Riders

by Veronica Rossi

  My immediate inner answer was, well, I don’t. With regard to that particular topic, I had decided I’d be a horseless horseman. I’d loved my armor during the few hours I’d worn it. I hadn’t battle-tested it yet, but my instincts told me Kevlar had nothing on it. And the sword was starting to grow on me, too. But I wasn’t excited about working with a creature that was essentially aggression in the form of fire.

  “We’ll get to the horses,” I said. “Weapons first.”

  “If you insist.”

  “I do.”

  Jode frowned. I could tell my answer had disappointed Bastian too—understandable, since Shadow was awesome—but I kept us moving along, turning to helping Jode call up his weapon. Marcus walked away almost immediately and sat against a tree along the trailhead. Daryn joined him a few minutes later, creating a nice, condensed visual focal point of distraction.

  So, I was going to bust my ass while he sat around and talked to her?

  Unbelievable.

  An hour later, with both Bas and I taking turns providing instruction, Jode still couldn’t call up the bow. Daryn and Marcus chatted away over by the tree. Marcus was actually smiling.

  “Again, Jode,” I said, rubbing my tired eyes. Last night had been another struggle. I’d tossed and turned on the hard floor in front of the fireplace. I just needed one night without seeing my mom standing over my grave. “Keep trying. You only fail if you quit.”

  “That’s right,” Bas said. “When you fall off the horse, you need to just saddle it back up.”

  I looked at him. “What if the saddle didn’t fall off? What if only you fell?”

  “Speaking of horses,” Jode said.

  “No horses. Go again.”

  Another hour went by. Bas and I started to get punchy.

  “Go to the light, Jode,” Bas said. “Your most precious inside light.”

  “Just feeeeeeel it. Feel it like you mean it.”

  Jode smirked. “I’m English. I don’t do anything by feeeel.”

  We kept at it, but both Bas and I had exhausted our vocabulary for explaining how we reached our powers. We did it by tapping into a certain purity of intention. A will to do what was best, what was needed, what felt right. Part of it was control, and part of it was surrender. I’d been joking, but in a lot of ways it was like finding a particular thread of feeling. I couldn’t reach in and find it for him. He kind of had to work it out on his own. Finally, though, he did.

  The instant the bow came up, his left arm shot straight out. “Now what?” he asked, his eyes flicking to me.

  “Breathe, Ellis. Relax,” I said. I took his wrist, keeping it steady, and took a close look at the weapon.

  The bow was radiant white, on the verge of being hard to look at directly. In construction it was long and tapered, and looked balanced and light. The bowstring was so thin at points that it disappeared the way spiderwebs did in sunlight. It was the prettiest weapon out of all of them, no question. I thought of my sister, who had a real eye for seeing beauty. Anna would have liked that bow.

  I didn’t see any arrows but I had a gut feeling.

  “Point it ten feet away,” I said, “right at the ground and draw back on the string—slowly.”

  “Ground,” Jode repeated as he turned the weapon down. “Draw.” The bowstring brightened as soon as his fingers touched it. He glanced at me, like if this goes wrong it’s on you; then he pushed out a breath and pulled the string back.

  At roughly half draw, there was a flash of brightness and the arrow appeared. Slender. Luminous. No fletching. Just a streamlined bolt of lightning.

  Sebastian started hooting and slapping Jode on the back. I couldn’t keep a grin off my face, either. A complete set now, the bow and arrow were even more impressive. And here was a weapon that actually made sense. That resembled a little bit, sorta-kinda, the weapons I knew.

  “About time,” Marcus said as he and Daryn walked up.

  “What now?” Jode asked.

  “What do you think?” I yelled. I couldn’t contain my excitement. “Let’s shoot something!”

  We hiked downriver. I wanted to find a closed environment, minimizing the margin for causing damage. A shooting range, essentially. What I found was a saddle between two hills that would do the trick.

