Riders (38 page)

I hear the wood split and I see my hand fall.

I hear it thump as it drops to the floor.

Time moves again, and reality returns.

No. It doesn’t.

What I see makes no sense. Where my hand should be there is nothing. I’ve been partially erased. And I’m bleeding. I’m bleeding like a leaky fuel pump.

Spots explode before my eyes.

Stay here, Blake. Stay, stay, stay.

Samrael grabs my forearm, keeping it in place with one hand.

With the other, he tugs on the cuff.

I feel warmth, wetness, slipping, and the cuff comes off.

The cuff, which is the key, which has been on me this whole time. On me and the guys—not around Daryn’s neck.

Very clever.

Samrael straightens. “Thank you, Gideon,” he says, giving the cuff a toss like it’s a baseball. “I’m glad we could finally work this out.”

He turns to Malaphar and they speak, but I can’t hear what they say. The pain comes with a sound like metal bending in my ears. It expands, a universe inside me. I stare at the knots in the pine paneling and still see my handless arm. I blink and blink and I can’t make it to go away. It’s like a scratch on a lens.

The metallic groan recedes and I hear Samrael again.

“Fine,” he says to Malaphar. “But you’ll have to answer to Ra’om for it.” He throws me a frustrated glance and leaves.

Malaphar smiles at me with his pinched features and beetle black eyes and I realize what just happened. An argument over who gets to kill me. Malaphar must’ve fought hard.

“It’s just you and me again, Gideon. It’s a shame you won’t get to meet the real Cordero. She’s here. Real nice lady. Smart. I think you’d have liked her. I think she would have liked you.”

I don’t want to die in this chair.

Malaphar disengages the safety and sets his aim on me.

I look right into the barrel.

This is the real deal, right here. Right now.

The gun goes off.

White noise—

Eclipses—

All.

C
HAPTER
55

I’m here.

I’m still here.

But I’m deaf and my heart isn’t beating.

I count to five. Ten. Twenty.

The ringing in my ears starts at twenty-one, my heart at thirty.

Texas leans against the wall, holding his side. Blood pours through his fingers. He holds his knife in his other hand.

His knife. He used his bowie knife.

Malaphar is facedown on the floor. I can’t see his neck, the front part, but deep black blood is forming a pool beneath him. It’s touching the redder blood that belongs to me and Texas.

There’s a bullet hole and splintered paneling to my right.

It looks bad in here. And I’m still making it worse.

Texas pushes himself off the wall and comes over. The ringing hasn’t left my ears, but I can hear the big sucking sounds coming from him. He’s dragging in air like he’s going to dive deep underwater and the veins are bulging in his neck.

I’m not doing great, either. It’s hard to think past the pain. It begins at my hand and has no end.

Oh, shit.

My hand.

“Hand? Where’s my hand?”

Texas glances at the floor. He tries to tell me something but it comes out as a burbling noise, then wet coughing, then he bends over and spits.

We’re making such a bloody mess. I hope I don’t have to clean this up later.

He straightens and tries to talk again, but it’s no better than last time and I can’t stop asking him where my hand is.

Where is it, where is it, where is it.

Worthless question but I can’t stop asking.

It still feels like it’s part of me, only that I can’t see it.

Between my question loop and Texas’s wheezing, I hear something else. There’s gunfire now. Outside this room. All over the cabin. Rounds are flying fast and furious.

Wood-paneled walls are shattering and windows are shattering. Tremors vibrate into the soles of my boots—the seismic ripple of the activity right outside this room. The jig is up. Everybody’s in the fight now.

Texas runs a sleeve over his chin, like,
Okay. Enough of all this chatter. Time to get down to work.
He kneels by the chair and pulls a flex tie from his pocket. He wraps it above my missing hand and ties it off, making a tourniquet.

“Southpaw?” Texas rasps.

Am I a southpaw. He’s been trying to talk for a full minute and this is what he wants to know. If I’m left-handed.

I want to answer him, but I also want to howl until my throat turns inside out. I want to know if Daryn knew.
I’m so sorry,
she’d said on our last night in the hut as she’d squeezed my hand.
Did she know
? What I want more than anything is to get out of this chair and pick my hand up off the floor. But I just nod and say, “Yes. Lefty.”

