Path of the Horseman (20 page)

I didn’t pay attention to them. I couldn’t
even see them with all the power flowing off of me. I couldn’t hold
onto this power for much longer. I needed to find the demon and
kill him.

He found me first.

He moved too fast for me to see, and I didn’t
know how close he was until his hand coiled around my throat.
Ciaran created the Soulless, and he had built up an immunity to my
poison. It would take all of my strength to kill him, and I didn’t
have that much left to spare. He knew this, and squeezed my neck so
hard I thought he snapped it. Ciaran lifted me like I was a
ragdoll, and slammed me onto the floor.

My hands were still cuffed behind my back, so
I couldn’t stop Ciaran when he filled his hand with demonfire and
punched me in the chest. Something inside my human body cracked,
and it was hard to breathe. The ball of demonfire around Ciaran’s
fist suddenly twitched. Thin spikes of fire exploded off the edges
and sank into me. I gasped, my scream catching in my throat. More
people were shouting, but I didn’t know who or where they were.

Ciaran kept his fist on my chest, letting the
blazing spikes twist and churn into me until they became hooks. I
could feel them digging under layers of skin while boiling my blood
and searing my nerves. The pain was so sharp and intense that my
control slipped. I lost hold of my power, cursing my human body
again. The moment the smoke slipped back into my skin, the agony
tripled. It felt like someone was trying to sew molten lava into my
chest.

“I was going to feed you to the wolves,
Avery. But it looks like Simon will have to take your place.”

Ciaran pulled his hand up, drawing the
demonfire hooks with him. He pulled slowly, making me give in and
scream. Then he smiled, and gave one hard, final yank. This time he
pulled the hooks out, along with chunks of my skin. Hot blood
pumped out of the thumb sized wounds in my chest, my heart
stuttering in a panic as it tried to figure out what to do. I kept
hearing screams and even louder bangs, but it was all white noise
to me. I could barely see, let alone understand what was going on
around me.

Then Ciaran’s weight was pulled from me. I
was almost numb from the pain swelling over my heart, but through
my blurring eyes, I noticed someone hovering over me. It looked
like Simon. Whoever it was put their hands on my chest.

“Hang on, Ave.”

I felt his smoke drift into me. I don’t know
where he got the strength to do it, but I would have jumped for joy
if I could have moved. The smoke tingled like icy frost, pulling my
damaged muscles together and freezing them in place. That and all
the pain was a sensory overload, and I nearly blacked out.

Simon grabbed my shoulders and shook me.

“Hey, stay awake, Ave. We need you awake. You
need to–”

“Well, well, well, look what we have
here.”

I cringed at the deep, rough voice in the
background, and wished I would pass out. Instead, I opened my eyes,
let my vision clear, and looked past my worried brother to the
hulking man behind him. The man grinned and stepped into my line of
sight. He was almost seven feet tall with muscles so big they could
have been taken from King Kong. He was dressed in a black Kevlar
motorcycle getup, complete with steel-toed boots and thick leather
gloves. A heavy war hammer hung by his side, dripping blood as red
as his cropped hair.

Simon stood up, reaching down to take my arm
and pull me up. I didn’t want to move, but he was stronger than me,
and there was no point in fighting back. So I shrugged off my
brother and looked into eyes black with murder and perverse
rage.

He smiled at me. “Pest.” He turned his head
to the right. “Slime.” His grin widened. “Isn’t this a nice family
reunion?”

Younger brothers will complain about their
older ones bullying them. They should be lucky that Kade isn’t
their brother.

There are some things you can’t question
about him. First, he’s the best fighter in the world. Possibly the
universe. No one can touch him, because he knows every move there
is to know. Add on his pyrokinesis, ability to instigate anger and
fear into his enemies and endless strength, and you have the
greatest warrior ever known.

He’s also a complete psychopath with an ego
the size of the Atlantic.

