Path of the Horseman (23 page)

Kade stared at me. “So? They’re weak. Cowards
and brownnosers that’ll do anything to survive. Watch.”

Kade turned around and looked past the
pillars leading to the rest of the hotel. Polishing silently in the
corner was the scrappiest man I’d ever seen. He looked like a
skeleton wearing a beef jerky suit and a rag coat. I had no idea
how long he’d been there, or if he’d been the one to tell Kade
about my fight with Simon, but he had been invisible to me.

“Hey,” Kade called, pointing to the thin,
dirty man. “Come here.”

The man obeyed, stepping out of from the
shelter of the pillars to the middle of the lobby with us, but he
looked terrified. He hobbled quickly until he stood in front of
Kade. The man stared at his feet, too scared to look Kade in the
eye.

“What can I do for you, my Emperor?”

Kade smiled. He was a man who loved his
title.

“So glad you asked,” sneered Kade. “My boots
need polishing. Lick them.”

The man almost looked up, then thought better
of it.

“Kade, come on,” Simon groaned.

Our brother glared impatiently. “Slime, I’m
trying to teach a lesson here. Shut the fuck up.”

Kade was the only person I knew who could
make a casual threat sound utterly lethal. Simon wisely shifted on
his feet, shoved his hands in his jean pockets and looked away.
Kade turned back to the ragged man, crossing his arms over his
gigantic chest.

“Well, what are you waiting for, bones? I
don’t have all day.”

The man hesitated again, but soon bent his
knees until they pressed onto the cold, hard floor in front of
Kade’s legs. Then he went lower. I don’t know what made me sicker–
watching Kade debase this innocent, weary man, or that the man was
willing to be debased.

He bent his head, tentatively sticking his
tongue out to Kade’s boot.

“God, you’re slow,” Kade grumbled.

He snapped his boot up, kicking the man
viciously in the chin. The man yelped as his head was wrenched
back. Blood spewed from his mouth and splattered onto the tile. I
could see a little chunk of bitten off tongue lying on the floor.
Kade kicked him in the ribs. The man groaned and curled into
himself.

I glared at Kade, hating him even more than I
had before.

He turned around and faced me, the smallest
flicker of triumph on his face.

“See? They’re scared shitless of us, Pest.
And why shouldn’t they be? We’re the stuff of nightmares. At least
the demons are more fun to draw out. Plagued are good to experiment
on, but they don’t have the brain matter to fight back, thanks to
you. And the humans just flocked to me the moment I gave them
something to aspire to. I took the strongest ones, made them better
fighters than they ever dreamed they could be. The rest work on
getting us food, water, and any other shit I say we need. That’s
how governments work.”

“If they’re fucking dictatorships.”

Kade rolled his eyes. “Wake up, Avery. It’s
the end times, thanks to us. If we don’t control what’s left, what
the hell use are we?”

I looked at the man lying on the ground,
trying to crawl away from Kade as discreetly as he could. Half of
me felt sorry for him. But the other half could see Kade’s point.
Even in our human bodies, we were stronger than any living
creature. Our powers could be drained in these bodies, but we could
still fight demons and Soulless and whatever else came our way. It
was hard not to feel superior watching that pathetic, bony man drag
himself away like a slug.

But the world wasn’t meant for us. It had
been made for humans. We might have destroyed it, but it was never
ours to live in.

“Where did you find all these people?”

Both Kade and I were astonished that Simon
started talking again. I’d assumed he was just going to stand there
and absorb information.

Kade shrugged. “Most of them were trapped in
the hotels. Some of them wandered in, running from this haven they
heard about on the radio waves.”

My attention shot from the crawling man to my
older brother. “They were trying to escape a haven?”

Kade looked at me impatiently. “Did I
stutter?”

I ignored him. “Did they say where it was?
Was it in the Valley of Fire?”

“Yeah. So?”

