Page 74 of Night in a Waste Land

They fell into a familiar dance, and she watched the heaviness lift off him like steam as their skin began to glow with sweat, and they circled one another with increasing energy. They traded jabs, easily dodged. Traded feints.

Then Rose hit a glancing blow off his ribs, and they closed in: time for the real tangle.

He never pummeled her like he would a true opponent, but he didn’t go easy on her, either; forced her to dodge, and duck, grunting, falling back and catching herself on the mats with a hand before she sprung back up. She met him strike for strike, hitting his shoulders, his ribs, his stomach.

She leaped, launched off with a foot on top of his thigh as he lunged toward her, braced a hand on his shoulder, and ended up on his back, a strangling arm hooked around his throat.

He didn’t try to pry her loose: dropped, tucked, and rolled, flattening her beneath his back in one quick, panic-inducing moment. When her elbow collided with the floor, it jarred her grip loose, numbed her arm, and she lost her chokehold on him. By the time he rolled upright again, he had the upper hand; pinned her down by both wrists, braced above her.

“Yield,” he suggested. There was something almost like his usual mischievous glint winking in his eyes.

She kneed him in the balls – tried to. Wound up catching him on the inner thigh, hard enough to have him grunting, his grip loosening just enough that she could wriggle loose.

She was grinning, heart pounding, thrilled, as she flipped onto her stomach and scrambled to her feet again. They faced off once more, hands at the ready.

“Getting tired, old man?” she asked.

His answer was a fast flash of teeth, and a lunge.

A feint, she realized, too late, shocked at her own lapse in judgment.

He got an arm around her waist, and dragged her in close; crushed her against his chest. She swung at his face, but he turned his head, and her blow skimmed past his ear. His free hand caught her wrist, after, pinching in just the right place, twisting – and she was forced to twist with it, or risk a dislocation or break. Had she been fighting a conduit, she would have let it break her wrist while she stabbed it with her other hand. But in Lance’s grip, she whirled around, put her back to him – and let him crowd up against her, the arm around her waist shifting so his hand was spread flat over her stomach.

His hips tucked forward, and she could feel his erection brushing at the small of her back. His face dropped, so he nosed at her ear, his breath rushing quick and warm across it.

She shivered.

“You are the most infuriating person I have ever met,” he whispered, “and I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

She shivered again – and leaned back into him.

The door on the training room didn’t lock, but it was late, and they were alone, and would probably stay that way.

When she pulled loose, he let her go, so she could spin, stand up on her toes, throw her arms around his neck and kiss him.

They stripped off sweaty training clothes, hands sliding and skidding over slick skin, and crashed together in passion just as they’d crashed together in their match – a different, but equally fierce kind of violence. She started out on top, but then he flipped them, gleaming muscles flexed and straining, and pinned her like he had before, between her legs this time, hips driving, until she came with a cry she muffled around her bitten palm, and felt him shuddering through his own release above her.

They lay slumped and tangled, after, skin gluing together, and to the mat. The competing push-pull of their breathing echoed off the concrete walls.

Eventually, he took a huge breath and said, voice full of doubt, and even fear, she thought, “We’ve called it a war this whole time. Through two Rifts. And in a lot of ways it’s felt like one. But I don’t think it’s actually been one until now.”

“Hm,” she hummed. “The conduits from the First Rift wanted to exterminate humanity. Punish us for our sins.”

“But we were like roaches to them. They blindly destroyed whatever fell into their paths.”

“Except Gabriel.”

“Except Gabriel,” he agreed. “Working with Castor the way he did didn’t fit the mold. And this time around, conduits are gangsters themselves – and they’re targeting our military people, and then bragging about it afterward. That’s war in the literal sense: sending your best fighters after ours, rather than merely targeting humanity itself.”

“Shubert and his conduit are sharing the body. They’re working together.”

“So it makes sense some of Shubert’s plans and ideals will rub off on the angel. Jesus.” He rubbed at his eyes, and when he pulled his hand back, his expression was writ with a dozen kinds of worry, and the sort of fatigue that sent people into nervous breakdowns. “We can’t keep doing things the way we always have. We have to step up our game. Now we’ve got angels and demons to fight, and one conduit to our name, who passes out for a week after fighting one hell beast.”

Rose stroked his chest, soothing up-and-down drags of her nails. “We’ll figure something out.”

“I didn’t realize you were an optimist.”

“Hm.”

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