Vicious (Villains, #1)

by V.E. Schwab

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.

WHEN Victor got home from his labs the next day, he found Eli sitting at the kitchen table, carving up his skin.

TRIGGER WARNINGS Suicide should just be a blanket one for this book, what with the near death experience experiments Victor and Eli are running, but HOLY CRAP there's definitely one for self harm when Eli starts testing his powers.

“Why of all the potential powers I ended up with this one. Maybe it’s not random. Maybe there’s some correlation between a person’s character and their resulting ability. Maybe it’s a reflection of their psyche.

That is actually a good thought, that something about who you are has a bearing on what you bring with you into your EO existence.

“According to your thesis,” he said, “an influx of adrenaline and a desire to survive gave you that talent. Not God. This isn’t divinity, Eli. It’s science and chance.”

There was nothing overtly wrong with the words, but Victor didn’t like the way he said them, the same calm, cautious tone people use when they want to let someone down slowly, smoothing a “no” into a “not right now.”

VICTOR hated loud music almost as much as he hated crowds of drunk people.

Victor and I are two peas in a pod about this.

Victor Vale was not a fucking sidekick.

A-fucking-men, Victor.

She didn’t feel afraid, but Sydney knew not to trust fear, and certainly not to trust the absence of it.

“You think that if you die, and manage to come back, you’ll turn into what, one of the X-Men?” Victor laughed. His throat was dry. “I was hoping for Magneto.”

Every time Victor thought the dial couldn’t go any further, the pain couldn’t get any worse, and then it did and it did and it did, and Victor could hear himself screaming even though the strap was still between his teeth and he could feel every nerve in his body breaking and he wanted it to stop. He wanted it to stop.

Eli's theory about the foundation for EO abilties was right.

Two different days, two different deaths, overlapping, swirling together. She blinked both memories away, but the photo was still there, staring up at her, and she couldn’t tear her gaze away, and before she knew what she was doing, her hand was reaching out, stretching past Victor, toward the paper and the smiling man on its front.

Was Eli Serena's boyfriend, the one that shot her?

Mitch looked tired, unamused, but safe. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to intervene. Victor knew that when he had bad dreams, other people always suffered.

Mitch is incredibly strong, to be able to stand up to Victor's power not once, but multiple times and under extended circumstances.

VICTOR didn’t revive Angie. He didn’t try. He knew he should, or should want to, but the last thing he needed was more evidence of himself at the crime scene.

Would the intervening years have been different if he'd tried? Would Eli have forgiven him, even a little bit, if Victor had tried to save Angie?

Victor realized that he could react. Fight back without having to touch them. Without even having to see them.

The calm troubled him; the fact that the physical absence of pain could elicit such a mental absence of panic was at once unnerving and rather fascinating.

Sensation was nuanced. Not on and off, but an entire spectrum, a dial with hundreds of notches, not a switch.

The steps to solving a problem, from elementary math to breaking out of a police station, remained the same. A simple matter of understanding the problem, and selecting the best solution.

Hell, if the bullets lodged, there was a chance Eli would heal around them. It gave Victor a modicum of pleasure to think of that.

But he didn’t only cause pain; Victor also took it away. He’d learned to gift painlessness, to trade it. Amazed by the lengths men would go to avoid any form of suffering, Victor had become a dealer in a drug only he could provide. Jail had, in some ways, been pleasant.

The absence of pain led to an absence of fear, and the absence of fear led to a disregard for consequence.

“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.

“I don’t know who you are, but you’re not Victor. You’re something that’s crawled into his skin. A devil wearing him.”

Eli's self-righteous zealotry will be a danger to all EOs.

“You may be able to turn the pain off,” said Eli, “but you can’t stop the blood loss.”

Serena was very good at telling tales. She had always been convincing (that was the word her sister liked to use for lying).

Sydney had heard them talking about her sister’s condition, but when she walked up and said she wanted to leave, they stepped aside and let her pass. Serena had always gotten her way, but never like this. Never without a fight.

Holy shit. Serena is an E.O. too??

It reminded Sydney of sinking beneath the surface, of wanting her sister so badly to come back.

That night, Sydney snuck out of her hospital room and went down to the morgue, to find out for sure if what had happened in that hall was truly a miracle, a happy accident, a fluke, or if she somehow had something to do with it. Half an hour later she hurried out of the morgue, thoroughly disgusted and spotted with stale blood, but with her hypothesis confirmed. Sydney Clarke could raise the dead.

For 12 years old, Sydney is brave and old beyond her age.

Sydney had barely grown at all, actually. Less than an inch in the year since the accident. It wasn’t just her height, either. Sydney’s nails, her hair, everything about her crept forward. Slowly. Like melting ice.

An eternal child?

There was something dangerous about Eli, about the calm way he smiled and the lazy way he moved.

