Path of the Horseman

by Amy Braun

  “If they’re fucking dictatorships.”

  Kade rolled his eyes. “Wake up, Avery. It’s the end times, thanks to us. If we don’t control what’s left, what the hell use are we?”

  I looked at the man lying on the ground, trying to crawl away from Kade as discreetly as he could. Half of me felt sorry for him. But the other half could see Kade’s point. Even in our human bodies, we were stronger than any living creature. Our powers could be drained in these bodies, but we could still fight demons and Soulless and whatever else came our way. It was hard not to feel superior watching that pathetic, bony man drag himself away like a slug.

  But the world wasn’t meant for us. It had been made for humans. We might have destroyed it, but it was never ours to live in.

  “Where did you find all these people?”

  Both Kade and I were astonished that Simon started talking again. I’d assumed he was just going to stand there and absorb information.

  Kade shrugged. “Most of them were trapped in the hotels. Some of them wandered in, running from this haven they heard about on the radio waves.”

  My attention shot from the crawling man to my older brother. “They were trying to escape a haven?”

  Kade looked at me impatiently. “Did I stutter?”

  I ignored him. “Did they say where it was? Was it in the Valley of Fire?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  I tried to calm down. Not an easy thing to do as my mind became a frenzy of scenarios. There were a million reasons why humans would run from the supposed sanctuary at in the Valley of Fire. None of them were good.

  “That’s where the humans we came with were going,” I said. “Why did these ones leave?”

  Kade shrugged. “Fuck if I know. Fuck if I care.”

  I looked past him to the skinny man. He got to his feet and started scurrying away. I moved around Kade and chased him.

  “Wait!”

  The man jumped and spun around, his eyes wide with fear. I looked as harmless as I could. Though with Kade behind me, I was pretty sure the way I looked wouldn’t mean shit to this guy.

  “The haven,” I asked, slowly bringing the man out of his fear-induced haze. “Why did you leave?”

  “Don’t you say a fucking word,” Kade commanded over my shoulder. My heart sank when I saw the man flinch.

  “Get the fuck out of here,” my brother went on. “If you tell this asshole anything without my permission, I’ll personally skin you and put you in a marathon with the Plagued.”

  The scrawny man’s eyes bulged. Kade barked at him to leave, and the man was all too happy to do so. I spun on my heel, barely holding onto my rage.

  “What the fuck did you do that for?” I demanded.

  “I don’t want you running off to play Save The Humans,” snapped Kade. “Whatever’s scaring the shit and piss out of them is pushing them this way. That means I can build a bigger army, which means I can cut my way to Ciaran easier. You don’t get to order my citizens in my fucking city.”

  Kade towered over me. I had to look up to meet his eyes. His hands were balled with a white-knuckle grip. He wouldn’t let me argue unless I had a broken jaw.

  “Kade has a point, Avery,” came Simon’s tentative voice. I didn’t look away from my oldest brother. “Ciaran knew where we were every time. We should find out what’s giving us away before you think about doing anything else.”

  The anger blazing through my chest wanted to ignore Simon’s reason. It wanted to beat Kade, free the humans, and kill Ciaran. But no matter how intense the rage was, it didn’t have the strength for the impossible…

  After our oldest brother left the madness, we began to separate from each other. I did not see who walked away first, and did not care which direction they went. I had no destination, so I wandered in a straight line, staring at the cracked pavement until it turned into cracked earth.

  I slowed down only when I sensed eyes on my back. They were not my brothers, and they were not human. There were no humans left. I stood in place and slowly turned around.

  The Paladin smiled at me, hellish eyes sparking with ravenous excitement. The exalted demon had chosen a human form with long, twisted hair and antique clothes. I recognized him from the images Heaven had shown me. I did not say his name.

  “I must confess, you have impressed me.” He inclined his head to the burning skyline. “Why have you turned your back to it?”

  I stared, unblinking. “This is not what I wanted to create.”

  The demon’s smile faltered. “You were created for chaos. How can you not revel in it?”

  My expression remained the same. “I have been given a human body and memories. It pains me to see what I have done. I cannot see any hope for this world’s future.”

  The Paladin took a careful step toward me. “This has not been for nothing,” he told me. “We have been set free. Together we could create a new world, one where humanity will bow to all supernaturals. With your powers, we will control them, the way we were always supposed to.”

  I showed the demon my back and continue to walk into the desert. As I left, I said, “There is nothing left to control.”

