Vengeful (Villains #2)(43)

“What am I doing here?” asked Eli, but the soldiers didn’t answer. They simply turned and left, steps echoing as they retreated. Somewhere a door opened, closed, pressurized, and as it did, the world beyond the fiberglass disappeared, the wall, transparent seconds before, becoming opaque.

Eli turned, taking in his new surroundings.

The cell was little more than a large cube, but after the months he’d spent strapped to various surfaces, sealed in a cell no bigger than a tomb, Eli was still grateful for the chance to move. He traced the perimeter of the cell, counted off the steps, took note of the features and their absences.

He noted four cameras set flush into the ceiling. There were no windows, no obvious door (he’d heard the fiberglass barrier retract into the floor, rise again behind him), only a cot, a table with one chair, one corner fitted with a toilet, sink, and shower. A wardrobe consisting solely of gray cotton lay folded on a floating shelf.

Victor’s ghost ran a hand over the folded clothes.

“And so the angel trades Hell for Purgatory,” mused the phantom.

Eli didn’t know what this place was—only knew that he wasn’t being strapped down, wasn’t being cut open, and that was an improvement. He peeled off his clothes and stepped into the shower, luxuriated in the freedom of turning the water on and off, washed away the scents of rubbing alcohol and blood and disinfectant, expecting to see the water at his feet run thick with the grime of a year’s torture. But Haverty had always been meticulous. They’d hosed Eli down every morning, and every night, so the only traces left behind were the scars that didn’t show.

Eli lowered himself onto the cot, pressed his back into the wall, and waited.





XIV





TWENTY-THREE YEARS AGO


THE SECOND HOME


THE phone tree worked.

Eli arrived at the Russos’ house that night with a backpack full of clothes, and the knowledge that his stay was temporary. A place for him to wait while the authorities tracked down a living relative, one willing to collect him.

Mrs. Russo met him at the door in a robe. It was late, and the Russo kids—there were five of them, ranging in age from six to fifteen—were already asleep. She took Eli’s bag and led him inside. The house was warm and soft in a lived-in way, the surfaces scuffed, the edges worn smooth.

“Poor thing,” she clucked under her breath as she led Eli into the kitchen. She gestured at the table for him to sit, and continued to murmur, more to herself than to him. The sound she made was so different from his own mother, whose whispered words had always been tinged with a hint of desperation. My angel, my angel, you must be good, you must be light.

Eli lowered himself into a rickety kitchen chair and stared down at his hands, still waiting for the shock to come, or go, whichever it was meant to. Mrs. Russo placed a steaming mug in front of him, and he curled his fingers around it. It was hot—uncomfortably so—but he didn’t pull away. The pain was familiar, almost welcome.

What now? thought Eli.

Every end is a new beginning.

Mrs. Russo sat down across from him. She reached her hands out and wrapped them over his. Eli flinched back at the touch, tried to pull away, but her grip was firm.

“You must be hurting,” she said, and he was—his hands were burning from the mug, but he knew she meant a deeper, heavier pain, and that he didn’t feel. If anything, Eli felt lighter than he had in years.

“God never gives us more than we can bear,” she continued.

Eli focused on the small gold cross that hung around her neck.

“But it’s up to us to find the purpose in the pain.”

The purpose in the pain.

“Come on,” she said, patting his hand. “I’ll make up the couch.”

*

ELI had never been a good sleeper.

He’d spent half of every night listening to his father move just beyond the door, like a wolf in the woods behind the house. A predator, circling too near. But the Russos’ place was quiet, calm, and Eli lay awake, marveling at the way eight bodies under one roof could take up less space than two.

The quiet didn’t last.

At some point Eli must have drifted off, because he started awake to raucous laughter and morning light and a pair of wide green eyes watching him from the edge of the couch. The youngest Russo girl perched there, staring at him with a mixture of interest and suspicion.

Four loud bodies came crashing suddenly into the room, a cacophony of limbs and noise. It was Saturday, and already the Russo children were running wild. Eli spent most of the time trying to stay out of their path, but it was hard in such a crowded house.

“Weirdo,” said one of the boys, knocking into him on the stairs.

“How long is he staying?” asked another.

“Don’t be un-Christian,” warned Mr. Russo.

“Gives me the creeps,” said the oldest boy.

“What’s wrong with you?” demanded the youngest girl.

“Nothing,” answered Eli, though he wasn’t sure if that was true.

“Then act normal,” she ordered, as if that were such a simple thing.

“What does normal look like?” he asked, at which point the girl made a small, exasperated sound and stormed away.

Eli waited for someone to come and get him, take him away—though he didn’t know where they would take him—but the day passed, and darkness fell, and he was still there. That first night was the only one he spent alone. They put him in the boys’ room after that, a spare mattress tucked in one corner. He lay there, listening to the other boys sleep with a mixture of annoyance and envy, his nerves too fine-tuned to let him rest among the various sounds of movement.