***
Annabella took off across the roof toward a set of red metal doors, and Custo had no choice but to follow. Joining the fray was madness, suicidal, something for him, but definitely not for her. Besides, they were on the wrong side of the fight; they’d have to cross through the wraiths to get to Adam and his defense of the fallen tower. And though it was plenty cool that he could kill wraiths with his hands, as he and the other angels had the night of the gala, there were far too many of them for him to take on alone. But Annabella wouldn’t think of any of that.
As always, she seemed determined to be a pain in the ass.
The doors opened to a flight of utility stairs, which led to an upper floor of the building, housing what appeared to be a series of small, independent businesses, little gold plaques to the side of their doors. They took the main elevator to the lobby. Custo avoided the main entrance and barged through a very sketchy-looking staffing business to exit out the rear to a parking lot off the main street.
He hid her behind a Dumpster and assessed the thick army of stinking wraiths held back by Adam’s gunfire. Had to be upward of a hundred converging on the Segue men defending the broken tower.
No way to get through. The wolf could catch up at any moment, and then they’d be beset on all sides. They had to keep moving. Maybe if they circled around—
“Who’s that?” Annabella nudged him.
Custo’s attention focused on where she pointed, a blind spot some ten yards from their location at the juncture of a low concrete wall and a building.
“He was right there a second ago,” she said.
Against the age-whitened concrete, a lash of rippling, smoky darkness whipped into existence, and a wraith was propelled backward from the press of the throng. Midair, the wraith halted, and though partially obscured by Shadow, Custo saw his head suddenly torque, and then the sack of wasted flesh fell to the ground. The kill was over before Custo could blink.
Two nearby wraiths turned at the sudden motion, teeth thick in their mouths. With a bloom and jut of Shadow, the lower jaw was knocked off one, and the other crumpled, head lolling after a blur of movement.
Darkness crawled across the lot. A third wraith suddenly threw himself onto a rusty stake.
One by one, wraiths were picked off from the back of the throng.
Had to be Shadowman, come to Adam’s aid. And he’d said he didn’t care.
Near a vertical cement post, the Shadows came to a roiling stop. Only Death’s stern face was visible in its depths, expression pitiless, eyes stirring with deep black. He looked over to the Dumpster and spoke, his words clear though he seemed to only mumble across the distance. “Don’t trouble yourself to help.”
Sarcastic son of a bitch. Custo had jumped Heaven’s Gate to help rid the world of wraiths; if he could have been wrenching the necks, he would have.
“I can’t. I’ve got a human woman here,” Custo replied. He couldn’t, wouldn’t leave Annabella alone for a second. “She’s been infected with…something.”
Shadowman tilted his head, forceful gaze intent across the debris and cars in the parking lot, assessing. Custo would have guessed from context that he was examining Annabella, but she was hidden by the gang-tagged Dumpster.
“She’s lost anyway,” Shadowman concluded, returning his attention to the throng of wraiths.
Custo straightened. “Over my dead body.”
“Don’t be a fool. You’re already dead.” Shadowman’s darkness contracted, and he was revealed completely—tall, broad, strong beyond imagining, and cruel. His trench coat, black leather from the look of it, seemed to absorb light. With a wicked whip and twist of darkness, Death’s long hair was bound effortlessly behind him. “The body you now hold is a choice, made of your soul, and thus mortal. Be careful with it. She’s gone regardless.”
Shadowman left his cover, stalked up behind the press of the immortal dead, and tapped one on the shoulder.
The creature turned, opened its mouth, and got its neck broken for his hesitation. The nearest wraiths hurled themselves back from the presence of Death, trampling a few that fell to get away from the one being that could kill them, but wouldn’t die himself. At least Shadowman had killed a few before revealing himself.
The wraiths scattered, a good many pelting for the Dumpster where Custo hid with shivering Annabella. A wraith leaped over the Dumpster with a great hollow thump. Custo altered its trajectory and brought it head first into the pavement, then stamped its neck to the side. Dead.
