When Villains Rise

by Rebecca Schaeffer

  The officer was silent, before he responded slowly. “That’s a pretty hefty accusation.”

  Nita snorted, then wiped her nose because it was snotty from crying. “I haven’t got any proof either. I mean, I’m sure there’s records in INHUP but . . .”

  “INHUP wouldn’t release them,” agreed the police officer. “You said you went to INHUP too?”

  “I stayed with them in the Bogotá office for a while. My case worker was Agent Ximena Quispe.”

  The officer made a note, and Nita twisted her web of truth and lies tighter and tighter. If he went and investigated, if anyone did, they’d be able to prove a lot of this—just not all of it. And the parts they couldn’t prove would be the parts INHUP would want to hide.

  It wouldn’t hold up in a court. But it might hold up enough to keep Kovit safe. If he survived.

  Even if he didn’t. Even if her mother won, even if Kovit was gone forever, and she could never get him back, at least she’d be able to take down the Dangerous Unnaturals List. Surely that would be something? A sad conciliatory prize, but something.

  He swallowed, then said carefully, “I’ve not seen you on any of the other coverage about the DUL.”

  “No. I was filmed on the black market demonstrating my ability, and now I’m worth a lot of money. I’ve been in hiding—or trying to be in hiding. I was in Toronto, and things got . . . violent. Black market hunters everywhere trying to kill me. INHUP was useless at protecting me. So I’ve tried to stay out of the limelight. I don’t want them to find me again.” Nita took a deep breath, then continued, “Kovit was helping protect me. People are scared of zannies, and he can fight well. After the disaster where INHUP betrayed him and couldn’t adequately protect me, we met back up so we could keep each other safe.”

  The officer was silent for a long moment. “That’s quite a story.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll need to talk to my superiors. Do you need a protective detail here?”

  Nita shook her head. “I don’t want anyone to know I’m here. I’m scared. Kovit’s already got enough attention without the black market finding out about me being here.”

  “I see.”

  Nita hesitated. “But Kovit will need one. If . . . if he survives.”

  The officer sighed. “I’m aware. We’ve got some people here already.”

  It made Nita uneasy, having the police so close. But she couldn’t see any alternative, so she just nodded. “Thank you.”

  The officer looked down, frowning. Nita couldn’t tell how much of her story he believed. But he’d believe a lot more once he started researching Nita. She hoped.

  She rose. “I’m going to go get some food from the cafeteria. Do you have any more questions?”

  He shook his head. “No. Do you have a phone number?”

  She gave it to him, and one of her burner emails, then said quietly, “But you won’t need to use them. I’ll be here, at the hospital until . . .”

  Until the end.

  He grimaced, understanding her unspoken words. “Thank you for your cooperation. We’ll be in touch.”

  Nita stared at the floor as he walked away. Lies upon lies upon lies. She wondered how long it would take the world to untangle them all. Hopefully long enough that Nita would have vanished without a trace by the time they realized how much wool had been pulled over their eyes. Long enough to keep Kovit safe in the hospital.

  But there was only one thing that could ever truly keep her safe.

  Nita rose and headed for the doors.

  It was time to end this.

  Forty

  OUTSIDE, THE SKY was still blue, and the sun beat down. The air was warm, and the city was bustling with noise and laughter. It was a beautiful day. The kind of day people wrote poems about, did their wedding shoots on.

  The kind of day people died.

  Nita took the subway south. She got off at Catedral station and walked the twenty minutes the rest of the way to San Telmo. Wide roads gave way to older cobblestoned streets. It was Sunday, and a massive antique market sprawled down all the side streets, people selling leather books and maté cups, artisanal dulce de leche and candles. Inside the buildings, more shops had been set up, these ones full of antiques and curiosities, nineteenth-century microscopes sitting next to Barbie dolls still in their packaging. The antique shops reminded her a bit of Adair and his strange pawnshop, and a part of her longed to be back in Toronto with Kovit, in simpler times.

  Nita paused at one shop, full of antique weaponry, ancient pistols and swords and knives, all of them polished and sharpened, ready to find a new home. She considered them for a moment, imagining herself walking into her mother’s hotel room with a double-bladed axe strapped across her back. While the image was tempting, it would ultimately be pointless.

  Nita couldn’t beat her mother in a straight fight.

  Her mother had decades of experience on Nita and had been hunting and killing unnaturals far more powerful than herself for years. In terms of skill, strength, and ruthlessness, Nita would never win in a straight fight.

  Which was why she had a very different plan.

  Her mother had emailed Nita the hotel address and room number. It was in the heart of the San Telmo district, surrounded by colorful historic mansions crammed together in a sea of faded glory, and a few blocks away from Plaza Dorrego, the center of the Sunday market and the home of tango. It was a huge tourist trap, and Nita hated how crowded it was as she squeezed her way between people on the narrow cobblestoned streets.

  The hotel was old but well cared for, and it had an aging, retro feel to it that made it seem quirky rather than dated. The bottom looked like it had once been part of a grand house, and the top floors were a newer addition, made of brick that didn’t match the lower level.

