Vicious (33 page)

“Big guy,” he said quietly.

Victor knelt carefully beside Mitch, and reconsidered his decision to leave Sydney at the hotel.

“Is he…,” started Dominic as Victor reached out and brought his fingertips to the gunshot hole in Mitch’s jacket. His hand came away dry. He let out a breath and patted Mitch’s jaw. The man groaned.

“Mother … fucker…”

“I see you met Eli,” said Victor. “He’s always been a bit trigger happy.”

Mitch grunted as he sat up and touched his head, a bruise already blossoming beneath the drying blood. His gaze went to Dominic. “I see you’re still alive then. Good choice.”

He tried to stand, and got to one knee before pausing for breath.

“A little help?” he said, wincing. Victor’s lips twitched, and the air hummed faintly for a moment before vanishing, taking Mitch’s pain with it. The man got to his feet, swayed, and caught himself against the wall with a bloody hand before making his way to the strip of sinks to clean up.

“So he’s like, bulletproof?” asked Dominic. Mitch laughed, and then pulled his jacket aside to reveal the vest beneath.

“Close enough,” he said. “I’m not an EO, though, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Victor wet a handful of paper towels and did his best to clean Mitch’s blood off the floor and the wall while Mitch finished cleaning it off his face.

“What time is it?” asked Victor, tossing the ruined towels in the bin.

Dominic checked his watch. “Eleven. Why?”

Mitch snapped the faucet off. “Cutting it pretty close, Vic.”

But Victor only smiled. “Dominic,” he said. “Let’s show Mitch what you can do.”

XXIX

SIXTY MINUTES UNTIL MIDNIGHT

THE ESQUIRE HOTEL

SERENA
toweled off her hair, holding strands up to the bathroom light to make sure Zachary Flinch hadn’t stained them. She’d had to shower three times to get the feel of brain and blood off her skin, and even now, raw from scrubbing, with her hair probably damaged from the rinse repeat of it all, she didn’t
feel
clean.

Clean was clearly not skin deep when it came to killing.

It was only the second execution she’d ever been to. The first had been Sydney’s. Serena cringed at the thought of it. Maybe that’s why she’d wanted to go, to wash the memory of her sister’s almost-murder from her mind, replace it with some fresher horror, as if one scene could paint over the other.

Or maybe she’d asked to go along because she knew Eli would hate it—she knew how much his removals mattered to him, how much they
belonged
to him—and that he’d resist. Sometimes those moments when he fought back, when she could see the spark of defiance, were the only ones that made her feel alive. She hated living in such a limp world, every glazed eye and simple nod a reminder that nothing mattered. She would start to let go, and then Eli would fight back and force her to tighten her grip. She wondered with a thrill if maybe one day he would even break free.

Finally satisfied that the blood didn’t stain, she dried her hair, pulled on a robe, and made her way into the living room, tapping the computer awake. She logged on to the police database, and filled out the “Middle Name” window of the search form with
ELI,
expecting it to return with no results, since Eli should have dispatched Dominic by now, but the search came back with two profiles. The first belonged to Dominic.

But the second belonged to
Victor.

She read the profile three times, chewing her lip, then searched the room for her phone, which she’d lobbed onto the bed when she got in. She found it beneath a pile of clothes and towels, and was halfway through punching in Eli’s number, when she stopped.

Less than an hour until midnight.

It was a trap. Eli would know it, too, of course, but he would go anyway. Why shouldn’t he? Whatever Eli’s enemy was planning, there was only one way this night would end, and that was with Victor Vale in a body bag. And Sydney? Serena’s chest tightened. Her resolve had faltered the first time; she didn’t know if she had the strength to watch Eli try again. Even if it wasn’t really her sister, just a shadow of the little girl who’d clung to her side for twelve years, an imposter in her sister’s shape. Even then.

Her fingers hovered over the screen. She could drag the file to the trash. Eli wouldn’t find it in time. But it would only be a stay of execution. Victor wanted to find Eli, and Eli wanted to find Victor, and one way or another, they would succeed. She looked at Victor’s profile one last time, and tried to picture the man who had once been Eli’s friend, who had brought him back, made him what he was, saved her sister … and for a moment, as she finished dialing Eli’s number, she almost wished he stood a fighting chance.

