Chapter 8: Aftermath and a New Lead
The sterile shriek of sirens faded into the hum of the city, leaving the loading dock in a bubble of grim silence. The air still tasted of ozone and copper. Red and blue lights washed over the wet concrete in fleeting, rhythmic pulses.
Inside, the laboratory was a tomb of sparking equipment and the ghost-impression of terror. Paramedics—mundanes, confused but professional—had strapped the still forms to gurneys and whisked them away. Jan, a pale flame under a silver blanket. Stacy, her athletic build ominously still. Katie, Annie, Aaron. Dale, with an oxygen mask over his face, Vivian’s hand gripped in his until the last possible second.
Now, Vivian stood alone in the center of the space, wrapped in a paramedic’s foil blanket, shivering. It wasn’t from cold. Her gaze was fixed on the dark smear of Dale’s blood on the floor.
Eric placed a hand on her shoulder. Reggie leaned against her leg. “The hospital they’re going to has a discreet supernatural intake. They’ll know what to look for. He’s strong. He’ll make it.”
Vivian just nodded, a tiny, brittle motion.
Fatima approached, her forearm bandaged with a strip of torn cloth from a guard’s uniform. Her face was a mask of controlled fury, smudged with grease and dust. In her other hand, she held a small, metallic data chip. Becky had pressed it into her palm moments ago, her chipper facade completely gone, replaced by a weary professionalism.
“Clean facility. Upstate. Just a room, no instruments. Lydia’s already been alerted. We need to move her now, before any loyalists to Bedivere try to clean up.”
They turned to where Yara lay curled on her side near the shattered console. She looked smaller, deflated. Her once-lustrous hair was a matted curtain over her face. She breathed, but it was the shallow, automatic breath of an empty vessel.
“Help me,” Fatima said to no one in particular.
Amir started forward from where he’d been standing like a statue, but Noor was quicker. She and Fatima each took an arm, hauling Yara upright. Her feet dragged, making twin trails in the grime. Vivian watched them go, her expression unreadable, then turned and walked stiffly toward the loading dock doors.
The night air outside was a slap, carrying the river’s damp and the distant wail of more sirens. Mike and Casey’s van was idling just outside, its rear doors still open. The two of them stood there, their cheap suits rumpled, faces etched with exhaustion and worry. They’d seen the ambulances leave.
“Where to?” Mike asked, his voice rough.
Fatima shoved Yara into the back of the van. Casey didn’t hesitate; she grabbed a coarse, grey moving blanket and threw it over Fatima's cousin’s form, tucking it around her with a surprising lack of malice. It was a practical gesture, like covering a piece of furniture.
“Coordinates are on this chip. Plug it into your phone. Lydia will meet you at the location. Don’t stop. Don’t talk to anyone.” Fatima’s instructions were clipped.
Casey nodded, climbing into the passenger seat. Mike slid behind the wheel. He looked at Fatima, at the blood on her arm. “Jan and the others?”
“Alive,” Fatima said, the word leaving her like a punch. “Go.”
The van pulled away, its taillights dissolving into the mist settling over the docks.
Inside the wrecked lab, the silence deepened. Becky was methodically wiping down consoles with a rag, erasing fingerprints. Amir stood amidst the debris, his tailored suit ripped at the elbow, his face ashen. The reality of what he had been a part of, what he had almost allowed to happen to his own sister, was settling into his bones like a terminal chill.
Becky finished her task and walked over to him. The click of her heels was the only sound. She stopped, close enough that he could smell her perfume, something floral and clean, absurdly out of place.
“Amir.”
He flinched, expecting condemnation, a dismissal. He opened his mouth. “I’m sorry, I should have—”
She grabbed the lapels of his suit and pulled him into a kiss. It was not gentle. It was a claiming, a punctuation. Her mouth was hot and insistent, her tongue sweeping past his lips before he could even process the move. Her body pressed against his, and he could feel the compact, powerful strength of her, the sidearm holstered under her blazer.
