was to learn that Custo was mortal, and the wolf, for all intents and purposes, was not.
Felt more like a step back.
Adam had his “not taking any arguments” expression on as he entered. Dr. Lin arrived next. Short, round, and bald, he stood in direct contrast to the two accompanying muscle-bound male nurses pushing a mobile gurney and a trayful of tools and supplies.
Before Adam could get a word out, Custo mouthed, “No, thank you,” and then turned his attention back to Anna-bella to dismiss the lot of them.
“Do you or don’t you have a bullet in your belly?” Adam asked softly, with an unspoken
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
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.”
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.
He waited for anger, or at least annoyance, but all he got from Adam was,
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
