That didn’t make sense. “Just last night, I was hammered by wraiths, even shot a couple of times, and today, aside from this nagging pain, I’m little worse for the wear.”
“Last night you were on the brink of death, and you know it.” Luca lifted a brow as if to dare Custo to dispute him. “Had we not come to your aid, you would have died. You sustained and healed from those injuries because you have a great soul, a soul capable of much good, or evil, as you so choose. But taxed enough, your body can and will die.”
Custo recalled debilitating darkness and the long wait for the welcome burn to signal healing. Yes, he’d come very close to something irrevocable last night.
“And what then?” Custo wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“You’ve already lost your life, so the only thing of yours left to give is your soul. You die a second time and you die forever. The choice to return to mortality is thus a difficult one, made with much forethought and deliberation.”
Custo had jumped Heaven’s Gate in a mad dash for the trees.
“Since the second birth is traumatic and painful, angels descend into the comfort and safety of the tower, to be cared for until they are strong enough and world-oriented enough to function without calling human attention.”
He had endured the rebirth on a city sidewalk, naked and terrified, and then mugged some poor slob for his clothes and cash.
“Afterward, each mortal angel is assigned a task, a mission to complete for the benefit of humanity. Usually something small and manageable. And then another of greater difficulty and another, until the angel elects to return to Heaven, preferably long before sustaining mortal harm.” Luca finished and made a show of waiting on Custo’s next question.
But Custo was still stuck on the first. “So you’re saying that I can die.”
Luca’s mouth twitched. “Will die, yes, if you remain long in mortality or don’t get that bullet out of your side.”
The table was ready, needle waiting.
No, no, no. “I’m fine for now.” Translation: Someone else at Segue could dig the bullet out of him. His friends were waiting below, and he wasn’t so keen on submitting himself to the tender mercies of the women in white.
You’ll be asleep. Won’t hurt a bit. The message came from the brunette.
“Don’t talk in my head,” Custo said, near growling. “And no thank you. I’m fine.”
“You like to court disaster, don’t you?” Luca said. “Very well, as always, it’s your choice. This way…” They made another circuit of the wide stairway, ascending to the level above. Instead of the wide archways of the floor below, this upper level had several corridors branching off the landing. Luca stepped down one and opened a door, revealing a simple, colorless bedroom with a bathroom en suite. “Quarters,” Luca explained.
The room was little more than a cell. “I’m not a monk,” Custo argued.
Luca gave a long-suffering sigh. “Like I said, you like to court disaster. Your choice. These rooms are temporary anyway. Most get lodgings near their station in the world. Limits the coming and going from the tower, reducing the possibility of discovery. If you work in the control room, you stay here; if you’re in the field, you get your own place.”
So he could be part of The Order without actually having to put up with any of the Host. That was a consideration, especially if he had access to those weapons. There had to be a catch.
“No catch,” Luca said. “Service. Dedicating yourself to the well-being of the world, a nonissue because you already have. You wouldn’t be here, in mortality, if you hadn’t.”
Custo shook his head in denial. He was here on Earth because he’d jumped the gate and made a break for it.
“But why did you jump the gate?” Luca asked.
“Because no one up there would do anything.” Custo’s heart beat hard with sudden anger. “A war was going on, and no one would fucking listen to me.”
“How many times did I come to you during your vigil at the gate? Think about that and answer me this: who wouldn’t listen?” Luca tilted his head with subtle irony. “You’re listening now. Join us.”
Custo couldn’t believe what he was hearing. All he’d been through. Pissing off Death. Diving into the Shadowlands. His uncontrolled crash to Earth. Bringing the Shadow wolf with him.
“You always did like to do things the hard way,” Luca observed.
“Stay out of my head.”
Custo had to think, and he couldn’t think when every conclusion he came to was open to outside commentary.
“Why don’t you come back downstairs, observe for a little while, work things out?”
“Don’t patronize me either.”
Luca held up his hands in surrender. “I’m just trying to help.”
Luca turned then and left him alone in the cell. Custo could hear the soft pad of his tread down the steps. Luca was leaving him alone with his thoughts, giving him the most space he could to process this new information and come to a decision, one that Luca felt had already been made.
Had it?
Custo had no idea. Luca was persuasive, but then, Custo had been unprepared for this conversation. He thought he’d be taken into custody. Had feared that all his work would be left undone, his friends unprotected. Now, it seemed, those concerns were irrelevant.
The bright little room was claustrophobic. Custo exited and headed to the stairs. Maybe he should watch in the control room a little bit. Get a sense of The Order in action, then make his decision.
He passed the armory, remembering the dagger. It would be his to use, a compelling point in The Order’s favor. Talia would be safe with the wraiths on the defensive once again. And the Shadow wolf? There had to be something in that glittering assemblage for him, too.
Okay: An apartment in the city, near Annabella preferably. A way to fight the monsters that encroached on his friends’ lives. And all he’d have to deal with was the occasional interaction with The Order. Custo could almost see Luca’s point.
If Custo was already going to fight, he might as well do so with the best tools, under the aegis of others like him.
He reached the main floor, hovering on the brink of change. Luca stood at the rear of the control room, his back to Custo. When Custo approached, Luca shot him a glance. “Decide already?”
Nearly. But still Custo hesitated. Something was bothering him, had been itching in his brain since the conversation started.
Right. His mood darkened. “You said to Adam that the wraiths weren’t your concern at this time.”
Luca shook his head. “The wraiths are trapped in mortality; they aren’t going anywhere. Your Adam is doing an admirable job keeping them controlled while we fight active breaches in the barrier between the worlds. We have to repair them before any more dark fae can enter the world and wreak as much havoc as the one who created the wraiths in the first place.”
“But you fought the wraiths in the alley last night. What makes today any different?”
Luca heaved an impatient sigh, as if Custo kept missing his point. “We weren’t fighting the wraiths. That wasn’t our aim at all.”
“Uh…Looked that way to me.”
“Then you are still a fool,” Luca said. “We were fighting to save you. So that you can join us, add your great soul to our strength. There is more work to be done than you know. You are needed. Here. Now.”
“I can’t abandon my friends. I won’t.”
“Do you think the wraiths or the hunter are the only creatures to trouble the earth since Death cracked the universe open for love? Magic is again seeping into the world, and on the one hand we have art, beauty, and innovation with the makings of a great modern Renaissance—your Annabella is part of that, by the way—and on the other, we have every kind of dark fae testing the boundary to grasp the power of the mortal world. The repercussions go far deeper than the wraiths or a wolf on the prowl, and we are doing everything we can to stop it.”