Vengeful E-Book

V. E. Schwab

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 601

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

A super-powered collision of extraordinary minds and vengeful intentions—V. E. Schwab returns with the thrilling follow-up to Vicious.Magneto and Professor X. Superman and Lex Luthor. Victor Vale and Eli Ever. Sydney and Serena Clarke. Great partnerships, now soured on the vine.But Marcella Riggins needs no one. Flush from her brush with death, she's finally gained the control she's always sought—and will use her newfound power to bring the city of Merit to its knees. She'll do whatever it takes, collecting her own sidekicks, and leveraging the two most infamous EOs, Victor Vale and Eli Ever, against each other once more.With Marcella's rise, new enmities create opportunity—and the stage of Merit City will once again be set for a final, terrible reckoning.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Also Available from V. E. Schwab and Titan Books

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Genesis: Six Weeks Ago

I: Resurrection

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

II: Revelation

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

XXII

XXIII

XXIV

XXV

XXVI

III: Ascension

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

XXII

XXIII

XXIV

XXV

XXVI

IV: Judgment Day

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

XXII

Exodus

I

II

III

A Message from Victor Vale

I

Common Ground

About the Author

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM V. E. SCHWABAND TITAN BOOKS

Vicious

Vengeful

This Savage Song

Our Dark Duet

The Dark Vault (November 2018)

A Darker Shade of Magic

A Gathering of Shadows

A Conjuring of Light

TITANBOOKS

Vengeful

Hardback edition ISBN: 9781785652486

E-book edition ISBN: 9781785652493

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First Titan edition: September 2018

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

V.E. Schwab asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Copyright © 2018 V.E. Schwab

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

To Mum, and Holly, and Miriam, the most powerful women I know

While seeking revenge, dig two graves—one for yourself.

DOUGLAS HORTON

GENESIS

SIX WEEKS AGO

THE MERIT SUBURBS

THE night Marcella died, she made her husband’s favorite dinner.

Not because it was a special occasion, but because it wasn’t—spontaneity, people insisted, was the secret to love. Marcella didn’t know if she believed all that, but she was willing to try her hand at a home-cooked meal. Nothing too fancy—a good steak, edges seared with black pepper, slow-baked sweet potatoes, a bottle of merlot.

But six o’clock came and went, and Marcus wasn’t home.

Marcella put the food in the oven to keep it warm, then checked her lipstick in the hall mirror. She freed her long black hair from its loose bun, then put it up again, teasing a few strands out before smoothing her A-line dress. People called her a natural beauty, but nature only went so far. The truth was, Marcella spent two hours in the gym six days a week, trimming and toning and stretching every lean muscle on her willowy five-foot-ten frame, and she never left her bedroom without her makeup expertly applied. It wasn’t easy, but neither was being married to Marcus Andover Riggins—better known as Marc the Shark, Tony Hutch’s right-hand man.

It wasn’t easy—but it was worth it.

Her mother liked to say she’d gone fishing and somehow bagged a great white. But what her mother didn’t understand was that Marcella had baited her hook with her prize in mind. And she’d caught exactly what she’d wanted.

Her cherry red heels clicked across the wood floor before being swallowed by the silk rug as she finished setting the table and lit each of the twenty-four tapers in the pair of iron candelabras that framed the door.

Marcus hated them, but for once Marcella didn’t care. She loved the candelabras, with their long stems and branching limbs—they looked like the kind of thing you’d find in a French chateau. They made the home feel luxurious. Made new money feel old.

She checked the time—seven, now—but resisted the urge to call. The fastest way to kill a flame was to smother it. Besides, if Marcus had business, then business always came first.

Marcella poured herself a glass of wine and leaned back against the counter, imagining his strong hands closing around someone’s throat. A head forced underwater, a jaw cracking sideways. Once he’d come home with blood on his hands and she’d fucked him right there on the marble island, the metal shaft of his gun still in its holster, the steel hard against her ribs.

People thought Marcella loved her husband in spite of his work. The truth was, she loved him because of it.

But as seven became eight, and eight neared nine, Marcella’s arousal slowly turned to annoyance, and when the front door finally swung open, that annoyance hardened to anger.

“Sorry, darling.”

His voice always shifted when he’d been drinking, slowing to a lazy drawl. It was his only tell. He never stumbled or swayed, his hands never shook. No, Marcus Riggins was made of stronger stuff—but he wasn’t without his flaws.

“It’s fine,” said Marcella, hating the edge in her own voice. She turned toward the kitchen, but Marcus caught her wrist, pulling her hard enough that she lost her balance. His arms folded around her, and she looked up into his face.

Sure, her husband’s waist had widened a little, while hers had narrowed, that beautiful swimmer’s body bloating a fraction with each passing year, but his summer brown hair hadn’t thinned, and his eyes were still the rugged blue of slate or dark water. Marcus had always been good-looking, though she wasn’t sure how much of that was his tailored suits or the way he moved through the world, as if expecting it get out of his way. It usually did.

“You’re gorgeous,” he whispered, and Marcella could feel the press of him, hungry against her hip. But Marcella wasn’t in the mood.

She reached up, nails dragging down his stubbled cheek. “You hungry, sweetheart?”

“Always,” he growled against her neck.

“Good,” said Marcella, stepping away and smoothing her skirt. “Dinner’s ready.”

* * *

A bead of red wine slid like sweat down the side of the raised glass, tracing its way toward the white tablecloth. Marcella had filled it too full, her hand made clumsy by her worsening mood. Marcus didn’t seem to notice the stain. He didn’t seem to notice anything.

“To my beautiful wife.”

Marcus never prayed before meals, but he always made a toast, had since the night they met. It didn’t matter if he had an audience of twenty or if they ate alone. She’d found it endearing on their first date, but these days the gesture felt hollow, rehearsed. Designed to charm instead of being genuinely charming. But he never failed to say the words, and perhaps that was a kind of love. Or perhaps Marcus was simply a creature of habit.

Marcella lifted her own glass.

“To my elegant husband,” she answered automatically.

The rim was halfway to her lips when she noticed the smudge on Marcus’s cuff. At first she thought it was only blood, but it was too bright, too pink.

It was lipstick.

Every conversation she’d had with the other wives came rushing back.

His eyes start to wander yet?

Keeping his stick wet?

All men are rotten.

