Authors: Veronica Rossi
Riders (7 page)
I moved right into action.
I’m going to tell you right up front, Cordero. The tall guy’s name is Samrael. I don’t want to keep calling him “Tall Guy” because … I don’t know. It’s dumb. For that matter, the girl with the red hair was Ronwae, and the possumy guy with the acne and the shifty eyes, that was Malaphar.
Don’t worry. You’ll know them all soon enough. Plus four more because there are seven in the Kindred. Seven total. But I’m skipping ahead again.
Back to the party.
Samrael looked like he was in charge, so I went after him, ready to brawl over a girl I didn’t know. The theory that popped into my head as I crossed the room was that he was Daryn’s violently jealous ex. It seemed plausible considering his intense focus on her. But Ronwae and Malaphar’s involvement didn’t fit well with that theory.
As I pushed through the last few partyers, I saw Daryn make a break for the patio. Ronwae plunged through the crowd, following her. I made a quick decision to stay on course. The best thing I could do was prevent the two guys at the door from joining in pursuit.
Joy had reached the front door moments before me and demanded to know who they were.
“You’re leaving,” I said to Samrael as I came to Joy’s side. “Right now.”
People stopped dancing and talking as the threat of danger percolated through the apartment. They circled around, a few of them pulling out phones, ready to catch any action.
“We’ll leave when we have what we came for,” Samrael said.
His voice was strangely calm, almost solemn, but I heard it perfectly through the pumping rap music. There was something dangerous about the total lack of emotion in his eyes. He was looking right at me, but he could’ve been looking at a chair or a lamp. And his posture triggered a warning inside me. I’d spent a lot of time around guys who made their livelihood off harnessed aggression. I knew potential hostility when I saw it.
I repeated my directive using more compelling language. His attention moved more fully onto me, a palpable weight descending on my shoulders.
“Who are you?” Samrael asked quietly, giving me a detached assessment.
Pressure settled over my eyes like a headache coming on, but it quickly turned painful. A feeling like invisible fingers prying around my eye sockets and digging deeper. It shocked me. I tried to move, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even speak. Black spots flickered at the edges of my vision and a hot sting spread over my scalp. Fear tightened my lungs. I knew I wasn’t passing out. I could still feel the tension in my muscles, and the drumming of my heart, but I couldn’t stop what was happening.
The spots melded into darkness and my field of view narrowed. Then the darkness started to swirl around me and stretch into a tunnel. My feet were planted in Joy’s living room but I felt myself pulling back. Felt the party recede, everything moving further away as I sank into a whirling black funnel.
“Weak,” Samrael said, “whoever you are.”
The pressure in my head sharpened to spikes walking over my skull.
He smiled. “Gideon Blake … so much anger…”
I heard myself groan. I wanted to fight, but my legs and arms wouldn’t answer. I had one possible move.
Pushing through the black tunnel with my entire focus, I felt myself pulling closer to the party. My gaze went to the two huge football players by the door—the same two guys who’d called me “GI Joe” an hour earlier. Their attention was already on me.
I threw open the rage throttle.
Bring it,
I told them.
Fight.
They reacted instantly, exploding forward like they’d come off the line. The larger guy bolted past me, dropped his shoulder, and buried it into Samrael’s back. The other one went after Malaphar, who plunged into the crowd.
The mental hold Samrael had cast over me broke. The pain released, the lack of it so overwhelming that for a second I felt like I was floating. My eyes cleared, the distancing swirl of darkness faded back, and my limbs unlocked.
The football player and Samrael grappled nearby, trapped in a struggle. Samrael was contending with the much stronger opponent. I looked for Anna and spotted her, but no Daryn.
Samrael freed himself from the football player’s grasp. With savage force, he took the guy’s head with both hands and drove his knee up. There was a sickening, meaty sound as the blow connected and then gasps erupted from across the apartment. The football player’s eyes rolled back and he went down, three hundred pounds dropping to the floor like a boulder.
I stepped in, already swinging as he fell. My fist met Samrael’s face, square on the jaw. He felt immovable, like I’d just tried to deck the Great Wall of China. He jerked back and the inside of my hand let out an audible
snap
.
