Path of the Horseman (37 page)

I turned away from Kade’s fist, watching it
crack and splinter the doorframe. I tried to get distance, but his
elbow whipped around and caught me in the side of the head. Hands
clasped around my throat as I was staggering, and squeezed
menacingly. Kade’s anger was beyond control.

“You did this, you little shit,” my brother
growled. “Everything I worked for, all my people, are gone because
of you.”

I didn’t point out that he found us.
Reminding Kade of that would only make him snap my neck faster.

“You still love those humans, Pest? Still
glad you saved them?”

All but one
, I thought, since I
couldn’t speak.

Red smoke floated toward me, Kade’s power
ready to drive fear deep into my brain–

“Kade.”

I looked over his shoulder at the same time
he turned his head. Logan stood in the middle of his room, still
looking perfectly immaculate. Nothing indicated he’d been in a
fight earlier. One of his gloves was off, pale smoke swirling
hazardously around his hand.

“Enough.”

Had it been anyone else, Kade wouldn’t have
listened. Logan was the one person stronger and deadlier than Kade.
Being able to kill anything with a single touch kind of makes you
superior, I suppose.

Disgruntled that I’d skip a beat-down for
now, Kade unfurled his fingers from my neck and shoved me back. I
coughed a couple times, rubbing my throat and feeling fresh
contusions there.

“You can’t heap the blame on one person. Not
when we’re all at fault.”

“Why, because we did what we were told to?”
Kade snarked.

“Exactly,” Logan shot back. “None of you
understood what you were doing the day we started, but I did. I
felt all those deaths, all that pain. I tried to tell you all to
stop, but you didn’t listen. All the three of you wanted was to use
your powers. I took the hurt for all of you. I still do.”

We all fell silent. Logan never said much,
but we listened when he did. Except for the time he was talking
about. I remembered it, my oldest, strongest brother telling us we
had to stop before we went too far and killed people who weren’t
ready to die. He told us about the agony he felt as each death sank
into him, like a layer of cement being poured inside his head and
chest. He asked us to stop.

But we didn’t. We didn’t care. Not then. Not
until it was too late.

“Every time anything with a soul dies on this
damned planet, I feel it. Since I’m not in that much pain anymore,
there isn’t a lot of suffering I can do.”

“Then you should be fucking ecstatic,” Kade
pointed out. “No more owies for big brother Death.”

Logan stalked across the room, angrier than I
ever knew he could be. Usually he hid whatever he was feeling,
accepting what came his way. I didn’t understand what had changed
him. Logan wasn’t afraid of his own death, despite what Ciaran was
threatening to do.

Knowing I needed to stay in the moment, I
turned my thoughts away from the demon who was tearing our lives
apart.

“When are you going to realize we won’t last
forever?” shouted Logan once he was in Kade’s face. “You’ve abused
your powers for far too long, brother. How much longer can you keep
up the charade of strength?”

Kade glared back. “It’s not a charade.”

“So you lie to yourself too, is that it?
We’re all lying about something, it seems. You, thinking you’re
invincible, Simon thinking he’s strong enough to fight on the front
lines, and Avery for believing Heaven’s lies.”

I wanted to argue with Logan that he was
being unfair with his temper tantrum, but he wasn’t spinning
falseness. Kade held himself on a pedestal higher than the clouds.
Simon’s fear might have been lessened, but it was still buried just
under the surface. And me, I was an idiot. I stumbled to do the
right things, never seeing how much worse I was making them until
it was too late.

Logan shook his head and turned away from
us.

“We never should have listened to them,” he
muttered. “Humanity would have found a way to destroy itself, but
we should have left them to their own devices. They didn’t deserve
this, and it’s too late to go back.”

After a moment, I said, “Then we
shouldn’t.”

Logan turned to look at me.

