“He came out of nowhere,” Annabella said. “One minute I was dancing alone onstage, the next Custo was with me, tackling my hallucination of a wolf.”
“I beg your pardon?” Talia’s brow furrowed. “A wolf?”
“Yeah. You’re not going to believe me, but I swear it’s the truth.” Custo believed her; maybe this woman would, too. “There is a huge wolf…in the city…that is made out of shadows, and he has been stalking me for two days.”
Annabella sat back in her chair and waited for Talia’s response. If the woman’s face showed one iota of disbelief, contempt, or amusement, then pregnant or not, she was going to get a piece of Annabella’s mind.
Talia’s face tightened, her mouth thinning. “Is the wolf made out of shadow, or does it exist in the shadows?”
Her serious expression had a chill sweeping over Annabella, prickling at her scalp as all the blood dropped out of her face. “He’s real?”
“It’s definitely possible.”
Two people believed her. Which meant the wolf was real and was stalking her. Annabella put her head on the table as the room spun.
“You’re safe here,” Talia said. Annabella felt a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”
The hunter crouched in a corner of darkness, panting with fear. Foul scents of industry, sharp and acrid, filled the air. Foreign sounds jarred him, echoing in a world of harsh, cold gray. His claws scrabbled and scratched on a firmament of flat, unnatural stone. No trees, no magic. Just large, wide caverns upon caverns going deep into the earth.
Not his territory. Not his realm. He was the trespasser here.
The hunter braced in meager earth-shadow. A high whine scraped up his throat. Back. He had to get back.
Mortals clumped with heavy, telling footfalls. Controlled violence hummed in the air around them. Fighters, all. The bright man, the one who’d faced him in Twilight, was worse, but they’d caged him.
The woman was here somewhere, too, her scent faint, yet threaded through the passageways she’d traversed.
She could get him back to Twilight. She could open the way to the never-ending forest. His running grounds.
A fighter stomped near, coming closer. A man, steamy and ripe with life.
The hunter bared his teeth, ears pinned, ready to strike.
The man walked the passage as if he belonged, his presence permitted everywhere in these caverns. Closer and closer. Fat with mortal juices.
This fighter could approach the woman. Perhaps he could compel her magic to open the way back.
The hunter sprang to take him.
The door retracted, and Custo stepped into the center of the cell—not too close to the opening as if to attack or escape, but not remaining on the far side, as if to draw Adam away from the door and the safety beyond.
Adam strode in anyway, the door grinding closed behind him. Custo could tell from the loose, but ready set of his shoulders that he was prepared to tangle, if necessary. Though they’d often handled wraiths together, Adam had taken on a couple of wraiths solo before.
“I’m not a wraith.” Custo sat on the floor to prove it. If he were a wraith, he’d be moving in for an Adam treat.
“An angel?” Adam’s tone was flat, concealing his true attitude.
Custo scratched his chin like a movie mob boss—an old private joke—and shrugged.
“From God?”
Custo winced slightly and dropped the act.
“Then from whom?” A touch of sarcasm there.
Custo cleared his voice. “I’m…uh…absent without leave.”
Adam frowned slightly, then sat on the floor and crossed his legs, mirroring Custo’s position, his gaze coolly assessing. “Let’s have it then. The story.”
There was too much and too little to tell, but at least he had an obvious place to begin. “Well, Spencer killed me.” Custo left off the torture part.
“I remember,” Adam said. His jaw tensed. Angry. But his mind betrayed nothing.
“What happened to him by the way?” Custo mimicked Adam’s surface composure, but he was angry, too. He had a score to settle.
“You mean you weren’t looking down from your cloud in the sky?” Full, bitter sarcasm now. Very angry.
“Doesn’t work that way.” Custo kept his tone deliberately light. “Did you kill him?” As far as Custo knew, Adam had never killed anybody. Custo didn’t think he could take it.
“Wraith beat me to it.”
Ah. “Fitting. He was colluding with them.” Spencer had been the SPCI liaison to The Segue Institute. SPCI, the Strategic Preternatural Coalition Initiative, was a covert government agency attempting to police the wraiths while Segue studied them, trying to discover the catalyst that changed them from human to monster. SPCI mostly mucked things up.
Custo drew a deep breath. “By the way, Spencer told me that you had another traitor at Segue. Another wraith collaborator. Someone you trust.”
Just like that, his message was delivered. A grasping knot of acute worry released. Adam had been warned.
How could you know that? Adam’s mind asked, but he said, “When did he tell you that?”
So Adam already knew. That was good news.
“Before…you know…he offed me.” It was utterly galling that that Spencer piece of shit had killed him. No pride in that. “Have you had any suspicions about another traitor?” Custo asked, though he knew the answer from Adam’s mind.
Adam shrugged. “We’ve had some intel leaks over the past six months or so and lives lost because of it. Talia killed the demon who created the wraiths soon after you died. The remaining wraiths number in the thousands and are nested all over the world. For a while we were able to aggressively track and…dispatch them, but they’ve become better at hiding and coordinating their attacks. Their target is Segue—me and Talia, specifically.”
“Is that why you’re in these charming new digs?” Custo cast an eye around the unrelenting gray of his cell. “Not your style, Adam.”
“This place isn’t mine. It’s the U.S. Army’s, who has, by the way, become very cooperative with our efforts.”
Custo held up a hand to stop him. “Oh, please not SPCI. If there is one rotten egg, there are sure to be others.”
“SPCI was disbanded. The wraiths’ existence is public knowledge now, and we have full military support.”
Custo glanced down at his now-healed arm, trying to process this new information. Spencer was dead, a personal disappointment. The government had granted full cooperation, which was excellent progress. And the war with the wraiths was status quo. He flexed the muscle of his forearm and the crusted blood cracked.
Adam spoke his thoughts, exactly as they came. “So I have an unknown quantity in you…”
Custo smiled. That was putting it mildly. He brought his gaze back up.
“And a traitor within Segue.”
Custo nodded, his grin widening. “No thanks necessary. I only escaped from Heaven, eluded a piranha mermaid with huge tits, and fell to Earth to save your sorry, purebred bottom.”
Adam gave half a chuckle, then sobered. “You’re not a wraith?”
“An-gel.”
Adam lifted an eyebrow. “Mermaid?”
“With huge tits. Bluish ones.” Custo cupped his hands a foot away from his chest to demonstrate.
Adam laughed outright. “And what was Heaven like?”
“Boring. Clean. Nice.” Custo shrugged. “You’d like it, but it’s not so much for me.”
Adam inclined his head. “Not for me either if Talia can’t go.” Banshee.
“Oh? You’ve been busy.” Seemed Adam had fallen hard for his half-fae, half-human researcher. And yes, the laws of Heaven did bar the fae from entering. Could a banshee, able to rend the boundary between mortality and the Other-world with her scream, enter the gates of Heaven? Custo guessed it depended on which side of her heritage won out. Definitely problematic.