Night In A Waste Land (Hell Theory Book 2)

by Lauren Gilley

  While she shoveled noodles into her face, he said, “You know Gallo better than the rest of us. The doctors say there’ve been some incredible advancements with prosthetics, and that, in a few months, they can outfit him with one that will enable him to stay in service as a Knight.” He tilted his head. “Do you think he’ll want to?”

  She considered a moment, chewing, but didn’t have to think long. Gallo was, as blunt as it sounded, simpler than her; his motivations were purer. “He has no family to go back to; no money saved up. This is his end game, for better or worse. And he’s got major hero-worship for Tris. He’ll stay; he’ll say it’s what Tris would do.”

  He frowned. “He really admires Tris, doesn’t he?”

  “In boot camp, he had magazines. And more than one poster.”

  “Shit.” He sighed again, and let his boots slide outward across the tiles, until their toes nearly touched. “Is it – more than strictly professional admiration?”

  “Yes, but if you tell him I told you that–”

  He offered his palms in surrender. “I won’t. That’s none of my business.”

  She frowned – but mostly to herself. She was too tired, and, in the moment, too grateful to be warm and clean and fed, to glare at him. “You think I’m your business, though.” It sounded faint and petulant, and she was exhausting herself with all this anger she couldn’t let go of.

  Her words didn’t seem to offend him, like they had before. “It’s not my business if one of my Knights has a crush – especially if that isn’t the thing that jeopardizes missions,” he said, evenly. “But it is my business when one of my Knights is on a suicide mission, hellbent on getting herself killed any way she can.”

  She drank the last of the broth from the cup and set it aside. “Right. If I died, who would kill all the conduits?”

  His smirk was edged with fatigue – and not only from today. This was soul-deep. Rose knew she was exhausting for him. “You are surprisingly ferocious. You have a knack for this. But, believe it or not, I don’t want you to die because – well, because I like you.”

  “You don’t.” Faint protest, because she could tell that he did, and had known it for a while now.

  He said, “I’m sorry about the way things played out today. It made sense to create a net around those two, and slowly close it. I didn’t think that you and Gallo would be the first ones in contact, not with our angles of approach.” He wiped a hand down his face, gaze shifting inward in a moment of reflective regret. “I’m sorry.”

  Simple words, and ones she’d felt owed – up ‘til now. Seeing the way his face changed, that flash of doubt and hopelessness, made for a hollow victory. “I engaged with them before ending up downstream with Gallo. I knew what they looked like, and what they were armed with. I should have radioed.”

  “Yes, you should.” His face blanked with surprise. “Engaged with them how?”

  She gave him a brief run-down of the chain of events.

  “That idiot,” he said of Gallo, without malice. “He didn’t sense her behind him?”

  “It was raining hard. I didn’t sense them until they were right on top of me.”

  He nodded. Studied her for a few beats. Said, “Will you call me an asshole if I say that this is a dangerous job, and sometimes shit happens?”

  “It is a dangerous job, and shit does happen.”

  “He’ll be a better soldier after this, if he stays. Hardship makes you smarter, and more careful.”

  “It does.”

  He cocked his head, expression softening. “But that doesn’t mean you should deny yourself basic comfort.”

  Back to her again, always back to her; back to wanting to fidget and divert his attention.

  “You don’t like it when I’m kind to you,” he observed, and it was her turn to be surprised. “Why?”

  Her belly shriveled up around the food she’d eaten. She felt caught-out, arrested in the act of doing something wrong.

  She could only be honest. “Because the only person who was ever kind to me went to hell.” She stood, before she could see whatever his face did in response, and left the locker room, flip-flops slapping over the tiles.

  “Rose,” he said, once, quietly, behind her, but didn’t offer any greater protest.

  SEVEN

  The Present

  The airfield was outside the city, in the middle of a barren field, surrounded by razor wire fence, and an assortment of ditches, manned bridges, and booby traps. They’d learned that silver and blessed objects could hold off the hell beasts, at least. The angel conduits were harder to keep out, but some of the ditches were lined with Wraith claymores and obsidian spike strips.