“Righty now, kid,” Texas says in his drowning voice.

Righty now. I nod. Okay. Okay. But it can’t be that easy.

Then my eyes pull past him, to the door.

To Marcus, who explodes into the room.

C
HAPTER
56

When Marcus sees what’s happened to me, he loses his mind. He instantly starts yelling and swearing. Calling for help. Cursing the Kindred. More out of control than I’ve ever seen him.

It legitimately moves me. I have to put my head down because it’s the nicest thing he’s ever done for me, hands down.

Hand down.

My hand is still down on the floor somewhere.

Marcus’s cuff is still on his wrist, which means we still have a chance. As long as we keep one, we still have a chance.

People stream into the room behind him. One is a stocky man wearing a black beanie. He picks up my hand, takes a quick look at it, then gives it to a red-haired guy about my age and barks some orders. The red-haired guy listens, nods, listens, nods; then he flees the room like a thief.

Black Beanie kneels beside me and opens a medical kit. He sprays something where my hand used to be, telling me that it’s under control, don’t rule anything out, reattachment is still a possibility.

I don’t say anything but I’m not so sure, given the way I heal. The bleeding’s already slowing. My nerve endings and muscular tissue may have already decided to move on, without my hand. Even the pain is lessening. Something’s kicking in. Adrenaline or some internal defense mechanism has kicked in. I’m getting less shaky. Things are making more sense.

As my arm is being wrapped in gauze, Texas is helped out of the room. Malaphar’s body is removed. The desk and chair where Cordero sat go next but I’m not clear on the urgency there.
Is there some kind of office emergency?

Then Beretta comes back in. He tips his head, giving me a look like,
We pulled it off, kid, it could’ve been worse.

Some part of me had begun to accept that he hadn’t survived, and the relief of seeing him is intense. He doesn’t look at the stump that’s part of me now, which makes the vote unanimous: he’s a human being of quality.

The bandage is tied off and it helps. It makes the end of my arm look better. Tidier.

I pull myself to my feet. I want to throw the chair against the wall, demolish it, but instead I wait for the room to finish taking a spin around me.

There are seven, eight people in here now. Wedged in this small room. Standing on human and demon blood. They’re all Army. Strapped down with rifles. Pistols. Radios. Everyone is talking and listening at the same time.

“Where is he?” I ask Marcus. “Where’s Samrael?”

“Outside, with the rest,” he says. “Daryn, Jode, and Bastian are out there.”

Information flows around me. The Kindred are digging in. Fighting for the other cuffs, of course. They won’t leave until they have them all.

A man steps forward and regards me with a penetrating look. I remember myself and salute, fighting through another round of dizziness.

“At ease, soldier,” he says.

At ease. It seems like an impossible thing to be.

Major Robertson’s decorated, has the look of someone who’s seen his share of combat. Nothing like this, I’m sure. But even this he seems to take in stride.

“Malaphar fooled us all,” he says to me. His eyes move to Beretta. “We had no idea until Sergeant Suarez told us.”

Suarez—that’s Beretta’s name.

“We’ll have air support in twenty minutes, sir,” Suarez says.

“Seventeen,” amends a guy wearing an earpiece.

Marcus and I look at each other. What kind of damage can Ra’om, Samrael, Ronwae, and Bay do in that amount of time?

The answer is: Too much.

“Ready?” Marcus asks me.

“Yes.” I’m ready to fight. But I didn’t just lose my hand—I lost the cuff. I don’t know if I still have my sword, my armor, or Riot.

I don’t know if I’m still War.

C
HAPTER
57

Outside, a battle is raging.

I pause on the front steps with Marcus and adjust to the scene. Our cabin is one of a dozen on the edge of a wide field where the fight is occurring. Dense woods surround the field, tall pine trees that rise like black spires. Gray clouds hover around the granite peaks of the jagged mountains in the distance. Snow patches spill like paint over the steep slopes. The terrain reminds me of Jotunheimen—if Jotunheimen were dropped and shattered.

“Wyoming,” Marcus says, sensing my disorientation. A familiar flurry of ash circles ahead of us, and then Marcus is running. He meets Ruin as she forms and gallops into the fray.

