Startled, Rose’s gaze went to him – was snatched toward him. She felt a pull like gravity, like a hook in her chest. She pulled her arm back from Lance, and nearly reached for Beck instead, instinct strong as compulsion.
His black hair was windswept and wild, a few strands clinging to his neck, his cheeks, his horns. He reached to tidy it absently, and already his hands seemed steadier around the horns, like he’d learned their shapes and knew how to smooth his hair around them.
He wore one of his smooth, pleasant masks, the sort he would offer to a shop keeper, or a stranger, the effect made more alarming by the gleaming gold of his eyes. “Hello,” he greeted. “I’ve just been surveying the city – or, rather, what’s left of it.”
“We were going to take a helo,” Lance said, tone hard and cold. “Go as a company so we’re all on the same page.”
Beck shrugged. “I won’t mind going along again. But.” He flexed his wings, and they rippled against his back. “No sense letting assets go to waste, and all that.”
“Yeah. No sense.”
“Rosie.” Beck turned to her. Extended a hand; palm-up, his black claws were less noticeable, the creases and calluses in the center just as she remembered, evidence of his weapons proficiency.
Her heart bumped in the same old way, flooding her with love, and heat, and the awe – the disbelief that he was here – she wasn’t sure would go away anytime soon.
“Would you like to see something?” he asked, his expression softening, mask slipping just enough to allow her a glimpse of the hot-blooded creature he’d always been beneath.
She was sliding her hand into his before she could even say, “Yes.”
He grinned, quick and sharp, and drew her forward as his wings unfolded; he turned them, spinning her effortlessly into place in front of him, and his arms closed securely around her waist as she felt the air displacement of the first few preparatory beats of his wings. “Ready?” he asked, breath hot in her ear.
“Yes.”
“Rose!” Lance shouted.
“He’s a dullard, your army man,” Beck sighed, and then with a great thrust, and a leap, they were airborne.
In that first moment, after he’d jumped off the roof, and she saw the tarmac far below – when the cold, wet wind touched her face, and lifted her hair, and the ground went out from under her – her stomach lurched like it did when she rappelled down out of a helo. The crazy, sickening realization that you were about to fall, and that a harness and bit of metal were all that would prevent you from crashing down to earth and splattering against the rocks.
But Beck’s arms were tight and strong, and a few great flaps of his tremendous wings had them lifting up, and up, and there was no danger of her falling; she knew he’d never let her fall, and that trust smoothed her initial nerves.
He climbed until they reached an altitude that he seemed to like, and the beat of his wings settled into something steady and regular, like the beat of a heart, or the measured rhythm of drawn-out sex. Her belly tightened, but only with excitement.
She turned her head a fraction, feeling his lips and chin against her temple. “This is incredible!” she shouted over the rush of the wind.
His laugh was low and rich – delighted. “Isn’t it?”
The rain slackened the closer in they got. Beck flew them through a thick screen of low cloud, and then the way ahead opened up, and Rose could see the lights of the city up close.
Some were electric lights burning in windows.
Some were cold, blue security lights.
Some were candles and gas lanterns.
But most of the light came from fire.
Beck’s wings stretched wide, and he swooped down lower – her stomach swooping along with them – and more details came into focus.
The city’s edge was built of crumbling strip malls, and two-story homes built on slabs, cheek-by-jowl, ringed by rusted metal fence. A house was on fire. A car was on fire. In deeper, over the cracked pavement tangle of the Interstate, where tiny cities unto themselves of tents, lean-tos, and tarp-covered sleeping bags crowded the once-green spaces; fires burned in metal drums, and in rings of stones and aluminum cans. Fires built for warmth, spitting steam in the aftermath of the drizzling rain. She saw a few faces lift toward them, mouths falling open as they beheld the silhouette of a winged figure. She could see the shadow of the wings on the ground, and the buildings, and the people below, despite the lack of sunlight; the points and arches; no mistaking them for the feathered wings of the angels of history books.
