Page 107 of Wicked Nightmare

"Jesus Christ!" Cam jerked back. "Where the hell did that come from?"

I couldn't help but cackle, despite the fact that both my vases were now destroyed. "Looks like our little flower has some thorns after all."

Rose stood there, chest heaving, the broken base of the vase dangling from her white-knuckled grip. The look in her eyes was familiar. Too familiar. The same feral gleam that stared back at me in the mirror after a particularly satisfying kill. And that should have scared me, probably, but it didn't. It made something click into place, something I'd been feeling since the first night she showed up at our door but couldn't put words to. She was one of us. Maybe not by choice, maybe not by experience, but by whatever Chimera had put inside her, she was wired the same way we were.

"Aren't you just full of surprises? Rose, I love what you did to his face, but you could have killed him. Also, not super impressed that now both my vases are broken."

She barely spared me a glance, her teeth bared. She'd done a number on him. The whole right side of his face was split open, the cheekbone caved in, blood pouring down his neck and soaking into his collar. It was gonna be a frustrating clean, but at least she didn't knock him unconscious. We needed him awake. We needed him talking.

Cam frowned. He was puzzled about Rose's sudden transformation. The speed. The accuracy. The way she'd gone from sleeping to violent in seconds, no warmup, no hesitation.

"Time for a little chat, I think," he said.

I cracked my knuckles and whirled on the intruder. "Oh goody, I do so love our heart-to-hearts. Shall we start with who the fuck you are and why you're interrupting our beauty sleep?"

He spat blood, glaring up at us. "Go to hell, you psychotic bitch."

I tsked, wagging a finger. "Now, now. That's not very nice. Babe, perhaps our friend needs some motivation to be more... cooperative?"

Cam's answering smile was all teeth. "With pleasure, babe."

His fist connected with the intruder's face and the nose exploded. The bone shoved sideways at an angle that would've made me wince if I gave a shit, which I didn't. More blood poured down his chin and he groaned, spitting out a tooth that skittered across the floor and disappeared under the couch.

"Let's try this again," I said, tapping my foot. "Who sent you?"

He coughed, more blood, more spit. "Chimera," he gasped. "They want the girl back."

I sighed. Of course it was. Well. I suppose that's slightly worse than if it was, say, the pope. But then again, maybe the pope is Chimera. Maybe they're all Chimera. Chimera. Chimera. Chimera. Fuuuuuck Chimera.

"Fuck," Cam muttered, echoing my thoughts. "How much time do we have?"

The intruder laughed, a wet, gurgling sound that bubbled through the blood pooling in his mouth. "You don't. They're coming. And they won't stop until they have her."

I glanced at Rose. She was shaking, her hands clenched at her sides, the broken vase finally dropped to the floor. Before I could process it further, she lunged forward, her hand connecting with the intruder's face in a slap so hard it echoed off the walls.

"You bastard!" she screamed. "You were supposed to protect me, not drag me back to that place!"

I blinked. "Well, now isn't that interesting." I looked at her with new eyes. Not just the violence. The heart-break written on her face. She knew this guy. "Looks like someone's got some fight in her after all."

Rose whirled on us, chest heaving. "You don't understand." Her voice cracked, raw and jagged. "Chimera... they'll never stop. I won't go back. I can't. This motherfucker was my 'guard.' He kept me safe from the more unstable patients. And yet here he is, trying to bring me back. Fuck. You." She directed the last two words at the man in the chair, each one landing with more force than the slap.

Then she whimper-screamed.

The rage in her voice stirred something in me. I'd made that sound. In the homes, when the adults who were supposed to keep us safe turned out to be the ones we needed protection from. When the people who fed you were the same people who hurt you. When trust became a weapon someone else was holding.

I looked at Cam. He was casually spinning his knife between his fingers, a habit he'd had since we were kids, the blade flashing in the dim light. His expression was blank, but that was his processing face. His connecting-the-dots face.

Well, fuck me. Now we knew two things. Rose had some ability to flip from docile to full-on offense without any ramp-up. Not trained. Not practiced. Triggered. Something in her switching on when the threat was real, and whoever this guy was, he knew shit.

Shit that we wanted to know. If only tongues could talk without a mouth, then we could just cut it out and put it in a jar to tell us its tales.

Cam stalked towards the intruder, stopping in front of him, eyeing him up and down the way he looked at a problem he was about to solve permanently. "Let's see what other goodies you've got, shall we?" He started patting down the bastard's pockets.

I grabbed the gun Cam had dropped in the scuffle and trained it on our guest, finger on the trigger. One wrong move and I'd redecorate.

"Jackpot." Cam held up a cell phone and what looked like an old-school beeper. The thing was flashing, red light pulsing fast and steady. "Now what do we have here?"

Before I could stop him, the idiot pressed the beeper's button. I opened my mouth to curse him out, but a strangled gasp from Rose cut me off.