SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (72 page)

“But I’m not letting you in,” Zoe finished in singsong. “She told me you’d pound and pound until someone answered, so I came down personally to tell you all to fuck off.”

“Listen,” Adam grated, “what Talia did to you was necessary at the time. You are alive and well, so get over it and let us—”

“Abigail is ill,” Custo said, thoughtfully. “Dying.”

Zoe’s pale pout trembled. Her black eyes trained on Custo, wicked arched brows winging. “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, but forcing my sister to look into Shadow makes her even sicker.”

Annabella blanched. She didn’t want anyone made sick on her behalf.

Zoe’s gaze hit her, too, her sneer turning her eyes into twin crescents. “That’s right, you’d be killing her.” She looked up, as if thinking really hard. “Hmmmm…Now, should I let my sister’s killers in the door, or should I tell them to screw themselves? Hmmm. Gosh, it’s just so damn hard to decide.”

“Let me help,” Adam said. “Let me bring you both to Segue. I have resources that might be able to…”

Zoe’s sarcasm thickened. “Oh, I think you’ve helped quite enough, thank you.”

Annabella lifted a hand to placate the girl. “They’re here for me, and I am totally cool not bothering your sister about my future. I like to think that I make my own choices about my life, so I wouldn’t really want to hear my fortune anyway. It would kinda destroy my illusions, you know?”

Zoe’s black-kohled lids lowered halfway in an expression of acute boredom. Lovely girl.

“Okay, then,” Annabella said. She leaned her weight into a step back to get Custo moving. No way was she going to kill some dying psychic today. Time to go back to Segue and work on Plan B. Or, uh, C.

Zoe rolled her eyes again. “Okay, fine. She might have said something about going to the party tonight. There. We’re done.”

“What party?” Adam asked.

“I don’t know,” Zoe returned petulantly. “
The party.
You figure it out.”

Party, party, party…Oh, crap. Annabella had completely forgotten. “The reception for the company. It’s tonight. I’ll get out of it, say I’m sick or something.” If Venroy wasn’t already pissed at her, he was going to be livid about this. The new principal missing the start-of-the-season bash. Freaking fantastic.

At her back, Custo suddenly stiffened. Annabella felt his arm around her waist. It tightened as he lurched forward, then stopped himself. “Abigail is—”
H
e halted for a second, his chest suspended midbreath. “—Adam, Abigail!”

“Move,” Adam said, as he slapped the door to the side and pushed Zoe out of his way.

“Stop!” Zoe shouted. “What the fu—?”

A scream from above cut the air, then strangled into silence.

“Abby!” Zoe screamed back. All bitchiness dropped from Zoe’s tone, leaving only gut-wrenching, frantic worry. She disappeared into the darkness after Adam.

Annabella tried to follow, but Custo held her back. “No, I think it’s the wolf.”

She bucked against the hard bar of his arm across her middle. “Then you’re the only one that can help. We have to go.” She tried to drop her weight to escape him. “You can’t let him hurt her.”

His hold tightened further, but Annabella could sense a hesitation, a moment of deep, conflicted thought.

“Damn it,” Custo said. “You stay with me.
Touching
me.”

“Yes! Fine!” Her head flushed with the return of circulation as he released her, only to take her hand and drag her through the underbelly of the building.

They burst into a large, windowless room. Its walls and floor were painted drippy black, and a bar took up the far wall, lit with eerie red light. They hurried up a scarlet runner that led to a slightly raised dais. Behind the stage was a short hall, papered with cheap, neon flyers announcing disturbing rocker bands.

Not her kind of club.

Up a narrow flight of steps and down a horror-movie hallway, they found Zoe and Adam crowding another doorway. Zoe was half in, half out, her face fearful, as if she couldn’t quite decide whether to go to her sister or run from whatever was in the room. Adam’s jaw was set with grim resolution.

Their expressions sent a vicious, electric shiver up Annabella’s spine that spread across the cold sweat dampening her body.

“Let her go,” Adam said to whoever or whatever was in the room.

“So,” a female voice trembled, as if in the throes of deep pleasure, “this is what it is like to be made flesh.”

“Leave her alone!” Zoe shouted with a painful warble, her love for her sister stripping her naked.

The fear in her voice resonated painfully within Annabella. Her throat grew tight in sympathy, even as her belly quailed against discovering what was in the room.

Adam glanced over his shoulder, spotted Custo, and stepped back. Annabella stumbled after Custo as he slowly moved forward to take Adam’s place at the door. She wrapped an arm around Custo’s middle so the wall of his strength was between her and Wolf; then she stole a quick glance over his shoulder.