Marcus was busy cutting into his steak, and rambling on about insurance, but Marcella had stopped listening. Behind her eyes, her husband traced his thumb across a pair of stained lips, parting them around his knuckle.

Her fingers tightened on the wineglass. Heat was flushing her skin even as a cold weight settled in her stomach. “What a fucking cliché,” she said.

He didn’t stop chewing. “Excuse me?”

“Your sleeve.”

His gaze drifted languidly down toward the bloom of pink. He didn’t even have the decency to look surprised. “Must be yours,” he said, as if she’d ever worn that shade, ever owned anything so tacky and twee—

“Who is she?”

“Honestly, Marce—”

“Who is she?” demanded Marcella, gritting her perfect teeth.

Marcus finally stopped eating, and leaned back in his chair, blue eyes hanging on her. “Nobody.”

“Oh, so you’re fucking a ghost?”

He rolled his eyes, clearly tired of the subject, which was ironic, considering he usually relished any topic that revolved around him. “Marcella, envy really doesn’t suit you.”

“Twelve years, Marcus. Twelve. And now you can’t keep it in your pants?”

Surprise flickered across his face, and the truth hit her like a blow—of course this wasn’t his first time cheating. This was only the first time he’d been caught.

“How long?” she asked icily.

“Let it go, Marce.”

Let it go—as if his cheating were like the wineglass in her hand, something she’d just happened to pick up, could just as easily set down.

It wasn’t the betrayal itself—she could forgive a lot, in the interest of this life she’d made—but it was the look in the other women’s eyes that Marcella had always taken for envy, it was the stoic warnings of the first wives, the twitch at the corner of a smile, the realization that they all knew, had known, for god knows how long, and she—hadn’t.

Let it go.

Marcella set the wineglass down. And picked up the steak knife. And as she did, her husband had the nerve to scoff. As if she wouldn’t know what to do with it. As if she hadn’t listened to all his stories, hadn’t begged for details. As if he didn’t go on and on about his job when he was drunk. As if she hadn’t practiced with a pillow. A bag of flour. A steak.

Marcus raised a single brow. “What do you plan to do now?” he asked, voice dripping with condescension.

How silly she must look to him, with her perfectly manicured nails gripping the monogrammed hilt of the blade.

“Dollface,” he crooned, and the word made Marcella seethe.

Dollface. Baby. Darling. Was that how he really thought of her, after all this time? As helpless, brittle, weak, something ornamental, a glass figurine designed to shimmer and shine and look pretty on a shelf?

When she didn’t let go, his gaze darkened.

“Don’t you turn that knife on me unless you plan to use it . . .”

Perhaps she was glass.

But glass is only brittle until it breaks.

Then it’s sharp.

“Marcella—”

She lunged, and had the thrill of seeing her husband’s eyes widen a fraction in surprise, the bourbon spilling as he jerked backward. But Marcella’s knife had barely skimmed his silk tie before Marcus’s hand cracked across her mouth. Blood poured across her tongue, and Marcella’s eyes blurred with tears as she tumbled back into the oak table, rattling the china plates.

She still had the knife, but Marcus had his hand wrapped around her wrist, pinning it to the table so hard the bones began to grind together.

He’d been rough with her before, but that had always been in the heat of the moment, signaled by some unspoken pact, and she’d always been the one to signal it.

This was different.

Marcus was two hundred pounds of brute strength, a man who’d made his living breaking things. And people. He clucked his tongue now, as if she were being ridiculous. Blowing things out of proportion. As if she’d made him do this. Made him fuck another woman. Made him ruin all that she’d worked so hard to build.

“Ah, Marce, you’ve always known how to rile me up.”

“Let me go,” she hissed.

Marcus brought his face close to hers, ran a hand through her hair, cupped her cheek. “Only if you play nice.”

He was smiling. Smiling. As if this were just another game.

Marcella spit her blood into his face.

Her husband let out a long-suffering sigh. And then he slammed her head against the table.

Marcella’s world went suddenly white. She didn’t remember falling, but when her vision flickered back she was on the silk carpet beside her chair, her head throbbing. She tried to get up, but the room swayed viciously. Bile rose in her throat, and she rolled over, vomited.

“You should have let it go,” said Marcus.

Blood ran into one of her eyes, staining the dining room red as her husband reached out and wrapped his hand around the nearest candelabra. “I always hated these,” he said, tipping the pole until it fell.

The flame caught the silk curtains on the way down, before the candelabra hit the floor.

Marcella struggled to her hands and knees. She felt like she was underwater. Slow, too slow.

Marcus stood in the doorway, watching. Just watching.

A steak knife gleamed on the hardwood floor. Marcella forced herself up through the heavy air. She was almost there when the blow hit her from behind. Marcus had knocked over the second candelabra. It came crashing down, iron arms pinning her to the floor.

It was disconcerting how fast the fire had spread. It leapt from the curtain to a puddle of spilled bourbon, to the tablecloth and the rug. It was already everywhere.

Marcus’s voice, through the haze. “We had a good run, Marce.”

That fucking prick. As if any of it had been his idea, his doing. “You’re nothing without me,” she said, her words unsteady. “I made you, Marcus.” She heaved against the candelabra. It didn’t move. “I will unmake you.”

“People say a lot of things before they die, sweetheart. I’ve heard them all.”

Heat filled the room, her lungs, her head. Marcella coughed, but couldn’t catch her breath. “I will ruin you.”

There was no answer.

“Do you hear me, Marcus?”

Nothing, only silence.

“I will ruin you!”

She screamed the words until her throat burned, until the smoke stole her vision, and her voice, and even then it echoed in her head, her last thoughts following her down, down, down into the dark.

I will ruin you.

I will ruin.

I will.

I—

* * *

OFFICER Perry Carson had been stuck on the twenty-seventh level of Radical Raid for the better part of an hour when he heard an engine rev to life. He looked up in time to see Marcus Riggins’s sleek black sedan peel out of the slate half circle that formed the mansion’s drive. It tore down the road, a good thirty over the suburb-mandated speed limit, but Perry wasn’t in a patrol car, and even if he had been, he hadn’t spent the last three weeks in this shit-heap eating greasy takeout just to bust Riggins for such a minor infraction.

No, the Merit PD needed something that would stick—and not just to Marc the Shark. They needed the whole crooked sea.

