Shadow Fall

Custo’s blood cooled. Iced. So basically Luca was telling him that the wolf was immortal for the time being, while he himself could die. For the present, Annabella and anyone close to her would be at risk.

“There must be a way,” Custo insisted.

“You already know it,” Luca said. “The best way is to force him back into the Shadowlands.”

Custo took a last look around the high-tech, gleaming fortress for angels. He thought of the sharp weapons in their cases above, and the conditional access to them.

Luca had said that as an angel Custo had earned the privilege of choosing his path. Okay then. All this was very interesting, and he sure hoped the dragon didn’t burn up too many people. And he was near certain the well- trained people in the flight towers would see all those planes safely landed. But really, he’d made up his mind before he set foot in this crusty alley.

“I won’t abandon my friends.”

Chapter Thirteen

ANNABELLA was bent on keeping her equilibrium around Custo, but some things were easier said than done. Balance took practice. Her motivation: Self-preservation and, well, she was still angry, hurt, and humiliated. Good thing all three emotions, especially combined, were very useful.

She scanned the city street as soon as they hit pavement, not relying on the big protective men with her to spot Wolf first. Though she couldn’t see him, the small hairs on her neck told her he was near. Watching. Waiting. Following. Anger strangled her fear long enough to get her across the sidewalk to the street. Custo tried to take her arm, murmuring, “We’ll talk,” but she neatly avoided his grasp. There was nothing to say, and she could stay close enough for safety without his hands on her.

She opened her own door and sat in the front passenger seat of the car, relegating Custo to the back. The fact that the vehicle was still waiting in traffic had to be divine intervention. At least the tower was good for something.

As soon as the car was moving, Custo reported the gist of his discussion with Luca. Basically, the divine intervention stopped with the car. They were on their own.

“That’s not good enough!” Adam’s knuckles were white from his grip on the car’s steering wheel. It was the first time Annabella heard Adam raise his voice. The first time Mr. Control had come unglued in her presence. That vein on the side of his head looked about ready to burst.

Not that she wasn’t a little ticked herself. Seemed Custo’s cronies weren’t keen on helping her either. But the performance season was ramping up. Another chance to get her life back was days away. The next time she danced, she’d keep her head on straight and use that Shadow magic to push the wolf out of the world. Things would never be normal again, but she’d be off this roller-coaster ride and back to reclaiming her life. Custo could go do whatever angels did when they were done with their work—fly away?

Whatever. She just wanted this over.

“They won’t assist at all?” Adam pursued, though Custo had answered this question twice already.

“Luca says they have other, more pressing concerns,” Custo answered. “Shuttling the dead across the Shadowlands, active breaches in the barrier between the worlds, and the dangerous creatures that have crossed. Says you’re doing a bang-up job with the wraiths on your own.”

“So quit,” Annabella concluded on Adam’s behalf. “If you quit fighting, then they will have to deal with the wraiths themselves.”

“Talia can’t quit,” Custo said quietly behind her. “She straddles this world and the Shadowlands. And even if she could, she will always be a target because she destroyed the wraiths’ maker. Adam is in the war to the very end…and so am I.”

Annabella’s gaze darted between them, but Custo was looking at Adam, who took a deep breath and seemed to exhale a lot of his fury.

“I know,” Adam said, “and I appreciate everything you’ve already done. It’s just that Talia has been through a lot, and it pisses me off that help was available but not rendered.”

“So what now?” Annabella asked.

Silence.

Well, damn it, somebody had to make a plan. “Common sense says that we try again for Wolf with my next performance, and in the meantime, Adam stays close enough to Talia to protect her from the wraiths until she delivers.”

There. Done. She turned around and sat back in the seat, making a mental note to call her mother when they got back to Segue, too. Her mom would be freaking out over missing her at the theater after last night’s performance.

From the rear, Custo said, “Quit calling him Wolf. It’s driving me crazy. Names have power. Don’t give him any more.”

Fine. The wolf. What about the plan?

“Your strategy would work if both the wolf and the wraiths act predictably, but I don’t think they will. It isn’t in their best interests. The wolf will try another way to gain access to you. And the wraiths are now aware that there are others capable of killing them. Because they are aggressive by nature, they won’t run and hide. They’ll attack first. And hard. We need to change things up if we are going to stay ahead of them.”

Well, crap. Annabella looked over her shoulder to ask, “Then how…?” and whipped around to grip the dashboard when Adam made a sudden U-turn.

“Abigail,” Adam said. “She can’t help Talia, but she might be able to see Annabella.”

“See me?” Annabella asked. Adam made no sense.

“She’s…” Adam began, “I don’t know what she is. A visionary? A psychic? An oracle? Someone touched by the magic of Shadow, like you, but different. Abigail seethes with Shadow internally; you can see the darkness in her eyes, like there’s a storm in her mind. It’s sped her aging, taking decades off her life. She can foretell futures, what she calls possible futures because every choice changes the course of things.” He fell silent, then added, “I don’t know if she can help. The last time she saw a future for me, I wasn’t able to change a damn thing.”

Annabella wasn’t sure she wanted to know what had happened, not by the tone Adam used or the misery that pulled at his eyes.

“That was two years ago,” Adam said, his voice rough.

When Custo died.

Well, Custo was fine now, and Annabella had had enough of him and the doom and gloom. Any more drama and she was going to lose it. Any more fear and she was going to start screaming. Any more Custo and she was going to fall apart.

A little food wouldn’t hurt either. She could feel her blood sugar plunging. On an ordinary day, she was bound to get a little cranky. With all this insanity going on, the big men better look out.

“Maybe,” she said perversely, “this Abigail will see my name in bright lights suspended over a theater, you know, bigger than the actual name of the ballet I am performing in. Maybe with the word incomparable in pretty cursive nearby. Or maybe magnificent?” Now she was just talking to herself. “Anyway, that’s what I see when I look into my future.”

Adam slanted a humorless glance her way.

“Really big lights,” she added for Mr. Buzzkill.

She refused to peek over her shoulder at Custo again, though she felt him behind her like a warm sun on her skin. The sensation was impossible to block so she kept her gaze on the road, on the white license plates with their blue anagramlike letters and numbers. GKM rearranged could be gimmick, and SFR could be surfer, and AGL could be agile, but not angel. No matter how hard she tried, heat and comfort wrapped around her, embraced her. And she knew it was just as dangerous as the Shadow creature that stalked her.

The contradiction of Custo was pulling her apart and called for an exception in her once-a-year cheesecake rule. Just as soon as possible. And with whipped cream. She needed a binge and bad, the kind ballet rarely permitted her.

The building Adam stopped at was three stories high, one in a series of several similar buildings, on a