Night In A Waste Land (Hell Theory Book 2)

by Lauren Gilley

  “She’s the only reason Gallo can stay a Knight,” she said. “She saved his career – fuck his career. She’s kept our company together, and God knows Francis is the best part of it.” After, she again asked herself why she kept trying to wound him with her words. She never could seem to help it, though he’d only ever been kind, and occasionally stern. He’d acted as her leader – which was appropriate, because he was. Her superior.

  But he wanted her, too, and that was…she couldn’t…

  His brows drew together now, and he sighed out a slow breath. Not wounded exactly, but tired, suddenly. He had to be so tired of her. She wanted him to snap already. To scream at her, and tell her to show some respect. “No offense to Francis.” He kept his voice low. “But he’s not exactly the most valuable member of my team.”

  She couldn’t deny that – she knew that had it been Gavin or Tris on the opposite bank of the flooded stream with her that day, things would have played out differently. But it struck her as a cruel admission. She said, “I think Tris would disagree with you at this point.”

  His nostrils flared, betraying his frustration. “Tris is – emotionally invested.”

  “And I guess that’s not allowed, right? Are you going to report them to someone?” she said, hotly. Too hotly.

  His expression smoothed in response – he was getting to her, and he knew it, damn him. “No. There aren’t any rules against fraternization. Not after the first Rift, and definitely not after the second.” He paused. “Let people find peace where they can. If they can.” His head tilted to that imploring angle that was really starting to get on her nerves. Searching for something, trying to draw her out. A subtle invitation.

  It provoked her to say, “Oh, well, good. Then you can take out one of those junior officer girls in the mess who are always batting their lashes at you, Sergeant Tightass, and stop looking at me.”

  It was the boldest she’d ever been about addressing the tension that lay between them. Afterward, she felt her face heat, and she retreated down the hall before she could see his reaction.

  ~*~

  The truth – which plagued her at night, when she tossed and turned until the sheets were twisted up around her waist – was that she did in fact like Lance. Honest, generous, fair, and blessedly uncomplicated, he was the sort of decent man – good man, even – who didn’t require interpretation. He meant it when he smiled, and when he frowned. He’d brought her folded clothes, and instant noodles, and sat on a bench while she showered, in case she fell.

  He’d saved her life, even if she often wished he hadn’t. Had been impossibly gentle with her the night of the second Rift; had offered her the chance to become a Knight, stood up for her with his superiors. Had taken her on into his company, and withstood all her nastiness with quiet, supportive patience. The uglier she was to him, the worse the guilt, and the more she didn’t want his kindness because she hadn’t done a thing to deserve it.

  Then there was the issue of his…looks.

  In a life that hadn’t involved Beck, she would have thought Lance very handsome. She thought that anyway, because he was – but she was always comparing. Beck had been so lithe and lean, while Lance was broader, and more obviously muscled: the big shoulders, the big biceps; thighs and ass that gave evidence to his devotion to leg day in the training room. Beck had been a dancer, and Lance was built like a brawler, down to the big hands with their broad palms and blunt fingers. He had a square-jawed, masculine face, but open, brown eyes. He could look angry, could look furious, but it was never the low-lidded, sharp gaze that Beck had slid across the library in the firelight.

  Rose had shaped her whole conception of sex and attraction around Beck; she gritted her teeth and fought against her imagination’s efforts to reshape it now – or to at least make room for attraction of another variety.

  She had dreams, though. Woke sometimes in a sweat, her skin humming, her pulse throbbing between her legs. And sometimes, when she let herself look at him, she found herself imagining the rough grain of his stubble against her palm; watched his hand flex around the grip of a gun, and wondered what it would feel like to have his fingers fitted to the spaces between her ribs.

  Only natural, only animal, she told herself. It had been a while.

  But tension had a way of coming to a head.

  The helo shuddered as another sharp updraft hit it, and the pilot wrestled with the controls. Rain spattered in through the open hatches, freckling their faces with cold droplets.

