Path of the Horseman

by Amy Braun

  Then I smelled sulfur and felt the heat at my back.

  I grabbed the Soulless in front me by his plaid jacket and swung him around, so his back caught the brunt of the black and red demonfire. The Soulless screeched horrifically as the flames burned him, the sharp noise going on for so long I was sure one of my ears popped.

  Seeing the demonfire coming from the far corridor of the bank offices fucked everyone up.

  A Soulless lashed out and punched me in the side of the head, right into the boot of his partner on my left. I lost my grip on the burning monster before getting my feet kicked out from under me. I landed hard on the bloody tile, bringing my arms up in a cross-block when one of the Soulless pounced on me. He grabbed my arms and yanked them away to punch me square in the face. My head snapped back and cracked against the tile. His friend stood at my side, kicking my rapidly in the ribs.

  I gave up on the block and swatted Puncher’s arms away with one hand, using the other to try stabbing him in the kidney. His friend Kicker suddenly leaped over my legs and grabbed my arm, twisting it until I felt a painful snap. My hand burst with pain and I was forced to drop the machete. Puncher hit me again.

  Over my head, the sounds of gunfire lessened. In its place were the dull thwacks of fists hitting flesh, and muffled screams. Guns and knives clattered onto the ground. I thought I heard a bow drop.

  My unbroken hand was still free, so I put all my strength into that arm and swung up. A third person grabbed my wrist and stopped the hit. His skin burned mine, still fresh from the fire he’d used.

  “Silly Avery,” tsked Vance, pulling my arm back to the ground. “Breaking into a bank when you know it’s closed. Thought your Bosses taught you better than that.”

  I felt a growl building in my chest, right underneath the magic I was trying to draw out. Vance grinned at me, his blazing coal eyes flickering when he saw what I was trying to do. He was one step ahead of me. Literally.

  He pulled his boot back and stomped it into my face. Pain detonated through my skull, and I couldn’t see. Then I couldn’t feel anything at all.

  Chapter 9

  People who say they’ve had the worst hangover in their lives should try being kicked in the face by a demon wearing steel-toed boots. I’d take the consequences of drinking the family alcoholic’s entire secret stash instead of the pounding that went through my head when I finally woke up.

  My head felt like a lead balloon when I regained consciousness. I lifted it, and nearly blacked out again. Fucking demons. They knew just how much pain our not-quite-human bodies could take.

  Eventually I sucked it up and pushed myself into a sitting position. Something cold was around my wrists, but I didn’t much care what it was. Until I started bringing one of my hands to my head, and had it jerk to a rattling stop.

  I blinked, my sight still blurring from the mush in my head. But I could make out the shackles well enough. Thick iron binds with even thicker chains were looped around both my wrists and my feet. I couldn’t lift my arms higher than my stomach. The same kind of slack was on my ankles. I slumped back, hoping to lean against a wall and quickly learning there wasn’t one. I had to keep myself from falling by placing a palm on the cold floor. I didn’t know I used my broken hand until a blast of pain that went through it, but at least now I was fully awake. I started taking in my surroundings.

  During my demon-induced blackout, I’d been chained into the middle of a stale, dank basement. There were no windows that I could see, just dusty, flickering tube lights bolted into the ceiling. The walls looked like they were made of metal, so I wondered if we’d been put in a bomb shelter.

  Simon sat beside me, awake and furious. He was chained the same way I was, blood beginning to cake around the end of his left eyebrow. The lower half of his chin was scraped off. His eyes were nearly full black with rage. Once I cleared the pain in my head, mine would probably look the same.

  Most of the human survivors were chained to each of the walls. Their arms were pulled behind their heads and cuffed in place with even less chains than I had. I say most, because someone was missing. Josh roughly pulled at his chains on my right. Ricardo sat slouched on my left. Laurel was a crying mess across from me. I turned quickly. Maddy was trying to stay calm, but I saw the tears streaking down her face. She looked angry rather than scared, but I knew it was a façade.

  Gwen was nowhere to be seen, but we heard her upstairs. We all jumped at the sharpness of her scream, staring past the lights even after her cry was cut short. Laurel sobbed wretchedly, and someone’s chains began to rattle.

  I sat upright, groaning from the extra pains in my head and ribs. Damn human bodies.

  “What’d I miss?” I muttered to Simon.

  His left eye twitched. He really wanted to punch something.

  “The Soulless took the rest of us down, then showed us Theo’s body. Vance had the Soulless tie us up and throw us on the bus. They put bags over our heads and drove us to wherever this fucking place is. Then they dumped us in here and chained us up. They said they only had enough chains for six of us, so they took Gwen.”

