Page 161 of Villains Series

THE LAST NIGHT

THE OLD COURTHOUSE

THE building was a ruin, the tangle of stone still shifting and settling, as Eli climbed out of the wreckage. Dust and glass rained down around him as he pried open a door, found a back stairwell intact, and climbed. The door at the top opened onto a parking garage. Sirens wailed nearby as he strode, naked, across the concrete toward the side street.

It had been hard to walk away from Victor.

There would be time for him again. But first, Eli needed to put distance between himself and the courthouse—and EON’s reach.

“Excuse me, sir,”

called a security guard, approaching.

“you can’t—”

Eli slammed his fist into the man’s jaw.

The guard dropped like a stone, and Eli stripped him, tugging on the stolen uniform as he stepped around the arm of the parking barrier and out into the alley.

It had been five years since Eli’s arrest, longer still since the last time he needed to disappear. Amazing how quickly the mind went down old paths. Eli felt calm, in control, his thoughts ticking off with soothing linearity.

Now, he just needed to—

Pain lanced his side.

Eli winced, and looked down to see a dart jutting between his ribs. He pulled the dart free and held it up to the light, squinting at the dregs of an electric blue liquid in the vial. A strange shiver ran through him. A tightness in his chest.

Footsteps sounded behind him, slow and steady, and Eli turned around, only to find a ghost.

A monster.

A devil in a white lab coat, deep-set eyes peering out from behind round glasses.

Dr. Haverty.

Eli’s mouth went dry. He flashed back to steel tables slick with blood, felt hands inside his open chest, but despite the bile rising in his throat, Eli forced himself to hold his ground.

“All our time together,”

he said, tossing the dart away.

“and you really thought something like that would work?”

Haverty cocked his head, glasses shining.

“Let’s find out.”

The doctor swung the gun up, and fired a second dart into Eli’s chest.

Eli looked down, expecting to see the neon liquid, but the contents of this vial were clear. He plucked out the dart.

“I don’t sleep,”

he said, tossing it away.

“but I still dream. And I’ve so often dreamed of killing you.”

He started toward Haverty, but halfway there his front knee buckled. Folded, as if it had gone to sleep. The world rocked sideways, and Eli collapsed to his hands and knees in the street, limbs suddenly sluggish, head spinning.

This wasn’t right.

None of this was right.

He was on his back now, Dr. Haverty kneeling beside him, measuring his pulse. Eli tried to pull free, but his body didn’t listen.

And then, for the first time in thirteen years, Eli Ever passed out.

* * *

VICTOR surged out up the stairs and out into the parking garage, the steel door crashing behind him. His shoulder was still bleeding, leaving a veritable breadcrumb trail on the concrete. On top of that, the humming had spread to his limbs, the tone pitching to a whine inside his head. He was running out of time.

He scanned the garage—would Eli take a car, or set off on foot? There were no empty spaces, not here on the street level, and the odds of Eli wasting precious seconds on higher floors was slim.

On foot, then.

He started toward the exit, and saw the security guard slumped on the ground, his body propped up against the booth. He’d been stripped to shorts and socks. Victor stepped past him and out onto the side street.

There were too many alleys, too many ways for Eli to go, and every time Victor chose wrong, it would only increase Eli’s lead.

Something shimmered on the ground nearby, and Victor knelt to retrieve it. A tranquilizer dart.

He looked up, and noted a pair of security cameras mounted high overhead.

He felt in the pockets of the stolen coat, and was relieved to find a cell phone. He dialed Mitch’s number, hoping for once the man hadn’t obeyed his orders.

It rang two times, three, and then Mitch picked up.

“The courthouse is coming down! What the hell’s going on?”

“Where are you?”

asked Victor.

A moment’s hesitation.

“About two blocks away.”

He was relieved to hear it.

“I still haven’t gotten ahold of Syd.”

“Well, since you’re still here,”

said Victor, looking up at the security cameras.

“I need you to hack something.”

* * *

STELL ground his teeth as Holtz and Briggs helped pry his leg free from the wreckage.

He’d broken something, he knew, but he’d gotten lucky. Samson’s body was buried somewhere at the bottom of the wreckage, swallowed up along with more than half of the courthouse floor. The rest of the building didn’t look very stable.

“Another ambulance is on its way,”

said Briggs over the noise of the approaching sirens.

Holtz had kept the crowds at bay, done everything he could to minimize civilian exposure during the incident. But now emergency crews were rapidly arriving, and the crowd outside was too curious, too used to getting their way, demanding answers, explanations, casualty reports.

Stell’s mind spun, but he only had a few minutes to contain the scene here.

Marcella Morgan’s body lay draped atop the broken marble far below, a testament to her own destructive power.

Heaped at the farthest edge of the ruined floor was the second EO—Jonathan—one hand hanging like a rag doll over the chasm’s edge.

There was no sign of June.

Or Victor.

Or Eli.

“Pull up the trackers.”

“I already did,”

said Briggs, grimly.

She offered Stell Eli’s coat in one hand. In the other, she held out five small tracking devices.

Stell’s stomach dropped.

“It gets worse,”

said Holtz, producing the rusted remains of Eli’s collar, broken, useless.

Stell swept the shards from Holtz’s hand, and they rained down onto the ruined floor.

“Call in everyone we have,”

he ordered.

“And find Cardale.”