So much for family. Custo was abandoned, alone, and made a bastard all over again.
At least Death, callous as stone, would not discriminate. Shadowman?
Death lifted the hammer Custo had given him from the ruin of the tower. “We’re even now.” With that, he folded himself into Shadow and stalked silently away.
Custo was alone with the rising beast, Annabella, and an audience. They’d betrayed his trust when he needed them most. Did they want to see a monster?
So be it.
Custo threw back his head and howled to the sky. The sound was a mix of wrath and soul, a curse to God and a prayer for deliverance. Lightning flashed in answer and black Shadow lifted like mist from the pavement, dark trees growing in the midst of the city, his hunting ground, prey packed into buildings like cages. Their myriad thoughts would both betray their locations and their intentions. So easy. Too easy. A glut.
The air filled with layered fae voices: Anna. Bella. Anna. Bella. Anna. Bella.
Annabella stood, eyes blazing with her formidable temper. She assumed a position, arms outstretched, to create a circle around them into which she allowed no curling dark tendril of magic to pass. Shadow seethed behind her, cold and silky, but she wouldn’t let Custo have it.
The beast in him roared.
“No,” she said. Her magic kept Shadow from feeding Shadow. She’d found the shift of mind that permitted her to draw from or deny the Otherworld. He’d helped her learn that trick himself, and she raised the sun.
How dare she?
“Custo or…or Wolf…” She shook her head in irritation. “…or whoever you are. You want Shadow? You deal with me first.”
Custo almost laughed. What did the puny woman hope to do?
Her hair whipped in the rising foul wind. She was graceful and strong, but tactically ignorant. With one swipe, he could drag his claws across her belly and end this.
But that would be too easy. He went for her neck.
Annabella flinched as his large hand closed around the pale, slender column. Her stubborn chin dimpled as she glared at him, unafraid. Angry. Willful. A tight bundle of passion daring him to do his worst.
If it hurt, she didn’t signify. But then, endurance was second nature to her.
Teeth bared, he snarled in her face. She was a pain. In the ass. She’d been this way from day one. Obstinate. Irritating. Intractable.
Before he did anything else, he would break her, body and spirit.
Hand around her neck, he forced her backward toward the ground. She had to know, had to learn, who was master once and for all. And then he could be finished with her. If she cracked her thick head on the pavement when her legs gave and she fell, so much the better.
But her legs didn’t give. Her body bent like a willowy bow, the epitome of supple strength. The kind that weathered hurricanes. And she made it look easy. The arch of her spine into the brace of her legs was the antithesis of submission. The satisfied smirk on her lips told him what he knew already. That her soul was made of the same stuff.
Her face was getting red. He could kill her, easily and with pleasure. The storm thundered its approval, echoing the primeval growl in his head.
—Anna. Bella. Anna. Bella. Bella. Bella. Bella.—
He could squeeze and squeeze and squeeze the breath out of her, until she collapsed from suffocation. The action required only the slightest contraction of his hand.
But that wouldn’t satisfy him. Not remotely.
Why wouldn’t she break?
Custo’s animal mind sought an answer, the means of her undoing. There had to be another way, and with it the secret to human will, the power of mortality.
Lightning flashed, illuminating the area. The bolt was caught in an eternal moment, the scene laid bare to Custo’s hungry eyes: On one side of the wreckage stood Adam, his dark, brooding eyes watching in expectation. On the other was Luca, his expression equal parts worry and faith. They were beacons of purpose—one from his life, and one from his death—their thoughts willing the man to overcome the beast.
In Custo’s grip was Annabella, the axis of his existence, his name in her mind while her throat was silenced.
The three of them created a strange geometry, an Order beyond his complete comprehension. But without doubt or reservation, he knew it was an equation calculated to save his soul.
Like a searing bolt from the sky, love fractured him.
Custo and the wolf were two again, inhabiting the same cursed body, but this time Custo was ascendant. A second chance. His life had been ruled by bitterness and regret, by clear paths scorned for darkness; now he could make a different choice.
The beast in his head roared denial and frustration as Custo forced his joints to open and release Annabella; the storm above cracked in protest, but he was in charge now. For the moment at least.
The air took on the uncompromising solidity that resisted a change of course. Annabella was right: He’d died before; now he wanted to learn something new. He wanted to live.
She straightened slowly, her gaze wary, guarded, as she gulped the thick air. “Custo?”
Her chest heaved and her skin shone with a determined light, offset by the pressing darkness at her back. Though she trembled with weakness, she again put her hands against the throbbing wall of Shadow to keep it from touching him, from nurturing the wolf.
And good thing, too, because the beast had started to prowl in his mind, wildly hungry, primitive, immortally strong, searching for a human weakness to exploit. Custo knew there were a lot of them: anger, violence, sex…
A wolfish growl rumbled in his chest—Found one!—and Custo’s tainted, pounding blood raced toward his groin.
Skin so smooth. Body so tight.
Custo clenched his teeth. He blinked hard and dropped his gaze from sweet, brave Annabella to the hot pavement. No. Not going to happen.
Strip her. Lick her. Take her in the trees.
Custo’s vision burned, the concrete rippling with dark mist.
“Custo?” Annabella repeated.
Every time he’d tried to resist her before, he’d failed miserably. Every single time her best interests would be served by not touching her, his wants had overruled judgment. How long could he resist? He wasn’t stupid, not long at all.
Custo had to be fast. Had to be prepared for even greater personal darkness.
His mind’s eye turned inward; he could sense the hulk of the wolf within him, in the most obscure, twisted corner of his mind, slavering with hunger. There was no way to kill the beast and Custo knew he could not sustain this dual existence much longer. Eventually the wolf would control him as it had Abigail.
There could be only one mind, one will, that ruled this body.
And the beast was so damn hungry. Custo grasped on to that singular lust, stoked it higher, denying the rest.
He let the hunger of the wolf inundate him, felt the appetite commingle with his gathering intent. The wolf responded, crouching as if to spring and overtake his consciousness again. When the wolf leaped, Custo braced and with a great, inner gulp…consumed him.
Custo swallowed, the burn a fierce roar of agony that overwhelmed his senses, sharpening them to brutal clarity. He took in the wolf, forced him thrashing into his blood and bones and the sizzling snap of his nerves. He absorbed and digested the raw, animal power, the dark identity. Made it his own, while obliterating the wolf’s personality in his head.
The burn intensified, beyond pain to shock and wonder. Custo arched with the agony of it. His body was changing again, always changing. This second life would not let him rest. What he would become this time, he didn’t know. How much of himself would he lose? Would there be enough left to protect Annabella?