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Deathmatch Eve

S he liked this. Not the squeezing onto a shared gurney or the catching some z ’ s on the lam, but she liked, for once, waking with Vincent in her arms.

She inched even closer to him, inhaling his scent of blood and smoke. Something metallic poked into her. Probably a broken part of the gurney, but when she wiggled away, she uncovered a mound of misshapen metal discs; the fired bullets Vincent’s body had pushed out in the night. She sat up. Splotches of dried blood on the sheet traveled from the edge of Vincent’s hospital gown. She put her hand against his side.

He turned over and lay on his back, shrugging. “I’m fine now.”

She searched his face for a sign of a half-truth. Nothing. “Fine or not, I’ll rip him limb to limb.” It frightened her how much it wasn’t an empty promise. She wanted to pull and chop Ruthven apart. And bring popcorn along.

Vincent laughed haughtily, like he didn’t believe her. “I’ll admit, I was a little out of it when I hung from a hook. Where is Ruthven?”

“Shut him up in an old meat locker with a sizable amount of tranquilizer and heroin in his system,” Tobias answered, sitting up on the couch.

“Would that be enough to stop you?” Marisol asked.

Vincent didn’t answer. Instead, he leaped off the gurney and ran to the laundry cart. He yanked on some scrub bottoms and tore off the hospital gown with his bandages, revealing his unblemished torso. While he dug for a shirt, the shifting shadows of his movement revealed a series of scars over his upper back.

The scars lured Marisol, and she walked steadily to him until she touched his back. She ran her fingers over the raised skin, amazed by its design. It resembled a fleur-de-lis. “Is it permanent?”

He shrugged. After a few blinks, he threw on a shirt and sprinted to pick his boots off the ground. He released a piercing whistle, and the SUV lit up. From the driver’s side, he fidgeted with compartments, acquiring a ball cap and aviator sunglasses. Not the best disguise, but without the fineries of couture or coiffed hair, he looked normal.

“Where are you going?” Marisol followed him with her legs and arms bent in anticipation, as if he was an expensive vase wobbling on an edge.

“I’m going to put him in cryofreeze.” Vincent continued to click buttons and open hidden compartments.

Tobias stood, shoulder slumped toward his injured side. “We’re clean out of tranqs.”

Another push of a button, and something emerged from the center console. “Won’t need them.” He held up a remote with one hand and dangled bolas in the other. “How do you stop someone with the strength of me? This time, prepared with magnetic force.”

Vincent tossed the bolas, and they wrapped around Marisol. They pinched. Definitely leaving a mark. As she struggled to free herself, Vincent pressed the remote and the magnetic force dropped her to the floor.

Oof.

She was a breathless cockroach on her back. Her middle finger would itch if those damn things weren’t cutting off her circulation. This warranted a punishment for sure. Kneeling? Wrists bound behind him with sisal rope? Back muscles rippling as she…

He pressed the remote again. The bolas fell off her body. There was that impish grin of his again.

While Marisol dusted her knees off standing up, Tobias asked, “Why didn’t we think of that? ”

The electric hum of the SUV engine started. Vincent poked his head out of the driver’s door. “You two coming?”

At least the swelling of Tobias’s eye had subsided. Marisol could almost see the white of his eyeball. Or rather, the broken-blood-vessel red of it. He moved with a crooked spine, slouching toward his injured side. They’d be the help no one asked for. Which gave her an idea.

“We could at least get some real-deal regenerative serum to beef us up,” Marisol said.

“Out of the question.” Vincent’s sonorous voice echoed through the room. He

continued, “Subsequent doses have highly addictive aftereffects. There’s the euphoria, then psychosis. It’s basically B’Lee.” He must’ve noticed the absence of gray in Tobias’s hair, giving away the first dose.

“I took B’Lee?” Tobias shouted.

Bolting for cover in the alcove again seemed like a good idea. “I didn’t know it was that,” Marisol said as she fidgeted with the overlong drawstring of her pants.

“You didn’t know what drug you offered me?” Again with the shouting.

“In fairness, the serum isn’t quite B’Lee. Someone inverted the chemical structures. With B’Lee, you get euphoria and psychosis without the regeneration.” Vincent cleared his throat. Of course, Vincent would offer a pill of comfort with an unsettling coating.

Marisol straightened. “How did a version of your wonder drug end up on the street?” she asked. “Parallel thinking?”

“More likely? Dr. Park gave an altered version of the formula to Ruthven. But that isn’t nearly as concerning as having a superpowered psycho on the loose. I would like to end the situation sooner than later.”

