“You . . .” Kovit couldn’t seem to finish his sentence.
Henry leaned over him, a peregrine falcon over a kestrel, one predator dominating another. “You’ve been very bad, Kovit, keeping Nita a secret. And going to her in the night, when you thought we were all asleep. No, this is exactly the kind of behavior that led to the whole mess with Matt.”
Henry smiled. “So how about every time you screw up, I murder one of your friends?”
Kovit just kept shaking his head, as if by continuing to deny what was happening, it would make Henry stop talking, his words lose their meaning.
“I’ll make sure it takes a while too.” Henry leaned forward. “I know how much you appreciate pain.”
Kovit closed his eyes. “I’d rather have INHUP catch me and just die.”
“I’ll still kill them.” Henry rose and twirled a pen from the sideboard in his hand. “Even if you’re dead.”
Kovit stared at him for a long time, the only sound in the room his harsh breathing. Finally, he asked, “Didn’t you tell me earlier you liked my morals? That it was better having a zannie with lines they wouldn’t cross?”
“Oh, I do! It’s much better.” Henry nodded for emphasis. “So much easier to control them. It’s hard to control people who aren’t attached to anything.” He shrugged. “I mean, obviously, I’d much rather you didn’t have any of those weird rules about friends and attachments. They’re so inconvenient, always getting in the way. But if I can’t get rid of them, I’ll use them.”
Guilt sank deep into Nita’s bones at Henry’s words. Kovit had accused her of trying to control him too, to make his morals fit her needs.
She closed her eyes as understanding fell over her. She always knew trying to change someone was a fool’s errand. People who fell for bad boys hoping to reform them were idiots.
No one fell for Kovit hoping to reform him. He was too evil for those people to want, and too good for the people in the market.
What would it be like, everyone despising you for being a monster, but also wanting you to be more of a monster? Wanting you more ruthless on one thing, less on another. They wanted to mold him into the person most convenient for them at the time. And that was impossible.
No one is perfect. No one is exactly who you want them to be. There is something in every person, even your closest friend, that you don’t like.
Kovit was loyal.
Kovit tortured random people.
Kovit went above and beyond to help his friends.
Nita had befriended him for his good side, and hated herself for caring for a monster. But when it came time for the true acts of monstrosity—luring strangers into buildings to kill them, demanding that Kovit murder the man who raised him—it was Nita, not Kovit, who pushed for it.
Her throat closed. The monster in the room right now wasn’t Kovit. It was everyone else. Including Nita.
“Henry,” Kovit whispered, rising shakily to his feet. His legs trembled slightly, but he stood tall. His eyes were focused and glazed at the same time, like he was intent on something far in the distance only he could see.
“Yes?” Henry looked bored.
Kovit was mere inches from him. “Are you afraid of me?”
Henry laughed. “Hardly. You never hurt people you know. I’ve been safe for years.”
“Yes.” Kovit agreed, voice distant. “I never hurt people I know.” Then he met Henry’s eyes, and his voice was a promise. “This won’t hurt.”
He reached out and snapped Henry’s neck in a single swift motion.
Forty-Six
NITA DIDN’T WAIT. Before Henry’s body was on the ground, she head butted the person closest to her. His gun tumbled to the ground.
She ripped her ankles free from her zip ties, and leapt at him before he could pick his weapon up, dragging the chair still attached to her wrists with her. She slammed sideways into him, bashing his skull into the wall. It shattered like a fragile egg, spraying her with blood.
Just like Kovit had killed Reyes.
You can dissect it later too.
A bright, crazy grin crossed her face. She could. She could move the body somewhere else, somewhere private, take a scalpel, let it sink into its flesh . . .
She shivered, body rippling like Kovit on pain for a moment. Then she pushed it down.
Not now.
There was still another enemy.
Gold was staring at Kovit and Henry, her eyes wide. Her gun was raised, but she just stared. “You killed him.”
Kovit turned to her with that same glazed and focused look in his eyes. Then he moved, darting forward and twisting the gun out of her grip and pinning her to a wall.
Gold shrieked. “Let me go!”
“Why?” he snarled. “Because you pretended to be my friend for years?”
“I didn’t pretend! You pretended!”
“Liar!” Kovit pressed forward, and Gold’s shoulder popped with a squelch and she shrieked, high and harsh.
Nita wrestled with her wrist zip ties but quickly gave up, popping her thumbs out and shedding the flesh from her wrists so they were nothing but bone. She yanked her hands free, then reattached the skin.
She stepped forward and put her hand, gory with her own blood, on his shoulder. “Kovit, stop.”
“Why?” His eyes turned to her, dark and dangerous and utterly shattered. “You don’t like the sound of her screams? Or is it just any screams you didn’t cause yourself?”
“That’s not—”
“You stand there and judge me, but you’ve killed more people in the last week than I’ve killed in my life!”
Nita flinched.
Gold tried to kick Kovit’s leg out, but he twisted his leg around hers, eliciting another horrible pop as her knee dislocated and her body slumped, only supported by the pressure of Kovit’s hand on her throat, pinning her to the wall.
“You’re nothing but a monster, no matter what you tell yourself.” Gold choked, gasping in pain and tears soaking into the bandages on the side of her face. “A real person could never do this to someone they thought of as a friend.”
Nita swallowed. “She’s not wrong, Kovit. You don’t hurt your friends. Remember? It’s a rule.”
“What rules?” His voice was bitter, and tearstains carved paths down his cheeks. “I’ve broken my rules. I just murdered Henry. What does any of it matter anymore?”
He was crying full out now, sticky wet tears coating his face, chest heaving in sobs as he twisted Gold so she screamed and his whole body shivered in pleasure.
Nita grabbed his arm and ripped him away from Gold, who crumpled to the ground. She spun Kovit to face her. “Kovit, look at me.”
He couldn’t, and Nita grabbed his cheeks and forced him to look her in the eyes.
“You’re hurting,” she whispered. “I get that. And if you need pain, if you need comfort food, I promise you, I can give myself more pain than any other human in the world if that will make you feel better.”
Sudden, naked hunger spread across his face, and his fingers curled at his side.
Nita swallowed the rising terror inside and plowed ahead, voice thick. “But I want to know that you’ll be able to look me in the eye afterward.” She leaned closer. “I will do anything for you, Kovit, but you have to promise me it won’t break us.”