Castor and his entourage reached the main floor, and headed down between two churning assembly lines. The machinery was belching white steam again, and visibility was reducing. Castor’s path would lead him right past their hiding spot.
Beck shifted forward without making a sound, braced his gun loosely in both hands, and waited.
Rose wasn’t one for prayers – she’d never lived in a religious household, and Beck’s talk of the heavens was largely academic, and practical, based on what he’d seen of conduits. But she prayed now. Graceless, uncertain, desperate. Please let this work. Please keep him safe. Please let us escape.
Even if anyone was listening, she didn’t figure she was the sort of person who had prayers answered.
“…streamlined the process,” Castor was saying as he passed beneath them, talking animatedly with his hands as the dazed and terrified dealers trailed along behind him. “The new dosage is twice as potent as the old, but we’ve tweaked the fillers. Much less chance of an overdose with the new binders–”
Beck had a suppressor screwed into the barrel of his .45, and it hardly made a sound when it kicked in his hands. A quiet pffft of displaced air.
Castor tripped, body going taut. Blood exploded forward, a red blossom from the exit wound. Then he collapsed.
A direct hit. A perfect shot.
Rose grabbed Beck’s jacket and tugged him down out of sight. No one had even turned toward them yet. No one had seen. “We have to go,” she hissed, and pandemonium erupted just a few yards away. Shouting, swearing, screaming. Someone barked clipped orders, and it would only be a matter of moments before a search began for the shooter.
Beck slipped his gun away, and pulled his favorite tactical knife. Met her gaze – his eyes almost feverish with triumph – and nodded. “Just like we planned.”
Someone halted the assembly lines with a sound of squealing gears, and, like before, the steam billowed and swelled, thick as rain-heavy clouds along the floor. Rose could hear feet running over the concrete, the muffled shouting and screaming, but visibility was down to near zero again.
The perfect conditions for an escape.
Beck jumped down to the floor, leading the way, and Rose hurried after.
A guard reared up out of the mist, on her right, one of the shirtless, cudgel-bearing toughs used to keep the drug packagers in line. He looked toward them, and then the mist swirled around him, screening them. Rose had a knife in her hand, but she kept moving, and they were past him, and it was a mad rush toward the vent.
For a moment, she thought – stupidly – that they would get away. No one had seen them, no one could find them in this dense fog.
But then the steam parted around a black-clad figure, and Beck got his knife up just in time to intercept a strike headed right for his face.
It was one of the death squad boys, tall, and powerful, and deadly serious. Beck’s knife caught him in the wrist. The hand spasmed open, and he dropped the gun he was carrying, but a flicker of muscle in his cheek was the only sign the pain had registered.
He brought up his other hand without hesitation, and made a grab for Beck’s face, fingers hooked, ready to gouge at his eyes.
He either hadn’t seen, or had dismissed Rose.
A mistake.
She ducked low, whirled under his guard, and punched her knife into his torso. Deep between his two lowest ribs.
He did make a sound, then: a deep gasp.
Beck cut his throat, shoved him back, and he toppled off into the steam and was lost.
Another reared up to take his place, and another, coming at them from opposite sides.
Rose caught Beck’s gaze, one fast exchange, and felt her mouth curve to echo the tiny smile he gave her. Then they spun away from one another, backs together, blades raised.
The guards were strong – too strong for her to have fought them bare-handed. But she didn’t have to; they couldn’t catch her. She ducked swipes, dodged the muzzle of a gun, and struck. The give of skin, the hot rush of blood, and she was already moving, stabbing, striking, slashing. Blood spattered her neck, her face; she licked its saltiness off her lips.
Behind her: grunts, a curse, a gasp – none of them Beck’s. He fought silently, the only sound the rustle of his coat, and the snick of his knife through fabric and flesh.
The first two guards fell, and were replaced by three more, four more.
The steam began to clear – but by then, there was no one left to face them. Rose looked up and over the ring of bodies that surrounded them, and saw the chaos of the factory: people running, shouting, hurrying. She spotted another member of the death squad, the man who’d poured the conduit’s blood into the vat. He had his gun in his hand, and he locked gazes with her, his eyes dark, his jaw clenched. He didn’t fire, though. She wondered why.