Perry settled back against the worn leather and returned to his game, cracking the twenty-seventh level just as he smelled smoke.

No doubt some asshole setting a poolside bonfire without a permit. He squinted out the window—it was late, half past ten, the sky an inky black this far from Merit, and the smoke didn’t stand out against the dark.

But the fire did.

The officer was out of the car and across the street by the time the flames lit the front windows of the Riggins mansion. Calling it in by the time he reached the front door. It was unlocked—thank god it was unlocked—and he threw it open, already composing his report. He’d say it was ajar, say he heard a call for help, even though the truth was he didn’t hear anything but the crack of burning wood, the whoosh of flame sliding up the hall.

“Police!” he called through the smoke. “Is anyone here?”

He’d seen Marcella Riggins arrive home. But he hadn’t seen her leave. The sedan had gone by fast, but not fast enough to leave any doubt—there was no one in the passenger seat.

Perry coughed into his sleeve. Sirens were already sounding in the distance. He knew he should go back outside and wait, outside, where the air was clean and cool and safe.

But then he rounded the corner and saw the body trapped beneath a coil of iron the size of a coatrack. The tapers had all melted, but Perry realized it was a candelabra. Who even owned a candelabra?

Perry reached for its stem and then recoiled—it was searing to the touch. He cursed himself. The metal arms had already burned through Marcella’s dress wherever they touched her, the skin raw and red, but the woman didn’t cry out, didn’t scream.

She wasn’t moving. Her eyes were closed and blood slicked the side of her head, matting the dark hair against her scalp.

He felt for a pulse, and found one that fluttered, then seemed to fall away beneath his touch. The fire was getting hotter. The smoke was getting thicker.

“Shit shit shit,” muttered Perry, scanning the room as sirens wailed outside. A pitcher of water had spilled across a napkin, leaving it unburnt. He wrapped the cloth around his hand and then took hold of the candelabra. The damp fabric hissed and heat shot toward his fingers as he heaved the iron bar up with all his strength. It lifted, and rolled off Marcella’s body just as voices filled the hall. Firefighters came storming into the house.

“In here!” he wheezed, choking on the smoke.

A pair of firemen cut through the haze right before the ceiling groaned and a chandelier came toppling down. It shattered against the dining room table, which split and threw up flames, and the next thing Perry knew, he was being hauled backward out of the room and the burning mansion, and into the cool night.

Another firefighter followed close behind, Marcella’s body slung over one shoulder.

Outside, the trucks were splayed across the manicured lawn, and ambulance lights strobed across the slate drive.

The house was going up in flames, and his hand was throbbing, his lungs burned, and Perry didn’t give a damn about any of it. The only thing he cared about right then and there was saving the life of Marcella Riggins. Marcella, who had always flashed a wan smile and a pert wave to the cops whenever she was followed. Marcella, who would never, ever snitch on her crooked husband.

But judging by the gash in her head, and the house on fire, and the husband’s swift departure, there was a chance her position had changed. And Perry wasn’t about to waste it.

Hoses sent jets of water into the flames, and Perry hacked and spat, but pulled away from an oxygen mask as two medics loaded Marcella onto a stretcher.

“She’s not breathing,” said a medic, cutting open her dress.

Perry jogged after the medics.

“No pulse,” said the other, beginning compressions.

“Then bring it back!” shouted Perry, hauling himself up into the ambulance. He couldn’t put a corpse on the stand.

“Ox-sat levels tanking,” said the first, strapping an oxygen mask over Marcella’s nose and mouth. Her temperature was too high, and the medic pulled out a stack of cold packs and began to break the seals, applying them to her temples, neck, wrists. He handed the last one to Perry, who grudgingly accepted.

Marcella’s heartbeat appeared on a small screen, a solid line, even and unmoving.

The van pulled away, the burning mansion quickly shrinking in the window. Three weeks Perry had spent outside that place. Three years he’d been trying to nail Tony Hutch’s crew. Fate had handed him the perfect witness, and he’d be damned if he was giving her back without a fight.

A third medic tried to tend to Perry’s burned hand, but he pulled away. “Focus on her,” he ordered.

The sirens cut through the night as the medics worked, trying to force her lungs to breathe, her heart to beat. Trying to coax life out of the ashes.

But it wasn’t working.

Marcella lay there, limp and lifeless, and Perry’s hope began to gutter, die.

And then, between one compression and the next, the horrible static line of her pulse gave a lurch, and a stutter, and finally began to beep.

I

RESURRECTION

I

FOUR WEEKS AGO

HALLOWAY

“I won’t ask you again,” said Victor Vale as the mechanic scrambled backward across the garage floor. Retreating—as if a few feet would make a difference. Victor followed slowly, steadily, watched as the man backed himself into a corner.

Jack Linden was forty-three, with a five-o’clock shadow, grease under his nails, and the ability to fix things.

“I already told you,” said Linden, jumping nervously as his back came up against a half-built engine. “I can’t do it—”

“Don’t lie to me,” warned Victor.

He flexed his fingers around the gun, and the air crackled with energy.

Linden shuddered, biting back a scream.

“I’m not!” yelped the mechanic. “I fix cars. I put engines back together. Not people. Cars are easy. Nuts and bolts and fuel lines. People are too much more.”

Victor didn’t believe that. Had never believed that. People were more intricate perhaps, more nuanced, but fundamentally machines. Things that worked, or didn’t, that broke down, and were repaired. Could be repaired.

He closed his eyes, measuring the current inside him. It was already in his muscles, already threading his bones, already filling his chest cavity. The sensation was unpleasant, but not nearly as unpleasant as what would happen when the current peaked.

“I swear,” said Linden, “I’d help you if I could.” But Victor heard him shift. Heard a hand knocking against the tools strewn across the floor. “You have to believe me . . .” he said, fingers closing around something metal.

“I do,” said Victor, eyes flicking open right as Linden lunged at him, wrench in hand. But halfway there, the mechanic’s body slowed, as if caught in a sudden drag, and Victor swung the gun up and shot Linden in the head.

The sound echoed through the garage, ricocheting off concrete and steel as the mechanic fell.

How disappointing, thought Victor, as blood began to seep across the floor.

He holstered the gun and turned to go, but only made it three steps before the first wave of pain hit, sudden and sharp. He staggered, bracing himself against the shell of a car as it tore through his chest.

