“Sorry,” a voice said.
Fae Death brought his head up and jerked around to find Custo, the angel who’d given him the damn hammer in the first place. Custo always seemed to be present when Death needed him, but most especially when Death did not. Like now. Custo’s olive-gold skin was lined with veins of Shadow, which meant the angel had the power to cross through fae Twilight to any other place on Earth, including this warehouse. But it was the angel’s light that had banished the death shadows just enough for Shadowman to lose his grip on the hammer.
Too late, Shadowman detected the even beat of the angel’s mortal heart. Damn the boy. What does he want now?
Shadowman tugged on the shadows hovering like storm clouds around the angel. Immediately the darkness delivered an echo of Custo’s emotions: Curiosity was dominant, but anchored by determined control and personal conviction, though what that conviction was, Shadowman could not fathom. The fae could sense feelings, but thoughts were the purview of the divine.
Bare-handed, Shadowman lifted the spearhead from the anvil and plunged it into the glowing coals of the forge. The fire leapt into red-gold curls, but the skin-crackling burn did not signify. Not as Death finally let cold Shadow take him, succor and restore him.
“What do you want?” Vitality pulsed through Shadowman’s form with old magic. As always, he could not escape the distant call of his discarded scythe, the hoary blade clamoring from the twilight Shadowlands to be lifted in place of the hammer.
No. Never again. He was done with death.
Custo crossed fully from Twilight into the mortal world. His pale inner light pushed the darkness of the room back, revealing the scarred floor, old piles of discarded rope and rotting crates, the dingy windows of the warehouse. “I . . . uh . . . came to see . . .”
Shadowman knew the moment Custo’s gaze hit the gate. Death watched the angel’s eyes narrow in examination, then widen in horror. Custo stumbled backward, his fear pervading the space. Shadowman could taste it, bitter and sharp, could smell it, rank, could feel the terror that made Custo shake.
“Oh, God,” Custo said, breathless. “What have you done?”
Death crouched to protect the hammer where it lay on the floor. He brought his deep cloak around, as if the fae folds could possibly hide something divine. Custo could not have the hammer back. Not when the gate was so close to completion. Not when he was so close to Kathleen.
“You told me yourself that she is not in Heaven,” Shadowman said. “And you gave me the hammer. What did you think I would do?”
Custo shot him a look of acute alarm, his green eyes deepening to black. “It was a favor. I didn’t know what your purpose was. I can read only mortal minds.”
Shadowman could sense the angel’s inner conviction transforming into a pressing intent to act. The shadows of the warehouse floor roiled as Custo added, “The fae are, as usual, utterly obscure and insane.”
“Fae Shadow runs in your blood now.” Death drew on the silky darkness, sucking the magic into his being, though Shadow could not possibly help him lift the hammer. Lifting the hammer took concentration and time. Shadow was a different kind of power, impulsive and sudden.
Custo sighed. “Yeah . . . well . . . I guess you have a point.” From an affectation of easy stillness, he leapt, the fae ascendant in the blackness of his eyes.
Death twitched a finger, and midair, the Shadows struck Custo down with a sickening head crack to the concrete floor. The boy would have been much better off using his angelic gifts. Shadow would forever and always obey Death first, even the small portion of it that ran through Custo’s veins.
Custo brought a hand to the floor and grunted as he pushed himself up. “Be reasonable.”
Reasonable? There was no such thing. Not in a universe that had consigned Kathleen to Hell, when he’d been the one to rend the boundary between the worlds. He’d broken the law that bound the fae to the Other side. He’d stepped into her room to view her painting. To speak with her. To touch her. If anyone was at fault, it was he.
Shadowman grabbed at the hammer. His hand passed right through it.
Kathleen! he thought, and tried for the hammer again. The tip of his finger budged the shaft slightly. So close . . .
Shadowman thought of her pale face, her gold hair, her violet eyes, but it was the memory of her smell, tinged with the chemical musk of her paints, that helped him close his hand around the grip of the hammer. He forced all his strength into his clenched fist. Mass, that contrary mortal magic, had always defied the fae.
Custo stood, shaking his head, and regarded the gate again. “You can’t think for a moment that The Order will suffer that . . . that . . . thing on Earth.”
“That thing?” Death mocked, standing again.
“The Order would call it an abomination.”
“And what would you call it?”