Night In A Waste Land (Hell Theory #2) - Lauren Gilley Page 0,17

tough, halfway unconscious.

Gallo had been learning and practicing, though. He dodged, blocked, and bent back, catching himself on one hand to avoid Tris’s last swipe – then bending back up in a flash, inside his attacker’s guard, ready with a strike of his own, a chop of his hand like Rose had just used on him.

Tris deflected it easily – but was forced to take a step back to keep his balance.

Gallo grinned, his gaze cutting over toward Rose. Did you see that?

“Dumbass,” Tris muttered, and in a matter of moments had him pinned face-down on the mat, his arm twisted behind his back.

Gallo’s face went red, and Rose knew it wasn’t from exertion.

“The second you stop paying attention is the second you’re dead,” Tris said, letting him up. Gallo scrambled to his feet, head ducked, cheeks flaming. “If you wanna celebrate every time you get in a halfway decent hit, you can go serve with the infantry.”

He shook his head with a mumbled, “No, sir.”

“Here, let’s go again.”

Lance settled down on the bench beside her; he walked very quietly, but he wasn’t silent, not like Beck. She’d heard him coming.

“I told Tris not to kill him,” he said, softly, too low for the sparring partners to hear.

“He’s tougher than he looks.”

He snorted. “Like you then, huh?”

She glanced toward him, and found his eyes on the action, the corner of his mouth curved up in a grim little smile. As she stared, his gaze cut over. He wet his lips, and she thought he meant to say something else, but in the end he didn’t.

He had no idea what to make of her, she’d realized. She thought a part of him wanted to treat her like any other new, young, inexperienced Knight. To guide her, offer suggestions, share his experiences, and to soothe her with bad jokes and anecdotes. But there was no escaping that night in Castor’s basement. He might not have known what she lost, but he knew who, and she could read the hesitance that flickered in his gaze when he looked at her for too long.

“That was a good hit,” Lance said, nodding toward the match.

She glanced that way and saw that Tris’s jaw was clenched, a muscle leaping in his cheek, though no other movement betrayed where he’d been struck.

Gallo was grinning again.

“What did I say about celebrating?”

“Sorry, sir,” Gallo said, not sounding sorry at all, and danced back into the next parry.

They circled one another a moment, taking stock. There was a stillness about Tris that Rose appreciated; he wasn’t one of those fighters who felt the need to boil in place, a needless expenditure of energy if there ever was one.

He pulled a double feint, and sent a blow toward Gallo’s ribs – that he blocked with a hiss as their forearms collided. Tris was bigger. But Gallo didn’t slow, and offered a strike of his own, one that was deflected, and the dance continued.

“Gallo knows he can’t match him strength-for-strength if they keep tangled. Same as me.” The last she added with reluctance, and she could feel Lance perking up beside her. It might have been the first time she initiated a conversation with him, she realized.

“Yeah, well, no shame in that,” Lance said, eagerness peeking through his casual air. He wanted to talk to her, for some reason. Probably as team bonding or some such rot. “It’s better to know your strong and weak points and learn to use them to your best advantage. We can’t all fight the same way – and that’s a good thing. How is he with a knife?”

“Not as good as he is with a gun,” she said, honestly. “But I don’t get the impression you guys do much knife-fighting.”

That earned another snort. “Not with conduits, no. Only crazy people attempt that. But you’d be surprised what sorts of situations we get into on some ops. Cities are full of surprises. The bad kind.”

She nodded. That was very true.

“Can I ask something?”

She stiffened. His tone had gone careful, like the night he’d tried – awkwardly, inefficiently, but sincerely – to offer his condolences about Beck. She nodded.

“When I told you that you could join up, that was a sincere offer. Things are upside down right now, and I think this is, as strange as it sounds, the safest place to be sometimes. But I didn’t think you’d actually do it.” He paused. “Why did you?”

She remembered Kay giving her one of those calculating looks through the