Page 66 of Vanish Into Light

Gavin muttered something low and inaudible.

Beck cocked his head – he’d heard. “Or you’re welcome to get shot, Sir Gavin. Your choice.”

Gavin said nothing else, and Beck set off at a ground-eating walk. Unlike the rest of them, he carried no weapon, save a knife he’d strapped to his thigh back at the house, when – sweaty, still catching their breath – they’d straightened their clothes and hair and shoved any unhelpful thoughts to the back burner. Lance had tried to press a gun into his hand, but Beck had grinned, and shaken his head.The knife’s a concession, baby. I don’t even need that.

He skated a look toward Rose now, as they turned in at the swinging chain link gate and moved as a unit up the walk, toward the building’s front door.

She caught his gaze, her own hard, flat, businesslike. She had her game face on, and looked not eager, like Beck did, but ready. She nodded, and faced forward again.

So did Lance – just as Beck reached the shivering junkie on the porch, and snatched him up by the back of the shirt collar. The man let out an angry bellow, and twisted, swung, no longer shaking, suddenly. He wasn’t a junkie at all, Lance realized, as he unfurled from Beck’s grip, and revealed himself to be a strong, able-bodied man who’d used acting, and his thick beard, and an oversized hoodie as decoys. He took a swipe at Beck with one hand – “what the fuck!” – and reached toward his hip with the other.

Beck held him easily, as if he was nothing more than a kitten, and plucked a radio from the man’s belt with his free hand. Hetsked as he chucked it into the yard. “Warning your boss? Where’s the fun in that?”

Before the man could respond – was spluttering in fear and indignation – Beck dragged him in and bit his throat.

Lance was almost used to this, by now. Didn’t make a low, disgusted noise like Gavin did, behind him; didn’t even feel disgust, or anything, besides that faint, unhelpful pulse of something akin to jealousy.

It wasn’t a long drink. Beck got a taste, then tossed the unconscious man over the steel rail of the staircase, as easily as he’d tossed the man’s radio. He made a face, wiped his lips, and said, “We’re looking for an idiot who calls himself King Midas. I trust you’ll know him when you see him.” He went up the last two steps, tried the doorknob – and then kicked his way in.

Adrenaline flooded Lance’s system; side-by-side with Rose, gun drawn, he charged up the stairs and they swept inside at Beck’s heels.

He couldn’t see much behind the screen of Beck’s half-spread wings. But he could see that they’d entered a long, straight hallway flanked by doors with peeling paint and crooked numbers. Overhead, he spotted part of a stairway disappearing up into the ceiling. Alarmed shouts heralded their entry. A woman screamed.

The sharp crack of gunshots echoed in the close confines.

“We need to get to cover!” Lance shouted, over the cacophony.

“No,” Beck said. Lance hard a soft, meatythump. “Keep moving. We’ve got to get” –thump– “up the stairs. Cover” –thump– “us from behind.”

Alarm sirens sounded in Lance’s mind. “Are you–”

Then the door opened beside him, and he caught a glimpse of a snarling face and the matte flash of a gun. He fired automatically, and it was only after the body fell backward that he realized he’d just shot a human, and not a conduit of any sort.

But Beck had been hit. He knew the sound of bullets meeting flesh all too well, and Beck had refused to wear the vest Lance had offered. Stupid, pridefulidiot.

Lance settled on anger, because it was easier to handle than panic.

Beside him, Rose’s gun barked.

Beck’s tail whipped along the floor, shot forward, and someone screamed, and choked wetly, and probably died.

The next door opened a crack, and a face pressed to the gap, eye wide and wild, before the door was slammed shut again.

Good.

The gunshots kept coming from ahead, pinging as they ricocheted off the concrete floor, and the walls; dug gouges in moldy sheetrock, and sent up a spray of wood splinters when they struck a doorframe.

Beck got hit again. Lance heard the thump – and heard the whipping of his tail; the messy, wet sounds of someone getting sliced, getting stabbed.

They reached the base of the stairs, and Beck’s voice was still his own, still strong, without a hint of pain when he said, “Keep moving.”

Lance mounted the stairs with quick, sideways steps, glancing back down as he went to see that, grumbling or not, Gavin was sweeping the hall behind them as he walked backward, on high alert, Tris and Gallo flanking him. Tris picked off one last idiot who tried to rush them with a baseball bat, and then the hall was empty, and Lance switched his attention to the floor above, as Beck crested the landing ahead of him.

It was chaos of a different sort up here. Through an iron railing, he glimpsed scantily-clad women running, clutching tops and dresses, shooting terrified glances over their shoulders. They ducked into rooms and slammed doors. One man emerged into the hallway struggling to yank up his open pants – a client, obviously.

The man they’d tortured had said this place was a brothel and a drug den.

“Don’t kill unarmed civilians,” Lance cautioned, as they shifted around the bannister and started down the hall.

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