“Rosie,” Beck said. She heard him pull the pin on the smoke grenade he’d brought, and green smoke boiled up around them.
She sheathed her knives, covered her mouth and nose with one hand; gripped Beck’s hand with the other. Their palms slipped, both slick with blood. But his fingers were tight, and his footing sure as he headed back for the vent.
Behind her bloody hand, Rose was grinning like a loon.
TWENTY-TWO
“He’s dead.” Beck paused in the act of unlocking the back door, and turned to face her, the first time he’d made proper eye contact since they fled the warehouse property. The drive home – they’d left the Jag parked down a service street half a mile from the main driveway – had been silent, humming with a kind of giddy, positive tension. Beck hadn’t spoken, and she hadn’t dared to, afraid she’d do something as undignified as giggle. She wondered why anyone did drugs when it was possible to feel this high without them.
Beck shoved his hands – sticky now with dried blood – back through his hair, holding it off his face. The rain had stopped, and the cloud cover was patchy enough to give the moonlight a path to his face; it gleamed silver off his forehead, and his sharp cheekbones; dazzlingly bright in his eyes. “He’s dead.” He smiled at her – beamed, all his teeth showing ivory in the gloom, sharp canines winking. “Rosie, he’s dead. I killed him!”
She smiled back, so wide her face ached. “You did. You really did.”
He stared at her a moment with unabashed, boyish glee. Joy, triumph. Her heart swelled until she thought it might burst, seeing him like this, being a part of this moment with him.
Then his eyes shifted, head tilting a fraction, as hunger stole across his face. A bright spark of need that was almost violence – before he cupped her face, stepped in close, and kissed her.
It was filthy: his tongue pressing for entry straight off, hot and insistent, cracking her jaw wide. He bit at her lips – and she bit back. Gripped the front of his jacket and held him to her. Lifted her leg and hooked it around his hip, drawing his lower body into hers, hips to hips. He was already hard, straining at the fly of his tight jeans. She could smell the blood on his hands, feel its tackiness as he framed her face, urging her jaw even wider.
They rocked against one another, stumbling. Too many clothes, too much effort to get inside, and get naked, and get someplace horizontal. She needed him now, and she could feel how much he needed her, with the smell of the kill, and of victory, fresh on their skin.
Beck staggered back against the door, one of his hands gripping her waist, hauling her even closer. They couldn’t be too close.
“I need you,” he murmured between kisses, throaty, and honest, and broken. All of her insides clenched in response. “Rosie…”
She heard the lock click – he’d fumbled back to turn the key – and then the door swept open, and they stumbled across the threshold into the dark kitchen.
One of them, she wasn’t sure who, managed to kick the door shut, and they fumbled at one another until the edge of the island bit into her back – not as fiercely as his teeth latched into her throat.
“Ah!” She couldn’t stop the breathy cry that left
her mouth; kicked her head back to give him better access. They were wet with rainwater, and blood, and sweat, fully clothed, strapped with knives – but it was essential right now that he be inside her. “Beck…”
He growled in response, and hoisted her up to sit on the countertop. They fumbled at each other’s clothes, fingers catching on buttons, and belts, sliding against sweat. But then, finally…
They both groaned when he sank inside her. That first breach, the hard stretch of it.
He set a fast pace. Sharp snaps of his hips as he held fast to hers, pulling her forward onto his cock, kissing and licking and breathing harshly at her throat. She gripped his shoulders, nails digging into the slick leather of his coat.
Orgasm hit her like a truck. A dazzle of spark and light and rippling waves of pleasure.
When she returned to herself, she was lying back across the counter, breathing in great gulps, pinned beneath Beck’s weight. He was still inside her, but softening, lips moving against her throat as he murmured endearments.
She raked her fingers through her hair. “I can’t believe we did it.”
“Me neither, darling.” He pushed upright, sliding free of her – they both winced. And took both her hands in his, pulling her up, too. “Let’s go to bed.”
He kissed again, lingering and sweet this time, a silent trading of I love yous between them.
