Page 90 of Vanish Into Light

It was a scene that Gallo felt he shouldn’t witness; it was shattering, and healing all at once, and it belonged to them, to the two of them, and the soul they’d been given back, and the angel who’d delivered him. He edged back a few steps – but before he turned, and dragged the other two with him, he heard Michael said, “Lucifer will always challenge God, in every generation. And I will always be my father’s sword.

“But Arthur Becket wished to right the world, and that is why I have brought him back to you.”

He heard the small, broken-open sound that Rose made, and then he took Tris’s hand, and grabbed Gavin’s sleeve, and led them toward the sunlight he’d never thought to see in person.

NINETEEN

He didn’t remember it with any clarity, afterward, in the days and weeks and months after his return. For Beck, heaven was a barrage of impressions: of heat, and light, and a cacophony of harmonious sound that nevertheless set his teeth on edge when the echoes of bells and harps chimed at the edges of his awareness. He remembered Morgan small but soheavyin his arms. Remembered his wings wrenching, his tail burning – and then the pain had become numbness, and there had been a crushing weight on his chest – and then a face sculpted of marble, softened with gold curls, and he remembered softness, and grace, and tears tracking hot down his face. There had been a voice, but he couldn’t recall the words.

And then there had been Rose, and her trembling hand. And Lance, and his wet cheeks, and he’d been too exhausted to comfort them. Most days, he still was.

At first, his existence had been nothing but a blur of sleeping, and waking; of cup rims pressed to his lips, and mild broth down his throat, and then sleeping again. Sometimes, his eyes fluttered open as a warm, damp cloth smoothed down his throat, and over his chest, washing him, and Rose’s voice was soft when she murmured, “Shh, go back to sleep.” And he would, powerless to do otherwise.

The first day he managed to sit up on his own power, they were both there with him, bracketing him, hands hovering in case he wobbled. They told him it had been two weeks since he’d come back, and he’d reached, without thought, to slick his hair back between his horns – and paused. His fingers were long, and pale, the nails blunt, trimmed, clear. No claws.

His hands had trembled when he’d touched the top of his own head, and felt only the silky, well-known texture of his hair, and no horns. He flexed his shoulders, and the sore muscles down his back pulled only at themselves, and not at the great, heavy wings whose weight had become normal after wearing them so long.

His stomach had dropped, and it had felt like loss, and Rose’s arm had slipped around his shoulders when he tried to hide the tears in his palms.

Three days after that, Lance scooped him up as tenderly as if he were made of glass, and carried him into the bathroom. When, arms looped around his neck for balance, Beck craned enough to catch sight of his reflection in the wide mirror above the sink, it felt like seeing a ghost. His hair was pale again, greasy from the pillow, down to his shoulders, and the same blend of honeys and ochres and golds that it had been before. His eyes were the faded hue of tarnished brass, his pupils round – normal. Human.

He sucked in a breath, and Lance’s hands tightened, briefly, where they gripped him. “You okay? Did I hurt you?”

“I’m…fine.” He bared his teeth, briefly, because Lance wasn’t looking toward the mirror, and his canines were human-sharp, but not fangs.

He hyperventilated, a little, in the bathtub, and Lance thought it was soreness, so he didn’t try to disabuse him of that notion.

~*~

Walking was hard, at first, his legs weak as water. They propped shoulders under his arms, and helped him go across the bedroom and back, across the bedroom and back. It took two weeks before he could hold himself upright without shaking, and keep down more than a bowl of soup. Only then would Rose consent to let him out of his room. Even then, she folded her arms, and looked at him with her jaw set at a stubborn angle, and he’d felt a smile threaten, because, somewhere along the line, she’d learned to embrace her stubbornness, no longer the frightened girl in the pie safe, not by a long shot.

He’d made it all the way down two flights of steps – but then had to brace a hand on the wall and let Lance carry him back up, tutting like a nurse maid.

~*~

The sun was shining. He didn’t notice it in those first few weeks swimming in and out of consciousness, but once he was ambulatory, or at least mostly so, he ground to a halt in front of a window in the third-floor hallway, and was dumbstruck by the view through the dirty glass. A blue sky, white clouds. The city looked even sadder and dirtier with clear, natural sunlight pouring down over it, gilding all its wounds and scars.

Lance stepped up beside him, and Beck had the sense he was holding himself carefully, trying to move softly, unobtrusively. He was a big, strong man, but, aside from lifting and supporting Beck, he’d been creeping around like a mouse. His voice was soft when he said, “It’s only rained once since you…got back.” Beck could hear the click of his throat as he swallowed. “And it wasn’t a storm. It only lasted a half-hour, and then the sun came back out again.”

A group of pigeons lifted up from the yard – still stubbly, brown, and weed-choked – and made their clumsy way up into the sky, black flecks against a cerulean backdrop. Sunlight gleamed on the patches of iron fence that hadn’t rusted all the way through.I did it, he thought, with a strange thrumming in his chest that felt neither like triumph, nor joy.I ended it.

Now what?

~*~

There was a small sitting area at one of the second-floor windows, right above the front doors, a place where two moldering chairs framed the glass and offered a view through tattered drapes at the street in front of the house. Beck took to sitting there in the afternoons, wrapped up in a robe, wearing a pair of Lance’s thick, military boot socks, sipping the tea that Rose had made him and watching people begin the slow, dazed process of drying out and cleaning up the mansion across the street.

“I think it’s going to get turned into a halfway house,” Rose said from the other chair, chipped mug held between both hands, steam curling up beneath her pert little nose.

“Hm. I’m sure there’s more people on drugs than off of them, in every city.”

Rose nodded. “Especially in the areas most densely populated with conduits – no one ever even attempted to clean out those dark corners. Now that they’re gone, the military is rerouting a lot of manpower and money into clean-up and recovery efforts.”

“Gone?” he felt his brows go up; his chest twinged, a jagged shard of fear sending little jolts of pain through him. Conduits hadn’t been a problem once he’d first emerged from hell; he was weaponless, now, as helpless as a newborn babe. His hands shook, faintly, as he sipped his tea.

Rose noticed. Her gaze lingered on his hands, frown tugging at her mouth. “That’s what Gallo says. He called yesterday: as far as anyone’s been able to tell, there’s zero reports of conduit-related violence since you – got back.” Her throat moved as she swallowed. Neither she nor Lance would saysince Michael brought you back. Since you fell from heaven’s grace as just a regular man again. “There’s no unusual heat or energy signatures. No miracles. It’s just…humanity. Again.” She sounded awestruck.

“That’s it, then.” His voice sounded hollow. The tea burned his throat. “All the powers of heaven and hell were called home, and the rifts closed for good.”

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