Two others rounded the side. Annabella tripped one, was slapped back, which gave Custo enough rage to break its back with his knee, then its neck with a midair strike that nearly ripped its head from its shoulders. The second wraith missed Custo’s face and locked onto his shoulder with his teeth. It jerked when Annabella stabbed it with something, releasing him. Custo jabbed his elbow in the wraith’s face, crushing its nose, and hurled it over his shoulder to stomp its trachea, then break its neck.
They’d be safer in Shadowman’s wake. No wraith would get near enough to hurt them. Taking Annabella’s hand, he made a break for the tall, dark man parting the wraiths like Moses at the Red Sea. Bodies of wraiths littered the street, the smell so foul Annabella vomited as they passed the worst of it, but stumbled alongside of him.
Beyond was the white wreckage of the tower and the ragtag group of Segue soldiers who’d held the wraiths at bay. Adam was midcommand, organizing a triage to save what injured angels he could. He glanced over, noted Shadowman, Custo, and Annabella’s presence, but continued with his work. Time was critical. A pitiful few others, angels, dug in the rubble for survivors. They called with their minds, seeking responses, but got only flickers of consciousness.
Hold on. Help is coming.
Custo wrapped his arms around Annabella as cold certainty ran through his blood.
The tower was a refuge no longer. No help for Annabella’s condition could be found there. The angels couldn’t save her when their brothers and sisters were buried, their mortal souls at risk.
In one minute, or ten, or thirty, the wolf would come again for Annabella. She was trying to hide her mounting shakes but not fooling anyone. Custo would have to fight him again. And again. Since Custo was mortal, the wolf would eventually prevail.
Which left…
Shadowman set his cold gaze on Annabella, and she visibly shivered.
“Please help her,” Custo said.
“Did your elders teach you nothing?” Death asked Annabella with disdain.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
Shadowman lifted a pitying smile. “Long ago, a girl such as you came into Shadow. Her name was Persephone, and she ignored warnings, as you likely did. She ate four pomegranate seeds, and in doing so, bound herself to spend a season each year in the Otherworld.” Death made a show of looking Annabella over. “How much did you eat at the hunter’s table?”
Shadowman’s tone was as awful as Annabella’s expression, and Custo almost intervened. But she lifted her chin, returning the bastard’s cold glare, and said, “I think I started with the chocolate, and then an éclair, no wait—” she inclined her head dramatically to remember, then continued, all brat, “I think I hit the comfort food first, some cheesy au gratin delicious dish I can’t name, but my mom would probably love the recipe if you wouldn’t mind getting it for me—”
Custo grabbed her hand to shut her up, but she brazenly continued in Death’s face, “and then the chicken pot pie, with the best spring peas I’ve ever—”
“Point is she ate the wolf’s food,” Custo cut in. “Could be worse, right?”
“Look at her. She’s bound to Shadow, and yet as a human, even one with a gift to draw from Shadow, she cannot tolerate it indefinitely. Eventually she will weaken, and the wolf will overtake and possess her.”
“Is there a cure?” Annabella asked.
“He has to release you,” Shadowman said, “but I don’t know why he would with your power. I th
ink he’d bring you to heel”—her chin went up again—“or let your body die, and keep you from passing into the Hereafter.”
The set of her jaw and the intensity of her black eyes told Custo she’d use every atom of her contrary spirit to make her submission miserable for the wolf. If she had to go, she wouldn’t go easy.
Custo was ready to beg. “Is it in your power to help her, to force his cooperation? Can you kill him?”
“The hunter is elemental, immortal. I can order him back to Shadow, but Annabella would eventually have to follow. He set out to capture her, and that’s exactly what he has done. There is no ‘cure’ for a choice. Even one so seemingly insignificant.”
So, better to fight now, when Annabella was at her strongest, than to run and be hunted again and again until they wished for an end. Any end.
“I like a good fight,” Adam said, coming up beside Custo. Adam was already beat to shit, his pretty, aristocratic nose swelling under blackening eyes.