“Go back, I mean,” I continued. “We can’t
reverse what we did, but we can make the best of what we left
behind.” I let that possibility sink in for my brothers before
going on. “We need to stop Ciaran. If he lets the demons up here,
it’s all over. They’ll get bored with the humans after a few
centuries, and think they can get a higher throne. Heaven won’t put
up with that, and will blast earth into oblivion the moment they
try.”

“Did you forget that Ciaran’s power grows as
ours lessens?” reminded Logan unhelpfully. “You can’t defeat him,
Avery.”

“Why not? Have you seen me die?”

Logan’s dark eyes held mine, his jaw set in a
firm line. Something flashed through his eyes, too fast for me to
read. Then he turned into a stone.

Well… That doesn’t exactly inspire
confidence.

“Look, none of you need to do this with me.
But I’ve screwed things up too many times. I need to make it right,
in a major way. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t
released that Plague. So you’re right, Logan. I should have
listened to you the second we came out of the ground. But I didn’t.
Now I have to make do with what I have. So don’t come if you don’t
want to. But don’t get in my way. I can do this myself.”

I looked at my older brothers quickly, trying
to get a sense of where they stood now that my offer was on the
table. Simon was nervous again. Kade was still angry, but he wasn’t
running over to put my head through the wall. Logan’s expression
bothered me the most. His dark eyes got that look again, the spacey
one when he saw a death where he would need to be directly
involved.

I didn’t waste any time, actually. When none
of them answered me, I turned and left the boardroom. I walked
through the grave-silent hotel, heading to the front entrance where
the bridge was. I had no idea where to start looking for Ciaran and
his goons. It was clear the campground in the Valley of Fire wasn’t
their main base of operations. It had just been a lure to bring
humans over to them. The big rig that carted the humans away in
cages… wherever they were going was where I needed to be.

I hoped whatever car I found had a full tank
of gas.

“Avery! Avery, wait!”

I stopped as I passed the pillars to the main
plaza outside the Venetian’s front doors. Simon was jogging toward
me, slowing down until he was face to face with me. My brother held
my eyes and sighed, as though whatever he was about to tell me was
going to be unpleasant. I waved my hand in front of him.

“Listen, Sime, if you’re going to try and
talk me out of this–”

“What? No, I’m coming with you.”

I paused, lowering my hand to my side. Simon
exhaled and ran a hand through his dark, shaggy hair. “Look, you’re
not the only one who screwed up. We all did. I hated what I had to
do, watching all those people die slowly, their bodies eating
themselves to stay alive…” Simon shook his head, as if it could
erase his own horrible memories. “I tried not to think about it.
Pretending I didn’t care made it easier to survive. But you showed
up, ready to throw yourself in the line of fire for humans you
didn’t know, mortals that would hate you for what you’ve done, and
I realized I wanted that too. A second chance. Something worth
fighting for.”

Simon raised his head, his graphite eyes
darkening, but not with anger or fear. With conviction. Strength.
Confidence.

“I’m sick of being scared and paranoid all
the time,” he told me. “This isn’t about us looking after our own
skins. It’s about protecting everyone around us. That’s what you’re
trying to do, what you’ve always tried to do. I get it now, and I’m
going to be part of it.”

A wave of relief flooded my chest, unknotting
the tension that had been building since I woke up, thinking I’d
need to fight this battle alone. But here Simon was, telling me he
was ready to face his fears and stand with me when I needed him
most. Just like a real brother would.

“Well, this Hallmark moment is wonderful and
all,” drawled a deeper, darker voice from the shadows beyond the
pillars, “but I’m ready to just start killing things.”

Simon and I turned our attentions to Kade,
who was strolling into the plaza with a smile on his face and
murder in his eyes. The Kevlar laced body armor that covered him
from head to toe looked pristine. Even his boots and the silver
blockhead of his hammer looked polished, as though he hadn’t been
knee deep in the massacre at his front door.

I tensed, shifting my weight in case he threw
himself at me. Kade saw what I was doing and rolled his eyes.

“Relax, Pest. I don’t feel like killing you
right now.” His black eyes narrowed on me. “But you are going to
pay for what you did to my home one day. I won’t forget this.”

