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pressure as well as her voice down, Becca addressed him. “When am I going to be able to put it behind me?”
     
    Michael stopped flipping through his file, tossing it down at the foot of the bed before he stuck his hands in his pockets and looked at her. The denim shirt and tan trousers looked good on him. Strong forearms showed where the sleeves were rolled up partway and his hair hung down on his forehead in thick black waves. “It hasn’t been that long, Becca. These things take time.”
     
    “I haven’t had a nightmare in weeks.” She felt her lip sticking out in a pout and sucked it back in.
     
    Shaking his head, Michael didn’t let his gaze break from hers. “I’m not just talking about the fire demon. It’s everything. Two months ago you didn’t know about any of this. Now you’re a fully functioning member of the unit. We’ve been on what, six cases counting this one and you’ve seen things that shouldn’t be possible. You lost Danny.” He watched her closely, knowing his words hit home.
     
    Michael was right. As much as she wanted to pretend this was all routine and it was no different than her previous post investigating cases on base, it was different. She’d seen vampires, shape shifters, werewolves, even a sea nymph. That wasn’t counting the fire demon who had melted the human shell he’d possessed right before her eyes. She barely got the others out before he burned the house down around them. It wasn’t her intention to get caught in the house with it. The pain had been horrible. She would never forget the smell of her hair and flesh being charred before she passed out from the smoke. Tears pricked at the backs of her eyes and Becca rolled them up, willing them to stop. “I’ve always pulled my weight, haven’t I?” She hated to think they were back to considering her as less than an equal or believed her to be incompetent like they had in the beginning.
     
    “Each one of us has been new. You’re no different.”
     
    “Yes, I am,” Becca maintained stubbornly.
     
    Head tipping, Michael came close to rolling his eyes. Not something he typically did. “You know what I mean. Coming in here, doing this, hunting things like ourselves, that’s hard in a different way than what you’ve done before.”
     
    Feet going numb from lack of blood flow, Becca slid over to stretch her legs out in front of her on the bed. Her eyes stayed on her wiggling feet. “How so?” The discussion of how they’d come to their roles in Admiral Black’s elite force was one she’d been hoping to broach for some time. She’d come in as the newbie serving with three veterans. “How is it hard for you?”
     
    She heard him inhale deeply as he lowered himself to sit on the corner of the mattress, body turned to face her. “Some people choose to become like this.” He rubbed at a finger, studying his palms with singular focus. “None of us did.” A chunk of hair fell and blocked her side view of his eyes, keeping Becca from seeing if emotion colored his irises. “All of us served before we were changed and that calling did not end with our humanity. Serving with Black affords us the opportunity to continue to do some good, to use our altered selves to help instead of hiding or losing ourselves in our monsters. The ones we hunt, they aren’t that different from any of us. The only thing that separates us is who chooses our targets.” He didn’t address the fact that Black also had found some way to keep all of them; that none could leave the unit.
     
    Feeling Michael’s words resonate, Becca was silent. Before she could try to come up with some sort of intelligent remark, Michael put his hands on his thighs and pressed himself up. “We should get going. There are a lot of bars for a small town.”
     
     
     
    Chapter 6
     
    Their third stop, Sneaky Pete’s was much the same as the previous two. The twenty-something kid working the front desk at the motel had recommended it for some local