Riders

by Veronica Rossi

  Daryn is outside. She’s here.

  I nod.

  “Me and my buddies,” Texas continues, “we’ve got this informal code going between us. Whenever we see or hear somethin’ we shouldn’t have, which happens a lot, Blake, happens a whole lot, you know what we call it?”

  He’s leading me somewhere. Normally I’d try to figure out where but there’s no chance of me thinking clearly. She’s right outside.

  “Look at me, Blake.” Texas digs his forearm into my throat. “Do you know what we call it? We say it’s a gold-medal moment. Not sure how it started, but that’s what it is. Whenever anybody says those two words, gold medal, we know we’re in the presence of information that we should never talk about. Gold-medal moments go to the grave.” He narrows his eyes. “You hear what I’m sayin’?”

  “I hear you.” I just had a gold-medal moment. Daryn is here but I’m not supposed to know. I’m not supposed let Cordero know that I know.

  Texas eases back, releasing me. “I’d have done the same thing in your shoes.” He drops the hood back over my head. “’Cept I’d have gotten to her.”

  “I didn’t want to get your ass court-martialed,” I manage, finally getting my bearings.

  He snorts. “Might still happen.” He flex-ties my hands behind my back this time. I’ve been downgraded. “Keep your trap shut and remember what I said.”

  The walk back to the room passes in a second. I’m there before I know it, Texas slipping new ties around my wrists and ankles, tethering me back to the chair. He leaves my right hand free. Beretta hands me an unwrapped granola bar. Food is the last thing on my mind, but the fuel is important. It’ll help me shake off the drugs faster. I eat it in two bites and get a stomachache. Behind me, my old friend the radiator clicks on. But the bulb is going to go. It’s going to burn out and this room will go dark. Just a matter of time.

  Why is she here? She’s the one who left me in Jotunheimen. Is she okay? Was she captured or did she come here on her own power? I don’t know what to think. I just need to see her.

  Cordero comes back. She scoots under the desk and opens the file. Business as usual. “We were out in the Mojave Desert when we left off. I believe you were waiting three hundred seconds.” She gives me a small, humorless smile. “What happened when Daryn came back around?”

  Does she know? Does she know that I know?

  “Gideon?”

  CHAPTER 30

  Daryn, um …

  She came back slowly. When she lifted her head, her eyes were unfocused. Distant. And with the heat of the desert, and my body heat, she’d gone a little sweaty around the forehead. She looked like she’d woken up from a long sleep.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said, but she looked around, clearly disoriented.

  A dozen questions were on the tip of my tongue, but Marcus and Sebastian were walking back to the Jeep. I’d save my questions until the time was right. Bastian’s expression didn’t change when he saw us standing close, but Marcus’s glass-colored eyes moved from me to Daryn like he was making some calculations.

  Daryn pulled away from me when she saw them coming, sort of suddenly, putting a few steps between us. She looked at them, and at the Jeep, and not at me.

  Okay, right. Message received.

  “We have to go,” she said. “We need to go back to Los Angeles.”

  We all stared at her for a few seconds; then we piled into my Jeep. No questions asked. I didn’t know what had convinced Marcus to come. Believe me, if I did, I’d have done the opposite. Within five minutes of being back on the road, it was obvious that he spoiled the easy vibe between me, Sebastian, and Daryn. As a trio we’d been stable, but Death added a new element that didn’t fit. He didn’t say anything rude or confrontational. The guy barely talked. He sat in the back with Sebastian, totally quiet, but quiet like a fog machine. He altered the landscape of my Jeep without making a sound.

  I thought of the bloody towel I’d found. The fact that he’d left the Mustang behind without a word. Obviously, he’d stolen it. He was dangerous. I didn’t trust him. But I couldn’t deny that the cuff on my wrist liked having him around. I felt both his and Bastian’s presence through it now. Two distinct tones. But they weren’t a distraction. I could choose to focus on them or not, just like with my other senses.

