Vengeful (Villains #2)(16)

The lights had come back on, but Victor couldn’t bring himself to go inside, couldn’t bear the look on Sydney’s face. Or Mitch’s.

He could leave.

Should leave.

Distance wouldn’t save him, but it might protect them.

The door slid open at his back, and he heard Sydney’s light steps as she padded out onto the balcony. She sank into the chair beside him, drawing her knees up to her chest. For a few minutes, neither spoke.

Once upon a time, Victor had promised Sydney that he wouldn’t let anyone hurt her—that he would always hurt them first.

He’d broken that promise.

He studied his hands, recalling the moment before—when he’d forced Syd out of his way. He hadn’t touched her nerves then, or at least he hadn’t turned the dials. But he’d still moved her. Victor rose from his seat, thinking through the implications. He was halfway to the door when Sydney finally broke the silence.

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

“Not right now,” he said, sidestepping the question.

“But when it happens,” she persisted. “Does it hurt then?”

Victor exhaled, clouding the air. “Yes.”

“How long does it hurt?” she asked. “How bad does it get? What does it feel like when you—”

“Sydney.”

“I want to know,” she said, voice catching. “I need to know.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s my fault. Because I did this to you.” Victor started to shake his head, but she cut him off. “Tell me. Tell me the truth. You’ve been lying for all this time, the least you can do is tell me how it feels.”

“It feels like dying.”

Sydney’s breath caught, as if hit. Victor sighed and stepped to the balcony’s edge, the railing slick with ice. He ran his hand over the surface, cold pricking his fingers. “Did I ever tell you how I got my power?”

Syd shook her head, the blond bob swaying side to side. He knew he hadn’t. He’d told her his last thoughts once, but nothing more. It wasn’t a matter of trust or distrust so much as the simple fact that they’d both left their pasts behind, ones filled with a few things they wanted to remember, and many more things they didn’t.

“Most EOs are the result of accidents,” he said, studying the snow. “But Eli and I were different. We set out to find a way to effect the change. Incidentally, it’s remarkably difficult to do. Dying with intent, reviving with control. Finding a way to end a life but keep it in arm’s reach, and all without rendering the body unusable. On top of that, you need a method that strips enough control from the subject to make them afraid, because you need the chemical properties induced by fear and adrenaline to trigger a somatic change.”

Victor craned his head and considered the sky.

“It wasn’t my first try,” he said quietly. “The night I died. I’d already tried once, and failed. An overdose, which, it turned out, provided too much control, and not enough fear. So I set out to try again. Eli had already succeeded, and I was determined to match him. I created a situation in which I couldn’t take back control. One in which there was nothing but fear. And pain.”

“How?” whispered Sydney.

Victor closed his eyes and saw Angie, one hand resting on the control panel.

“I convinced someone to torture me.”

Syd drew a short breath behind him. Victor kept talking.

“I was strapped to a steel table, and hooked up to an electrical current. There was a dial, and someone to turn it, and the pain went up when the dial was turned, and I told them not to stop until my heart did.” Victor pressed his palms against the icy rail. “People have an idea of pain,” he said. “They think they know what it is, how it feels, but that’s just an idea. It’s a very different thing when it becomes concrete.” He turned back toward her. “So when you ask me what the episodes feel like—they feel like dying all over again. Like someone turning up the dial inside me until I break.”

Sydney’s face was white. “I did this,” she said under her breath, fingers gripping her knees. “I did this to you.”

Victor went to Sydney’s chair and knelt before it.

“Sydney, I am alive because of you,” he said firmly. Tears spilled down Syd’s cheeks. Victor reached out and touched her shoulder. “You saved me.”

She met his eyes then, ice blue laced with red. “But I broke you.”

“No,” he started, then stopped. An idea flickered through his mind. The first spark of a thought, bright but brittle. He shielded its fragile heat, trying to coax it into something stronger, and as it kindled, he realized— He’d been looking in the wrong place. Searching for ordinary solutions.

But Victor wasn’t ordinary. What had happened to him wasn’t ordinary.

An EO had broken his power.

He needed an EO to fix it.





IX





TWO YEARS AGO


SOUTH BROUGHTON


IT was amazing what passed for music.

Victor leaned against the bar as sound blared out from the stage, where a group of men slammed their hands against their instruments. The upside, he supposed, was the way they drowned out the rising sound in his own head. The downside was the ache forming in its place.