Path of the Horseman (27 page)

“Hey, Mads,” I grinned, using her nickname
for the first time in far too long.

Maddy showed no emotion other than shock as I
drew closer. I lowered my hands when I was a couple feet away.

“Look, I wanted to–”

I forgot what I was going to say when she
punched at me. I leaned back and let the swing go wide, and needed
to use my hand to block her second strike. I batted away Maddy’s
quick, dirty jabs and kicks. She was well trained, and managed to
drive her knee into my kidneys when I was sweeping her arms away. I
growled, but didn’t make any move to hurt her.

Still, we were wasting time, and I didn’t
want the girl I liked to kick my ass.

Maddy aimed a powerful roundhouse at my head,
forcing me to duck. As I dropped, I swept my leg along the pavement
and kicked the foot she was using to balance herself. Maddy started
to topple and I rushed up to grab her so she wouldn’t crack her
head on the pavement.

That of course forced me to land on top of
her, and launch the air from her lungs. I pushed myself up to make
sure Maddy was okay, which freed her elbow. It sailed toward my
jaw, but I knocked her arm down and pinned it by her side.

“Get off of me!” she hissed, knowing that
shouting would draw more attention to her escape.

I lifted myself up just enough so Maddy could
breathe, but didn’t release her.

“You’re going to the Valley of Fire, aren’t
you?” I asked.

“I said get off me!” she repeated, raising
her voice. Her pulse was through the roof, her chest pounding
against mine.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I answered.

Keeping my eyes on her, I rose to my feet.
Maddy pushed herself up and scrambled into a fighters stance. She
was human and didn’t have any weapons I could see, but she wasn’t
going down without a fight.

No wonder I liked her so much.

“We can’t get over the wall like this,” I
told her. “But I know another way.”

Maddy started to ask me how, then
backtracked. “What do you mean, ‘we’?”

“I’m going with you,” I answered plainly.

“Like hell you are,” she growled.

I cautioned a step forward. Maddy’s fists
tightened, but she didn’t back away.

“Kade’s planning to go there and kidnap any
humans he can find. He wants to make his slave army bigger.”

Maddy’s anger turned into horror, then
flipped back to disgust. “So why do you want to come? You planning
to poison them out of spite first? Do you guys have some kind of
murder competition going?”

I winced, hating that she would think that of
me. But I shouldn’t have expected anything less. Now that she knew
who I was and what I was capable of, all she would see was a
monster. I didn’t think there would be anything I could do to
convince her otherwise.

But this couldn’t be about my growing
feelings for Maddy. I had bigger problems to deal with. Keeping my
psychotic brother and a pack of vile demons away from a group of
helpless humans was more important than impressing the girl I
liked.

“Look, you can stand here and chew me out, or
you can come with me. I’m betting Josh told you to run and he’d
catch up with you, right?”

She flinched at his name. “Is he okay?”

I think I should try not lying for
once.
“The Vermilions caught him. I don’t know what will happen
to him now. But Kade’s looking for you, and if he finds you, he’ll
torture you. He’s going to keep Josh locked up for a while, but
after we warn the people in the Valley, we can come back and bust
him out. I promise.”

Maddy scowled at that. It didn’t look as cute
this time. “What makes you think I’ll trust you?”

I could have given her a cliché, something
like, ‘you don’t have a choice,’ or ‘I’m your only hope,’ some
bullshit that wasn’t even true. Maddy was more than capable of
taking care of herself. Instead, I took a knife out of from my
belt. Maddy backed up when she saw it, but relaxed when I tossed it
on the ground next to her feet. Her denim blue eyes met mine
uncertainly.

“You’ll probably need that.”

Taking a very, very big leap of faith, I
turned my back to Maddy. I heard her pick up the knife, but when it
didn’t instantly sink into my back, I figured I was in the clear.
Actual trust was virtually out the window, but at least we’d be
able to work together without her attempting to kill me. For
now.

I took a deep breath and focused on the
corner of the wall connecting the shop to the sidewalk beyond. I
held up my hands and called on the black smoke hiding inside of me.
It answered my command, smoothing out into a foggy wall. I turned
the smoke in my hands, spinning it around and splitting it into
smaller fractions. Then wall began to buzz and hum, and soon my
locusts were born.

I could feel the power soaking my energy as I
released it. I was getting low, probably now at half the capacity
I’d been at the beginning of the Tribulation. But the locusts were
the most effective weapon I had. They could eat through anything.
Stone, metal, skin, it didn’t matter. If I wanted my locusts to get
through, they would.

The locusts buzzed eagerly toward the wall,
and began dismantling it. I held them in place, letting them chew
away the corner wall. They ate away concrete and scrap metal with
their acidic mouths, creating a small crevice between the street
and the building.

Sweat began to slide down my neck, but I
concentrated. Kade’s men were on their way, and if he saw what I
was doing, he’d rip the skin from my back with his bare hands.

Finally, the concrete crumbled until it was
low enough to climb over. I called my locusts back to me,
dissolving them into smoke so they could slide home underneath my
flesh. A rush of dizziness hit me, and I slumped against the wall.
I held myself up with one hand, shaking the daze away and blinking
to clear my sight. I was fairly taken aback when I looked to my
right and saw Maddy standing there with a look I could have sworn
was concern.

It faded quickly, and she climbed over the
wall without my help.

I followed her, glancing back to make sure no
one was following us. It looked like we were still in the clear,
though I wasn’t sure how we’d get to the Valley of Fire from the
Las Vegas strip. It was a sixteen hour walk, and I had no idea if
any of the cars would be working.

A handful of Plagued roamed the streets,
moaning at us with rattling voice boxes. There weren’t a lot of
them, but it only took a few of them to notice you, and then you
had a full blown horde on your hands. Not what I wanted to deal
with right now.

