“You said that magic is again seeping in the world. This has happened before?” Custo knew the answer before he’d finished phrasing the question. Of course it had happened before. Otherwise, where had all the stories, myths, and legends come from? The angel from Greece had said as much, too, that humanity had forgotten the old stories. Custo choked with the implications.
But the bottom line was…“You won’t fight the wraiths? What if Adam and Talia decided to quit?”
“The wraiths would probably grow bolder. More people would die.”
“And the wolf?”
“Similarly trapped here, and fixated for the moment on your Annabella. He is a lesser threat because, as a shape-shifter, he cannot hold his form indefinitely. Eventually, he will disperse into shadows.”
Custo had seen that effect himself, the wolf’s sudden contraction from beast to empty darkness. Problem was, the wolf could re-form again. “And in the meantime? What about Annabella?”
Luca’s face was expressionless.
Angry frustration burned in Custo’s blood. “So you won’t help.”
Luca met his gaze dead-on. “We are helping. You just won’t see it. This morning a little boy in China called a dragon—that’s right, a fire-breathing dragon—out of a storybook into mortality, and you want us to scour New York City looking for a wolf who will fade on his own?”
An exclamation within the command center set the angels in residence into a new flurry of activity.
Luca said, weary, “That would be Coyote, the trickster, and he just reassigned the flight numbers to all of the South-west’s airborne flights, and you want us to drop everything and hunt wraiths already pursued by Adam and world governments? Not to mention with Death abandoning his post, we have to guide the dead to our gate, or they would be lost to Shadow. We go where we’re most needed. We fight the best way we can. And we need your help.”
Custo was beyond caring. “If I can die in the mortal world, then the wolf can, too.” After all, the wolf crossed to mortality, too, when he fell to Earth.
A long pause wedged distance between Custo and Luca.
“Sure,” Luca said with a shrug of irritable defeat.
Custo’s heart throbbed in a quick burst of bloodlust.
“But,” Luca continued, waggling his head back and forth as if to argue a middling point, “as a shape-shifter, the hunter can return to a shadow-state, only to take on a live form again, man or wolf, uninjured. At least until whichever form is too difficult for him to hold.”
Custo’s blood cooled. Iced. So basically Luca was telling him that the wolf was immortal for the time being, while he himself could die. For the present, Annabella and anyone close to her would be at risk.
“There must be a way,” Custo insisted.
“You already know it,” Luca said. “The best way is to force him back into the Shadowlands.”
Custo took a last look around the high-tech, gleaming fortress for angels. He thought of the sharp weapons in their cases above, and the conditional access to them.
Luca had said that as an angel Custo had earned the privilege of choosing his path. Okay then. All this was very interesting, and he sure hoped the dragon didn’t burn up too many people. And he was near certain the well-trained people in the flight towers would see all those planes safely landed. But really, he’d made up his mind before he set foot in this crusty alley.
“I won’t abandon my friends.”
Chapter Thirteen
ANNABELLA was bent on keeping her equilibrium around Custo, but some things were easier said than done. Balance took practice. Her motivation: Self-preservation and, well, she was still angry, hurt, and humiliated. Good thing all three emotions, especially combined, were very useful.
She scanned the city street as soon as they hit pavement, not relying on the big protective men with her to spot Wolf first. Though she couldn’t see him, the small hairs on her neck told her he was near. Watching. Waiting. Following. Anger strangled her fear long enough to get her across the sidewalk to the street. Custo tried to take her arm, murmuring, “We’ll talk,” but she neatly avoided his grasp. There was nothing to say, and she could stay close enough for safety without his hands on her.
She opened her own door and sat in the front passenger seat of the car, relegating Custo to the back. The fact that the vehicle was still waiting in traffic had to be divine intervention. At least the tower was good for something.
As soon as the car was moving, Custo reported the gist of his discussion with Luca. Basically, the divine intervention stopped with the car. They were on their own.
“That’s not good enough!” Adam’s knuckles were white from his grip on the car’s steering wheel. It was the first time Annabella heard Adam raise his voice. The first time Mr. Control had come unglued in her presence. That vein on the side of his head looked about ready to burst.
Not that she wasn’t a little ticked herself. Seemed Custo’s cronies weren’t keen on helping her either. But the performance season was ramping up. Another chance to get her life back was days away. The next time she danced, she’d keep her head on straight and use that Shadow magic to push the wolf out of the world. Things would never be normal again, but she’d be off this roller-coaster ride and back to reclaiming her life. Custo could go do whatever angels did when they were done with their work—fly away?
Whatever. She just wanted this over.
“They won’t assist at all?” Adam pursued, though Custo had answered this question twice already.
“Luca says they have other, more pressing concerns,” Custo answered. “Shuttling the dead across the Shadowlands, active breaches in the barrier between the worlds, and the dangerous creatures that have crossed. Says you’re doing a bang-up job with the wraiths on your own.”
“So quit,” Annabella concluded on Adam’s behalf. “If you quit fighting, then they will have to deal with the wraiths themselves.”
“Talia can’t quit,” Custo said quietly behind her. “She straddles this world and the Shadowlands. And even if she could, she will always be a target because she destroyed the wraiths’ maker. Adam is in the war to the very end…and so am I.”
Annabella’s gaze darted between them, but Custo was looking at Adam, who took a deep breath and seemed to exhale a lot of his fury.
“I know,” Adam said, “and I appreciate everything you’ve already done. It’s just that Talia has been through a lot, and it pisses me off that help was available but not rendered.”
“So what now?” Annabella asked.
Silence.
Well, damn it, somebody had to make a plan. “Common sense says that we try again for Wolf with my next performance, and in the meantime, Adam stays close enough to Talia to protect her from the wraiths until she delivers.”
There. Done. She turned around and sat back in the seat, making a mental note to call her mother when they got back to Segue, too. Her mom would be freaking out over missing her at the theater after last night’s performance.
From the rear, Custo said, “Quit calling him Wolf. It’s driving me crazy. Names have power. Don’t give him any more.”
Fine. The wolf. What about the plan?
“Your strategy would work if both the wolf and the wraiths act predictably, but I don’t think they will. It isn’t in their best interests. The wolf will try another way to gain access to you. And the wraiths are now aware that there are others capable of killing them. Because they are aggressive by nature, they won’t run and hide. They’ll attack first. And hard. We need to change things up if we are going to stay ahead of them.”