  When I left Ciaran that day, I thought it would be the last I would see of him. I hadn’t thought about his offer. Join him and rule the dead world, all that shit. Could he still want me for that, after all this time? I never stuck around to get the details. I only started killing the Soulless when I found out that Ciaran was making them. Partly to get back at the demon for taking advantage of the dwindling human race, and partly because I needed something to do.

  Now things were different, and we were all part of his plan.

  “Have you seen Logan?” I asked Kade. “If people have been dying recently, he must have been around, but we never saw him.”

  Logan felt and collected every death in the world, but he couldn’t be around for all of them. Human lives went out like fire under rain when we did our dirty jobs. Logan picked the deaths he wanted to see, though he never told us why. Our oldest brother had about as many secrets as Ciaran and his coal-eating crew.

  Kade scoffed, a hint of rage seeping into his cold, black eyes. He’d never forgiven Logan for telling him that all the humans were dead. I can’t imagine knowing he’d been lied to sat well with Kade.

  “I don’t know and don’t give a fuck. That emo bitch is probably in some cave writing poetry and having a cry whenever he has to collect some dead bunny.”

  That was harsh. Logan was a recluse, but I still liked him. Well, understood him was probably a better word. He had the roughest job of all of us. We made the messes. He had to clean them up.

  Logan’s biggest problem was that he cared too much. The memories hit him the hardest, forcing him to feel the pain of every broken heart and dying breath. Logan hated his job, because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t save anyone.

  But I wasn’t going to get any help from Kade, and Simon was too scared. If anyone would want to help me stop Ciaran and find this haven, it would be Logan.

  “Look,” Kade said, “we’ve all come up with a big pile of steaming nothing. No one knows what Ciaran is trying to do, and I’m in no rush to find this stupid Garden of Eden. Best thing we can do if you want to kick Ciaran in the balls is wait for him to show up. He knows where to find me, and my door’s always open to anyone that wants a tussle. So are you done playing twenty questions? I’m fucking starving.”

  Simon perked up at that, but hid it quickly. Kade would take the tiniest flinch and blow it up to massive proportions. Simon was his favorite target. Kade started turning for the side doors.

  “I want to see the other people I came in with,” I told him.

  Kade stopped and looked over his shoulder. “Again with seeing your pets? What’s gotten you so hot and bothered about them?” He paused to think it over, then grinned. “Or is it just one of them that’s flustering you? Let me guess, the pretty blonde?”

  It was a huge effort not to give anything away. But the
thought of something happening to Maddy behind my back worried me too much.

  Enough that feeling it became a huge mistake.

  Kade sensed my worry, and used his power to get into my mind. He prodded that worry, twisting it until it grew into paranoia, and finally fear. My blood was pounding, my heart was racing, and my palms were sweating.

  “She’s cute, for a human. We’re at war, and it’s been a long time since I’ve had a spoil.”

  “Don’t you fucking dare,” I warned him, unable to stop myself. Shit. He wasn’t just trying to work up my fear. He was jacking up my rage.

  Kade smiled, black eyes flashing wildly. Skeletal rings of red smoke wafted off of him, becoming a thin fog around us.

  “Relax, Pest. I’ll be gentle with your Juliet. She looks fragile. Wouldn’t want to break her on the trial run.”

  I set my jaw but held my tongue. My nails clawed at my palms. I wanted to defend Maddy’s honor, but the moment I told Kade how strong she was, he’d make it his personal goal to break her. Kade lived for challenges.

  So he pushed me further.

  “It’s not all uglies I have out there, you know,” he said, now only three feet away from me. “I found some great looking girls when I took over. Poor things were scared out of their minds. Literally begged me for comfort, promising to let me do anything I wanted to them.” Kade’s eyes were pitch black. They nearly looked like a demon’s eyes. The red smoke around us was thicker now.

  “Some probably regretted it, but the others liked the pain. If they didn’t, I made them like it.” He tilted his head. “So what do you think, Pest? Is your golden-haired princess going to be a sweet submissive, or am I going to have a tigress to beat into line?”

  I couldn’t hold all the fear and rage he was forcing into my head. Kade knew how to manipulate the most dangerous emotions to the point where he could put images into others heads. Not the full-fledged memories like our Bosses used on us, but quick bursts of visions that seemed so real you ended up believing them. Like a single reel of a horror film spliced into pieces of a Disney daydream.

  I saw Maddy, crying and bleeding. Trying to escape. Getting pulled back. Fighting uselessly. Being tortured. Screaming for me to save her–

  I snapped.

