“Let her go,” Adam said to whoever or whatever was in the room.
“So,” a female voice trembled, as if in the throes of deep pleasure, “this is what it is like to be made flesh.”
“Leave her alone!” Zoe shouted with a painful warble, her love for her sister stripping her naked.
The fear in her voice resonated painfully within Annabella. Her throat grew tight in sympathy, even as her belly quailed against discovering what was in the room.
Adam glanced over his shoulder, spotted Custo, and stepped back. Annabella stumbled after Custo as he slowly moved forward to take Adam’s place at the door. She wrapped an arm around Custo’s middle so the wall of his strength was between her and Wolf; then she stole a quick glance over his shoulder.
A woman sat in a rocking chair, gnarled hands clutching the armrests, aged beyond any believable sibling relationship to Zoe. Her thin white wisps of hair floated off sallow skin, colorless lips working into a parody of a smile. Her eyes were blackened with pulsing Shadow.
Annabella’s blood ran cold.
The smile reached its grotesque apogee. “You can’t hurt me,” she taunted.
“Wanna bet?” Custo started forward.
From behind, Zoe yelled, “That’s my sister!”
Custo halted again. “Release Abigail. She’s not worth it. Her body is wasted, near death.”
Annabella shuddered with a sudden realization, her fear turning sharp and cutting within her. Where before Wolf had simply assumed whatever form he wanted, the soldier and Jasper, now he possessed, sharing the old woman’s body. The how was more than obvious: Adam had said that Abigail was so full of Shadow that her eyes were stormy with it. Now Abigail was full of Shadow wolf, the blackness of her gaze hungry, predatory, and…unnatural.
The union was wrong, but there was nothing they could do about it. Any harm Wolf took, the woman would as well, and by Zoe’s account, Abigail was already weak and ill. Zoe had blamed them for killing her sister; it seemed her accusation was dead-on.
Annabella fought a tide of nausea. She thought of her mom and brother, safe at home. If Custo and Adam had come knocking, she would have barred the door, too. And then some.
“Yes, a joining of fae and mortal, less satisfying than I’d hoped”—the old woman’s head cocked sharply; her nose twitched as she sniffed the air—“but nevertheless…potent.”
One of her knobby hands uncurled, splaying its fingers, palm up in front of her. A condensation of light appeared above, while her eyes grew blacker still.
The magic pulsed, thrumming over Annabella’s skin, loosening her joints and muscles, sending languid ease over her limbs, her core contracting with pleasure. The sensation was wrong, too. She didn’t want to feel this, not here, not now. Not from him.
The magic within her responded anyway: It was pure possibility. Pure potential. The same kind she used to weave a story with her body and mind. Annabella couldn’t draw her gaze from the shimmer above the woman’s palm.
By nature Wolf could change his form, but he couldn’t do more than that. He couldn’t cross back and forth between the worlds, couldn’t make or see or create like people in the mortal world, like she and Abigail. But now Wolf had discovered access to mortal power; they’d led him right here to Abigail’s doorstep.
The wolf, Annabella corrected herself. Not Wolf. He already had enough power over her.
Annabella rose on tiptoe to whisper in Custo’s ear. “Can we push him back into Shadow?”
Custo gave a short shake of his head. “He’s anchored in her body. It’s a refuge until she dies.”
Annabella regarded the old woman’s twisted expression, then had to look away from what she found there. “It’s not a refuge. It’s a rape.”
She had let this dark creature touch her, dance with her, tap into her fantasies. The memory was both revolting and humiliating in the extreme, enough to really tick her off.
Annabella stepped out from behind Custo, channeling her fear and anger into action. “You said you wouldn’t hurt anyone else.”
“You said you would join me,” the old woman whined. The light in her hand evaporated into the air. Her arm dropped like a stone into her lap, her palm spotted with blisters.
“Get that monster out of my sister!” Zoe was hysterical.
“I’ll go if Annabella comes, too,” the wolf offered, lips peeling back into a toothy smile.
Annabella shivered, recoiling.