XXX

FIFTY MINUTES UNTIL MIDNIGHT

THE THREE CROWS BAR

ELI
stormed through the front door of the Three Crows as he dialed Detective Stell and told him to send a cop over to the bar to clean up an incident.

“It was an EO, right?” asked Stell, and the question, as well as the shade of doubt that lined the officer’s voice as he asked it, troubled Eli immensely. But he didn’t have time to deal with the detective’s resistance, not right now, not as the clock ticked down.

“Of course it was,” he snapped, and hung up.

Eli paused beneath the metal sculpted crows on the bar’s marquee, ran his fingers through his hair, and scoured the street for any sign of Dominic Rusher or Victor Vale, but all he saw were drunkards, and bums, and cars whizzing past too fast to see drivers or passengers. He swore and kicked the nearest trash can as hard as possible, relishing the blossom of pain even as it faded, whatever damage he’d done repairing, bone and tissue and skin knitting neatly back together.

He shouldn’t have killed Mitch Turner.

He knew that. But it wasn’t as though the man were innocent, not truly. Eli had seen the police records. Turner had sinned. And those who ally themselves with monsters are little better than monsters themselves. Still, he had felt no silence, no moment of peace, following the act, and Eli’s chest tightened at being denied the calm, the assurance that he had not strayed.

Eli bowed his head, and crossed himself. His nerves were just beginning to smooth when his phone rang.

“What?” he snapped into the cell, heading for his car in the lot across the street.

“Victor posted to the database,” said Serena. “That Falcon Price site. Ground floor.” He heard the sound of the glass patio door sliding open. “It’s right here, across from the hotel. Did you take care of Dominic Rusher?”

“No,” he growled. “But Mitchell Turner’s dead. Is the deadline still midnight?” His anger was cooling as he walked, focus knitting him closed the way his body knit together his skin. Things were on schedule. Not
his
schedule, but
a
schedule.

“Still midnight,” said Serena. “What about the police? Should I call Stell? Have him send his men over to the high-rise?”

Eli rapped his fingers on his car and thought of Stell’s question, his tone. “No. Not before midnight. Turner’s dead, and Victor’s mine. Tell them to be there at twelve, no sooner, and order them to stay outside the walls until we’re done. Tell them it’s not safe.” He got inside, his breath fogging the windows. “I’m on my way. Should I pick you up?” She didn’t answer. “Serena?”

After another long pause, she finally said, “No, no. I’m not dressed yet. I’ll meet you there.”

*   *   *

SERENA
hung up.

She was leaning on the balcony, and she barely noticed the biting chill of the iron rail under her elbows because she was too busy looking at a trail of smoke.

Two floors down and several rooms over, the smoke curled through a pair of open doors, wafting up toward her. It smelled like burning paper. Serena knew because in high school she and her friends would always light a bonfire on the first night of summer vacation and pitch their essays and exams in, casting the old year into the flames.

But nice as the Esquire rooms were, none of them had fireplaces.

She was still wondering about the smoke when a large black dog wandered out onto the balcony. It stared out through the bars of the railing for a moment before a girl’s voice called it back.

“Dol,” called the girl. “Dol! Come back in.”

A shiver ran through Serena. She knew that voice.

A moment later the small blond girl who so many people had mistaken for Serena’s twin bobbed onto the porch, and tugged at the dog’s neck.

“Come on,” coaxed Sydney. “Let’s go in.”

The dog turned and obediently followed her back inside.

Which hotel room?
Serena began to count. Two floors down. Three rooms over.

She spun on her heel, and went inside.

XXXI

FORTY MINUTES UNTIL MIDNIGHT

THE THREE CROWS BAR

DOMINIC
took hold of Victor and Mitch, and led them in silence and shadow out of the restrooms, through the bar, and into the alley that ran beside it.

Victor gave a nod and Dominic let go, the world springing back into life around them. Even the deserted alley was a cacophony compared to the heavy quiet of the in-between; Victor rolled his shoulders, and checked his watch.

