Page 4 of Vanish Into Light

“Becket returned?” Lance asked.

“With Shubert. The bastard looks dead. And Becket’s got…” She gestured to her own mouth, nostrils flared as she sucked in a breath. “What did he do? Why did he abandon the op?”

“Sir, is he still on the roof?” Rose asked. “I should go and–”

Bedlam caught her by the arm as she moved to step past her captain, and for one horrifying moment, Rose nearly lost herself to instinct.

She tensed, jerked her arm from Bedlam’s grip, and her other hand landed on the hilt of the knife on her hip. It was a knee-jerk, automatic reaction.Don’t get caught, fight back if you do.

She pulled up before anything could happen. The whole exchange had taken only a split second, and no witnesses could have said that Rose had done anything.

But Bedlam had felt the violence of her withdrawal. Her gaze was pinned on the hilt of Rose’s knife, released now, but held for that one damning moment.

Slowly, her gaze shifted back to meet Rose’s, hardening, glittering with aggression. “Shubert’s been taken into custody. I have no idea where Becket went.

“Du Lac,” she snapped, turning to Lance. “Go lie the hell down in the infirmary. That’s an order.” She stormed off, already barking orders at a pair of privates waiting down the hall.

Rose felt Lance turn toward her; felt the weight of his gaze on her profile. She said, “You heard her: let’s get you to the infirmary.”

~*~

The docs hooked Lance up to an IV – fluids rather than a transfusion – and pressed a cookie into his hand. He held it indifferently, gaze still fixed, assessing, on Rose.

She wished now that she’d asked Gallo to come along and keep an eye on him, but, at this point, walking away would have been in poor taste. Manners were important, after all. Weren’t they? Beck had always been mannerly – right up until he was drinking blood. Because that was a thing he did now, apparently. He drank blood. And he speared people on his tail, and he smashed through windows with his horns…

And none of that went against any of the things she knew and loved about him from before.

“Rose.”

She gave herself a mental shake and returned to the present.

Lance said, “I’m worried about you.”

“Why?”

The groove between his brows deepened. “For starters, you haven’t even washed your hands.”

A glance down proved that to be true: it had dried red-brown all over her palms and in streaks up her forearms; was caked in beneath her nails. When she flexed her wrists, little bits cracked and flaked off.

“And second,” he continued, “because we all just watched Beck drink blood from a conduit.”

She rested her blood-crusted hands on her thighs. “What do you want me to do? Freak out about it?”

He lifted his brows, and she noted that the color was returning to his face, that he looked steadier and more like himself. The fluids were helping. “I’d like you to acknowledge that something is majorly wrong with him.”

“No.”

“No?”

“This is just Beck. He’s more powerful now – he has new abilities – but this is just him.”

He stared at her with open disbelief. Around them, beyond the half-pulled privacy curtain of his cubicle, doctors and nurses moved about, rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the tiles, voices conferring in low murmurs.

“You’re in shock,” he finally said, after he’d swallowed.

“I’m what?”

“You’re in shock,” he repeated. “Christ – you probably have been since that first moment, when you saw that he hadhorns. And then tonight, seeing what he did–”

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