Custo was more than a little curious himself. Did an AWOL angel heal rapidly, too?
A long two-inch sliver of thick Plexiglas broke up the monotonous gray of his prison. No way to get food in without unsealing the two-foot-thick steel-reinforced door. No place to piss. Aside from the metallic scent of blood, the air had a wet earth smell, as if he were underground, but laced by the peculiar funk of the walking dead. A wraith’s cell.
Custo knew the three Segue facilities in the northeastern U.S. by heart—he’d been involved in the construction of them all—but this place wasn’t familiar. Had to be new, and if it was new, then the wraith war continued and at least several months had passed since his death. Actually, since he’d picked up from Annabella’s thoughts a general awareness of wraiths, the threat had to be public as well. He did a little mental math. Probably over a year had passed. It made sense that Adam was so suspicious.
“I’m not a wraith, Adam,” Custo called. His voice bounced back at him.
As expected, no answer.
Custo stretched his consciousness to locate Adam. He was there, on the other side of the cell. Custo touched his mind: his friend was determined to wait out the test. Custo pushed harder, trying to unlock Adam’s deeper thinking, but as always, only immediate intent was discernible, and even that was unreliable. People changed their minds all the time.
He extended himself further and found Annabella, not far away. Her thoughts were a muddle. Probably scared, worried, angry. But safe. There was no better place for her than Segue, both for her protection and for the resolution of her problem. The sooner he settled the wraith question with Adam, the sooner he could put her at ease. He didn’t want her frightened any longer than necessary. She was feisty, which he liked, but too delicate to fight a creature of Shadow. He’d take care of everything.
An image flashed in his mind: Annabella wrapped around him while he was buried deep within her, the heat of their friction, hearts pounding against each other, his mouth on the apple of her shoulder, the sweet taste of her skin…
A sharp sizzle, white-hot, brought Custo’s attention back to his arm. Pain cleared his fantasy from his mind. He blinked hard and examined his wound.
The deepest layers of rent tissue were obscured by congealing blood, the gape in his skin cracking slightly like a wide, lipless mouth. The shallow edges of the cut, however, had gone from scarlet to pink as the skin came back together, sealing with the pucker of a scar. It was a miracle of millimeters, but Custo had no doubt he was healing—fast.
Shit. His heart tightened like a fist.
Adam would have only one conclusion—wraith. And on the subject of wraiths, Adam had always been blindly resolute. Kill them, kill them all. Custo couldn’t blame him. Adam’s own brother, Jacob, had made the choice to become a wraith, trading humanity for immortality, then murdered Adam’s mother and father, fed on them to make himself stronger, and mocked Adam for being too human, too weak to stop him. Jacob should have known better, should have known Adam wouldn’t break and would never forgive the destruction of his family. The Segue Institute was born with a single clearly defined purpose—find a way to end Jacob.
The heat in Custo’s arm was now bone-deep, aching with the weave and knit of his flesh. The healing wasn’t nearly as fast as a wraith’s, who could recover in minutes from what should’ve been mortal wounds, but it far exceeded a normal man’s. Therefore, damn it, wraith.
Custo lifted his uninjured arm, licked his thumb, and cleaned away the dried blood at one edge of the wound. It was obvious now that he was healing supernaturally. No point hiding the truth.
He turned the closing wound toward the slit in the wall, so there would be no mistake. “I’m not a wraith, Adam. I’m—” He broke off. Still couldn’t say the ridiculous word out loud. He groaned inwardly and took a deep breath. Tried again. “I’m an angel.”
Silence. Not even a flicker of a question from Adam’s mind.
Custo sighed. “I know. I know. Sounds absurd. I don’t expect you to believe me when I don’t believe it myself, but there it is. The only way you’re going to know either way is to trust me. I’m asking you to trust me.”
Silence.
Jacob had loved to play games with Adam’s memories, to trick him into painful recollections of times when life was full and whole. Custo refused to do the same—to pull out their shared past to manipulate his friend. Not that Adam would be moved. He had learned to turn a deaf ear to the insidious ramblings of a wraith in a cell, the clever pleas for release, though the wraith had the voice of his brother or long-lost friend.
Dropping his arm back on his knees, Custo sighed. He could feel Adam’s presence on the other side of the concrete, a bright condensation of identity. Adam couldn’t afford mistakes. If the world were anything like it had been before, there was no way Adam could take a chance on him.