Marisol hesitated while Tobias strapped his battered body back into his borrowed bulletproof vest. She wanted to shake Annie the first time Ruthven entered her lab and accessed the research. But Annie kept Marisol out for that very reason. She bit into her bottom lip. Ruthven would pay for trying to change the version of Annie that Marisol had to hold on to. She dashed to her equipment and suited up. With her boots, utility belt, bullet-proof vest, and gloves combined with their faded scrubs, she resembled an escaped patient.

In the SUV, the dashboard came alive under Vincent’s touch. As soon as they entered the light early morning traffic, technicolor computer scrawls traced the bottom of the front window. Staci worked a little harder with Vincent in charge.

The car crawled to the crooked chain-link fences of the abandoned industrial park. The morning sun peeked over the horizon. Marisol wiped her clammy hands on the car seat. If Vincent fell to Ruthven the first time, Ruthven wouldn’t fall as easily as she did to a pair of bolas. Vincent switched his aviator sunglasses with his heat vision goggles. The SUV stopped right at the barbed wire entrance to the Clark’s Slaughterhouse. “No one’s there.” He tossed his goggles aside and put his sunglasses back on.

Marisol touched the cross at her clavicle to steady her shaking hand.

The wind lifted a broken streamer of yellow police tape over the mouth of the open garage. Tobias rolled his ski mask to his forehead. “Looks like our stunt caught the SPD’s attention.”

Did Ruthven rip through the police like he had those gangsters? Marisol might need the other car seat to wipe her hands dry.

Vincent pulled an entire computer screen up on the front window, swiping through various blotters and news articles. “Nothing strange reported besides the arrest of a bunch of zip-tied gangsters with open warrants a mile long. He must’ve ditched them and broke out before the police arrived.” He punched the steering wheel.

“We got him once. We can do it again.” Marisol put her hand on top of his.

Vincent grimaced. “ Again is a little complicated. You know the virus the W.H.O. reported missing recently?”

Marisol asked, “The one the news keeps burying on the back page?”

“He has it. ”

Her heart dropped. “What does he get from that? This place is his city too.”

“He’s figuring if enough people get sick, he’ll force my hand, and Varian Pharmaceuticals will manufacture Dr. Park’s cure-all.”

“A city dies. The world panics. He profits. And everyone who can afford it will become deathless rage monsters.” Tobias pounded his fist into the car ceiling.

Tobias may understand Ruthven’s plan, but it made no sense to Marisol. “But Annie’s research disappeared, and what was left died with her.”

“So a city dies, and Vinnie and the Bloodsucker duke it out over the rubble?”

The massive SUV all of a sudden felt smaller. “People could be getting sick as we speak!” Marisol reached for the door handle. To do what? Run the streets screaming? Either A virus is coming! or Bloodsucker! Come out wherever you are? Anything to feel helpful rather than helpless.

“It’s a weaponized contagion. If he released it already, we’d hear about it within the hour. It’s ideal for spreading in a densely populated area. Not just a city but a special event.”

“How does a career vulture investor like Stone Ruthven go from co-oped drug deals to bioterrorism?” Tobias asked.

“Easy. Someone hired him.” Vincent adjusted the rearview mirror. The mirror reflected the emotionless abyss of his sunglasses in contrast to Tobias’s face, crooked with bruises and incredulity.

“You’re kidding me.” Tobias scrubbed his hands over his face and muttered, “Chess boards in chess boards.”

Tobias said this before, back at the precinct. They caught Izzy, a king, only to find he was the Bloodsucker’s pawn. That didn’t mean… Marisol must’ve misheard him. “What?”

“Someone with even more influence pointed him in my direction,” Vincent added. “But I’d surmise that Dr. Park’s serum will make it difficult to order him around.”

“Know of anyone with a grudge against you?” Tobias punctuated his question with a smirk in the mirror.

Vincent took off his sunglasses, matching smirk with smirk. “Over five hundred years, it can be quite a long list. Though they tend to die after a while.” He tapped an arm of his glasses against his lips.

“But that doesn’t matter now, right? If he has the virus, he’s going to release it. Where? Public transportation? Schools?” She offered anything to change the focus to what really mattered.

“I was drifting out of consciousness on that hook, but he kept bringing up legacy .”

She snapped her fingers. “The Rooks’ Legacy semi-finals is this afternoon. Everyone in Shadowhaven vies for tickets! ”

Tobias’s smirk faded. “It would be a perfect super-spreader event for something with a—how d’you put it?—weaponized gestation period?”

“We’ll patrol the arena for him.” Vincent rubbed his chin.

The reality of the date hit Marisol. She kicked the glove box. “Damn, I go into work today! I’ll call in.”

“No. If he attacks the game, we’ll need our best people at the hospitals. Leave the game to Quinlan and me.”

“We’ll be canaries in the coal mine,” Tobias said.

And so they settled it. Her deathless saint and the man who would die for her were all that protected hundreds of thousands of Shadowhaven’s people from the Bloodsucker.