Custo straightened. “Over my dead body.”
“Don’t be a fool. You’re already dead.” Shadowman’s darkness contracted, and he was revealed completely—tall, broad, strong beyond imagining, and cruel. His trench coat, black leather from the look of it, seemed to absorb light. With a wicked whip and twist of darkness, Death’s long hair was bound effortlessly behind him. “The body you now hold is a choice, made of your soul, and thus mortal. Be careful with it. She’s gone regardless.”
Shadowman left his cover, stalked up behind the press of the immortal dead, and tapped one on the shoulder.
The creature turned, opened its mouth, and got its neck broken for his hesitation. The nearest wraiths hurled themselves back from the presence of Death, trampling a few that fell to get away from the one being that could kill them, but wouldn’t die himself. At least Shadowman had killed a few before revealing himself.
The wraiths scattered, a good many pelting for the Dumpster where Custo hid with shivering Annabella. A wraith leaped over the Dumpster with a great hollow thump. Custo altered its trajectory and brought it head first into the pavement, then stamped its neck to the side. Dead.
Two others rounded the side. Annabella tripped one, was slapped back, which gave Custo enough rage to break its back with his knee, then its neck with a midair strike that nearly ripped its head from its shoulders. The second wraith missed Custo’s face and locked onto his shoulder with his teeth. It jerked when Annabella stabbed it with something, releasing him. Custo jabbed his elbow in the wraith’s face, crushing its nose, and hurled it over his shoulder to stomp its trachea, then break its neck.
They’d be safer in Shadowman’s wake. No wraith would get near enough to hurt them. Taking Annabella’s hand, he made a break for the tall, dark man parting the wraiths like Moses at the Red Sea. Bodies of wraiths littered the street, the smell so foul Annabella vomited as they passed the worst of it, but stumbled alongside of him.
Beyond was the white wreckage of the tower and the ragtag group of Segue soldiers who’d held the wraiths at bay. Adam was midcommand, organizing a triage to save what injured angels he could. He glanced over, noted Shadow-man, Custo, and Annabella’s presence, but continued with his work. Time was critical. A pitiful few others, angels, dug in the rubble for survivors. They called with their minds, seeking responses, but got only flickers of consciousness.
Hold on. Help is coming.
Custo wrapped his arms around Annabella as cold certainty ran through his blood.
The tower was a refuge no longer. No help for Annabella’s condition could be found there. The angels couldn’t save her when their brothers and sisters were buried, their mortal souls at risk.
In one minute, or ten, or thirty, the wolf would come again for Annabella. She was trying to hide her mounting shakes but not fooling anyone. Custo would have to fight him again. And again. Since Custo was mortal, the wolf would eventually prevail.
Which left…
Shadowman set his cold gaze on Annabella, and she visibly shivered.
“Please help her,” Custo said.
“Did your elders teach you nothing?” Death asked Annabella with disdain.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
Shadowman lifted a pitying smile. “Long ago, a girl such as you came into Shadow. Her name was Persephone, and she ignored warnings, as you likely did. She ate four pomegranate seeds, and in doing so, bound herself to spend a season each year in the Otherworld.” Death made a show of looking Annabella over. “How much did you eat at the hunter’s table?”
Shadowman’s tone was as awful as Annabella’s expression, and Custo almost intervened. But she lifted her chin, returning the bastard’s cold glare, and said, “I think I started with the chocolate, and then an éclair, no wait—” She inclined her head dramatically to remember, then continued, all brat, “I think I hit the comfort food first, some cheesy au gratin delicious dish I can’t name, but my mom would probably love the recipe if you wouldn’t mind getting it for me—”
Custo grabbed her hand to shut her up, but she brazenly continued in Death’s face, “And then the chicken pot pie, with the best spring peas I’ve ever—”
“Point is she ate the wolf’s food,” Custo cut in. “Could be worse, right?”
“Look at her. She’s bound to Shadow, and yet as a human, even one with a gift to draw from Shadow, she cannot tolerate it indefinitely. Eventually she will weaken, and the wolf will overtake and possess her.”
“Is there a cure?” Annabella asked.
“He has to release you,” Shadowman said, “but I don’t know why he would with your power. I think he’d bring you to heel”—her chin went up again—“or let your body die, and keep you from passing into the Hereafter.”
The set of her jaw and the intensity of her black eyes told Custo she’d use every atom of her contrary spirit to make her submission miserable for the wolf. If she had to go, she wouldn’t go easy.
Custo was ready to beg. “Is it in your power to help her, to force his cooperation? Can you kill him?”
“The hunter is elemental, immortal. I can order him back to Shadow, but Annabella would eventually have to follow. He set out to capture her, and that’s exactly what he has done. There is no ‘cure’ for a choice. Even one so seemingly insignificant.”
So, better to fight now, when Annabella was at her strongest, than to run and be hunted again and again until they wished for an end. Any end.
“I like a good fight,” Adam said, coming up beside Custo. Adam was already beat to shit, his pretty, aristocratic nose swelling under blackening eyes.
Luca joined them. His face was scabbed with blood, eyes heavy with losses from The Order’s ranks. I’m with you, too.
Hell of a way for Segue and The Order to come together, but at least some good was coming out of the nightmare.
Annabella was shaking her head. “This is between the wolf and me. Has been from the beginning. I can do things with Shadow. Magic. I can make him hurt.”
But eventually he’ll overpower you, Custo added mentally to himself. Not good enough.
There was no way he could bear Annabella submitting on her own, alone. At the very least, he’d be by her side, even if it cost his embodied soul. It wasn’t worth much without her anyway. They’d fight, and they’d pay for their mistakes together, in blood and pain, which was nothing new for him.
But they couldn’t win.
Last time he died, he had nothing to lose but his regrets. This time…everything.
Someone had to win.
Adam had Talia and their babies. Custo couldn’t allow him to help, and in so doing invite more loss and misery into the world. Or Luca, whose end would be as final as Custo’s.
And Shadowman?
“I tricked you once,” Custo said, “and I am sorry. Is there anything I can do to make it right before…he comes?”
“I can’t exactly trade you to Hell now, can I?”
No. “Other than that.”
Shadowman’s eyes slanted to the ruin of the tower. To the arsenal now littering the white stones. The weapons would have to be carefully tucked away until The Order could rebuild.
“I need the hammer,” Shadowman said.
“Take it,” Custo said.
Death’s nostrils flared. “I would have already, if I could touch it. But I need an angel to hand it to me.”
Luca bumped Custo’s arm. “No. It’s forbidden. Don’t add this mistake to the others.”
“Who are you to talk?” If Luca had listened to Adam in the first place, the tower would still stand. If the hammer would bring Kathleen and Shadowman together, then so be it.
Custo climbed the steps of rubble and found the hammer in the dust, the same one he’d handled in the tower’s armory. The shaft was solid, a dark wood rubbed smooth by handling. One side was wide and blunt, the other a rounded knob. A blacksmith’s tool. Custo had no idea what Death would do with such a thing when there were some awesome blades littering the area, and he didn’t care.