Night In A Waste Land (Hell Theory Book 2) Read online

  NIGHT IN A

  WASTE LAND

  Hell Theory Book Two

  by

  Lauren Gilley

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are all the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to persons, living or dead, is coincidental, or meant to serve as entertainment, rather than fact.

  Names and characters are property of the author and may not be duplicated.

  NIGHT IN A WASTE LAND

  Copyright © 2020 by Lauren Gilley

  Cover design copyright © 2020 by Lauren Gilley

  HP Press®

  Atlanta, GA

  All rights reserved.

  A cry that shiver’d to the tingling stars,

  And, as it were one voice, an agony

  Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills

  All night in a waste land, where no one comes,

  Or hath come, since the making of the world.

  ~ from “Idylls of the King: The Passing of Arthur”

  By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  ONE

  It wouldn’t have been honest to call Arthur Becket a legend. More like a cautionary tale; a juicy bit of gossip. A dark truth whispered where Castor couldn’t hear. By the time Lance came aboard with Castor’s elite guard, after he’d lied and killed to prove himself worthy of the position, he’d done his best to fit in with the others: a rough lot, when they weren’t on the job, fond of drinking, and dirty magazines. They spent their free hours gambling, or forcing strippers to service them in the backs of dark clubs. He’d done more listening than talking, only prodding with questions here and there, and he’d heard the stories about Becket.

  Even among the killers and thugs of Castor’s men, Beck was spoken about with horrified awe and open contempt. He’d had a taste for a certain kind of violence that had repulsed the others. He likes carving people up, a fellow guard confessed one night over bitter, cheap whiskey. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it feels good to pop a fucker, but Becket loved it. Caught him licking his knife one time, the sick piece of shit.

  There were codes of behavior, even amongst the worst of criminals, and Becket had broken them, it seemed.

  Lance’s first glimpse of him had been on the factory floor: a flash of flaring black coat and tossing honey hair through a blur of mist. He’d glimpsed the fire in Becket’s eyes, the joy, the thrill. Had seen his teeth bared in a sharp, feral smile.

  The girl had been a shock. Slender, and smaller, but just as deadly, her movements quick, practiced, efficient. A second striking snake amidst the blunt force of the death squad. He’d had an impression of two equally-matched predators in the thick of their element; and then the mist had sealed around them, and pandemonium reigned, and Castor was alive, somehow, and Lance was hustling him out of the building.

  His second glimpse had come a few hours later. Beck unguarded in the dark of his bedroom, sleeping face-to-face with the girl. Their eyes closed, their expressions peaceful, fingers overlapping on top of the sheets. Beck’s hair had lain softly on one lean cheek, wrists nearly delicate inside the overlarge sleeves of his pajama shirt, and he hadn’t looked like a monster or a lover of violence, then; only a rich boy who’d gone astray, all clean lines, and good breeding, and aristocratic bone structure.

  And the girl…she’d taken his breath a little, just for a moment, as they all stood hovering around the edges of the bed. Face silvered with moonlight, her hair a spill of ink across the pillow. She had the faintest dusting of freckles across her nose, and a lush mouth, faintly parted in sleep.

  He’d felt an alarming tug in his gut – it had been a long time since he’d slept with anyone who wasn’t a jaded professional, cash on the table and a dull, dead look in her eyes. For one guilty moment, he let himself imagine.

  But then Becket was startling awake, leaping up with eyes open, and knife bared. Lance had grappled with him a moment – felt the ungodly strength in his whipcord arms and known that Beck intended to kill him messily, intimately, before Harper got the needle in his neck and he went limp.

  His last glimpse had been in the basement ritual room beneath Castor’s mansion. A dead conduit in his arms, and a fist of blood closing around him, dragging him down. The girl, Rose, had kicked and clawed, and screamed; he’d felt her heartbreak in the wild thrash and hum of her body. The way she’d fought to get loose, to join him.

