Riders

by Veronica Rossi

  I reached down. I picked up the yellow pencil from inside the gutter. Then I stood and watched the strength leave his fingers. Watched as he fell and hit the red bricks of the walkway below. I just stood there.

  More, Gideon? Or will you bring me the key?

  CHAPTER 39

  After that, I lost some time. I wasn’t conscious but I wasn’t unconscious, either. I was trapped in the middle somewhere.

  I only remember pieces of what happened next. The dread-locked woman lifting her head and letting out a long, baying sound. Samrael releasing me and leaving with the other Kindred. Responding to a threat that was beyond me. No more Ra’om—that was all I cared about—but I wasn’t free yet.

  Nausea hit me. Stomach-clenching nausea, like a concussion and motion sickness, plus the sensation that my brain had been thoroughly ransacked.

  I bent over my legs and heaved, riding out the shaking in my muscles, the coughing, and the bitter taste on my tongue. It took me long minutes to regain some control. As I straightened and looked around me, I still felt weak and disoriented.

  The darkness Alevar had released from his wings was lifting. Under the glow of the streetlights, the wet cobblestones looked like gold, the apartment windows like crystal. Night had never seemed so bright to me before.

  I realized I didn’t have the sword any longer. I had a vague recollection of calling it back just before Samrael had introduced me to Ra’om. I’d tapped into the same feeling as when I’d summoned it. A singular purpose. A clear intention. I was almost sure I could achieve that again.

  So at least one good thing had come out of this.

  As I found my composure, I became aware of someone watching me from the end of the street. A guy in a dark coat sat on one of the apartment stoops. Blond hair. About my age, from what I could tell. I had a feeling he’d been there for the past few minutes while I’d hacked up my intestines. I also had a pretty good idea of who he was thanks to the cuff, but I didn’t go after him yet. I didn’t trust myself to.

  “Gideon!”

  Daryn and Marcus came running from the other end of the street. Daryn flew into my arms. I yanked her close and hugged her hard, needing to feel her realness. Ra’om had knocked down some part of me that still couldn’t seem to get back up.

  “What happened?” Daryn said, drawing back. “Gideon, your nose.”

  “Don’t know.” I felt it now, the swelling and the pain. And I tasted blood on my tongue. “Busted it. Daryn, where were you?”

  My voice sounded like it had gone through a shredder, and I was having trouble concentrating. Daryn was right in front of me, but I had to keep telling myself that she was okay. That my mom and Anna were, too.

  Marcus looked away, noticing the guy on the stoop.

  “We had to leave,” Daryn said. “I tried to get you on the radio. I know you wanted us to stay, but Alevar saw us, then left. We thought he was going to get the rest of the Kindred.”

  She looked at Marcus, waiting for him to jump in and help explain.

  “Has he been there a while?” Marcus asked, his eyes still locked on Conquest.

  “Ten minutes.”

  We didn’t say another word, but we both knew what needed to happen. We took off like heat-seeking missiles.

  Conquest jumped up when he saw us coming. He ran down the steps and tore down the street, but Marcus turned it up, cutting off his escape route. I came up behind him. We had him boxed in.

  Conquest looked from Marcus to me, like he couldn’t decide who posed the lesser threat. He faced me. Wrong choice.

  “Hey, man,” I said. “Are you Jode?”

  “Who are you?” he said, scowling at me with bloodshot eyes.

  No mistaking his accent. He was English. And rich, judging by his threads. Double-breasted coat. Fisherman-style, but the kind you saw on runways, not gangways. He was weaving in place and reeked of alcohol.

  That sealed it for me. I hauled off and punched him.

  He fell gracefully. Knee, hip, shoulder. Like some part of him had decided, What the heck. I’m passing out tonight anyway. Might as well get started now.

  “Gideon!” Daryn gaped at me. “What did you do?” She rushed over, kneeling beside him.

  There was no way to explain it all. I couldn’t shake the fears Ra’om and Samrael had planted in my mind. Something felt different inside me. Darker. And we didn’t have time to stand around and try to convince Conquest to join up. I wasn’t going to say all that, so I shrugged and said, “I came. I saw. I conquered.”