“Sydney,” Serena’s voice cut through the chill March air. “Stop whining.” And she did. The complaint died in her throat.

I'm not sure this is because of Serena's power, though, or because Sydney is afraid of her sister.

But when Sydney touched them, they didn’t just come back, they revived. They were okay. Alive. Human. And, as she found out in the morgue, as susceptible to mortality as they’d been before, just not the form that killed them.

Does this mean if someone dies one way, they can't be killed that way again?

It perplexed Sydney, until she remembered the day on the frozen lake when the ice water had swallowed her up and she’d reached for Serena’s leg and been a fraction too late, too slow, to catch it—come back, come back—and how badly she’d wanted a second chance.

That’s what Sydney was giving these people. A second chance. Her fingers hovered over the dead man’s chest for a moment as she wondered if he deserved a second chance, then chided herself. Who was she to judge or decide or grant...

“I want you to know,” said Eli, fingers flexing on the gun, “that it is my grim task to do this. I have no choice.”

Bullshit. You're like any other zealot trying to see righteosness in their quest, however depraved.

“Sydney, look at me.” He rested his hands on the car roof and leaned in. “No one is going to hurt you. Do you know why?” She shook her head, and Victor smiled. “Because I’ll hurt them first.”

“Mitchell,” said Victor. “Tell Sydney what you were in prison for.” “Hacking,” he said cheerfully. Sydney laughed. “Seriously? I had you pegged as more of a beat-someone-to-death-with-their-own-arm type.” “I’ve always been big,” said Mitch. “That’s not my fault.” He cracked his knuckles again. His hands were larger than the keyboard. “And the tattoos?” “It’s best to look the part.”

They made time to replace the vase, because apparently it was a focal piece in the house, but they were too busy to find a new watcher, so they said I didn’t need one.

“Now that,” he said, “is a gift.” She petted the dog between the ears, both of which stood roughly eye level with her. “Can we keep him?”

What the hell is he going to say, NO? 😱

“Is that blood?” “I shot him,” said Victor, searching through his papers. “Why would you do that?” asked Mitch, closing the laptop. “Because he was dying.” “Then why isn’t he dead?” “Because Sydney brought him back.”

“Victor named him Dol,” she said. “It’s a measurement of pain,” explained Victor. “Well, that’s morbidly appropriate,” said Mitch. “Can we get back to the part where Sydney resurrected him?

Sydney watched Victor’s hand tighten into a fist, and felt the air hum around her, but Barry didn’t seem to feel anything. Something was wrong. She’d gone through the motions, given him a second chance, but he hadn’t come back the way the ordinary humans had, not all the way.

“I’m Nicholas.” Eli had always liked the name. Nicholas and Frederick and Peter, those were the ones he found himself using the most. They were important names, the kind held by rulers, conquerors, kings.

Pretentious bastard.

There had been a time when he spoke to the EOs, tried to impart to them the logic, the necessity, of his actions, tried to make them understand before they died, that they were already dead, already ash, held together by something dark but feeble. But they didn’t listen, and in the end, his actions conveyed what his words had failed to. He’d made an exception for Serena’s little sister, and look where that had gotten him. No, words were wasted on them all.

So Eli pinned the girl against the car, and waited patiently until the struggle slowed, and weakened, and stopped. He stood very, very still, and relished the ensuing moment of quiet. It always came to him, right here, when the light—he’d say the life, but that wasn’t right, it wasn’t life, only something posing as life—went out of their eyes. A moment of peace, a measure of balance being restored to the world. The unnatural made natural.

Dude, you're a rationalizing serial killer.

She’d warned him not to lie, and he’d looked her in the eyes and told her that he’d shot Sydney. And that hadn’t been a lie exactly, had it?

Eli found a way around Serena's power: Elvish lies.

Eli was getting better at fighting back, finding little loopholes in her power. Redirections, omissions, evasions, delays.

Eli said it best. He called EOs shadows, shaped like the people who made them but gray inside.

Eli wondered if he was in shock, if that was the thing keeping Angie’s death from sinking in the way the knife had. He wanted to care, he wanted to care so badly, but there was this gap between what he felt and what he wanted to feel, a space where something important had been carved out.

I don't think this lack of caring about Angie's death has to do with whatever was taken fron Eli after his death, or at least not entirely. Victor made observations prior to any E.O. experiments that Eli didn't seem to have much in the way of attachment to Angie.

“If I’m missing something, then so are you. Life is about compromises. Or did you think because you put yourself in God’s hands that He would make you all you were and more?” “He did,” said Eli aloud to the sink. He did. He would. He had to. Whatever this gap was, it was there for a reason, there to make him stronger. He had to believe that.

The Victor that he knew was dead, replaced by something cold and vicious.

Roll credits.