Five years ago, it would have been a simple matter of flipping that internal switch, killing power to the nerves, escaping any sensation.

But now—there was no escape.

His nerves crackled, the pain ratcheting up like a dial. The air hummed with the energy, and the lights flickered overhead as Victor forced himself away from the body and back across the garage toward the wide metal doors. He tried to focus on the symptoms, reduce them to facts, statistics, measurable quantities, and—

The current arced through him, and he shuddered, pulling a black mouth guard from his coat and forcing it between his teeth just before one knee gave way, his body buckling under the strain.

Victor fought—he always fought—but seconds later he was on his back, his muscles seizing as the current peaked, and his heart lurched, lost rhythm—

And he died.

II

FIVE YEARS AGO

MERIT CEMETERY

VICTOR had opened his eyes to cold air, grave dirt, and Sydney’s blond hair, haloed by the moon.

His first death was violent, his world reduced to a cold metal table, his life a current and a dial turning up and up, electricity burning through every nerve until he finally cracked, shattered, crashed down into heavy, liquid nothing. The dying had taken ages, but death itself was fleeting, the length of a single held breath, all the air and energy forced from his lungs the moment before he surged up again through dark water, every part of him screaming.

Victor’s second death was stranger. There had been no electric surge, no excruciating pain—he’d thrown that switch long before the end. Only the widening pool of blood beneath Victor’s knees, and the pressure between his ribs as Eli slid the knife in, and the world giving way to darkness as he lost his hold, slipped into a death so gentle it felt like sleep.

Followed by—nothing. Time drawn out into a single, unbroken second. A chord of perfect silence. Infinite. And then, interrupted. The way a pebble interrupts a pond.

And there he was. Breathing. Living.

Victor sat up, and Sydney flung her small arms around him, and they sat there for a long moment, a reanimated corpse and a girl kneeling on a coffin.

“Did it work?” she whispered, and he knew she wasn’t talking about the resurrection itself. Sydney had never revived an EO without consequences. They came back, but they came back wrong, their powers skewed, fractured. Victor felt gingerly along the lines of his power, searching for frayed threads, interruptions in the current, but felt—unchanged. Unbroken. Whole.

It was a rather overwhelming sensation.

“Yes,” he said. “It worked.”

Mitch appeared at the side of the grave, his shaved head glistening with sweat, his tattooed forearms filthy from the dig. “Hey.” He drove a spade into the grass and helped Sydney and then Victor up out of the hole.

Dol greeted him by leaning heavily against his side, the dog’s massive black head nestling under his palm in silent welcome.

The last member of their party slumped against a tombstone. Dominic had the shaken look of an addict, pupils dilated from what ever he’d taken to numb his chronic pain. Victor could feel the man’s nerves, frayed and sparking like a shorted line.

They’d made a deal—the ex-soldier’s assistance in exchange for taking away his suffering. In Victor’s absence, Dominic clearly hadn’t been able to keep his end of the bargain. Now Victor reached out and switched the man’s pain off like a light. Instantly, the man sagged backward, tension sliding like sweat from his face.

Victor retrieved the shovel and held it out to the soldier. “Get up.”

Dominic complied, rolling his neck and rising to his feet, and together the four of them began filling Victor’s grave.

* * *

TWO days.

That’s how long Victor had been dead.

It was an unsettling length of time. Long enough for the initial stages of decay. The others had been holed up at Dominic’s place, two men, a girl, and a dog, waiting for his corpse to be buried.

“It’s not much,” said Dom now, opening the front door. And it wasn’t—a small and cluttered single bedroom with a beat-up sofa, a concrete balcony, and a kitchen covered in a thin layer of dirty dishes—but it was a temporary solution to a longer dilemma, and Victor was in no condition to face the future, not with grave dirt still on his slacks and death lingering in his mouth.

He needed a shower.

Dom led him through the bedroom—narrow and dark, a single shelf of books, medals lying flat and photographs facedown, too many empty bottles on the windowsill.

The soldier scrounged up a clean long-sleeve shirt, embossed with a band logo. Victor raised a brow. “It’s all I have in black,” he explained.

He switched on the bathroom light and retreated, leaving Victor alone.

Victor undressed, shrugging out of the clothes he’d been buried in—clothes he didn’t recognize, hadn’t purchased—and stood before the bathroom mirror, surveying his bare chest and arms.

He wasn’t free of scars—far from it—but none of them belonged to that night at the Falcon Price. Gunshots echoed through his mind, ricocheting off unfinished walls, the concrete floor slick with blood. Some of it his. Most of it Eli’s. He remembered each and every wound made that night—the shallow cuts across his stomach, the razor-sharp wire cinching over his wrists, Eli’s knife sliding between his ribs—but they left no mark.

Sydney’s gift really was remarkable.

Victor turned the shower on and stepped beneath the scalding water, rinsing death from his skin. He felt along the lines of his power, turned his focus inward, the way he’d done years before, when he’d first gone to prison. During that isolation, unable to test his new power on anyone else, Victor had used his own body as a subject, learned everything he could about the limits of pain, the intricate network of nerves. Now, bracing himself, he turned the dial in his mind, first down, until he felt nothing, and then up, until every drop of water on bare skin felt like knives. He clenched his teeth against the pain and turned the dial back to its original position.

He closed his eyes, brought his head to rest against the tile wall, and smiled, Eli’s voice echoing through his head.

You can’t win.

But he had.

* * *

THE apartment was quiet. Dominic stood out on the narrow balcony, puffing on a cigarette. Sydney was curled on the sofa, folded up carefully like a piece of paper, with the dog, Dol, on the floor beside her, chin resting by her hand. Mitch sat at the table, shuffling and reshuffling a deck of cards.

Victor took them all in.

Still collecting strays.

“What now?” asked Mitch.

Two small words.

Single syllables had never weighed so much. For the last ten years, Victor had focused on revenge. He’d never truly intended to see the other side of it, but now, he’d fulfilled his objective—Eli was rotting in a cell—and Victor was still here. Still alive. Revenge had been an all-consuming pursuit. Its absence left Victor uneasy, unsatisfied.

What now?

He could leave them. Dis appear. It was the smartest course—a group, especially one as strange as this, would draw attention in ways that solitary figures rarely did. But Victor’s talent allowed him to bend the attention of those around him, to lean on their nerves in ways that registered as aversion, subtle, abstract, but efficient. And as far as Stell knew, Victor Vale was dead and buried.

