Vicious

by V. E. Schwab

  XXI

  THREE AND A HALF HOURS UNTIL MIDNIGHT

  THE ESQUIRE HOTEL

  “DO you really have a plan?” asked Sydney sometime later.

  Victor dragged his eyes back open, and said the same thing he’d said in the graveyard, when she asked if Wrighton Penitentiary had let him go. The same words and the same tone and the same look. “Of course,” he said.

  “Is it a good plan?” pressed Sydney. Her legs swung from the couch, boots grazing Dol’s ears with every pass. The dog didn’t seem to mind.

  “No,” said Victor. “Probably not.”

  Sydney made a sound, something between a cough and a sigh. Victor wasn’t terribly fluent in her language yet, but guessed it was a kind of sad affirmative, the pre-teen version of gotcha or okay. The clock on the wall said it was almost nine p.m.. Victor closed his eyes again.

  “I don’t get it,” said Sydney a few minutes later. She was scratching Dol’s ear with her shoe. The dog’s head rocked back and forth gently with the motion.

  “What don’t you get?” asked Victor, eyes still closed.

  “If you want to find Eli, and Eli wants to find you, why do you have to go through all this? Why can’t you just find each other?”

  Victor blinked, and considered the small blond thing beside him on the couch. Her eyes were wide and waiting, but they were already losing their innocence. What little she’d clung to and brought with her down that road in the rain had faded in the face of Victor’s pragmatic execution, his promises and his threats. She’d been betrayed, shot, saved, healed, hurt, healed again, forced to resurrect two men, only to witness the reassassination of one of them. She’d gotten tangled up in this, by Eli and then by Victor. She was like a child, but not a child, and Victor couldn’t help but wonder if becoming an EO had hollowed her out the way it had him, had all of them—cut the ties of something vital and human. He wasn’t protecting her, not by treating her like a normal kid. She wasn’t normal.

  “You asked me if I have a plan,” he said, sitting forward. “I didn’t, at first. I had options, yes, ideas, and factors, but not a plan.”

  “But you have one now.”

  “I do. But because of Eli, and because of your sister, I only have one shot to get it right. The first person to act sacrifices the element of surprise, and I can’t afford to do that right now. Eli has a siren on his side, which means he could compel the entire city. Maybe he already has. I have a hacker, a half-dead dog, and a child. It’s hardly an arsenal.”

  Sydney frowned and reached for the folder of living EOs. She held it out to him. “So make one. Or at least, make yours stronger. Try. Eli sees EOs—us—as monsters. But you don’t, right?”

  Victor wasn’t sure how he felt about EOs. Up until he fetched Sydney from the side of the road, he’d only ever known one EO, himself excluded, and that was Eli. If he’d had to judge based on the two of them, then ExtraOrdinaries were damaged, to say the least. But these words people threw around—humans, monsters, heroes, villains—to Victor it was all just a matter of semantics. Someone could call themselves a hero and still walk around killing dozens. Someone else could be labeled a villain for trying to stop them. Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human. The difference between Victor and Eli, he suspected, wasn’t their opinion on EOs. It was their reaction to them. Eli seemed intent to slaughter them, but Victor didn’t see why a useful skill should be destroyed, just because of its origin. EOs were weapons, yes, but weapons with minds and wills and bodies, things that could be bent and twisted and broken and used.

  But there were so many unknowns. Whether the EOs were still alive was an unknown. What their powers were was an unknown. Whether they would be receptive was an unknown, and while Victor possessed a compelling argument, since the other side wanted them dead and he had use for them alive, the fact remained that to recruit an EO would mean introducing unpredictable and unreliable elements into his equation. Add to that the fact that Eli was probably busy eliminating Victor’s options, and it seemed more trouble than it was worth.

  “Please, Victor,” said Sydney, still holding out the folder. And so, to pacify her, and pass the time, he took it, and flipped the cover back. The page with the blue-haired girl had been removed, leaving only two profiles.

