Page 66 of Villains Series

FIFTY MINUTES UNTIL MIDNIGHT

THE THREE CROWS BAR

ELI stormed through the front door of the Three Crows as he dialed Detective Stell and told him to send a cop over to the bar to clean up an incident.

“It was an EO, right?”

asked Stell, and the question, as well as the shade of doubt that lined the officer’s voice as he asked it, troubled Eli immensely. But he didn’t have time to deal with the detective’s resistance, not right now, not as the clock ticked down.

“Of course it was,”

he snapped, and hung up.

Eli paused beneath the metal sculpted crows on the bar’s marquee, ran his fingers through his hair, and scoured the street for any sign of Dominic Rusher or Victor Vale, but all he saw were drunkards, and bums, and cars whizzing past too fast to see drivers or passengers. He swore and kicked the nearest trash can as hard as possible, relishing the blossom of pain even as it faded, whatever damage he’d done repairing, bone and tissue and skin knitting neatly back together.

He shouldn’t have killed Mitch Turner.

He knew that. But it wasn’t as though the man were innocent, not truly. Eli had seen the police records. Turner had sinned. And those who ally themselves with monsters are little better than monsters themselves. Still, he had felt no silence, no moment of peace, following the act, and Eli’s chest tightened at being denied the calm, the assurance that he had not strayed.

Eli bowed his head, and crossed himself. His nerves were just beginning to smooth when his phone rang.

“What?”

he snapped into the cell, heading for his car in the lot across the street.

“Victor posted to the database,”

said Serena.

“That Falcon Price site. Ground floor.”

He heard the sound of the glass patio door sliding open.

“It’s right here, across from the hotel. Did you take care of Dominic Rusher?”

“No,”

he growled.

“But Mitchell Turner’s dead. Is the deadline still midnight?”

His anger was cooling as he walked, focus knitting him closed the way his body knit together his skin. Things were on schedule. Not his schedule, but a schedule.

“Still midnight,”

said Serena.

“What about the police? Should I call Stell? Have him send his men over to the high-rise?”

Eli rapped his fingers on his car and thought of Stell’s question, his tone.

“No. Not before midnight. Turner’s dead, and Victor’s mine. Tell them to be there at twelve, no sooner, and order them to stay outside the walls until we’re done. Tell them it’s not safe.”

He got inside, his breath fogging the windows.

“I’m on my way. Should I pick you up?”

She didn’t answer. “Serena?”

After another long pause, she finally said.

“No, no. I’m not dressed yet. I’ll meet you there.”

* * *

SERENA hung up.

She was leaning on the balcony, and she barely noticed the biting chill of the iron rail under her elbows because she was too busy looking at a trail of smoke.

Two floors down and several rooms over, the smoke curled through a pair of open doors, wafting up toward her. It smelled like burning paper. Serena knew because in high school she and her friends would always light a bonfire on the first night of summer vacation and pitch their essays and exams in, casting the old year into the flames.

But nice as the Esquire rooms were, none of them had fireplaces.

She was still wondering about the smoke when a large black dog wandered out onto the balcony. It stared out through the bars of the railing for a moment before a girl’s voice called it back.

“Dol,”

called the girl.

“Dol! Come back in.”

A shiver ran through Serena. She knew that voice.

A moment later the small blond girl who so many people had mistaken for Serena’s twin bobbed onto the porch, and tugged at the dog’s neck.

“Come on,”

coaxed Sydney.

“Let’s go in.”

The dog turned and obediently followed her back inside.

Which hotel room? Serena began to count. Two floors down. Three rooms over.

She spun on her heel, and went inside.