Six years he’d known Mitch.

Six days he’d known Sydney.

Six hours he’d known Dominic.

Each of them was a weight around Victor’s ankles. Better to unshackle himself, abandon them.

So leave, he thought. His feet made no progress toward the door.

Dominic wasn’t an issue. They’d only just met—an alliance forged by need and circumstance.

Sydney was another matter. She was his responsibility. Victor had made her so when he killed Serena. That wasn’t sentiment—it was simply a transitive equation. A factor passed from one quotient to another.

And Mitch? Mitch was cursed, he’d said so himself. Without Victor, it was only a matter of time before the hulking man ended up back in prison. Likely the one he’d broken out of with Victor. For Victor. And, despite knowing her less than a week, Victor was certain Mitch wouldn’t abandon Sydney. Sydney, for her part, seemed rather attached to him, too.

And then, of course, there was the issue of Eli.

Eli was in custody, but he was still alive. There was nothing Victor could do about that, given the man’s ability to regenerate. But if he ever got out—

“Victor?” prompted Mitch, as if he could see the turn of his thoughts, the direction they were veering.

“We’re leaving.”

Mitch nodded, trying and failing to hide his clear relief. He’d always been an open book, even in prison. Sydney uncurled from the sofa. She rolled over, her ice blue eyes finding Victor’s in the dark. She hadn’t been sleeping, he could tell.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” answered Victor. “But we can’t stay here.”

Dominic had slipped back inside, bringing a draft of cold air and smoke. “You’re leaving?” he asked, panic flickering across his face. “What about our deal?”

“Distance isn’t a problem,” said Victor. It wasn’t strictly true—once Dominic was out of range, Victor wouldn’t be able to alter the threshold he’d set. But his influence should hold. “Our deal stays in effect,” he said, “as long as you still work for me.”

Dom nodded quickly. “Whatever you need.”

Victor turned to Mitch. “Find us a new car,” he said. “I want to be out of Merit by dawn.”

And they were.

Two hours later, as the first light cracked the sky, Mitch pulled up in a black sedan. Dom stood in his doorway, arms crossed, watching as Sydney climbed into the back, followed by Dol. Victor slid into the passenger’s seat.

“You sure you’re good?” asked Mitch.

Victor looked down at his hands, flexed his fingers, felt the prickle of energy under his skin. If anything, he felt stronger. His power crisp, clear, focused.

“Better than ever.”

III

FOUR WEEKS AGO

HALLOWAY

VICTOR shuddered back to life on the cold concrete floor.

For a few agonizing seconds, his mind was blank, his thoughts scattered. It was like coming off a strong drug. He was left grasping for logic, for order, sorting through his fractured senses—the taste of copper, the smell of gasoline, the dim glow of streetlights beyond cracked windows—until the scene finally resolved around him.

The mechanic’s garage.

Jack Linden’s body, a dark mass framed by fallen tools.

Victor pulled the mouth guard from between his teeth and sat up, limbs sluggish as he dragged the cell phone from his coat pocket. Mitch had rigged it with a makeshift surge protector. The small component was blown, but the device itself was safe. He powered it back on.

A single text had come in from Dominic.

3 minutes, 49 seconds.

The length of time he’d been dead.

Victor swore softly.

Too long. Far too long.

Death was dangerous. Every second without oxygen, without blood flow, was exponentially damaging. Organs could remain stable for several hours, but the brain was fragile. Depending on the individual, the nature of the trauma, most doctors put the threshold for brain degradation at four minutes, others five, a scant few six. Victor wasn’t keen on testing the upper limits.

But there was no use ignoring the grim curve.

Victor was dying more often. The deaths were lasting longer. And the damage . . . He looked down, saw electrical scorch marks on the concrete, broken glass from the shattered lights overhead.

Victor rose to his feet, bracing himself against the nearest car until the room steadied. At least, for now, the buzzing was gone, replaced by a merciful quiet—broken almost immediately by the short, clipped sound of a ringtone.

Mitch.

Victor swallowed, tasting blood. “I’m on my way.”

“Did you find Linden?”

“I did.” Victor glanced back at the body. “But it didn’t work. Start looking for the next lead.”

IV

FIVE YEARS AGO

PERSHING

TWO weeks after his resurrection, the buzzing started.

At first, it was negligible—a faint humming in his ears, a tinnitus so subtle Victor first took it for a straining light bulb, a car engine, the murmur of a television rooms away. But it didn’t go away.

Almost a month later, Victor found himself looking around the hotel lobby, straining to find a possible source for the sound.

“What is it?” asked Sydney.

“You hear it too?”

Sydney’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Hear what?”

Victor realized she hadn’t been asking about the noise, only his distraction. He shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, turning back to the desk.

“Mr. Stockbridge,” said the woman, addressing Victor, “I see you’re with us for the next three nights. Welcome to the Plaza Hotel.”

They never did stay long, bounced instead from city to city, sometimes choosing hotels, and other times rentals. They never traveled in a straight line, didn’t stay at places with any regularity, or in any particular order.

“How would you like to pay?”

Victor drew a billfold from his pocket. “Cash.”

Money wasn’t a problem—according to Mitch it was nothing but a sequence of ones and zeroes, digital coinage in a fictional bank. His favorite new hobby was skimming minute quantities of cash, pennies on the dollar, consolidating the gain into hundreds of accounts. Instead of leaving no footprint, he created too many to follow. The result was large rooms, plush beds, and space, the kind Victor had longed for and lacked in prison.

The sound inched higher.

“Are you okay?” asked Syd, studying him. She’d been studying him since the graveyard, scrutinizing his every gesture, every step, as if he might suddenly crumble, turn to ash.

“I’m fine,” lied Victor.

But the noise followed him to the elevators. It followed him up to the room, an elegant suite with two bedrooms and a sofa. It followed him to bed and up again, shifting subtly, escalating from sound alone to sound and sensation. A slight prickle in his limbs. Not pain, exactly, but something more unpleasant. Persistent. It dogged him, growing louder, stronger, until, in a fit of annoyance, Victor switched his circuits off, turned the dial down to nothing, numbness. The prickling vanished, but the buzzing only softened to a faint and far-off static. Something he could almost ignore.

Almost.

