Page 86 of Saint of the Shadows

She liked this. Not the squeezing onto a shared gurney or the catching somez’son 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 emptypromise. 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. Ofcourse, 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.”

---