I tried to calm down. Not an easy thing to do
as my mind became a frenzy of scenarios. There were a million
reasons why humans would run from the supposed sanctuary at in the
Valley of Fire. None of them were good.

“That’s where the humans we came with were
going,” I said. “Why did these ones leave?”

Kade shrugged. “Fuck if I know. Fuck if I
care.”

I looked past him to the skinny man. He got
to his feet and started scurrying away. I moved around Kade and
chased him.

“Wait!”

The man jumped and spun around, his eyes wide
with fear. I looked as harmless as I could. Though with Kade behind
me, I was pretty sure the way I looked wouldn’t mean shit to this
guy.

“The haven,” I asked, slowly bringing the man
out of his fear-induced haze. “Why did you leave?”

“Don’t you say a fucking word,” Kade
commanded over my shoulder. My heart sank when I saw the man
flinch.

“Get the fuck out of here,” my brother went
on. “If you tell this asshole anything without my permission, I’ll
personally skin you and put you in a marathon with the
Plagued.”

The scrawny man’s eyes bulged. Kade barked at
him to leave, and the man was all too happy to do so. I spun on my
heel, barely holding onto my rage.

“What the fuck did you do that for?” I
demanded.

“I don’t want you running off to play Save
The Humans,” snapped Kade. “Whatever’s scaring the shit and piss
out of them is pushing them this way. That means I can build a
bigger army, which means I can cut my way to Ciaran easier. You
don’t get to order my citizens in my fucking city.”

Kade towered over me. I had to look up to
meet his eyes. His hands were balled with a white-knuckle grip. He
wouldn’t let me argue unless I had a broken jaw.

“Kade has a point, Avery,” came Simon’s
tentative voice. I didn’t look away from my oldest brother. “Ciaran
knew where we were every time. We should find out what’s giving us
away before you think about doing anything else.”

The anger blazing through my chest wanted to
ignore Simon’s reason. It wanted to beat Kade, free the humans, and
kill Ciaran. But no matter how intense the rage was, it didn’t have
the strength for the impossible…

After our oldest brother left the madness, we
began to separate from each other. I did not see who walked away
first, and did not care which direction they went. I had no
destination, so I wandered in a straight line, staring at the
cracked pavement until it turned into cracked earth.

I slowed down only when I sensed eyes on my
back. They were not my brothers, and they were not human. There
were no humans left. I stood in place and slowly turned around.

The Paladin smiled at me, hellish eyes
sparking with ravenous excitement. The exalted demon had chosen a
human form with long, twisted hair and antique clothes. I
recognized him from the images Heaven had shown me. I did not say
his name.

“
I must confess, you have impressed me.”
He inclined his head to the burning skyline. “Why have you turned
your back to it?”

I stared, unblinking. “This is not what I
wanted to create.”

The demon’s smile faltered. “You were created
for chaos. How can you not revel in it?”

My expression remained the same. “I have been
given a human body and memories. It pains me to see what I have
done. I cannot see any hope for this world’s future.”

The Paladin took a careful step toward me.
“This has not been for nothing,” he told me. “We have been set
free. Together we could create a new world, one where humanity will
bow to all supernaturals. With your powers, we will control them,
the way we were always supposed to.”

I showed the demon my back and continue to
walk into the desert. As I left, I said, “There is nothing left to
control.”

When I left Ciaran that day, I thought it
would be the last I would see of him. I hadn’t thought about his
offer. Join him and rule the dead world, all that shit. Could he
still want me for that, after all this time? I never stuck around
to get the details. I only started killing the Soulless when I
found out that Ciaran was making them. Partly to get back at the
demon for taking advantage of the dwindling human race, and partly
because I needed something to do.

Now things were different, and we were all
part of his plan.

“Have you seen Logan?” I asked Kade. “If
people have been dying recently, he must have been around, but we
never saw him.”