  The rain was only a mist, and as the plane descended, the scattered, yellow and blue lights of the city lay like sick fireflies in the distance, beneath the press of stacked, black clouds. Rose was tired, hungry, sore from the five-hour flight, and felt a sick lurch when she saw those lights, and thought about going back into the city.

  It would be different this time, though; she was going back with Beck in tow.

  Or, rather, Beck was towing her.

  He’d stood most of the flight. The moment the plane taxied to a halt on the runway, he offered his hand to her, lifted her elegantly and effortlessly to her feet, and they were the first ones down the ramp. She heard Gavin muttering about the fact, but he didn’t dare protest too loudly.

  With a soft sound like leather gloves sliding against one another, Beck lifted a wing and cupped it over her head in an umbrella of sorts. She bit her lip against a giddy smile, and when she glanced at him, she got one of his old, small, close-lipped grins, the kind that lit up his eyes – even brighter, now.

  She heard a gasp, ahead of them. She squeezed Beck’s hand and turned her attention to the young officer who’d come out to greet them.

  He was, in truth, Rose’s age, if not a few years older, but he looked boy-green and unsteady, mouth hanging open, as they approached. He didn’t have wings pinned to his fatigue jacket – not a Knight, then. If he’d seen action, it hadn’t been anything like that of the Gold Company, and he’d certainly never seen a horned, winged man walking toward him.

  “Sir Greer,” Rose introduced herself, when they reached him. “From Gold Company. They’re expecting us?”

  The boy blinked, shook his head, and refocused. “Yes, ma’am. Sergeant du Lac’s company?”

  “Yes,” Lance said, stepping up beside them. “Has Captain Bedlam arrived?”

  “She’s with my captain, sir. If you’ll follow me?”

  The airport had once – pre-Rift – been the sort of sprawling, mini-metropolis that saw hundreds of thousands of travelers every day. Its main structure was a wedge of gridded glass, an open atrium from which terminals extended like the spokes of a wheel. Newsstands, shops, and restaurants had existed here, before. All of them dark, now, empty. Paint had flaked off, and bits of molding and decoration sagged like limp arms. The newsstand they passed offered a view of tipped-over shelves, and a few scattered, waterlogged paperbacks.

  “Hm,” Beck hummed, and she knew he was lamenting the waste of perfectly good books.

  Another young officer stood at the entrance of what had once been, according to its damaged signage, a Pizza Hut. He saluted them, for some reason, and Rose watched him quail in the face of Beck’s…everything.

  “Sir. Sirs.” He quivered head-to-toe. “Sir du Lac and his company?” he asked, gaze pinned on Beck.

  “Yes,” Lance said, stiffly.

  Beck’s wings rustled.

  “This way.”

  They went through the Pizza Hut, past old ovens and shelves dripping moss and algae, and through a heavy steel door into a concrete and metal corridor like those in all the other bases she’d seen since joining the Knights.

  A young Army sergeant waited there; snapped a salute without ogling Beck too badly, and led them farther down the hall, through several open pneumatic doors and back into the old airport proper, into a room w
ith one glass wall that overlooked the tarmac, and an old parking lot: its pavement cracked and weed-choked, its spaces filled now with armored military vehicles rather than passenger cars.

  Rose noted young officers floating at the edges of the room; she smelled coffee and bad donuts. And in the room’s center, a long table, at which sat Captain Bedlam, an unfamiliar woman wearing captain’s bars on her fatigue jacket, and a man who was unmistakably a general. Army, going by his jacket, with a single star stitched on each epaulette.

  “Du Lac, good,” Captain Bedlam greeted. Her gaze shifted to Beck, and her usual stern mask flickered, just a moment, as she took in the sight of him. Wings, horns, and all. For Beck’s par, his own mask cloaked his thoughts, Rose noted, with a glance. That perfect, skin-tight marble that clung to ever feature, clothing him in bland interest, and inoffensive pleasantness. His eyes were hooded, low-lidded, that withdrawn look she’d seen so often in the first few weeks they’d known one another – but there was no disguising the way they glowed like backlit gems.

