Seeker

by Veronica Rossi

  “I’m not the one who’s calling this off tonight,” Daryn says, right behind me. She overheard it all. “Cordero wants to stop.”

  I straighten off the porch rail and face her. “How does it feel to not be calling the shots for once?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I don’t know what it means. I’m on autopilot. I catch Jode’s eye over her shoulder. He shakes his head slightly, and I know I should walk away but I don’t.

  “You blame me for this.” Daryn steps forward and stares right into my eyes. “Just say it, Gideon.”

  “I’m not doing this. I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

  “Yes, you do. You blame me for leaving Bas in there. Why can’t you tell me the truth?”

  Unbelievable. This, from the girl who hides everything and disappears any chance she gets. “I don’t give a shit about why you did what you did, Daryn. Only one thing matters and it’s getting Sebastian back. That’s the truth. There. Now you know.”

  * * *

  It’s three in the morning by the time we check into an inn in Jackson Hole. The team took the last available rooms. Marcus, Jode, and I will be crammed in a room with a queen and a rollaway cot. As we take the elevator up, Jode and Marcus argue about who’s taking the floor.

  I toss my duffel through the door. “I’ll take it.” I won’t be getting much sleep anyway.

  Jode looks at me like he’s going to say something funny, but he doesn’t. What’s there to say?

  Great to see you and Daryn back in form?

  Nice to see some things never change?

  Jode’s phone rings. He slips it out of his pocket and smiles. “Anna,” he says. He moves further into the room, his voice goofy and high like he’s talking to a kitten instead of my sister.

  This perfect capper on my day makes Marcus laugh.

  I shake my head. “I hate you. I’m going to go destroy something.”

  “Emergency stairs at the end of the hall,” he says, knowing what I really need. “There’s roof access.”

  That’s where I go.

  I step onto a small patio with stacked plastic chairs and tables. Underneath the tables, a few grungy piles of snow have still held on. Empty kegs tied with bungee cords lean against the wall. This is probably a great place to hang in the summer.

  The rain has stopped and the night has a chill. I move to the edge of the balcony. The small square at the heart of Jackson sits in mostly darkness two stories below. Only a few lights are still on.

  Turning back to the patio, I feel the anticipation building. I’d get reamed if Cordero found out I summoned Riot here, in such an exposed location. If people found out about us, the horsemen, it’d be a nightmare. Yes, we’re Death, War, and Conquest, but our purpose is good! Promise!

  That’s a losing PR battle, so. You could say keeping our identities confidential is a matter of global security. And you could say summoning a burning horse on the roof of an inn in Jackson Hole is asking for trouble. There are all kinds of things you could say, but no one’s around and I need my horse or I’ll lose my mind.

  I reach for Riot.

  I’ve summoned him hundreds of times before, maybe thousands. It’s a process Cordero tried to understand for months. How the guys and I can make supernatural horses manifest. How we bring them forward—and our armor and weapons.

  Scientifically, there’s no explanation. We have this energy inside of us, this power that we can produce as easily as we can speak words or exhale our breaths. Our horses come from inside us, and retain part of us, but they are not actually us. It’s something in the middle. And something that ultimately originates from a power that’s much, much higher than any one of us. To my knowledge no one’s managed to put hard science around faith or God. Cordero gave it her best shot. Then she just came around to accepting the unexplainable, like the rest of us.

  Riot comes up in a quiet whirl of flames stirring on the concrete floor. They build into a small burning tornado that solidifies into thousands of pounds of smoldering horse.

  Broad. Red. All raw power.

  If he were a real horse, he’d be a medium draft horse, or a warmblood. Not a Budweiser Clydesdale, but you wouldn’t see him winning the Kentucky Derby, either. The guys joke because he’s the biggest of our mounts. A lightweight tank with an attitude. But he’s the greatest companion. The best. I can’t even picture what my life was like before he came along.

  His amber eyes find me first, then look around, checking things out, eventually coming back to me.

  I smile. It’s not that I hear his thoughts. It’s more that I know them.

