Path of the Horseman (34 page)

The four of us stood by the crevice, Logan
working with his death-smoke to keep the Plagued back. I glanced
over my shoulder to where the Vermilions were fighting the worst of
the horde. Bright red flames whipped over Kade’s wall, blasting
over the Plagued and Soulless. The enemy responded by tossing over
a wave of black and red demonfire. I could hear the death-screams
even from where I was standing.

“We have to get moving,” I said.

Logan whistled sharply, making the rest of us
jump. I looked past him, seeing a fog of pale smoke sifting through
the crowds, brushing against the Plagued and killing them with a
single touch. But the smoke wasn’t coming from Logan.

It was coming from Orcus, shivering off the
Horse’s body and hair like a second skin. The Horse stood
triumphantly in front of the crevice, stamping his feet and looking
at his master. Orcus’s eyes shone like black marbles.

Logan stared at his Horse for a moment
longer, then pulled back and turned to face us. His pale face was
drawn and serious, his eyes just as black as his Horse’s.

“Orcus will stay here. He has enough magic to
keep the Plagued from entering this way.”

There was no doubting the trust in my
brother’s voice when it came to his animal. And we didn’t have time
to doubt it, either.

Logan crossed the patio toward me, looking
more intense than I’d seen him in a long time.

“Avery, you must conserve your power. We
can’t afford to lose you.”

I caught a warning underneath his words, but
didn’t bother to question it. All I did was nod, turn, and start to
run. Not waiting for the others, but knowing they were behind me, I
bolted across the other patios, turning into the side entrance of
the Venetian, and running behind the pillars making up the front
entrance of the hotel. It was the same path I’d used when I was
chasing after Maddy, but this time it wasn’t empty.

Dozens of wounded were resting next to the
door, holding their insides in their hands or writhing from
agonizing burns that blackened their skin. They were in too much
shock or pain to notice us, or even see the nurses rushing to patch
them up as best as they could. Kade likely deemed these people too
weak to physically fight. Otherwise he would have dragged them back
to the front lines.

It seemed like just minutes before we came to
a stop at the pillars behind the wall, but what we saw left us too
stunned to move.

It pained me to admit, but I’d always had a
morbid fascination with Kade’s fighting skill. He lived up to the
madness of his true name, never more in his element than when he
was in control and destroying his enemies every ruthless way he
knew how.

When some of the Soulless scrabbled over the
wall, the human Vermilions scampered back, and Kade took their
place. He used his war hammer to take out the first Soulless before
he even landed on the ground, swinging the massive weapon into the
falling man’s chest and pinning him to the wall. Blood burst around
the edge of the hammer and the man slumped forward, every bone
inside his chest crushed.

Kade took his hammer back, never missing a
step as four other Soulless dropped behind the wall. They hesitated
to take Kade on, but my brother didn’t have such reservations. He
lunged forward and swung the hammer again, crashing it into the
skull of the Soulless on his right. He pivoted again, sweeping low
and catching the Soulless on his left in the knee. I watched the
man’s kneecap bend out of its joint, sticking out horrifically from
the other side of his leg.

The Soulless closest to the wall tried to
lunge at my brother, but Kade saw him coming. He jabbed his elbow
back, breaking the Soulless’ nose when the strike connected. The
last standing Soulless tried to run, but Kade was faster. He swung
the hammer around, using the crevice to grab his opponent’s neck.
He pulled the Soulless man back, driving his knee into his victim’s
spine. Kade bent the man at a terrible angle, until it was clear
the Soulless’ back was broken. Kade released him and launched the
hammer into the temple of the broken-nosed Soulless. As he stumbled
to the side, Kade drew a huge knife from his belt and shoved it
into the ear of the Soulless. He twisted it once, and let the
Soulless fall dead.

Kade made short work of the Soulless lying on
the ground. His hammer crashed into their fallen bodies, turning
their heads into chunky red stains on the concrete. Kade didn’t
check on his men. He marched over to the side of the bridge
overlooking the empty canal below. He rested his hammer against the
banister, lifted up both his hands, and pulled on the angry power
residing inside of him.

