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.
“Hey!” shouted the bartender. “Get you a drink?”
Victor twisted back toward the bar. Toward the man behind the counter.
Will Connelly was six-foot-three, with a square jaw, a shock of black hair, and all the markers of a potential EO.
Victor had done his homework, had instructed Mitch to rebuild a search matrix, the same one Eli, and then the police, had used to find EOs, the same one that had led Victor to Dominic.
It had taken two months to track down the first lead—a woman down south who could reverse age, but not injury—another three to find the second—a man who could take things apart and put them back together, sadly a skill which didn’t really apply to living things.
Finding other EOs was hard enough.
Finding specific ones, with restorative abilities, was even harder.
Their latest lead was Will Connelly, who’d bailed from a hospital bed, sans discharge, a mere two days after his accident. The doctors had been stunned.
That suggested a healing ability.
The question was whether he could heal Victor.
So far, no one could.
“Well?” called Connelly over the music.
“Glen Ardoch,” Victor called back, nodding at a bottle on the back wall. It was empty.
“Gotta grab some more,” said Connelly, flagging another bartender before ducking out from under the bar. Victor waited a moment, then followed, trailing the other man down the hall. Connelly’s hand was on the open storeroom door when Victor caught up.
“I’ve changed my order.”
The bartender swung around, and Victor gave him a single forceful shove, tipping Connelly down the flight of stairs.
It wasn’t a long flight, but there was a wall of metal kegs at the bottom and the bartender crashed against them with a noise that would have called attention, if not for the wailing of the band overhead.
Victor followed, taking the steps at a more leisurely pace as the man straightened, clutching his elbow. “You broke my fucking arm!”
“Well, then,” said Victor, “I suggest you fix it.”
Connelly’s expression changed. “What? What are you ta—”
Victor flicked his fingers and the bartender staggered, biting back a scream.
There was no need to quiet him. The bass from the club overhead would have been loud enough to drown out a murder.
“Okay!” gasped Connelly. “Okay.”
Victor’s hold dropped away, and the bartender straightened. He took a few steadying breaths, and then his whole body shuddered, the motion so small and fast it seemed more a vibration than a shiver. As if he were rewinding. A fraction of a second, and his arm hung easily at his side, the pain gone from his face.
“Good,” said Victor. “Now, fix me.”
Connelly’s face crumpled in confusion. “I can’t.”
Victor flexed, and the man staggered back into the crates and kegs. “I—can’t—” he gasped. “Don’t you think—if I could help other people—I would? Hell—I’d be a—fucking messiah. Not working—in this shithole bar.”
It was a valid point.
“It only works—on me.”
Fuck, thought Victor right before his phone rang. He dragged the cell out of his pocket and saw Dominic’s name on the screen.
Dom, who only called Victor when there was trouble.
He answered. “What is it?”
“Bad news,” said the ex-soldier.
In the storeroom, Connelly had grabbed a bottle off the shelf behind him and now lunged toward Victor. Or started to. But Victor raised a hand, and Connelly’s whole body slammed to a stop as he caught the man’s nerves, pinned them in place. He’d been practicing, since the night he moved Sydney. He’d learned that pain and motion were both facets of control. Hurting a body was simple; halting it was harder—but Victor was getting the hang of it.
“Go on,” he said to Dom.
“Okay, so you know a lot of the guys who come out of the military, they go into private sector. Security. Task force. Muscle-for-hire kind of jobs. Some of it’s aboveboard. Some of it’s not. But there’s always work for people in a certain field, if you’re willing and able.”
Connelly was still fighting Victor’s hold, throwing all his weight against it as if they were arm-wrestling. As if this were a battle of muscle, not will.
“So I’m having drinks with an old army buddy,” continued Dom, “well, he’s drinking bourbon, I’m on club soda—”
“Summarize,” urged Victor, forcing the bartender to his knees.
“Right, sorry. So he tells me about this new job posting. It’s under the radar—no public listings, no paper ads or online posts, just word of mouth. No details. Nothing but a name. Letters, really. EON.”
Victor frowned. “EON?”
Connelly tried to shout, but Victor clamped his jaws shut.
“Yeah. EON,” said Dom. “As in ExtraOrdinary Observation and Neutralization.”