  By around eleven, the desert heat was beating us down. We pulled over at a gas station to put the top down since my Jeep’s air-conditioning was fresh air. Marcus took off his ripped-up sweatshirt. He had a detailed tattoo on his left forearm, some kind of script, the ink only a few shades darker than his skin, but what I really wanted to get a better look at was his cuff. The thing looked like it was made of alabaster—but molten, like someone had dripped wax around his wrist.

  “What are you looking at?” he asked me.

  I felt the cold creep of fear along my neck, that falling sensation nudging toward me.

  “You want to go again?” I said, but Sebastian shot over and pulled me away,

  “Chill out, Gideon,” he said, and dragged me to a bank of vending machines outside the convenience store. I could still see the Jeep. Daryn was talking to Marcus. Whatever she said made him run a hand over his scalp and loosened the tension in his shoulders.

  “How do you call the scales?” I asked Bastian as I watched them. “The weapons? You said you’d tell me.” I needed to know how to get the sword. Marcus had command of the scythe. I couldn’t be at such a disadvantage.

  He nodded. “Yeah. I’ll tell you.”

  “Do it. Now.”

  “Okay. Well, you have to find it inside yourself. Really search, and when you’re on to it, you lock in.” He snapped his hand shut in front of him like he was catching a bug. “It takes practice, but you’ll get it.”

  “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  He grinned. “I’m not. It’s the truth.”

  “Shit.”

  “Hey, you got any money?”

  I shook my head. How did the guy on a soldier’s paycheck become the one with the money? I dug around in my pocket, finding three dollars for him, then watched him fight with the vending machine over how flat the bills needed to be.

  Two girls in a white BMW on the third pump apparently thought this was adorable. They giggled, acting like he was a rock star or something.

  “Hey, Bastian. Are you famous?”

  He’d finally managed to get a Coke and some Skittles. “No. Not even close.”

  Whatever he was, girls liked it. They snapped photos of him with their cell phones as they pulled away from the pump. Bastian was oblivious.

  “You eat a lot,” I said.

  He tore into the bag of Skittles. “Man, I love food.” He shoved a handful in his mouth and offered me some.

  I shook my head. “No, thanks.” I liked Skittles but they turned into mini grenades in my stomach. They were harder on me than most food. “You know it’s eleven a.m., right?”

  Bastian’s eyebrows went up. “Wow. Early.” He swallowed. “Gideon, I don’t mean to overstep, but we can’t mess this up because of our differences.” He glanced toward the Jeep. Toward Marcus. “We’ll never get out of this situation if we’re fighting amongst ourselves. Maybe you can just try to keep your eye on the bat.”

  I was with him up until end. I’d heard him screw up phrases like that before and let it go, but this time I couldn’t. “Dude, it’s ball. It’s keep your eye on the ball. Keeping your eye on the bat would be … not good, man. What’s up with the cliché mutilation?”

  “Oh, that. I think it’s because English was my second language. Shoot, no. I don’t think that’s it.” He lifted his shoulders. “I just get ’em wrong. But at least I get my lines right. Man, can you imagine if I couldn’t remember my lines?” He said this with devastation, like if he couldn’t remember his own mother.

  I stared at him for a few seconds, not sure if he was messing with me or not. Then he grinned like gotcha, tossed a handful of Skittles into his mout
h, and chomped away.

  I held my hand out. “Give me some of those.”

  When we got back to the Jeep, Daryn was sitting in the back talking to Marcus. She trailed off when I climbed into the driver’s seat. Either she’d been talking about me or she didn’t want to keep talking around me.

  Whatever. I didn’t care either way.

  I had a horseman to find, so. Eye on the bat.

  Since it was my car, and since I felt confident it would make Marcus miserable, I pushed the Pearl Jam cassette into the tape deck as I got back on the freeway and turned it up. After a couple of tracks, Bas got hung up on trying to figure out the lyrics to “Yellow Ledbetter”—an unattainable goal since they were basically undecipherable sounds with a few words sprinkled in. The song was all feeling, but he was determined. We listened to it over and over, and caught a little more each time. Metaphorically, the song felt perfect for the mission we were on.