“You can’t have her,” Custo cut in. “I won’t let you.”
“It’s your choice, Annabella,” the wolf said, “not his. Come with me and end this. I know how to make you happy in ways no one here can conceive. You have a body made for weaving magic; I am made of magic. Join with me.”
Annabella’s heart flooded her body with an oh, yes! wave of blood. She considered the offer for a split second, but the oily black throb of the woman’s eyes decided it.
“I can’t,” she said, though Zoe’s sobs turned her stomach with pity and guilt.
A hand roughly shoved Annabella away from Custo, as Zoe burst through. “Take me. Just leave my sister alone. She’s been through enough. I’ll do whatever you want.”
Adam caught Zoe and dragged her back. Tears smeared black makeup down her cheeks.
“You can’t manipulate Shadow,” Custo said, “so that creature doesn’t want you.”
The talent was inborn, though Annabella understood that it took many forms—anything with vision, she imagined—but then the talent had to be nurtured and honed over years of sacrifice. Just look at Abigail. Her ongoing intercourse with Shadow had brought her prematurely to the brink of death.
“Annabella, please,” the woman crooned, “you must come with me. Bide with me. You may not have set any traps for a wolf, but you have caught me just the same.”
“Yeah, well, I’m setting you free now,” Annabella returned bitterly. “Go away. Git.”
Abigail cocked her head again, and with a little knowing smile made a gesture with her wounded hand. Shadow roiled into the room behind her, opening a moonlit vista of dusky purples and blues, of portent trees under a whirling cosmos possible only in story, myth, or magic. It was the landscape of Annabella’s imagination, and she knew with one sinuous stretch of her body she could blow through the darkened forest and lick the topaz sky. The longing and want that filled her was excruciating. No amount of faking indifference could cover it.
The wolf belonged there, prowling beneath the darkened boughs, but the old woman’s body did, indeed, anchor him in the mortal world. A single bloody tear snaked down the wrinkled cheek.
“Is she in pain? Is she suffering?” Zoe asked as she wept from Adam’s arms.
Next to Annabella, Custo tensed.
“She’s still with the wolf,” he answered. “She’s…”
Annabella looked sharply at Custo when he didn’t finish. His jaw was clenched, nostrils flaring, his forehead drawing taut. Whatever he perceived was bad, real bad.
Zoe wrenched a sob. Her sister suffered. Shame made Annabella feel large and awkward and conspicuous. This was her fault, her problem. Maybe she should give herself up. Anything was better than the ache bleeding out of Zoe.
“Oh, just end it.” Zoe begged.“get that thing out of her.” She hid her face against Adam’s chest, her body visibly trembling as she clung to him.
“You don’t have it in you,” the wolf said to Custo, lifting the old woman’s upper lip to bare her teeth.
Annabella went very cold and still. She knew that Custo did. He’d killed for love before.
He stepped forward into the room, putting her firmly behind him again. “This is your last chance,” Custo said to the old woman. “leave her now.”
“You bluff,” the wolf countered. “Are you going to break this weak neck with your bright hands?”
Custo’s fingers twitched, but he said, “No.”
Instead, he touched the old woman’s brow. A slender hiss of smoke trailed upward from the poin
t of contact.
Abigail reared back and thrashed her head to the side, but was trapped in the rocker. The wolf might be strong, but Abigail’s human body was frail. Beyond, the view of the Shadowlands shredded, darkness fraying into ragged whips of magic, the incomparable tapestry of the fairyland dissolving. The wolf snarled and snapped her teeth near Custo’s wrist, but with a backward whoop of black dust that had them all cringing, was expelled from the woman’s body.
Annabella’s terror seized her muscles, locking her in place. Was Wolf gone for good, gone for now, or not gone at all?
The cloud of black dust condensed, the grains whispering as they roiled, churning above the now-slack body of Abigail. The rocker pitched back and forth, creaking. Wolfish black specks melted and coalesced into an amorphous blotch of potent darkness, a shadow without a source.
Heart in her throat, Annabella caught Custo’s wrist, her gaze tracking the wolf’s movement. For a moment, the wolf blended with the deeper shades of Abigail’s bedroom.
