Kovit was quiet. After a long moment, he looked down at the gun in Patchaya’s hand and whispered, “Are you going to kill me?”
Patchaya laughed, wet and broken, her fingers tight on her gun. “I came here to stop you. To avenge Bran, to put an end to this.”
Kovit swallowed. “Pat—”
“Shut up.”
They stood there for a heartbeat, then two, completely silent, Patchaya’s chest heaving as she steadied herself, gun high, and Kovit stared at her with dark eyes.
Finally, Patchaya lowered her gun and turned away, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Don’t talk to me, now or ever again. As far as I’m concerned, my brother died ten years ago.”
Then she spun around and left, slamming the door behind her.
Kovit stared after her, before slowly falling to his knees on the old carpeting.
Nita’s muscles loosened. It was okay. Patchaya hadn’t been able to go through with it. Her mother’s plan had failed. Kovit was all right.
Nita’s mother clicked her tongue, jerking Nita’s attention away from the screen. “Well, that’s annoying.” She sighed heavily. “But as they say, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”
Then she raised her own gun and shot through the paper-thin wall into the room next door.
Thirty-Seven
KOVIT HAD BEEN SHOT BEFORE. When they’d both been trapped in a cage together in Death Market, they’d tried to escape their captors, a fight had ensued, and a stray bullet had caught Kovit in the side. Nita had stitched it up, he took antibiotics, and he recovered.
But a stray bullet is not the same as a bullet shot by her mother aiming to kill.
It didn’t matter that it was through the wall, or that they were watching through a TV screen. Her mother had practice and aim, and Kovit went down in a spray of blood.
Nita tried to scream, but she was paralyzed, and all that came out was a terrible, broken croak.
Her mother nodded approvingly as Kovit choked onscreen, his body sprawled across the floor, blood seeping out and pooling around him.
“I’ve still got it.” Her mother laughed, harsh and cruel.
Tears streamed down Nita’s face at her own uselessness.
On the screen, Kovit gasped, hand weakly coming to cover his wound, even as the blood pooled around him.
A sudden sharp pain rocked Nita’s spine, and it took her a heartbeat to realize her mother had pulled the knife out. She immediately started healing the damage.
“Go say goodbye to your little monster. I imagine you’ll need a little bit of alone time to think through things. I’ll be waiting for you in my hotel.” Her mother’s eyes hardened. “Don’t make me wait long.”
Then with a cheery wave, her mother was out the door and gone.
Nita didn’t focus on the future, on what she’d do about her mother, she spent all her energy healing her spine, re-fusing vertebrae and nerves. The moment she could move, she was out the door and smashing into her and Kovit’s room.
Kovit turned to her when she entered, his face spattered with his own blood, eyes unfocused. “Nita?”
“I’m here,” she whispered, yanking out her phone and calling 911. “I’m here, Kovit. It’s going to be okay.”
His eyelashes fluttered like butterfly wings, and he gave her a cracked smile. “I don’t think it is.”
The blood was pooling around him, and the stain on his shirt was a deep, dark red. His chest was rising and falling in jerky motions, and his breathing was wrong. There was a strange, sucking sound coming from his chest when he inhaled, and glops of blood burbled against his shirt.
“Don’t talk like that,” Nita hissed. “You’re going to get through this.”
He just smiled slightly and fumbled for her hand with his bloody one. “Thank you, Nita. For everything.”
“Stop talking like that.” Her voice rose in panic, because the more he spoke, the more real it made things.
His eyes fluttered closed. “It’s okay. This is how it was always going to end for me.”
“Bullshit!” she screamed, hating that he was so accepting, that he wouldn’t fight back against the path that the world had put him on. “That’s bullshit, and you know it!”
But he didn’t respond, his chest gasping and gaping, and his head lolling limply.
Then she was connected to the emergency line, and she had to listen to them rather than to Kovit. She covered his wound with a piece of duct tape to keep the blood in and the air out. The person on the other end of the line was calm and collected even as they said things like “punctured lung” and “sucking wound” and “critical condition.”
