Path of the Horseman (5 page)

The archer locked eyes with me. He dropped
his bow unhappily.

“Goddamn it, Avery!” shouted Simon. “You know
how long it took me to make that trap?!”

I would have given my brother shit for making
more noise to draw the Plagued with, but it was a little late for
that. I swung around, driving my heel into the head of a Plagued
sneaking to my back. I pinned its skull in place with my boot so I
could put my machete through the left side of another Plagued’s
skull, and watched it exit the right side. Then I stomped down, and
shattered the cranium of the unlucky bastard under me.

“Bitch at me later!” I yelled back. “Get me
out of here!”

“You’ve got powers!” Simon retorted. “Use
them!”

There had to be a dozen Plagued surrounding
me now. They weren’t making much noise, but I could see their
rotting, weathered faces and smell the sourness of death coming
from their open sores.

“I just walked fifteen miles to find you!
Pull your own weight for once!”

Simon’s laugh was bitter and harsh. I
couldn’t see him anymore. I didn’t know if he was still shooting
arrows into the Plagued, or if he was just watching me shove them
around like I was the unfortunate asshole in a zombie mosh pit.

“That’s rich, considering you clammed up
halfway through!”

My temper became a lit fuse reaching the
powder keg. I could have drained myself with my powers to
permanently kill these undead bastards, I could have cut them to
ribbons with my blades, or I could have let them bite me and poison
themselves. But human bodies were fragile, and I had worn mine out
from lack of food, running, fighting, facing a demon, and trudging
all the way through two cities to find my brother. I was not in the
mood for Simon or his shitty truths.

I punched two Plagued and kicked another,
snarling as they reached out to grab me. I knocked down their arms
and shoved out my hands, feeling smoky power tear out of my
fingertips. I flexed my fingers and stabbed out whips of fume,
letting it enter their mouths and work its way into their dead
brains. I sent the smoke into their skulls, and gave them a fever
of one hundred and seven.

Stretching my power the way I was, I could
only infect six of them. Even as their brains started melting and
they dropped like flies, I could feel myself weakening. When I
finally let go, my vision went dark and I pitched forward. I caught
myself before I blacked out, but it didn’t matter when the Plagued
dog-piled on top of me.

The weight of so many bodies crushed the air
from my lungs. A putrid mix of sour rot and dead blood filled my
mouth and nose. Rough, stubby fingers pushed aside my rucksack and
blunt teeth dug into my back. The Plagued couldn’t infect me, and I
felt them convulsing as my blood poisoned them, but they were too
stupid to figure out I was killing them for good. All they tasted
was flesh, and they wanted as much as they could get.

I tried to move, to form some smoke, anything
to get the undead fuckers off of me, but I couldn’t so much as
twitch under all the literal dead weight. I fumbled for my weapons
as flesh was pulled from my back. I gritted my teeth as they gnawed
on my back, shoulders, and legs. They shivered as they ate me,
fighting the venom in my blood for a few more mouthfuls of
flesh.

I hated being in a human body. The agony of
being eaten alive made it so fucking hard to think. Every time I
tried to work up a plan, a Plagued would clamp its teeth into my
body, putting down the pressure and pulling until my skin was
stretched like a tough elastic band. Agony electrified my brain and
stopped me from remembering what I was trying to do.

The only way to get out of here alive was to
let go, and not care about how much more power I would lose. I
relaxed as much as possible and breathed deeply, letting the black
smoke of disease mix with my blood and filter out of my pores. The
Plagued started collapsing off of me, poisoned the instant my smoke
touched them, with more taking their place. The bastards were
oblivious to the venom I was putting in the air. They’d walk
through fire to get their dinner.

But then they stopped. I heard the dull
thumps of bodies collapsing, though they didn’t sound as heavy as
they should have. The last set of Plagued teeth unlatched from my
back, and I was finally free. I let go of my power and nearly
passed out again when the hurt train arrived. This must have been
what going through a meat grinder felt like. There wasn’t an inch
of me that didn’t feel like it had been gnawed on. Even though the
bites wouldn’t kill or turn me, they still burned and throbbed. Now
I was going to have to use the last of my skills to heal
myself.

My arms wobbled when I pushed myself up. I
slid my knees up to get better leverage. I lifted my head slowly,
but still felt some vertigo. I blinked and looked over my shoulder
to figure out why I’d escaped becoming a three course meal.

Simon was standing at the far end of the
pool, his hands swirling with white smoke. His eyes were black
chasms even as he called his power back. Simon was the smallest and
least intimidating of all of us, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t
dangerous.

He let the white smoke slip back into his
skin and sighed. I glanced down at the bodies of the Plagued.
Calling them leathery skeletons was now more accurate. When Simon
unleashed his smoke, the vapors touched the Plagued and evaporated
all their bodily fluids. Blood turned to dust in their veins, the
heart, lungs and brain dried out, the spinal fluid turned to sand.
The body lost half its weight in a matter of seconds, until the
skin became thick parchment and clung to the bones like saran
wrap.

Simon saved my life by starving the dead. How
convenient.

He blinked as he came back into himself,
watching me with an expression that was almost concerned. I focused
on standing up. I got to my feet, only to get a head rush and
nearly topple over again. Simon took a few quick steps toward me,
stopping in his tracks when I swiveled my head to give him a death
glare.

“Fuck off,” I growled.

He looked hurt for a second, then glared
right back. “I saved your life, asshole.”

“After you let me get turned into a chew toy.
Thanks for that, Sime.”

“I didn’t actually think you’d get bitten,”
he defended. “Why didn’t you fight them off?”

I whirled fully, staring at Simon with
furious, blazing eyes. It was a serious effort to hold in my power
and not lash out at him. Given what I was, I could do severe damage
to him. I could even kill him.