  The first profile belonged to a man named Zachary Flinch. Victor had read through the man’s page earlier that day, while waiting for Mitch’s call, so he knew it was a dead end. Everything about the suspected EO was too ambiguous—an EO’s ability seemed to have at least a tangential relationship to either the nature of death or the subject’s mental state, but it was still a guessing game—and the fact that everyone had left in the wake of the accident suggested trouble. More trouble than Victor had time for.

  He turned to the second profile, the one he hadn’t gotten to yet, skimmed the page, and stopped.

  Dominic Rusher was in his late twenties, an ex-soldier who’d had the misfortune of standing too close to a land mine overseas. The explosion had shattered many of Dominic’s bones, and left him in a coma for two weeks, but it wasn’t the coma or his newfound habit of disappearing that attracted Victor’s attention. It was the brief medical note at the bottom of the page. According to the military hospital records, Rusher had been prescribed 35 milligrams of methahydricone.

  It was a high dose of a fairly ambiguous synthetic opioid, but Victor had spent one rather slow summer in prison memorizing the extensive list of painkillers currently available via prescription, their purposes, dosages, and official names, as well as their medical ones, so he recognized the drug on sight. Not only that, but he felt sure that unless Eli had dedicated the same amount of time, he wouldn’t recognize it.

  Fate, it seemed, was smiling on Victor again.

  With mere hours until his midnight meeting, he knew there was no time or place for building trust or loyalty, but perhaps these could be supplanted by need. And need, Victor had learned, could be as powerful as any emotional bond. The latter was neurotic, complicated, but need could be simple, as primal as fear or pain. Need could be the foundation of allegiance. And Victor had exactly what Dominic needed. He could supply, if Dominic’s power was worth it. There was only one way to find out.

  Victor folded the profile and put it in his pocket.

  “Grab your coat, Mitch. We’re going out.”

  “Car or foot?”

  “Car.”

  “Absolutely not. Did you miss the memo about the cops? Last time I checked, that vehicle is stolen.”

  “Well, we’ll just have to make sure we don’t attract attention, then.”

  Mitch mumbled something unkind as he reached for his coat. Sydney ran to get hers from the bedroom where she’d abandoned it.

  “No, Syd,” said Victor when she reappeared, already tugging on her large red coat. “You need to stay here.”

  “But it was my idea!” she said.

  “And it’s a good one, but you still have to stay.”

  “Why?” she whined. “And don’t tell me it’s too dangerous. You said that about the cop, and then you dragged me in anyway.”

  Victor scoffed. “It is too dangerous, but that’s not why you have to stay here. We stand out enough without a missing child, and I need you to do something for me.”

  Sydney crossed her arms and considered him skeptically.

  “If I’m not back by ten thirty,” he said, “I need you to hit the Post button on Mitch’s computer, and upload my profile to the database. He has the window up and ready.”

  “Why ten thirty?” asked Mitch, buttoning his coat.

  “Long enough for someone to see it, but hopefully not long enough for them to be prepared. It’s a risk, I know.”

  “Not the biggest one you’re taking,” said Mitch.

  “Is that all?” asked Sydney.

  “No,” said Victor. He patted down the pockets of his coat. His hand vanished, and then came out with a blue lighter. He didn’t smoke, but it alway
s seemed to come in handy. “At eleven, I need you to start burning the folders. All of them. Use the sink.” He held out the lighter. “One page at a time, you understand?”

  Syd took the small blue device, turning it over in her hands.

  “This is really important,” he said. “We can’t be leaving evidence around, okay? You see why I need you here?” At last she nodded. Dol whined faintly.

  “You’re going to come back, right?” she asked when they reached the door.

  Victor looked over his shoulder. “Of course I will,” he said. “That’s my favorite lighter.”

  Sydney almost smiled as the door shut.

  “I get burning the papers, but why one page at a time?” asked Mitch as he and Victor were headed down the stairs.

