Had that been my Horseman’s power?
Alarm gongs suddenly rang out and I grabbed him by the shoulders as a dozen more guards spilled out from the building, turning to stare up at where the freak bolt of lightning had struck.
I also saw a band of necromantic blood slaves dry-washing their hands guiltily, as if fearing one of their associates had fucked up somehow.
“We need to leave. Now. We’re the only other people on the street, so it’s pretty hard to deny our involvement.”
Xylo nodded. “Follow me.”
And we fled, turning down a side street, ducking low behind the hedgerows so that no one noticed the escaping vampiric terrorists.
What in the living hell had that been? The bolt of black lightning had torn through the dome of the building like it was tissue paper.
Thankfully, the Observatory wasn’t more than a few blocks away, and since it was around a corner, there would be no immediate line of sight from our most recent crime scene.
The Observatory was a tall, cylindrical building about fifty feet in diameter and twice as tall, with two squat, rectangular wings stretching out from either side. The top of the Observatory proper was a massive glass dome, but the opening for the telescope was pointed the opposite direction from us, aimed up at the Blood Moon. I shook my head in wonder, but Xylo was already making his way up the broad steps leading to the entrance. I followed, keeping an eye out for sentries or, really, anything with at least two appendages, a modicum of self-awareness, and a figurative axe to grind.
Thankfully, I saw no one—but that brought on it’s own brand of anxiety, like we were walking into a trap of some kind.
Xylo skipped the main entrance and made his way to a side door, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure we were still alone. Then his ligaments abruptly flared brighter, emitting fiery embers into the night air as he simply tore the handle off the apparently locked door. He tossed the handle into a nearby bush and motioned for me to follow. I slipped inside a gloomy interior that reminded me of an empty train station in a bustling city like New York.
Xylo stood perfectly still, cautiously scanning the area from one end to the other. The building was pretty unremarkable. A lot of desks and bookshelves, piles of loose paper, and furniture to lounge in. Xylo finally turned to me with a nod. Then he was walking.
As he strode deeper into the building, I pulled out my butterfly charm, considering our current situation.
So far, we’d only managed to take out four targets—which had netted us two functional amulets to use to get my power back. At the expense of killing the three ex-Brides of Dracula but leaving a hot and bothered Mina Harker still in the land of the living, and hungry to hunt us down like dogs even though we were technically on the same side.
We both wanted Dracula dead.
As I considered the list of demands Samael and Dracula had made for me, I found that I was grinding my teeth in frustration—not at our failure to do better but at the utter ridiculousness of it all.
It just didn’t make much sense.
I wasn’t going to even begin to attempt to understand Samael’s personal motivations in all of this—him announcing he was my Godfather, proving we shared a solid Blood Bond, admitting he had the hots for my mother, and then immediately betraying—or possibly pretending to betray—me in order to aid the man we had supposedly come here to kill.
For his loyalty, Dracula had then tossed the Greater Demon into the Coliseum for a long, drawn-out execution and some wholesome family entertainment.
All of this was what had been bothering me ever since speaking with puppet-Mina, and what had put my subconscious mind into overdrive.
With a huge, apparently empty, building concealing us from curious, murderous eyes, I decided it was time for me to face the music and see if my subconscious analysis had shaken any answers loose.
Ultimately, it boiled down to motivations. If Samael or Dracula wanted me dead or imprisoned, I would have been dead or imprisoned already. Pretty much every explanation or scenario I’d come up with could have been solved more efficiently by them simply locking me up or killing me back when they’d taken all my powers.
In fact, I hadn’t been able to come up with a single reason for them not to have entertained one of those two options.
Which meant that one—or both—of them wanted me out here, hitting the streets, killing the locals.
Even though Dracula could have likely done that for himself with a figurative snap of his fingers. What did I bring to the equation? Especially when Dracula had been expecting Roland—a vampire—not me. What had turned him from being disappointed to see me to suddenly excited to agree to Samael’s overly complicated scheme to cut me loose?
