Night In A Waste Land (Hell Theory Book 2)

by Lauren Gilley

  “No,” she said, giving another tug on her jacket collar. “Not really.”

  “Hungry?” he asked, undeterred.

  Her stomach growled, and she hoped he hadn’t heard it. “I could eat.”

  “Come on. There’s a place just up here that does kebabs.”

  Hunger, like fatigue, had become one of those sensations that necessitated action, but which didn’t concern her imagination. When she got hungry, it was a bother; she ate some bland mess hall food to refuel, and kept going.

  But when Lance led her to a stall with its steel panels propped open to let out lantern light, and deliciously fragrant steam, her stomach rumbled not just with hunger, but with want. It smelled heavenly, and she realized her mouth was watering already; that she was sniffing the air appreciatively and anticipating the spice and warmth and grease of the meal to come, just as she had in Beck’s kitchen.

  They settled into the back of the line to wait behind other eager, jacketed patrons, and she realized they’d lost Gavin and Gallo somewhere along the way.

  She craned her neck to look over the bobbing, hatted heads of the other shoppers. “He’s not going to get Frankie into some kind of trouble, is he?”

  “Only the good kind,” Lance assured.

  She sent him a look.

  He smirked. “The fun kind.”

  “Hookers,” she said, flatly. “’Cause that’s a good idea.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Aw, come on. Guys – people – need to let off some steam. Especially with what we do for a living. It’s harmless.”

  “Is that where you’re headed after this? To let off steam?”

  His brows lifted, head tilting. Thoughtful. “And if I was?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “Would that bother you?”

  “No.” But she could hear the way her tone was too sharp; knew she didn’t have her expression under control. Took a breath, tried to school her features, and said, “That’s none of my business.”

  “It’s not,” he said, not unkindly. “But you seem to care.”

  She opened her mouth to respond – then saw the hint of a smile in his eyes, and pressed her own lips tightly together. Felt an embarrassed flush come up in her cheeks. He’d gotten her; she could grant him that. Not that she’d say it.

  “Ha,” he said, letting the smile break through. “So you’re not made of stone.”

  The line shuffled forward, and she stuck her hands in her pockets and faced ahead, face overly warm.

  Lance shuffled beside her, keeping pace. “That wasn’t an insult, you know. It’s a good thing you’re not made of stone. You don’t have to be cold to be a good soldier.”

  She darted him a questioning look, one she retracted when she saw the way he was looking at her: with a patience and gentleness she didn’t have the capacity to handle right now.

  “We do some dark shit, don’t get me wrong,” he went on. “It’ll give you nightmares, no doubt. I figure you’re used to those.”

  She found herself nodding.

  “But we’re also a team. And the only way to be an effective part of a team is to give a damn about the guys – and girls – walking into the fire beside you. It hurts like hell if something happens.” His voice grew soft. “But you have to care. That’s the only thing that makes this job worth it.”

  They moved up again, and when she glanced toward him, he was staring off across the chatting, milling crowd. “I thought you said you forgot the name of the last Knight you lost.”

  A low blow. Vicious, really.

  She didn’t use to be cruel, before Beck died.

  “It was Craw- Cromwell.” She didn’t think he sounded sure about that. “And he was much less memorable than you.” The little smirk that followed confirmed what she’d been suspecting for weeks, now: that he liked her.

  A misplaced sense of guilt, most likely. He felt responsible for her, because he’d been there the night she lost Beck. Because his boss – even if it had been an op rather than a true loyalty – was the reason she was here in the first place.

  She didn’t want him to like her.

  The couple in front of them moved off, food in-hand, and they were at the counter, then. Rose’s stomach gave another growl of interest as she caught sight of cooks turning kebabs on a flaming grill; the up-close scent of cooked meat and vegetables hit her like a slap.

  Lance ordered for both of them, and he pressed a paper boat loaded with kebabs and rice into her hands. There were picnic tables, but Lance headed off at an ambling walk, two bottles of soda tucked under his arm, and Rose was content to eat and walk; sitting down and eating together, just the two of them, would have felt far too intimate. Would have reminded her of dinners with Beck, and all the ways Lance was certainly not him.