Thick red smoke rose from his skin, wrapping
around his hands and turning into jets of blood red fire. The
flames rocketed out into the crowd of Plagued and Soulless near the
wall, rising until it draped over them like a burning blanket.
Aside from the screams of the Soulless, there wasn’t much to hear.
Plagued didn’t respond to pain.

But the smell… Even I couldn’t remember the
last time I’d smelled something that terrible. It was probably the
same kind of smell Hell had when it hosted a barbecue with human
meat.

With the amount of power and fire Kade was
using, you’d think that he’d torch any demons trying to get in from
the other side. Just as I was thinking Lady Luck might have winked
at us for once, a huge tidal wave of black and red demonfire roared
over the side of the wall and tumbled toward Kade.

My brother let go of his flames and rolled
out of the way. He escaped unscathed, but the Vermilions behind him
weren’t as fortunate. The demonfire consumed them in one heated
blast, their screams cut short as they were turned to a pile of
cinders.

Kade ignored them, got to his feet, and
finally saw us.

I’d never really been terrified of Kade.
Intimidated and a little scared, yes. But never completely fearing
for my life. Kade was serious in War-mode, and he liked to play
with his victims before he crushed them.

But looking into his eyes, darker than any
depth of space, absolute fear was the only thing I could feel.

“
You
,” Kade hissed, stomping toward
us, blood swinging off the end of his war hammer. “What the fuck
did you do?!”

The closer he got to us, the more I could see
his rage wasn’t directed at me or Simon or Logan, who he didn’t
seem to notice yet.

He was furious with Maddy.

I stood in front of her, hoping to hide her
smaller frame with my body. Kade came up short, red smoke seeping
from his skin as his eyes pierced me.

“Get the fuck out of my way, Avery,” warned
Kade. It was the kind of tone he only used once.

“She was with me,” I reasoned. “Whatever you
think she did–”

“What she did was call the demons here!” Kade
erupted. “Someone let them in, and my people don’t know how to do
that, so don’t tell me it was someone else–”

His rant would have gone on, if the wall
hadn’t exploded.

The rumbling crack and crunching squeals of
stone and metal made us all forget about Kade’s temper. The manmade
wall now had a huge fracture running down the middle like a fault
line, black edged flames curling around the edges like a claws.
Past the new halves of the wall was a swarming mass of hungry
Plagued and Soulless, but I could spot a familiar hat in the
crowd.

Even with hundreds of walking corpses and
Soulless men and women around him, Vance wasn’t even nudged. He
stood there with a huge grin on his face, and tipped his cowboy hat
in our direction. Kade cursed and hurled a ball of red fire at the
horde coming through the broken wall. It burned tall and fierce,
but it was only a distraction. Kade shouted orders at the remaining
Vermilions to move back into the hotel, knowing it was only a
matter of time before the Plagued and Soulless got through.

The rest of us didn’t move.

“Avery.”

Maddy’s voice was quiet, so small under the
racket ahead of us I almost didn’t hear her. I turned around and
looked at the human girl. She seemed so small, unsure of where she
should be. I put my hands on her shoulders.

“Get inside, Mads.”

She hesitated, like she wanted to stay and
fight with me instead. It was sweet, but I knew she wouldn’t last
long out here. Not with Vance, or Kade for that matter.

“Go find Josh,” I told her. “We’ve got
this.”

Maddy’s surety came back slowly, but the fear
didn’t leave her eyes. Maddy nodded once and backed away, turning
and running for the hotel entrance with the rest of the humans. I
didn’t have time to check and see if she made it, because the rest
of the monsters finally broke down the wall.

They poured over the crumbling wreckage like
blood from a wound, shoving each other aside to get to us. I
couldn’t see Vance any more, but I knew he was there.

We reacted without needing to think or speak.
It was like it had been during the Tribulation, when we were first
brought up from the depths of the earth and left to our own
devices. We knew what we had to do.