He froze for a second, then melted into it, his hands coming up to clutch at her back, a drowning man grabbing a lifeline. The kiss tasted like blood and coffee and desperation.
She broke it, breathing hard, her forehead resting against his. “Shut up,” she murmured, her voice low and raw. “You chose. That’s all that matters now.” She pulled back, her blue eyes searching his. “The Merlin will want a debrief. Your loyalty is to the true Order now. Not Bedivere’s splinter group. Understood?”
He nodded, wordless.
Noor, leaning against a doorjamb with her arms crossed, watched them with a faint, knowing curl to her lip. Then her eyes swept the ruined lab. “This place will need a cleansing fire before morning. Too many bad memories etched into the walls.” She looked at Fatima, who had just re-entered, Vivian trailing behind her like a lost ghost. “You should go to the hospital. Be with your people.”
Fatima nodded, her energy sapped. She looked at Eric. “You coming?”
“Reggie and I will stay, help Noor make sure nothing… unpleasant… is left behind. Then I’ll come.” He gave Vivian a small, encouraging smile. “He’s going to be okay.”
The hospital room was dark, lit only by the soft glow of the machines monitoring Dale’s vitals. The steady, rhythmic beep was a fragile anchor in the quiet. He was alive, stabilized, but deeply unconscious, his body working to heal the internal damage Bedivere’s weapon had caused.
Vivian sat in the chair by his bed, still wrapped in the foil blanket. She had refused a gown, refused to leave. She just stared at his face, at the scar tissue that laced across his collarbone—scar tissue she had woven herself to save him once before.
The door opened with a soft click. Jan slipped in, wearing a standard hospital johnny, her feet bare. She moved slowly, each step deliberate, as if she were relearning how her body worked. Godfrey padded at her heels, his service vest now back on, a familiar anchor of normalcy.
Jan pulled a second chair close to Vivian’s and sank into it. For a long time, neither spoke. The beeping machine filled the space.
“They pumped me full of saline and glucose,” Jan said finally, her voice a raspy whisper. “Like I was a fucking car battery.”
Vivian didn’t look away from Dale. “She took from you. From all of you. Because of me. Because she’s what I could become.”
“Bullshit.” The word was quiet but firm. Jan reached out, her hand covering Vivian’s where it lay on the blanket. “She’s what happens when someone tells a person their hunger is the only thing that matters. You’re not that. You never have been.”
Vivian’s jaw tightened. A single tear traced a path through the grime on her cheek. “I felt it. When I took it all back from her. It was… incredible. It was a feast. I’ve never felt that full, that powerful. It scared me.”
“But you stopped. You came back. You’re here.” Jan squeezed her hand. “You’re here, and he’s there, and we’re all still here. That’s the difference.”
Another stretch of silence. Then Vivian turned her head, her green eyes luminous in the low light. “I need to feel something else. Something that isn’t that hollow, sucking feeling or that… grotesque fullness.” Her gaze shifted to Dale’s still form. “I need to feel him. To know he’s still mine and I’m still his.”
Jan understood. She leaned back in her chair. “Then feel.”
Vivian stood, letting the foil blanket slither to the floor. She was naked, pale and slight in the machine-glow. She climbed onto the narrow hospital bed with a careful, feline grace, straddling Dale’s hips, mindful of the tubes and wires. She leaned down, her lips brushing his, a ghost of a kiss. Then she nuzzled his neck, inhaling the scent of him beneath the antiseptic hospital smell.
Her hand slid under the thin sheet, finding the waistband of his hospital pants. She tugged them down, just enough. He was soft, vulnerable. She wrapped her fingers around him, stroking gently, coaxingly. She poured a thread of the energy she’d reclaimed—not the stolen, chaotic storm, but a trickle of the pure, grounding passion that was at the core of Green Moon magic—into the touch. A gentle, persistent wake-up call to his body.
