Page 1 of Vanish Into Light

ONE

“…Greer. Rose.Rose.”

Rose startled. She knelt on the floor of the ruined penthouse, staring at the shattered window, the wedge of velvet night visible beyond it. It had started to rain; drops pattered in on the slick tiles. The breeze that blew in smelled of water, and soot, and crowded humanity. Like the acrid, smudgy cesspool that New York City had become.

It was Gavin who’d been shouting her name – shouting because she’d been frozen, for God knew how long, staring at the place where Beck had just crashed through a window and taken flight, lugging Shubert’s unconscious (possibly dead?) body along like a broken doll.

Rose blinked, shook her head, and returned to herself.

She still knelt on the floor, hands pressed tight to Lance’s wound – oh, God,Lance– but the hot pulse of blood against her palm had slowed. His face, when she glanced toward it was white and slack.

“Here, Rose,” Gallo said, sinking down beside her. He pulled her hands away – she found she didn’t have the strength to resist him at the moment – and pressed a thick wad of bandaging over it instead, and then pressed down with his own metallic, mechanical hand.

“Helo’s here,” Tris announced, and she could hear the thump of its rotors.

Rose hadn’t been struck in the head, but that’s what it felt like: her vision blurred at the edges, her reflexes slow, her mind stumbling to keep up. Her gaze wandered: from Lance’s still form, to Tris charging across the vast space toward a patio door; from Gallo’s steady calm as he applied pressure to the wound, to the bodies, all the bodies, that lay sprawled and crumpled around them like discarded piles of laundry.

None were left standing. The penthouse smelled like an abattoir.

She looked down at her own hands, wet to the elbows with fresh blood, deep crimson in the glow of the overhead can lights.

When she blinked she saw Beck. Saw the spread of his wings, and the gleam of his fangs. Saw his tail piercing flesh like a sword; saw himdrinking. He’d been smiling throughout, that sharp, delighted grin edged with bloodlust – but that was nothing new.

That part was the same as ever.

Whatever Beck was now, it wasn’t something hell had instilled in him. Hell had merely stripped away the last of the pretty packaging; distilled him down to his truest form.

She shuddered, but she wasn’t afraid.

Thewhump-whump-whumpof helo rotors became a vibration up through the floor, through her body, pulsing in her back teeth. The building shuddered as it touched down out on the patio, and a door banged open, and quick, quiet booted footfalls heralded reinforcements.

Morgan reached them first, tiny and pale in her fatigues. A few strands of white-blonde hair had slipped free of her helmet, damp with rainwater, clinging to her cheeks. She knelt down on the other side of Lance, facing them, her gaze serious, her bearing one of competence and concern, that ages-old poise always so at odds with her small shape.

“May I see?” she asked.

Gallo pulled his hand back.

Morgan pulled off the bandage and lifted up Lance’s blood-soaked shirt, exposing the small, but obviously deep stab wound. Fresh blood welled and trickled from it, but not nearly enough. The rise and fall of his chest was hitched, shallow.

Morgan hummed a quiet note of what sounded like concern, then covered the wound with her hand. Closed her eyes. The glow began slowly, a faint prickling of light around the edges of her palm, and between her fingers. And then it swelled, brightened. Pulse like the beat of a heart as it grew, and grew, the same blue-white light that had accompanied the awesome transformation of Gallo’s prosthetic into the permanent, flexible limb that it was now. So bright that Rose had to close her eyes and turn her head; Gallo hissed beside her.

Other voices and sets of footfalls joined them.

“What the hell happened here?” one man asked.

“The suspects are neutralized,” Tris answered. “All save Shubert, and Becket took possession of him.”

“Took possessionof him?”

“He jumped out the goddamn window and flew off,” Gavin said.

“We passed something on our way in,” another voice added. This was Green company, Rose thought.

The bright flare of light receded, and she opened her eyes, blinking against the afterimages, to see Morgan sitting back on her heels, shaky but conscious; and to see Lance’s bloody torso whole again. The wound had knitted together neatly, only a faint, pink smudge like an old, healed burn left to mark the place where he’d been stabbed. He was still unconscious, but his brow had smoothed; he no longer looked like he was in pain.

“He lost a lot of blood,” Morgan said. “He’ll need to rest, but I healed the internal damage.”

“Thanks,” Rose managed to say. She stood – unsteady as a new lamb, all her usual grace having long abandoned her – and turned…

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