And we did it fucking well. Kade greeted the
horde with a single, sweeping blast of fire. He held onto it while
Logan rushed to his side, raising his hands to form an intricate
web of pale smoke. It looked like a fisherman's net as Logan tossed
it into the air, and it floated over and past Kade’s fire, and
dropping onto the unsuspecting masses beyond.

As brutally effective as Kade and Logan were,
it wasn’t enough. Smarter Soulless dodged the fire and death from
my older brothers, and some of the Plagued stumbled off to the side
of the fight, trudging forward with hunger in their eyes.

That was when Simon and I joined the
fight.

He started off using his bow, firing arrows
as he walked to the left, each shot finding a mark faster than the
last. Soon the bow became impractical, and Simon tossed it on his
back, going for hand-to-hand combat.

Sometimes I forgot Simon was a fighter as
much as the rest of us. He played the weak one, letting one of the
Soulless throw the first punch. Then he blocked the hit, filled his
hand with white smoke, and plowed it into the Soulless’ gut. He
gasped and tried to scream, but it came out as a hissing rasp. His
face lost all shape as it dried out, Simon leeching all the life
and strength from him. Once he subdued the Soulless in front of
him, he whipped around and threw a devastating roundhouse at the
one sneaking up behind him. When the monsters tried to surround
him, Simon flexed his fingers, shooting out daggers of white smoke
with perfect accuracy.

Fuck whatever Kade said. Simon was a
ferocious opponent, not someone you’d want to brush off
casually.

While this was going on, I charged to the
other side of Kade, using my machete like an extension of my arm to
cut down any stragglers. I shoved the heavy blade into a Soulless
man’s chest, severing his spinal column, then slashed it across the
face of a Plagued woman lurching toward me. Black claws reached for
my throat, but I leaned away, flipped the hold on my machete, and
swung up. The Soulless man screamed as his hand became a stump, at
least until I sliced open his neck.

More Soulless claws lunged for me while
Plagued teeth gnashed eagerly. Not using my power was difficult.
The temptation lingered under my skin, teasing and begging me.
Promising to be good, even when I wasn’t. Reminding me I was
becoming more human, and a human couldn’t beat these kinds of
numbers.

So I was going to have to make do with my
physical strength for now.

As I moved deeper into the crowd of Plagued
and Soulless, my older brothers let go of their powers. By then,
half the Plagued and Soulless were nothing more than charred,
motionless heaps on the ground. Even more were being emaciated by
Simon. Kade and Logan followed the same direct approach I was. Kade
climbed over the blackened remains of the dead, swinging his hammer
in unforgiving waves. Logan was across from him, gracefully moving
from enemy to enemy, punching and kicking and instantly killing
anyone he touched. The pile of bodies continued to grow as Simon
sent out darts of smoke to starve his opponents. I was beginning to
feel inferior amongst my brothers, watching them use their natural
gifts while I played with a sharp blade like a good little
near-human.

Whole lot of good that did me when a jet of
demonfire careened my way.

I scrambled to get out of the way, my tired
human body struggling to sync with my much faster, supernatural
brain. Both parts of me finally synchronized at the last second,
forcing me to dive, tuck, and roll when the blast slammed into the
banister at my back. I came up with the machete gripped securely in
my hand, but he was still too fast for me.

He must have been moving even as he threw the
demonfire, because Vance was suddenly in front of me and kicking me
in the chest.

I stumbled and almost fell on my ass, but
stayed on my feet and swung the machete in a low arc, hoping to
eviscerate him. No such luck, since the bastard jumped to my left
and aimed at right hook at my head. I twisted and slashed at him
again, but Vance gave up the hook and turned it into a low block,
the crook of his elbow catching my arm and raising it up. He bent
my trapped arm painfully, wrenching the machete from me with his
free hand. He kept my arm pinned, bending my arm again and sending
a piercing rush of pain through it. I winced and watched his free
hand curve into a fist, ready to punch my arm the entirely wrong
way so it would break.