He sat on the edge of his bed, feeling feverish, ill. When was the last time he’d been sick? He couldn’t even remember. But with every passing minute, the feeling worsened, until Victor finally rose, crossing the suite and taking up his coat.

“Where are you going?” asked Sydney, curled on the sofa with a book.

“To get some air,” he said, already slipping through the door.

He was halfway to the elevator when it hit him.

Pain.

It came out of nowhere, sharp as a knife through his chest. He gasped and caught himself on the wall, fought to stay upright as another wave tore through him, sudden and violent and impossible. The dials were still down, his nerves still muted, but it didn’t seem to matter. Something was overriding his circuits, his power, his will.

The lights glared down, haloing as his vision blurred. The hallway swayed. Victor forced himself past the elevator to the stairwell. He barely made it through the door before his body lit again with pain, and his knee buckled, cracking hard against the concrete. He tried to rise, but his muscles spasmed, and his heart lurched, and he went down on the landing.

His jaw locked as pain arced through him, unlike anything he’d felt in years. Ten years. The lab, the strap between his teeth, the cold of the metal table, the excruciating pain of the current as it fried his nerves, tore his muscles, stopped his heart.

Victor had to move.

But he couldn’t get up. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. An invisible hand turned the dial up, and up, and up, until finally, mercifully, everything went black.

* * *

VICTOR came to on the stairwell floor.

The first thing he felt was relief—relief that the world was finally quiet, the infernal buzzing gone. The second thing he felt was Mitch’s hand shaking his shoulder. Victor rolled onto his side and vomited bile and blood and bad memories onto the landing.

It was dark, the light overhead shorted out, and he could just make out the relief on Mitch’s face.

“Jesus,” he said, slumping backward. “You weren’t breathing. You didn’t have a pulse. I thought you were dead.”

“I think I was,” said Victor, wiping his mouth.

“What do you mean?” demanded Mitch. “What happened?”

Victor shook his head slowly. “I don’t know.” It wasn’t a comfortable thing for Victor, not knowing, certainly wasn’t something he cared to admit to. He rose to his feet, bracing himself against the stairwell wall. He’d been a fool to kill his sensitivity. He should have been studying the progression of symptoms. Should have measured the escalation. Should have known what Sydney seemed to sense: that he was cracked, if not broken.

“Victor,” started Mitch.

“How did you find me?”

Mitch held up his cell. “Dominic. He called me, freaking out, said you took it back, that it was like before, when you were dead. I tried to call you but you didn’t answer. I was heading for the elevator when I saw the light burned out in the stairs.” He shook his head. “Had a bad feeling—”

The cell started ringing again. Victor took it from Mitch’s hand and answered. “Dominic.”

“You can’t just do that to me,” snapped the ex-soldier. “We had a deal.”

“It wasn’t intentional,” said Victor slowly, but Dominic was still going.

“One minute I’m fine and the next I’m on my hands and knees, trying not to pass out. No warning, nothing in my system to dull the pain, you don’t know what it was like—”

“I promise you, I do,” said Victor, tipping his head back against the concrete wall. “But you’re fine now?”

A shuddering breath. “Yeah, I’m back online.”

“How long did it last?”

“What? I don’t know. I was kind of distracted.”

Victor sighed, eyes sliding shut. “Next time, pay attention.”

“Next time?”

Victor hung up. He opened his eyes to find Mitch staring at him. “Did this happen before?”

Before. Victor knew what he meant. Once his life had been bisected by the night in the laboratory. Before, a human. After, an EO. Now, it was split down the line of his resurrection. Before, an EO. After—this. Which meant that it was Sydney’s doing. This was the inevitable flaw in her power, the fissure in his. Victor hadn’t avoided it after all. He’d simply ignored it.

Mitch swore, running his hands over his head. “We have to tell her.”

“No.”

“She’s going to find out.”

“No,” said Victor again. “Not yet.”

“Then when?”

When Victor understood what was happening, and how to fix it. When he had a plan, a solution as well as a problem. “When it will make a difference,” he said.

Mitch’s shoulders slumped, defeated.

“Maybe it won’t happen again,” said Victor.

“Maybe,” said Mitch.

Neither one of them believed it.

V

FOUR AND A HALF YEARS AGO

FULTON

IT happened again.

And again.

Three episodes in less than six months, the time between each a fraction shorter, the duration of death a fraction longer. It was Mitch who insisted he see a specialist. Mitch who found Dr. Adam Porter, a compact man with a hawkish face and a reputation as one of the best neurologists in the country.

Victor had never been fond of doctors.

Even back when he wanted to become one, it had never been in the interest of saving patients. He’d been drawn to the field of medicine for the knowledge, the authority, the control. He’d wanted to be the hand holding the scalpel, not the flesh parting beneath it.

Now Victor sat in Porter’s office, after hours, the buzzing in his skull just beginning to filter into his limbs. It was a risk, he knew, waiting until the episode was in its metastasis, but an accurate diagnosis required the presentation of symptoms.

Victor looked down at the patient questionnaire. Symptoms he could give, but details were more dangerous. He slid the paper back across the table without picking up the pen.

The doctor sighed. “Mr. Martin, you paid quite a premium for my services. I suggest you take advantage of them.”

“I paid that premium for privacy.”

Porter shook his head. “Very well,” he said, lacing his fingers. “What seems to be the problem?”

“I’m not entirely certain,” said Victor. “I’ve been having these episodes.”

“What kind of episodes?”

“Neurological,” he answered, toeing the line between omission and lie. “It starts as a sound, a buzzing in my head. It grows, until I can feel the humming, down to my bones. Like a charge.”

“And then?”

I die, thought Victor.

“I black out,” he said.

The doctor frowned. “How long has this been happening?”

“Five months.”

“Did you suffer any trauma?”

Yes.

“Not that I know of.”

“Changes in lifestyle?”

“No.”

“Any weakness in your limbs?”

“No.”

“Allergies?”

“No.”

“Have you noticed any specific triggers? Migraines can be triggered by caffeine, seizures by light, stress, lack of—”

“I don’t care what caused it,” said Victor, losing patience. “I just need to know what’s happening, and how to fix it.”

The doctor sat forward. “Well, then,” he said. “Let’s run some tests.”

* * *

VICTOR watched the lines chart across the screen, spiking like the tremors before an earthquake. Porter had attached a dozen electrodes to his scalp, and was now studying the EEG alongside him, a crease forming between his brows.