  Daryn sprang up. “That’s not funny!”

  I hadn’t intended it to be funny. But I didn’t clarify that either. My logical, rational mind was slowly coming back online. I had to get us off the street. Daryn and Marcus had been spotted in the Fiat, so we had no wheels anymore. We also had no Sebastian, but my first priority was getting present company to a safe location.

  I crouched by Conquest and rolled him onto his back. A bruise was spreading over his cheek where I’d hit him. He let out a big snore, which got a laugh out of Marcus that honestly surprised me. I hadn’t known he could laugh. I pulled Conquest’s sleeve up. His cuff was bright white and had clean lines, more like mine than Sebastian’s and Marcus’s. Right guy.

  Then I checked the pockets of his fancy not-fishing coat and found a wallet made of butter-soft leather. Moving through the contents quickly, I came up with a small stack of euros in crisp new bills, credit cards, and a student ID for Oxford University issued to James Oliver Drummond Ellis. No wonder he went by Jode.

  Between the wallet, his clothes, the gleaming watch at his wrist, and the pretty boy face, I was starting to worry I had a Wyatt Sinclair on my hands.

  Checking his other pocket, I finally found what I wanted. I held up the hotel security card. “The Great Gatsby’s staying in town.” I pulled the radio from my pocket and checked the address on the GPS. “His hotel’s less than three miles away.”

  “Really?” Daryn said. “That would be so doable if we could all walk.”

  Three minutes ago she’d been hugging me, all worried. Now she looked like she wanted to finish the job Samrael had started.

  “No problem,” I said. I grabbed Jode’s arm and pulled him over my shoulder. Thankfully, he had a light build. A buck fifty and five-nine or so. Also thankfully, I’d done a lot of this in RASP. Carrying Cory on my back on forced road marches had prepared me. Cory was my size. One eighty and six-one. I knew I could handle Prince Conquest.

  “Race you guys,” I said, settling him over my shoulders.

  Marcus and Daryn looked at me like I was a nut, which felt normal and gave me a needed morale boost. Then we were off, trudging along the dark city streets of Rome.

  By the time we came to the Ponte Sant’Angelo, I was sweating bullets but the adrenaline was finally leaving my body. Some of the fear, too. But I still felt like if I closed my eyes for too long, the images Ra’om had shown me would come right back.

  I tried to focus on my surroundings. According to my guidebook, the bridge had stood for almost two millennia. As I passed one angel statue after another, I felt the centuries the bridge had seen. All the days and nights it had spanned the waters of the Tiber below. Looking at it, I felt insignificant. Linked to every human on the planet. Everything seemed awesome now that I wasn’t in the mental clutches of a demon.

  “What are you thinking about?” Daryn asked. “At this very second?”

  “I was thinking that this is great,” I said.

  “No, you weren’t.”

  “Was so. I’m in the moment, Martin.” This moment was a lot better than the ones I’d just been in.

  We walked for a little more. Marcus was ahead of us, out of earshot. He wasn’t clutching his shoulder anymore. Maybe it was already healing. “Is this really what you do all the time?” I asked. “Run all over the world like this?”

  Daryn shook her head. “Not like this. This is by far the most challenging thing I’ve ever done.” She glanced at me, her eyes spa
rkling. “In large part because of you.”

  I grinned. “But who doesn’t love a good challenge, right?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes a challenge is just a challenge,” she said, but she was smiling.

  Jode was feeling heavier by the minute, but I had to deal. I’d knocked him out. He was my responsibility. “So what’s your typical kind of work?”

  She shrugged. “There really is no typical. It’s all kinds of stuff. Always different.” She pulled her hair from beneath the strap of my backpack and twisted it into a knot. She was carrying both my pack and hers. “But for example, I’ve found lost hikers and helped them back to trails. I’ve kept a couple of kids from running into the streets. I’ve made dozens of emergency calls. I kept a scared woman company when her car was stranded on the side of the road in the Oregon wilderness. I’ve stopped four suicides. All amazing experiences. I’ve been to a lot of parties—high school and college—where I’ve prevented rape. Those make me sick. Physically, I feel ill after those. So … it’s things like that. Smaller, you could say, compared to what we’re doing. But still really important.” She frowned. “Why do I tell you so much?”

