Page 81 of Vanish Into Light

Gavin sighed unhappily, but kept silent.

Lance felt more than a little disconnected from his body, at the moment – too out of it to offer Gallo a grateful look. He was staring across the room, toward the old, draped sofa where Morgan had stretched out on her back, eyes closed, hands clasped together over the sword that rested all down the length of her. She looked like a carved mausoleum statue.

Tris appeared in front of him, suddenly. His face offered no judgment, a fact which had Lance blinking back to the moment at hand, a little. He placed a hand on Lance’s shoulder, and squeezed. “Go lie down. You look like shit.”

“I’m fine.”

“Go lie down anyway. Humor me.”

“We’ll clean up,” Gallo offered.

“I…” He’d been running on adrenaline up to this point, but, suddenly, the idea of sitting down made him want to weep. “Okay. Thanks.”

Making his way upstairs was more of an effort than it should have been. When he reached the landing on the third floor, the door to his private room was nearest. He needed to shower, and put on fresh clothes, and radio in to tell Bedlam what they’d discovered – what they’d done.

But he couldn’t bring himself to do any of those things. He went past his door, down to the room where he’d spent the night with Beck and Rose. He lay down across the width of the bed, sheets releasing a whiff of sex and sweat as he disturbed them.

Lucifer.

Not just Arthur Becket, warped by hell – but hell itself, really. Before Adam, and Eve, and the Original Sin, there had been Lucifer.

Trying to rectify his childhood bible study knowledge with the man who’d kissed him, who’d swung astride him and taken him into his body…his brain ran up against a wall. It was an impossible kind of knowledge, the kind that could break him, if he let it.

Gavin had voiced his opinion loudly and viciously downstairs: Beck was the devil, and, as one would expect of the king of hell, he’d warped and seduced Lance – him and Rose, both. Held out his poison apple and coaxed them into biting – again and again.

But it hadn’t felt like that. Hadn’t felt like falling – like going over to the other side. It had felt thrilling, and warm, and necessary; it had felt like doing something good. He remembered the limp heaviness of Beck’s barely-conscious body as he’d carried him up to this same room, laid him out on this same bed. Remembered the hot press of his cheek against his chest, the touch of a hurt thing seeking comfort from someone safe.

Safe. That’s what he’d been for Rose – for Beck, too, he thought: a safe place.

And how could that be wrong? How could that be the result of manipulation?

So he was Lucifer.

So what?

By the time sleep finally closed over him, thunder murmuring restless overhead, Lance knew where he stood.

~*~

Rose knew where he was taking her without being told. The rain stung her eyes, wormed its cold way beneath her clothes; plastered her hair to her head, and left her braid heavy down her back – but Beck’s arms were tight and strong around her, and the rain didn’t seem to slow the steady pumping of his wings.

When they reached the row of Gothic townhouses where they had once lived – where he had brought her, face flecked with blood, on that first night, the night of the pie safe, and Miss Tabitha’s still form slumped over the table, and all that would follow – he circled a few times, and then finally swung their feet down and lowered both of them so they stood on the front stoop.

Someone had spray-painted a yellow anarchy A over the front door; the paint had run and bubbled, since, so that it seemed to have sizzled. All the first and second-floor windows had been smashed. Soot and acid rain had gathered in dark smudges along the window ledges, but, otherwise, it was in remarkably good shape.

Rose wished, suddenly and painfully, that she’d bothered to come and check on the place before now. Her stomach rolled when she thought of Kay, left alone in the hallway, where she’d fallen. Where she’d died.

Beck squeezed both her shoulders, then stepped around her to pick the lock with his claws.

Rose took a deep breath, and followed.

It smelled of abandonment. Of damp, and rot, once-loved things gone to ruin. What little furniture remained had collapsed, or been hacked apart; the tufted leather sofa in the front parlor had been sliced open, and all its stuffing pulled out – for the hell of it, seemingly – its guts gone soggy and black with mold.

The floorboards groaned beneath their feet, faintly less dirty in the places where rugs had once been. Beck’s tail brushed against a baseboard, and sent up a puff of dust. The light from the street – silver and waterlogged – didn’t reach far into the front hall, so Rose clicked on a flashlight. She didn’t pull a weapon – she could tell the house was empty, that haunted, lonely echo absolute.

She followed Beck as he leaned into what had once been his office. The computers had been stolen, but the desk, and all the books and files remained, paper dissolving into the floor like old, scattered leaves, useless to the looters who’d pillaged the place. He tapped his claws on the doorframe, but said nothing. This was where he’d hunted for his targets, and pored over maps, and put hit lists together. This was where, though he hadn’t even known it at the time, the part of him that was Lucifer had shifted restlessly beneath his mortal skin, wanting something to do, needing a crusade of sorts.

They went to the kitchen, and that was where memory slammed into Rose, and nearly leveled her. Because this was where he’d brought her, that first night, and made her a sandwich with his own two hands. This was where they’d chopped, and diced, and pan-fried. Where they’d come together, the three of them, three times a day, to fill their bellies and seek out some sense of normalcy, of habit. This was where Beck had stumbled in, bleeding, and then been patched carefully back together. This was where she’d killed her first man, right up against those cabinets, and learned she had the taste for it.

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