Night In A Waste Land (Hell Theory #2) - Lauren Gilley Page 0,12

least for a moment, for this brief span in the shelter of his wings.

Beck must have felt them, because he stroked her hair and her neck, and hummed a soothing noise, his purr deepening. “Don’t cry, my darling. Not for me. Not when I’m here.”

She fisted her hands in the fabric of his shirt, and swayed when he swayed, breathed when he breathed.

“I found you,” she murmured.

“Of course you did. My clever girl.”

~*~

She knew that her team was hanging back – partly out of respect, but mostly out of fear, she figured. They’d worked alongside a conduit, and seen the post-Rift horrors of the world – but sight of Beck had rattled them, she could tell. And so they gave her some time alone with him.

She knew it wouldn’t last.

They sat now inside the church, in the chapel, on a creaky wooden pew that smelled of lemon oil and beeswax. On the altar, the candle flames whipped and flickered, the wicks grown long, the dripping tails of wax hanging off the altar’s edge like stalactites.

Beck sat with his wings carefully folded, draped around him like a cape, tail coiled on the pew beside him. He held her hand in his – hadn’t seemed willing to let go of it, so far – and stared up at the cross on the wall.

“I thought it might burn,” he murmured. “To look at it. To be in this place. To touch any part of it.” He rested long, claw-tipped fingers on the back of the pew in front of him, staring at his own hand in a kind of blank wonder. “It doesn’t.”

“Why would it?” She squeezed his hand. “You aren’t a vampire in an old movie.”

One corner of his mouth twitched upward in the restrained, close-lipped smile she remembered so well. “No. But I’m not exactly divine.”

“Beck.”

He turned toward her, and she’d always thought his eyes had glowed before, always gleaming in the firelight, honey-warm and crackling with withheld emotion. They actually glowed now; pulsed with yellow, leonine light.

“You aren’t a demon.”

His wings rustled, an abortive move to lift them. His tail flexed, sinuous and muscled as a healthy snake. “Look at me.” His smile was full of self-mockery. “What else could I be?”

“Brother Eustace said that you would be changed. That being there…” Her throat threatened to close when she thought of it; the fire and pain and torture. She’d seen what had come from the pit; they’d chased its evil back and forth across the country, and that was only after a small portal had been open for a short while.

“I don’t feel changed,” he said, reaching to touch her face again. He kept doing that, like he was afraid she wasn’t real. “Only tired.” His thumb stroked her cheek, and his smile this time broke softly, gently. “And glad.”

They tipped together, drawn as if my magnets, and she realized she hadn’t kissed him yet, and that she needed to rectify that right now.

He angled his head, his breath feathering hot across her lips.

Someone cleared his throat behind them.

Rose sat back.

Beck had a much more violent reaction.

He stood and whirled in an instant, wings opening wide, blocking off her view of whoever stood in the aisle – protecting her, she realized. He was shielding her from the interloper. His tail lashed against the flagstones, and he growled like an animal; a deep, resonant, big-cat sound. An unmistakable threat.

“Whoa.” She recognized Lance’s voice. “Easy there. It’s only me.”

The growl repeated, and Beck didn’t back down.

“Beck.” Rose ducked under his wing and climbed up onto the pew on her knees. Lance stood halfway down the aisle, both arms lifted, empty palms toward them. Beck had his head ducked, and his teeth bared, fangs long and gleaming in the candlelight. “Beck, it’s okay. It’s just Lance.”

When she glanced toward him, she saw that Lance was staring at her, brows lifted in silent question. You gonna do something about this? Can you?

She shuffled around and put her hand on Beck’s chest; she could feel the growl, like the chug of an idling engine. “It’s okay,” she repeated. “He’s a friend.”

Beck glared at him a moment longer, eyes glassy with aggression; nothing about his expression was human in that moment. It wasn’t even the thrill of the hunt she remembered from before; this was a predator with prey in its sights.

I don’t feel changed, he’d said only moments ago.

But he was.

Finally, Beck snorted, and straightened. Closed his wings. Standing, with the hooks linked behind his