Path of the Horseman

by Amy Braun

  Josh might have seen what I was doing, but it happened too fast for him to react. When he crashed into me, the chair leg went straight through his chest.

  He still knocked me over, but I turned at the last second so he wouldn’t crush me again. He rolled onto his back, the metal chair leg embedded deep in his heart. I crawled over to him, watching his eyes stare at the ceiling without seeing it. I left the chair leg in his chest, knowing he couldn’t heal around it, and that his eyes would glaze over with death soon enough.

  The floor shuddered underneath me, the Hell Door refusing to be ignored. I planted my palms on the ground for balance as the metal furniture clattered sharply behind me. I looked up to where Maddy was hanging.

  The circle of demonfire had decreased, but a pit currently two feet wide was growing beneath Maddy’s feet. A spiraling, churning crimson pit that looked like the ribbed, twisted hole left in a body from a bullet wound. The smell of sulfur wafted into the air, so intense it made my eyes water.

  The Hell Door was beginning to open, meaning Maddy was out of time. Everyone was out of time.

  Ciaran stood in front of her, a knife poised in his hands, ready to plunge it into her chest. Once she was dead, there would be no stopping the Hell Door from opening.

  I scraped up some power as I got to my feet, letting it mist out of my hands and condense into a few small locusts. I shot them up to the ropes above her head, ordering them to chew through the binds but not to touch her. While they worked, I started running. The gap beneath her was widening, and if I didn’t move now, I would never make it.

  Everything happened at once, though to me it seemed to occur in slow motion.

  Ciaran’s knife descended toward Maddy’s heart at the same time I leaped over the cavern. The locusts finished chewing through the ropes, making her fall until I grabbed her in my arms. Ciaran’s knife stabbed into my ribs just under my heart as we fell onto the opposite side of the gap. The dying shudder of the basement as the Hell Door collapsed and shivered closed. Ciaran’s furious scream as I turned and landed on my back, protecting both of us from the hard fall but doing more damage to my side.

  I’d done it. Stopped the Hell Door from opening and kept the demons trapped where they belonged. But if Ciaran’s angry scream was any indication, the fight was far from over.

  Watching Ciaran from the corner of my vision, I rolled Maddy to the side and put my hand on her bare skin. I forced the clotting to accelerate and stop her bleeding. Then my smoke dug into her bone marrow and created new blood cells, splitting in half to find her kidneys to help stimulate the production–

  The shadow appearing over me was the only warning Ciaran gave me.

  A battle-axe shaped from demonfire dove in my direction. I pushed Maddy away, keeping in the barest amount of my smoke so she could be healed, and rolled away before I could be killed. The battle-axe crashed into the cement, the black demonfire melting away from its magic blade and slithering toward me. I felt the flames lash my arms, burning my skin until it was blistered. I twisted into a crouch, ducking as the black and red battle-axe swung for my head. The edges of my hair were singed, though it felt like my entire head had been shoved into an open stove.

  Ciaran’s foot collided with my face, knocking me onto my back. The bleeding wound in my side flooded with pain. I couldn’t take another beating. Magic was the only weapon I had against Ciaran, and I didn’t have much of it left.

  The Paladin raised his battle-axe over me again, bellowing a war cry as he brought it down. I forced power out of my skin and pushed it all at Ciaran. The smoke wasn’t made of anything really deadly. I only made it to force Ciaran back and give me a chance to get to my feet.

  The demon hacked the blazing battle-axe through my smoke, charging toward me again. The madness in his eyes was terrifying, the red, orange, and yellow of his pupils swirling like dual infernos. Ciaran’s strikes were wild and brutally fast. It was hard for me to compare this Ciaran to the casual, smooth talker who liked to work behind the scenes to dismantle people’s lives. I was facing the Paladin now, the demonic warrior who tortured and killed his way through the ranks of Hell, who was ready to create a pandemonium circus on earth.

  This wasn’t someone I could beat.

  Ciaran’s battle-axe made an upward arc in front of my chest, forcing me to step back. I raised my hands to grab on the last scraps of my smoke, when the demonfire shifted in his hand. It coiled and twisted into a thick black whip. The lash crashed down, burning me from the top of my right shoulder to my left hip.

  It felt like someone had stripped the skin off my body. The agony was so excruciating I didn’t have time to scream. I just blacked out for half a second.

  That half a second was all the time Ciaran needed to lunge forward and punch me in the ribs, exactly where he’d stabbed me by accident.

