Vengeful (villains, #2)

The second installment in V.E. Schwab's Villains series, Vengeful picks up five years after Vicious, expanding the story's world of ExtraOrdinaries (EOs), people who gain supernatural abilities after surviving near-death experiences. The novel weaves multiple timelines and perspectives as several characters' paths converge in the city of Merit.

Six weeks before the central events, Marcella Riggins discovers her husband Marcus, a mob enforcer for crime boss Tony Hutch, has been unfaithful. Marcus responds with brutal violence, setting their house ablaze and leaving her pinned beneath wreckage. Medics revive her after she flatlines, and Marcella discovers a terrifying new power: Her touch can corrode and destroy any material, reducing steel to rust and people to dust. She escapes the hospital, tracks Marcus to a weekly poker game, and kills him, his mistress, and three other men.

Meanwhile, Victor Vale, the series' antihero who can manipulate pain, is deteriorating. Five years earlier, after Eli Ever, an EO who regenerates from any wound, stabbed him to death, Sydney Clarke, a young girl with the power to raise the dead, resurrected Victor. Sydney's power always introduces a flaw: Those she revives come back wrong. Victor's flaw manifests as recurring fatal episodes, surges of electrical energy that cause cardiac arrest and temporary death. The episodes grow longer, each edging closer to irreversible brain damage. Victor spends years searching for an EO who can fix him, traveling city to city with Sydney (now eighteen but physically still childlike), Mitch Turner (a loyal ex-con and hacker who serves as Sydney's surrogate family), and their dog Dol. Every lead fails.

When Dominic Rusher, an ex-soldier EO who can freeze time, warns Victor about EON (ExtraOrdinary Observation and Neutralization), a government organization run by Director Stell to hunt EOs, Victor orders the group to kill every EO and witness they previously encountered to erase their trail. Sydney objects but tearfully chooses their survival. Victor sends Dominic to infiltrate EON as a mole.

Inside EON, Eli has been imprisoned for five years. After his capture, he endured a year of vivisection by Dr. Haverty, a scientist who exploited his regeneration. Stell fired Haverty and offered Eli a choice: cooperate as an analyst tracking EOs or return to the lab. Eli agreed, tracked nineteen EOs, and deduced Victor was alive and killing them, but he concealed this from Stell, planning to handle Victor himself.

Another thread follows June, a shapeshifting EO assassin who assumes anyone's appearance through touch. June recognized Victor as an EO years earlier and later engineered a friendship with Sydney, becoming her closest confidante. Through their calls, June learns about Victor's illness and the death of Sydney's older sister Serena, whom Victor killed because her mind-control power made her an uncontrollable danger. When Sydney overhears Victor telling Mitch that killing Serena was "right," she confronts Victor at gunpoint but cannot pull the trigger.

In Merit, Marcella's killing spree draws EON's attention. June intervenes when EON sends a team to capture Marcella, and the two form an alliance. June helps Marcella kill Hutch by assuming his appearance: When Hutch shoots June's borrowed body, the wounds transfer to the real Hutch, revealing that June functions as a living voodoo doll. They recruit Jonathan Royce, an EO with an involuntary forcefield that deflects attacks and can extend to shield others. Together they eliminate Merit's remaining mob bosses, and Marcella takes over the city's criminal empire.

Stell reluctantly meets Marcella, who proposes a ceasefire: She will help EON find the unknown EO killer in exchange for being left alone. Stell provides a list of the killer's last five locations. June recognizes the cities as places Sydney mentioned and realizes Victor is the killer.

Victor's search leads him to Merit when Mitch's algorithm identifies Ellis Dumont, a surgeon, as a potential EO lead. At the hospital, Victor discovers Dumont is a human coerced by EON, and soldiers ambush him. A fatal episode strikes; he dies and revives after four and a half minutes, his longest death yet. Marcella then meets Victor at a private gallery, demonstrates her power, and reveals she knows about Sydney. She invites him to a gala at the Old Courthouse where she plans to publicly reveal EOs.

After Victor leaves, Marcella betrays him to Stell, giving up his location and the address where Sydney and Mitch are staying. June races to protect Sydney, drugging her and locking her in a hotel bathroom. EON soldiers storm the apartment, beating Mitch and killing Dol. Victor walks into a second trap, and Stell captures him.

Stell authorizes Eli's extraction, fitting him with a steel collar that can sever his spinal cord via remote. Dominic, learning of Victor's capture, hacks EON's system with Mitch's guidance and triggers a facility-wide breach, opening every cell. Dom reaches Victor and pulls him into frozen time to escape, but Dom was fatally shot shielding Victor moments before and bleeds out. Mitch crashes through EON's front doors, and Victor escapes.

Sydney wakes, shoots out the bathroom door, and finds Dol dead at the apartment. She resurrects the dog and follows the invisible tether connecting her to Victor. At the Falcon Price building, she prepares to resurrect Serena from bone fragments she has carried for five years but realizes she fears a successful revival would not return the sister who once loved her. Serena had been complicit with Eli's violence, lost long before her death. Sydney wraps the bones back in their tin and walks on.

The climax unfolds at the gala. Marcella addresses Merit's elite, declaring a new age of power. Eli moves through the crowd toward her; Victor arrives and spots Eli for the first time in five years. June, disguised as Mitch, reveals that Marcella covets Sydney's resurrection power and demands Victor help stop her. Victor and Eli inadvertently work in tandem: Victor assaults Jonathan's forcefield while Eli seizes Marcella by the throat. Her corrosion strips his flesh, but his regeneration matches it. Their struggle erodes the marble floor until both plummet thirty feet. Victor's assault shatters Jonathan's forcefield, and Jonathan falls to his death. Below, Marcella lies dead, her neck broken. Eli regenerates and flees.

Victor tracks Eli to a storage facility where Haverty, who continued his research after being fired, has strapped Eli to a table and injected him with a power-suppressant serum. An airborne version neutralizes Victor's powers as well, along with the episode building inside him. Eli frees himself, kills Haverty, and the two fight hand-to-hand without powers. Eli pins Victor with a knife to his throat. Sydney arrives, guided by her tether, and shoots Eli in the back. Stripped of his regeneration by the serum, Eli dies.

Victor sends Sydney and Mitch to a rendezvous outside Merit, promising to meet at midnight. He stays behind, recognizing the suppressant as a potential treatment: It suppressed not only his power but also the fatal episode. He kills Stell, drops his phone, and disappears into the night. Sydney waits past midnight; Victor does not come. She resolves to find him eventually. June infiltrates EON disguised as a young agent, deletes her own file, and drives away, briefly returning to her true appearance before shifting into someone anonymous.