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, shaking off the now-limp guard. Then he strode forward into a massive, open-air space littered with couches, chairs, chaises, and even a large dining table.
Rose followed him. She caught a fast, confirming glance of Shubert: as tall and golden and elegant as she remembered, dressed in an impeccable suit, his eyes glowing blue. He was wrist-deep in a screaming woman’s stomach, phased right through her dress and skin as he drained her of life in prep for the battle to come. He glanced toward them, quickly, as her eyes flared, and she died.
But this was where he’d kept back most of his troops, and as they closed in on them, Rose lost herself to the fight.
She still didn’t dare draw her gun, not with all of them back-to-back: too much chance of hitting one of her fellow Knights. She fought with a knife in each hand, a jagged, fat blade in the left good for hacking and blocking, and her favorite slim stabbing blade in her right. She dodged slow, inelegant jabs, and struck again, and again, drawing grunts, wetting her blades in crimson up to the hilts. A gunshot cracked over her head, and she ducked and rolled, hamstringing a guard as she somersaulted between his legs. He went down hard just behind her, and she used his back as a stepstool to leap at another, catching him in the throat with her bigger knife. Blood sprayed hot across her face, salty on her lips.
Behind her, she heard the crack of Beck’s laughter, and it could have been five years ago, the two of them in a warehouse, cutting down bigger, stronger, better-paid thugs like it was nothing. Like it was a dance.
He’d been right: it was fun.
She heard sounds of male effort around her.
Gallo said, “Tris?” tight with alarm.
“I’m fine. Watch out.”
The thuds of bodies hitting the floor, and bodies colliding. She became aware that her opponents came slower, and more reluctantly. They were thinning the ranks.
Then Gavin said, “Lance!”
Rose halted, and then pulled her knife out of the belly she’d stuck it in. She blinked, and felt like she was surfacing after a deep dive into dark water. Turned, and there, across a sea of felled guards, she saw Lance, on his knees on the floor, swaying, a hand clutched to the wound in his gut; blood ran over and between his fingers, a shiny patch like an oil slick down his shirt, and the whole leg of his pants. Gavin stood over him, gripping his shoulders.
He glanced toward her, face tight with fear. It was the most afraid she’d ever seen him. “He’s gonna bleed out!”
Rose ran to them. Went down on her knees beside Lance, and up close, she could see how pale and clammy his skin was; saw the way his lashes fluttered. “Shit. Shit, shit. Lance? Can you hear me?”
He didn’t respond.
She sheathed her knives and fumbled in one of her cargo pockets for her portable med kit. “Watch our backs,” she said to Gavin. “Don’t let anyone…”
Gavin said, “Oh my God,” in an entirely different voice.
Rose tore open a packet of gauze with her teeth and pressed the whole wad of it to Lance’s wound, over the hole in his shirt. He needed to be laid down, to have the area flushed; needed firmer pressure than her bare hand could provide. She heard running footfalls; glimpsed Gallo and Tris heading for them, Gallo already unslinging his pack.
“Oh my God,” Gavin repeated.
She twisted her head around, an order she wasn’t entitled to give poised on her tongue…
One that promptly flew out of her head.
She had a clear profile view of the unfolding tableau. Beck had backed Shubert up against the dining table, was bending him back across it with one clawed hand at his throat, and his tail stabbed through the conduit’s belly, out the other side, the spade tip buried in the wood, pinning him in place. Shubert had phased his hand through Beck’s chest.
Rose gulped.
But Beck’s eyes weren’t burning out, and he wasn’t screaming or shuddering, the way the woman had. In fact, he was smiling, fangs bared right in Shubert’s face.
Shubert’s terrified face.
All the color had bled out of it, and his lips trembled. “Why…why isn’t it…what are you?”
And then, in the deeper, resonant voice of the angel inside him, with a hint of something almost like dread: “King Arthur.”
Beck’s grin widened. “Exactly.” Then he ducked his head and bit Shubert’s throat.
Rose gasped, and heard Gavin, Gallo, and Tris echo it.
Lance’s blood tickled her palm, hot, terrifying.
Beck…Beck seemed to drink. His throat worked as he swallowed, again and again. His black hair trailed over Shubert’s slackening face, and his wings flexed in small increments, echoing the rhythm of his drinking.
It seemed to go on for only a moment, and for forever. Rose wasn’t sure she breathed the whole time.
But, then, finally, Beck lifted his head, his mouth red and steaming. He tipped his head back, eyes closed a moment, sighing. His tongue darted out
, cleaning the blood from his lips, from his fangs.
Shubert wasn’t moving, but that didn’t stop Beck – once he’d straightened – from gripping his head in both clawed hands and wrenching it to the side, so he faced them, glowing blue eyes blank and sightless. The crack of the body’s neck breaking echoed through the otherwise silent space, rebounding off the windows.
Beck withdrew his tail from the body with a sick squelch, stepped back, and lifted Shubert up with a hand beneath each of his arms. “That should buy us some time,” he said, brightly, turning to them. “Long enough to get him back to base and properly bound. You have lead and iron, right?”
After a long beat, Gallo said, “Y-you. You killed him.”
“No, dear,” Beck said, smile slipping, sighing impatiently. “I’ve incapacitated him.” His gaze skipped to Lance. “Hm. He doesn’t look good.”
Rose waited a beat for someone, anyone to take charge. To start barking orders.
In the end, she was the one who said, “We have to call in a helo.”
“Excellent idea, sweetheart,” Beck said, smile returning. “Get your soldier stitched up. I’ll take this back.” He hefted Shubert’s limp corpse – or, weakened body? – over toward the windows.
“Beck!”
He glanced back over his shoulder, wings low so their eyes could meet.
Her chest ached. “Beck. What are you now? What are you really?”
He tilted his head to that new, birdlike angle that wasn’t quite the same as it had always been.
Different, Morgan had warned.
Yes, yes, he was different.
“A little of this, a little of that,” he said, sing-song. “But mostly…you heard the man. I’m King Arthur.” His fangs flashed. “Welcome to my Round Table, at long last.”
Then he gathered his burden, and leaped, head ducking. His horns broke the window, and it shattered in a dazzle of flashing crystal shards as Beck jumped out into the rain, his wings unfurled, and he disappeared into the darkness.
THE END
To be Continued…
~*~
Up next:
Book Three
And a tie-in short story about Tris and Gallo
Stay tuned!
Other Titles by Lauren Gilley:
The Dartmoor/Lean Dogs Legacy Series (in reading order):
Fearless
Price of Angels
Half My Blood
The Skeleton King
Secondhand Smoke
Snow In Texas
Tastes Like Candy
Loverboy
American Hellhound
Shaman
Prodigal Son
Lone Star
Homecoming
The Sons of Rome Series
White Wolf
Red Rooster
Dragon Slayer
Golden Eagle
Lionheart (coming soon)
The Russell Series
Made for Breaking
God Love Her
Keeping Bad Company
The Walker Series
Keep You
Dream of You
Better Than You
Fix You
Rosewood
Standalones
Whatever Remains
Walking Wounded
Shelter
Hell Theory Series
King Among the Dead
Night in a Waste Land
Night In A Waste Land (Hell Theory Book 2) Page 22
