SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (73 page)

“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.

Shadow Fall: Chapter Fourteen

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 how 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.

“Do you or don’t you have a bullet in your belly?” Adam asked softly, with an unspoken
you poor bastard
tagged on.

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
years
ago and there were extenuating circumstances.

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.”

What’s happened?

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.