A low groan rumbled in Dale’s chest. His eyelids fluttered. His cock began to stiffen in her hand, thickening, lengthening, responding to her magic and her touch.
“That’s it,” she whispered against his lips. “Come back to me.”
His blue eyes opened, hazy with drugs and pain, but focusing on her. A weak smile touched his mouth. “Viv…”
“Shhh. Don’t talk. Just feel.”
She positioned herself, guiding him to her entrance. She was already wet, a slick, aching heat born of fear and need. She sank down onto him slowly, taking his full length inside her with a trembling sigh. He felt so good, so solid and real buried inside her. A anchor in the storm of what she was.
She began to move, a slow, undulating rhythm on top of him. Her hips rocked forward and back, taking him deep, then almost letting him slip out before sheathing him again. Each stroke was a claim, a reassurance. Her breasts swayed with the motion, her nipples hard peaks. She leaned forward, bracing her hands on his shoulders, careful of his wounds, and increased the pace.
The bed creaked softly. The steady beep of the heart monitor began to quicken its rhythm.
“Fuck,” Dale breathed, his hands coming up to grasp her hips, his grip weak but present. “Vivian…”
“I’m here,” she gasped, riding him harder now. “I’ve got you. You’re mine. You’re alive.” Her movements became more urgent, less about care and more about raw, desperate connection. Her inner muscles clenched around him, milking his shaft with each descent. The wet, filthy sound of their joining filled the quiet room, a stark, living counterpoint to the sterile beeps.
Jan watched, not with voyeuristic thrill, but with a deep, empathetic solemnity. This was medicine. This was healing of a kind no doctor could administer. Godfrey, lying at her feet, let out a soft harumph and put his head on his paws, closing his eyes.
Vivian was close. She could feel the climax coiling in her belly, a clean, sharp tension so different from the draining pull of her hunger. “Come with me,” she begged, her voice breaking. “Please, Dale. Fill me up. I need it. I need you.”
Her plea tipped him over. A grunt was torn from him, and his hips bucked off the mattress as much as they could. He spasmed inside her, pumping hot jets of cum deep into her core. The feel of it, the proof of his life, triggered her own release. She cried out, a sharp, choked sound, as her body clamped down on him in wave after wave of contracting pleasure. She collapsed forward onto his chest, shuddering, his release leaking out around their still-joined flesh, soaking the sheet beneath them.
She lay there for long minutes, listening to his heartbeat, now strong and fast under her ear. The monitor beeped a vigorous, healthy rhythm.
In the chair, Jan finally moved. She stood, a little unsteady, and walked to the bed. She placed a hand on Vivian’s damp back, then leaned down and kissed Dale’s sweaty temple.
“Welcome back,” she whispered.
She and Godfrey slipped out of the room, leaving them wrapped around each other in the dark.
The safe house was a modest, anonymous two-bedroom in Queens, provided by Becky’s “Internal Affairs” division. The sun was just beginning to bleed grey light through the blinds.
Mike and Casey had returned hours before, exhausted and silent. They’d handed Yara over to a stern-looking Lydia and a team of placid-faced Green Moon initiates from the New York chapter. The transaction was wordless. They’d driven back to the safe house in a silence that was both heavy and comfortable.
Now, they were in the shower together. The water was scalding, beating down on tired muscles and washing away the stink of the dock, the van, the blanket that had covered Yara. Casey stood with her forehead pressed to the tiles, her dark hair plastered to her back. Mike lathered soap between his hands and began to wash her, his touch slow and thorough.
He soaped her shoulders, her back, the curve of her ass. His hands slid around to her front, cupping her breasts, his thumbs circling her nipples until they pebbled under his touch. She let out a soft sigh, pushing back against him. He was already hard, his erection pressing against the small of her back.
He turned her around, water streaming down their faces. He didn’t kiss her. He just looked at her, his goofy grin absent, replaced by a stark, open need. He reached down, hooked his hands behind her knees, and lifted her. She wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, and he pinned her against the wet tiled wall.