  “This is Arthur Becket?” Bedlam asked, looking toward Rose.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’ve had a makeover,” Beck deadpanned, his wings rustling. “As you can see.”

  “Yes.”

  They sized one another up like two tigers who’d crossed paths in the jungle.

  The general said, “It has wings.” The man’s face was slack, but his eyes sparked with alarm. Surely he’d seen what they’d all seen in the last five years: a lot. The old rules no longer applied; whether they claimed to be good or evil, impossible creatures stalked the forests and streets of the world wearing human skin. Beck defied logic in much the same way – and was even more visually intimidating besides.

  Beck turned his head a fraction to face the man. “It does have wings, yes,” he said, deceptively light. “And eyes and ears. And critical thinking abilities. Would you like a full inventory?”

  The general hitched himself up higher in the chair with a disgruntled huff, brows slanting down in an expression that screamed I’m the general, damnit. “Captain Bedlam,” he said, sternly.

  “Yes, sir.” Bedlam stood. “My knights, sir, of Golden Company. Sergeant du Lac, Sir Greer, Sir Gavin, Sir Gallo, and Sir Mayweather. They requested a short leave in which they could attempt a soul retrieval – the soul of Mr. Becket, here. As you can see, it was successful – in a way.” Her brows lifted on the last, in silent question.

  “The procedure went smoothly,” Lance said. “Though there appear to have been some – side-effects.”

  Beck’s wings rustled again. “Oh, now they’re side-effects.” He sounded faintly amused.

  Rose touched his hand, briefly, comfort and reassurance. She couldn’t bring herself to censure him, not even in front of a general.

  “How did you do this?” the general asked.

  Rose hesitated, because she didn’t feel like giving away what felt like a secret. She imagined the military en masse, lined up outside the modest gray church in Wales, a line of requests; that great, swirling mist figure on his stag diving and reappearing, until the whole room was boiling and blue with his holy magic. The idea repulsed her, viscerally, even as she acknowledged her own selfishness. Weren’t there others, down in the pit, who’d left those behind who loved them and would sacrifice to get them back?

  Gallo, of all people, spoke up: “It was Rose – that is, Sir Greer, sir, who knew how to do it. A saint, and an offering. The saint brought him back.”

  The general’s gaze sharpened. “What was the offering?”

  Rose said, “A few drops of my blood. And an artifact.”

  “What sort of artifact?”

  “A dagger. Forged in hell.”

  Again, his gaze blew wide with shock – and again he tried to suppress it with bluster. “Where did you get it? Is there another?”

  “No, sir. There was only the one.” She left the other question unanswered.

  ~*~

  “General Waits is old-fashioned,” Captain Bedlam said, a few minutes later, when she had Rose and Lance seated opposite a desk in a tiny, cramped broom closet of an office. “He’s a good man, but all of this” – she made an impatient, all-encompassing gesture – “frightens him, I think.”

  “Everyone’s frightened,” Lance said.

  “Careful,” she warned. Then fixed Rose with a look. “Why the hell does he have wings?”

  “I don’t know,” Rose said. “He hasn’t told us anything about his time down there.”

  “And you haven’t asked?”

  “No,” Rose said, firmly – more firmly than was respectful.

  Captain Bedlam’s brows lifted. “Why not?”

  “Because it was hell. Ma’am. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.”

  She held her captain’s gaze unflinching, until Bedlam’s flickered away, muscle in her jaw clenching. “Why the wings?” she asked again, to both of them. “Is he a demon?”

  Lance fidgeted in his chair, a little, and then sat up straighter. “He wasn’t dead when the portal closed, ma’am. I wonder if that makes a difference.”

  “But is he a demon?”

  “No,” Rose said, sharply.

  Both of them turned toward her; Lance’s chair creaked as he leaned; she saw his hand start to reach, and then clench into a fist instead.

  “I’ve fought demons, and I’ve killed them,” Rose said. “He isn’t one.”