I wasn’t at that point, but I was getting
there.

“Because I haven’t eaten in three fucking
days and walked fifteen fucking miles to get here! And that was
after I faced off with some Soulless and fucking Vance!”

My voice could have rattled the walls, but I
didn’t think that was why Simon flinched. Vance’s name freaked him
out as much as it did when I saw the demonic jerkoff.

“Vance was out there? With Soulless?”

“That’s what I said,” I spat. “And yeah, he’s
still Ciaran’s go-to-bruiser-slash-prankster. Know what trick he
tried to pull on me? He said that they were looking for souls.”

Simon squinted, not understanding the same
way I hadn’t. “But nothing here has a soul. Everyone’s dead, or
they’ve given their souls to the demons.” Sure enough, he processed
the same thoughts tumbling through my head. “Unless…”

His dark eyes practically popped out of his
head.

“Yeah,” I remarked, lowering my voice.
“Unless.”

For a long time, Simon did nothing but stare
in my direction and think. It gave me the chance to really take in
his appearance for the first time since I last saw him. He wore an
oversized burgundy hoodie and heavy blue jeans to make himself look
bigger than he really was. A camouflage printed compound bow was
looped over his back next to a quiver of arrows. In reality,
Simon’s human body weighed about a hundred and twenty pounds. He
had the height, but not the muscle. His dark brown hair looked like
it had been caught in a wind tunnel. Simon was older than me, but
he looked like a fourteen year old that never left puberty. The one
similarity we had was our eyes. They were the same constantly
shifting tone of darkness. Right now, they were the same color as
graphite. He was a mixture of nerves and relief, the same way he
always was. Simon was always worried about something. But he was
still the only brother I sort of got along with.

Simon ran a hand through his shaggy mess of
brown hair. “I wasn’t going to let anything happen to you,” he
admitted. “You know that, right?”

Damn him. Hearing shit like this kept me from
punching him, and reminded me of how alone I’d been. Judging from
the sincerely depressed look on his face, I wasn’t the only one
feeling it.

But he wasn’t getting off that easily.

“Whatever. How the fuck do we get out of your
shooting gallery?”

Simon stepped to the side and let me see the
collapsible metal ladder unfurled over the edge of the pool. I
grabbed my weapons and stomped over to it, forcing the tough guy
act on even though my human body was screaming at me to take it
easy.

“You should take it easy,” Simon told me as I
started to climb up.

My brother wasn’t a mind reader. He just knew
me too well. Just like he knew I’d glare at him once before
climbing up the ladder without help. I pulled myself back onto the
resort grounds and debated detaching the ladder from where it was
planted in the ground by the poolside. I wouldn’t mind leaving
Simon trapped in the pool with a bunch of corpses for a
timeout.

By the time I made up my mind, Simon was
climbing up the ladder. I sighed internally and waited. He was
about as graceful as a newborn calf with a whiskey-filled brain,
but at least he got to his feet.

Simon stared at me hesitantly, like he didn’t
know what to do now that he’d seen me again. Of the four of us, we
were the only two that could tolerate each other. Kade had a
superiority complex that was only outsized by his arrogance, and
Logan was as sociable as a cactus dripping with cyanide. At least
Simon and I could stand in front of each other without wanting to
depress or kill one another.

He observed the tears in my clothes, the
blood and grit on my face, hands, and arms. His graphite eyes
sparked nervously.

“How far away was Vance?”

“He jumped me on the highway a few hours ago.
He did his disappearing act before I could kill him. I kicked the
shit out of his Soulless, so he might be getting new party
crashers. I have no clue where he’s going, but something tells me
he’s gonna give Ciaran a status update.”

Simon’s eyes flashed again. He was scared.
Couldn’t say I blamed him, though I was more worried about the
possibility of live humans running around this patch of wasteland.
Simon glanced around as the sky continued to darken. Night was
always the hardest time of day. We had to find a place to hole up
and get as much half sleep as we could, just in case Plagued got
hungry, Soulless became restless, and demons wanted to play
pranks.

“Let’s get inside,” Simon said. “I’m
starving.”

The moment he turned his back and walked
away, I couldn’t help it. Simon’s irony never failed to make me
smile.

Living in a fancy resort after the
Tribulation wasn’t as luxurious as you might think. Sure, there was
no shortage of rooms, if you don’t mind that half of them have
rotting bodies in them. Yeah, the views are great, if you like
staring at endless amounts of sand. There are tons of supplies and
amenities, if you don’t mind that half of them are broken or
expired.

Being inside the Ravella made me feel about
as glamorous as a five dollar whore that just did a face plant into
pig slop.

Simon picked the biggest, most expensive
suite in the whole hotel. Made sense to me. It wasn’t like there
were creditors to check if his deposit was going to bounce. The
suite’s pale yellow walls continued to leech their color. All the
photos and frames were covered in dust. The edges of the sofas were
fraying and the sides of the tables were scuffed. White sheets were
tossed lazily onto the mattress, and the bathroom smelled like
mold. Past the tattered curtains, I could see handprints on the
windows where someone had been watching the massacres underneath
them. There wasn’t any luggage or clothes in the suite, so the
handprints must have been from Simon. I wondered how much he had
seen while he was living here alone.

While my brother set down his bow and walked
into the dining room and started rifling around, I turned from the
window, tossed my rucksack onto the floor, and dropped ass first
onto the couch. For all its plush appearance, it didn’t feel as
comfortable as I expected. Though that could have been because I
felt like road kill.

Shifting again, I pulled my machete over my
head and set it on the dusty carpet floor. I brought up some black
smoke, rubbing it between my fingertips until there was a deep blue
glow in the center. Then I pulled down the collar of my shirt and
placed my pointed fingers over my heart.