  I made everyone stay put on the eastern slope while I jogged down and then back up the scree slope on the other hill. Along the way, I picked up a branch about as thick around as a baseball bat, but twice as long. I wedged it into the loose rocks, piling more at the base to keep it upright. Then I took a step back and congratulated myself. Good target. We were almost set.

  Turning, I looked at everyone on the other slope, trying to eyeball the distance. Tomorrow I’d bring the radios and use the GPS to get exact distances, but it looked to be about 120 meters or so.

  “Now?” Jode yelled. A flash of white appeared in his hands.

  “No!” I scrambled up the hill like a mountain goat on fire.

  Then I heard them laughing.

  “Assholes,” I muttered. But something inside me loosened up a little. If they were messing with me, it meant they were doing something together. It was a good sign.

  When I got back over to them, I found them deep in discussion about the proper archer’s stance.

  “I think I’m ready,” Jode said.

  He looked overextended and stiff, like he should be planted in a fountain, spurting water from his mouth, but I let it go. He’d gotten mentally prepared and he didn’t look like he was going to injure himself. I’d get my shot at coaching him later.

  “Okay, Robin Hood.” I stepped back with Bas, Marcus, and Daryn. “Let it rip.”

  No time passed between the moment he released the arrow, and the eruption on the other hill. It happened in an instant.

  An explosion cracked into the air, like an entire forest of trees splitting in half. My chest bucked at the pressure. Rocks flew apart.

  Then, the aftermath—a dusty cloud lifting up, to the sound of a small avalanche rumbling down the hillside.

  We practically killed ourselves rushing over there. The branch I’d set up was nonexistent. Pulverized. In its place we found a small crater about three feet wide and two deep, blackened at the center, surrounded by fine gray ash around the edges.

  Serious explosive power.

  “Incredible,” Sebastian said.

  I had to agree. It sure as hell beat a sword.

  With everyone armed up, we moved into actual training. I went over basic safe-handling guidelines. Don’t draw a weapon unless you plan to use it. Be aware of your surroundings at all times. Never fire without a target in mind. Then I broke us into two groups based on our weapons—aerial and hand-to-hand. It was the right thing to do from a tactical standpoint, but that left me with Marcus as my training partner, so. The potential for problems was high.

  Jode and Bastian stayed behind to practice at our new firing range, Daryn staying with them, while Marcus and I headed back to the grass clearing. He brought up the scythe, I called up the sword, and we got started—using the flat of the blade and the base of the staff because we didn’t want to kill each other. Actually, that’s inaccurate. We did want to kill each other, but we avoided the business end of our weapons and proceeded to safely beat each other down. What we did in no way resembled sparring. The level of intensity went way beyond that. We took turns having the last say—him winning, then me—but it was pretty much always a dead heat.

  Late that afternoon, with both of us covered in sweat and fresh bruises, he backed me up to the river. I stepped into water that was pure glacier melt. Water so cold it burned. I made a move to get around him and my foot landed right into a depression. Next thing I knew I was ass-planted, water up to my chest, an eighteen-inch blade a few centimeters away from my nose.

  “Who’re you fighting?” Marcus yelled.

  “What are you talking about?” I yelled back. The cold pierced deep into my muscles. I’d only been in a few seconds, but I was already
shivering badly.

  “I know it ain’t me,” he said. Then his attention moved to Daryn, who was coming along the riverbank from our firing range.

  Marcus flipped the scythe around, offering me the end of the staff to help me up. Did he care what Daryn thought of him? Or did he want to highlight who was on the winning end of our sparring exercise? Like me sitting in a river didn’t make that clear enough.

  I pushed the scythe away, got up, and broke into a jog. The sun had already dipped behind the mountains and my teeth were rattling. I had to get up to the hut and in front of a fire.

  Daryn jogged over and met me, blocking my path to the trail. She looked at my sopping clothes. At how I was shivering. She couldn’t seem to decide what to say and I couldn’t look at her without picturing Samrael’s arm wrapped around her, the two of them smiling.

  “Gideon…”

  Don’t ask.

