Night In A Waste Land (Hell Theory #2) - Lauren Gilley Page 0,62

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