  “I don’t know. Do you resent it?”

  “Telling you stuff?” She smiled. “Yes. Every word.”

  “That hurts, Martin,” I said, but I knew she liked talking to me. Probably not as much as I liked it. Everything she said only made her more incredible. And she was helping me forget Ra’om. “I meant being a Seeker.”

  “No, I don’t resent it. It’s not always easy but it’s a privilege. It was harder in the beginning, before I got used to it. There was one point when I felt so lonely, I wasn’t sure I could take it anymore. I ended up working with another Seeker, this really great woman named Isabel. She helped so much. She’s the one who told me to start keeping a journal, which helps a lot, too. I see her once in a while, whenever I need her. She’s become like an aunt to me. And there are people all over the world who open their homes to me. Good people who will feed me and give me a room to sleep for as long as I need it without asking any questions. I get to see so much kindness because of this. And I’m helping people. I can’t think of anything I’d want to do more than that. What about you? Do you resent it?”

  “Being a horseman?” I shifted Jode onto my left shoulder. “Undecided.”

  My gut was telling me that no, I didn’t. I’d met her because of it. I’d seen some incredible things. I knew the answer to humankind’s most fundamental question. I couldn’t look at the stars without feeling like God was right there watching over me. Over everything. A lot of hugely positive aspects. The parts I didn’t love were the Kindred. And Marcus. My horse. Maybe the rage powers. Dropping out of RASP had sucked. Making my mom worry did, too. And leaving the Jeep at LAX. But other than that, being a horseman was cool.

  “I bet you’ve been wondering why this happened to you,” Daryn said.

  “You bet right.”

  “I wondered that a lot too in the beginning.” She glanced at me. “But what if it’s happening for you? I’m not saying it is. I’m just putting it forward as a possibility. But what would you think then?”

  “That’s deep, Martin. I need a second to think about that.” I actually needed a rest. I set Jode down beneath one of the angel statues lining the bridge. A cold whip of air rushed across my sweaty back as I straightened.

  “Blake,” Marcus said, turning to me. “You feel that?”

  “What is it?” Daryn asked.

  “Not sure,” I said. I scanned the streets in the distance. They were still. It was the quietest part of night, on the verge of morning. Then I saw a shadow slipping along the far banks of the river. It could have been Alevar but the cuff was sending me—and Marcus, apparently—undeniable Sebastian signals. As the shadow drew closer, zipping up the same bridge where we stood, I could see it more clearly. It looked like long smoky threads, dark and fluttering.

  I thought I knew what this was, but I had to play it safe. I focused on the feeling I’d tapped into just an hour ago—a combination of protect, defend, serve—and connected with a thread of power inside me. A jolt ran through my hand and I saw a flash of fire, then the sword was mine.

  Yes, yes, yes.

  Marcus came over to us. He looked at me like, oh, so we’re doing that? A moment later, a scythe-sized tornado of pale dust flowed from his hand down to the street, forming into his weapon.

  The flurry of black smoke drew nearer and slowed a few feet away. From that moving darkness, a black hoof appeared, then another, then legs, shoulders, haunches, and on up. I’d seen Shadow materialize twice now, and I was no less amazed.

  This time was different, though. Sebastian formed up right along with her. One moment I was looking at ribbons of smoke. The next, there he was. Mounted on Shadow. Sitting in a black saddle I’d never seen before. Wearing black clothes and light armor I had also never seen before.

  He looked nothing like himself.

  He looked impressive. And terrifying.

  The only recognizable part of him was his gigantic grin, which disappeared when he saw Jode slumped under the statue.

  “Whoa,” Bas said. “What happened to him?”

  CHAPTER 40

  Five minutes later, we had secured Jode onto Shadow with some rope I had in my backpack. As I tethered Jode down, I took a look at Bas’s armor and Shadow’s saddle. They were made of material that felt like leather in places, and of the same substance as Bas’s cuff in others. Like his cuff, his armor and saddle had intricate, webbed styling. I’d never seen anything like it.

  I also got closer to Shadow than I’d ever been. She was incredible. All raw power beneath a coat as cool and soft as night. I tried not to think of my burning, mean-ass horse as we set off again.