Simon scurried around my back, hastily
unlocking the shackles from my wrists. Now that he’d healed me, the
pain in my chest was dulling and my shoulder was at a dull throb.
Once the shackles were gone, Simon touched my broken wrist and used
some of his white smoke to knit the bones back in place. It would
be stiff for a while, but at least I’d be able to use it.

My eyes never left Kade’s. His smile could
outmatch the grin of every kid at Christmas. I’d only ever seen him
frown once. Kade believed that nothing could touch him, and I
couldn’t help but think he was right.

I looked past my older brother to the people
behind him. There were seven of them, each one looking like bloody
ninjas in dusty red trench coats. They were armed to the teeth with
knives and automatic rifles. Red scarves covered their heads and
mouths, leaving only their eyes visible.

“Who are the flunkies?” I croaked out,
nodding to the ninjas. As I watched the ninjas unchain the humans,
I rubbed my thumb over the patch of skin that had been ripped from
my chest. It still burned when I touched it, but it was scarred
over thanks to my brother. My shoulder was feeling a lot better,
and my wrist was set back in its proper place. On a whole, I was
sore and a bit dizzy, but the key word was ‘whole’.

“That’s what you have to say?” said Kade,
feigning astonishment. “Not ‘Hi, Kade, how are you? Long time no
see? I missed you?’”

I glared at him. “You want me to be a
liar?”

Kade’s grin was dangerous. “Careful, Pest.
I’m still not a fan of arrogant pricks.”

He stared at me, hoping I would point out the
obvious. I was smart, and kept my mouth shut. I looked past him
again, seeing the ninjas backing up from the humans. They all
scurried to their feet and huddled together, rubbing their sore
arms and watching us nervously.

“If you really want to know, they’re my
followers.”

“Followers?” Simon asked. “What are
they?”

Our brother laughed harshly. “You’ll love the
answer when I decide to tell it. By the way, you’re welcome.”

He made a show of putting his foot on the
corpse of a Soulless, one of the mountainous monsters I had
infected. At least I think that’s who it was. It was difficult to
tell since his entire face was caved in like a cinder block had
been dropped on it. Kade looked down, spinning the hammer in his
hand. He never passed up the chance to smash something.

But it didn’t matter that Kade desecrated a
corpse or soon-to-be-corpse. I had infected it first, blowing apart
each of its organs, torturing it to death with a single touch.

Right in front of the humans.

Fuck,
I thought.
They know.

“How’d you find us?” Simon’s next question
pulled me out of the blur my mind was in.

“I’ve been tracking Ciaran, Vance, and the
whole coal-eater crew for months now. The son of a bitch doesn’t
hide as well as he thinks he does. Finding you two lost souls and
the meat-sacks was the icing on the cake.”

Kade didn’t look surprised to see the humans
with us. That bothered me. He should have been just as stunned as
we were. But he just stood on the Soulless body, spinning his war
hammer and looking disappointed that there was nothing left for him
to break.

“Are they still alive?” I asked. My throat
still hurt from being strangled, but it was getting better the more
I spoke.

“Yeah. They pulled that ashy disappearing
trick of theirs. But don’t worry. They’ll come looking for me soon.
I have something they want.”

“What are you talking about?”

Kade grinned. He stepped over the Soulless
corpse and made his way toward us. Simon and I both tensed. I
didn’t think Kade would ever kill us, not unless he knew we were
the last beings alive and he lost complete control of his sanity,
but he wasn’t opposed to hurting us.

“See my pets back there?” he whispered,
nudging his thumb over his shoulder. “Guess what they are.”

We looked at them, watching their movements,
the way Maddy, Josh, Ricardo, and Laurel talked to them. My eyes
started to widen.

“They’re human.”

“Points to you, Pest. And I have more where
they came from.”

I snapped my head to him. “Where?”

Kade smiled. “You’ll see, since I’m taking
you there. Unless you think it’s smart to stay out in the open
where Ciaran and Vance can find you and get some revenge.” Kade
tapped his hammer on my sore chest. I stumbled back, but didn’t
make a sound.

