Path of the Horseman (14 page)

I let myself lose control. I wanted to break
him. I wanted him to be in just as much pain as my brother was. I
wanted him to suffer. It had been a long time since I felt this
kind of anger, and now I refused to let it go.

The only thing that stopped me was the weak,
desperate cry behind me. I stopped the beating, holding my fist in
mid-air and looked at my brother.

He was lying on his back, his hands at his
side, struggling to push Maddy and the others away. He didn’t want
them to help, either because he didn’t trust them, or he knew they
couldn’t save him.

I turned back to the demon, made sure no one
was watching me, and pulled down the collar of the black shirt the
demon was wearing. I shoved my hand into his chest, and let him
have a hearty dose of costochondritis. The demon reacted
immediately, clutching his chest and gasping for air. Every time he
did, he coughed. Every time he coughed, the pain increased, and the
cycle started again. I leaned down until our noses were almost
touching.

“Stay right fucking here, coal-eater. I’m
coming back.”

I punched him in the right lung, and dosed
him with round two of the disease. The fucker wouldn’t be able to
escape thanks to the pain.

Barking an order for Ricardo and Gwen to
watch him, I rushed to Simon’s side. The closer I got, the better I
could hear what he was mumbling.

“Don’t… Go… Leave… don’t want…”

I shouldered past the humans and knelt beside
him. Maddy looked at me with confusion. She was holding a white
strip of gauze in her hand, eager to apply it to Simon’s steadily
bleeding side.

“He’s not letting me touch him,” she told me.
“Why isn’t he letting me help?”

I looked at Simon’s face, and immediately
understood.

When we lost control of our emotions, we lost
control of our powers. Anger, fear, desperation, they made us
forget about the human bodies we were in and reminded us of what we
really were. Venting for us usually meant something catastrophic.
Simon was on the edge. The single touch of a human would remind him
how fragile he was, something he didn’t want to be. My sharper
eyesight let me see the tiny wisps of smoke leeching out of his
pores. He opened his dark eyes to mine, begging me to help him. I
was in relative control now that I’d turned the coal-eater back
there into a punching bag.

“Go watch the other guy,” I told Maddy. “I’ll
look after him.”

“Avery,” she hesitated.

I raised my head and looked at her sharply.
She flinched.

“I said go. Take the others with you.”

Maddy didn’t need to be told twice. She
placed the gauze onto the ground and hurried away. She whispered to
the human pack, who followed her without complaint or question.
Once they were gone, I reached over Simon’s body and placed my
hands on the hilt of the knife. I looked at Simon.

“I have to take the knife out,” I told him
grimly, silently praying that Logan wasn’t lurking over my
shoulder.

“Then… do it…”

I didn’t wait for him to tell me again. I
yanked the blade free. Simon gasped and gritted his teeth while I
slapped my hands over his side. Sticky blood warmed my hands.

I didn’t hesitate with my power. The humans
couldn’t see me, and my smoke wouldn’t hurt Simon. I concentrated
on the damaged skin, torn muscle, and bleeding kidney. I let the
black smoke filter into his body and repair it all. Simon winced,
but didn’t try to move my hands. I concentrated, feeling every
ripped part of him knit back together.

In a couple minutes, Simon’s injury was
healed over to a simple knotted scar. It would take me too long to
replace the blood his body had lost, but I also knew that we had
appearances to keep. I grabbed the gauze that Maddy had dropped and
started wrapping Simon’s wound.

“It was a fucking demon,” Simon said. His
voice returning to a shaky whisper was a sign of improvement.

“I know,” I muttered back.

“First one I’ve seen since the Tribulation.
He scared the shit out of me. I could feel myself losing it, and
then all those people were crowding me…” Simon closed his eyes. “I
almost fucking lost it, Avery. I was ready to kill them all.”

I kept silent as I finished wrapping his now
nonexistent wound. There was enough blood on his clothes and skin
to be absorbed into the bandage and make it look like he was still
hurt.

“But you didn’t,” I pointed out. “That’s all
that matters.”

Simon opened his eyes and looked at me. “What
the fuck do they want?”

“Good question.” I tightened the bandage then
stood up and held out my hand. Simon took it and let me pull him to
his feet. He grunted and swayed, placing one hand on his hurting
ribs. But he could stand on his own, and he was still
breathing.

“Let’s go ask.”

I let go of my brother and walked toward the
humans crowding the writing demon.

“Thank you, Avery.”

I turned my head ever so slightly and nodded
once. Then I walked toward the demon that was circled by the
humans. I brushed shoulders with them again, but they were more
than happy to back away from me. I was covered in blood, armed, and
pissed. I had the universal look “Fuck Off Or Die” plastered on my
face.

Josh had his rifle trained on the demon’s
pulped face, but the demon was in too much pain to notice. His
breath sounded like it was coming out of a metal can. He rolled and
coughed and gagged, turning onto his side and coughing up
blood.