  “You’ve killed demons in human skins,” Bedlam corrected. “Conduits. What if he’s a demon in the flesh? Would you recognize it then?”

  “Yes, and he’s not.”

  But he was different. In small ways – besides the wings and horns and tail.

  “Are you sure?” Lance asked, and his tone had shifted. He wasn’t asking as her superior, but as her lover, almost hesitant, laced with sympathy.

  She sent him a glare – and watched him pale and shrink back in the face of it. “I’m sure.”

  ~*~

  She went looking for Beck, after, and found the other three members of her company in the mess, huddled around one end of the table and eating ugly, rehydrated food with the unhappy efficiency of hungry soldiers. They all glanced up at her when she approached, all of their faces wary in different ways.

  They’d thought they’d known her – she’d started to think they might even like her – but then she’d pricked her finger on a hell dagger and sent a ghost down into the bowels of hell to drag back a steaming, winged creature that she called the love of her life. She regretted the way they looked at her now, but only a little.

  “He’s not here,” Gavin said, lips twitching like he wanted to scowl, or maybe snarl. “Try outside.”

  “Thanks.”

  He was outside. On a flat section of roof, beneath the windbreak of the great glass angular roof panels of the main atrium, gazing toward the dim lights of the city, wings held up as an umbrella, again. His head turned in acknowledgement, as she approached, and she ducked beneath the cover of his wings to find his nostrils flared – scenting her, she realized. The idea sent a strange bolt of warmth through her belly, and she became aware all over again of the fact that they hadn’t had any considerable time alone yet.

  “Can you smell me?” she asked.

  “I can smell – so many things,” he said, wondrously. His golden eyes seemed to swallow her. More penetrating than they’d ever been before. Could he see what she’d done in the years since? Could he tell that she and Lance…was he angry? Jealous? She felt shame, and knew she shouldn’t.

  She swallowed and said, “I’m sorry about my captain. And General Waits. They weren’t expecting…” She trailed off, and gestured instead.

  He grinned, tight and small. The rain had spangled his hair before he put his wings up, and a thick, black lock slipped from behind his ear and plastered itself to his cheek. It was so dark against his skin; washed all the gold out of his complexion. “I don’t think you were expecting it, either.”

  “Well. I’ve n
ever brought anyone back from hell before. I didn’t have expectations.”

  His smile widened, truer now. He reached to touch her face, lightly, just the pads of his fingers. She couldn’t get over the new heat of his skin. “That’s a clever answer.”

  She smiled back. “I try to be.”

  “No, you are.” His hand slipped down to her neck; his claws scraped lightly over her pulse, and she shivered. “What did they send you to tell me?”

  She felt her smile slip, even as she leaned into his touch. “I just came to see you.”

  “With a message,” he pressed. His breath steamed in the air between them, a thicker, whiter cloud than her own. “It’s alright, sweetheart. You’re a soldier now. I understand that.”

  She sighed. “They’re getting a helo ready. They want to take us up and over to survey the city before tomorrow morning’s deployment.”

  “Helo,” he echoed, smiling again, with teeth this time. The fangs were still startling. “How military.”

  “Beck–”

  His hand withdrew. “Tell them there’s no need.” His wings stretched wide, scattering raindrops. “I can survey it myself.”

  “Beck,” she tried again.

  But he stepped back, still holding her gaze, still grinning. His wings stretched, lifted, dropped, cupping and catching air. And then they were flapping, and he was lifting, hovering. And then he tipped his face up to the rain, and his wings gave a great thrust, and he was off. Flying.

  Flying.

  Away from her, as gracefully and lithely as he did everything.

  EIGHT

  Before

  “Will he accept a new limb?” Morgan asked. She considered the board set up on the cot between them, then carefully took her rook between two small fingers and moved it.

  “I don’t know.” Rose sighed. “We all want him to. Tris has been – especially encouraging about it. The doctors and scientists here have made some major progress with the tech. But. He says he doesn’t want to have something clunky that hinders more than it helps.”