  Bad day, Gideon? That’s too bad. But I’m here now so you’ll be better. Hey, nice view.

  “Come here, horse,” I say, but I’m the one who goes to him. I call up my armor so I don’t have to be careful about burning my clothes. Then I bury my hands deep into his mane, sending a shiver of embers into the night sky.

  He makes a low deep sound, telling me he’s listening. That I can tell him what I’d never say to anyone, not even Marcus.

  “I screwed up, Riot. Didn’t stick with the plan. Said some really stupid things. Really stupid.”

  Ohhh. That’s not good, Gideon. But it happens. Especially with Daryn. Don’t worry. Tomorrow you’ll do your best and try to fix it. I like Wyoming.

  I laugh. Then I let my face fall forward, and rest my forehead on his broad neck. Letting his fire spread over me, and through me, and around me.

  Warm. True.

  Like peace.

  CHAPTER 9

  DARYN

  “Daryn?” Isabel raps softly on my bedroom door. “They’re here.”

  “Okay. I’ll be right out.” I stand on my toes and twist, getting a glimpse of the gashes on my lower back in the mirror over my dresser. Blood is still welling from the three cuts the creature gave me, three nice parallel claw marks. At least it’s not pouring freely like last night.

  The worst part is that they drag right across the scars I already have from crawling under the fence when I broke out of the mental institution a year and a half ago. My lower back has become a tic-tac-toe board of scars from the worst days of my life. Perfect.

  I thought about telling Isabel I was hurt last night after the house emptied but I couldn’t do it. I just needed some time alone after everyone left. And what are cuts compared to seeing your mother swallowed up by flowers? Compared to Shadow still missing or what Bas must be going through?

  I’m having a hard time feeling bad that Daryn’s a little tired when Sebastian could be getting tortured or worse.

  Ugh. That comment from Gideon keeps haunting me. I didn’t want to stop working, either—it was Cordero’s doing—but that moment keeps replaying in my mind. I see it with perfect clarity. The anger in his blue eyes. The scruff on his jaw and the glint of his prosthetic under the porch light.

  I wanted to cry when he said that. And I wanted to head-butt him.

  I shake my head at myself and pull on my gray shirt. Then I tie a flannel tight around my waist. I wince at the pain, but this is the best compression bandage I can create on my own.

  My notebook is open on my bed with the list I started last night.

  A list, not a journal entry or poem. But it was a night for firsts, apparently.

  1. My faith in God

  2. Seeing Mom again, no matter what she said to me

  3. Finding Shadow and Sebastian

  4. Isabel’s warm hands and unconditional love

  5. Marcus’s smile, perfect

  6. Jode’s voice, the charm of it

  7. Gideon. How on earth I can manage to find him stunning even when he’s being a total and complete Photo I took of Gideon’s back/bearing/butt

  They’re things that popped into my head, things that bolster me, that give me the courage to keep going after Bas.

  I write Reasons across the top, since that encompasses pretty much everything, and stash my notebook in the trunk. Then I twist my wet hair into a k
not and head for the living room, ready for battle.

  * * *

  “Morning, Daryn,” Natalie Cordero says.

  I expected a dozen people packed into our cabin again but it’s only her and Ben, the guy with the buzz cut and black glasses who looks like a young astronaut. Clean-cut and stupendously brilliant.

  Cordero’s not too far off. She’s businesslike in her dark suit, but there’s also a military assuredness to her actions. I get the feeling that when a situation takes a nosedive she knows where the emergency exits are and how to deploy the water slide.

  The cabin still smells of the blueberry muffins Iz baked for me at five in the morning when we had some time alone. I’d tearfully apologized for entering the Rift without telling her, and she tearfully patted my hand and told me she forgave me.

  Through the window I see a dozen people milling by the SUVs on the drive. Several of them are eating muffins off of napkins. I hope they appreciate how amazing those are. Like Isabel, blueberry muffins are among my favorite things in life.

  “Shadow hasn’t come back yet,” I tell Cordero, skipping past the platitudes. “She won’t come back with all these people around.”