When the EMTs finally came, they hauled Kovit onto a stretcher and calmly wheeled him to the elevator bank. The police had arrived at some point, not that Nita cared. She just hoped no one decided to shoot him again because he was a zannie.
She choked on the thought and stuck close to Kovit, praying that they’d help him, that the people here were anti-DUL, that they’d let him live.
One officer came over to talk to her, but paused when he saw Kovit’s face, doing a double-take. Kovit had been recognized. His hand went to his weapon, but another man put his hand on the policeman’s arm.
“Didn’t you see the notice this morning? The DUL is temporarily suspended pending investigation.”
Nita had won. She’d gotten the DUL suspended. Kovit being alive wasn’t a crime anymore.
A part of her wanted to laugh at the irony of it all. So much time and effort fighting to get the DUL suspended, all her manipulations and plans finally came to fruition.
But it was too late.
What did it matter now? Maybe the hospital wouldn’t legally be allowed to kill him, but he could die in surgery anyway, and Nita would never know if it was murder or not. No one would.
Nita had won everything and somehow lost what she was fighting for in the first place.
She linked her bloody fingers through Kovit’s limp ones, not knowing if she was trying to comfort him or herself as the policeman joined them with the EMTs in the elevator.
Part of her wanted to scream at the EMTs. They were so calm and slow and methodical and slow and she just wanted them to move faster, help him more. But they remained slow and steady as they all climbed into the ambulance and sped toward the hospital.
The officer tried to ask her a few basic things while they were in the ambulance. Did Nita know who shot Kovit? No, it was someone in the room next door. The officer nodded like he expected as much and remained silent. The EMTs cut Kovit’s shirt off and exposed the gaping hole in his chest. They shoved tubes down his throat with sharp precision and connected him to an IV drip.
“Do you know his blood type?” one of the EMTs asked her.
Nita stared at him for a moment, and then touched her bloody hand to her mouth, making Kovit’s blood a part of her, letting it dissolve on her tongue. And when it was a part of her, she could identify it, she could manipulate it, same as any other part of her body.
“B positive.” Her voice was hoarse.
He made a note, and Nita swallowed her panic, a desperate idea taking form. “I’m type O negative. Does he need blood?”
He did indeed need blood, and they set up the transfusion bag as the ambulance screamed toward the emergency room.
Nita wasn’t actually O negative, but she could manipulate her body to be anything, and she changed her blood as it filtered into the bag, hoping desperately that all those fools on the black market were right, that consuming her body really did give a person immortality or faster healing or anything remotely useful. She’d never wanted any of the marketing scams around her to be right before, but at this moment, she wished she were made of magic, that everything said about her was true, that it was within her power to save Kovit.
Drops of her blood filtered into his veins, but his eyes remained closed, and his wound remained open and vicious.
At the private hospital the policeman had insi
sted the ambulance go to, the halls were sterile and strangely empty, making it feel creepy and haunted. Nita had expected a big crowded hospital with thousands of people and beds in the hall, overworked and underpaid staff. This place gleamed with money, and a small part of Nita wondered how she was going to pay for this. But that was a problem for later, and she shoved it aside.
Nurses wheeled Kovit away, right into surgery. Nita grabbed the doctor as he followed beside Kovit, and she whispered, “Will he be okay?”
The doctor looked at her, and she knew, she just knew, in that moment, that Kovit would not be okay. That no one here believed he would survive this.
But all the doctor said was, “We’ll try.”
And then they wheeled the stretcher away, and he was gone.
Thirty-Eight
NITA STARED AFTER KOVIT as though if she watched the white surgery doors long enough, she would develop x-ray vision and be able to see what was happening beyond. A nurse directed her to a short row of chairs and a small table with pop culture magazines on it.
“You can wait here,” the nurse said, her face lined and her eyes soft. “It will be a while, but I promise, the minute I have news, I’ll come tell you. Okay?”
