Vicious (Villains, #1)

by V.E. Schwab

The moments that define lives aren’t always obvious. They don’t always scream LEDGE, and nine times out of ten there’s no rope to duck under, no line to cross, no blood pact, no official letter on fancy paper. They aren’t always protracted, heavy with meaning. Between one sip and the next, Victor made the biggest mistake of his life, and it was made of nothing more than one line. Three small words. “I’ll go first.” He’d thought about it in the car on the way back from the airport, when he asked why not? He’d thought about it as they ate lunch, and then as he walked around campus, finishing his coffee, thought about it all the way back to the residence halls and the upperclassmen’s apartments beyond them. Somewhere between the third and fourth tumbler, the question mark had become a period. There wasn’t a choice. Not really. This was the only way to be more than a spectator to Eli’s great feats. To be a participant. A contributor.

The paper called Eli a hero. The word made Victor laugh. Not just because it was absurd, but because it posed a question. If Eli really was a hero, and Victor meant to stop him, did that make him a villain? He took a long sip of his drink, tipped his head back against the couch, and decided he could live with that.

“A note for your thesis,” he said as his friend lay there, gasping. “You thought our powers were somehow a reflection of our nature. God playing with mirrors, but you’re wrong. It’s not about God. It’s about us. The way we think. The thought that’s strong enough to keep us alive. To bring us back. You want to know how I know?” He turned his attention to the table, looking for something new and sharp. “Because all I could think about when I was dying was the pain.” He cranked the dial up in his mind, and let the room fill with Eli’s screams. “And how badly I wanted to make it stop.”

A hero? Victor now scoffed at the word. That’s what the paper had been so eager to call Eli. And for a moment, Victor had believed the headline. He had been willing to play the villain when he thought Eli was actually a hero; now that the truth of his old friend was proving itself to be much darker, Victor would relish the role as opposition, adversary, foe.

he had seen the perfect opportunity to spell out a simple but effective “We … ruin … all … we touch.”

His eyes had an unfocused intensity, as if he were somewhere else, unconcerned with the cage around him or the monsters inside. Like a predator, Mitch realized one day. He’d seen enough nature specials on the common room set to know that prey had eyes on the sides of their head, were constantly on guard, but predators’ eyes were forward-facing, close together, unafraid.

There was a blossom of red, and her lips parted, but he’d cut deep, and no sound made it out. “And Ulysses stopped up his ears against the siren’s song,” recited Victor, pulling the plugs from his own ears as Serena collapsed to the dirt lot, “for it was death.”

This is everything