  She nods. “I understand your concern. I took the security down to the safest possible level but I do need to have some people here. For your good and Isabel’s, and for the safety of this mission.” Her smile is placid. Appeasing. “I want to show you something this morning, so we’ll be going for a ride. I’ve studied last night’s transcript and made a list of questions. Ben and the rest of the team have supplemented with theirs. We’ll go through them in the car in order to save time. Isabel, you’re welcome to come, too. Shall we go?”

  My face warms. I feel like I’ve been handled.

  Outside, the crisp air hits me, and the weight of a dozen foreign stares. I was too shaken up to focus on “the team” last night but now I notice them all. To think that I brought these strangers in on my failures unsettles me.

  As Isabel and I follow Cordero to a Suburban, I see Jode, Marcus, and Gideon talking by a car. Marcus looks over but Gideon doesn’t. I feel like a pariah, like I’ve been voted out of the group.

  Ben the baby astronaut opens the door for me and I climb inside, trying not to lean back on the seat because I can still feel my cuts bleeding. The huge guy with the rust-colored beard is in the driver’s seat. I notice he’s wearing an earpiece and humming a song to himself. “All My Exes Live in Texas,” I think. The dark-haired girl in the passenger seat with a rifle resting across her lap isn’t much older than me.

  “I’m Maia,” she says, turning. “This is Travis but we all call him Low.”

  He meets my eyes in the rearview mirror. “Pleasure.”

  “I’m Daryn.”

  “We know,” Maia says. “We’ve heard a lot about you.”

  It could’ve been a rude comment but her smile is genuine and even a little teasing. She faces front again as soon as Cordero slides in beside me. Low starts the car, and the motorcade—that’s the only real word for this—gets moving.

  “Daryn, I checked and your mother is home in Connecticut,” Cordero says, before we’ve even left the property. “I’ve confirmed that she was at home last night while you were in the realm.”

  “You called her?” A wave of heat rolls from my head to my fingertips.

  “No, I apologize. I should’ve been clearer. Of course we didn’t call her. We have other means of discovering what we need to know. We were simply trying to confirm whether you saw an illusion in the realm or a reality. I think we can safely say it was the former.”

  As she speaks, Isabel’s hand slips into mine and squeezes.

  It didn’t feel like an illusion. It felt more real than this moment, having this woman knowing more about my family than I do. “Is … is my mother okay?”

  “Yes. She’s doing well at the moment. Your father and sister are, too.”

  Cordero says this with a trace of warmth but it smacks of professional training.

  “What does that mean, they’re ‘well’?” I ask. Does she know about Mom’s depression? Does this mean Mom isn’t having an episode right now?

  Natalie Cordero taps her manicured fingers on the leg of her slacks as she gives me an assessing look. I know exactly what she’s thinking.

  Can she handle this?

  “It means that, by my standards at least, they’re all relatively content. Your sister is in her second year at Yale, but she goes home most weekends to see your parents. Your mother is training for a marathon and she’s planted bulbs for the year. Twice, it seems. Your father is working long hours, which seems typical. Four weeks ago at a fund-raiser, he bid on a puppy and won. Apparently it likes to dig and is quite good at it. They’re installing a dog run, well away from your mother’s flower beds.” Her eyes sharpen on me. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have—”

  “I wanted to know. I asked.” I look out the window. My God, I miss them. I’ve missed so much. Josie is a sophomore. Mom is training for a marathon? She always hated running. She never understood how I loved it. And a dog? They never let Josie and me have one. Why now? Do they even want it? I try to picture muddy paw prints on our rugs and can’t do it. “What did they name the puppy?”

  “Chief. He’s a rescue. The breed is unknown but the veterinarian believes he’s a blue heeler–boxer mix.”

  “Helluva mix,” Low mutters.

  “Right?” says Maia.

  I’m not sure what they mean but I don’t ask. I feel turned inside out. Everything sacred and secret about me is viewable and open for discussion. And the things that I should know are all mysteries. Only Isabel understands. She clings to my hand, giving me roots, connecting me to something. I would float away without her.