“That’s what I thought. Your shit’s upstairs.
Get it and we’ll meet outside.”

Kade turned and started walking away. His
human soldiers took my friends up the stairs. As they were dragged
along, they tried to look at me. Laurel and Ricardo looked
terrified. Josh was furious. Maddy seemed stunned, staring at me
like she couldn’t understand what happened. Or what I was. I
lowered my head.

“Kade,” Simon asked. “Where are we
going?”

I could hear the smile in my older sibling’s
voice when he said, “Sin City, brother. Where else?”

***

Ciaran and his pet monstrosities had been
holding us in a bunker in the desert a few miles behind McCarran
Airport. The drive wasn’t far, though Kade had his red
ninjas– the Vermilion, he called them– bring two SUV’s.
Kade’s expedition had been a success, as all of the Soulless in the
bunker were dead, but he’d lost some men.

All he did when I pointed that out was shrug
and say, “At least you have a place to sit. I was going to tie you
to the roof.”

I didn’t have a chance to check on the
humans. They were shuffled up by the Vermilion and tucked into the
black vehicles before I could explain anything. All I saw of Maddy
was her honey blonde hair and Josh’s arm curling protectively
around her shoulder.

I sat in the same SUV with Kade, who was
driving at the head of the road, doing at least one-twenty on the
highway. The sand was cleared from this stretch of road, and most
of the vehicles had been pushed off to the side. Most of them had
massive dents in their sides, like someone had been shooting the
world’s largest elephant gun at them. Kade’s hammer was resting on
the armrest between the front seats, the handle leaning against the
dashboard. The Vermilion in the passenger seat was doing everything
he could not to touch it.

That made me even angrier at Kade. Not only
did he know that there were still humans around, he was using them
as a personal army. Instinct told me he’d been cheating, using his
powers to coerce them.

You’re one to talk, Avery. You showed the
humans exactly what you were. You gave Ciaran just what he
wanted.

But what the hell did he want it for?

“So what’ve you two been doing since the
world shit itself?” Kade asked. “I’ve been worried about my little
brothers since we split up.”

“Don’t patronize us, Kade,” I shot back. “You
never gave a fuck before, and you’re not going to give one
now.”

“Ouch, that hurts, Pest. I’d watch that mouth
of yours if you want to keep it.”

I ignored Kade and looked through the
windshield, seeing the tall towers of the Las Vegas hotels drawing
nearer to us.

“Avery was in Boulder City hunting Soulless
and Plagued,” Simon confessed quietly. “I was at a resort in
Henderson kinda doing the same thing.”

“Kinda?” mocked Kade. “Meaning you were
hiding and stuffing your face, right?”

“Back off, Kade,” I warned.

“Why? It’s true, isn’t it?”

Simon shook his head at me before I could
keep arguing. Kade sniggered.

“Fighting Plagued. More like playing
Whack-A-Mole. But whatever helps you pass the time, right,
Pest?”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Don’t be such a whiny bitch. Of course, if
you’re off collecting zombie heads and playing Mother Hen to that
group of meat-sacks, I guess I can’t expect much else from you,
right?”

Vegas was only minutes away from us now. I
was starting to see its ruin.

“See, while you were pissing around and
playing mouse, I was actually accomplishing something. I took Vegas
for myself. Soulless and Plagued had clogged the place before I
came back. I killed every dead fucker I saw, and made myself a nice
little home. Funny thing about Vegas, though. Guess who it used to
belong to?”

I stared at the toppling “Welcome to Fabulous
Las Vegas, Nevada” sign that dangled half supported on its stand,
the lightbulbs punched out and the white background smeared with
dirt and dust.

“Ciaran didn’t have Vegas.”

Kade laughed. “You bet your ass he did. He
used it as a base for his Soulless doormats, trying to snatch any
humans they could find.” He turned in his seat and grinned at us.
“I couldn’t resist crashing the party.”