Yes. There was a reason she needed to stay in this between place, though it was fading from her mind fast. All she had to do was dance, dance her best, and someone else—who?—would take care of the rest. Would see her safely home.
Her body arched to stretch the magic. To see just how high she could go. And Albrecht was with her, his caresses no longer performance-perfect, but sensual, a pleasure that stroked deeper than the surface clutches they’d rehearsed over and over again. His heat at her back sent a ripple of carnal desire over her skin, emanating from him but stirring her. Tantalizing her.
Join me, he coaxed, wordless. Stay in this wood with me.
It’s not real.
It’s as real as you choose to make it. The low timbre of his voice mixed with the hum of her blood. Stay.
Annabella sighed into the next lift, the worlds spinning around her. Hadn’t she dreamed of feeling like this her entire life? Wasn’t this what she’d worked for, punished her body daily to achieve?
Stay with me and dance.
Was it possible?
The first movement ended and the audience called their approval, the emotion shaking the tree branches of the Shadowlands. “Brava! Bravo!” The calls were both deafening and muted as the boundary between the worlds shuddered.
Annabella inhaled deeply to strengthen herself for the first of her solos. She opened her arms and gestured to Albrecht, as if giving him handfuls of love.
Albrecht met her gaze, his eyes roiling with desire. With Shadow.
Annabella froze.
Wolf.
Her sudden terror reminded her that she had a heartbeat, and that she was on a stage in the real world. She chanced a glimpse at side stage, focusing beyond the myriad trees to reality. No angel brightened the shadows. Custo was gone.
The orchestra waited on her while the audience applauded like thunder.
She whipped her gaze to the other side of the stage. Where was he? She couldn’t do this alone. Had he left her alone?
Why do you look for him? He cannot possibly understand you. Understand this.
How could Custo abandon her?
Dance, Wolf begged. He had to be Wolf now, so much more than just any “wolf,” after what they’d shared.
His request had her aching to move. He motioned to the crowd and took his place to watch her perform.
But how could she? You attacked me. Would have raped me. You killed another.
Wolf canted his head. I didn’t know what you were, or the ways of this world.
The audience began to murmur, waiting for her.
Dance, Wolf repeated. You want this; you want me.
In a Shadow world where darkness shaded all certainty, she knew for a fact that she did.
Custo watched Adam spin, bring up his gun, and riddle the torso of the female wraith with a line of black holes in a cacophony of painful, echoing noise. The wraith trembled with multiple impacts, then fell in a heap to regenerate.
“What about Annabella?” Adam shouted.
Custo’s limbs felt like jelly, but he managed to stand, bracing himself on the wall.
Annabella.
He lurched back toward the entrance. She needed him. Even now the wolf could be—
His vision blanked as something crushed him from above. A wraith. Disorientation had his head spinning as the wraith grasped him and clawed into his shoulder, taking him as a human shield.
Except Custo wasn’t human.
Renewed strength percolated though his system, though his shoulder burned with the wraith’s grasp. He didn’t have time for this shit; Annabella was alone.
Custo reached behind him, grabbed the wraith by his open jaw, and heaved the stinking creature over his shoulder. Adam caught the thing midflight with another earsplitting round. The wraith was still moving when it hit the pavement, so Custo bent and broke the fucker’s neck to extend its rejuvenation process. Custo wiped his hands on his pants, but the fetid smell clung.
Another wraith jumped on a car, tore off its hood with an eeerch of warping metal that would render any normal person deaf, and advanced down the street.
“Custo!” Adam shouted.
Custo kept his concentration on the new wraith. The hood would protect it long enough to get close to Adam. If Adam were disarmed, this fight was over. Hell, the wraith war was likely over, too.
The wraith swung the car hood like a misshapen Frisbee toward Adam. Custo darted into the arc of its trajectory, the metal crushing his ribs in a sickening, blood-wet exhalation that brought him to his knees. His mouth was coated in wet copper. Each searing, panting breath was like a drowning man’s last.
Adam’s gunfire filled the air again. “Custo! Look!”
Custo slowly brought up his gaze, but arrested on the first fallen wraith. His neck was skewed from Custo’s break, but the rest of the creature’s body had grayed to fleshy ash. Its bones seemed to be collapsing within the leathered skin. The smell coming off the thing had Custo fighting his gag reflex.
The wraith was dead. As in dead, never to regenerate again.
“How did you do that?” Adam yelled.
Custo inhaled, the pain diminishing to a general bitch of an ache as his ribs knit back together.