Was it really as basic as them just wanting to watch me struggle and squirm to stay alive for three days?
But then Dracula had given me a guide—Xylo—to help me navigate his home. One that his wife did not apparently approve of. Then again, he hadn’t told her anything important about this scheme, so maybe that was just his standard M.O. when dealing with Mina Harker.
And to give me a guide who almost immediately shared a strong bond with my Horseman’s Mask—the Mask that Samael had conveniently failed to mention to Dracula. Taking away all my other powers but leaving me the Mask was akin to taking a butter knife away from a toddler but handing her a cocked and loaded pistol.
I knew Dracula’s Beast wanted me dead as recompense for my mother apparently stealing her eyes but, again, that could have been resolved when Sanguina had me pinned down for Samael, but they had instead put my foe to sleep. No matter how I wished I could see things in a different light, Samael had saved my life with the Mark of the Beast. Otherwise I would already be dead.
The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that Samael—in his own twisted fashion—had used the Mark of the Beast on me to give me the only chance he knew he could give me.
To let me be myself for three days while making me appear weak and helpless to Dracula—to make him underestimate me.
And Dracula had bought it.
To be honest, I hadn’t even taken the time to really process what they’d said about my mother—that she had come here and freaking blinded Dracula’s Beast. That was some straight-up, gangster-level heat.
I wasn’t saying that the quest they had given me was easy. But it was strange. Like inviting the guy who beat up your friend over to your house for a long weekend and telling him—at gunpoint—to take out your trash as punishment.
Regardless, if I wanted to survive, I needed to assess my own situation.
I had none of my powers other than my years trained in the art of hand-to-hand combat, my tentative Horseman Mask, and Xylo—the depressed, under-appreciated Death Spinner who didn’t know his own past. Oh, and my skin was tougher, now, and Xylo had a strange lightning bolt high-five.
The enemies were easier to line up.
Dracula had a job of some kind for me that he said I would take whether I wanted to or not. And I knew he wanted the barrier taken down.
The Beast wanted vengeance for my mother stealing her eyes.
Mina Harker was now gunning for me, thinking I was Dracula’s pawn.
And Samael had brought me here, obviously knowing all of this ahead of time, meaning he’d been very busy while I was off exploring the Doors in my quest to enter Solomon’s Temple.
And he hadn’t been alone in that setup. Other godly beings in Kansas City had helped the Fallen Angel. And that had been before anyone knew about me becoming a Horseman, so it wasn’t my powers they were interested in.
It…was me, Callie Penrose.
But I couldn’t do anything until I found a way to neutralize Sanguina, otherwise she would just keep reviving my foes until I gave up or collapsed from exhaustion.
So, how could I defeat a Beast like her? My mother had tried a direct assault and had succeeded only in harming Sanguina. Even when I’d had all my powers at my disposal, I hadn’t fared very well at all i
n a direct fight. Worse than my mother, in fact.
I followed Xylo up a flight of stairs, finding nothing worthy of even a second glance as we made our way closer to our target. Thankfully, everyone who lived or spent time in the Observatory seemed to either be out searching for us elsewhere or they had clocked out for the day, so we reached the top of the steps and continued walking through another large, open space without any sign of danger hitting our radars. We still acted as if dangers lurked around every corner, but we saw no one. The Observatory even felt empty—devoid of life. Abandoned. Vacant. Lifeless.
I had come here with one clear purpose: kill Dracula before he decided to come to Kansas City in retaliation for Roland’s barrier. Roland had just been a pawn in that—and I didn’t have the mental energy to consider where our relationship now stood—but Samael had orchestrated the barrier scheme with finesse. Totally unlike this scheme right now.
I decided that there really wasn’t any easy way to predict what Samael and Dracula were up to. One was a Greater Demon and one was a Master—both known for manipulating events in truly bizarre and complicated ways.