~*~
Theirs was a quiet household. All of them soft-footed; TV was a rarity, and enjoyed mostly by Kay. No one threw fits, no one slammed doors. The house was old, and it creaked and groaned, especially beneath the tread of even the quietest walker…but it was not a loud house. Sudden bursts of violent noise were an anomaly.
That was why Rose had been startled the night Beck came banging in the back door, bleeding and half-dead. It was why she – and Beck – woke the night the front and back doors were kicked in. The night of her first kill.
She would have heard the men coming for them, that night, if they’d been loud. But they’d learned. They were better-trained than the others. Professionals.
The death squad.
Rose woke when a hand clapped over her mouth.
Her eyes snapped open. Lungs full of the scent of cordite; palm rough against her lips.
A face hovered above her own: not Beck’s. “Shut up, bitch,” she was told.
She reached out, weaponless, dressed only in pajamas, but ready to draw blood…
Only for something sharp to prick her neck. Injection, she thought, and then was lost to unconsciousness.
~*~
“…Rose. Rosie.” A low whisper, carried on a tide of blood. Beck’s voice, familiar and beloved, all scraped-raw and full of faults.
Rosie.
She tipped her head back, and there was the Rift, jagged and bright amidst the stars, pushing back the clouds, chasing away the dark, until the slowly-lapping tide around her was bathed with its glow. As she watched, the stars swelled, too bright to look at, and then fell, streaking to earth, long comet tails flaring. She couldn’t see them hit the blood waves, but felt it; low, deep rumbles through the hot tides that surged around her, blood lapping at her throat, her chin, filling her mouth…
She woke on a gasp.
She was staring at her own lap. She was wearing her pajama shorts, and grimy fingerprints streaked her thighs. Bruises were coming up on her shins.
She remembered the hand over her mouth. The needle.
It took an age to lift her head. Her pulse thumped, quick and erratic, in her ears, and the world spun crazily; her vision blurred. She swallowed back a wave of nausea, and blinked, forcing her vision clear.
She sat on the floor, legs splayed out before her, bruised and sore from being lugged out of the house and into whatever vehicle had transported her. A cold, hard pressure along her spine, a post or pole of some sort; she tried to lift her hands, and found they were bound together with coarse rope.
“Rosie.”
There was Beck beside her, too far away to touch, even with her toes. He sat like she did, on the floor, legs before him, hands tied behind a tall, intricately carved column. She looked at his face – bloodied, bruising, cut; he’d fought their attackers while she was succumbing to the drug – and let her gaze travel up, up, up the column, to the soaring, painted ceiling above. A vision of fat, winged cherubs…fighting demons with scaled tails and leathery wings.
“Sir, they’re waking up,” someone said.
“Excellent.”
She knew that voice; had heard it only hours ago. Tony Castor.
She whipped her head around, and the room tilted, and blurred. She had to close her eyes, and listened to Castor chuckle. When she dared look, and slowly, by degrees, the room slid into focus.
It was circular, and colonnaded; an indoor pavilion of sorts, with its soaring, painted ceilings, and, beyond the columned arches, a hallway paneled in sleek marble, and set with portraits. Guards stood between the tall paintings, guns strapped to their chests. And in the center of the room: Castor and his conduit, Daniel. The floor was dark stone, and it was marked…
Marked with chalk, she saw, the nearest symbols hastily scrawled near her right foot. A circular sequence of symbols that made no sense to her; words scrawled hastily in Latin.
A pentagram at the center.
She gulped, and glanced toward Beck, who stared at Castor with glittering contempt.
Castor, who’d been dead earlier. Who Beck had shot through the heart.
He hadn’t changed clothes. Wore the same suit as before, minus his tie, his white shirt soaked through with dried blood.
He smiled, and his teeth were stained red; his face was flecked with it. “There he is. King Arthur. It’s been a long time, Augustus.”
Beck surged forward, straining at his bonds, tendons standing out sharp in his throat. But he couldn’t get loose, and subsided with a deep exhale that lifted the damp hair from his face.
