t think to look for sabotage within his own ranks, even after Spencer’s betrayal. Adam was just too trusting. Without Adam, the Segue Institute would crumble, and without Segue, the wraiths would eventually dominate the world.
Luca sighed. “If you went into service, you might find the time easier to bear. You might find purpose. There is great work to be done.”
Not any work he was suited for. “I prefer solitude.”
The saving grace of Heaven, the only thing that kept Custo remotely sane, was that in spite of the overwhelming—and in his opinion, slightly obsessive—order to the place, nothing about him had really changed. At least that he could tell. He was himself, and if he wanted to wait at the outer wall, no one tried to force him to do otherwise. For that reprieve alone, he gave Luca his attention.
Luca had died in his late forties, but he appeared youthful and fit, as if twenty-five. He was casual in jeans and a white tee, where Custo wore black. Luca’s dark hair was longish and curling, almost femme, if his black gaze weren’t so intense.
“You might find your memories less bothersome,” Luca said.
No thank you. His memories—the good, the bad, and the very bad—were all that he had left. All that defined him. He didn’t want to become something else. Someone else.
“When you’re ready, then. I’ll always know where to find you.” Luca put a hand to Custo’s shoulder briefly, and then descended the stairs.
Custo dismissed the good-bye and turned back to his watch. There were no good-byes in Heaven, only unwanted, endless hellos.
A blink or an eon, and the boat appeared. Custo gripped the wall to contain a rush of anticipation.
How much time had passed while he’d been waiting, he couldn’t guess. A minute? A year? A millennia? Impossible to tell.
The narrow vessel carried two passengers: an old man, white hair glowing with the light of the gate, and tall, grim Shadowman, wrapped in his seethe of darkness. The old man passed, Heaven burst with jubilation and welcome, and the gate clanged shut against the potent throb of the twilight Shadowlands.
But this time Death didn’t leave, though divine light pierced and tore at his cloak, snapping it back toward the darkened tree line. Likewise, the shining black strands of his hair lifted, whipping from his broad shoulders in the streaming brilliance of the gate. His bared torso was defined with muscle, his fae-tinged skin flecked with gritty black, burning with Heaven’s brightness. As quickly as the light eroded the tip of his nose and wore away at his flesh, Shadow renewed him. Death’s expression was severe, the high slashes of his cheekbones growing prominent with his effort, but he showed no inclination to retreat.
At last.
“Kathleen!” Shadowman raged at the wall, his voice thick, deep, and cracked. His anguish shook the gate, the walls shifting to deeper hues.
So he’d come for her at last, the woman who’d tempted Death to fall for love. Why now, after all this time? Had something happened on Earth?
Custo needed to get home. Not knowing was torture.
“Kathleen!” Death called again, louder, resolute. His free hand fisted in defiance at his side; the other clutched the staff of his scythe, knuckles mottling with black. His body flexed, as if he faced into a violent, blasting wind. A law of Heaven, one of God knows how many, prohibited the faerie within the walls.
Maybe…
Custo reached with his mind to locate Death’s lost love. Maybe he could make a deal with a lord of the Shadowlands in return for a favor. Custo cast his consciousness out like a net, but came back empty. He cast again and sifted more carefully. Nothing. Damn.
Kathleen was not in Heaven.
“Kathleen!” Death threw his scythe into the water, as if repudiating any continued, willing concert with the divine. The light of Heaven tore his cloak to ribbons.
Custo’s mind darkened with subtle purpose, proof positive that Heaven was no place for him either.
“Hey!” he shouted from the top of the wall.
Shadowman looked up. His eyes were all black, glossy with power.
“Trade you,” Custo offered. Was such a thing possible?
No answer, just a throb of soul-deep, intense inspection.
“You want in or don’t you? Heaven’s no place for me, and I’m not hanging around until they figure it out.” Right about now it would become overwhelmingly apparent that he didn’t belong.
Custo glanced over his shoulder
. No one coming for him. Yet.
“I do.” Shadowman spoke the words like a vow. The sound carried and penetrated to chill Custo’s marrow. He was glad he wouldn’t be here when Death discovered Kathleen was elsewhere.
Custo grinned. “Meet me at the gate.”
Custo took the steps by twos and threes. He kept his eyes from the grassy plains that led to the Great Halls. He didn’t want to lose his nerve. His chance.
He felt along the carved surface of the gate, and his hand warmed, burned, as it passed over the intricate figures of a couple entwined in an embrace, marking the lock to Heaven. Funneling every ounce of will, he pushed.
The gate cracked open.
Custo found Shadowman’s blistering hand mirrored his. A spark of light, and their positions were reversed. Custo was delivered.
Segue.
Without a backward glance, Custo set off at a run across the beach. He dived into the channel, aiming for the drifting boat. With any luck, there’d be an oar inside. A shock of wet cold stunned, but didn’t slow him. The stuff went in his mouth—salty—and his ears and nose. He blinked the drops out of his stinging eyes, urgency pushing him to stroke and kick a path across the water.
As he swam, he extended his mind for signs of pursuit. His consciousness broadened to find Luca back at the top of the wall with a host of others, looking out, tracking his progress. And below, he perceived how the sandy shelf fell away and the water rapidly deepened.
Something sinuous grazed his leg as he reached Shadowman’s slender gray boat. The side pitched as Custo swung a leg over and heaved himself inside, accomplishing the feat with a wet body roll that nearly capsized the vessel. He knelt immediately and looked into the water.
The shadow of a large creature—not a fish—broke the surface. A mermaid, if he had to put a name to it, with greenish skin that went blue over defined cheekbones forming the features of a water goddess. Her hair twisted in thick, frondy pieces like Medusa, and her black eyes blinked rapidly, regarding him. She lay on her back so that the water lapped her full, tight breasts.
Bad Boys of the Night: Eight Sizzling Paranormal Romances: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set Page 19