Nita didn’t respond, only sort of hearing what the nurse was saying. The nurse gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder and then quietly retreated.
Nita stood there, staring at the wall, hands covered in blood, Kovit’s blood, wondering if she’d just seen him for the last time. The nurse returned at some point with wet wipes, a towel, and a pair of scrubs. Nita took it all in her bloody hands and let the nurse lead her to the bathroom.
The nurse spoke slowly and carefully, as though if she said too many words too fast, Nita would just shatter from the pressure. “You take all the time you need. Wash the blood off. You’ll feel better after you’re clean, I promise.”
Then Nita was left in the bathroom. It was a handicapped one, large, with sparkling clean white tiles and walls. Nita dripped dark blood on the floor as she stumbled in, marring the pristine surfaces. She put the scrubs on a small shelf by the door and wandered over to the sink.
Her reflection stared back at her from the mirror. She looked dead. It wasn’t just the blood on her face or the waxiness of her skin. It was the expression in her eyes. The expression of someone who has lost everything. The expression of someone broken.
Kovit wasn’t going to make it.
Part of her demanded that she shouldn’t think like that, that he wasn’t dead yet, but she’d seen the doctor’s look, the EMTs’ expressions. She knew the chances were low.
And even on the slight chance he did make it, her mother wouldn’t let it last. Was her mother here at the hospital even now, waiting for a chance to sabotage the surgery? How would she go about it, Nita wondered, thoughts almost clinical. She could cut the power. Or poison Kovit. Even just take his IV out. Swap the blood bags.
Or she could just tell the staff to look at the news. They’d all see he was a zannie, and even though the Dangerous Unnaturals List was suspended now, someone would take matters into their own hands, thinking they were doing the right thing. There was always going to be someone.
A choked sob made its way from Nita’s throat, scraping the skin at the back of her throat with its force, and she crumpled to the floor, blood on her hands staining the towel she’d been given, coloring the pure white with death.
She thought of Kovit, with his beautiful black eyes, the way he smiled just for her. Not his creepy smile, his weaponized grin of violence and fear. No, she thought of the soft one he gave her when she laid her head on his chest, the gentle one that was full of childish wonder. The genuinely sweet one that was all him, none of the darkness seeping in.
She swallowed heavily, a barrage of memories playing through her head of all the different Kovits she knew, all the different faces he wore. She thought of the expression he made when people were cruel to him, internalizing his hurt so that no one could see it. She thought of all the conversations they’d had, how little he felt he truly knew himself, how much he wanted to learn.
She remembered the pure joy on his face when he’d seen Buenos Aires. And she remembered the cracked and broken soul he’d worn on his sleeve after he killed Henry.
She closed her eyes. They’d managed so much together, from escaping and destroying the market where they’d met to evading black market hunters and setting Kovit free of the Family. It seemed so unfair that here, at the end, when they were so close to a fresh start, when the list was crumbling and the future was full of possibility, that it should all end. They’d always had the cards stacked against them. She supposed it was only a matter of time before they were dealt a losing hand.
She clutched the towel close, pressing it to her chest like it could stem the blood flowing from the wound in her soul, trying to imagine what she’d do without Kovit. The hard truth was, she could still do everything. Her life wasn’t over. She could still go to college. She could still have power over the black market. She could still live her life.
But it felt empty. Hollow. Like the whole world had lost its color. She didn’t need Kovit to achieve her dreams. She didn’t need his help against the market. Kovit wasn’t a tool she’d lost, or a change of plans. Kovit was Kovit. He was the person who held her when she cried. Who entwined his enemies with hers, so that she wouldn’t be alone. He bought her breakfast and told corny jokes. He slaughtered the people who tried to hurt her. He made her smile.
There, on the floor of the bathroom, Nita finally broke down. She curled in a puddle of his blood, clutching the towel, as the wound in her soul bled her dry, spilling out in her tears until she was empty inside.