“What is it?” asked Victor.

The doctor shook his head. “This level of activity is abnormal, but the pattern doesn’t suggest epilepsy. See how closely the lines are gathered?” He tapped the screen. “That degree of neural excitation, it’s almost like there’s too much nerve conduction . . . an excess of electrical impulse.”

Victor studied the lines. It could be a trick of the mind, but the lines on the screen seemed to rise and fall with the tone in his skull, the peaks in rhythm growing with the hum under his skin.

Porter cut the program. “I need a more complete picture,” he said, removing the electrodes from Victor’s scalp. “Let’s get you into an MRI.”

The room was bare save for the scanner in the center—a floating table that slid into a tunnel of machinery. Slowly, Victor lay back on the table, his head coming to rest in a shallow brace. A framework slid across his eyes, and Porter fastened it closed, locking Victor in. His heart rate ticked up as, with a mechanical whir, the table moved and the room disappeared, replaced by the too-close ceiling of the machine in front of Victor’s face.

He heard the doctor leave, the click of the door shutting, and then his voice returned, stretched thin by the intercom. “Hold very still.”

For a full minute, nothing happened. And then a deep knocking sound resonated through the device, a low bass that drowned out the noise in his head. Drowned out everything.

The machine thudded and whirred, and Victor tried to count the seconds, to hold on to some measure of time, but he kept losing his grip. Minutes fell away, taking with them more and more of his control. The buzzing was in his bones now, the first pricks of pain—a pain he couldn’t stifle—crackling across his skin.

“Stop the test,” he said, the words swallowed by the machine.

Porter’s voice came over the intercom. “I’m almost done.”

Victor fought to steady his breathing, but it was no use. His heart thudded. His vision doubled. The horrible electric hum grew louder.

“Stop the—”

The current tore through Victor, bright and blinding. His fingers clutched at the sides of the table, muscles screaming as the first wave crashed over him. Behind his eyes, he saw Angie, standing beside the electric panel.

“I want you to know,” she said as she began to fix sensors to his chest, “that I will never, ever forgive you for this.”

Alarms wailed.

The scanner whined, shuddered, stopped.

Porter was somewhere on the other side of the machine, speaking in a low, urgent voice. The table began to withdraw. Victor clawed at the straps holding his head. Felt them come free. He had to get up. He had to—

The current crashed into him again, so hard the room shattered into fragments—blood in his mouth, his heart losing rhythm, Porter, a pen light turning the world white, a stifled scream—then the pain erased everything.

* * *

VICTOR woke on the exam table.

The lights on the MRI were dark, the opening threaded with scorch marks. He sat up, head spinning, as the world came back into focus. Porter lay several feet away, his body contorted, as if trapped in a spasm. Victor didn’t need to feel for a pulse, or sense the man’s empty nerves, to know that he was dead.

A memory, of another time, another lab, Angie’s body, twisted in the same unnatural way.

Shit.

Victor got to his feet, surveying the room. The corpse. The damage.

Now that his senses had settled, he felt calm, clear-headed again. It was like the break after a storm. A stretch of peace before bad weather built again. It was only a matter of time—which was why every silent second mattered.

There was a syringe on the floor next to Porter’s hand, still capped. Victor slipped it into his pocket and went into the hall, where he’d left his coat. He drew out his cell as the text came in from Dominic.

1 minute, 32 seconds.

Victor took a steadying breath and looked around the empty offices.

He retraced his steps to the exam room, gathered up every scan and printout from Porter’s tests. In the doctor’s office, he cleared the appointment, the digital data, tore off the sheet on which the doctor had made his notes, and the one beneath it for safe measure, systematically erased every sign that he’d ever been inside the building.

Every sign aside from the dead body.

There was nothing to be done about that, short of setting fire to the place—an option he considered, and then set aside. Fires were temperamental things, unpredictable. Better to leave this looking as it did—a heart attack, a freak accident.

Victor slipped on his coat and left.

Back at the hotel suite, Sydney and Mitch were sprawled on the sofa, watching an old movie, Dol stretched at their feet. Mitch met Victor’s gaze when he walked in, eyebrows raised in question, and Victor gave a small, almost imperceptible head shake.

Sydney rolled upright. “Where were you?”

“Stretching my legs,” said Victor.

Syd frowned. Over the last few weeks, the look in her eyes had shifted from pure worry to something more skeptical. “You’ve been gone for hours.”

“And I was trapped for years,” countered Victor, pouring himself a drink. “It makes a body restless.”

“I get restless too,” said Sydney. “That’s why Mitch came up with the card game.” She turned to Mitch. “Why doesn’t Victor have to play?”

Victor raised a brow and sipped his drink. “How does it work?”

Sydney took the deck up from the table. “If you draw a number card, you have to stay in and learn something, but if you draw a face card, you get to go out. Mostly just to parks or movies, but it’s still better than being cooped up.”

Victor cut a glance at Mitch, but the man only shrugged and rose, heading to the bathroom.

“You try it,” said Syd, holding out the deck. Victor considered her a moment, then lifted his hand. But instead of drawing a card, he brushed the deck from Syd’s palm, spilling cards across the floor.

“Hey,” said Syd as Victor knelt and considered his options. “That’s cheating.”

“You never said I had to play fair.” He plucked the king of spades from where it lay, upturned. “Here,” he said, offering her the card. “Keep it up your sleeve.”

Sydney considered the card for a long moment, and then palmed it right before Mitch returned. His eyes flicked between them. “What’s going on here?”

“Nothing,” said Syd without a second’s hesitation. “Victor’s just teasing me.”

It was disconcerting how easily she lied.

Syd returned to the couch, Dol climbing up beside her, and Victor stepped out onto the balcony.

A few minutes later, the door slid open at his back, and Mitch joined him.

“Well?” asked Mitch. “What did Porter say?”

“He didn’t have answers,” said Victor.

“Then we find someone else,” said Mitch.

Victor nodded. “Tell Syd we’re leaving in the morning.” Mitch slipped back inside, and Victor set his drink on the railing. He drew the syringe from his pocket, reading the label. Lorazepam. An anti-seizure drug. He had been hoping for a diagnosis, a cure, but until then, he would find a way to treat the symptoms.

* * *

“I don’t normally meet with patients after hours.”