He entered her in one smooth, solid thrust. There was no preamble, no teasing. It was pure, blunt reconnection.
“God, yes,” Casey gasped, her head thumping back against the wall.
Mike fucked her with a relentless, driving intensity born of spent adrenaline and lingering fear. Each thrust slammed her into the tiles, the slap of their wet skin echoing in the small stall. Water sprayed into their mouths, their eyes.
“You were so fucking loud in that van,” he grunted into her neck, his pace unrelenting. “Screaming for me to make you a mommy again.”
“I meant it,” she panted, biting his shoulder. “Fuck me, Mike. Like that. Just like that. Remind me we’re alive. Remind me we get to go home to our son.”
Her words ignited him. He drove into her harder, deeper, the angle hitting a spot that made her see white flashes behind her eyelids. Her moans were loud, unabashed, swallowed by the roar of the shower. One of his hands moved between them, his fingers finding her clit, rubbing rough, wet circles.
Casey came suddenly, a sharp, clenching orgasm that made her scream into his shoulder, her body locking around him like a vise. The feel of her pulsing around him tore his own climax from him. He shouted, a raw, unfiltered sound, and emptied himself inside her, his hips jerking through the pulses as the hot water washed over them.
They clung to each other, breathing ragged, as the water began to run cool. Finally, Mike carefully lowered her. Her legs were shaky. They leaned against each other under the stream, foreheads together.
“We are never,” Casey whispered, “doing door-to-door evangelism again.”
A weak, genuine laugh bubbled out of Mike. It was the first one in what felt like years. They finished their shower, eager to get back to their hotel where Amy and Jason were watching their precious son.
In the living room, Fatima sat on a worn sofa, a mug of tea cooling in her hands. The cut on her arm had been properly cleaned and stitched by Noor. The physical pain was negligible. The other pain was a deeper ache.
The door to the other bedroom opened and Amir stepped out. He’d showered, changed into borrowed sweats that were too short for him. He looked young and utterly lost.
He stood there, hovering. “Fati…”
She didn’t look at him. “Did you know what they were doing to them? To Jan? To the others?”
He was quiet for a long time. “I knew they were studying cross-Order magical resonance. Bedivere said it was for defense. To fight the Consortium more effectively. I didn’t… I didn’t ask for details. I didn’t want to know.”
“That’s your answer?” Her voice was quiet, deadly. “You didn’t want to know.”
“I’m sorry.”
The word was so useless it hung in the air like a bad smell.
Becky emerged from the same room, dressed in jeans and a simple t-shirt, her hair damp. She carried a duffel bag. She looked at Fatima, a silent communication passing between them—apology, understanding, a promise of future reckoning on different terms. Then she looked at Amir.
“We have to go. The Merlin’s jet is waiting at Teterboro. Your testimony is… crucial.”
Amir looked from Becky to his sister. His face was a battlefield of shame and dawning resolve. He took a step toward Fatima. “I will make this right. I don’t know how, but I will.”
Fatima finally lifted her gaze to his. The anger was still there, a cold, hard core. But beneath it was a flicker of the big sister who remembered teaching him to ride a bike. “You start by telling them everything. Every single thing. You hold nothing back. Then you live with what you’ve done. That’s how you start.”
He nodded, a jerky motion. He turned and followed Becky out the door. It clicked shut behind them.
Noor came and sat beside Fatima, taking the cold mug from her hands. “The heart is a stubborn muscle,” she said quietly. “It tries to forgive long before the mind agrees.”
“I don’t forgive him,” Fatima said.
“Not yet. But you didn’t strike him down when you had the power to. That’s a beginning.”