  Cordero steers the conversation away from my family, asking me to clarify some of the things I told her yesterday. I don’t want to tell her any more than I already have. She’s prying into every little part of my life. But I make myself do it.

  In the sparkling blue-sky morning my answers sound unbelievable. “I felt this extreme emptiness looking into its eyes,” I hear myself answer. “I don’t know—it looked harrowing. That’s why I called it that. And yes, the flowers rose like a wave over her and she disappeared.” It sounds absurd and cringeworthy. I’m so self-conscious about it that I only notice where we’ve arrived as we’re pulling up.

  “Here?” I ask. “The site of the battle against the Kindred?”

  “To start.” Cordero shuts the yellow pad where she’s been jotting notes on my replies and slips it into her bag. Up ahead, a tall cyclone gate on wheels is set into a grove of trees. A man in cargos and a black sweatshirt pulls it open and we drive through.

  I’ve wondered about this place—twice daily, since I drive right by it going to and from work. The fence went up right after the battle and there’s always someone in a car parked in the trees just inside, day and night. The rumor I heard was that there’s a complicated lawsuit going on between the landowner and the US government, but I’m pretty sure they’re one and the same. And that the “lawsuit” is really just a decoy.

  Less than a quarter mile in, the trees thin and the landscape changes. The grass is withered and dry, and the trees look brittle, like the area has been affected by drought. Then it’s like we’ve driven onto the surface of the moon. The closer we get to the place where I opened the portal, the more extreme the desolation.

  Low drives right to the spot where I stood when Bastian was stung by Ronwae, the Kindred that could transform into heinous scorpion-like creatures. My heart begins to thump a quick beat in my chest.

  We get out of the car without a word. The earth here is a husk. No trace of blade or bug. Even the dirt is ashen, leached of every nutrient. There were a series of cabins in a horseshoe arrangement around this field once—they’re still here but they’re mere piles of timbers. Shipwrecks.

  “This is the epicenter,” says Cordero. “The damage began here about twelve hours after the portal was opened.
It spread for approximately two weeks and it’s been slowly restoring since then. Believe it or not, what you see today is a vast improvement over a few months ago.

  “I call this a signature—a unique mark left by the opening of the portal. I believe the energy from that realm bled through when it was open and left its mark here.” She looks at me. “The same thing is happening at yesterday’s location. I have the team working on containment there now.”

  “Is it harmful?” My voice sounds hoarse. I had no idea this would happen.

  “The vegetation is a straight loss. Animals and humans tend to clear out—or else they suffer the effects of exposure.”

  “What effects?”

  “Short-term, the effects are headaches, irritability, confusion, nausea. Similar to what you described feeling last night. Long-term, we’re still analyzing the data.”

  “Were you here for that?” I ask Maia, who’s standing a few feet away.

  “Yeah. I felt awful for about a week. It sucked. We were all here. We all felt it.”

  I look around me, at Low and the half-dozen people here. Then wander off, feeling dazed. And responsible.

  I opened the portal.

  Marcus and Jode make their way over and join me.

  “How you doing?” Marcus asks. He drops his arm across my shoulders and tucks me against his side, which makes my eyes blur.

  “Apart from the fact that I unknowingly made this happen? I’m fantastic.”

  Jode stuffs his hands in his pockets and bunches his shoulders against the chill morning air. “Mad, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “None of us knew, Daryn.”

  “I know.”

  Gideon is with Low and Maia. As he gestures to the Tetons, sunlight flashes on his prosthetic hand. I ache to get a closer look at it. I ache to get a closer look at him. But I don’t expect him to come over like Jode and Marcus, so I just say what I need to say.

  “I lost the Sight right after this … after we were last here.” I swallow the gritty emotion in my voice. “It just stopped and I didn’t know if it would be wrong to go after Bas without it. And I didn’t want to mess up. I didn’t want either of you to get hurt, or Gideon, too. I mean more hurt, in his case. Even though I didn’t know about his hand or about Bas in the fall. You know I’d never—I’d never have let that happen…”