  “To keep her busy.”

  Mitch thrust his hands into his coat. “We’re not coming back then, are we?”

  “Not tonight.”

  XXII

  THREE HOURS UNTIL MIDNIGHT

  THE THREE CROWS BAR

  ELI sat in a booth along the back wall of the Three Crows and waited for Dominic Rusher to show up. He’d checked with the bartender when he first arrived, and had been assured that Rusher came every night around nine o’clock. Eli had been early, but he had nothing else to do besides wait for midnight and whatever that would bring, so he’d ordered a beer and retreated to the corner booth, savoring the time away from Serena more than the booze.

  The drink was mostly for appearances anyway, since regenerating negated its effect, and alcohol without inebriation was far less enticing (he’d been carded, too, and the novelty of that had long worn off). But the distance from Serena was important—vital, he’d found—to maintaining his slim hold on control. The longer he was with her, the more things seemed to blur, an intoxication Eli’s body didn’t overcome so easily. He should have killed her when he had the chance. Now, with the police involved, it was messy. Their loyalty was to her, not to him, and they both knew it.

  A new city, that’s what he needed.

  After midnight and Victor and this whole mess was sorted out, he’d find a new city. Start over. Away from Detective Stell. Away from Serena, too, if he could help it. He didn’t even mind the prospect of his old method, the time and dedication it took, the weeks of searching for the mere moments of payoff. Things had gotten too easy lately, and easy meant dangerous. Easy led to mistakes. Serena was a mistake. Eli took a sip of beer and checked his phone for messages. There were none.

  Eli had hunted here once, a few years back, before Serena, when he was still a ghost, just passing through. The place was loud, and crowded, made for people who liked to surround themselves with chaos instead of quiet, ambient noise built of glass and shouting and music to which you could never discern the lyrics. It was an easy place to be invisible, to vanish, swallowed by the low light and the din of drunk and drinking and angry people. But even knowing that, Eli was neither bold enough nor foolish enough to perform a public execution. Serena might have secured him the police, but the people in the Three Crows weren’t much for cops or conformity. A problem could escalate into a disaster in a place like this, especially without Serena to soothe the masses.

  Eli reminded himself again that he was glad to be rid of her influence, both over others and over him. Now he could, out of want and necessity, do this his way.

  He checked the time. Less than three hours until … until what? Victor had set the deadline to rattle him, put him on edge. He was disturbing Eli’s calm, like a kid dropping rocks into a pond, making ripples, and Eli saw him doing it and still felt rippled, which perturbed him even more. Well, Eli was taking back control, of his mind and his life and his night. He drew his fingers through the ring left by his beer glass on the old wood table, before writing one word in the film of water.

  EVER.

  XXIII

  TEN YEARS AGO

  LOCKLAND UNIVERSITY

  “WHY Ever?”

  Victor posed the question from across the table. Eli had just died. Victor had just brought him back. Now the two were sitting in the bar a few blocks down from their apartment, buzzed from several rounds (or at least Victor was) and the fact they’d been lucky enough to survive an acute attack of stupidity. But Eli felt odd. Not bad, just … different. Distant. He couldn’t put his finger on it yet. Something was missing, though, he could feel the absence of it, even if he couldn’t deduce the shape. Physically though—and he supposed that mattered most, all things considered—he felt fine, persistently so, suspiciously so, given that for some time that evening he had been an inanimate object instead of a living being.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, sipping his beer.

  “I mean,” said Victor, “you could pick any name. Why pick Ever?”

  “Why not?”

  “No,” said Victor, waving his drink. “No, Eli. You don’t do anything like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Without thinking. You had to have a reason.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know you. I see you.”

  Eli drew his fingers through a ring of water on the table. “I don’t want to be forgotten.”

  He said it so softly he worried Victor wouldn’t hear, not over the chatter of the bar, but he clamped his hand down on Eli’s shoulder. For a moment he looked so serious, but then he let go and slumped back in his seat.