From the hallway, Eric appeared, Reggie at his heals, leaning on the doorframe. “Lydia just called. Jan and Godfrey apparently slipped out of the hospital at some point. Stacy and Katie are awake. Annie and Aaron are stable, still out but healing. They’re going to be okay.” She looked at Fatima, at the profound exhaustion on her friend’s face. “We’re all going to be okay.”
Fatima let out a long, slow breath. Outside, the grey dawn was finally giving way to a tentative, pale gold sun. The city’s endless noise was starting up again, a distant rumble of life stubbornly continuing.
Godfrey trotted over and put his head in Fatima’s lap. She absently scratched behind his ears. The simple, mundane act felt like the first real thing in hours.
They had survived. The cost was written on their bodies and in the new shadows behind their eyes. But they had survived. And for now, in the quiet of a borrowed safe house, with the morning light promising a new day, it was enough.
And for now, in the quiet of a borrowed safe house, with the morning light promising a new day, it was enough.
The shrill cry of her phone shattered the quiet.
Fatima jolted, fumbling for the device in her pocket. The screen glared with Hank’s name. She had lost all track of time, missed the sun’s slow crawl over the city’s skyline. Eric and Noor looked up from their quiet conversation.
“Habibi?” Hank’s voice was a low, steady anchor, but tension threaded through it. “You okay?”
“I’m here,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Your mom is asking when you’re coming down for breakfast. I told her you went for an early walk to clear your head after the travel. She’s making ful medames.” He paused. Fatima heard the distant clatter of a spoon against a pot, the comforting murmur of her parents’ morning routine. “But that’s not why I’m calling. I was passing Youssef’s room last night on the way to the bathroom. He was on the phone, talking about a philanthropy event. Innocent stuff.”
Hank took a breath. “But on his macroeconomics textbook, Fati. There’s a sticker. For the fraternity he’s pledging. Delta Kappa Psi. The logo has a circle with interlocking gears and a… a test tube in the center. It’s their symbol. It’s the Consortium’s symbol.”
Fatima’s blood, already cold, froze solid. She closed her eyes.
“He doesn’t have a clue,” Hank continued, his whisper urgent. “He was laughing about secret handshakes and free pizza. He sounds like a kid playing a game. But if that symbol is on their letters…”
“The Consortium is recruiting through the frat,” Fatima finished, her voice hollow. “They’re scouting for new members on college campuses. Building their next generation of fanatics.”
“Best case scenario,” Hank agreed grimly.
Fatima ended the call, the plastic phone case creaking in her tight grip. She looked at Noor, whose face had gone still and hard. She looked at Eric, who understood the weight of a hidden war targeting the young.
A corrosive thought wormed its way through her exhaustion: Bedivere’s monstrous experiments were born from a desire to create weapons against this very threat. His methods were evil, his actions unforgivable. Yet his central, driving fear was now sitting on her younger brother’s textbook in suburban New Jersey.
“Youssef,” she said to Noor, the name a prayer and a curse.
Her aunt stood, her movements suddenly sharp, all prior weariness burned away by a new, more personal fire. “We are going to Newark. Now.”
Eric rose as well. “I’ll stay, coordinate with Lydia on the clean-up, keep an eye on the hospital updates. Reggie and I have got this.”
Fatima was already moving, grabbing her torn jacket. The cut on her arm throbbed in time with her heartbeat. The quiet was gone, obliterated. The new day’s light now felt like an exposé, revealing not peace, but the next layer of the fight.
The hospital room was no longer a sanctuary. The beeping monitors had become a metronome for anxiety. Dale slept, his color better, his breathing deep and even. Vivian watched him, but her thoughts were no longer static. They churned.
The door opened again. This time, it was Stacy.
She moved like a stranger in her own body, each step cautious, as if testing the integrity of her bones. She wore hospital scrubs, her dark hair a tangled mess against the pale green fabric. Her athletic vibrancy was muted, replaced by a wary, hollowed-out fatigue. She paused inside the doorway, her eyes finding Vivian, then Dale. A muscle twitched in her jaw.