When they got into the city proper, the fires were on the street: in drums, in cars, in dumpsters, even in a few windows. An apartment building blazed, its heat blasting her face before Beck flapped his wings hard, tipped back, and lifted them up, up, over the rooftops. People walked along in hurried, huddled groups. Some ran. She saw the muzzle flash of a gun going off, and watched someone fall. She saw a figure glow blue, fire leaping from its hand.
“Shit, there’s one,” she said, pointing, but Beck kept going, faster now. The conduit saw them, she noted; its head snapped around toward them, its pale hair flaring in the firelight. But it didn’t have wings, and it couldn’t give chase.
Her eyes watered, as the air streamed around them, damp, and hot, and smelling of char. Beck cleared the burning building, his arms tightening a fraction around her. He hit an updraft, wings opening like sails, and they jetted up and up and onward. Over the tall, darkened shoulders of other buildings. High above the chaos on the streets below, the violence and turmoil playing out in specks of light.
The city had never been picturesque in her lifetime, but it still astounded her how very terrible things had gotten since she lived here last – first with Miss Tabitha, and then, blessedly, in the townhouse with Beck and Kay.
Kay. It hurt to think of her, and so she hadn’t, not most of the time. She refused to acknowledge the fact that it was easier to set thoughts of her aside than it had been with Beck.
Another draft caught them, a cool one. Rose was starting to get the hang of this; her nerves – about flying – had settled fully, and her senses were attuned only to the ground they covered. And their destination.
Which she finally understood when Beck sent them winging over a cemetery full of crooked obelisks and crumbling mausoleums.
They lifted over a final few rooftops – rain-slick tiles, steep gables, widow’s walks, old Gothic mansions – and there it lay, as sprawling and intimidating as before…despite its half-gone roof and shattered façade.
Anthony Castor’s mansion.
She gasped.
If the way Beck’s hands tightened on her was any indication, he heard her.
He flew them straight up again, a dizzying vertical climb, and when she glanced down, she saw the gaping maw of the destroyed roof. It didn’t look burned, but like it had been ripped away by some giant set of claws. Hunks of roofing and stone lay scattered across the lawn, still encircled by its razor-tipped iron fence. Through the damage, she could glimpse moldering finery, three layers of lavish rooms, and even the black and white check tile of a lavish main floor.
Beck squeezed her around the middle, tucked his wings, and dove.
The fall was too quick and sharp for her to exclaim in alarm. Shadows enfolded them; cool, damp, mold-scented air rushed into her face, set her eyes to streaming. She saw the flash of black and white floor tiles, the grand entryway and front hall of the mansion, she thought, and then Beck opened his wings, slowing them. He executed a few small circles, and hovered, briefly, before he dropped them down to stand lightly on the tiles.
His arms loosened, but stayed around her, cradling her to his chest. She felt the point of his chin on top of her head; felt the hard surge and retreat of his ribs as he fought to catch his breath.
His voice was steady, though, when he said, “Extraordinary, isn’t it?”
She could only stare.
The night of Beck’s – descent, she supposed it was, because it
hadn’t been a death – Lance had hustled her out of the mansion in a mad rush; her surroundings had been blurred, by exhaustion, by grief, by tears. Even so, she thought she would have remembered this place – this great hall, that was the only name for it.
The checkered tile stretched wide and deep; the ceilings, when they’d been in place, had been as high and arched as cathedral rafters, and just as ornate, if the remaining, painted tatters were anything to go by. Dark wood paneling, damaged by the elements, still gleamed faintly along the walls; studded with sconces, and ruined paintings.
A stained-glass window, miraculously intact, marked the end of the hall. Her breath caught when she looked at it, and recognized what it showed. In resplendent color, artful fractures of mortar: an archangel, clothed in white and crimson robes, golden hair flying, white, feathered wings stretched wide, a sword in his hand – a sword driven into the breast of a dark, coiled, cowering winged figure all in black.
“Saint Michael,” she breathed, and shivered.
