Vicious

By V.E. Schwab

Two college boys, Eli and Victor have a secret project. They want to become EOs: people with Extra-Ordinary powers. Their research led them to try a dangerous experiment and Eli ended up dead, but only briefly. When he was revived, he revived with the an extra-ordinary ability: he automatically healed from any injury. As time passed, it became apparent that he was ageless too. But despite his apparent resurrection, Eli felt he not the same person, that something basic was missing. He became convinced that people brought back from death were unnatural and wrong and he set out on a new mission in life. He would hunt down and kill all those revived from a near death experience who came out of it with an extraordinary ability.
But before Eli left college to go hunting and murdering, there was Victor. Victor had been the first to undergo the experiment, but in his case it didn't work. So he tried again, against Eli's wishes. He enlisted the help of his ex-girlfriend (and now Eli's girlfriend) but the procedure didn't go as planned. The girlfriend ended up dead and Victor, framed by Eli, in prison for her murder. But Victor did get a super-power out of it, namely the ability to inflict or remove pain. Which meant his time in prison went fairly well for him, since everyone was terrified of him. Except for his cellmate, Mitch, who became his follower. Once the two of them were out of prison, Victor got another follower, Sydney, a young teen girl on the run from Eli and Eli's partner in murder, Sydney's older sister, Serena.
Both Serena and Sydney were EOs. They had both drowned together and been brought back. Serena's power was her voice. Whatever she told anyone to do, they would do it. Even to killing themselves, if she told them to. Sydney's power was the gift of life. She could bring the dead back to life. Serena met Eli when he tracked them down, planning to kill both the girls. But Serena simply told him not to kill her and he couldn't. Eli explained to Serena what he was doing and she agreed with him. The next victim was to be her little sister, Sydney. But Sydney escaped with a bullet wound to her arm.
That is when Victor found her, on the roadside, bleeding and running away from Eli and Sydney. And when Victor understood the possibilities of Sydney's gift, he knew she would be a powerful ally against Eli and Serena. Because she hated Eli almost as much as Victor did. Together, with the faithful Mitch, they would attempt to bring down two ruthless killers who believed themselves to be on a mission from God to rid the world of those like themselves and Victor and Syndey.

This was a pretty good story. I enjoyed it, although it is kind of hard to tell who really are the bad guys. Eli and Serena are totally certain that the EOs are an affront to nature, based on what they perceive to be lacking in themselves. And, towards the end of the story, Victor admits to himself  that he has no real feelings, he just pretends to have them:

Victor didn't feel guilt, or fear, or even a sense of consequence, not like normal people. All those things had been dead—or at least dulled to the point of uselessness—for years. But he'd trained his mind to reconstruct those feelings from memory as best he could, and assemble them into a kind of code. 

So it kind of boils down to a battle between monsters. But Victor has Mitch on his side and Mitch is clearly a good guy. Sydney brings a dying dog back to life and adopts it, which makes her a good guy too. But Victor is most definitely in much the same league as the deadly Eli and Serena.
I am looking forward very much to the next book in the series, Vengeful.