Rather than wasting more time trying to understand what they wanted from me, I decided to flip the script—focusing on what I wanted.
No more playing by their rules—like Mina had implied. So, what did I want?
I knew I would like to hang Samael by his giggle-berries over a frozen pond in the middle of nowhere, with Lambchop’s The Song That Never Ends playing on repeat on a boombox with blown-out speakers that was hooked up to a solar chargeable power source.
For example.
A close second was to figure out my Horseman Mask, because right now it was the only gun in my magical holster, and I knew I would need every advantage when confronting Dracula or his Beast.
Unless I wanted to risk shattering the amulets in my pocket, but I had a very strange feeling about that—especially because anytime I considered doing so, that nagging sensation came back with a vengeance.
Chapter 24
The first time I’d used the Mask, I’d spent a considerable amount of time focusing on my failures and flaws, owning up to them. I’d also focused on my indomitable spirit—that I would always get back up one more time than I had been knocked down.
But that hadn’t worked for me back on the bridge.
Xylo was very much in tune with his failings and flaws, owning up to them without question—even wallowing in them. I’d spent a little time trying to help him turn his self-esteem switch back on, but his default negative mental attitude was a hard habit to break.
On the bridge, he’d said he felt an echo from the Mask, and then he’d somehow tapped into it, absorbing black shadows into his eye-sockets and establishing some kind of bond with me and the Mask. But unlike my first time tapping into the Mask, he hadn’t added a caveat to his flaws like I had—that he would overcome them in some way. He just relished in them.
If that was the key to using the Mask…
I started to grow angry. What kind of stupid power was that? Was I supposed to sit around for a few hours prior to every fight, wallowing in misery over my past failures so I could depress my enemies to death? That wasn’t practical. Fights happened spontaneously most of the time, and my enemies weren’t the kind to give me a few hours warning or to postpone their attack if I needed a Debbie Downer breather.
No. My enemies were assholes. Cruel, sadistic bastards who wanted only power. And the Masters were at the top of that chain. They wielded fear like a weapon, using it to break down both their enemies and those who worked for them. Those like Xylo—a guy who couldn’t even remember his own life. Dracula chose to constantly remind him of his failures, kicking his feet out from under him at every—
I blinked. Dracula did to his enemies what I had done to myself the first time I used my Mask. He had used despair like a bludgeon to keep them in line, but I had chosen to use it like a self-flagellation whip, beating my own body with it. I had been my own Dracula. It had worked because it had still been me focusing on Despair—just in an unproductive way.
What if I flipped the direction?
Why had I chosen to become a Horseman in the first place?
Sure, I had needed power to fight Roland and to earn Xuanwu and Ryuu’s help, but that hadn’t been my true, underlying reason.
It hadn’t even been to help Nate Temple.
I’d chosen this path because I wanted to sow seeds of despair in the hearts of my enemies. I wanted to show them fear in a handful of dust. To make them shake with it, constantly looking over their shoulders. To break them from the inside out.
Hope and Despair were two sides of the same coin.
Nate, the Horseman of Hope, had vowed to take all hope from his enemies.
I, the Horseman of Despair, had vowed to give unrelenting despair to my enemies.
This understanding wasn’t news to me, although I hadn’t really applied it as the dominating factor to powering my Mask—the ignition key. Instead, I’d used it to control the Mask’s abilities once I already had it running—like gasoline or fuel. I had wanted to bond and open up to the Mask, baring my soul in order to show my true colors, and that I was worthy of its power—and it had worked.
So I had falsely assumed that it was the only way to get the engine running—introspection and humility.
To pour a ton of gasoline into it and wonder why it didn’t start, even though I didn’t have an ignition key.
But if I’d already bared my soul to the Mask, admitting my own Despair and that my will to overcome it would always be stronger…
What use was it to bare my failings to the Mask all over again? You couldn’t really bare your soul twice—that nullified the very meaning of the phrase. Sure, things could change as time passed and you had more failings you needed to acknowledge and add to your diary, but that only reshaped your core, it didn’t necessarily change it.