Across the field, I see Jode and Lucent—a bright pair in the twilight. Jode is firing arrows at Bay’s monsters and Ronwae’s scorpions—a sight I saw constantly on our bluff—then my eyes pull to the black horse and rider. Sebastian is here. Bas, who was missing before. He’s here. And
fighting.
But he has no choice. One of the cuffs is on his wrist.

I don’t see Samrael, but Ra’om is flying over everything—a massive dark shadow wheeling against the steel clouds.

And there’s another addition to this fight. The US military force on hand isn’t significant in number, fifteen to twenty men, but they’ve dug into covered positions around the cabins and Humvees along the road, and they’re laying down some serious brass. My ears fill with the steady chug of M249 SAWs and the staccato pop of M4s. Never have I heard a more welcome racket. I see that Bay’s monsters are falling, but it takes a hail of firepower to break down the scorpions’ shells. My sword pierces their armor with much less effort.

Then I see Daryn.

She stands with a cluster of soldiers behind a Humvee. Her calf is wrapped with gauze. Our gallop from the burning bluff feels like it happened a hundred years ago, but has it even been a day?

She sees me. She breaks away and comes running. Then she’s flying into my arms. As I wrap them around her what I feel is a plummet from incredible to incomplete.

I don’t know where I end anymore.

I don’t know how I still feel my hand, but not
her
.

“Gideon.” She steps back, and her gaze drops to the bandage on the end of my arm. Her eyes go wide and she freezes—but I don’t.

I take off, summoning Riot on the run.

He comes up with a concentrated, furious burst of fire.

I still have him.

I fold in, and he sweeps me up. As we rise into the sky, it strikes me that Riot has become a bigger part of me than my hand, and I thank God he’s still with me. I don’t know what would’ve happened if I’d lost him.

Bonded as fire, we’re something better than
alive
. In moments, I feel healed. Whole. There’s no pain anymore, no shame. I shed all of it. Then I feel Riot’s anger and his fear. He knows what’s happened. I feel him clinging to me as we soar down to the field. I try to shift, but Riot wants to keep me as fire. We’re untouchable like this. We can’t be harmed. But to fight I have to become human. Vulnerable and dangerous. I push and Riot understands. He finally relents and we lock in. Horse and rider, formed again.

As we charge into the field, I loop the reins over my stump twice, ignoring the pain, fighting against it. Then I summon my sword.

It materializes in my right hand.

Righty now, kid.

Hopefully the reins will stay on my arm, and I can fight like this.

Marcus and Ruin fall in beside us, and together we make for Bay. With her monsters and Ronwae’s scorpions flanking her, she’s making a push toward Jode. He could shift and soar away with Lucent, but the demons have found a weakness. They’re directing their attacks on the people by the cabins. Jode, who wields the bow’s matchless range and power, is policing the entire battlefield. Marcus glances at me as we gallop closer. He knows it, too. If we lose Jode, we lose everything.

Reaching one of the beasts, I plunge my blade into the hump on its back. I swing again, inflicting a grazing blow on another, and Marcus is there to finish it with the scythe. We move through the clearing in tune, lethal as we fight. Marcus moves toward Jode, but I work toward Bay. By taking her down, I hope it’ll call off the rest of her beasts, or at least stop the creation of more. It’s our best shot. We can’t beat an enemy that keeps regenerating in number.

The fog of battle settles over me, and I become instinct, reflex, reaction. The moments blur until one of Bay’s beasts comes bounding at me from the left. Then it hits me—I can’t parry or block to my left. I have a weak side now.

“Gideon!” Marcus yells.

Time slows as I recognize that it’s
Bay—
and that she’s coming with every bit of speed and power she possesses. She leaps, fangs bared, her claws slashing. I call to Riot urgently—
to fire
.

I’m too late and she slams into me. My left arm wrenches against the reins. I rock back, but I don’t fall from the saddle. Bay tumbles off me as Riot kicks, but she isn’t giving up. She slashes with long claws, tearing at Riot’s hindquarters.

Riot roars. He goes ballistic beneath me, his body lighting up with flame. I try to send him all the way to fire, but he’s seized by terror. He doesn’t listen, and Bay won’t let him go. She rips my horse’s thigh open again as he kicks and bites. I feel him buckle beneath me, his legs giving out. I swing at Bay, but I can’t turn enough to reach her. I need the sword in my left hand, but that hand is gone.