Erin Kellison: Shadow Fall

Afist to his jaw snapped Custo’s head to the side. His ear roared as a storm of broad heat spread across his cheek and behind his left eye. He shuddered with the swell of ache that followed, each beat of his heart searing a lightning strike of pain through his skull as dark clouds gathered in his mind.

Focus.

He flexed his hands against the bonds that cut into his wrists—not to escape, that was impossible—but to control the wicked-slick fear that might wheeze out of him in a weak moment.

He was going to die. The trick now was to die well. No sniveling allowed.

Spencer’s face loomed into Custo’s blurred view. His brown hair was close-cropped, just shy of a buzz. A black earbud connected him to the rest of his team, the covert government agency that investigated paranormal activity. They were supposed to be the good guys, but something had gone terribly wrong. Spencer had always been a bastard, but colluding with the wraiths made him a traitor.

“Just tell me where Adam is, and I’ll let you go. There’s really no need for this—we’re going to find him anyway. He doesn’t need to know it was you,” Spencer said.

A wet, warm trickle found the channel beneath Custo’s nose. The coppery smell filled his head.

Adam would know, and worse, Adam would forgive.

A rough scrape—metal on the floor. A coin of light pressure on his foot.

Custo cracked his eyes. What now —?

Spencer had positioned one of Adam’s sleek chairs directly in front of his own and levered himself into the seat, close enough to bump knees. With Spencer’s weight in the chair, the pressure on Custo’s foot increased. A bone ached, burned, then snapped with a sizzle of white-hot sparks that shot up his calf. Reality slipped out of focus for a fraction of a moment.

Spencer sat back in the chair, a friendly smile on his face. “Really, I’ll let you walk right out of here. Just tell me where Adam is.”

Spencer loved games, loved winning. The only way to thwart him was to beat him into the ground, or not to play. There was no winning today. It was better to think of something else.

Custo focused beyond Spencer, scanning the bedroom for a distraction. The New York City loft was typical Adam Thorne—clean lines of modern, uncluttered wealth in industrial grays and blacks, accented by bold colors—a strong red in the case of the bedroom, which detailed the side table and the low Asian bed centered on the opposite wall. In the abstract painting above, the red deepened to a sangre splatter.

Sangre. Blood. Custo dropped his gaze to the wide-planked wood floor.

“You must know where he is.” Spencer gripped Custo’s hand, his urgency overriding his previous levity.

I thought he was here. We were supposed to meet here. Adam had brought Talia to the loft for safekeeping. Custo was to rendezvous with them, and together they would strategize an offensive strike on the wraiths’ locus of power. Adam had even checked in with Custo several times over the course of the evening to monitor his progress.

Something must have happened, and Adam and Talia bolted.

“He tells you everything.” Spencer found Custo’s index finger. Lifted it away from the arm of the chair.

Draw this out, and maybe they can escape.

Custo’s breath caught in his chest as his finger came to a burning right angle with the back of his hand. He gritted his teeth—a molar had loosened—and waited for the—

Pop. Custo shivered under the break of his cold sweat, then surged against the bonds that held him to the chair. Too fucking tight.

He just had to hold out a little longer. Long enough for Adam and Talia to get to safety.

“So sorry,” Spencer said, pulling the finger back into alignment. He twisted it this way and that. The little bones screamed. “I think it’s broken.”

Very funny. Only nine more to go.

“What about that freak Talia?” Spencer lifted the middle finger. Custo tried to pull his hand back, but the damn ropes held him firmly to the chair.

Talia. Yeah, she was a little odd. No doubt about it. One scream and her dark daddy Shadowman came to the rescue. Handy having Death for a father.

Death. Custo watched as a female wraith glided from the corner of the room and settled onto Adam’s bed to lounge against the pillows, her hungry gaze meeting his. A thin, pale brunette. She looked human, and at one time she was, but something had changed her and made a monster of the woman. A soul-sucker. The Segue Institute, a private organization that had teamed with Spencer’s government group, had been dedicated to discovering the source of the human-wraith transformation and curing it, if possible. The focus had shifted to full war when Talia deduced that wraiths were monsters by choice, forgoing humanity for immortality.

Pop. Custo’s hand twitched in an acute spasm of agony, double that of the first break. He breathed deeply, lungs straining for control.

Spencer selected another.

Heart lurching in his chest, Custo ground his teeth together as the pressure on his thumb increased to liquid fire, but pissed himself anyway.

Spencer lurched back with a laugh. “Whoa, buddy! Ya scared to die?”

“Not as scared as you.” Custo’s voice was gravel, the sound rumbling from his chest.

“I’m not the one who peed my pants.”

The sour-sweet smell lifted into the room and burned through the coppery scent of blood.

“You”—Custo put his tongue to his loose tooth—“you turned coward the moment you sided with the wraiths.”

The wraith woman winked. “On the contrary, takes nerve to be in the same room with a hungry one.”

Spencer ignored her. He gave a huge sigh and rolled his eyes heavenward. “You just don’t get it, Custo. You never did. There’s no fighting immortality. Adam and I have been over this a million times. What the wraiths do may not be pretty—feeding on the life essence of their human forebears—but it is a natural evolutionary step toward conquering Death. I merely read the writing on the wall.”

“You got scared. I always knew you were chickenshit.”

“I got smart.” Spencer’s tone rose with anger. “Who are you to talk anyway? I know what you’ve done.”

What I’ve done?

“Heinrich Graf for starters.”

Oh. The German bastard who’d had a contract out on Adam’s life. A shot at long distance had taken care of him. “Scum.”

“You seduced his daughter to discover his whereabouts. Scum, yourself.”

“I didn’t suck out her soul.” Custo’s gaze darted to the wraith.

“Splitting hairs. You used her to kill her own father.”

A mistake, and not the worst of his wrongs. Some things simply had to be taken care of, and Adam couldn’t do it. Didn’t have enough of the dark side in him to see it through. But yeah, if there were a God, there’d be no mercy when this was through. Just more hell. Once there, at least, he could scream. Not here. Not for a piece of shit like Spencer.