  About eighty miles outside of Los Angeles, Daryn suggested we stop for food. I pulled into a roadside diner—a place that would’ve looked super stylish if the year was still 1972—and scoped it out. Not a lot of cars in the parking lot. Only a few truckers and older folks inside. I asked for a table by the exit, view of the entrance, view of the parking lot, view of the entire dining area.

  The Kindred had killed someone in the middle of a studio. And Alevar—the creepy bat guy—had found me in the middle of the desert. No place was safe.

  Everybody ordered, and then commented on my “just bread, no butter” selection. I was forced to explain about the Skittles and my dumb stomach.

  “So War has a sensitive tummy?” Sebastian said, grinning at me from across the booth.

  “War has nothing sensitive, okay jackass? Eat your French toast. Who has breakfast at two in the afternoon, anyway?”

  Beside me, Daryn glanced up from her blueberry pancakes.

  “Dude, it’s so. Good,” Bastian said. “Ahhh, look at that. Delicious!”

  He was having a great time at my expense. It did look damn good. Meanwhile Marcus wolfed down his burger like we weren’t even there.

  “There’s something I need to tell you guys.” Daryn pushed her plate away. She hadn’t finished her pancakes and I wondered if they hadn’t been as good as in Cayucos. “Are you ready?”

  No one said anything. I think we all thought it was a rhetorical question. And we weren’t ready for information, we were starved for it.

  “LA isn’t our actual destination,” she continued. “We need to get to Italy.”

  “Then we’ve been driving in the wrong direction,” I said. Ha ha. Then I saw the serious look in her eyes and dread started snaking through me. She was serious? “Negative, Martin. No on Italy.”

  “That’s where Conquest is. It’s where we need to go.”

  “I’m not going to Italy. I’m not taking this wild-goose chase international.”

  “Then I’ll go alone.”

  “No, Daryn. And the problem isn’t Italy. I don’t know what I’m protecting. I don’t know who I’m up against. I’m not hauling my ass all over the world. There are too many unknown variables. Just … no.”

  Marcus sank down and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m with him,” he said.

  I hated that he said that. I was right, but when he agreed with me, I felt less right.

  “Okay,” Daryn said. “Then let’s eliminate one thing.”

  “I vote for Marcus,” I said. That got me a nice, long stare-down across the table.

  “I meant one unknown variable,” Daryn said. I’d known exactly what she meant.

  She bit her bottom lip, thinking for a few seconds. “I can’t tell you what you’re protecting yet. For now, it’s better that only I know because…”

  “Because why?” I already knew why, but I wanted to make sure Marcus and Sebastian did, too. “Keep it coming, Martin.”

  “Because it’s an object. A powerful heavenly object that needs to stay hidden. Samrael, one of the Kindred, can get into your minds. He can see what you’ve seen. He can flip through your memories like photographs, so the less you know about what and where it is, the safer it is for all of us. What I can tell you is more about him. About them. The Kindred.”

  Our server came by to clear our plates, which gave everyone a moment to absorb the fact that we were walking slide shows for Samrael.

  “You might have heard about the War in Heaven,” she continued. “The fall of Satan, who was cast down to earth for being prideful. It’s what most people think of when you imagine good versus evil. Satan defied God and for that, he was cast out along with his angels. The Kindred were subjects of Satan’s. They were his servants, except the same thing happened. They were prideful and rebellious as well. They decided they didn’t want to be followers of Satan, so they left.” Daryn looked at me. “They went AWOL.”

  “Which is what again?” Sebastian asked, after a moment.

  He wasn’t alone in needing a second to catch up to things.

  “Absent without leave,” I said. “They cut and ran.”

  “That’s right,” Daryn said. “They turned their backs on Satan.”

  “Which seems like a good thing?” Bastian said.