Trusting that Kade wasn’t going to stab me in
the back, I glanced over my shoulder at the carnage we had created.
The pile of dead Soulless and permanently dead Plagued was stacked
so high it rivaled the height of Kade’s previous wall. The reek of
burned, rotting flesh rode the wind, hitting my face and bringing
tears to my eyes. I turned away, knowing I wouldn’t forget the
carnage any sooner than Kade would.

“But right now, I think I’ll go on this
hunting trip with you brats,” Kade said, sounding almost cheerful.
He spun the war hammer in his hand, grinning malevolently. “Can’t
pass up the chance for a fight, especially when Ciaran’s begging
for it.”

I thought about reminding him of what Logan
said, how Kade wouldn’t know his power was exhausted until it was
gone and someone got a lucky shot in. Kade was good at what he
did– the best, really– but he was becoming human. He’d
never admit it, but lying didn’t alter the truth, not at its
core.

Still, I would need all the help I could get.
Ciaran must know I would be coming for him, and he’d have an army
waiting to stop me.

But if anybody could take on an army
singlehandedly with a smile and a song in his heart, it would be
Kade.

“Okay,” I agreed. “We should head back to the
Valley of Fire. The rig we saw would have left some kind of track.
We can follow them there.” I started walking around the bridge,
going back to the corner we’d slipped into during the battle. I had
no desire to further desecrate the bodies of the dead.

“What makes you think Ciaran won’t have
erased those tracks?” Simon asked as we briskly crossed the walkway
and strolled through the patios.

“We don’t have anywhere else to start
looking,” I pointed out. “He knew where both of us lived, but he
wouldn’t put his base so close to us if we could find it through
sheer dumb luck. He’d want somewhere with wide enough space to open
a Hell Door.”

I cringed at the very words, but I knew that
was what Ciaran was planning to do. A Hell Door was the only way to
bring the heavy hitting demons out into the world. Though if a Hell
Door opened, it wouldn’t just be demons coming through. It’d be
their pets, their masters, their soul-slaves, their diseases and
dementia, their fire and weapons… It would be a whole new
Apocalypse, worse than anything we’d ever created.

“He wouldn’t stay in the Valley of Fire, no
matter how big it was. The terrain isn’t right. Too many exterior
variables.”

I stopped talking when we got to the crevice
in the wall I’d created. We couldn’t move through it without
stepping on the dead, so I forced myself to do so with a hard
frown. I made it onto the road by the Strip, looking at the bodies
strewn along the road.

Orcus stood about twenty feet away, the
death-smoke no longer surrounding him. The Horse stood like a
statue, watching us because there was nothing else for him to see.
He waited for Logan to come out behind us, and when he didn’t see
him, the Horse simply turned and stared at the Venetian past the
wall. He knew where his master was, and would wait for forever if
he had to.

“Damn, Logan kept his Horse awake? I’d say
that son of a bitch was sentimental, but he’s not. Otherwise he’d
be coming with us.”

I looked at Kade. “Logan isn’t coming?”

My older brother scoffed. “Of course not.
That pussy would rather sit and brood in the shadows. Hell, he’s
probably cutting his wrists and coming up with his next poem. Logan
would rather whine about problems than try to solve them.”

I didn’t appreciate the jab at my brother’s
expense, but I also didn’t like thinking about the truths hanging
under Kade’s words. I wanted Logan’s support. Needed it. Of all of
us, I thought he would be one of the first ones to stand beside me,
given all his talk about wanting to right our wrongs.

But he said nothing, did nothing, and would
stay in the Venetian while his Horse waited to be ridden or
freed.

“Avery, we need to leave.”

I tore my gaze away from the Venetian, along
with any hope I had of Logan running out to join us. Simon was
standing by the car he had used earlier. It didn’t appear damaged
aside from a couple new dents and a slightly cracked back window.
Kade was already sitting in the passenger seat, his massive frame
taking up every inch of space.