Free Shadow Fall by Erin Kellison

nowhere,” Annabella said. “One minute I was dancing alone onstage, the next Custo was with me, tackling my hallucination of a wolf.”
    “I beg your pardon?” Talia’s brow furrowed. “A wolf?”
    “Yeah. You’re not going to believe me, but I swear it’s the truth.” Custo believed her; maybe this woman would, too. “There is a huge wolf…in the city…that is made out of shadows, and he has been stalking me for two days.”
    Annabella sat back in her chair and waited for Talia’s response. If the woman’s face showed one iota of disbelief, contempt, or amusement, then pregnant or not, she was going to get a piece of Annabella’s mind.
    Talia’s face tightened, her mouth thinning. “Is the wolf made out of shadow, or does it exist in the shadows?”
    Her serious expression had a chill sweeping over Annabella, prickling at her scalp as all the blood dropped out of her face. “He’s real?”
    “It’s definitely possible.”
    Two people believed her. Which meant the wolf was real and was stalking her. Annabella put her head on the table as the room spun.
    “You’re safe here,” Talia said. Annabella felt a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”
    The hunter crouched in a corner of darkness, panting with fear. Foul scents of industry, sharp and acrid, filled the air. Foreign sounds jarred him, echoing in a world of harsh, cold gray. His claws scrabbled and scratched on a firmament of flat, unnatural stone. No trees, no magic. Just large, wide caverns upon caverns going deep into the earth.
    Not his territory. Not his realm. He was the trespasser here.
    The hunter braced in meager earth-shadow. A high whine scraped up his throat. Back. He had to get back.
    Mortals clumped with heavy, telling footfalls. Controlled violence hummed in the air around them. Fighters, all. The bright man, the one who’d faced him in Twilight, was worse, but they’d caged him.
    The woman was here somewhere, too, her scent faint, yet threaded through the passageways she’d traversed.
    She could get him back to Twilight. She could open the way to the never-ending forest. His running grounds.
    A fighter stomped near, coming closer. A man, steamy and ripe with life.
    The hunter bared his teeth, ears pinned, ready to strike.
    The man walked the passage as if he belonged, his presence permitted everywhere in these caverns. Closer and closer. Fat with mortal juices.
    This fighter could approach the woman. Perhaps he could compel her magic to open the way back.
    The hunter sprang to take him.
    The door retracted, and Custo stepped into the center of the cell—not too close to the opening as if to attack or escape, but not remaining on the far side, as if to draw Adam away from the door and the safety beyond.
    Adam strode in anyway, the door grinding closed behind him. Custo could tell from the loose, but ready set of his shoulders that he was prepared to tangle, if necessary. Though they’d often handled wraiths together, Adam had taken on a couple of wraiths solo before.
    “I’m not a wraith.” Custo sat on the floor to prove it. If he were a wraith, he’d be moving in for an Adam treat.
    “An angel?” Adam’s tone was flat, concealing his true attitude.
    Custo scratched his chin like a movie mob boss—an old private joke—and shrugged.
    “From God?”
    Custo winced slightly and dropped the act.
    “Then from whom?” A touch of sarcasm there.
    Custo cleared his voice. “I’m…uh…absent without leave.”
    Adam frowned slightly, then sat on the floor and crossed his legs, mirroring Custo’s position, his gaze coolly assessing. “Let’s have it then. The story.”
    There was too much and too little to tell, but at least he had an obvious place to begin. “Well, Spencer killed me.” Custo left off the torture part.
    “I remember,” Adam said. His jaw tensed. Angry. But his mind betrayed nothing.
    “What happened to him by the way?” Custo mimicked Adam’s surface