Vicious (30 page)

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 always 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 to 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.

The moving green dot on his phone reached the red still dot that marked the Three Crows Bar, and Mitch sat up.

“We’re here.”

*   *   *

VICTOR
parked in the lot across from the bar, even though it was crowded and narrow, and would prevent a quick exit, especially under pursuit. But with a stolen car and the cops on high alert, he didn’t dare do anything that might stand out. He wasn’t about to get picked up for a parking ticket on a stolen car. Not tonight. He shut off the engine, stepped out, and examined the huddle of bricks across the street that declared itself to be the Three Crows Bar, a trio of metal birds perching on the sign above the front doors. To the left of the bar was an alley, and as the two men crossed the street, Victor could make out the bar’s side entrance set into the stained brick wall. When they reached the curb, he made his way toward the alley, and Mitch made his way toward the bar. Behind his eyes, Victor saw the pieces of his game lining up on the city-shaped board, chess and Battleship and Risk. His move.

“Hey,” he called, as Mitch’s hand gripped the front door. “Be careful.”

Mitch smiled crookedly, and went inside.

XXV

FIVE YEARS AGO

WRIGHTON PENITENTIARY

“YOU
want more milk?”

It was the first thing Victor Vale ever said to Mitchell Turner.

They were sitting in the cafeteria. Mitch had spent three days wondering absently what Victor’s voice would sound like if he ever decided to talk. If he even
could
talk. Over the course of lunch, Mitch had actually taken to imagining that he couldn’t, that beneath the collar of his prison-issued shirt some ghastly scar carved a smile across his throat, or that behind his curling lips there simply was no tongue. It sounded weird, but prison was boring, and Mitch found his imagination going to strange places more often than not. So when Victor finally opened his mouth and asked with perfect elocution if Mitch wanted another carton of milk, the latter was caught between surprise and disappointment.