  He uncapped one of the sodas and passed it to her.

  “Thanks.” The sharp, sweet taste chased the warm spice of the meat, and she had to actively work not to smile; it was the best thing she’d eaten in months, but smiling around Lance du Lac felt risky.

  “See anything you like?” he asked around a mouthful, nodding toward the stalls. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think you’ve spent any of your wages on anything. You should have some pocket change to burn.”

  She gave him a flat look as answer.

  He shrugged. “Guess there’s not lots of places to shop at base.”

  “Decidedly not.”

  Her tone had been downright frosty – but he grinned in response. “Let’s have a look around, then.”

  Let’s implied together. Rose didn’t like the familiarity, on instinct, but she took another bite of her kebab and didn’t protest. Walked along beside him down the bustling alley between shop stalls, while snow and ash sifted down around them.

  The thing she kept noticing, again and again, was the way the people they passed – shopping, talking, eating, bundled up against the cold, many carrying umbrellas to keep the snow and ash off their heads – seemed…happy. That was too generous a word, she thought. More like content. Unworried. Back home, in the city where she’d gone to school, and gone to work, and lived beneath Miss Tabitha’s cruel thumb – where Beck had found her, and given her a new sort of home; where she’d hunted with him, and known the warmth and roughness and gentleness of his hands in the tall, canopied bed of his personal suite. There, people had walked with ducked heads, or driven in cars with bullet-proof glass. The poor slept in the gutters, and the rich never stepped a toe out onto their balconies. Misery had lived in the patter of water on flagstones; in the mist that curled her hair and settled deep in her lungs.

  But for all that this city was as derelict as every other, there was an ephemeral sort of warmth and good cheer on the air tonight, nearly contagious when coupled with her yellow, turmeric-tasting rice, and the fizz of cola on her tongue, and the way Lance kept pointing things out to her.

  “I have eyes,” she snapped, once, dropping her now-empty paper boat into a trash can. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve like a heathen, and imagined Beck giving her a sternly disapproving look.

  Beck wasn’t here, though.

  Not yet.

  Lance remained unphased. “You don’t strike me as the jewelry type,” he mused, scanning the booths they passed. “What about – there, that one’s got knives.”

  She sent him a withering look – tried to. He was striding off, and she found herself following.

  The booth did indeed offer knives, alongside an array of other small, personal weapons. Her eyes went first to the blades, on instinct: not the expertly-crafted, gleaming new steel ones of her own, but still serviceable. Smoked, dark metal with sharp edges, jagged with serrated teeth. The longest was half the length of her forearm, and the shortest half the length of her pinky finger. Perfect weapons for someone looking for a bit of cheap protection – or for muggers and petty thieves, she thought, sourly.

  All of them were arrayed in overhead racks, and along the back wall of the booth, but up close, beneath a thick plastic counter to prevent
theft, she noted brass knuckles, some blunt, and some sharp. Spiked rings. A blade inside a walking stick, the head an ugly approximation of a snarling bear’s head. Round weights with hollow centers on leather thongs: flails, she realized. Studded gloves and spiked chokers to prevent an enemy from strangling someone.

  Street weaponry. All of it would have been beneath Beck.

  “See something you like?” Lance materialized at her elbow, not touching, but close enough for her to feel the heat radiating off his body, pushing back against the chill of the night; close enough for the steam of his breath to plume in front of her face; close enough to smell spicy kebabs, and his cologne, and for her to feel a small, distant chime inside herself, a faint awareness like a struck bell.

  “Yes,” she said, tapping the plastic counter, arriving at a sudden, fierce decision. “I’ll take these.”

  He snorted.

  ~*~

  When the team reconvened, Rose noted that Gavin was tousled and drowsy and beaming, and that Gallo walked with his head down, his cheeks pink from more than the cold.