“They said I could walk,” Stacy said, her voice rough. “I needed to see.”
Vivian just nodded, scooting her chair aside to make room. Stacy leaned against the wall, crossing her arms, not taking the seat. Her gaze was fixed on Dale’s sleeping face, then dropped to where Vivian’s hand rested on the blanket over his thigh.
“You fixed him,” Stacy stated. It wasn’t a question.
“I took back what was stolen,” Vivian corrected softly. “He’s healing himself.”
“But you were there. In the lab.” Stacy’s eyes, usually so bright with fierce confidence, were dark pools of confusion and a simmering, directed anger. “You saw what she did. What she took.”
“I felt it,” Vivian whispered, the memory a fresh bruise.
Stacy pushed off the wall. The movement was quick, tense. “I feel like someone sanded down my insides. Like all my edges are gone.” She looked directly at Vivian, her expression stark. “She didn’t just take energy. She took the feeling of my last deadlift. The burn in my lungs after a five-mile run. The… the want to move. It’s just… grey.”
Vivian understood. Yara had feasted on their essences, their passions. For Stacy, that passion was motion, discipline, the proving of her body’s capabilities.
“It will come back,” Vivian said, but it sounded weak.
“How?” The word snapped out. Stacy began to pace, a short, tight path in the small room. “Do I just wait? Do I go to the gym and hope the muscle memory ignites something? I can’t just sit here.” Her pacing brought her to the foot of the bed. She stared at Dale, at the rise and fall of his chest. A different kind of heat, sudden and irrational, flared in her eyes. “He’s here. He’s solid. He’s real. I need to feel something real that isn’t this fucking hollowed-out nothing.”
Vivian watched her, the pieces clicking into place. Stacy’s need wasn't for Dale, not truly. It was for an anchor, for a sensation powerful enough to blast through the numbness Yara had left behind. It was a need Vivian recognized in its raw, desperate shape.
Stacy’s gaze flicked to Vivian, a challenge and a plea woven together. “You’re here. You’re… packed with whatever the hell you pulled out of her. You’re not grey.”
Vivian felt a corresponding pull low in her belly. Feeding from Dale had been about love, reconnection. This was different. This was about communion, about using the tools of her nature to heal in a way only she could.
“He needs to sleep,” Vivian said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur.
“Then we don’t wake him.”
Stacy walked to the door, locked it with a soft click. The sound was decisive. She turned and pulled the scrub top over her head in one fluid motion. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. Her body was a map of lean muscle, defined abs, the powerful shoulders of a swimmer. The physical perfection was still there, but it seemed oddly separate from the woman inhabiting it.
Vivian stood, letting her own blanket fall. They met in the space between the chair and the bed. No caution this time. Stacy’s hands were on Vivian’s hips, pulling her in, and her mouth was hot and demanding on Vivian’s. The kiss was not tender; it was a collision, an attempt to spark a fire by force.
Vivian responded in kind. Her fingers tangled in Stacy’s dark hair, pulling just enough to sting. She bit Stacy’s lower lip, and Stacy growled into her mouth, her hands sliding down to grab Vivian’s ass, squeezing hard.
“Tell me what you need,” Vivian breathed against her throat.
“Make me feel my skin. Make me sweat. Make me fucking shake.”
Vivian pushed her. Stacy stumbled back onto the empty second bed in the room, landing with a grunt. Vivian was on her in an instant, crawling over her, pinning her wrists above her head. Stacy bucked, not to escape, but to feel the restraint, to test it.
Vivian lowered her mouth to Stacy’s breast, taking the nipple in, sucking hard, then scraping it with her teeth. Stacy cried out, a sharp, gratifying sound. Vivian switched to the other breast, her hand sliding down the quivering plane of Stacy’s stomach. She didn’t tease. She pushed two fingers inside Stacy, finding her soaking wet, her inner muscles clenching around the intrusion immediately.