Logan felt and collected every death in the
world, but he couldn’t be around for all of them. Human lives went
out like fire under rain when we did our dirty jobs. Logan picked
the deaths he wanted to see, though he never told us why. Our
oldest brother had about as many secrets as Ciaran and his
coal-eating crew.

Kade scoffed, a hint of rage seeping into his
cold, black eyes. He’d never forgiven Logan for telling him that
all the humans were dead. I can’t imagine knowing he’d been lied to
sat well with Kade.

“I don’t know and don’t give a fuck. That emo
bitch is probably in some cave writing poetry and having a cry
whenever he has to collect some dead bunny.”

That was harsh. Logan was a recluse, but I
still liked him. Well, understood him was probably a better word.
He had the roughest job of all of us. We made the messes. He had to
clean them up.

Logan’s biggest problem was that he cared too
much. The memories hit him the hardest, forcing him to feel the
pain of every broken heart and dying breath. Logan hated his job,
because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t save anyone.

But I wasn’t going to get any help from Kade,
and Simon was too scared. If anyone would want to help me stop
Ciaran and find this haven, it would be Logan.

“Look,” Kade said, “we’ve all come up with a
big pile of steaming nothing. No one knows what Ciaran is trying to
do, and I’m in no rush to find this stupid Garden of Eden. Best
thing we can do if you want to kick Ciaran in the balls is wait for
him to show up. He knows where to find me, and my door’s always
open to anyone that wants a tussle. So are you done playing twenty
questions? I’m fucking starving.”

Simon perked up at that, but hid it quickly.
Kade would take the tiniest flinch and blow it up to massive
proportions. Simon was his favorite target. Kade started turning
for the side doors.

“I want to see the other people I came in
with,” I told him.

Kade stopped and looked over his shoulder.
“Again with seeing your pets? What’s gotten you so hot and bothered
about them?” He paused to think it over, then grinned. “Or is it
just one of them that’s flustering you? Let me guess, the pretty
blonde?”

It was a huge effort not to give anything
away. But the thought of something happening to Maddy behind my
back worried me too much.

Enough that feeling it became a huge
mistake.

Kade sensed my worry, and used his power to
get into my mind. He prodded that worry, twisting it until it grew
into paranoia, and finally fear. My blood was pounding, my heart
was racing, and my palms were sweating.

“She’s cute, for a human. We’re at war, and
it’s been a long time since I’ve had a spoil.”

“Don’t you fucking
dare
,” I warned
him, unable to stop myself. Shit. He wasn’t just trying to work up
my fear. He was jacking up my rage.

Kade smiled, black eyes flashing wildly.
Skeletal rings of red smoke wafted off of him, becoming a thin fog
around us.

“Relax, Pest. I’ll be gentle with your
Juliet. She looks fragile. Wouldn’t want to break her on the trial
run.”

I set my jaw but held my tongue. My nails
clawed at my palms. I wanted to defend Maddy’s honor, but the
moment I told Kade how strong she was, he’d make it his personal
goal to break her. Kade lived for challenges.

So he pushed me further.

“It’s not all uglies I have out there, you
know,” he said, now only three feet away from me. “I found some
great looking girls when I took over. Poor things were scared out
of their minds. Literally begged me for comfort, promising to let
me do anything I wanted to them.” Kade’s eyes were pitch black.
They nearly looked like a demon’s eyes. The red smoke around us was
thicker now.

“Some probably regretted it, but the others
liked the pain. If they didn’t, I made them like it.” He tilted his
head. “So what do you think, Pest? Is your golden-haired princess
going to be a sweet submissive, or am I going to have a tigress to
beat into line?”

I couldn’t hold all the fear and rage he was
forcing into my head. Kade knew how to manipulate the most
dangerous emotions to the point where he could put images into
others heads. Not the full-fledged memories like our Bosses used on
us, but quick bursts of visions that seemed so real you ended up
believing them. Like a single reel of a horror film spliced into
pieces of a Disney daydream.