Pain speared up my arm. I grabbed my hand, my instincts firing. I needed to withdraw, assess damage. But Samrael caught me around the throat and shoved me across the living room. Pain-drunk, I could only backpedal. We knocked over a small table and sent a lamp crashing to the floor. Then my back struck the wall with so much force, I felt it crack behind me.
Samrael had me pinned. My lungs couldn’t get enough air. And I must have hit my head because his face blurred in and out of focus. The room had grown dimmer with the lamp broken, but in the semidark, I saw a trail of glistening blood dribble down his mouth and over his chin.
“Fool,” he whispered, but his flat eyes were alive now. “Who sent you?”
He didn’t wait for me to answer. The pressure came back over my eyes and my ears. He was getting inside my head again
.
As the stinging spread inside my scalp, the darkness began to whirl around me. I felt myself drawing back, separating from reality.
I didn’t know how to fight this way. How was I supposed to defend myself? I couldn’t even
move
.
Samrael smiled. His grip was crushing my throat. I still couldn’t get enough air. “You know, for a moment there I thought you weren’t pitiful. I guess I was wrong, pitiful Gideon.” He angled his head slowly, left and then right. “But you’re not scared, are you? How about now?”
His smile went wider. No … it was his mouth. His mouth pushed forward, forward, forward, elongating into a muzzle or … a beak? What was it? A
snout
?
His skin curdled into worn leather as his skull reshaped. His eyes pulled back, sloping, the black irises stirring, lighting with something dark inside. I saw a sea of torment in his eyes. Cries of anguish, fear, and weakness writhed there. I heard howling, and begging, and—
Enough
.
What are you? What the hell are you? Are you an animal?
“Not animal,” Samrael said. “Worse.”
Monster.
“That’s closer.”
“Hey, asshole. You need to let go of my brother.”
My consciousness lurched back into the apartment. My sister appeared in my peripheral vision. She was holding a baseball bat.
Why wasn’t she reacting to Samrael’s horrific appearance? Why wasn’t
anyone
reacting?
Samrael looked at Anna. “Sure thing,” he said mockingly. He released me. In an instant his features shifted back to normal. He was just a guy again. With a split lip leaking blood that was just a little too dark, like wine.
I took the bat from Anna. “Get out,” I rasped.
I still wasn’t completely myself but I had every intention of attacking if he didn’t leave. Taking a life was something I’d been preparing myself for, as a soldier. But I’d never imagined it happening this way. With a bat, in front of my sister.
Samrael turned to the front door. Ronwae, the redhead, stood there breathing hard. “She’s gone. I looked everywhere,” she said, her voice chiseled with an accent I didn’t recognize. She disappeared into the hallway.
A mild look of disappointment crossed Samrael’s face, like he’d been told he’d just gotten a parking ticket. He followed her, but hesitated at the door. “Whatever you do, Gideon, whatever you
think
you can do”—he opened his hands and showed me emptiness, futility—“it won’t matter,” he said, and he was gone.
I looked at my sister and struggled to find words. I’d been submerged in that consuming darkness and it still hadn’t fully left me. I was still kicking for the surface.
“Your
hand,
” Anna said.
I looked down. The knuckles of my right hand were already swollen and red. Pretty alarmingly. I had no idea how I was gripping the bat. The pain blared like a car alarm that wouldn’t stop but my injury was a second-level concern.
“You okay?” I asked.
Anna shook her head. “I guess? More than
you
are. Who was that guy?”
“Whose bat is this?”
“What? It’s Taylor’s.”
“I need to borrow it,” I said. Then I shot out of the apartment.
I shouldn’t have pursued. I had a serious injury. And I’d just seen a person-monster. But the enemy was retreating and I just couldn’t let that shit go. I flew out of the complex and hit the sidewalk at a sprint. Anger roared inside me, clearing my thoughts and propelling me forward, but I slowed down as I reached the street.
It was deserted. I didn’t see any college kids strolling around. Both the parking lot and the housing complex were dead quiet. All I heard were my running shoes scuffing the pavement and my lungs pumping oxygen.