Victor sat across the table from the young doctor. She was slim, and dark, eyes keen behind her glasses. But no matter her interest, or suspicion, her practice was located in Capstone, a city with strong government ties, the kind of place where privacy was paramount, discretion mandatory. Where loose lips could end careers, even lives.

Victor slid the cash across the table. “Thank you for making an exception.”

She took the money and considered the few lines he’d filled out on his intake. “How can I help you, Mr. . . . Lassiter?”

Victor was trying to focus through the rising sound in his skull, as she asked all the same questions, and he gave all the same answers. He laid out the symptoms—the noise, the pain, the convulsions, the blackouts—omitting what he could, lying where he had to. The doctor listened, pen scratching across her notepad as she thought. “It could be epilepsy, myasthenia gravis, dystonia—neurological disorders are hard to diagnose sometimes, when they present overlapping symptoms. I’ll order some tests—”

“No,” said Victor.

She looked up from her notes. “Without knowing what exactly—”

“I’ve had tests,” he said. “They were . . . inconclusive. I’m here because I want to know what you would prescribe.”

Dr. Clayton straightened in her chair. “I don’t prescribe medications without a diagnosis, and I don’t diagnose without compelling evidence. No offense, Mr. Lassiter, but your word is not sufficient.”

Victor exhaled. He leaned forward. And as he did, he leaned on her, too. Not with his hands, but with his senses, a pressure just below pain. A subtle discomfort, the same kind that made strangers bend away, allowed Victor to pass unnoticed through a crowd. But Clayton couldn’t escape so easily, and so the discomfort registered for what it was—a threat. A fight-or-flight trigger, simple and animalistic, predator to prey.

“There are plenty of dirty doctors in this city,” said Victor. “But their willingness to prescribe is often inversely proportional to their skill as a physician. Which is why I’m here. With you.”

Clayton swallowed. “The wrong diagnosis,” she said steadily, “and the medication could do more harm than good.”

“That is a risk,” said Victor, “I’m willing to take.”

The doctor let out a short, shaky breath. She shook her head, as if clearing her mind. “I’ll prescribe you an anti-seizure medication and a beta blocker.” Her pen scratched across the page. “For anything stronger,” she said, tearing off the sheet, “you will have to admit yourself for observation.”

Victor took the slip and rose. “Thank you, Doctor.”

Two hours later, he tipped the pills into his palm and swallowed them dry.

Soon, he felt his heart slow, the buzzing quiet, and thought, perhaps, that he had found an answer. For two weeks, he felt better.

And then he died again.

VI

FOUR WEEKS AGO

HALLOWAY

VICTOR was late, and he knew it.

Linden had taken longer than expected—he’d had to wait for the garage to clear, wait for them to be alone. And then, of course, wait for the death he knew was coming, see it through so it didn’t follow him back to the house where they’d been for the last nine days. It was a rental, another one of those short-stay places you could book for a day or a week or a month.

Sydney had chosen it, she said, because it looked like a home.

When Victor walked in, he was met by the smell of melted cheese and the crack of an explosion on the large TV. Sydney was perched on the arm of the couch, tossing Dol pieces of popcorn while Mitch stood at the kitchen counter, arranging candles on top of a chocolate cake.

The scene was so extraordinarily . . . normal.

The dog spotted him first, tail sliding back and forth across the hardwood floor.

Mitch met his gaze, forehead knotted in concern, but Victor waved him away.

Syd glanced over her shoulder. “Hey.”

Five years, and in most ways Sydney Clarke looked the same. She was still short and slight, as round-faced and wide-eyed as she’d been the day they’d met on the side of the road. Most of the differences were superficial—she’d traded the rainbow leggings for black ones with little white stars, and her usual blond bob was constantly hidden by a collection of wigs, her hair changing as often as her mood. Tonight, it was a pale blue, the same color as her eyes.

But in other ways, Sydney had changed as much as any of them. The tone of her voice, her unflinching gaze, the way she rolled her eyes—an affectation she’d clearly taken on in an effort to stress her age, since it wasn’t readily apparent. In body, she was still a child. In attitude, she was all teenager.

Now she took one look at Victor’s empty hands and he could see the question in her eyes, the suspicion that he’d forgotten.

“Happy birthday, Sydney,” he said.

It was a strange thing, the alignment of Syd’s birthday with her arrival in Victor’s life. Every year marked not only her age, but the time she’d been with him. With them.

“Ready for me to light the candles?” asked Mitch.

Victor shook his head. “Give me a few minutes to change,” he said, slipping down the hall.

He closed the door behind him, left the lights off as he crossed the bedroom. The furnishings really didn’t suit him—the blue and white cushions, the pastoral painting on one wall, the books on the shelf picked out for decoration instead of substance. The last, at least, he’d found a use for. An attractive history text sat open, a black felt-tip pen resting in the center. At this point, the left page had been entirely blacked out, the right down to the final line, as if Victor were searching for a word and hadn’t found it yet.

He shrugged out of his coat and went into the bathroom, rolling up his sleeves. He turned the faucet on and splashed water on his face, the white noise of the tap matching the static already starting again inside his skull. These days the quiet was measured in minutes instead of days.

Victor ran a hand through his short blond hair and considered his reflection, blue eyes wolfish in his gaunt face.

He’d lost weight.

He had always been slim, but now when he lifted his chin, the light glanced off his brow and cheekbone, made shadows along his jaw, in the hollow of his throat.

A short row of pill bottles sat lined up along the back of the sink. He reached for the nearest one, and tipped a Valium into his palm.

Victor had never been keen on drugs.

Sure, the prospective escape held some appeal, but he could never get over the loss of control. The first time he’d purchased narcotics, back at Lockland, he wasn’t even trying to get high. He was just trying to end his life, so he could come back better.

Irony of ironies, thought Victor, swallowing the pill dry.

VII

FOUR YEARS AGO

DRESDEN

VICTOR hadn’t spent a lot of time in strip clubs.

He’d never understood their appeal—never been aroused by the half-naked bodies, their writhing oiled forms—but he hadn’t come to the Glass Tower for the show.

He was looking for someone special.

As he scanned the hazy club, trying not to inhale the cloud of perfume and smoke and sweat, a manicured hand danced along his shoulder blade.

“Hello, honey,” said a syrupy voice. Victor glanced sideways and saw dark eyes, bright red lips. “I bet we could put a smile on that face.”