  Don’t ask if I’m okay.

  “I think we should train with the horses. I think it would help.”

  Right. That was what I needed.

  I couldn’t even respond. I went right around her, back to the hut.

  We ended the day around the stone circle. All of us together, but not together.

  Jode and Bas hadn’t done well in their training either. Daryn had grown quieter than normal. Marcus and I had gone backwards. We sat around the fire pit and ate rice and beans out of a pan. Passed around a couple of cans of peaches and some chocolate bars. Then I got the fireplace going in the hut and we crashed.

  The next few days weren’t any better. In fact, they got worse. I couldn’t sleep more than a few hours a night. Ra’om’s images started haunting me during the days, too. I’d find myself staring off, divided between what I was doing and seeing the worst things I could possibly imagine. I imagined them over and over.

  I kept us all on a strict training routine, though. Sunup to sundown we worked with the weapons and even drilled with armor, but we made meager progress. Bastian and Jode’s marksmanship with the scales and the bow held at a constant level—the suck level of marksmanship. Every day, I ran them through the basic principles of good shooting. I set up new targets and had them try different firing positions, but nothing helped.

  Jode overthought everything. He was too much in his head. I’d tell him to shoot and he’d go into the history of longbowmen. He’d detail the Battle of Agincourt and how his weapon would fit in with our overall strategy. I knew the rambling was his way of stalling. When he did shoot, he was okay. Really, not bad. But he’d take a shot that was off by a few feet and that was unacceptable to him. He’d want to quit. He expected perfection, which I appreciated. But he had no patience for the failures that needed to happen along the way.

  Jode kept pressing me to start our training with the horses. Bastian, too. But I kept shutting them down.

  I knew we should be training with the horses. We were horsemen. But our weapons were higher priority—so I thought—and my horse? Didn’t want to go there.

  Bastian didn’t give up like Jode, but his confidence with the scales was shaky, and the guy didn’t have an aggressive bone in his body.

  “I’m just not like you, G,” he told me on the fourth day of missing targets by a mile. “I think you’re barking up the wrong wall.”

  “You’ll get it, Bas,” I said. “You only almost decapitated me twice today.”

  “Man, I’m so sorry about that.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Let’s go again.” I gave him the scales and stepped back, feeling hopeful. Ready to duck.

  He got them spinning in the air above his head. He looked pretty solid with that part. The problem was the release, which was a lot like hitting a baseball. A series of precise movements that had to flow in just the right order, culminating in a single, perfectly timed instant.

  Bas let them fly. They sailed behind us, tearing the hell out of a patch of wildflowers. I wanted to laugh, but I was worried it would break him down.

  “I suck at this, Gideon. Besides, I don’t even think this is the right thing. How’s this the right way to do good?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean fighting.”

  “You’re asking a soldier this?” I had to believe it played some part in doing good. Otherwise, what was my life? Or my dad’s life? Or Cory’s life? Or anyone who fought for good’s life? “Dude, are you drowning in a sea of gray?”

  Bas laughed. He shook his head and looked out over the water. “You said it yourself. You’re a soldier. I’m not. I don’t even know how to fight people. What do I know about fighting demons?”

  That question legitimately worried me, too. How long did we have before the Kindred found us? How much more time did we have to prepare? Right then, a year wouldn’t have seemed like enough.

  Our best-case scenario relied on Daryn. Our Seeker needed to bring us information, a mission plan, a drop-off point. I’d have killed for a goal. For actual actionable plans, instead of the hide-and-train holding pattern we were in.

  The only clear benefit from working with Jode and Bastian during that first week was that I started getting pretty good with the bow and the scales. The bow was my favorite—the arrows appeared to have limitless range and their accuracy was off the charts—but the more I used the scales, the more I took to them. The chains could be used to lasso, the disks were sharper than knives, and, thrown the right way, they came back like a boomerang. The weapon had serious versatility.