Her heart’s wild pounding muted her hearing, which, in turn, seemed to confuse her sense of sight. Panic abused her reason. The wolf huddled in the shadows by the bedside table, then—where? Under the bed? Along the wall? Behind the door?
She couldn’t see, damn it. Shadows were freaking everywhere.
Annabella’s fear solidified into a stone in her gut, a chill prickling her scalp. With effort, she brought her gaze up to the ceiling, to the shadowy splay of the ceiling fan. Sure enough, the wolf crouched there, like a misshapen spider, once stomped but still living, its legs double bent under a nubby body.
Annabella stumbled as Custo hauled her to his side. With a tripping step, they fled to the far side of the room, opposite the door. Breath catching, broken into stuttering gasps, she backed to the wall.
The old woman stirred, whimpering. But oh, thank god, alive.
A flicker of movement brought Annabella’s gaze briefly back to Zoe, as the sister wrenched free. Zoe twisted out of Adam’s reach, driving forward to shield Abigail with her body from the predator above.
“Shhh, it’s okay,” Zoe said. “I’m here. Shhh.”
Annabella gulped to clear her throat and squeezed Custo’s hand. She hated spiders. Hated hated spiders.
“If you had angel wings, you could fly up there and squash him,” she said, voice shaking, eyes tearing.
“I’d need a really big shoe to kill one that size,” he answered. He was way more calm than she was, his attention focused on the ceiling. “Adam, add Big Shoe to Segue’s weapon list.”
Adam grunted.
Custo shifted beside her, and in one fluid movement brought a gun up and hammered the ceiling with a violent pop, pop. Adam was one second behind him with his own, pop, pop.
Annabella startled painfully with each report, as Zoe squealed and clutched closer to Abigail, hands protecting her head.
They had guns?
The shadow fell in a dark rain and landed on four paws on the other side of the rocking chair. A bristling wolf, the breadth and hulk of his shoulders too familiar. His ears were pinned, teeth bared, intelligent eyes glaring. Glaring, oh shit, at her.
Custo’s shot was blocked by the huddled sisters. “Adam!”
Adam fired again, and the wolf dropped.
Annabella sucked in a shaky, hopeful breath, though she knew, knew, that the wolf could not be killed. She reached a hand to clutch the back of Custo’s shirt.
Her high tanked as she spotted the sinewy twist of shadow easing toward her through the rungs under the sisters in the rocking chair.
Annabella tried to squeeze behind Custo, pressing herself against the wall. Wolf was never going to stop. Never never, until he had her. Never never nev—
Custo fired repeatedly at the floor—her body clenched sharply at the noise again—but he hit the thing, tight, smoky impact holes biting the snakelike body, but not slowing it.
The nearer it got to Custo and her, the more the dark Shadow of the creature hissed, foul steam rising as if Wolf, no, the wolf, were on fire. Yet it slithered closer.
Annabella kicked with her foot when it was inches away, but the Shadow branched, one tendril twining coolly around her ankle. When it hit bare skin she started to shake uncontrollably.
Custo dropped to his knees, grasping the dark body, and ripped it off her. The Shadow evaporated like smoke in his hands, and he redoubled his efforts as the snake reformed before Annabella’s eyes.
A low moan, her own, reached her ears as rank terror gripped her. Custo couldn’t stop it. Why couldn’t Custo stop it?
The serpent insinuated itself beneath the hem of her pant leg in a sizzling caress, climbed her calf, and twisted around her thigh.
She screamed, near mindless, beating at her clothes in futility as the snake crossed her crotch, lined her like a fat g-string—oh, please, no—then tightened around her waist as he approached the cleft between her breasts. Her body quivered with its touch.
Custo was already at her pants, ripping the seams as he tore the thing off her. The wolf’s burn on her skin was hot, blistering, her body responding to his dark magic with a violent, unwilling orgasm. She throbbed with it, flesh, blood, bone. Her senses were subsumed with want and revulsion, Shadow and magic torturing and promising at once. Her scream gave way to choked weeping, and when Custo tore away the last of the wolf, she was certain her soul had been ripped away as well.
