Page 18 of Vanish Into Light

But she was still bright, brightandsinister, and Becket hadn’tmadeher. Beck had suited her.

Because he was just as bright and sinister, magnetic in a raw, impossible to understand way that had Lance’s stomach cramping and his hands flexing and his heart stuttering.

He wasn’t attracted to men. Never had been…at least, he hadn’t ever thought he was. He’d spent years sharing locker rooms with muscled, strong, capable guys, and he’d never once felt a stirring of anything.

But every time he licked his own lips, he tasted smoke, and fear gripped him in a way that didn’t feelbad, exactly, and he had no idea what was happening to him.

Maybe he was just attracted to killers. And wasn’t that a pleasant thought?

“I thought we’d start in the library,” Becket said, and led them to it, Rose on his arm like a queen. His tail, Lance noted, was held just off the ground, so the tip didn’t drag along the dirty floor. Fastidious bastard.

Unless they were talking blood.

Stop. Focus.

The library, when they entered its double doors, was a watercolor rendition of the way he remembered it. A wide, turreted room with a balcony, shelves lining every wall save that above the fireplace, where an oil portrait of Castor hung on a backdrop of flocked, burgundy wallpaper.

But after five years of abandonment, and with a gaping hole in the ceiling of the great hall, the damp had gotten in, the most insidious of infestations. Now, the wallpaper was peeling in jagged strips that hung like torn flesh over Castor’s mildewed portrait. The air smelled of damp, and fungus, and other unpleasant things. The tile floor had survived, but the rugs were black with mold, and the book spines flecked with white growth.

Rose tipped her head back to scan the upper gallery, its rail, its waterlogged books. “He has more books than I’d expect a drug dealer to own,” she murmured.

Beck turned his head, his sharp profile limned by the silver light of the windows, his smile going soft and fond as he regarded her. “He does. But I think our library was cozier.”

Rose turned to look up at him, corner of her mouth plucking in a smile that was small, and private: just for the two of them. “I agree.”

They ceased, in that moment, to be the winged hell beast and the hardened Knight. They were just them, remembering a home that was no longer there. The sight of them like that left Lance reeling, almost woozy.

But then Beck – Becket,goddamnit– released her, and stepped forward toward a grimy table loaded with books, and Lance returned to himself with a deep, gasping breath.

“You alright?” Tris asked from behind, tone grudging.

“Fine.” He went up to the table, standing on Rose’s other side, and left the other three to come around across from them.

“With the exception of a very old set of Encyclopedia Britannica,” Beck said, opening a worn-smooth, tattered cover, “every book in this library is a study on the occult.” The pages he revealed were yellow, mold-spotted, and rippled from the damp. Most of the text was still legible, though. He flipped to an illustration: an ink rendition of a winged man seated on a stone, a serpent at his feet.

Lance’s stomach clenched hard, because the illustration’s wings looked just like Becket’s: leathery and batlike.

“Lucifer,” Rose murmured.

“Yes.” Beck turned the page, and it was only type again; Lance’s stomach didn’t relax, though: it churned right along with his thoughts, dark waves he didn’t want to examine too closely. “Before the First Rift, heaven and hell were thought of in abstract terms. The soul couldn’t take a physical shape, and neither could angels or demons. God and Lucifer were shapeless in the minds of most, though artists did try, with quite some creative results.

“The Rift didn’t exactly disprove that – but seeing an angel inside of a mortal shell, seeing him dispense heavenly power – that was a more concrete idea. Castor – at Gabriel’s behest, I imagine, became focused on leveling the playing field. Castor thought further chaos would help him rise to greater heights of power. Gabriel was using him for his own ends: he wanted to bring about Armageddon and get the war over with, once and for all.”

“WhereisGabriel?” Morgan asked. “I came down during the Second Rift, but he was gone.”

“Hmm.” Becket’s hum sounded nearly pleased. “I’m afraid he caught a ride with me. And Saint Derfel wasn’t sent to retrievehim, after all.”

“He’s in hell?” Rose asked.

“And having a marvelous time, surely. Now.” He turned another page, and tapped it. “This is a post-First Rift volume that – for obvious reasons – wasn’t mass-produced. Nothing really was, after the world collapsed. Its author – Fordham – postulated that hell would be easier to access than heaven, for obvious reasons.”

“How obvious?” Tris asked, face an emotionless slab of granite.

Becket lifted his head to regard him, and here was another new expression that Lance had never seen: a look of open patience; the face of a scholar and teacher. A face that Rose must have seen many times, when she was with him.

“Because all humans are sinners.” His voice was patient, too. The gold gleam of his eyes somehow lent him another layer of credibility. “They always have been. Hell is the default; heaven is to be achieved.”

Gallo shifted his weight from one foot to the other, so his hip bumped casually into Tris’s. He wore his rifle around his neck, his hands, flesh and metallic, linked over the butt of it. “But I’m Baptist.”

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