Beck’s arms tightened around her. “Champion over Lucifer,” he mused. “He put his fellow angel in the pit.”
“A fallen angel.”
“Is there any difference?”
She shivered again.
In front of the window, secondary to its splendor, she noted a raised dais, and a heavy, black wooden chair. A seat. A throne, she thought, with a lurch. It was carved, and grand, and could be nothing less, at the top of three wide, ebon steps.
“He thought himself a king,” Beck said. He kissed her temple, her cheek, lingering, inhaling – as though he could smell her better now, or perhaps had merely missed the scent of sweat on her skin. Then he pulled back from her, and walked toward the dais, wings folding elegant and cape-like down his back.
Rose watched as he climbed the stairs, turned, and then sat, as graceful as ever, wings adjusting with a few flicks and a smoothing of his hands. They folded behind him in a way she hadn’t expected, looking even more like a cape. He crossed his legs, propped an elbow on the arm of the throne and rested his chin on his fist. With his sharp face, and the elegant, coiled-spring strength of his lean body, he looked every inch the negligent royal. The horns caught a stray bit of light from somewhere, gleaming like a crown.
“Oh,” she murmured aloud, unable to help herself. In the five years since she’d lost him, she’d become near-expert in controlling herself, but he was back now, and she felt unmoored, and out of control.
He tipped his head back, so he regarded her from low-lidded, glowing eyes. “What do you think?” he asked.
She snorted – but then sobered, because he wasn’t joking. “I think the chair looks better on you than on Castor.”
He grinned, a fast flash of teeth. And fangs. “You never saw him here.”
“No. But I saw him. He doesn’t compare.”
His grin stretched. “Thank you, sweetheart. I’m quite flattered.”
Sweetheart. Lance called her that, too. Sometimes.
She’d spent the past five years perfecting the masks she wore, learning to cloak and guard her expressions. Sometimes she caught her reflection in a bit of glass, and was startled by how lifeless she looked.
But Beck could read her. His head tilted a fraction. “He really is your soldier, isn’t he?”
Shit. For one awful moment, he looked like a stranger. Perfectly composed, curious, questioning – she searched for little signs of tension in his face, and could find none.
Belatedly, she realized she was searching for Lance’s usual tells. In Beck’s face.
She took a breath, and shifted her focus. Searched for the old, familiar, well-loved, long-grieved tells. The little flickers she’d glimpsed in the library firelight once upon a time. She found Beck’s tension in the whiteness of his knuckles, in the way his claws bit into the black wood of the throne, and in the slight flaring of his nostrils on each inhale.
She took another breath, and felt steadier. “I didn’t start out wanting to join the military, after…everything. But Lance had made me an offer, and after a few months of roughing it on my own, I decided it was safer and easier with them than it was out on the streets.”
His lips pressed together, a considering half-frown. “The military, sure. But you signed up to become a Rift Walker. That’s above and beyond.” He didn’t sound disapproving – but not approving, either.
“I don’t like the idea of being average,” she said. “If you’re going to do something, you might as well be the best at it.”
He grinned, a fast flash of teeth. “There’s my girl.”
“And I am. Good at it, that is.”
His brows lifted. “The best?”
“Yes.”
He shifted in his seat, posture relaxing, crossing one long leg over the other. The way his boots fit – a spare pair of lace-up combats loaned courtesy of Gavin – over his trim ankles and strong calves was distracting. She’d missed this so much – looking at him, the elegant, purposeful way he moved and held himself.
His grin softened, and his head tipped the other way, damp hair sliding across his shoulders. “I’m not angry,” he said, softly.
“About what?”
“You’re a beautiful, healthy young woman. You have appetites. And you had no way of knowing if you’d ever see me again.”
She sucked in a breath. Five years ago, she would have gone down on her knees and asked for his forgiveness. I’m so sorry I slept with someone else. It didn’t mean anything. I love you.
