“Hello, Adam.”
Spencer stood in the center of the room, outfitted in black gear like his team and aiming a gun his way. His stance blocked Adam’s view of a person bound to a chair behind him.
Alive. Please be alive.
Adam braced and kept a throttle hold on his thumping heart, sweat burning through his skin with the effort, as he shifted to the side to get a better look.
Custo sat in the office chair, hands bound to the armrests, feet bound to the legs of the chair, one ankle cruelly skewed. His head lolled forward, blood staining his shirt and the lap of his pants. The faint acrid smell of urine made Adam grit his teeth.
Hold on, Custo. Stay alive.
He sighted down the barrel at Spencer’s head, shifting from foot to foot in anticipation of the sweet satisfaction of pulling the trigger. Spencer was going to die, had to die. Right now. “Why? You son of a bitch. Why?”
Spencer kept his gun steady. “I was sure he knew where you were, he always does. But this is much easier. Him bringing you and the girl to me. Really very convenient.”
“How could you do this?”
Shrugging, Spencer answered, “I had to get your location somehow. Got to hand it to Custo; he didn’t give. But there’s no fighting The Collective.”
“I’ve found a way,” Adam said. She’s just outside the door.
“It’s too late. The world has changed. The wraith population tops ten thousand, headed by an immortal demon. Cooperation is in our best interests. The wraith revolution is over. The Collective won.”
The hell it did. Adam’s finger tightened on the trigger.
“But I’ll, uh, throw you a bone if you let me out of here,” Spencer said with a flash of his teeth.
“You’re not leaving this room alive.” Hold on, Custo.
“Really?” Spencer asked. “I can show you how to end a wraith without a scream. It’s actually very simple. Your perspective at Segue has been so myopic that you couldn’t see it for yourself.”
Adam thought of Talia. Her small, fragile frame struggling for air. He couldn’t imagine her fighting a demon. Couldn’t imagine her slack body if she died trying.
“What is it?”
“Wraiths can’t tolerate death.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Can’t tolerate death.
Spencer glanced meaningfully at Custo, slumped in his chair. His rounded shoulders were too still.
No! It couldn’t be. Not Custo.
A life for a death. Philip’s druid rite, his theory of symmetry in which a person gives up their life to teach a monster to die. That wraith wasn’t worth Custo. His only friend. His brother in every way that mattered.
“Out,” Adam said. He had to get to Custo. Save Custo.
Spencer’s eyes glittered in satisfaction. Adam kept his gun trained on him as Spencer eased out the door.
“I’ll be just outside when you’re done,” Spencer said. Him, his SPCI team, and a couple wraiths. All that, and still Spencer would die when Adam was finished here. His banshee easily trumped Spencer’s backup.
Adam rushed to Custo and gently felt his blood-slick neck for a pulse as his own clamored wildly. He couldn’t find it.
No, wait. The vein at Custo’s neck trembled. The pulse was there, just thready. Weak.
Hang on. Hang on.
Adam knelt on the floor beside the chair, forced his trembling hands to gentleness to raise Custo’s chin. His face was a nightmare of brutality, even softened by Talia’s shadows. His eyes were red-ringed, his nose askew, his jaw oddly hanging. “Oh, God. Custo, I’m sorry.”
Not that Custo could hear him. He was well beyond that.
Adam swallowed bile as a rage of helplessness filled him, vision blurring with water. Custo couldn’t die like this, tied to a chair. Adam took the knife out of his belt and severed the cords that bound his friend, so very careful not to nick Custo’s skin.
Custo’s body sagged forward when Adam freed his arms.
“Easy now,” Adam said, shouldering the weight. Warm wetness seeped through his shirt, Custo’s blood flowing freely. Adam brought him to the bed. There was nowhere else to take him. No help he could get to save him.
He was too late, again.
Adam’s arms shook as he laid out his friend. He couldn’t hold Custo’s hand as he died, because his fingers were cruelly twisted, broken. He took Custo’s wrist instead to wait out the fading heartbeats.
One beat.
Custo as the poor kid with no family, new to Shelby Boys’ School, rumpled and rearing to fight.
A second beat.
Custo, showing no fear when first confronted by the horror of Jacob. Working side by side to contain the monster. Helping found Segue instead of living his own life. Custo should’ve had his own life. A woman. A family. Of all things, Custo should’ve had a family of his own.
The darkness of the room thickened.