  I did the right thing, he told himself, after. While she pressed her sobs into a blanket in the passenger seat. When she twirled a knife and squared off from him on the mats at the training facility. When they pinned her wings on, and announced her a full-fledged Rift Walker. I did the right thing, saving her.

  She still whispered Beck’s name in her sleep; had kissed it into the base of Lance’s throat more than once, in the throes, while her nails raked down his back, and she wished that he was her first lover.

  He couldn’t refuse her, even though he’d wanted to. Couldn’t dismiss her theory. They were drowning, and they needed help. Needed a trump card: a new weapon in this war. If Arthur Becket could be that weapon, so be it. It couldn’t hurt to try.

  He’d seen Becket a total of three times, but all three moments had been memorable; Beck’s portrait was stamped firmly against the back of his mind.

  A portrait matched by the visage of the winged creature currently holding Rose’s hand, unfolding itself from the flagstone floor with a long, black tail coiling around its leg, and broad, black wings unfurling, stretching wall-to-wall.

  It wasn’t Beck – it couldn’t be. The horns, and the jet-black hair, and the fangs, and the black claws tipping its long fingers. But that was Beck’s nose; Beck’s aristocratic cheekbones and sharp jaw. The predatory tilt of his head as he turned to regard them all.

  Lance had been so stunned that he’d let his attention slip; had let Gallo draw his gun, which was now pointed at the creature’s chest. The barrel trembled; Gallo’s dark curls shivered across his forehead.

  “What is that?” he asked in a whisper, voice shaking as badly as his arms. “Holy fuck, what is that?”

  Lance reached for him.

  Tris got to him faster. “Francis,” he hissed, and caught a fistful of Gallo’s collar. He dragged him backward with one sharp jerk; got his arms around him, and took his gun all in a matter of seconds.

  Gallo resisted – but clumsily, and not very hard. He stood inside Tris’s embrace slack-jawed, staring, fighting for breath. Utterly panicked.

  Lance shifted his attention back to the creature – the one who still held Rose’s hand. She’d placed hers in his right away, without hesitation. She stood beside it – him; it was naked, and definitely male, steaming, still, and it had Beck’s face, and holy fuck was right.

  The Beck Creature tilted his head, black hair sliding across his shoulders. When he spoke, there was an unnatural undercurrent to his voice; the low harmonics of a big cat, something like a growl. “You, I recognize.”

  Lance took a deep breath, his chest tight, his pulse pounding. “Sergeant Lance du Lac, of the company of the Golden Knights. Formerly undercover with Anthony Castor.”

  Newly-black brows jumped over glowing, golden eyes. “Ah. His death squad.”

  Lance resisted the urge to fidget. Whatever Beck had become, he didn’t relish the idea of showing nervousness to it. “Only as an undercover operative.”

  “Yessss…” A long, drawn-out hiss that couldn’t be called pleased. “You held onto Rosie.”

  Rose stepped in closer, within the half-curled wing, and rested a hand on Beck’s bare chest; murmured something that Lance couldn’t hear, but which left Beck smirking darkl
y.

  He swallowed with difficulty, keenly aware that he’d held onto Rose in more ways than one over the past five years – and now her former lover was not dead, was standing here, and he had wings and a tail and claws. “There was a lot of senseless violence that day,” he said. “I didn’t want to see someone innocent get dragged down into hell with you.”

  Beck’s grin widened, fangs flashing in the lamplight. “Innocent?” He turned to look at Rose, and her face blossomed – opened and melted and shone with a love that was like worship. Wondering, full of awe and doubt like she couldn’t believe he was really here. “What do you think, sweetheart? Are you innocent?”

  They shared a grin that left Lance feeling like an interloper. He felt vaguely sick.

  He thought they would kiss – but then their smiles softened, and Beck lifted his head to survey them all. “Well, then. What have I missed?”

  TWO

  Before

  “Sergeant du Lac!”

