Night In A Waste Land (Hell Theory #2) - Lauren Gilley Page 0,85

His gun clattered to the floor.

Around her, she heard grunts and impacts. A shout somewhere farther ahead.

She turned to find Lance grappling with another guard, just in time to see Lance get a grip on his jaw and snap his neck. He let go, and the body fell with a heavy thud. When Lance turned, her eyes went straight to the shiny patch down low on his jacket, below the reach of his Kevlar.

The dead man held a knife dark with blood.

“You got stabbed,” she said, reaching for him, flooded with horror.

“Bastard got the drop on me. I’m fine, it’s fine.” He gripped her shoulders and spun her back around, but not before she saw the lines of pain etched in his face. “Keep moving.”

She swallowed down a surge of fear-sickness – fear for him, for the damage, fear she couldn’t allow herself right now, in the thick of things – and pressed onward, knives at the ready.

She expected to encounter more guards, all down the long length of the row, roots catching at their elbows, trailing over their shoulders. But they didn’t, and when they reached the end of the row, and the open lab space there, she realized why.

Beck stood amid a tableau of bodies. Seven, she counted quickly, all heavy, black-clad hired muscle. All dead. One’s head looked to be on backward, and a black tide of blood was rapidly spreading from beneath the twist of limbs and newly-slack faces. Eyes stared sightless; fingers twitched open around unused weapons.

He turned to them, flicked blood delicately off one claw – it landed in a scatter of droplets on the pale tile – and said, “Well, that takes care of at least most of our welcoming committee, I imagine.”

Gavin skidded into sight and blurted, “You did all that yourself?”

“He can cut chains in half,” Tris said, arriving alongside Gallo, expression made somehow grimmer by the blue and purple light. “What’re a few goons?”

“Good,” Rose said decisively. She started to turn back to Lance. “You–”

“We should keep moving,” he said, firmly.

She glared at him, but he stepped past her, and headed for the stairwell.

She went to Beck’s side, not bothering to step around the expanding puddle of blood. She was no stranger to standing in blood. “He’s hurt,” she whispered.

“And being proud about it, I see,” Beck said. “Well, it can be seen to later.”

She gripped his sleeve. “Our conduit, Morgan. She could heal it.”

“And will, when we return to base,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a chance of them flying her in now, is there?”

His expression, and tone, were pleasant, reasonable. Devoid of all worry.

Again, she found herself inhaling deeply.

“Let’s go, Rosie,” he said, touching her shoulder.

She went.

They encountered another team of guards on the stairwell. It was an open, tall, concrete set of stairs, and while Tris dispatched the first man in the knot, Beck spread his wings and flew up and over, landing in the midst of them. His movements were a blur, even surer and quicker than they’d been pre-fall. Blood sprayed up the walls in red-black arcs. The men fell. Again, Beck flicked blood off his claws, a fastidious little movement, and invited them to follow with a glance.

“This is…unbelievable,” Gallo said beside Rose, awed.

She could believe it, though. This was Beck. He’d always defied explanation.

When they reached the door that let out onto the twelfth floor – the floor that was Shubert’s personal domain – Beck paused, his hand on the door handle, and turned to give them all a toothy grin. “This is going to be fun.”

Rose’s nerves crackled with anticipation; her hand tightened on the hilt of her knife. She tried to glance toward Lance, to check on him, after that climb–

But Beck turned the handle, and it was go time.

The stairs fed into a narrow foyer of sorts, its floor tiled in slate, just as Shubert’s old townhouse had been. The décor was modern and sleek, though, more cohesive – at least until Beck bodily picked up a guard and smashed him through a glass side table.

“Beck–” she shouted, as another guard came at his back.

But he’d noticed. He still held the collar of the man he’d swung like a bag of laundry, and he didn’t even turn toward the second; his tail shot out, lightning-quick, and the spade tip punched into the man’s chest. The man fell forward into it like a puppet with cut strings, blood exploding out of his mouth. Beck’s tail flexed, cracked like a whip,

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