Luca joined them. His face was scabbed with blood, eyes heavy with losses from The Order’s ranks. I’m with you, too.
Hell of a way for Segue and The Order to come together, but at least some good was coming out of the nightmare.
Annabella was shaking her head. “This is between the wolf and me. Has been from the beginning. I can do things with Shadow. Magic. I can make him hurt.”
But eventually he’ll overpower you, Custo added mentally to himself. Not good enough.
There was no way he could bear Annabella submitting on her own, alone. At the very least, he’d be by her side, even if it cost his embodied soul. It wasn’t worth much without her anyway. They’d fight, and they’d pay for their mistakes together, in blood and pain, which was nothing new for him.
But they couldn’t win.
Last time he died, he had nothing to lose but his regrets. This time…everything.
Someone had to win.
Adam had Talia and their babies. Custo couldn’t allow him to help, and in so doing invite more loss and misery into the world. Or Luca, whose end would be as final as Custo’s.
And Shadowman?
“I tricked you once,” Custo said, “and I am sorry. Is there anything I can do to make it right before…he comes?”
“I can’t exactly trade you to Hell now, can I?”
No. “Other than that.”
Shadowman’s eyes slanted to the ruin of the tower. To the arsenal now littering the white stones. The weapons would have to be carefully tucked away until The Order could rebuild.
“I need the hammer,” Shadowman said.
“Take it,” Custo said.
Death’s nostrils flared. “I would have already, if I could touch it. But I need an angel to hand it to me.”
Luca bumped Custo’s arm. “No. It’s forbidden. Don’t add this mistake to the others.”
“Who are you to talk?” If Luca had listened to Adam in the first place, the tower would still stand. If the hammer would bring Kathleen and Shadowman together, then so be it.
Custo climbed the steps of rubble and found the hammer in the dust, the same one he’d handled in the tower’s armory. The shaft was solid, a dark wood rubbed smooth by handling. One side was wide and blunt, the other a rounded knob. A blacksmith’s tool. Custo had no idea what Death would do with such a thing when there were some awesome blades littering the area, and he didn’t care.
When he turned back, his heart stopped.
The wolf was padding slowly across the street, his bunched shoulders rolling with the stealth of his advance. The wolf barked once, and Annabella fell to her knees.
“Hunter,” Death said, “there is no need for that. You’ve leashed her already.”
Custo leaped down from the white rubble as the wolf morphed into an almost-man, naked, hairy, potent, and vicious. His body was built for power, muscles thick and corded. His expression was feral, but had lost that rabid craze that had cost him the fight at Segue. He was back to cunning, to searching out and exploiting weakness.
He’d set traps, and one had sprung. He was here to collect his prey.
Custo helped Annabella to stand and, handing Shadowman the hammer, said, “I won’t let you have her.”
“You can’t stop me,” the wolf said. To Annabella, he barked, “Come.”
The blackness of her eyes seemed to throb, the thin lines on her skin growing thicker. Annabella swayed, but obstinate as ever, said, “No.”
“Come!”
Annabella blurred, the Shadow within her hazing toward the wolf in obedience, but the rest of her was rooted in the rubble. Custo put his arms around her waist. Her slim frame trembled, every trained muscle overriding the compulsion of Shadow.
How long could she keep it up?
An hour? A day? And yet, what else could she do but refuse and endure? She’d fight until her body broke. Annabella was made of willpower, had honed it, like her body, for most of her life. She was by nature a fighter.
“Come. Now,” the wolf growled across the war zone that was the street. His disgusting stuff was getting hard as if he anticipated dominating her.
Rage pounded in Custo’s head. He put Annabella behind him. That monster would not touch her while Custo was living.
Annabella reached around Custo’s body to flip the wolf the bird. God, Custo loved her.
Adam’s thoughts filtered through Custo’s worry. I’ve got six guns trained on him, waiting for your signal.
To fight the wolf with conventional weapons was to prolong the inevitable.