  Rose touched the collar of her tac jacket, zipped to her throat, and the small, hard shapes of her pendants beneath. Her crown and her rose; her lucky talismans.

  Lance met each of their gazes in turn. Above the chop and whine of the rotors beating overhead, he shouted, “Stick to the plan. Everybody, stick to the plan. If you go off script, and get your other arm cut off” – this for Gallo, whose cheeks reddened – “you’re not getting another fancy conduit-made one. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” they all chorused.

  He nodded, leaned out to snap his carabiner to the line, and dropped out of the helo and out of sight, toward their target destination.

  Rose attached her harness to the second line, and followed.

  The city into which they rappelled was more of a town – a mining town. It had been years ago, before the pre-Rift environmental movement had closed it. The town had all but faded into obscurity, all but the oldest and most stubborn residents packing up and searching for work and lives elsewhere. But when the First Rift devastated…everything…coal mining rebounded. It flourished still.

  Rose caught a glimpse of the landscape as she descended, an impression of squat, ash-dusted cottages, and muddy yards; shotgun houses along a wide gravel lane that led to the yawning maw of the main mine shaft. A grand, tumbledown house sat at the opposite end of the clearing, a place where the foreman or mayor or some such important person must live; light blazed yellow through the windows, energy wasting bulbs that should have been swapped out long ago.

  The rain stung her face, and she dropped her head to watch the ground rush up to meet her. She landed lightly, disengaged, and stepped clear so that Gallo could land behind her.

  A man waited for them, dressed in plain, dirty clothes, an ivy cap crammed down on his head and doing little to keep the rain out of his eyes. “Are you the Gold Company?”

  “We are,” Lance confirmed, as the helo winged away overhead, retreating until their scheduled rendezvous.

  He nodded. “Mayor Bixby wants to talk to you first.”

  The big house was a mayor’s mansion, then. Up close, Rose could see the way leafless brown vines and lichen choked the red brick, soot-streaked in the places where it showed through, like bloody scabs on necrotic flesh. The windows bore thick coats of grime, the light behind it greasy and blurred.

  The inside was better, but only a little. Floorboards cupped and warped from the damp; mold crawling up the wallpaper, and creeping along the edges of bookshelves that held canned goods rather than books. She smelled the rain, and felt a breeze where a window or bit of roof had failed, and was letting in the grimy outdoors.

  The man who’d come for them, and driven them up the hill to the house in an old Jeep, walked them down a wide entry hall and into a room with high, moldy ceilings, and a massive fireplace, where a roaring fire provided the only bit of warmth and comfort she’d seen so far in this desolate place. More electric light burned, standing and desk lamps; she could hear the drone of so many bulbs above the crackle of the fire.

  Mayor Bixby was a small, ferret-faced man with fear shining in his eyes as he turned away from the hearth and surveyed them all. Lance and Tris got the longest, most apprehensive looks, given their size and obvious musculature. Then he looked at Rose with goggle-eyed shock.

  “Never seen a woman in uniform before?” Gavin drawled, and Rose was surprised – and a little pleased – to hear him come to her defense, even in so slight a way.

  “Mr. Bixby,” Lance g
reeted.

  “It’s ‘mayor,’ actually,” Bixby said, drawing himself up to his full, unimpressive height, puffing out his chest.

  The world could be ending, and people like this would still get high on their own importance. Nothing ever changed.

  “Mr. Bixby,” Lance repeated, and Rose bit her lip against a sudden chuckle. A quick glance at Gallo proved he was struggling to hold back a smile. “Did you want to brief us on the conduit before we get to work?”

  He frowned at them all, but nodded. “How much do you already know?”

  “It’s down in the mines,” Lance said. “And it likes to come out at night.”

  “Like a fucking old school cyrtid or some shit,” Gavin said.

  “Gavin,” Lance warned.

  “No, no, that’s not right.” Bixby sighed, and deflated; Rose’s first impression felt a little ungenerous now, as she watched the firelight play in the deep grooves that worry had carved into his small face. “Let’s eat – I’ve asked Mrs. Avery to make up some sandwiches – and I’ll fill you in.”

