Page 22

18

Everything You Touch Dies

R ain drops continued to patter against the window. They confirmed, to Marisol’s relief, that she could still hear. She and Vincent waited in silence for so long, she had doubted it. How long had they been like this? Her, with her eyebrows raised, rolling Abuelita’s pendant in her fingers? Him, with his brawny arms crossed over his chest, leaning against the corner? He had bowed his head.

Her brain registered his words in slow motion.

Pieces of his 500-year-long story sounded through—“Sixteenth-century expedition for the Queen Regent to the New World,” “drinking from the Fountain of Youth,” “exploitation, betrayal, and death.” The last words he said before bowing his head swam to the surface of her mind. “It wasn’t supposed to be permanent. One drink gave us the power of the gods but took our human gifts. To create life, for instance, a condition set in place to ensure we’d return the power with another drink. But we shed blood in the Fountain’s waters and destroyed it. For that, I can never age or die. I am cursed with eternal life until the balance of Justice is restored to the world.”

Tiny vibrations rumbled the room as the thunder faded. “So…” She wasn’t sure what to say next, waffling between “What’s it feel like to be America’s first villain?” and “If magic is real, what else is—fairy tales, legends, God?” But her voice breaking through the tinny pitch in her ears said, “There are others like you.”

He lifted his head enough to say, “There is no one like me.”

She finally let go of the pendant. “How so? You said—”

“Our bodies can handle damage, but we still need to take care of ourselves. If we are too reckless and take on damage too great, we can become...” He paused and sighed. “Permanently affected.”

“That’s why you needed the blade out.”

He tipped his head. “Only the curse holds the others together. Barely human. They’re waiting in cryostasis for the day I can fix them. They’re stored down below.”

Marisol recalled the vault glowing blue. “The weapons.”

He nodded.

“You’ll fix them when you lift the curse?”

“The curse will never lift! I’ve spent lives trying to undo the viciousness of humanity, to restore Justice. I’ve tried to learn from our mistakes—to stand by those crushed between our wars and revolutions. I can’t do it. It’s never enough.” He pounded his fist into the wall, cracking the marble.

Marisol adjusted the belt of her coat tighter, as if it would protect her. “How will you fix them, then?” The question she really wanted to ask was how he was going to fix himself before he became some thing held together by the rotting sinews of an everlasting curse.

“Aut inveniam viam aut faciam.” Lightning flashed and thunder drummed, its rumbling strength ever closer in the distance. “I will find a way, or I will make one.”

“The words carved on your estate.”

“I’ve placed my faith in science to find my way.”

His past lives were all men searching, discovering, and exploring. One of those lives belonged to his father—him, Victor Varian. And... the cells that Annie discovered were Victor Varian’s cells. Or Vincent’s cells. The cells that she used for the serum to improve the flawed regenerative serum he had already created.

The serum that cured her tumor-ridden mouse only to leave it as a monster, deathless and vicious.

A fire burned inside of her, an anger for withholding the truth from her. “It hasn’t worked.” But she felt angry on behalf of her history. Vincent’s people created the ripple of death and destruction across early America. They were the reason her abuelita spoke Spanish. The sins of Vincent’s people twisted every branch of Marisol’s family tree. She saw it in the raw, overworked hands of her mother, the desperation of her father, and the acquired cruelty of her brother.

He talked to the ground. “I should have never acted on my feelings for you. Not when I can’t—” He held his face in his hands, his hair caught between his fingers.

Her body spasmed as it felt like another floor dropped out from under her. They bonded over their pasts, over family, food, and the heartbreak of loss. Yet his homes were living mausoleums collecting more and more stuff because he never had to lose anything.

Through clenched teeth, she said, “You lied to me.”

“I couldn’t bear it,” he replied, voice shaking.

He had the nerve to lie to her and snivel because he felt bad? Her darker self, the one too close to Caz, wanted to make ashes of those fake happy memories at the lake house. “Those stories of you and Leonard? You played me! All along you were talking about yourself!”

“It was all true.” He heaved a sigh and muttered, “Leonard was an orphan boy whom I offered a future, and in exchange, he helped me but died an old man.” He stared outside the window, clenching the muscles in his jaw.