  My heart sank a little. This was what Simon had been trying to warn me about. I hadn’t known Gwen very well, except that she was close to Ricardo. She’d been a quiet but sad woman. I didn’t know if I would miss her when all of this was over, but I damn sure blamed myself for her death.

  Neither Soulless nor demons killed cleanly.

  “Did Vance say what he wanted?”

  “Of course not,” Simon spat. “He’s a fucking demon, Avery. They exist solely to torture you as long as possible. Trust me, waiting is part of the torture.”

  I didn’t disagree, but I’d been hoping for some kind of silver lining.

  “I told you we should have left,” my brother continued to argue. His voice was beginning to rise. I narrowed my eyes at him.

  “Not the time, Simon.”

  “Well, we’re about to be shredded like pulled pork, so is the good time going to be before we go in the roaster?”

  “Simon–”

  “We can still get out, Avery. You know we can.”

  Josh had stopped moving. He could hear us, and he didn’t like what we were saying.

  “We’re not leaving them.”

  “How many times am I gonna have to say it before you get it?” my brother protested. “We are not like them. We’re the fucking–”

  The loud screech of the door above the stairs stopped Simon from saying something I knew he would regret. We turned in its direction. For a moment I was glad Josh’s attention was taken off of me. Though I was pretty sure he was still watching me out of the corner of his eye.

  Heavy feet stomped down the steps, each one sounding like their owner wanted to pound their boots through the floor. Its effect worked on the humans, each of them more terrified than the last. Even Josh was having trouble holding it together.

  I could sympathize. The Soulless that walked down was huge. Frankenstein’s monster huge. Arms as thick as trees, a nearly invisible neck, and a torso that looked like he swallowed a wine barrel. Soulless Frankenstein was dressed in dirty black clothes. His hair looked like oil and his skin was thinner than most Soulless I’d seen. I could nearly count every vein under his flesh. His bloodshot eyes were dilated from having just fed. If that didn’t give away the obvious, the red stains around his mouth and dripping from his pointed black fingers did.

  I didn’t recognize him from the bank, so he must have been part of the muscle here. He looked at Simon and me, but he didn’t seem to register us. Someone left him out of the loop about why we were so special that we got chained up in the middle of the room.

  Frankenstein was still high from feeding, and now he was looking for his next snack. It happened more often than not. A Soulless would devour an entire human and feel sated, but would be looking for the next one just as quickly. They couldn’t get enough of the taste of human blood, especially now that it was so rare. If they exploded from engorged stomachs,
they died happy.

  The humongous monster made a show of looking around, but I knew who he’d pick. I was already crunching my body as much as I could, my fingers stretching for the screws keeping me trapped to the floor. My broken wrist was swollen under the cuffs, and I wasn’t doing it any favors. But I didn’t care.

  “Hey!” Josh shouted. “Hey asshole! I’m talking to you!”

  Frankenstein didn’t care. His bloodshot gaze was fixed on Maddy.

  She twisted and pulled on the chains, even though she knew there was nowhere she could go. She tried to drag her knees to her chest to make herself smaller, but the shackles around her feet stopped her. Frankenstein took his time, making each step deliberately slow. Maddy’s eyes started to widen. I could almost picture the face she was looking at, covered in blood and smiling with crocodile teeth and wild eyes.

  I bent myself in half, dragging my useless hand under my stomach and trying to work with my good one. I contorted my ankle, trying to get to the bolts. I still couldn’t reach. Even if I did, Frankenstein would be chomping through Maddy’s arteries before I so much as loosened a screw. Josh’s shouts were getting incomprehensible. Laurel’s cries were turning into screams.

  “I said gimme the knife!” Simon suddenly hissed. It was loud enough for the Soulless to stop and turn.

  Even I looked at him with shock. I didn’t have a knife in my boot. My belt and machete were gone. All my supplies had been taken when I was knocked out. But with my hand near the top of my boot, it looked like I was reaching for something extra hidden.

  I had no idea what Simon’s plan was, until a slightly guilty look crossed his face, and Frankenstein started getting closer.

  Oh. Gee, thanks brother.

  I wasn’t ready when Frankenstein struck me, but is anybody really ready when someone kicks them in the chin? I toppled back, but didn’t hit the floor. Frankenstein grabbed the chain holding my broken wrist and pulled me forward. He knelt in front of me, and grabbed my throat easily when I stumbled into his grasp. He dug his nails in deep, poking my skin and getting blood to bead out of it.

  “Bad idea,” growled the bloody smiling monster.

