evervale bot

Victor stared at the wall as if it were still a window. “He doesn’t know how patient you are,” he said. “Doesn’t know you like I do.” Eli cleaned the blood from his hand. “No,” he said softly. “No one ever has.”

Victor let out a guttural scream, but when he tried to pull free, Eli caught his hand in a vise grip, and twisted.

Ships in the night, thought Eli grimly. But he couldn’t afford to worry about Victor Vale right now.

Victor wasn’t thinking of the weather. He hardly felt the cold through his coat. He was too busy trying to picture what Eli’s face would look like when he received their message.

Every end may be a new beginning, but every beginning had to end. Eli Ever understood that, leaning over his old friend.

“There’s no way,” said Eli. He saw the tumbler in Victor’s hand, and headed to the bathroom to pour himself one, too.

He had worked so hard to bring it out, and Angie was undoing all of Eli’s focus with a kiss.

Victor let out a guttural scream, but when he tried to pull free, Eli caught his hand in a vise grip, and twisted.

“But you haven’t heard,” said Victor soberly. “Eli here is going to give me a run for my money.” Angie eyed him with newfound interest. “Is that so?” Eli smiled. “I’ll do my best.”

Eli’s strangled scream cut through the marble hall as Victor was forced to the floor.

“You know what I figured out?” Victor leaned into him as he spoke. “Watching you in the street that night, picking the glass from your hand? You can’t heal yourself until I take the knife out.” He twisted it, and Eli groaned.

For once Victor had the natural advantage, and even though it was the smallest, most inconsequential kind of thing, the way a name fell from the tongue, he liked having something Eli didn’t. Something Eli wanted.

All of it froze, the way it had in the street last night with Eli, only it wasn’t Eli’s hand this time but Victor’s, burning faintly from the shock.

And then, somewhere between Victor giving up and reaching for his phone, Eli gasped.

Eli Ever wouldn’t die. Couldn’t die.

“I think I need…,” he started. Victor assumed the line would end with “a doctor” but instead Eli met his eyes in the mirror, and smiled—not his best—and said, “A drink.” Victor managed to pull his own mouth into something like a smile, then, too. “That I can do.”

Wondered what Victor would do to occupy his thoughts once Eli was gone. If Eli was gone.

And it felt good. He had been worried that after so much waiting and so much wanting the actuality of shooting Eli wouldn’t live up to the dream, but it did.

It frightened and thrilled Eli, to be seen, and to see himself reflected. Not all of himself—they were still so different—but there was something vital, a core of the same precious metal glinting through the rock.

“And so the angel trades Hell for Purgatory,” mused the phantom

“You’re not blessed,” Victor had said. “You’re a science experiment.” Those words came back to Eli now. And so did Victor.