  She took the elevator up to the eighth floor. Her own reflection stared back at her in the mirrored elevator walls, shadows under her eyes and something both very empty and very dark caught in the reflection of her gaze.

  She walked down the long hallway to the end and stood in front of the door for a long moment. This was it. The moment she’d never thought would actually come, yet somehow had always known had to happen. She expected to feel some sort of regret or resistance. This was her mother, after all, and for so long, she’d been the only person in Nita’s life. Nita had truly believed her mother loved her.

  And maybe she did, in her own way. But that wasn’t the kind of love Nita wanted.

  But though she’d expected some reluctance in her heart when she stood here, there was nothing. Only cold, stony determination.

  She adjusted her backpack and knocked on the door.

  Her mother opened it quickly, a broad smile blooming on her face. She’d reapplied her lipstick, and it was a bright vivid red, like an artificial candy.

  “Nita.” Her mother opened the door wider. “I see you’ve seen sense.”

  “Yes,” Nita agreed. “I have.”

  Nita stepped into the room. It had two beds, each with a baby blue comforter. Sheer white curtains covered the window, and a small electric kettle sat on top of a mini fridge. A hard-case carry-on suitcase was tucked in the corner, the same blood red as her mother’s fingernails.

  Her mother closed and bolted the door. Nita barely suppressed a flinch at the sound of the bolt sliding home. It felt too much like she’d walked back into a cage, and the bolt was the lock sealing her inside.

  Her mother breezed past. “So, I’ve been thinking we should move to India next. So many unnaturals there to hunt, and I’ve never really had a chance to explore the country. What do you think? We could kill some nagas—you know their venom goes for a high price online.”

  Nita imagined the idea of being in her lab, a half snake person on her dissection table, and a part of her delighted a little at the idea of dissecting something new.

  Her mother had always known how to appeal to Nita. To throw the carrot in with the stick, as Fabricio would have said.

&nbs
p; “Whatever you think is best,” Nita commented noncommittally.

  Her mother laughed. “Oh, someone’s in a mood. Are you angry about this morning?”

  “No,” Nita said. She wasn’t angry. She was something, all right, but the emotion had long since transcended anger and formed into something entirely new. Determination? Resolution? “I’m not.”

  Her mother paused and looked Nita up and down. She frowned. “You really aren’t, are you?”

  Nita shrugged.

  “Well, good.” A smile, wide and sharkish. “That makes things so much easier.”

  Nita didn’t respond. She put her backpack on the bed, and it bounced gently before settling. Then she quietly walked to the window to pull the curtains back and look out at the view below. It looked over the roof of another building, and the building beyond that blocked any hope of seeing the rest of the city.

  Her mother eyed the backpack. “Is that everything you have?”

  “Yep. Just two changes of clothes, a book, and a laptop.”

  Her mother’s tone suddenly dropped into something dangerous. “You know you’re not allowed a laptop.”

  Nita did know that. Her mother hated the idea of Nita having her own computer. She’d always hogged the one they did have, doling out uses of it sparingly, always keeping control over Nita’s internet time and access.

  Her mother didn’t want Nita getting ideas, after all.

  But Nita just stared at her with dead eyes. “It’s mine.”

  Her mother’s jaw tightened, and her voice was cold. “I see you’ve learned some sass out there in the world. We’re going to have to fix that.”

  Nita flinched, a fear as old as she was crawling through her heart and settling in her chest, making her nauseous. That was the tone that meant dead animal bodies in her bed.

  Her mother went to the bag and scooped it up, her expression cold and angry. Nita had no doubt she had some dramatic demonstration of control planned. Shattering the laptop over her knee. Throwing it in the toilet. Something to show Nita who held the power here.

  Her mother always had to be in control of these things.

  Nita knew that. So when she’d decided to finally end this, she’d taken what some might call the cowardly way out. Nita called it practical.

  Google had told her easy ways to make a bomb using household chemicals, and she’d spent the last hours carefully building the device inside her backpack.

  When her mother ripped it open, she severed the lining keeping two different chemicals apart. Their molecules mixed, and the chemicals bonded to each other, starting a chain reaction.

  Nita ducked behind the desk near the window as the bomb exploded.

  The blast wave hit her before the sound did. She’d made the bomb as powerful as she could, knowing her mother’s ability to heal and knowing that Nita herself would be farther away and would also be able to heal.

  She might have gone a little overboard.

  A ball of fire smashed outward, crashing through the window and into the world beyond. Nita braced as the force ripped the skin from her hands, her bones shattering and her muscles melting. The desk she cowered behind was crushed, and flying shards of glass rained down on her. She’d held her breath so the flames wouldn’t get inside and melt her from within, but her flesh was blackened and cracked.

  If she were human, she’d have died instantly.

  But she wasn’t, and she’d been prepared. She’d shut off all her ability to feel pain, which allowed her to focus on healing herself quickly, rebuilding melted muscles, fusing shattered bone, regrowing layers of skin that had been scorched off.

  She’d closed her eyes and covered them for the blast itself to avoid having them boiled too badly, and when she opened them, the whole room was black with ash. Black walls, charred beds, ash all over the floor. It looked like a dragon had breathed fire across the room.

