Page 29 of Vanish Into Light

“Patrol first, research after. We need to take advantage of the rain gap.”

With a little bit of grumbling, Gavin set to washing the dishes, and the rest of them went to gear up.

They’d all spent years donning their vests and belts and holsters in the close quarters of the base ready room, but even the vast kitchen felt too confining right now. His skin still tingled, faintly: aftereffects of Beckdrinking his blood? God, why wasn’t he more freaked out about that?

He went to the empty dining room, with its cobwebbed chandeliers and its dusty table. He set his bag up on what had once been a mirror-finished mahogany surface, and started pulling out what he’d need. The op would be good. Nothing like the harrowing wilds of city recon to refocus his thoughts.

Behind him, the door flicked open, and then clicked shut.

He stopped breathing, tension stealing down his spine.

The faint, leathery rustling had become familiar, at this point. He’d never thought to know the sound of wings.

He finished buckling on his main holster, the weight of his guns and grenades a comfort around his hips. Then he picked up his shoulder holster and was in the act of shrugging into it when he finally turned around.

Beck wore clinging black tac pants, combats, and had somehow managed to finagle a fitted black shirt and long, black coat so that they fit as if tailored, despite the wings. His skin looked very pale in contrast to all that dark, and his eyes were very bright in the dim room.

Bright, and lively, totally different than they’d been in the kitchen. He wasn’t smiling, exactly, but the corners of his mouth seemed to press deeper, so that he gave the impression of being amused. Fond, even, though that was probably fanciful thinking on Lance’s part.

“What do you want?” Lance asked in his least welcoming tone, ignoring that strange lightness in his chest, the heat in his stomach.

Beck tipped his head to the side, humming. “Good morning, my Lancelot.”

“No. Don’t do that. It’s just Lance, and I’m notyouranything.”

Beck sighed, head straightening. “I expected resistance, but I’d hoped you’d be a little more reasonable.”

“Reasonable. Says the guy who thinks it’s cool to go through two shut doors and walk in on someone’s shower.”

“I didn’t hear you telling me to leave.”

Lance ground his molars, and realized he was gripping the edge of the table hard, that he…that he wanted to move forward, and was resisting, yes, fighting the tug in his gut that wanted him to move into Beck’s space. “What do you want?” he repeated.

Beck linked his hands behind his back and took several slow, casual strides deeper into the room, tail swinging behind him like a pendulum. “Let me offer you a proposition.”

“Isn’t that sort of thing supposed to comebeforeyou jump a guy’s bones?”

“Hm.” Beck paused, and regarded him, that not-quite-a-smile becoming a smirk. “You liked it. I didn’t do anything you didn’t want me to.”

“You son of a–”

Beck held up a hand – and Lance fell silent. “I think last night proved something to you. Something you’d maybe been denying yourself. But I won’t make any more overtures, if you insist on clinging to your old impression of yourself.

“My proposition is this: tonight, when we’ve seen the horrors of the city, and you’re tired, and weary in your soul, and in need of succor, come to us. To Rose and to me. Let us show you what it could be like, all of us together.Enjoyyourself, for once.”

Even as it shocked him, sent a thrill of forbidden anticipation through him, it was appallingly easy to imagine it: all three of them. Together. Rose’s soft lips, and Beck’s sharp fangs, and skin, and hot breath, and pleasure, every kind of pleasure.

He swallowed hard.

“But I’ll leave it up to you,” Beck said. “If you want to go sleep alone, you’ll remain alone. You have my word on that.”

Another swallow, this one even more difficult. “What’s your word worth?”

A quick smile, a glint of a fang. “Quite a lot, actually.”

~*~

The Hummer was too conspicuous for recon. Though the bigger, heavier, post-Rift models were armored these days, and thus safer, it would also draw low-level gang members and thugs like a magnet. But they’d towed along a trailer loaded with the small, quiet, highly-maneuverable dirt bikes they’d used here before, and unloaded them in the yard, beneath a roiling sky that promised a storm later.

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