When I reached the edge of the parking lot, I stopped. There was something strange about how heavy the darkness seemed. How thick. The streetlamps curving down the hill were weak points of light, and I couldn’t even see the main road below. No sign of Samrael.
Okay, Blake. Take a second.
I set the bat down. My quads twitched. My right hand had developed its own heartbeat. Broken bones in there, I was sure. Nice. Added some fresh fractures to the list of things I had to deal with. I heard the squeal of cats fighting somewhere close. Because of me? Definitely possible.
Now what?
Anna would be worried. I should head back. But I was tempted to walk to the nearest psych clinic and turn myself in.
What had I just
seen
?
“Gideon.”
I launched two feet off the blacktop.
My Jeep. The voice had come from my Jeep, which was parked just down the street. Was that—?
Yeah. It was. Standing on the driver’s seat, propped on the roll bar like she’d been there for a while, was the girl. Daryn.
“How are you in my Jeep?” I asked, walking up. That was a mix of the two questions that fired off in my head.
How do you know that’s my Jeep?
What are you doing in the Jeep that’s mine that you shouldn’t know about?
“It’s a Jeep.” She shrugged. “I just climbed in.” She dropped into the driver’s seat. “Come on, get in.”
Sure. Get in. Right. But what were my options? Go back to my sister’s apartment to field questions I couldn’t answer? More hospitals?
No way. It was an easy decision. Nothing made sense anyway. And I had a feeling this girl was my only shot at getting answers.
I climbed into the passenger side, sliding the bat between the seat and the center console. “Hold on, I left my keys in my sister’s—”
“It’s an old car, I’ve got it.” Daryn reached beneath the steering column for a couple of wires that hadn’t been there before. She twisted a piece of electrical tape over them, sealing them together, and the engine growled to life. Then she threw it into first, and we lurched into the street to the reek and shriek of burning rubber.
She drove like she was trying to qualify for the Indy 500, pushing my Jeep past eighty—its top speed. And that was on the way to the freeway.
My throat ached from Samrael’s grip. My hand hurt so much, it was making me nauseous. I couldn’t stop searching the night for three …
monsters
? Dozens of people had witnessed the fight I’d just been in. I knew I hadn’t imagined that part. But the way Samrael had transformed … that couldn’t be real.
I looked at the cuff on my wrist. Was
it
responsible for everything? Or was I hallucinating because I’d sustained a brain injury from my fall?
Unbelievable. My best-case scenario was hallucinations.
Then there was Daryn, driving my Jeep at Mach 3 like it was nothing out of the ordinary, her hair whipping all over the place. Where did she fit into all this? The confrontation at Joy’s had obviously been about her. But why had she come there looking for me? Had she known I’d get into it with Samrael?
After a couple of minutes, I couldn’t take my confusion anymore. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
Daryn trapped her hair to the side. “Right now?”
Fair question. An open-top Jeep doing eighty wasn’t the best location for a conversation. We had both shouted to be heard over the roar of the tires.
“Just tell me one thing. Did you hot-wire my car?” I felt like an idiot right when I said it.
Hot-wire
sounded like such an old-timey term, like I should’ve been twirling my mustache or something.
Did you circumvent my car’s ignition
wouldn’t have sounded any better, and too late anyway.
“Yes!” she shouted back. “That’s okay, right?”
“Sure! It’s great!”
She smiled at my sarcasm, which I didn’t love. My
hand
was broken. Possibly my head, too. Smiling needed to be banned for at least twenty-four hours.
I pinned my gaze on the freeway and focused on relaxing. Relaxing and not fighting the pain.
Breathe, Blake.
I glanced down at the Pearl Jam cassette tape in the player.
Just breathe, like Eddie Vedder.
Being a passenger in my car was weird.
Being a passenger in my life was weird, too.
There were hardly any cars on the freeway. The rolling hills and dark fields around us had an eerie human quality. Like the earth had knees and shoulders.
Time passed and we put some miles behind us. Ten, twenty. By around thirty my hand was still swollen but the pain had ratcheted back noticeably. Way more than it should’ve, but that was one mystery I wasn’t going to complain about. Had this same thing happened during my first days at Walter Reed? Pain leaving first, then accelerated healing? Had I failed to notice because I’d been hopped up on drugs?