  Lance didn’t slow, but cast a glance over his shoulder at the young cadet rushing down the hall after him. The hall branched, and he took the right fork. “Better make it fast, Adamson, I’ve got a plane to catch.”

  “Sir! I’ve just come down from the recruitment offices…” He panted as he caught up to Lance and drew alongside him. “There’s a girl up there – wants to join – Rift Walkers, she said – and some of the boys – they – sir, she challenged them. Wiped – wiped the floor with–”

  Something pinged in the back of his mind, and he drew up short. Adamson nearly fell. “What’s her name?”

  “I dunno. But she knows your name.” The cadet pitched forward, hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. “She said you told her to come join up. And, sir, she’s kicking everyone’s ass.”

  “Rose.” He turned and started back the way he’d come.

  “Sir, what about your flight?”

  “Tell them I’ll catch the next one.”

  Rose stood in the center of the ground floor training room, barefoot, in leggings and a tank top that showed off her lean musculature. She was poised lightly, ready for another attack; one cadet helped another over against the wall, and no one looked ready to have another go at her.

  When Lance entered, she blew a strand of hair out of her face and straightened. Shoulders back, feet squared, chin lifted in challenge. Her eyes sparked, glittering with grief masked as defiance.

  He wondered, briefly, what she’d been like before Becket was taken. If there had ever been anything soft about her.

  “Rose,” he greeted. “How are you?”

  She swallowed, the movement of her throat betraying her nerves. But when she spoke, her voice was steady. “Disappointed in your cadets.”

  He felt a grin threaten. “You and me both. It’s hard to find good soldiers these days.”

  She shifted her stance, ready again. “Maybe you’re not looking in the right places.”

  He unzipped his jacket, and shrugged it off; passed it to the nearest cadet.

  “Sir?” he asked. “She’s nuts.”

  “She’s good,” Lance corrected. He tucked his dog tags down inside his shirt, and stepped onto the mat. “Watch and learn something.”

  Rose’s gaze narrowed, and one corner of her mouth flicked up a second: she was pleased. She wanted a good match, and had been denied one, if the way the cadets stood now on the sidelines, nursing bruises and glaring at her was any indication. One of the girls had an eye swollen shut that was going to turn into a wicked shiner.

  Lance shook out his arms, rolled his shoulders, stretched his neck – and launched his first strike without warning. It was a move he’d used in every cadet training match, and which usually garnered him a few good hits, if not an outright pin.

  But Rose was ready for him. She dodged, and ducked under his guard right away; caught him the throat with a sharp jab from the heel of her hand.

  Lanced choked – but he was well-trained and practiced enough to push past it, reaching for her even as his lungs emptied and his eyes watered.

  She wriggled away, though, slick as an eel, and squared off from him again, her slight smile tight now with satisfaction.

  The cadets around them murmured and exclaimed. Someone hissed an insult.

  Lance took a deep breath and moved in again, more careful this time.

  She was strong – but it wasn’t a brute strength. She couldn’t have bested him at arm wrestling or weight lifting, but she’d been taught well – taught to fight in a way that made the best use of her own unique talents. She was quick, and slippery; could twist out of every grip he tried to apply; could dodge; could chop at his ribs, or the side of his neck; kicked his shins and knees. Flexible enough to bend back at the waist and evade him when he grabbed for her; athletic enough to kick up to her feet from flat on the floor.

  But everyone had weak points. And Lance had the stamina to keep going, matching her with blocks, noting the way she reacted; learning her patterns, her feints. Her weak points.

  She stepped back from his next strike, whirled into a pirouette, spinning around to kick at his chest–

  And he caught her ankle.

  He saw her eyes widen, saw her lips part in shock. Then he yanked her off her feet.

  She didn’t go down easy – thrashed, and resisted, and elbowed him in the ribs, just like she had the night she lost Becket, hissing and cursing and clawing at him.

  But he had her. Caged her in with his arms and bore her down to the mat; pressed her to it face-down, an arm twisted behind her back, his legs pinning hers, his free hand pressed between her shoulder blades.