“Fuck, yes,” Stacy panted, her hips rocking to meet Vivian’s thrusting fingers. “Just like that. Harder.”
Vivian fucked her with a ruthless, rhythmic pace, the filthy, wet sound loud in the sterile room. She added a third finger, stretching her, and Stacy’s back arched off the bed, a string of obscenities falling from her lips. “Yeah, you greedy cunt, take it,” Vivian whispered, a dark edge of her power lending the words a physical weight. She curled her fingers, searching.
“There!” Stacy screamed, her body bowing. “Right there, don’t stop, fuck, don’t you dare stop!”
Vivian pressed the heel of her hand against Stacy’s clit, grinding in rough circles as her fingers pistoned inside her. She watched Stacy’s face contort, watched the numbness shatter and burn away in the crucible of raw, overwhelming sensation. She leaned down and kissed her again, swallowing her cries.
Stacy’s orgasm hit like a seizure. Her entire body locked, vibrating, and a guttural, ragged shout was torn from her throat as she came, pulsing around Vivian’s hand in hot, rhythmic waves. Vivian held her through it, feeling the stolen vitality within herself circulating, responding, a fraction of it flowing back into Stacy not as theft, but as a transfusion of pure, uncomplicated sensation.
When the tremors subsided, Stacy went boneless, gasping. Sweat plastered her hair to her temples. Her eyes were closed, but the grey emptiness was gone, replaced by a well of spent, shining intensity.
Vivian slowly withdrew her fingers, bringing them to her own mouth. She tasted Stacy, salty and musky, and then she guided Stacy’s hand between her own legs. “Now you.”
Stacy’s touch was unsure at first, then firm, learning. She pushed two fingers into Vivian’s slick heat, her thumb finding her clit. She mimicked Vivian’s earlier rhythm, her other arm wrapping around Vivian’s back to pull her down into another savage kiss.
Vivian rode her hand, her movements growing frantic. The energy swirling inside her—Jan’s chaotic joy, Stacy’s fierce discipline, the lingering echo of Dale’s steadfast love—coalesced into a tight, screaming knot. She broke the kiss, burying her face in Stacy’s neck as the climax detonated, silent and profound, her body milking Stacy’s fingers in relentless pulses.
They lay tangled, breathing the same air, the smell of sex a bold, living defiance in the clean, sickroom smell. The heart monitor continued its steady, oblivious beep.
Stacy finally spoke, her voice ragged but clear. “I’m going to lift again tomorrow. It’s going to hurt like hell. And it’s going to feel fucking amazing.”
Vivian smiled against her skin. It was a real smile.
The safe house door slammed open. Jan stood there, grinning fiercely. She’d changed out of the hospital gown into someone’s borrowed clothes—a too-big Ramones t-shirt and yoga pants. Godfrey trotted in past her, heading straight for a water bowl in the kitchen.
“The lovebirds are safe with Lydia’s people, the hospital crew is on the mend, and I just got off the phone with Mara,” Jan announced, plugging her dead phone into a charger on the counter. “She said the paperwork on an ‘unsolved industrial accident’ in that warehouse is already being drafted by someone she’s calling a ‘friendly.’ Legal shit I don’t understand. Point is, external optics are handled.”
She spun around, her eyes landing on Eric waiting by the window, then the now-empty spot where Fatima and Noor had been. Her grin faltered for a second. “Where’s Fati?”
“Family emergency in Newark,” Eric said quietly. “Her younger brother might be tangled up in something. She and Noor left in a hurry.”
Jan absorbed this, the weight of it settling over her momentary triumph. She walked over to the fridge, pulled out a beer, and twisted the cap off with a hiss. She took a long swallow. The events of the night were a series of vivid, brutal flashes behind her eyes: the gurney, the restraints, the hollow feeling of depletion, the sight of Vivian’s demon-form. The frantic call from Zack earlier that morning about Mara’s clever distraction and Mike and Casey’s disturbingly effective performance.