Thirty-Nine
WHEN NITA FINALLY CAME OUT of the bathroom, she was a little more put together. She wore the scrubs and had washed most of the blood from her skin. Her face was still waxy, and her eyes were still dead, but she wasn’t covered in the blood of her best friend anymore, and that made a lot of difference.
A policeman was waiting for her in a chair by the bathroom, and he rose when she approached.
“Can we talk?” he asked. He kept his voice slow and gentle, and it was clear he was trying to be considerate of her shock.
All she wanted to do was tell him to fuck off. To slide Kovit’s switchblade across his throat. He was an obstacle in the way of her one and only goal, the last thing in this gray world that had any color in it.
Kill her mother.
That was all that was left. Kill her mother, end this once and for all. Get vengeance for Kovit, vengeance for herself, end her mother’s brutal control over Nita’s life.
After that . . . Well, there wasn’t an after that. Nita couldn’t envision it. She knew it wouldn’t bring back the color, knew it wouldn’t fix what was already broken. But she’d feel goddam good doing it.
“Señorita?” The policeman sounded worried.
Nita forced her hands to unclench, forced her mind away from the switchblade and her mother. If Kovit did survive, she wanted him to have a chance. On that slim possibility the world would be good to her, she needed to cover for him. She needed to protect him.
So she nodded and forced herself to reply with, “Yes. We can talk.”
The policeman led her back to the waiting room chairs, giving her worried glances. She seated herself on a black plastic chair, and he brought her a cup of water. She didn’t drink.
“Am I correct in assuming that’s Kovit Sangwaraporn in surgery right now, the zannie all over the news the past couple of days?”
There was no point denying it. “Yes.”
“And you are?”
“Nita.”
“Nita . . . ?”
Nita tried to remember what name she was using with INHUP. She had so many aliases, it felt weird to actually use her real birth name. “Anita Sánchez.”
He waited a moment for her to give the rest of her name, but she didn’t have more. They’d used American naming customs, so she only had her
father’s surname.
“And what’s your relation to Kovit Sangwaraporn?”
“He’s . . .” Nita chose her words with care. “He’s my friend.”
The officer nodded slowly. “How did you meet?”
“On the black market. We’d both been kidnapped and were up for sale.”
The policeman was taking notes. “And you’re . . .”
“I’m harmless,” Nita lied.
“How did you two end up for sale on the black market?”
“I was kidnapped. Wrong place, wrong time,” Nita whispered. “Kovit had been a prisoner of a mafia group for years. They finally got tired of him resisting their demands and decided to sell him.”
“Demands?”
Nita met his eyes. “You’ve seen the videos.”
The policeman stilled. “I have.”
“I don’t really need to explain what his life was like, then, do I?”
“No.” The man sighed softly. “No, I got it.” He cleared his throat. “So what happened next?”
“We escaped, and we both made our way to INHUP.”
“Both of you?”
“Yes,” Nita lied, weaving her story to match as closely to the truth as possible but adding her own flavor to it. “He had a lot of information on that mafia group in the States. The one recently arrested after the videos came out. They were . . . bad. Really bad. I think he knew INHUP would probably kill him anyway, but I think he also felt like he had to stop the people who’d hurt him for so long, who’d made him hurt others.”
The policeman had started recording her. That was fine. Nita didn’t want to have to tell the story again. She hoped it got leaked. She should have recorded it herself.
“What happened at INHUP?” the policeman asked.
“I don’t know all the details. We didn’t get to see each other much after I went into protective custody. The news keeps talking about how he was dating that INHUP agent, but that’s not true. She’s his sister. But they’d been separated when INHUP killed their parents a decade ago.” Her eyes flicked to the policeman and then away. “Kovit was in some sort of INHUP witness protection thing for a while, and they spent a lot of time together while he informed on the mafia group that had kept him prisoner. But after INHUP had all the information they needed, she turned around and betrayed him. She put him on the list and—” Nita swallowed a huge gulp of air, not needing to fake the shaking in her hands. “He got shot.”
When Villains Rise Page 25