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  VANISH INTO LIGHT

  Hell Theory Book Three

  by

  Lauren Gilley

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are all the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to persons, living or dead, is coincidental, or meant to serve as entertainment, rather than fact.

  Names and characters are property of the author and may not be duplicated.

  VANISH INTO LIGHT

  Copyright © 2021 by Lauren Gilley

  Cover design copyright © 2021 by Lauren Gilley

  HP Press®

  Atlanta, GA

  All rights reserved.

  Then from the dawn it seem'd there came, but faint

  As from beyond the limit of the world,

  Like the last echo born of a great cry,

  Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice

  Around a king returning from his wars.

  Thereat once more he moved about, and clomb

  Ev'n to the highest he could climb, and saw,

  Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand,

  Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the King,

  Down that long water opening on the deep

  Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go

  From less to less and vanish into light.

  And the new sun rose bringing the new year.

  ~ from “Idylls of the King: The Passing of Arthur”

  By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  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 him drinking. 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.

  The whump-whump-whump of 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 possession of 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…

  To find a fellow knight right behind her, studying her with concern. It was Sir Theresa Samuels of Green Company. They’d nodded and helloed a few times at the gym, and Rose didn’t think that warranted the way the other woman stared at her now, brows knitted, gaze worried.

  “Greer, you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Her own Company, she saw, noting Tris and Gavin behind her, were watching her with far less concern, and something more like wariness.

  ~*~

  Lance came awake in the helo, halfway back to base. “You need to rest,” Gallo said, and pressed his shoulder back down to the gurney they’d strapped him to for the short flight.

  “I’m fine, let me up.”

  “Lance. You lost a lot of blood.”

  Rose thought she probably should have been the one to feel his forehead with the back of her hand, and shake her head, and keep telling him to be still and
be a good patient. But Gallo seemed to have it well in-hand.

  And Rose couldn’t have moved closer to him if she’d wanted to, rooted to her jump seat, gaze fixed on the rain-streaked window. She couldn’t bear the thought of meeting Lance’s gaze. Not after…

  Welcome to the Round Table, Beck had said, before he’d jumped. She could recall the exact sound of the glass shattering against his horns; the sound of his wings unfurling and snapping on that first powerful stroke.

  There were going to be so many questions: from Bedlam, from the General; questions telephoned from Washington. What happened, Greer? they would all want to know. What did you bring into our operation?

  “Where’s Becket?” Lance asked.

  “We don’t know,” Gallo said.

  “Probably still out cosplaying Dracula,” Gavin said, sourly. “Jesus Christ, what was that?” When no one answered him, he said, “Greer, what the fuck was that?”

  She turned her head to meet his gaze, and wished she hadn’t. She and Gavin had never been close, but his glare now was downright hostile.

  “That was Beck,” she said.

  His brows lifted. “I’m sorry, I can’t hear great over the goddamn rotors. That was Beck?”

  “Captain Bedlam said we needed a weapon, and that’s what I brought to the table. A weapon.”

  “No, that’s bullshit. You wanted your old boyfriend back,” he said, sneering.

  Tris flicked at his sleeve. “Gavin.”

  “You wanted him back,” Gavin continued, “and you did it on the military’s dime. Don’t pretend it was about the war, or any of us. It was all for you.”

  “Gavin.” Lance this time, struggling to sit up, only to be pushed back down by Gallo again.

  “My question,” Gavin pressed on, bristling with anger, with a fear he couldn’t quite hide. “Is why the fuck your boyfriend is some kinda vampire-wannabe freakshow serial killer.”

  “Gavin,” Lance snapped. “That’s enough!”

  Gavin turned away, muttering to himself, but not before one last nasty glare.

  Lance tried to catch her eye, his face still too-pale, hair limp on his forehead from sweat.

  Rose glanced back out the window.

  The rest of the flight passed in tense silence, and when the helo finally touched down at base, Gavin was the first one up, levering open the door before the motor was cut.

  Rose started to follow suit, but caught herself at the last second; she should stay with Lance.

  Tris and Gallo began readying his gurney for transport, but he swatted them away. “For fuck’s sake, I can walk, let me up.”

  Rose watched them unfasten the straps and take him by either arm, helping him sit upright.

  Morgan appeared beside her, silent as a ghost save for the brush of their jacket sleeves: Rose’s only warning of the conduit’s presence before Morgan said, quietly, “Arthur Becket wasn’t the one who stabbed him.”

  Rose whipped around to face her. “No. Did you think it might have been?”

  Morgan lifted wide, unfathomable blue eyes to meet her gaze. “I wondered, when we first arrived. But when I touched the wound, I could feel none of his presence in it.”

  “His…presence?”

  Morgan tipped her head to a birdlike angle. “Hell marks what it takes. It leaves a scent behind.”

  Brimstone. Ash. Something metallic and crackling with electricity. She’d smelled it up close; had tasted it on her tongue.

  Rose swallowed. “He wouldn’t hurt Lance.”

  Morgan nodded, accepting her answer, and turned to step down out of the helo.

  Tris and Gallo had Lance on his feet, and though he said, “I’m fine,” he still leaned on them. They shuffled forward as an awkward, six-legged entity in the confines of the helo, and Rose thought I suppose I should stay, more than a little shocked at her own reluctance to do so.

  In the back of her mind, she was aware that her brain was misfiring right now, perhaps dangerously so.

  When Lance was in front of her, he tipped his head, his gaze searching. “Are you okay?”

  She blinked. “You’re asking me?”

  His gaze tracked back and forth across her face, and his brows drew together. “Rose. Are you okay?”

  There he stood, freshly healed, with a bloody, holey shirt, unsteady on his feet, and he was asking if she was okay.

  “I’m fine.”

  He frowned. His gaze lifted over her head, out through the open hatch. “Is Becket back yet?”

  “Let’s go find out,” Tris suggested.

  By the time they’d crossed the tarmac, rain lashing at their backs the whole way, Lance was walking unassisted, albeit slowly. He held himself stiffly upright, hands clenched in fists at his sides. Rose recognized the posture of someone doing everything he could to keep from collapsing on the spot.

  Belatedly, she realized she’d been walking a half-step behind him, and closed the distance so they were side-by-side. “You probably need a transfusion,” she said. “You lost a lot of blood.”

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “Funny, no one believes me when I say that.”

  He slanted her a sideways look, but it lacked the half-smirk that usually accompanied that kind of regard.

  A young private stood at the door, and opened it as they reached it, so they didn’t have to slow.

  “Did Mr. Becket return yet?” Lance asked as they passed him.

  “A few minutes ago, sir.” The young man’s voice trembled.

  “Where did he–” Lance started to ask over his shoulder, but he cut off when he spotted Captain Bedlam charging toward them down the hall.

  Rose’s stomach clenched unpleasantly. She’d seen her captain angry before, but not like this – never like this. Her eyes white-rimmed, her face pale, her steps not just forceful and ground-covering, but hurried. She was angry, yes, but she was also terrified.

  “Greer,” she snapped when she reached them, halting, hands unsteady before she clamped them on her hips. “What in the ever-loving fuck just landed on the roof?”

  “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 had horns. And then tonight, seeing what he did–”

  “No.”

  He didn’t gape at her this time – but glared. “Rose, you’re being unreasonable.”

  “And you’re being a condescending dick,” she shot back. Her voice was cold, and flat – as was her anger. Razor-edged, smooth and cool as polished steel. She knew, on some level, that she was shocked – but not in the way that he meant. Not numb with horror and regret.