SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (77 page)

Annabella’s profile in the streetlight was smooth and cold as marble. He liked a girl who could hold a grudge in the face of all the shit they’d been through. That kind of constancy took nerve and dedication. All those years of ballet discipline exercised to shut him out. Sucked for him, but good for her.

They reached the narrow concrete steps to Jack’s. They were wicked steep for loading and unloading gear, and probably miserable on high heels. He’d just have to hold on to her some more. Good for him, too bad for her.

“I’m not going down there,” she said.

“Sure you are.” Custo gave her a little nudge. The street was bright with traffic, but he didn’t trust the staggered blind corners of the buildings. A wolf lurked somewhere in this city, watching and waiting.

Annabella bitched all the way down, something along the lines of being dragged from one crap hideout to the next only to die by falling and breaking her neck on a freaking flight of stairs. When she wrenched open the door to the club, a rain of tenor sax finally drowned her out.

“It’s too dark in here,” she shouted, stopping in the doorway.

The wolf hid in shadows, so her fears were understandable, but the creature had no problem with light now either. She had to get over it.

Custo half pushed, half carried her into the comparable pitch of the club. The music was so loud, he could almost feel it vibrating on his skin. “We won’t be down here long,” he said into her ear. “It’s a place where we can be off everyone’s radar.”

He waited for his eyes to adjust, the darkness taking on depth and variation until he could make out the block of the bar, to his left, attended by hunched men. Others sat at small tables crowding the long, crooked rectangle of a room. Various instruments cluttered the small spaces between the tables. The room culminated at a slightly raised platform where a trio played—drums, upright bass, and sax. Old cigarette smoke poisoned the air, leaving an acrid, bitter taste in his mouth. He took a deep breath of the wretched stuff, more at ease than he’d been since he’d scraped his bare ass outside that friggin’ theater.

Custo was two years dead, but Jack Stampos was still at the bar. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

Custo dragged Annabella over to the bar and shook Jack’s hand. “It’s been too long.”

Jack looked older: his hairline had taken two dips on either side of his forehead and the reluctant light of the club made deep creases of the man’s wrinkles.

“This is Annabella,” Custo said, yanking her hard up to his side, and just to tick her off some more, he added, “my sweetheart.”

She gave an angry but cute grunt, grumbling “not likely,” loud enough for Jack to hear.

“Nice to meet you anyway,” Jack answered. He shot Custo a look that said,
You got your hands full with this one.
No mind reading necessary.

He was done with mind reading for the night anyway. It cost him too much.

Custo leaned into the bar, pitching his voice to both suggest and carry. “You still got that room upstairs?”

Annabella stiffened, then planted one of her pointy elbows in his gut.

Jack chuckled. “Yeah, I still got that room, but it’ll cost you.”

That was new, but Custo was willing. He reached for his wallet. “How much?”

“Put your damn money away,” Jack said. He moved away to refill a drink, then stepped a bit farther, stooping, and drew out a guitar case from under the bar. “Play me a song, and I’ll get you both supper as well.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Annabella said. “I’ve got a monster after me and these heels are killing my feet. I want to go to bed.”

“Oh, we will,” Custo said, taking the guitar. The “we” had her scowling again. He was certain a whole new level of violence was added to whatever was in her head. Anything to distract her from the wolf. “Suppers, too, eh?”

“You were always hungry, if I remember correctly.”

Jack referred to the days when Custo was just out of school. Adam had offered him a job in his father’s company, but pride wouldn’t let him take it. Another handout would have cost Custo way more than any paycheck could cover. It had been time to make something of himself, show his father what he’d thrown away so many years before.

He’d had only a few months of living hand to mouth when Adam called him, desperate for help. Jacob, Adam’s older brother, had gone insane, turned into a wraith, and had murdered Adam’s perfect family. The rest was Segue history.

“I am exhausted, Custo,” Annabella said.

He was sure she was, but she would live. And if the wolf decided to…
engage
them, then here was just as good a place as any to make it clear that Custo was not giving up Annabella.