  “With all due respect, Mr. Mayor,” Lance started.

  Bixby stepped forward. “Please. I know this isn’t – well, it’s not like the old days, is it? No one entertains people and they don’t talk about things in a civilized way.” He attempted a smile that looked like more of a grimace. “But the situation’s a little more delicate than the usual sort of stuff you encounter, I think.”

  Lance traded looks with all of them.

  Rose shrugged.

  “Alright.”

  The dining room boasted a long table that sagged in the middle. Chairs sat clustered around one end, and the five of them took seats to either side of the chair at the head, where Bixby settled like a puppet with cut strings, sighing deeply. A woman only slightly cleaner than their chauffer – Mrs. Avery, apparently – brought out a tray of sandwiches, a mix of near-colorless ham and cheese, and plain butter. Rose wasn’t hungry, but she ate a butter sandwich to keep the food from going to waste.

  “After the First Rift,” Bixby began, “our town was revived. I wasn’t mayor, then, but thinking of throwing my hat in the ring. The town was alive again – people moving back toward us instead of away. I know it sounds awful to be glad about sending men back into the mines again, especially after everything the world had been through. But they were desperate times, and there was demand for coal, and we were – well, we were booming, frankly. The people here could afford to buy livestock, and to import goods and groceries. Even if it was always raining, and there was ash, the air wasn’t fit to breathe, we were warm, and clothed, and fed, and that was worth so much, in a time when we all had so little.

  “But things started to change about seven years ago.”

  Before the Second Rift. Before Beck died.

  “We were taking in refugees from surrounding cities,” Bixby continued. “We had enough miners, but we needed schoolteachers, and other sorts of tradesmen. Everyone was welcome.

  “That was when he showed up.”

  “The conduit?” Lance asked.

  “We didn’t realize that’s what he was, at the time.” Bixby’s food sat untouched on his plate. He scrubbed a hand across his bristled chin. “He seemed so normal: tired, dirty, hurting for work, same as everyone. He said he was a carpenter.” He offered a grim smile, and Rose felt a lurch in her stomach that had her setting her sandwich down. “I think you can guess where this is going.”

  “I think so,” Lance said, “but why don’t you tell us.”

  The other three sat forward in their chairs, expressions hardened for readiness. No one looked anxious to dismiss the mayor and go charging into the fray, now.

  “It started slowly,” Bixby said. “We found him a cottage, and he started working with one of the roofing crews – you can’t keep a roof on a house in all this damn rain. I spoke with his foreman; he was kind, and obliging, and he got along well with everyone.

  “Then the first miracle happened.”

  “Miracle?” Rose asked, thinking of Gallo’s arm. A darted glance proved that Gallo himself was thinking of it, his gaze on his gloved left hand – Tris was looking, too, mouth set in a flat, unreadable line.

  “A little boy – one of our metalworker’s sons – took a fall. Climbed up on one of the water towers and then fell. His leg was broken, and he was unconscious. A crowd gathered – by the time I got there, it was nothing but a sea of umbrellas and crying – and John – the conduit – was there at the center. He had the boy in his arms. He touched his forehead, and then his leg. There was this – it was a flash. And I thought I was being pushed down, for a second there. But when I could see again, the boy was awake, and his leg was healed.”

  Rose traded glances with Lance, saw the grim set of his eyebrows.

  “Maybe he wasn’t hurt as badly as you thought,” Tris suggested.

  “No. The angle.” Bixby swallowed and shook his head. “You could see that it was, but that then it wasn’t. Not anymore. He stood up, and hugged John. The boy’s mother shoved through the crowd, and then she hugged John. She thanked him for saving her son’s life.”

  “I imagine he was pretty popular after that,” Lance said.

  “He all but put the local clinic out of business. People went to him for everything from papercuts to dysentery. If he put his hands on you, and you started to glow, you were better. They really were miracles. That was when I realized.” Bixby sighed heavily. “Miracles weren’t impossible anymore, not like they were when I was a little boy. Conduits could do things that mortals couldn’t. I knew it, the whole town council knew it. We called him in to ask him some questions.”