“That was … weird,” said Mitch, whose mood seemed to have soured considerably since being shot.

“It was perfect,” said Victor. “Let’s go.”

“So I passed?” asked Dominic, still flexing his hands. Victor could see the fear in his eyes, the desperate hope that the pain would stay away. He appreciated how transparent Dominic’s desires were. It kept things simple.

“The night’s not over yet,” he said. “But you’re doing well so far.”

Mitch grumbled about the hole in his jacket as they made their way to the mouth of the alley. Victor knew that it was the first thing Mitch bought when they got out, a well-made coat, lined with dark-dyed goose down that now leaked in small puffs as he stepped off the curb.

“Look at the bright side,” said Victor. “You’re alive.”

“Night’s still young,” said Mitch under his breath as they crossed the street.

He said something else, or started to, but it was cut off by the sudden shriek of sirens.

A squad car tore around a corner and down the street toward them in red and blue and white and blaring ripples of noise. Mitch spun, and Victor tensed, and time slowed. And then, time
stopped.
Victor felt the hand come down on his arm a breath before the sound and color went out of the night. The cop car froze, suspended between moments through the film of Dominic’s shadows. Dominic’s other hand rested on Mitch’s wrist, and all three of them now stood in the darkness of his in-between world, frozen as if they, too, were caught in time. Victor might have admitted—if he
could
admit, if his words could take shape and sound—how useful Dominic Rusher was turning out to be, but since he couldn’t, he simply nodded in the direction of the parking lot, and the three men waded through the thick air across the street.

Victor knew that they had a predicament.

Dominic, while much improved, was in no condition to drag them across the city. They needed the car. But they couldn’t use the car until they stepped out of the shadows, and the moment they did that, reality would resume and the squad car would continue down the street to the Three Crows. Victor led the way to the stolen sedan, the other two in a trailing line behind, and when they got there he gestured for them to kneel in the gap between their vehicle and the next on the side of the cop cars’ frozen approach, which had before been a convertible and was now a considerably larger truck. He took one last breath, and said a quiet curse, which was as close as Victor came to praying, and then he nodded at Dominic, whose hand vanished from his shoulder, stripping the stillness and plunging his world back into chaos.

The cop car careened up to the bar’s entrance, where it slammed to a stop, sirens blaring. Victor held his breath and pressed his body against the metal side of their sedan and peered through the narrow space between his front bumper and the truck’s as the sirens cut abruptly off, and left his ears ringing.

Two officers got out, and met at the front doors.

One cop vanished inside, but the other stayed on the curb and confirmed their arrival on a radio. Something about a body. They were here for Mitch’s body. Which was problematic, since there
was
no body, a fact that would soon become readily apparent.

Go inside,
he begged the second cop.

The cop didn’t move. Victor freed his gun and trained it on the officer, tracking up until it was level with the man’s head. He had a clear shot. He drew in a breath, and held it. Victor didn’t feel guilt, or fear, or even a sense of consequence, not like normal people. All those things had been dead—or at least dulled to the point of uselessness—for years. But he’d trained his mind to reconstruct those feelings from memory as best he could, and assemble them into a kind of code. Nothing so elaborate as Eli’s set of rules, just a simple wish to avoid killing bystanders, if possible. It didn’t feel wrong, resting his finger on the trigger, but his mind provided the word
wrong.
He lowered the gun a fraction, knowing that sacrificing a kill shot would also sacrifice the certitude of their escape.

He let out his breath just as the radio crackled, and even if Victor couldn’t make out the message, he could hear the officer’s response—“What kind of problem?”—and, a moment later, “What do you mean? According to Ever and Stell … forget it. Hold on.”

And just like that, the second cop turned toward the door. Victor lowered his weapon and his eyes drifted skyward, where thick gray clouds weakened the black of the night. He’d never been one for God, never had Eli’s zeal, never needed signs, but if there were such things, if there was Fate, or some higher power, maybe it had an issue with Eli’s methods, too. The second officer followed the first inside, and Victor, Mitch, and Dominic were on their feet, and in the car before the front doors of the bar had even swung shut.