  “Tell you what,” said Victor. “You remember me, and I’ll remember you, and that way we won’t be forgotten.”

  “That’s shit logic, Vic.”

  “It’s perfect.”

  “And what happens when we’re dead?”

  “We won’t die, then.”

  “You make cheating death sound so simple.”

  “We do seem awfully good at it,” said Victor cheerfully. He lifted his glass. “To never dying.”

  Eli lifted his. “To being remembered.”

  Their glasses clinked as Eli added, “Forever.”

  XXIV

  TWO AND A HALF HOURS UNTIL MIDNIGHT

  THE THREE CROWS BAR

  DOMINIC Rusher was a broken man. Literally.

  Most of the bones on his left side, the side nearest the IED, were pinned or screwed or synthetic, the skin pocked with scars beneath his clothes. His hair—for three years buzzed to military standards—had grown out, and now hung shaggy around his eyes, one of which was fake. His skin was tan and his shoulders strong, his posture still too straight to blend entirely with the bar’s regulars, and despite it all he was clearly broken.

  Eli didn’t need the files to tell him any of that; he could see it as the man walked up to the counter, slid onto a stool, and ordered his first drink. Time was ticking past and Eli’s grip tightened on his own glass, as he watched the ex-soldier kick off his night with a Jack and Coke. He had to resist the urge to abandon the booth and the beer and shoot Dominic in the back of the head, just to be done with it. Eli did his best to smother the flare of impatience; his rituals existed for a reason, and he would—and had—compromised them on occasion, but would not abandon them, even now. To slay without cause would be an abuse of power, and an insult to God. The blood of EOs washed from his skin. The blood of innocents would not. He had to get Dominic out of the bar, had to get a confession, if not a demonstration, before he executed him. Besides, Dominic would make fine bait. So long as he was instilled at the bar, and in Eli’s sight, he was as useful alive as he was dead, because if Victor came looking for the broken man, and made his way here before midnight, Eli would be waiting, and he would be ready.

  * * *

  VICTOR drove, while Mitch lay sprawled across the backseat, as out of sight as possible given his mass. The city slid by, the greens and reds and office-window whites streaking past as Victor wove the car through the gridded streets, out of the downtown and into the old sector. They kept to the roads that curled through the side streets of Merit instead of the main grid that ran in and out of the city, avoiding any street that eventually led t
o a toll or a bridge or any other potential checkpoint. They watched their speed, pacing traffic when it went too fast because going slow would stand out just as much as speeding. Victor guided the stolen car through Merit, and soon the numbered avenues and lettered roads gave way to named streets. Real names, trees and people and places, clustered buildings, some dark, boarded, abandoned, and some bulging with life.

  “Take a left,” said Mitch, consulting the card-sized, shifting map on his phone. Victor checked his watch and ticked off the time it was taking to get to the bar, subtracted it from midnight to figure out how long they really had. He couldn’t be late. Not tonight. He tried to find calm, find peace, but excitement rattled inside of him like loose change. He rapped his free hand on his leg and swallowed the whisper that this was a bad idea. It was better than sitting still. Besides, they had time. Plenty of time.

  “Left again,” said Mitch. Victor turned.

  They’d spent the first half of the drive going over the plan, and now that it was laid out, and all that remained was to execute it, they drove in a silence punctuated only by Mitch’s directions and Victor’s restless tapping, and the roads rolling away beneath them.

  * * *

  WHILE Victor drove, Mitch wondered.

  Wondered if he would survive the night.

  Wondered if Victor would, too.

  Wondered what tomorrow would bring if they both did.

  Wondered what Victor would do to occupy his thoughts once Eli was gone. If Eli was gone.

  Mitch wondered what he would do next. He and Victor had never discussed their partnership, its terms and termination, but it had always been about this. About finding Eli. There was never any mention of what would come next. He wondered if there was a next, in Victor’s mind.