Page 12 of Night in a Waste Land

She reached for him; she couldn’t help herself. It had been five years, and she couldn’t believe that he washere, that shecouldtouch.

He reached back. His palm found her cheek, when he was close enough; that familiar pattern of calluses, preserved, even after five years of whatever hell had dealt him. And, faintly, the scrape of claws, beneath her ear, down her throat. But she wasn’t afraid; she’d never once been afraid of him, no matter what.

“Rosie,” he breathed, as his other hand found her waist, and the shadow of his great wings fell over her, enfolded her.

She put her arms around his neck and pressed their bodies flush together; his arm hooked around her, and held tight. He was still lean, and hard, all sculpted muscle, and not enough meat.

He smelled different, though, when she pressed her face into his throat and sought the old cedar, ink, and smoke. Now she caught a whiff of brimstone; of ash; of char. A dark spice like incense, musky and heady. His skin was warm, almost too warm, feverish. As was his breath as it rustled through her hair.

He pressed his face to the top of her head and breathed in slow, shaky draws; a purr rumbled in his chest, vibrating through her own, reverberating along every nerve ending.

Tears flooded her eyes, and she closed them; she could do that now. She couldrest, at least for a moment, for this brief span in the shelter of his wings.

Beck must have felt them, because he stroked her hair and her neck, and hummed a soothing noise, his purr deepening. “Don’t cry, my darling. Not for me. Not when I’m here.”

She fisted her hands in the fabric of his shirt, and swayed when he swayed, breathed when he breathed.

“I found you,” she murmured.

“Of course you did. My clever girl.”

~*~

She knew that her team was hanging back – partly out of respect, but mostly out of fear, she figured. They’d worked alongside a conduit, and seen the post-Rift horrors of the world – but sight of Beck had rattled them, she could tell. And so they gave her some time alone with him.

She knew it wouldn’t last.

They sat now inside the church, in the chapel, on a creaky wooden pew that smelled of lemon oil and beeswax. On the altar, the candle flames whipped and flickered, the wicks grown long, the dripping tails of wax hanging off the altar’s edge like stalactites.

Beck sat with his wings carefully folded, draped around him like a cape, tail coiled on the pew beside him. He held her hand in his – hadn’t seemed willing to let go of it, so far – and stared up at the cross on the wall.

“I thought it might burn,” he murmured. “To look at it. To be in this place. To touch any part of it.” He rested long, claw-tipped fingers on the back of the pew in front of him, staring at his own hand in a kind of blank wonder. “It doesn’t.”

“Why would it?” She squeezed his hand. “You aren’t a vampire in an old movie.”

One corner of his mouth twitched upward in the restrained, close-lipped smile she remembered so well. “No. But I’m not exactly divine.”

“Beck.”

He turned toward her, and she’d always thought his eyes had glowed before, always gleaming in the firelight, honey-warm and crackling with withheld emotion. They actually glowed now; pulsed with yellow, leonine light.

“You aren’t a demon.”

His wings rustled, an abortive move to lift them. His tail flexed, sinuous and muscled as a healthy snake. “Look at me.” His smile was full of self-mockery. “What else could I be?”

“Brother Eustace said that you would be changed. That being there…” Her throat threatened to close when she thought of it; the fire and pain and torture. She’d seen what had come from the pit; they’d chased its evil back and forth across the country, and that was only after a small portal had been open for a short while.

“I don’t feel changed,” he said, reaching to touch her face again. He kept doing that, like he was afraid she wasn’t real. “Only tired.” His thumb stroked her cheek, and his smile this time broke softly, gently. “And glad.”

They tipped together, drawn as if my magnets, and she realized she hadn’t kissed him yet, and that she needed to rectify thatright now.

He angled his head, his breath feathering hot across her lips.

Someone cleared his throat behind them.

Rose sat back.

Beck had a much more violent reaction.

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