  We came across a few people on the streets, but no one paid us much attention. Horses had been clopping through Rome for a long time, and with the darkness, no one seemed to notice that Shadow was a little unusual.

  Our luck changed when we reached Jode’s hotel. The entrance was promenade-style, so the four valets manning the front doors got a good long eyeful of the five-plus-horse of us as we walked up. When we finally reached them, they looked completely at a loss for words.

  “Ciao, signores,” I said, in a fine Italian-Californian accent. “We’re bringing our buddy James Oliver Drummond Ellis back after a big night out for his birthday. Jode here went a little crazy with the celebrating, as you can see. Too much vino. But he gave me his key card before he passed out.” I pulled it out of my pocket and held it up. “And what kinds of friends would we be if we didn’t make sure he was tucked in safely?”

  They looked at each other. Then the oldest one said, “Perché hai un cavallo? Why horse?”

  “She’s a birthday gift from his father,” Daryn said. “Polo pony.”

  “Champion lines,” I added, patting Shadow. “We’re expecting a lot out of this girl.”

  Daryn smiled at me. “She’ll deliver. She is a beauty, isn’t she?”

  Definitely. She definitely was.

  “Che meraviglia! Un regalo per el compleanno,” the valet rushed to explain to the others. He looked back at me, pointing at his face. “Signore, your nose?”

  “Oh, I did that,” Daryn said. “He was hitting on me.”

  “Yep. So she hit back. Wicked right hook. Does that … does that translate?”

  Sebastian muffled a laugh. He stood behind us with Shadow and passed-out Jode. Marcus was there, too, watching everything in silence. He looked like he was ready to spring into action at the first sign of any problem.

  “We’re fine now, though,” I said to Daryn. “Aren’t we fine?”

  She shrugged. “I’m fine. I think your nose is broken.”

  These ludicrous fabrications seemed acceptable to the doormen because they were suddenly all goofy about Daryn and the pretty black horse and how funny my nose looked ha ha ha. From there, it was nothing to get their help tracking down Jode’s room num
ber. They wanted to help carry him up, but Daryn and I said we’d manage. We lifted him by the arms and carried him through the swankiest lobby I’d ever seen in my life.

  Once we got to the room, I set Jode on the bed. “Don’t get too comfortable,” I told Daryn. Then I got on the hotel phone and requested a bigger room. I expected some kickback, since it was two a.m. by then, but my request was accepted right away. Apparently if money talked, nothing was chattier than Jode’s bank account.

  Fifteen minutes later, Marcus and Bastian were with us as we walked into the penthouse suite. They’d taken Shadow out to the hotel’s garden, where Bas had discreetly unsummoned her.

  In the suite, I dumped Jode in the first bedroom I saw, then took a look around. The suite’s first floor had two bedrooms and a huge living room with a bar. Upstairs, there was a rooftop patio with a hot tub and a small garden. I had a pretty good eye for spotting quality in art, from listening to Anna my whole life. Everything in the suite was top-notch.

  “This place has to be worth a fortune,” Bastian said.

  I looked at him and found myself smiling. He was my favorite fellow horseman, and I was glad to have him back. “We need the space and we couldn’t stay in the other room. Find somewhere to crash.”

  He and Marcus collapsed on the couches before I’d finished speaking. After the cross-country flight, the fight at the airport, and then the fight at the Vatican, we were all smoked.

  I looked at Daryn. “Hey, Martin.” I tipped my head to the stairs. “You and me. Hot-tub time.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Keep dreaming.” She set her backpack down on a chair. “Will you let me take a look at your nose?”

  “Sure,” I said. The way she was looking at me, I’d have said yes to anything.

  We went to the bathroom that adjoined one of the bedrooms. I sat on the edge of the ornate marble tub as Daryn ran a towel under some water. She came over and knelt on the rug in front of me. Suddenly I wasn’t tired anymore.

  She scooted closer and pressed the towel to my nose. I had a cut on the bridge. With the swelling, it’d been in my peripheral vision for a while but the pain felt distant. I knew I’d already begun to heal. And I was focused on one thing only, and it wasn’t my nose.