They took a table near the front. The back ones were mostly filled with musicians ogling Annabella’s dress, or depending on the view, lack thereof. Near the makeshift stage there was more light anyway, which should make Annabella less jittery. She settled herself into a seat. A glass of wine was set before her, another gift from Jack.

Custo popped the frogs on the guitar case while the guy on sax finished up his song. Opening the lid, a waft of sweet wood cut the stale air of the club. Nestled inside was a beauty of an arch-top jazz guitar, a Benedetto. Inlayed with abalone along the neck and constructed of a mix of exotic woods, walnut and curly maple most likely, it gleamed as he lifted it to his knees. Had to be a recent acquisition by Jack, at a pretty penny. It was an honor to try his hand at it.

Jack took the stage as the guy on sax accepted his smattering of applause. “We have a slight change in our lineup. When you hear him play, you won’t mind the wait. Custo? When you’re ready.”

Custo took the stage, forcing himself not to look at Annabella, though he could feel her—he always felt her—simmering on his skin. She burned hotter just now.

The bass player, an old guy, held the neck of his upright, the knuckles of his hands enlarged. The drummer was college-young, with black bolts in his earlobes. A guitar cord snaked from the amplifier to the center and got tangled around the leg of a stool. Custo lifted the seat and planted it front and center of the stage. He switched the amp to “stand-by” to avoid a screech, then flipped it back to “on” after he was plugged in and ready to go.

He settled himself on the stool, glanced out over the group, and came to rest on his livid Annabella. “For you,” he said.

* * *

Annabella gripped the seat of her chair as Custo put pick to guitar. Her insides ached, straining to control and compartmentalize the emotions that churned and surged within her. The toxic air of this hole in the wall of a jazz club was making her nauseated, too. She wanted to get out of there, but had no choice but to stay put.

They were tempting fate, dangling her like bait into the shadows. The wolf could,
would,
come any moment now. Why didn’t he attack again? She was vulnerable.

A sip of wine burned her throat. She’d had enough of Custo Santovari. Enough. She couldn’t think straight,
feel
straight, with him around. Angel? Demon? She barely even knew herself anymore.

Of course the song he chose would be depressing. The melody was one of those bluesy dirges in a minor key. She never really cared for free-form jazz anyway. Must be an acquired taste. The drum’s soft rap counted the final grains of time at the end of a life. The bass’s
doo-dow-dow-doo
was like a heart about to beat its last. And Custo had dedicated it to her. Well, thank you very much.

She clenched her hands on the wood under her thighs to stop her shakes.

Not that he could help the whole wolf thing. But still…Forcing her to go to that stupid reception, then bailing. Hypocrite. And she didn’t need anyone tooling around in her head, picking apart her private thoughts. It wasn’t like she could stop thinking to shut him out. Oh God, what awful things he must have learned about her.
She
was no angel.

And then to take her to that miserable loft.

What possible purpose could it serve to show her the very bullet holes that ripped through his body? And how was it that those scars of violence still had the power to penetrate and wound? Because she was frickin’ bleeding inside, and any second it was going to come pouring out her eyes in tears. Tears for someone already dead.

For someone she couldn’t have.

He played the guitar in weeping notes, a lament of heartache for which she had no defenses.

How dare he mess her up like this? She bored her gaze into him.
How dare you do this to me?

No response. Not even a flicker of his eyes as he picked the strings with one hand, while the other worked the frets.

Custo! Get me out of here!

She’d been shouting at him in her head since his big revelation at the loft. Why they were in the jazz club, she had no idea. Something about a room for the night. If they couldn’t go back to Segue, she’d much rather sacrifice her credit card for the predictable double queens and bath in a hotel room. Something, anything, normal.

I’m tired. I want to leave.

Nothing. Just the wail of a note as he pushed a string high on a fret to tug at the melody. The guitar was a voice calling out into the club for attention, the last note crying,
Please!

She didn’t have to listen. She looked away, clenching her teeth so hard her jaw ached.

The song followed her, breaking away from the melody into a solo. The notes stayed low, quarrelsome, building to an angry, violent accusation, but laced with pain.