  Black smoke filled my hand as I threw it at Kade. Just what he’d been waiting for. He tilted his head to the side, letting my fist fly past him. Then he slammed the heel of his palm into my solar plexus.

  I went sprawling, skidding back along the floor and landing hard on my back. I coughed, trying to breathe. Kade punched like a freight train full of rocket fuel. It only took one hit for him to beat you. But he took more when he could get them.

  I stayed on the ground to make sure nothing inside me was seriously damaged. I was fine, though I’d have a hell of a bruise under the scar Ciaran had given me. I grunted and rolled up, seeing Kade standing over me. Simon was in the background, watching with wide, nervous eyes.

  “Keep pushing me, Pest,” Kade whispered dangerously. “Please. It’s been so long since I’ve had a real fight.”

  Kade leaned back and crossed his arms, grinning.

  “Not that I think you’d beat me, but who knows? You might get a lucky shot in.”

  The fear and rage he was funneling into me nearly shattered my control. More images of Maddy in pain raced through my mind. How was I supposed to know if these were hallucinations, or memories of what he’d already done?

  I closed my eyes. No. Stop thinking that. Kade’s just fucking with you. She’s okay. She has to be.

  I got to my feet, exhaled steadily, and stared at Kade. “Are you done?”

  My brother frowned. “You’re no fun.”

  I waited for him to torment me again. I wasn’t entirely ready for more of Kade’s sadism, but I would take it. The only way to beat him was to resist.

  Kade finally sighed. “Fine. Let’s see if your friends decided to do something useful with the last days of their lives.”

  He started for the stairs. I followed him, but kept my distance in case he tried another trick. All he did was walk. I could sense Simon’s eyes on my back, but I didn’t waste my time on looking or talking to him. I was still pissed, and I figured he was too.

  I was really starting to hate family reunions.

  Chapter 13

  There was no working power any more, so to get to the top floor of the hotel, Kade replaced the elevators with a pulley system. It looked like a metal cage designed to drop us into the deepest pit of Hell, but Kade assured us that the elevator cables pulling us up were secure.

  I hated having to trust him on that.

  During the slow, rickety ride, Kade explained that when new humans arrived, he took a look at them and decided what they would be best for. There were a lot of open spaces for work, though his theory was that if he ever started losing manpower, he’d make the people he had work even harder.

  During the ride, Simon asked him what he did with people who didn’t want to be slaves, Kade chuckled and said, “Don’t worry, Slime. I have a special place in the basement for them. It’s the same place I put the people who want to be my assistants.”

  Kade had a small town and a cult/army, but he worked alone. It made him look like even more of a god.

  When he told me that two of the humans, Ricardo and Laurel, had already offered to work for sanctuary, I was disappointed but not surprised. Ricardo could do a lot with the engineers and mechanics. Laurel would be distracted by gardening. Staying under Josh’s command had brought them nothing but grief, though I couldn’t see them growing to love Kade when their muscles burned and their backs gave out.

  But what the fuck did I know about the human mind? I had part of one, the memories of one, but that didn’t make me one of the mortal bipeds.

  It seemed like forever before we reached the top floor, but the moment I stepped out of the metal cage and looked at the suite with four Vermilions standing in front of it, I was nervous.

  Maddy would have a lot of questions. Josh would think I was Satan himself. How the fuck was I going to explain everything to them? Was there even a way for me to lie?

  Fingers flicked my ear hard. I rubbed the side of my head and glared at Kade, wishing I could rip the smug look off his face.

  “What’s wrong, Pest? Don’t you want to see your cute little pet?”

  I shoved past him. Kade laughed and let me. I stormed toward the guards, all four of whom were holding crude spears made from golf club staffs with butcher knife tips. Two of them crossed their spears in an X over the suite doors, and the two on the far side by the walls pointed their spears at me.

  “Get the fuck out of my way,” I told them.

  “Our orders are not to let anyone into this suite,” one of the Vermilions said. The emptiness in his voice made me want to snap all of those spears and shove one half up their asses. I wasn’t picky about which half.

  I crushed my nails into my palm. Kade laughed, then got out of my head. He stepped forward and put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Relax, boys. I’ll look after him.” Kade jutted his chin at the doors. “Are they co-operating?”

  “They haven’t caused any problems and aren’t shouting or breaking things anymore, but they refuse to join your gracious community,” answered another Vermilion.