Night In A Waste Land (Hell Theory #2) - Lauren Gilley Page 0,83
pretend this is about you being patriotic.”
“Have I ever denied that I wanted to find a way to save Beck?” she challenged.
He glanced away from her, throat jumping as he swallowed. “No.”
“That doesn’t mean that I don’t care about–”
He silenced her with a raised hand, one that trembled faintly. “Don’t,” he said, voice thick.
Rose knotted her fingers together in her lap, torn. She really didn’t want to hurt him – but she wouldn’t bury the idea of saving Beck, not even for him.
Finally, she stood, crossed the small space between them, and carded a hand through his thick, dark hair.
He tipped forward so he could press his face into her stomach, breath rushing against her skin through the fabric of her shirt as he let out a gusty sigh.
She kept petting his hair. “You don’t have to come with me. No one does. Bedlam will send me on my own.”
“No,” he said, after a minute. “No, I’m coming. We’ll all come.”
They took a vote the next day, and everyone voted yea.
They left for Wales a week later.
~*~
The Present
“Where is Shubert now?” Beck asked. He paced slowly down and back the length of the table, tail twitching behind him, wings mantled above him with the little thumb claws hooked together.
“He’s taken over the top floors of one of the gardening high-rises,” Lance said. His voice was hard and flat, too-professional, and simmering with badly-disguised distaste. It had occurred to her more than once that, had they known one another as mortal men, they still wouldn’t have liked one another – Beck would still have had the upper hand, all sharp smiles and coy manipulation.
Manipulation. The thought shocked her. She’d never thought of Beck as manipulative. He certainly never had been with her.
Of course he hadn’t.
Of course.
“Hmm,” he said, stroking his chin thoughtfully with one claw. “Rooftop access?”
“For you, maybe,” Gavin said with a snort. “But there’s no scaling it, and we don’t have a helo at our disposal, not that deep in. He’d hear us coming a mile away.”
“Right, right.” More pacing. A pause. Beck turned to them with the air of a man who’d made a decision. “We’ll just have to walk in the front door, then.”
Lance made a rude, dismissive noise. “Right. Straight in the front door.”
Beck sent him an incalculable look, a pulse of gold in the gloom. “If you’re worried, you shouldn’t be.”
Lightning chose that moment to illuminate the window; thunder followed closely, a low rumble.
Gavin swore under his breath.
“I didn’t think kicking in doors was your style, back in the day,” Lance said. “I thought it was all about sneaking in the back way. Or was it through air shafts?”
Beck grinned. “An effective strategy. But I’m afraid my wings wouldn’t fit.” He spread them in demonstration, as lightning flashed again, blue limning the black, bat-like scallops of them. “Won’t you trust me, Sergeant? This is why you brought me back, after all. To solve your war.”
“Wars are won,” Lance gritted out. “Not solved.”
Beck shrugged eloquently. Then his brows lowered, his smile becoming more a baring of fangs. “What’ll it be?”
Lance studied him a moment; Rose saw the pulse of a vein in his temple, and the beading of sweat there, too. He was nervous – very nervous. More so about Beck than the mission he was proposing, she wagered. “Through the front door, then.”
“Excellent.”
~*~
“We still don’t know how he’s doing it,” Rose said, a few minutes later. Everyone had gone off for final, private preparations. She and Beck stood at the head of the dining table, the map still laid out before them. Beck was tracing city blocks with the tip of one claw. “He’s still sharing the body with his angel. Two voices.”
“Hm.” He was distracted, lips moving soundlessly as he recited street names to himself, nearly wondrous.
“Beck?”
He lifted his head, finally. “No worries, sweetheart.” He offered her a smile that was truer than the ones he’d given the others, but no less quick. “I can handle him.”
She worked not to frown. “You’re not being overconfident, are you?”
His expression froze. A split second, easily missed if she hadn’t been watching him so closely. “What’s this I hear? Doubt?”
Despite the crumbling mansion around them, his black hair, his horns, she was transported back to the basement of his townhouse, that day during their training, right near the end, when his obsession had become feverish. Right before they went after Castor.
Right before he was taken from her.
She felt that way – but he looked different. Not only