And then she knew Custo was speaking to his father.

All the things he couldn’t say were translated into a medium where, like her dance, communication was visceral, pure. The music formed a foreign language, but like a gift of tongues, she understood.

With each pick of the strings Custo’s story tumbled out, the specifics rounded by notes, but the layers of feeling pronounced in sheets of sound. Aggression predominated, but the intensity was strung together by hurt. The refrain passed away, and the song broke into a doubled melody, two lines of music in conversation with each other. One was regular, masculine, predictable, Adam. The other, its brother, was all improvisation, running headlong into a catastrophic explosion of notes, death.

If Custo’s life hadn’t been co-opted by the wraith war, she knew what he would have become. The raw honesty of his music, coupled with obvious mastery over an instrument, revealed him. He couldn’t keep his secrets while he played. This was his truth.

Annabella’s heart was in her throat as she tried to keep the darkness of the club from shifting to Shadow while she resonated soul to soul with the weave of the song. Magic flickered at the edges of her vision, but she kept her attention fixed on Custo’s bowed head. She stayed grounded in the club, breathing its smoke in lieu of the intoxicating air of Faerie.

Custo’s playing reduced, and with a tilt of his head, he threw the song to the others for solos. The old man played as if he knew Custo’s story, dribbling on the bass like a rapid heartbeat. The drums came up after with a snap and burr of a flight from danger.

When Custo rejoined them, his notes were higher, lilting, slightly eerie, and…threaded with the dominant melody of
Giselle
. Annabella flushed with the realization that he was playing
her
into his story. His improvisation wove the two songs together into one composition: soaring, mournful, full of impossible hopes. A love song.

She’d known him only two days of hell on Earth. And he was an angel, utterly beyond her.

But with his soul filling the smoky club, what could she do but love him back?

Shadow Fall: Chapter Seventeen

Gripping the guitar by the neck, Custo stood to a smattering of applause. Not that he needed it. God, it had just felt so good to play. To channel his maddening restlessness into a medium that satisfied like a back-alley fight, but without the broken nose or bloody knuckles.

His hands had been itching for murder since the attack at Abigail’s. The trip down memory lane hadn’t helped either. Fucked-up life, fucked-up world. Now that the sensation had receded, he could think. He could be. That dark, angry part of him had finally gone quiet. Like absolution.

The darkness of the club had remained undisturbed while he played. Nothing had moved out of place. No wolf. Just peace. There had been so many opportunities for the wolf to attack, yet none were taken. The wait at Segue, his “outpatient” surgery, the party, the loft, now Jack’s place. To what they owed this reprieve, he had no idea.

Maybe it wasn’t a reprieve at all.

Custo had kept an eye on Annabella in his peripheral vision while he played. Ready to drop Jack’s $20,000 guitar should she twitch in fear. Now he dared to look directly at her.

Annabella sat like a queen in her deep blue gown, always straight, never slumped and easy. She didn’t look so angry anymore. Her eyes were shimmery with tears, which was never a good sign in a woman. But she didn’t seem sad or scared either. He didn’t like it.

He was glad he had already decided not to read her mind. At the moment, he was nervous about what he’d find there. He had wanted her to hear him play, but now he felt exposed. Uncomfortable in his own skin.

He discarded the feeling. It wouldn’t take much to tick her off again. It was what he did best.

The bass player and drummer gave Custo a nod of recognition and Custo thanked them for backing him on the spur of the moment. He got a couple of sincere
anytime
s.

Then Jack was there. “At least you were playing these past two years, even if you weren’t playing for me.”

Custo hadn’t touched a guitar for years. Somehow in all that time his fingers never forgot the intricate patterns of the song, and the music had obeyed. He probably owed the peak looseness and dexterity of his hands to his altered status, though he was still loath to own the title. Angel.

Jack held up keys and traded for the guitar. “Same room. I’ll send out for dinner. Any preferences?”

A simple question would be a good way to gauge Annabella’s real mood. “What do you want for dinner?”