Her life, the world, was both wild and ravaged, reason and meaning torn ragged.
At last her legs gave, and Custo took her weight at his shoulder. Dimly she was aware of a subtle retraction of darkness, the retreat of the wolf. Part of her yearned to follow, to be satiated, obliterated by Shadow, even in an ecstasy of pain. But she was anchored in her body, too.
“Where is he?” Custo shouted. His chest felt solid, his arm around her secure. Which was good because she’d finally lost it. Custo would hold on to her. Custo wouldn’t let her go.
“I can’t see him!” Adam returned, but from a great distance.
Annabella’s body went slack against Custo’s, her head to the side on his shoulder, dumb to anything but the pump of his heart and the receding promise of magic. Her eyes burned and tears scorched her cheeks as they fell unchecked. The room grayed to static, the fuzz filling her ears.
Then nothingness swallowed her.
CHAPTER 14
Annabella was sleeping. Finally. She was tucked into bed, her shiny brown hair spilled across the crisp white pillow. Her breathing was deep and even, lips slightly parted.
Custo exhaled and scrubbed a hand through his hair. A shiver of fever wracked him, though the wound in his gut was a hot throb. He was too angry to care. He wanted to hurt something, beat something, tear something apart with his hands…and make it stay dead. Was that too much to ask?
He stood up from the chair beside the bed, pain stabbing his belly, and paced the length of the mattress.
The fight at Abigail’s place was the second time in as many days that the wolf had evaporated in Custo’s grip, leaving him clutching at empty air. At least wraiths could be contained, but the wolf kept slipping away.
Why? Why attack and then retreat only to stalk and wait and watch? Why not attack and attack and attack, until all resistance was exhausted, all protectors dead?
Custo didn’t like his answer. He’d spent the three hours since the fight trying to come up with a different one, but with no success. The reason was crystal clear.
The wolf wanted Annabella willing.
The wolf had already tried to seduce Annabella through her beloved dance. Like Custo had expected, he’d simply changed his approach.
Abigail, already filled with Shadow and ailing, required little effort for the wolf to possess. He could sample the mortality that he so craved in Annabella. If Abigail had been a stronger vessel, the wolf might have been satisfied, his menace to the world exponentially compounded, and the immediate threat to Annabella ended.
Abigail, however, was weak. And h
ow wily of the dog to leave the old woman alive. That way, he’d deliver to Annabella a threat and a promise with the same act: Come with me, and no one else need be harmed. Then he slithered all over her to demonstrate how their union was inevitable. That he could give her carnal pleasure, however forced. That not even her “angel” could stop him.
The thought made Custo sit down again, sweating, clenching his hands, remembering the empty fistfuls of darkness as he tried to wrench the wolf off Annabella.
Custo gazed across the bed at Annabella’s lovely profile. She’d awakened in the car, confused, blinking for memory. Then she’d sat up, spine stiff, yet shaking during the swift ride back to Segue. She wouldn’t let him hold her anymore, and a touch of her mind told him she meant it. And she wouldn’t eat, though he knew she’d been fantasizing earlier about food. Annabella had come to the same conclusions he had about the wolf’s attack.
The wolf, the hunter, wanted her willing, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
They had all returned to Segue, Abigail and Zoe included, as if Segue equaled safety. Nowhere was safe until Talia delivered and could deal with the wolf once and for all. Or until they could manufacture a new way to coax the wolf from the world, a long shot with the wolf growing so impatient. The only progress they’d made today was to learn that Custo was mortal, and the wolf, for all intents and purposes, was not.
Felt more like a step back.
…idiot better cooperate…The garbled bit of Adam’s thoughts told Custo he was approaching. Sure enough, there was a soft rustle of noise in the foyer of the apartment, then a shuffle of multiple people crossing the living area. Custo stood in the bedroom, waiting for them to come to him. They’d better keep it quiet, too.
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 Annabella to dismiss the lot of them.