“Annabella, please,” the woman crooned, “you must come with me. Bide with me. You may not have set any traps for a wolf, but you have caught me just the same.”
“Yeah, well, I’m setting you free now,” Annabella returned bitterly. “Go away. Git.”
Abigail cocked her head again, and with a little knowing smile made a gesture with her wounded hand. Shadow roiled into the room behind her, opening a moonlit vista of dusky purples and blues, of portent trees under a whirling cosmos possible only in story, myth, or magic. It was the landscape of Annabella’s imagination, and she knew with one sinuous stretch of her body she could blow through the darkened forest and lick the topaz sky. The longing and want that filled her was excruciating. No amount of faking indifference could cover it.
The wolf belonged there, prowling beneath the darkened boughs, but the old woman’s body did, indeed, anchor him in the mortal world. A single bloody tear snaked down the wrinkled cheek.
“Is she in pain? Is she suffering?” Zoe asked as she wept from Adam’s arms.
Next to Annabella, Custo tensed.
“She’s still with the wolf,” he answered. “She’s…”
Annabella looked sharply at Custo when he didn’t finish. His jaw was clenched, nostrils flaring, his forehead drawing taut. Whatever he perceived was bad, real bad.
Zoe wrenched a sob. Her sister suffered. Shame made Annabella feel large and awkward and conspicuous. This was her fault, her problem. Maybe she should give herself up. Anything was better than the ache bleeding out of Zoe.
“Oh, just end it.” Zoe begged. “Get that thing out of her.” She hid her face against Adam’s chest, her body visibly trembling as she clung to him.
“You don’t have it in you,” the wolf said to Custo, lifting the old woman’s upper lip to bare her teeth.
Annabella went very cold and still. She knew that Custo did. He’d killed for love before.
He stepped forward into the room, putting her firmly behind him again. “This is your last chance,” Custo said to the old woman. “Leave her now.”
“You bluff,” the wolf countered. “Are you going to break this weak neck with your bright hands?”
Custo’s fingers twitched, but he said, “No.”
Instead, he touched the old woman’s brow. A slender hiss of smoke trailed upward from the point of contact.
Abigail reared back and thrashed her head to the side, but was trapped in the rocker. The wolf might be strong, but Abigail’s human body was frail. Beyond, the view of the Shadowlands shredded, darkness fraying into ragged whips of magic, the incomparable tapestry of the fairyland dissolving. The wolf snarled and snapped her teeth near Custo’s wrist, but with a backward whoop of black dust that had them all cringing, was expelled from the woman’s body.
Annabella’s terror seized her muscles, locking her in place. Was Wolf gone for good, gone for now, or not gone at all?
The cloud of black dust condensed, the grains whispering as they roiled, churning above the now-slack body of Abigail. The rocker pitched back and forth, creaking. Wolfish black specks melted and coalesced into an amorphous blotch of potent darkness, a shadow without a source.
Heart in her throat, Annabella caught Custo’s wrist, her gaze tracking the wolf’s movement. For a moment, the wolf blended with the deeper shades of Abigail’s bedroom.
Her heart’s wild pounding muted her hearing, which, in turn, seemed to confuse her sense of sight. Panic abused her reason. The wolf huddled in the shadows by the bedside table, then—where? Under the bed? Along the wall? Behind the door?
She couldn’t see, damn it. Shadows were freaking everywhere.
Annabella’s fear solidified into a stone in her gut, a chill prickling her scalp. With effort, she brought her gaze up to the ceiling, to the shadowy splay of the ceiling fan. Sure enough, the wolf crouched there, like a misshapen spider, once stomped but still living, its legs double bent under a nubby body.
Annabella stumbled as Custo hauled her to his side. With a tripping step, they fled to the far side of the room, opposite the door. Breath catching, broken into stuttering gasps, she backed to the wall.
The old woman stirred, whimpering. But oh, thank God, alive.
A flicker of movement brought Annabella’s gaze briefly back to Zoe, as the sister wrenched free. Zoe twisted out of Adam’s reach, driving forward to shield Abigail with her body from the predator above.
“Shhh, it’s okay,” Zoe said. “I’m here. Shhh.”
Annabella gulped to clear her throat and squeezed Custo’s hand. She hated spiders. Hated hated spiders.
“If you had angel wings, you could fly up there and squash him,” she said, voice shaking, eyes tearing.
“I’d need a really big shoe to kill one that size,” he answered. He was way more calm than she was, his attention focused on the ceiling. “Adam, add Big Shoe to Segue’s weapon list.”
Adam grunted.
Custo shifted beside her, and in one fluid movement brought a gun up and hammered the ceiling with a violent pop, pop. Adam was one second behind him with his own, pop, pop.
Annabella startled painfully with each report, as Zoe squealed and clutched closer to Abigail, hands protecting her head.
They had guns?
The shadow fell in a dark rain and landed on four paws on the other side of the rocking chair. A bristling wolf, the breadth and hulk of his shoulders too familiar. His ears were pinned, teeth bared, intelligent eyes glaring. Glaring, oh shit, at her.
Custo’s shot was blocked by the huddled sisters. “Adam!”
Adam fired again, and the wolf dropped.
Annabella sucked in a shaky, hopeful breath, though she knew, knew, that the wolf could not be killed. She reached a hand to clutch the back of Custo’s shirt.
Her high tanked as she spotted the sinewy twist of shadow easing toward her through the rungs under the sisters in the rocking chair.
Annabella tried to squeeze behind Custo, pressing herself against the wall. Wolf was never going to stop. Never never, until he had her. Never never nev—
Custo fired repeatedly at the floor—her body clenched sharply at the noise again—but he hit the thing, tight, smoky impact holes biting the snakelike body, but not slowing it.
The nearer it got to Custo and her, the more the dark Shadow of the creature hissed, foul steam rising as if Wolf, no, the wolf, were on fire. Yet it slithered closer.
Annabella kicked with her foot when it was inches away, but the Shadow branched, one tendril twining coolly around her ankle. When it hit bare skin she started to shake uncontrollably.
Custo dropped to his knees, grasping the dark body, and ripped it off her. The Shadow evaporated like smoke in his hands, and he redoubled his efforts as the snake reformed before Annabella’s eyes.
A low moan, her own, reached her ears as rank terror gripped her. Custo couldn’t stop it. Why couldn’t Custo stop it?
The serpent insinuated itself beneath the hem of her pant leg in a sizzling caress, climbed her calf, and twisted around her thigh.
She screamed, near mindless, beating at her clothes in futility as the snake crossed her crotch, lined her like a fat G-string—oh, please, no—then tightened around her waist as he approached the cleft between her breasts. Her body quivered with its touch.
Custo was already at her pants, ripping the seams as he tore the thing off her. The wolf’s burn on her skin was hot, blistering, her body responding to his dark magic with a violent, unwilling orgasm. She throbbed with it, flesh, blood, bone. Her senses were subsumed with want and revulsion, Shadow and magic torturing and promising at once. Her scream gave way to choked weeping, and when Custo tore away the last of the wolf, she was certain her soul had been ripped away as well.