A woman sat in a rocking chair, gnarled hands clutching the armrests, aged beyond any believable sibling relationship to Zoe. Her thin white wisps of hair floated off sallow skin, colorless lips working into a parody of a smile. Her eyes were blackened with pulsing Shadow.

Annabella’s blood ran cold.

The smile reached its grotesque apogee. “You can’t hurt me,” she taunted.

“Wanna bet?” Custo started forward.

From behind, Zoe yelled, “That’s my sister!”

Custo halted again. “Release Abigail. She’s not worth it. Her body is wasted, near death.”

Annabella shuddered with a sudden realization, her fear turning sharp and cutting within her. Where before Wolf had simply assumed whatever form he wanted, the soldier and Jasper, now he
possessed,
sharing the old woman’s body. The
how
was more than obvious: Adam had said that Abigail was so full of Shadow that her eyes were stormy with it. Now Abigail was full of Shadow wolf, the blackness of her gaze hungry, predatory, and…unnatural.

The union was wrong, but there was nothing they could do about it. Any harm Wolf took, the woman would as well, and by Zoe’s account, Abigail was already weak and ill. Zoe had blamed them for killing her sister; it seemed her accusation was dead-on.

Annabella fought a tide of nausea. She thought of her mom and brother, safe at home. If Custo and Adam had come knocking, she would have barred the door, too. And then some.

“Yes, a joining of fae and mortal, less satisfying than I’d hoped”—the old woman’s head cocked sharply; her nose twitched as she sniffed the air—“but nevertheless…potent.”

One of her knobby hands uncurled, splaying its fingers, palm up in front of her. A condensation of light appeared above, while her eyes grew blacker still.

The magic pulsed, thrumming over Annabella’s skin, loosening her joints and muscles, sending languid ease over her limbs, her core contracting with pleasure. The sensation was wrong, too. She didn’t want to feel this, not here, not now. Not from
him.

The magic within her responded anyway: It was pure possibility. Pure potential. The same kind she used to weave a story with her body and mind. Annabella couldn’t draw her gaze from the shimmer above the woman’s palm.

By nature Wolf could change his form, but he couldn’t do more than that. He couldn’t cross back and forth between the worlds, couldn’t make or see or create like people in the mortal world, like she and Abigail. But now Wolf had discovered access to mortal power; they’d led him right here to Abigail’s doorstep.

The
wolf, Annabella corrected herself. Not Wolf. He already had enough power over her.

Annabella rose on tiptoe to whisper in Custo’s ear. “Can we push him back into Shadow?”

Custo gave a short shake of his head. “He’s anchored in her body. It’s a refuge until she dies.”

Annabella regarded the old woman’s twisted expression, then had to look away from what she found there. “It’s not a refuge. It’s a rape.”

She had let this dark creature touch her, dance with her, tap into her fantasies. The memory was both revolting and humiliating in the extreme, enough to really tick her off.

Annabella stepped out from behind Custo, channeling her fear and anger into action. “You said you wouldn’t hurt anyone else.”

“You said you would join me,” the old woman whined. The light in her hand evaporated into the air. Her arm dropped like a stone into her lap, her palm spotted with blisters.

“Get that monster out of my sister!” Zoe was hysterical.

“I’ll go if Annabella comes, too,” the wolf offered, lips peeling back into a toothy smile.

Annabella shivered, recoiling.

“You can’t have her,” Custo cut in. “I won’t let you.”

“It’s your choice, Annabella,” the wolf said, “not his. Come with me and end this. I know how to make you happy in ways no one here can conceive. You have a body made for weaving magic; I am made of magic. Join with me.”

Annabella’s heart flooded her body with an
oh, yes!
wave of blood. She considered the offer for a split second, but the oily black throb of the woman’s eyes decided it.

“I can’t,” she said, though Zoe’s sobs turned her stomach with pity and guilt.

A hand roughly shoved Annabella away from Custo, as Zoe burst through. “Take me. Just leave my sister alone. She’s been through enough. I’ll do whatever you want.”

Adam caught Zoe and dragged her back. Tears smeared black makeup down her cheeks.

“You can’t manipulate Shadow,” Custo said, “so that creature doesn’t want you.”

The talent was inborn, though Annabella understood that it took many forms—anything with vision, she imagined—but then the talent had to be nurtured and honed over years of sacrifice. Just look at Abigail. Her ongoing intercourse with Shadow had brought her prematurely to the brink of death.

“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.“
G
et 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. “
L
eave 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
G
od,
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.