  She was breathing hard; he could feel the heat coming off her body, smell the sharpness of sweat. He could feel the way she trembled, too. She was furious with him.

  “Yield,” he said, almost gently.

  She bared her teeth like a snarling animal.

  “Yield, Rose, or I won’t let you up.”

  She panted a moment, body tight, resistant. And then she sagged on a deep exhale. “I yield.”

  He released her, and stood, and offered a hand down to help her up, convinced she wouldn’t take it.

  The room was silent around them, the tension of their audience palpable. Rose rolled over, sitting with knees drawn up, still out of breath. She smoothed a stray piece of hair from her forehead, and stared at his hand a long moment, expression guarded, impossible to interpret.

  Then she tipped her head back, and met his gaze. For one second, the flicker between blinks, he could see how badly she was hurting on the inside, and wondered if it was a slip. If she’d let go of her mask a moment – or if she’d wanted him to see. Then she smoothed her face, and took his hand.

  ~*~

  The Rift Walkers were an elite group; eighty-five percent of the cadets who started in the program washed out; ended up in the regular infantry, got shuttled to scientific or communications duty, or quit the military altogether, based on a variety of factors. The strongest and the sternest stayed on, finished their training, and then got assigned to squads: small, highly-mobile units that could move in and out of an area at a moment’s notice.

  The day he pinned Rose to the mat, he paid a visit to the intake office, made sure all her paperwork was in order, gave a personal recommendation to ensure she began her training with the other Walker candidates, and then he went to the front lines. The world was erupting in fresh chaos and violence in the wake of the Rift reopening; in the wake of the second Rift, the one that had opened in Tony Castor’s basement and closed around Arthur Becket.

  It was four months before he saw Rose again.

  “Fuck,” Tris said, without inflection, straightening and planting the tip of his shovel in the mud.

  Thunder rumbled, and the first, fat drops of rain spattered against the tarp they’d rigged overhead as a precaution.

  Lance lifted his head, gaze sweeping out across the lumpy plain of bare dirt that stretched before them, all the way to the hills. Burial mound after bu
rial mound, all of it ceilinged with low, black clouds. Lightning chased in long, jagged stripes over the distant peaks.

  “Was it…Crawford?” Lance asked, too exhausted to find anything like grief in his heart for their newest loss.

  “Cromwell,” Tris said. “I think.”

  Lance looked toward his teammate, and found Tris’s gaze trained, as his had been, on the distant hills. The churned-up mud of the burial field. Tris had been with him the longest, a survivor, his short beard threaded with gray, his face lined with the strain of service. Lance didn’t know why he’d never made officer – he should have been in charge of this squad, based on experience – but suspected it was the same reason he kept mostly to himself: he didn’t care. Perhaps not about anything. Definitely not about medals, or valor, or personal gain.

  “Did he have any family?” Lance asked of their fallen teammate.

  Tris shrugged. “He was calling for his mother, there at the end.” When he’d been bleeding out all over them. “The captain will let them know.”

  Lance swallowed. “Yeah.”

  They gathered their shovels, and their weary bones, pulled their hoods up, and started back up the hill toward headquarters.

  Life as a Rift Walker had taught Lance to crave only the simplest of pleasures. Right now, he wanted a hot meal, and a hotter shower. But when he poked his head into Captain Bedlam’s office on his way to the barracks, just to let her know that the burial was done, and that she didn’t need to bother any orderlies with it, he found that she wasn’t alone.

  Two cadets in clean, new fatigues sat across from her desk, both young, one boy and one girl. The girl wore her dark hair in a severe braid; she turned at the sound of his light knock on the doorjamb.

  It was Rose Greer.

  He felt a spark of emotion in his gut, and refused to call it eagerness. A frisson nonetheless; a prickling awareness all through his tired limbs that had him standing up straighter, keenly aware of the mud on his face and clothes. It was probably in his hair.