  “Was he honest?”

  “Yes, actually. He wouldn’t give us his true name, but he said he didn’t agree with his fellow – higher beings.” He stumbled, and didn’t say angels, Rose noted. “He said he only wanted to live as one of us. To be helpful and to be accepted. The miracles continued.” He sounded bereft, and not like a man who’d benefitted from said miracles.

  “But something changed,” Lance said. “I’m sorry, but: at least from the air, it doesn’t look like a prosperous town.”

  The house shifted around them, a faint, damp creak, driving home the point.

  Bixby took a deep breath, and reached for his glass – red wine, by the look and smell of it. Rose wondered how much he had left in storage at this point. “John hadn’t done anything wrong, but…conduits weren’t supposed to be around anymore. When the Rift closed, they all went away – went back. Whichever. There had been sightings, but the media wrote them off as hoaxes. I wanted to believe they were, but here was our very own conduit, and if he was fooling us all, I hadn’t figured out how.” He glanced down at his hand, and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “He closed a cut on my hand. A deep one. I watched my skin knit back together.”

  “Mr. Mayor,” Rose prompted.

  “I tried to report him. I contacted the military. I reached out to Washington. I talked to the governor, and, eventually, a few senators. I kept saying there was a conduit here in town, that he was using his power, that he wasn’t cut off and he definitely wasn’t human. No one believed me. They thought I wanted attention.

  “And then, three years ago, the mine shaft collapsed.”

  It had been wholly unexpected, he said. All the safety protocols were being followed. There hadn’t been unsanctioned blasting. But, suddenly, the ceiling was coming down on the miners’ heads. Seven had been trapped, and estimates on the time it would take to dig them out were bleak; they’d been running out of air.

  And then John, the conduit with a man’s name, had walked into the shaft, his hands glowing blue, and he’d walked out with the men, dirty-but-whole, and he’d left the ceiling of the mine shaft healed, just as he’d left human flesh reknitted.

  “He was a true hero after that. There was even talk of naming him mayor – no election, no process. They wanted to install him, because he could do what no one else in the town could.”r />
  “Are you only the mayor in spirit, now?” Lance asked.

  “No, I’m still technically mayor. John doesn’t want any titles – though he has them, I think. The people here treat him like a deity. Like their god.”

  “He is an angel,” Gallo pointed out.

  Bixby turned a savage, pained look on him. “And what sort of angel wants to be worshiped like a false idol?”

  “If we figure out how conduits think, we’ll be sure to let you know,” Lance said, wearily. “Where can we find him now?”

  “At the scene of the miracle. The mine.”

  ~*~

  Mayor Bixby went on to tell them that a witness had come forward after the miracle in the mine, one who claimed to have seen John cause the cave-in before he then saved the minors from it. In the years since, Bixby had tried to resist without overtly accusing the man – conduit – but that John had basked in the adoration, the people had shirked their responsibilities, and the weather had turned even nastier. John saved the town from another conduit, during the Second Rift, but Bixby feared it was too late, that the town was dying.

  “If you go up to him dressed like that, brandishing weapons, he’ll kill you,” Bixby informed them.

  “He’ll have seen the helo,” Tris pointed out. “He’ll know someone’s here.”

  “But you might be diplomats, instead of soldiers,” the mayor suggested, and that was how they found themselves upstairs in the crumbling mansion, digging through warped and swollen chests and armoires, dodging roof leaks and trying to see if there was any way to disguise themselves.

  “Oh my God.” Gavin held up a green blazer. “Did this guy play in the Masters?”

  “The what?” Gallo asked.

  “You’re disgustingly young,” Gavin said.

  Tris smacked him in the face with a handful of threadbare white linen, and Gallo laughed.

  Rose left the bedroom and went down the hall to the next, carrying the oil lantern Bixby had given her. This room was packed with more trunks, though the floor looked less damp, and the scent of mold wasn’t as strong.