  He held his fist there, calling on more fire and created a knife to spear me again. My insides erupted, the blazing pain searing my nerves, snapping my tendons, and bursting my blood vessels. Ciaran pulled the demonfire knife from my ribs and kicked me in the chest.

  I hit the ground hard, unable to think past the pain. When I tried to call up my power, it didn’t work. The gifts I’d been granted with struggled to heal me, cauterizing and knitting my injuries together. My head pounded when I tried to concentrate.

  I had to give up when Ciaran lashed the whip at me again. It missed its initial strike, getting to my feet and lurching back, but the demonfire weapon snapped backward and slashed across my stomach. Another strip was burned from me, causing me to drop to one knee. Ciaran came out of nowhere, slamming his knee into my head.

  When I toppled onto the ground, my body refused to co-operate. I dragged myself along the floor, telling myself not to give up. There was still some fight in me. Ciaran couldn’t win like this. But I was feeling human. Broken. Vulnerable. Weak.

  The Paladin put one foot on my throat, crushing it with his boot and nearly breaking my neck.

  “You must think you’re superior, don’t you?”

  The demonfire whip lashed over my stomach, just over the first wound. Scorching agony blinded me. I couldn’t even scream with my throat trapped the way it was.

  “You Horsemen always thought you were above us all. The humans and the demons.”

  Another lash. Another strip of skin torn away.

  “How does it feel to be brought so low? To feel the pain you brought on so many?”

  Ciaran had been too busy torturing me he didn’t pay attention to my smoke covered hands. He didn’t notice them slide under the hem of his pants, and latch onto his shin. He barely felt the smoke enter his body.

  Not until I condensed that smoke, and released my locusts.

  “It feels like this,” I rasped.

  The swarm of locusts detonated inside of Ciaran like a nuclear bomb. They spread like a cancer in rapid motion, devouring every inch of Ciaran. Taking him apart piece by piece, as he had tried to do to me. The Paladin staggered off me, but I refused to let go of his leg, even when his whip cracked against my back. I held on, shoving all my magic into Ciaran and letting the locusts devour him from inside out.

  They were acid in his veins, burning and corroding every healthy cell they touched. They were the best disease I ever created, and the most effective. It wasn’t long before Ciaran couldn’t stand, because there was nothing left of his femurs. He dropped the demonfire whip, because there was nothing left of his muscles. He couldn’t breathe, because there was nothing left of his lungs.

  He barely had the chance to look at me and gasp, “How?”

  I was supporting myself on one elbow, holding onto the last of my strength.

  “I’m a disease,” I said. “There’s nothing I can’t destroy.”

  With one last push, I set my locusts on Ciaran’s skin. The Paladin exploded into a flash of dark red blood, the freed locusts buzzing hungrily over his splotchy remains.

  At least they were feeling cheerful.

  Chapter 24
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  I dissolved the locusts and pulled the smoke back into my skin, forcing them to get to work on me. Now that the hardest fights of my life were over, I could hardly move. There wasn’t an inch of me that wasn’t burned, bruised or punctured. I had maybe a tenth of my power left. There was no way that would be enough to heal everything I had endured. This human body wasn’t meant to handle all the pain it had received.

  But I heard her voice, and suddenly my pain wasn’t important.

  “Avery! Oh my God, Avery!”

  Maddy dropped to her knees beside me, pulling me into her lap.

  “Ow, shit, don’t move me,” I breathed.

  “Fuck, sorry.”

  I wheezed a couple times. When she figured out what I was doing, she frowned. “Why are you laughing?”

  I grinned. “You’re cute when you swear.”

  Maddy’s snicker caught in her throat. Her soft fingers stroked through my burned, bloodstained hair. “And you’re an idiot.”

  Idiot or not, Maddy still leaned down to kiss me.

  Her lips were soft and warm, filled with life and sweetness. It made everything I’d been through worth it. Ciaran was dead. The humans had been saved. Maddy was alive, and deepening her kiss. She didn’t care what I was. I meant something to her.

  What more could I have asked for?

  She sat there with me until I told her I could stand. She assumed this meant that I was okay enough to walk. I didn’t tell her otherwise. She held my hand and pulled me toward the ladder, until I tugged her to a stop. Maddy turned around, looking confused and worried.

  “Give me a second,” I said.

  “No,” she countered. “You’re hurt. You’re getting help now.”

  She pulled on my hand again, but I slipped my hand from hers and wrapped it around my middle.

  “There’s something I need to do first,” I told her.

  “Whatever it is, it can wait. You’re bleeding everywhere.”