She did love him, still, fiercely, violently. But his smooth assurance left her hackles lifting. “You say that like I can’t control myself.” The hardness of her tone had him stilling a moment, expression freezing.
His claws tapped on the armrest and he said, “No. Quite the opposite in fact.”
“If you’re hoping for an apology, you aren’t getting one,” she said, kicking her chin up. She felt a bit like a child, defending her actions; by the end, she and Beck had felt like equals, partners. But in the beginning, he had glistened like an untouchable statue on a pedestal, fascinating and unknowable. She was reminded of that, now; it brought out her stubborn streak. “Lance is a good man. He’s a good fighter, and he’s fair, and he’s been kind to me. He helped me bring you back even though…” She trailed off before she said too much, and how strange to keep things from Beck of all people.
His smile was small, and tight. “Even though he’s in love with you.”
She couldn’t deny that.
Beck sighed and turned his head, presenting his beautiful, now-horned profile. His black hair set off his sharp features in even greater relief. Harsh and lovely, that was Beck. “Of course he is,” he murmured, tone lower, rawer – more honest. “I’m sure he’s wonderful, and you of course care for him in return. I’m not – listen, when I say I’m not angry, I’m not trying to be dictatorial. I’m truly not angry. But I’m it saying wrong, like always.” He turned back to her, gaze open, now; broken-open, tinged with deep sadness. “I’m sorry that I left you before, sweetheart. But I can’t say I would go back and do it differently.”
She swallowed, a lump forming in her throat.
“And I’m not sorry that you were spared – that he saved you. There is no way possible to thank him for that. But I can stay a step back. I won’t ask you to choose. I forfeited any claim on your heart the night I chose revenge for the past over a life with you in the future.” He attempted a smile, a wobbly, pathetic thing.
Her eyes stung. She blinked, and stepped toward him – heart breaking when she saw the surprise flicker through his gaze, the doubt. His hands tightened on the arms of the chair, claws squealing faintly against the wood.
“You’re an idiot,” she told him, voice choked. “You’re the most brilliant man I’ve ever met, but you’re also an absolute idiot.” She leaned forward and put her hands on his shoulders, having to clutch to him for balance thanks to the awkwardness of the angle.
He blinked up at her in a moment of blank incompreh
ension. Then he let out a breath, and she saw his throat move, saw the flex of tendons there. He uncrossed his legs, carefully, made a space for her between them; gripped her waist and reeled her in, until she lost her balance totally and was forced to straddle his lap.
A very rewarding development, actually.
“I am an idiot.” He sounded pained. He reached to cup her cheek with one hand, so carefully; she felt the scrape of his claws down the side of her neck, and leaned into the heat of his palm. Trusting. It was important to her that he know she wasn’t frightened or disgusted by the changes in him.
“I won’t apologize,” she said again, voice unsteady now. She smoothed her hands across his chest, its muscled planes achingly familiar beneath the soft cotton of his shirt. He was warmer, though, nearly hot, as if feverish. “But I am sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Hush, sweetheart,” he whispered, and pulled her mouth down to meet his.
It wasn’t their first kiss since his resurrection, but it was the most private, and the most honest, too. His tongue teased at the seam of her lips and she opened for him right away, welcoming the hot slide of his tongue against hers. She could feel the points of his fangs, against her lips, and her tongue, an electric scrape amid the lush softness of the act.
It was as consuming and dizzying as kissing him had always been. It wasn’t just about the care and talent, the gentle rasp of his thumb over her cheek, coaxing her jaw wider, the sly flex of his tongue; there was something deeper to it, something soul-shattering that had rocked her foundations from the outset – that had given her the nudge to reach out of the pie safe and take his hand that very first night.
She became gradually aware that she was kneading at his chest like a cat – and that she was sitting on his crotch, and that he was growing steadily harder beneath her. She gave an experimental circle with her hips, and he groaned into her mouth.
And purred. The sound rippled out from inside him, vibrating through his chest, and through her hands.
Night In A Waste Land (Hell Theory Book 2) Page 16