Vengeful (Villains #2)(126)

“This,” he said, “is, as you might have guessed, a power suppressant.”

Haverty brought the blade to Eli’s chest and pressed down. The skin parted, blood welled, but as Haverty withdrew the knife, Eli kept bleeding. The pain continued too, a dull throb, until slowly, Eli felt the wound drag itself back together.

“Ah, I see,” mused Haverty. “I erred on the side of a low dose, to start. I gave the last subject too much too fast and he just kind of . . . came apart. But, see, that’s why you’re the perfect candidate for this kind of trial.” Haverty took up the syringe. “You always have been.” He plunged the needle into Eli’s neck.

It hurt, like cold water racing through his veins.

But the strangest thing wasn’t the sensation of pain. It was the spark of memory—a bathtub filled with cracking ice. Pale fingers, trailing through the frigid water. Music on the radio.

Victor Vale, leaning against the sink.

You ready?

“Now,” said Haverty, dragging Eli back to the present. “Let us try again.”





XXI





THE LAST NIGHT


WAREHOUSE DISTRICT


VICTOR paused outside the bland gray building. It was a storage facility. A two-story grid of climate-controlled, room-sized lockers where people abandoned furniture or art or boxes of old clothes. This was as far as Mitch’s camera work had gotten Victor. But it was far enough.

There had been another man, according to Mitch. Glasses and a white coat. Eli, dragged behind him, unconscious.

Those words made no sense. The night of Eli’s transformation, Victor had watched as Eli tried to drink himself into oblivion. But the liquor didn’t even touch him.

After his death, nothing could.

Victor made his way through the ground-floor grid, scanning the roll-up doors for one without a lock. His shoulder had stopped bleeding, but it still ached—he didn’t dampen the pain, needed every sense firing, especially with the charge building in his limbs, threatening to spill over.

Victor heard a male voice—one he didn’t recognize—coming from a storage container on his left. He knelt, fingers curling around the base of the steel door as the voice carried on in a casual, conversational way. He inched the door up one foot, two, holding his breath as he braced for an inevitable rattle or clank. But the voice beyond didn’t stop talking, didn’t even seem to notice.

Victor ducked under the rolling door, and straightened.

Instantly he was hit by a stench, slightly noxious, and far too sweet. Chemical. But he soon forgot the smell as he registered the scene before him.

A tray of hospital-grade tools, a man in a white coat, his back to Victor and his gloves slick with blood as he leaned over a makeshift table. And there, strapped to the surface, Eli.

Blood spilled down his sides from a dozen shallow wounds.

He wasn’t healing.

Victor cleared his throat.

The doctor didn’t jump, didn’t seem at all surprised by Victor’s arrival.

He simply set the scalpel down and turned, revealing a thin face, deep-set eyes behind round glasses.

“You must be Mr. Vale.”

“And who the hell are you?”

“My name,” said the man, “is Dr. Haverty. Come in, take a—” Victor’s hand closed into a fist. The doctor should have buckled, dropped to the floor screaming. He should have at least staggered, gasped in pain. But he didn’t do any of those things. The doctor simply smiled. “. . . seat,” he finished.

Victor didn’t understand. Was the man another type of EO, someone whose own powers rendered him untouchable? But no—Victor had been able to feel June’s nerves, even if he’d had no effect on them. This was different. When he reached for the doctor’s body, Victor felt—nothing. He couldn’t sense the man’s nerves. And suddenly, Victor realized he couldn’t sense his own, either.

Even the building episode, the terrible energy ready to spill over moments before, was now gone.

His body felt . . . like a body.

Dull weight. Clumsy muscle. Nothing more.

“That would be the gas,” explained the doctor. “Remarkable, isn’t it? It’s not technically a gas, of course, just a compressed airborne version of the power-suppressant serum I’m currently testing on Mr. Cardale.”

Victor registered motion over the doctor’s shoulder, but he kept his focus on Haverty. Had the doctor himself turned around, he would have noticed Eli’s fingers reaching out, feeling for the edge of the table—would have seen them find the scalpel Haverty had so foolishly set down. But Haverty’s attention hung on Victor, and so he failed to notice Eli slipping free.

“I’ve read your file,” the doctor continued. “Heard all about your fascinating power. I’d love to witness it myself, but as you can see, I’m in the middle of another—”

Haverty turned to gesture then, finally, at Eli on the table, but Eli was no longer there. He was on his feet now, scalpel flashing in the fluorescent light.

Eli struck, the knife parting the air—and the doctor’s throat.

Haverty staggered back, clutching at his neck, but Eli had always had a deft hand. The scalpel bit swift and deep, severing jugular and windpipe, and the doctor sank to his knees, mouth opening and closing like a fish as blood pooled on the concrete beneath him.