  Nita healed her burst eardrums, and sound flooded back into the world. The fire alarm rang tinnily, and the faint sounds of screams from outside echoed through the room like the voices of ghosts.

  Her mother was gone.

  Chunks of cooked flesh were spattered across the room, charred beyond all recognition. A few pieces of a spinal column lay on the floor, and one of her mother’s boots was still mostly intact, though the leg it had been attached to was gone.

  There was nothing else.

  She let out a shuddering breath, stumbled to her feet, and took a tentative step forward, needing to see, to make sure that her mother was gone.

  But not even bones, only ashes remained when Nita rose. Not even her mother could put herself back together after being blown to literal smithereens.

  Nita’s mother was dead. And she was never, ever going to hurt Nita again.

  Nita let out a long breath. She’d expected to feel relieved, but she didn’t. Just vaguely satisfied, like she’d finally completed a long overdue task.

  She walked slowly across the room, kicking a fragment of skull out of her way, and left through the shattered hole where the door used to be, down the blackened hallway, its walls on fire, and to the stairwell.

  Her mother would never control Nita’s life again.

  Forty-One

  NITA SPENT the next three days at the hospital by Kovit’s bedside.

  Kovit had a room to himself in the far corner of the hospital. Normally, hospital rooms were shared, but because of Kovit’s notoriety in the news, other patients’ misgivings, and the fact that he unconsciously fed on the pain of everyone around him, the hospital had agreed to give him his own room.

  A policeman stood outside the door, and Nita wasn’t sure if it was to make sure Kovit didn’t escape or protect him from the zealots, reporters, and curious bystanders who kept trying to swing by his room. Either way, while Kovit was unconscious and helpless, it was a boon to have the police presence—it saved Nita a lot of effort.

  When he’d come out of surgery, Nita had asked the doctor his prognosis.

  “It’s too early to tell. Honestly, I never thought he’d survive the surgery. He shouldn’t have.” The doctor had frowned softly. “I’ve never worked on a zannie before, though. Do they have healing skills like vampires?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Nita had whispered, but she’d thought about the vampire blood Kovit had drunk that morning, known to improve healing and lifespan, and her own blood running through his veins. Maybe it had been enough.

  “Ah. Well. He’s been lucky so far.” The doctor had given her an encouraging smile. “We’ll see if it continues. We’re not out of the woods yet.”

  Nita hadn’t been able to return the smile, or any of the other optimistic comments the doctor had made in the days since then. She just listened to the steady beep of the heart monitor and watched as Kovit’s sleeping face grew more and more hollow.

  Outside the hospital, the world changed and morphed. Countries suspended INHUP operations pending investigations, exposés were done on various INHUP founders. The Dangerous Unnaturals List was taken down in most countries—most, but not all. Never all.

  Nita had leaked what information she could to the press, and a reporter had been able to get access to INHUP’s research facility in France, where he’d filmed and photographed a comatose Nadezhda Novikova. She looked young, far too young for her age, and rumors and theories flew fast and furious. The pictures were analyzed, and old scarring on her neck made people scream vampire, but it wasn’t until one of the scientists at the research facility spoke out that the theory was confirmed.

  For days, headlines blared articles with titles like Dangerous to Us, or Dangerous to INHUP’s Internal Politics? The DUL History Exposed. And in the center of it all, the scandal around Kovit raged, information and misinformation flying fast and free. A transcript of Nita’s first conversation with the police right after Kovit was shot was leaked to the press and made more headlines, igniting further speculation. Kovit’s sister had been fired from INHUP and had vanished. Reporters and private investigato
rs tried to hunt her down, but so far no one had found her, and she wasn’t speaking out.

  Police had come twice more to visit Nita and ask her questions. She kept her story as consistent as she could, making sure all the lies she wove in were things that only INHUP could prove false. INHUP, which was currently under investigation in multiple countries, with operations in some parts of the world completely suspended. The world was caught up in a frenzy of INHUP-related scandal, and the organization began to crumble internally from the pressure. The acting head resigned amid a tax fraud scandal—something Nita had exposed with her new information from Tácunan Law.

  Everything went exactly according to Nita’s plan. INHUP was collapsing in on itself, she’d taken out her mother. Adair had been as good as his word, and black market forums had started questioning the legitimacy of the video of Nita circulating. Her involvement in the end of el Mercado de la Muerte, and the theft of files from Tácunan Law had been leaked as well, and the conversation online had shifted.

  People were still hunting her. But they were more cautious now. They were waiting to see her next move. It wasn’t the power Nita needed, but it was a step in the right direction.

  To all intents and purposes, she’d won.

  Except it never really felt like it.

  Her eighteenth birthday came and went, and she spent the day by Kovit’s side. She forgot it even was her birthday until the next day, when some spam arrived in her inbox promising her a fifty-percent-off birthday discount.

  Adair emailed her a video file he’d managed to get from INHUP in the midst of the scandal. It was from her neighbor’s security camera, and it showed Zebra-stripes and her father fighting. Nita couldn’t watch the whole thing, it hurt too much, so she skipped to the end, where Zebra-stripes stood over her dead father.