  “Next time,” Gavin proclaimed, shaking Gallo by the shoulder. “I’m gonna drag you inside.” He laughed, a little drunk and thrilled by his own joke.

  Gallo tried to duck down deeper into the collar of his jacket.

  Tris showed up last, his expression both more tired, and tighter than it had been before. He’d missed a button on his shirt, Rose noticed.

  Gallo finally managed to shake loose from Gavin and put several paces between them. He shot a glance toward Tris, and the way his face fell another fraction told Rose he’d noticed the missed button, too.

  “What did you two get up to?” Gavin asked them. “You find a bar fight to throw Greer into?”

  Rose stared at him.

  Lance chuckled and said, “Nah, did some shopping.” Thankfully, he didn’t elaborate.

  ~*~

  Hardly anyone drove in this city, and no one would have cared about a drunk driver besides. Several stalls sold beer, and heated wine in foam cups. Gavin insisted on getting some, and Lance got a cup of his own. By the time they headed back to the base, Gavin was thoroughly wasted, swaying and trying to convince Tris and Gallo to sing some sort of rowdy drinking song with him.

  Lance’s cheeks, Rose saw when she darted him a glance, were stained red from the alcohol and the cold, eyes glittering as he surveyed their surroundings. He didn’t stagger or stumble, but his voice was a little softer and less guarded than usual when he leaned in a little closer and said, “I know you hate us.”

  Unexpected. She felt her brows go up. “What? I don’t hate you.” The protest was automatic, and she wished, after, biting her lip, that she hadn’t offered it. She didn’t owe him that kind of reassurance.

  His gaze slid over, mouth curving into another of those small, amused smiles he’d been giving her all night, unbothered by her venom. “No, you do. Or, at least, you want to hate us. And that’s alright. But I hope you won’t forever. If you let yourself, you might even like us.”

  The nerve of him. She couldn’t find a rational explanation for the white-hot anger that flared in her chest. She faced forward, not wanting to look at him lest he see the furious, stinging tears gathering in her eyes. She managed to choke out, “I like Frankie.”

  Lance laughed. The asshole.

  When they reached the base, she headed straight to the room she’d been assigned for the night, a dorm no bigger than a closet, just like at their home base. She shut herself inside, threw her shopping bag down on the bunk, and stood leaning back against the door a moment, hands clutching tight in the front of her own jacket, catching her breath.

  She hadn’t been this winded on the op – on any op. This wasn’t exertion, but emotion wringing her out like an old dish rag, and she hated it. It was so useless, so childish, so stupid. She wished she hadn’t gone to the market; that she had in fact stayed here and found a treadmill to run the belt off of, rather than be subjected to Lance du Lac’s attempts at friendship.

  Not just friendship, an unhelpful voice chimed in the back of her head, and that was even worse.

  She couldn’t allow these people to make her feel like a part of something. She couldn’t afford to grow complacent here.

  She closed her eyes, and conjured Beck’s voice from memory. Imagined him reading to her, by the firelight in the library, his voice low and velvety and beloved, animating the hearts of the characters on the page.

  Her own heart slowed, eventually. When she had herself under control, she pushed off the door and crossed to the half-sized desk against the wall. Rooted around in her bag until she found the little zippered pouch that contained her most valuable possessions.

  The two pendants hooked on the single gold chain winked up at her beneath the harsh tube lights. The rose and the crown. She didn’t like to wear them for fear the chain would snap on an op, and she would lose them. But tonight, she fastened the necklace around her throat, and let the pendants lay on top of her shirt, where she could see them. Where she could cover them with her hand and feel their familiar points.

  “I’m coming,” she whispered to herself – to Beck, wherever he was. (Hell.) “I won’t get distracted. I’ll find you.” More fervent than any prayer.

  FIVE

  The Present

  The plane, with its hollow belly and its jump seats and its netting for their baggage, the drone of its engines insanely loud, was no more comfortable on the return flight, but Rose couldn’t be bothered by those sorts of mortal inconveniences. Not with Beck back – and pacing up and down the length of the cargo hold, wings folded back, as steady and graceful as ever, despite being on a moving plane above the Atlantic.