Luca added, I can think of three of The Order’s blades that would cut him out of the world.
That might take care of the wolf, but what about Annabella? The Shadow was making her ill. She’d have to return to the Otherworld eventually to survive, and the wolf would be waiting for her.
No. Shadowman had stated the only possible way: the wolf had to willingly release her. But what circumstances would compel the beast to do such a thing when Annabella’s power was almost in his grasp?
The wolf needed a better offer.
Custo slanted his gaze toward Luca. “You said my presence on Earth, my body, was a choice?”
“No.” Luca shook his head. So he’d thought it, too. You have no right to offer your body, your great soul, to a dark fae. Annabella would give him free access to Earth, but with you he could breach Heaven.
Hence, a better offer. It was a simple solution: Convince the wolf to release Annabella in exchange for him instead. A mortal for an angel.
A sharp pinch brought Custo’s attention to Annabella. Her eyes were huge in her face, the lines of her skin like old, cracked china.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking,” she said, her voice strained with threat, “but I know I don’t like it.”
Custo had to smile at that. The world needed someone with her kind of spirit, her talent, her light. He would not stand by and watch her grow dim.
To Luca, he said, In my body, the wolf would be mortal, as I am. Adam has six guns at the ready and you have three swords to choose from. Kill him as soon as he overtakes me.
You’d be giving him your soul.
Custo had given his life for Adam. He’d easily give something as inconsequential as his soul for Annabella. And all he’d have to do is control the wolf within his body long enough for Adam or Luca or even Death to do what needed to be done. To kill him—gunshot to the head ought to do the trick—and thus kill the wolf. There was a way after all.
Decision made, sweet peace swept over Custo. He kissed Annabella on her head and then forcibly guided her to Adam for safekeeping.
Her feet were damn stubborn. “What are you doing?” she cried, resisting him.
The wolf growled, lips peeling back from canine teeth. “Annabe—”
“Forget her,” Custo interrupted over his shoulder. “I’ve already had her anyway. Find yourself a more faithful mate.”
“I’m going to be sick,” Annabella said as Custo delivered her to Adam’s hands and left h
er without a backward glance—better that way—to approach the beast.
“I want her power,” the wolf answered.
Custo shrugged. “Release her, and you can have mine.”
CHAPTER 21
Annabella twisted and yanked her arm out of Adam’s vise grip. She caught the glances he exchanged with Luca. They were up to something, and since no one saw fit to clue her in, the plan was probably very, very bad. She couldn’t hear clearly, but Custo had offered something cryptic to the wolf, which the wolf seemed to understand and be considering.
Whatever it was, the answer was, “No!”
Custo turned back. “Baby, trust me, it was meant to be this way.”
“Don’t ‘baby’ me!” Annabella yelled. She wasn’t a child. “Stand by me. Fight with me.”
She really didn’t think she could handle this if he weren’t by her side, and she couldn’t believe he was pulling this macho crap on her now. Actually, she could believe it. This pigheaded behavior was just like him.
Custo murmured to the wolf. “Yes, they’ll try to stop you, but my body will heal on its own if you can get away.”
“You’re suggesting that I possess an angel?” The wolf grinned, toothy and cruel.
Annabella’s heart stopped beating. She should have known Custo would attempt a stupid but impossibly sweet thing like that. Trade himself for her.
But what then? They’d still have a power-hungry, crazy-ass wolf on the loose, just inside an impossibly gorgeous body. And as far as she knew, they didn’t have a way to restore Custo afterward, unless the angels and their Order had some extra power no one had shared with her.
Movement caught her eye: Adam flicking his fingers. A signal, but to whom? For what?
Annabella scanned the area, saw the black tip of a rifle braced on white stone. And ten feet away, another weapon came up, carefully aiming at the wolf and Custo. A third soldier knocked the decaying remains of a wraith off a wall and took up position.
They better be careful where they fire, because even though Custo could heal supernaturally well, he could still be…
Bad Boys of the Night: Eight Sizzling Paranormal Romances: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set Page 44