“You’re still an excellent shot,” Castor continued, and unbuttoned his jacket. Beneath, the shirt was dark and crusted with dried blood. He unbuttoned it, and parted the halves…to reveal smooth, unblemished skin. No sign of a gunshot wound. “But something you failed to learn long ago: having the right sort of friends trumps having the right sort of skills every time.”
The conduit, Rose realized with a lurch. The shot had hit the mark, but the conduit had healed the damage. Had saved his life.
Beck rebelled against his bonds again with a curse.
Castor threw his head back and laughed. “God, you’re just the same. Just as stubborn and violent as ever. Did you learn anything from your brother? Can’t you understand you’ll never be anything, Arthur?”
His glittering gaze shifted to Rose, and she stilled, sucked in a quick breath. “I’m surprised to see you’re no longer working alone, though. You’ve made an…interesting…choice in a slaughter partner.”
He started toward her, slow and deliberate, and the revulsion that stirred in her belly threatened to make her sick.
Rose tried to shrink backward; her hands curled to fists…and she felt the cool, hard length of the knife strapped to her forearm. She and Beck both had one. Had secured them in the sheaths, with their straps, beneath the long sleeves of their shirts, before they collapsed into bed. Just in case, he’d said. It was something he did often: sleeping armed. If she could get to hers...
But she was tied tight, and couldn’t move; could only lift her chin in defiance and watch as Castor came to stand over her, reeking of dried blood.
He grinned, head tilting to the side. It was an agile, unnerving, predatory movement on Beck, but one of graceless indifference on this man. He wasn’t someone who ever had to do his own dirty work. He wasn’t looking for weak points, or giving her a proper scrutiny.
“Pretty,” he pronounced. “But young. Too young for this work, I would think.”
One of the death squad goons cracked an ugly laugh. “I didn’t even think he went for girls.”
“Nah,”
another one chimed in, “remember those hookers?”
“Oh, yeah. He likes girls sometimes.”
“He likes killing,” another said, and all three of them cackled.
Castor snapped his fingers, and they all fell silent at once. He gave Rose one last, lingering look, and then moved to stand over Beck. “You’ve been busy, Becket. Very busy.”
At no point in the time she’d known him had Rose been afraid of Beck. She wasn’t afraid now – but the way he looked at Castor sent a chill rippling down her back. “Not busy enough,” he said, voice flat, stare vicious.
Castor’s smile was more of a grimace. “You don’t even realize how pathetic you are, do you?” He leaned down, so their faces were nearly level, and Beck’s whole body went rigid with tension as he strained at his bonds. “You can hate me all you want; you can be full of a breathtaking amount of rage. But you are one man, and I am this city.”
He straightened, and turned; walked back to the center of the room where his conduit stood.
Rose tried to catch Beck’s eye, staring at his taut profile, willing him to glance her way. But he didn’t; didn’t even blink. A muscle leaped in his jaw.
One of Castor’s guards had come to his side – the stern-faced one from before, who’d poured the conduit’s blood into the vat at the factory. His jaw was clenched nearly as tight as Beck’s; his gaze, dark and hooded, swept toward her – one brief, shocking moment of eye contact that conveyed how very displeased he was with this whole situation – then settled respectfully on the floor at his boss’s feet. He extended a small bundle on flat palms, one that Castor unwrapped with an almost delicate touch. A dagger: gleaming, sharp-edged, with an obsidian handle set with rubies. It was comically overwrought…but the sight of it winking in the lamplight as Castor lifted it filled her with fresh dread.
There was power in that weapon. It fairly pulsed with it.
“You know,” Castor mused, turning back to face them – to face Beck. She wasn’t relevant here, and she wasn’t going to say anything to make herself so. Was going to continue twisting her wrists subtly, working at the knots that bound her. They were tight, and tied well, but if she could just get the knife in her sleeve loose… “I should really be thanking you, Becket. It was your obsession that led me down the path to research. The path to this.” He gestured with the dagger, seeming to encompass the chalk circles and runes on the floor. “I have the means to bring it to fruition, but you – you had the imagination.” He offered a nasty grin, and a waggle of the dagger tip that seemed to say oh, you.
King Among the Dead (Hell Theory Book 1) Page 21