Marisol gasped as if she had emerged from depths of hatred that she swore she’d drown in. No, Vincent wasn’t shut off from loss, he was a vortex of loss, and he would take her with him. She had to escape. But how? “Come here, Vincent.” He kept his focus outside, so she vied for his attention another way. “Vicente, ven aquí.” She lowered onto her good foot and propped her weight against the desk’s ledge.

He looked at her with his brilliant stained-glass eyes.

She untied the coat and let it drop to the ground. “Ven aquí, ahora, Vicente.”

He took one step forward.

That wasn’t right. He needed to show how contrite he truly felt. “No!” she ordered, “Crawl.”

Thunder rattled the windows. Her Vincent dropped to his knees and slinked toward her like a predator. On his knees, he hugged around her waist and nuzzled her belly.

Marisol’s knee buckled, and she caught herself on his shoulders. This still wasn’t right. “Heal me, Dr. Varian.”

He grabbed the syringe on the table, filled it with the serum, and pulled Marisol’s shorts down to expose her hip. He hovered the needle over the muscle and glanced at her with a plea that asked, Are you sure?

She answered, “Do it!”

He jabbed the needle into her side and pushed the plunger down. The serum sizzled in her veins like freezer burn. The first blow hit, taking Marisol’s breath away as she stumbled back into the desk. She squeezed the edges of the desk and gulped for air. She caught her breath, a sip of respite. Not completely terrible. The pain had been worth it until the stab became a crushing avalanche. Marisol writhed, kicking her good leg. She wanted to escape her body, thrashing and squeezing her muscles.

She blinked rapidly and then felt nothing.

Released from the torture, Marisol relaxed. So did her stomach. She dry-heaved as a warning. Vincent caught the real deal with a bedpan when she vomited. Before she finished wiping her mouth, another wave of pain crashed into her. Her stomach tightened, heaving up what little she had left.

He sawed through the fiberglass layer of her cast and cut away the cotton layer. With a snip, Vincent freed Marisol’s leg. A faint scar below her knee was the only sign of her injury. He said, “You’re free.”

Her veins buzzed with adrenaline from the drug’s after-effects. She moved to walk on her new leg, but it took weight like jelly. She fell into Vincent and steadied herself with her arms around his neck. She could have everything now, the pain and pleasure wrapped in a silk, leather, and barbed wire bow. “I want you more than ever.”

“Hm.” He leaned his forehead against hers.

She approached the edge. With two working legs, she could jump or walk away. What would it be? She could have everything except… “But answer this. If it wasn’t for you, would Annie still be alive? ”

His chin trembled as he kissed her forehead. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

She pushed him back yet kept a firm hold of him, fisting the fabric at the neckline of his sweater in both hands. “Answer me!”

“I don’t know.”

Sobs wrenched from her chest as an unseen rope pulled her between him and Annie. Escape. “I need to go home.”

He held her jawline in his thumbs, his fingers threading her hair at the nape. “The Bloodsucker.”

She let go of his sweater. “I’ll keep a low profile.”

“It isn’t safe.”

She extricated herself from his grip. “How can I be safe with you?” and stood straight on her own two legs. “Everything you touch dies!”

He closed his eyes and stepped back. His resignation twisted like a vise around her chest. But for Annie, she walked out of his study, ran through his ballroom, and left him behind. He’d just become one of those weird stories she had about her city: man-eating sewer rats, immortal cockroaches, and the weekend affair with the cursed superhuman.

With one of Vincent’s computer pads, she coordinated a ride two miles up the road from his estate. It would be a spot far enough away to not betray the estate’s perceived abandonment. She’d have to leave soon to meet her ride to allow enough time to reach the mile marker .

Before she left, she ripped a commlink off the wrist of one of his suits. If the Bloodsucker happened to sniff around her apartment, she’d make sure Vincent was a click away—for self-defense and nothing more. Maybe when life calmed down, the commlink would end up in a Lost and Found box next to an ex’s sweatshirt.

She took off, swinging her garbage bag of things by her side. She caught her reflection in the gleam of a window. Wearing her hood up in oversized clothes, she resembled a teenage version of Caz. She had to come up with a good story to keep her driver from speeding off and leaving her on the side of the road. But when the driver picked her up, he asked, “What is a kid doing out here at night?”

She replied, “Got a little lost. I had to find my own way back home.”