  I tried to grab his hands, but I couldn’t move. I think Simon swore and Maddy screamed my name, but it all became white noise when Frankenstein put his teeth into my shoulder.

  New pain coursed through me like an electric shock, pouring down into my chest and numbing my already fucked up arm. I closed my eyes and tried to hold the power in, but I knew it was too late. The Soulless monster had tasted my blood. He was as good as dead.

  Simon did the only thing he knew would work to save Maddy’s life, but how was I supposed to explain why Frankenstein, a blood-drunk Soulless vampire, recoiled from me? What was my explanation supposed to be when he began spitting and coughing out everything he just ingested? Would they believe any lies I told them when the monster looked at me with blackening veins and complete fear?

  “Foul…” rasped the poisoned monster.

  He let go of me and scrambled to his feet. I was happy to collapse onto my back. The bite wound was nasty, but it wasn’t lethal. That didn’t make it hurt any less.

  “Poison!” shouted Frankenstein. Great. “You’re poison!”

  Without bothering to explain any further, he scuttled to his feet and bolted for the stairs. I closed my eyes and listened to him stomp around, leaving the humans to be confused about the piss-scared Soulless, and why he didn’t want to drink pints of me.

  Chains shook by my side. “Avery? Are you okay?”

  By my shining stars. He actually sounds concerned.

  “Next time you want payback, can you do something that doesn’t get me bitten?”

  I could almost see Simon flinch. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t know what else to–”

  “Stop talking, Simon.”

  He did. I was getting drowned in miracles lately.

  “Avery?”

  I lolled my head in the direction of Maddy’s voice. “I’m good.” Too bad I sound drunk. “I don’t think he liked me.”

  “Why?”

  Now Josh was talking. Damn it. I rolled and got into a sitting position, careful not to aggravate my latest bite or broken wrist.

  “Why what?” I grumbled.

  “Why didn’t he drain you? Why did he say you were poisonous?”

  “He’s the blood drinking monster. Ask him.”

  “No, I want an answer from you right now.”

  I sighed. I was not in the mood for this. I was bleeding, bruised, probably concussed, unable to heal myself, chained to a floor, and now a human was asking me to tell my dirtiest, darkest secret.

  Color me unlucky. And a liar.

  “I’m sick,” I said. “Got some kind of septicemia when I was a kid. Been on a shitload of drugs ever since.”

  “And you’re still alive?” Ricardo exclaimed.

  “I was a tough kid.”

  Josh tried to bore holes into me with his eyes. “This is not the time to be lying. My people’s lives are a stake here.”

  “What the fuck do you want me to say, Josh?” Tell me, because I can’t tell you the truth.

  “I want to know who you are, and why a fucking Soulless thinks you’re poisonous.”

  That was my biggest problem with Josh. He couldn’t accept anything without knowing its inner workings and getting an instruction manual. I found it amazing that he was still willing to go on the blind hunt for the haven, though I figured being obviously in love with Maddy overrode his reason. Everyone else he was ready to go in circles with.

  Too bad I wasn’t.

  “I’m Superman, all right?” I snarked, but I was starting to wish I was, and not just for the keener eyesight. “I came from another planet and diseases can’t kill me.”

  Josh’s expression could have cut glass. He took a deep breath to fire either another argument or a string of insults at me, but the heavy metal door creaking open stopped him. We all became silent as the grave as footsteps plodded down.

  These ones had a different tone. They weren’t as heavy as Frankenstein’s, and I swore they had a slight jingle to them.

  Christ.

  Vance was more than happy to make his grand entrance into the light. He beamed at us, showing his fangs. The black coat on his shoulders hung over him like a shadow. The shade under the brim of his hat made it look like he was wearing a Zorro mask. His burning coal eyes were as bright as the sun.

  I hoped the humans weren’t as scared as they should have been. I would rather have them confused. Demons like Vance would pick the fear out of them in a heartbeat, and exploit it until they cut their chests open and let him rip the terror from their bodies.

  Vance stalked deeper into the room, the lights overhead turning the shadows darker around him. He finally locked eyes with me.

  “Avery,” he crooned. “So good to see you again.”

  “Vance,” I grumbled. “It hasn’t been long enough.”

  The demon chuckled and knelt in front of me. “I see you’ve picked up some strays since we last met. Quite the collection.”

  “I also ran into a friend of yours. Hope you guys aren’t planning a tea party. He’s gonna be late.”

  “Oh, you mean Armin?” Vance shrugged. “Can’t say I was surprised. That prick always loved to jump the gun.”

  Vance finally turned his head, acknowledging Simon for the first time. “You’re looking healthy, Simon. Plump, almost. I guess Armin didn’t get past the fat?”