  There was a tremor in her voice. I must have looked terrible, at least five enormous blisters lining my skin while my sides leaked copious amounts of blood. I felt about as great as I looked.

  “Sorry, Mads. I need to do this now.”

  She took a step toward me, close enough that I could see the intensity of her denim blue eyes. God, she was beautiful.

  “Fine, if you’re going to be stubborn, tell me what we’re doing and let’s get it over with.”

  Keeping one hand across my stomach, I used my less bloodied hand to stroke her honey blonde hair. It felt like silk, and her skin was even softer when my thumb brushed down her cheek.

  “Sorry again, Mads. This is something I have to do alone. Besides,” I looked at her blood streaked but undamaged legs and grinned, “you need pants.”

  “Don’t you dare make jokes right now!” she cried, barely controlling herself. “You need help.”

  “I’ll be okay. This won’t take me long to do. Wait upstairs for me. I’ll be there in a fifteen minutes.”

  Maddy’s eyes traced over my pale face, all her defiance turning into worry. “Ten,” she finally whispered. “If you’re not outside in ten minutes, I’m bringing in the cavalry.”

  I grinned. “Ten minutes it is.”

  It hurt to move, but I leaned down to kiss her. Maddy put her fingers over my lips and slowly pushed me back.

  “Not so fast, tough guy. You don’t get another kiss until you come outside. Promise me.”

  My chest ached, and it wasn’t just from the wound. “Madeline–”

  “Promise me.”

  This was the one promise I didn’t want to make. But it would probably be the last.

  “Okay,” I said. “I promise.”

  Maddy didn’t relax. Not that I was expecting her to. She stepped back, watching me like she was hated herself for leaving me behind.

  “Ten minutes.”

  I nodded and smiled weakly. “Ten minutes.”

  Maddy stood in basement for a few more seconds, fighting all her instincts. Then she turned, climbed up the ladder, and disappeared from my sight.

  I waited a full minute, until I knew she was out of earshot. Then I collapsed.

  I crawled on all fours, finally slumping with my back against a wall. Now came the waiting. He showed up before I could pass out again.

  “Hello, Avery.”

  I looked up, meeting Logan’s eyes as he stood across from me in the darkness.

  “If you tell me you’ve been here this whole time, I’m gonna be pissed.”

  Logan shook his head, striding over to me. “I arrived after you defeated Ciaran. Finding you with my vision was difficult, otherwise I would have been here sooner.”

  He stopped at the wall beside me and sat down at my side. He rested his forearms on his knees, pulled a cigarette and silver lighter out from his jacket, flared it up, and looked at his feet. Cancer was the least of our worries right now.

  Logan sighed wearily. “I kept thinking of ways I could have changed it. A time when I could appear and help all of you. But every time I did, the ending remained the same. It was just the scenario that was different.”

  “So,” I said. “It’s really that time, huh?”

  Logan nodded slowly, taking a slow drag from the cigarette. “I am so sorry, brother.”

  I believed him. But Logan wasn’t here to save me.

  “Don’t be,” I said. “We knew this would happen.”

  “I’m not just talking about that,” he admitted. “I’m sorry for not helping when I should have. For letting this cursed power of mine rule what I am and what I do. It seems like if I’d just toughed it out and looked at the positives the way you have, a lot more deaths could have been prevented.”

  “Hey, don’t apologize for being what you are. What you have to do, it’s not easy. We didn’t think about the pain we would cause you.” I lowered my eyes. “That makes me feel like the worst brother in the world.”

  I could feel Logan’s sad dark eyes on me. “We’re forgiving each other. I think that makes us good brothers.”

  That was when we fell into silence while Logan continued to smoke. I sat there in pain, wondering how much I could get out of him before I kicked the bucket. It wouldn’t be long now.

  “You’re going to be the last person alive,” I said.

  If Logan was surprised by my out of the blue remark, I couldn’t tell. “I know.”

  “Who’s going to tap your shoulder when it’s time?”

  Logan was silent for a moment. “No one. It’s my responsibility, and nobody else’s.”

  “That doesn’t seem fair.”

  “Name one thing in life that is..”

  I coughed, tasted copper, then spit it out. I looked up and saw Logan watching me with tired, black eyes.

  “Well, are you going to do it or not?” My demand sounded raspy.

  “In a minute.” Logan’s reply was sad, and he didn’t seem interested in smoking anymore.

  “Why waste the minute? I’m in a shitload of pain here.”

  “I know,” said Logan. “I shouldn’t keep you here, but I can’t help it. I’m going to miss you.”