Page 17 of Victorious

It didn’t help that she could feel him out there, the unbreakable thread, the one that connected her to those she’d resurrected, stretching long and thin over however many miles he’d put between them.

Sydney shook her head and clicked back to the directory.

And then, for some reason, she typed a second name.

Eli Ever.

She didn’t know why—she never had before, she didn’t want to see his face, should have been relieved when the search returned no result.

Her stomach lurched.

But then she remembered, that wasn’t his real name. She searched her memory, and found the other name, the one he’d gone by when he was a student. The one she’d read in the article about the incident on campus, the one that had resulted in another student’s death, and Victor’s power. Her fingers moved across the keyboard, resurrecting him letter by letter.

Eliot Cardale.

She hit ENTER. The search returned a single result, and as the profile came up and the picture filled her screen, Sydney shivered.

Ten years stood between this boy, in his senior year at Lockland, and the man who’d shot Sydney.

But unlike Victor, he hadn’t aged a day.

The Eliot on the screen still had those all-American good looks, that quarterback physique, his mouth tipped into a charming smile. He looked the same age as her sister, Serena. And he would have been, here. Even though it was a solid decade before their paths crossed. And even though he didn’t have his powers yet, Syd could see the emptiness behind his eyes.

It had always been there.

She wanted to close the window, but she couldn’t. She felt frozen. Pinned beneath that flat, dark gaze. The library melted and she was standing in a field, looking down at the corpse in the knee-high grass. She felt Serena’s hand on her shoulder, urging her to show them her power. Saw the kindness melt from Eli’s face the moment she did. The gun in his hand.

This is for the greater good, he’d said, before the shot rang out.

The bullet had slammed into her. Buried in her arm instead of her heart because Serena had chosen that moment to intervene. And Sydney had run.

For years, Eli had run after her, stalked her through dreams, turned each and every one into a nightmare that ended in blood and death and pain.

Nightmares that had finally ended when she put a bullet in his heart.

She conjured that moment, the surprise on his face as her shot echoed through the room, as blood bloomed across his chest. The satisfying sound his body made when it hit the ground.

At last, Sydney’s limbs came unstuck.

Her fingers twitched on the mouse, and Eli disappeared.

Wiped from sight, if not from memory.

VIINOW. THEN.

2.75 YEARS AGO

MORNINGSIDE

VICTOR Vale sat in a café waiting for George Ardley to leave work.

He nursed a black coffee and pretended to read a battered paperback, but his eyes kept picking out certain words, fingers itching to black out the surrounding text. Eventually he just let his gaze rest on the top line instead, and the window beyond.

The table he’d chosen offered an unobstructed view of the medical lab across the street, so he saw when the chemist shuffled out just after six, shoulders hunched as he headed for his car.

Victor rose, but made no motion to follow.

Instead, he ordered a second coffee, and returned to his seat, and waited for the man to come back.