  “But it’s not,” Daryn said. “They didn’t reject evil outright. Only the power structure they’d been under. These are still evil beings and they’ve become a problem. They’ve banded together and gained strength. They’ve mutated into these, I don’t know … these abominations. They hide behind human form, but they aren’t human. And they have plans now. They want power. Independence. They’ve done a lot of harm, and they’ll do a lot more if we don’t succeed. That’s what we’re trying to prevent.”

  “Will,” I said. “Will prevent.”

  “Yes,” Daryn said. “Will prevent.”

  Sebastian grimaced. He looked like he was regretting the French toast.

  I thought about my confrontations with Samrael at Anna’s college and the studio. In retrospect, they’d seemed rushed. Samrael and his team had been quick to strike and quick to leave. They definitely hadn’t wanted to linger. “They’re being run down, aren’t they?”

  “It’s possible, yes. Satan doesn’t want them to rise to power any more than we do.”

  “So they have the devil on their tail. And they’re chasing us down. Everybody’s chasing everybody. What’s at the end of this race? What does the object do for them?”

  I needed to know what we were protecting more than ever.

  Daryn’s hand made the smallest movement toward the chain at her neck before she caught herself. She tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear. “It would enable them to establish their own realm of power.”

  “A realm?” Marcus said. “A kingdom or something? That’s what they want to create?”

  “They can’t actually create anything. They’re trying to access what’s not theirs by unlocking a realm, a dimension, and they almost succeeded once already. They almost stole the object, but we have it now. We need to keep it safe until I can get it back to its rightful place.” She looked at each of us. “I need your help to do that, and Conquest’s when we find him.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So we’re running defense against a splinter faction of demons who are trying to build a second hell?”

  “That’s it. And build is a good word for it. They want power. If they can open this realm, it’s possible they’ll enslave people.”

  “Enslave people?” Bastian said. His face had gone ashy.

  Marcus leaned over his elbows, lacing his fingers behind his head. I knew exactly how they felt, but the information was finally coming. I had to get as much as possible out of her now because I knew it wouldn’t last.

  “You said they’re tracking the object,” I said. “How, exactly?”

  “I’ve told you that. They pick up on its energy. And they have other ways, I’m sure, but I don’t know what they all are.”

  “You really don’t know or you’re filtering information as a defense me
asure?”

  Bas frowned at me.

  “What? That’s not a fair question? Then what about their abilities?” I knew Samrael had the mind powers and the bone blades. Alevar had wings. It wasn’t much. We had a lot to learn about our opposition. “Can we know about those? Or are we back to playing twenty questions again?”

  Daryn glared at me. “I told you up front. I can’t tell you everything.”

  “Yeah, but you’re giving me just a little more than nothing.” And there it was again. Hello, temper. Welcome back.

  It was quiet for a second. Then Daryn said, “Gideon, can I talk to you alone?”

  Sebastian and Marcus evacuated the booth before I could answer.

  Daryn and I turned toward each other. Too close, nowhere to look but right at her, so I got up and slid across to where Bas had just been.

  “Is this about earlier?” she asked.

  “Earlier?”

  “You and me.”

  It might have played some part in how frustrated I felt. But I just shrugged and said, “Give me some credit.”

  Her gaze fell to the table.

  Wait. Was she disappointed?

  Strike three. Strike twenty. I just couldn’t get it right.

  My attention pulled to the entrance, where a group of bikers covered in leather and ink filed in and began unsnapping their jackets and helmets. Not the Kindred, but we’d been there too long. My Jeep was starting to feel like shelter, even though it wasn’t. But at least it kept us moving.

  “I told you I’d give you one unknown. I’ve given you much more than that,” Daryn said.

  She had. It still didn’t feel like enough.

  As I looked back at her, I noticed that the chain around her neck fell over the outside of her jacket. On the end was a key. Heavy. Old-fashioned. Nothing spectacular, but not ordinary, either.

  That was it.

  It had to be the object the Kindred were after. A key that could unlock realms.

  I looked into her eyes. They were steady, as always.