It was no wonder that opening up to the Mask on the bridge had produced no results for me but had worked for Xylo. I’d tried reliving my first date with the Mask, where Xylo had gone on a first date with the Mask.
On the way here, Xylo had asked me why I hadn’t broken the necklaces to get my powers back yet. I’d shrugged it off, telling him it could wait, not wanting to voice my concerns out loud.
Because his simple question had shone a light on something I’d been hiding from without even knowing it. I’d failed. I’d tried to call up the power of the Mask only to be ignored. And then Xylo had succeeded without any apparent effort.
And I was way too competitive for that not to bother me. When I committed to something, I gave it my all. Excellence was the only acceptable result.
I had just become the Sixth Horseman—at least I had used the Mask one time. I hadn’t received any kind of confirmation letter or anything, but I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was mine. The Mask even looked like that dream vision I’d had of myself with the blindfold and crying silver tears.
Despair was written on my forehead in Enochian script.
I. Was. Despair.
No question. But that certainty had only made it worse, because on the bridge, I had failed where Xylo had succeeded.
Despair was a fickle, fleeting thing, apparently. Like a dog, if you gave it a little affection it would forget all about previous owners.
So I’d had my face rubbed in my failure by Xylo’s success.
And that had apparently bothered me on a deeply subconscious level—brought to my attention only thanks to Xylo’s innocent question about breaking the amulets. My failure with the Mask had led to me feeling undeserving of it. And that dark cloud had hovered over my head, growing darker and darker with each step—even as I cheerfully tried to help Xylo banish his own perpetual dark cloud.
But I had been too stubborn to give up, not wanting to run away from the problem and revert back to the easy path, the comfortable path—my wizard’s magic, my Silvers, and my Heavenly abilities. Smashing those amulets—although sma
rt—was also running from my Despair problem.
Even though I hadn’t consciously been aware of any of this. I’d basically gone crazy all internally—splitting into different warring factions within my own heart and soul. Now that I was aware of it, I could get on with fixing it—like I would fix any other bout of internal insanity.
Women did that all the time. We were professionals at going crazy and then, just as swiftly, going uncrazy. Nine out of ten men disagreed with this fact, but upon further analysis by an independent group of women, it turned out that they had just been wrong.
It was rather concerning how that single failure on the bridge had festered, creeping through my self-confidence like…
I narrowed my eyes, realizing my problem with Despair mirrored something Xuanwu had once told me.
“Yeah. Okay. Fuck turtles,” I growled.
Xylo jumped at the unexpected sound, my words crashing into the silent space like a broken glass. Then he crouched, snapping off one of his ribs to wield as a weapon. “I’ll fuck the turtle,” he rasped, glancing left and right, brandishing the rib bone over his head like a meat cleaver. “Wait. What is a turtle?” he asked, not seeing any nearby threats.
I laughed, shaking my head. “No. I was thinking out loud about something a friend once told me,” I explained.
“Oh.” He lowered his hands, opening and closing his mouth several times. “What is fuck?”
I laughed again. “Something you do with bad guys.” My face instantly flushed beet red as I realized how that would have sounded to any of my other friends. “I mean that the word can be used in many ways. Most often it’s used when you are angry about something or angry with someone. I was angry with the turtle,” I said hurriedly, not wanting to have to explain the whole sex thing to my new skeleton friend. Anatomically, it didn’t really apply to him anymore anyway, which would only make it harder to explain.
He nodded thoughtfully, repeating the word a few times under his breath. Thankfully, he was too preoccupied with the new vocabulary to read my thoughts. “Okay. Fuck Dracula,” he said, glancing over at me as if to check whether or not he’d used it correctly.
Godless: Feathers and Fire Book 7 Page 15