  “He should really sit down,” Gavin said, not for the first time; he was having to shout above the engine noise. At no point had he addressed this remark to Beck himself, but to Rose, instead.

  Lance looked on Beck with mistrust and reluctant awe. The other three, though – even Tris, though he did an admirable job of maintaining his usual indifference – were openly frightened. None of them had made direct eye contact, nor spoken to him.

  Beck, being Beck, had of course noticed. He paused when Gavin spoke, tail whisking side-to-side. He spun, hands clasping behind the small of his back, beneath his wings, and his golden stare zeroed in on Gavin a moment, sharp as a blade – Gavin blanched, throat kicking as he gulped – and then he looked toward Rose. And toward Lance, sitting beside her, his gaze shifting between the two of them.

  She wondered, briefly, almost horrified, if he could tell that she and Lance…

  Probably. He’d probably known back at the church. He’d always been the most perceptive person she’d ever met.

  “Tell me about the city,” he said. “What sort of hell are we walking into?” He grinned quickly at his own joke.

  Rose grinned back, but only because he was here, at last; it faded quickly, when faced with the enormity of their task. “That night in Castor’s basement. When you–” It still hurt to say, even though he was gazing softly back at her, finally, eyes glowing. “When the ritual started, when the conduit Gabriel killed Castor, a gateway to hell was opened. And in the time between it opening and closing, when – when you were lost – things managed to slip out. Lots of things.”

  “Hell beasts,” Lance said. “There are two kinds of conduits, now. The angels that we’ve faced before – and a new kind. A demonic kind. They’re battling each other, and, as you can guess, humanity’s been caught in the crossfire for the past five years.”

  “Humanity’s always been in that position,” Beck said. “What of the demons? Are they any more powerful?”

  “Equally matched, for the most part,” Rose said. “But the war’s on properly now, in a way it never was during the First Rift. The streets have never been this bloody.”

  “And the Knights have never been so busy,” Lance added. “We’ve learned how to engage them more effectively, but we’re still humans messing with a kind of power
we can’t understand.”

  Beck showed his teeth, his new fangs flashing, in an expression that wasn’t at all a smile. “And this is where I come in.” He didn’t sound bitter or unhappy – Rose thought he almost sounded eager. He always had enjoyed his hunting. But the way he bared his fangs wasn’t pleasant.

  “I planned to raise you either way,” Rose said, “but the only way I could get assistance” – she gestured to the plane encasing them, the men sitting beside and across from her – “was if I pitched you to my superiors as a weapon.”

  “As well you should have.”

  “But…”

  Lance’s gaze landed heavy against the side of her face, burning, questioning.

  “Rest assured, Sergeant,” Beck told him. “Rose isn’t thinking of deserting. She feels beholden to her company, now. Doubtless she’d tell me to run off if I chose, but she won’t abandon the mission.” His unsettling non-smile sharpened at the edges, honed like a blade.

  Lance let out a deep breath, but didn’t respond.

  Tris, nearly shouting to be heard above the engines, said, “Here’s what I’m wondering, though. You’ve got wings.” He met Beck’s gaze when he turned to him, his own face impressively unimpressed. The twitch of an eyelid betrayed deeply suppressed nerves. “And horns. But does that make you any better at fighting conduits than us?”

  Gallo’s lips moved, a silent oh, shit.

  Beck chuckled, and the low sound was more smoke than velvet these days. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  SIX

  Before

  Rose shifted the tray she carried to one arm and knocked on the heavy, locked door before her. The lead-lined cell was soundproof, so she couldn’t hear whether she was invited in or not, but it felt like a courtesy. Morgan had said she could feel the vibration, and knew that someone stood on the other side of the thick door.

  Rose counted to five, then spun the wheel, listened to the bolts sliding back, the hiss of depressurized air. She stepped into the vestibule, sealed herself inside, and then went through the second, more normal door, inside the box where Captain Bedlam had housed their captured conduit.