I jogged after Maddy, about to ask her how we
could get to the Valley, when I noticed a lone car sitting in the
middle of the road. A car that was running.

The driver’s side door opened, and an
unexpected face popped out.

“Hurry up!” Simon called. “This thing doesn’t
run on hopes and prayers, you know!”

I couldn’t stop my laugh. I jumped in the
passenger seat of the burgundy sedan, moving Simon’s bow and full
quiver onto the floor so I could sit down. Maddy slid into the
back. As soon as we closed the doors, Simon stepped on the gas. I
lurched around the seat, suddenly recalling the last car accident
I’d been in. I grabbed the seatbelt, strapped myself in, and looked
at my brother.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Playing cabbie. Duh.”

I frowned at him. “I mean, why the hell were
you waiting in an escape vehicle on the middle of the Strip?”

“Because you’re predictable,” informed Simon.
“The moment I heard where the fire was coming from, I knew two
things. One, Kade would go batshit. Two, you’d go looking for Maddy
and need an escape route.” He looked in the rearview mirror. “Hey,
Maddy.”

She didn’t respond, shrinking against the
backseat and staring out of the window. Simon sighed.

“Great. This is going to be a long drive.
Where are we going, anyway?”

I leaned back, feeling the machete press
against my spine.

“The Valley of Fire.”

My brother sighed again. “I knew it. Like I
said, you’re so predictable.” He glared at me. “I hate that, you
know.”

“Just keep driving.”

I was grateful when he fell into silence and
did just that.

Even in the black of night, the Valley of
Fire was a sight to see.

Illuminated by the headlights of the car, I
could see the weaving highway road and the rock formations on
either side. In the darkness, they took on a gold tone with light
and dark ribbons of sediment wrapping around them. The sparse
patches of yellow grass and green bushes cast circular shadows on
the sandy floor. Everything looked haunting and creepy, but I
couldn’t tear my eyes from the bumpy horizon. The landscape outside
my window was nothing more than hunched shadows pushing against a
midnight blue sky.

“This Park is huge,” I said, turning in my
seat to look at Simon. “Do you know where you’re going?”

Simon kept his eyes on the road as he
answered me. “Yeah. I had a feeling you’d drag me here one day, so
I looked around the Venetian for a map.”

I raised my eyebrow. “And you found one? How
long did that take you?”

My brother glanced at me and grinned. “You
have your methods, I have mine.”

I stifled a laugh. Simon continued driving.
“It’s in the glove box, along with some flashlights I found.” He
turned his eyes to me again. “We’re going to have to find a place
to stash the car and walk to the Park,” he told us. “We don’t know
who or what’s going to be out there. I don’t want the car to be
stolen, or for someone to find it and know we’re wandering
around.”

I nodded my head in agreement, looking out
the front windshield. “Any ideas?”

“There’s a rock cabin in the Park. It’s
pretty secluded, so we can ditch the car around there then follow
the trails until we find the campground.” He glanced in the
rearview mirror. “It’s by Arch Rock, right?”

She’d been so quiet that I nearly forgot
Maddy was in the car. Still brooding angrily, she gave Simon a curt
nod. She never turned her head from the window. Simon sighed and
turned the car around another bend in the highway.

“This is gonna be a fun hike,” he
mumbled.

My thoughts weren’t much different.

***

About twenty minutes later, Simon used a
crevice between two large boulders to stash the car. We got out and
took a deep breath of fresh, cool mountain air. It was windy and
chilly out here, but I loved the feel of night air in my lungs. I
took extra long breaths, smelling cool sand, dry rock, and freedom.
I looked at the rough, marbled rocks, nudged the thick sand under
my boots, and gazed up.

Millions of stars dotted the inky sky, like
an excited child had spilled a bag full of glitter over a black
tablecloth. There were no clouds to obscure my vision, and I
couldn’t help but wonder what my Bosses Upstairs were thinking. Did
they see my brother and me with a human girl? Did they know what we
were doing? Did they care?

I decided the answer to all of those
questions was no. It was better to accept that they’d left us here.
My brothers constantly accused me of having too much hope in our
cause anyway. I only needed one firm hope to hang onto. Having more
than that asked for disaster.

A blinding white light shone from my right. I
turned away from the stars and looked at the car. Simon was handing
a halogen torch to Maddy. She took it carefully, making sure not to
touch his skin. If Simon was offended, he didn’t care. As Maddy
clicked her torch on, Simon walked over and handed a third one to
me.

“You’re not worried this will attract
attention?” I asked. “It’s a big park. Who knows what’s here.
Plagued or Soulless might see the light.”

Simon gave me an impatient glare, buckling
the quiver of arrows to his back and draping his bow over them. “We
can either see where we’re going and risk exposure, or we can walk
in pitch blackness and let ourselves get lost. There’s no good
scenario here.”

Accepting his point, I took the torch from
him and clicked it on. Simon reached into his pocket and pulled out
the map. I peered over his shoulder, getting the barest glimpse of
it before he turned and started walking away. I didn’t try to stop
him. Simon had enough self-confidence issues. If he wanted to take
the lead for once, I was going to let him.

I followed him down the hill to the beaten
trail. He paused once in the middle of the road to look at the map.
I stood behind him, looking around for any kind of threat. I
couldn’t see or hear anything. It was eerily quiet in the Valley.
The beauty and serenity I’d seen and felt earlier was giving way to
something more sinister. I didn’t exactly feel like I was being
watched, but this was the kind of place where you were just waiting
to hear a piercing scream echo through the canyons before it was
silenced forever. This was the perfect place to kill someone,
especially these days.