  My own training with the sword didn’t progress much, though. Marcus and I continued to give each other the good news—beatdowns, in other words. I hated the guy and he hated me. The only upside was that our fast healing was like a reset button. We ended the days with welts, swollen eyes, and split lips, but by morning we were usually fine and ready to wail on each other again.

  All told, we spent a week training in which nothing positive was accomplished. I mean that.

  Nothing.

  I didn’t know how to bring us together as a team. It was a failure on me as a leader. I hated the situation with Daryn. How awkward and forced things had become between us since Italy. And I was out-of-my-head tired from losing sleep and mentally fried, thanks to the Kindred. With all of that piling up, I’d become a walking bomb by the end of that week, so it wasn’t surprising when things with Marcus came to a head the next day.

  CHAPTER 48

  “Ma’am?”

  It’s Beretta.

  Beretta is cutting in on me.

  A vicious expression passes over Cordero’s face at the interruption. Slowly, she turns to face him. “Yes?”

  Yesss. Little demon hiss in there.

  “I need to rotate out,” Beretta says.

  “Is there a situation I’m not aware of?”

  “No, ma’am. I need to report in to my CO.”

  Texas doesn’t say a word, but everything about him is backing up his partner. The way he’s watching Cordero. The way he’s standing. These guys are risking everything for me. What Beretta wants to report is the fact that something’s wrong.

  Has he figured out what?

  Does he know who Cordero is?

  Cordero finally nods. “Fine. But hurry back.”

  Beretta steps out. Now I wonder who’s on the other side of that door. Are they really Army? Are they people? Or is Samrael out there with Ra’om? With Bay and Ronwae? They could all be here.

  Cordero and I are looking at each other like nothing unusual is going on. I picture who I’m really looking at. Stringy hair the color of earthworms. Pocked. That dark, dirty suit that’s oversized, bagging around the hands and feet. Spilling over his shoulders. But that was just a front too. The real Malaphar is the melted wax monster, with drooping skin and boneless limbs.

  The radiator kicks on. Tink, tink, tink.

  Perfect soundtrack for the nightmares I’ll be having the rest of my life.

  If I live.

  “I changed my mind,” I say. “Can I get some water?” Maybe Texas can cut my bindings
when he brings me water. Or loosen them. Or slip me his bowie knife. Anything.

  “But you’re almost finished, aren’t you?” Cordero says. “I think you’ll survive.”

  Everything has a double meaning now.

  Focus, Blake. Assess, plan, execute.

  I search for my sword again, and find the thread, the focus, the feeling. The relief stops my heart for a moment. Yes. It’s with me. I can summon it now. And I can feel Jode, Bas and Marcus through the cuff, too. They’re close, like I thought. My armor’s still out of my reach. And Riot is too, but I’m coming back.

  I need to know why Malaphar is here. He wants something—something from me. Knowledge. I’ve been sitting here, telling him my story. He’s been listening for clues.

  Clues about what? The Kindred got the key.

  Didn’t they?

  I think of Daryn at the diner outside of Los Angeles the first time I saw the key on the chain around her neck. Did she ever tell me, actually tell me, that I was looking at the key?

  “You were saying that you and Marcus finally had it out?” Cordero says.

  I’m a sitting duck, tied to this chair.

  Time. Time is the only thing I can control.

  Daryn is here. So are the guys. Texas and Beretta. One of them will come through. Someone will get me out of this chair before Malaphar is done with me.

  I need to keep bluffing.

  I need to stall.

  CHAPTER 49

  Jealousy was what started it.

  I was coming back to the hut after a patrol hike around our area. I’d been making them every day to search for signs of the Kindred. Alone for the past couple of hours, I was completely zoned in to the quiet of the fjord, my senses tuned to all the smells and sounds of Jotunheimen.

  I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw Daryn and Marcus by the stone circle. They were huddled on the same stone, their heads were bent close, and their backs were to me.

  For a second I thought they were kissing.

  Or about to. Or just had.

  Something.

  I heard Daryn laugh, and then Marcus said, “Dare, this isn’t gonna work if you keep moving.”