Victor stilled. “It’s a prison.”
“Or something like it. They’re looking for guards, but they’re also training officers to hunt down people like us.”
Victor turned the information over in his mind. “What else did your friend tell you?”
“Not much. But he gave me a card. Some cloak-and-dagger shit. Just those three letters on one side, a name and number on the back. Nothing else.”
“Whose name?” asked Victor, even though he had a feeling he already knew the answer.
“Director Joseph Stell.”
Stell. The name scraped against Victor’s skin. The cop who’d first come for him at Lockland, on the heels of Angie’s death; the reason he’d spent four years in a solitary cell, and another six in standard; the same man who’d tracked Eli to Merit a decade later, only to fall under Serena Clarke’s spell. Stell was a dog with a bone—once he got his teeth in, he didn’t let go. And now—this. An organization designed to hunt EOs.
“I thought you’d want to know,” said Dominic.
“You were right.” Victor hung up.
What a mess, he thought, shaking his head. Victor Vale was dead and buried in Merit Cemetery, but all it would take was a hunch—hell, bodies were dug up for a dozen reasons. And he’d left behind an empty coffin. The beginning of a trail. Not an obvious one, but enough to cause trouble. From there, how long would it take EON to catch on? To catch up?
“Let me go,” growled Connelly through locked teeth.
“All right,” said Victor, releasing his hold. The bartender staggered, unbalanced by the sudden freedom, and was halfway to his feet when Victor drew his gun and shot him in the head.
The music continued to rage overhead, unbroken, undisturbed.
* * *
“FIVE marshmallows,” said Sydney, perched on the kitchen counter. Tonight her hair was a shock of purple.
“That’s too many,” said Mitch at the stove.
“Fine, three,” said Syd.
“What about four?”
“I don’t like even numbers—hey, Victor.” Syd swung her legs absently. “Mitch is making hot chocolate.”
“How domestic,” he said, shrugging out of his coat. They didn’t ask about his evening, or Connolly, but Victor could feel the tension in the air like a taut string. His silence on the subject was answer enough.
He caught Mitch’s eye. “I need you to find out everything you can about EON.”
“What’s that?” asked Mitch.
“A problem.” Victor relayed Dominic’s intel, watching Sydney pale and Mitch’s face shift from surprise to concern. When he was done, he turned toward his room. “Start packing.”
“Where are we going?” asked Syd.
“Fulton. Capstone. Dresden. Capital City . . .”
Mitch frowned. “Those are all places we’ve already been.”
“I know,” said Victor. “We’re going back. We need to clean up.”
A shadow crossed Sydney’s face. “You’re going to kill them,” she said. “All the people you’ve met with . . .”
“I don’t have a choice,” he said simply.
“Yes, you do,” said Sydney, crossing her arms. “Why do you have to—”
“Some know my condition. Some know my power. But all of them have seen my face. From here on out, we leave absolutely no trace, and that means before we go forward, we have to go back.”
A trail of bodies, or a trail of witnesses—that was the choice they were faced with. Neither option was ideal, but at least corpses couldn’t give statements. Victor’s solution was logical, but Sydney wasn’t having it.
“If you kill all the EOs you meet,” she said, “how are you better than Eli?”
Victor’s teeth clenched. “I take no pleasure in this, Sydney, but if EON finds them, they’ll be one step closer to finding us. Do you want that to happen?”
“No, but—”
“Do you know what they’ll do? First they’ll kill Dol, and then they will take you, and me, and Mitch, and we will never see the light of day, let alone each other, ever again.” Sydney’s eyes widened, but Victor went on. “If you’re lucky, they’ll lock you in a cage. Alone. If you’re not, they’ll turn you into a science experiment—”
“Victor,” warned Mitch, but he only stepped closer. Sydney stared up at him, fists clenched. He knelt so they were eye to eye.
“You think I’m acting like Eli? You think I’m playing God? Fine, you play, Sydney. You decide, right now, who should live. Us, or them.”
Tears hovered on her lashes. She didn’t look at him, kept her gaze focused on his shirtfront as her lips moved, short and soundless.
“What was that?” he asked.
This time, he heard it.
“Us.”