“Jesus, man,” Ricardo said. “You fucked him
up.”

“He stabbed my brother,” I replied without
looking at the human. “What did you think I was going to do?”

Nobody argued with me, and now they knew how
far I would go to protect my family. Even if we didn’t get along. I
took another step into the circle and knelt by the demon. I pushed
him roughly onto his back, then flicked the side of his head. The
demon sputtered, tiny drops of blood flipping up from his lips. I
hoped he could picture my hate filled stare even with his eyes
closed.

“Talk,” I demanded.

The demon groaned, screwing his face so his
lips curled upward. The coal-eater was trying to smile at me.

“Ciaran has… been looking… for you,” he
wheezed. “He’ll… have you all… soon.”

Simon and I were the only ones who knew what
Ciaran was, so I didn’t know if this Neo-wannabe meant the super
demon was coming after Simon, me, or the humans we’d been hanging
out with.

Or all of the above. Demons wanted anything
they could sink their rotten claws into.

“What does he want?” I asked. The
costochondritis would have stagnated by now, the intensity of the
pain now reaching his central organs. He was in the middle of a
full-blown heart attack.

Yet the sulfur sucking prick still found the
will to open his eyes and smile at me.

“Everything.”

The demon started laughing again,
purposefully causing himself more pain until his coughs became his
only source of inhalation. He gagged and hacked, spewing blood and
choking on it. Finally, his wheezes became too sharp for his body
to endure. He shuddered out one more gasp, then went still. I
watched his burning coal eyes glaze over and stare vacantly at the
sun burning a hole in the sky.

“What the fuck was he?” Josh’s strong voice
had a shake to it.

There was no point in lying. He saw the man
appear from a sudden pillar of ash, heard what he said, and saw the
strangeness of his eyes. He knew this dead thing lying on the
resort grounds wasn’t human any more than it was another monster
he’d seen.

“He was a demon,” I confessed.

The air was still. Everyone was staring at
me. I looked up and saw Simon putting a hand on his side. His jaw
was set like he wanted to argue with me, but he was too tired to
make the effort.

“Did you say ‘demon’?” Theo repeated. He must
have come up behind us after the drama finished.

“Yeah. It’s a long story. Best told on a
drive.”

Josh’s expression was harder than steel. He
didn’t want me along for the ride, but I knew things he didn’t
know. He couldn’t protect his people if he didn’t know about all
the dangers in the world.

“Then we’d better start the road trip,” he
said.

***

Simon was able to play the part of a wounded
warrior to a tee. He sat by the window near the front of the bus
with me. Ricardo was driving the newly repaired Rust Bus, while the
others stayed in the front to listen with rapt attention. Josh was
gripping the tattered seats of the bus, like it was all he could do
to keep from hitting something. Maddy was hunched over, taking
every word we said with a dose or horror and a pinch of
fascination.

Simon wasn’t really in a talking mood, so I
explained most of the truths about demons. I told them they’d come
out during the Tribulation, they were smart and devious, and
summoning them took some blood and knowing their true name. I then
advised them that if they ever did it, I’d personally track them
down and beat them to a pulp.

“So let me get this straight,” Jerry said
when I took a breather. In another, better life, he’d been a
mythology teacher. Demons interested him, though I didn’t think he
was stupid or brave enough to attempt summoning one. “The demons
are the ones creating the Soulless?”

I nodded. “I’ve seen it happen.” Not a lie.
“People get desperate, reach the end of their rope, can’t take the
pain or terror, whatever. So they call up a demon and give up their
soul. The demon makes them Soulless, giving them extra strength and
speed, and a nasty craving for red liquid.”

“But the demon gets something else, don’t
they?” Maddy prodded. “I mean, they’re always out for the best
deal. What does the soul give them?”

“Power,” I answered. “The more souls a demon
collects, the stronger they become. They can make bigger fires,
increase their physical skills, fuck with minds better. Souls are
steroids for demons without the nasty side effects.”

Maddy cringed, not liking what I was saying
any more than I was telling her. Instead of asking more questions,
she leaned back and ran her hands through her honey blonde hair.
Josh shuffled to be closer to her, watching me over her
shoulder.

“How do you kill them?”

I shrugged. “Same as you kill anything else,
but it’s harder to do. There aren’t many of them out here that I
know of, but all of them are going to be working for the same
boss.”

“And who’s that?”

“He goes by the name Ciaran,” muttered Simon.
I glanced at him sitting in the seat behind me. He was still
holding his ribs and looking miserable. “He controls things behind
the scene, letting his walking pit-bulls do the dirty work. But
Ciaran is more powerful and dangerous than Vance, because Ciaran
creates almost all of the Soulless.”

Josh’s eyes narrowed with mistrust. “You two
certainly know a lot about these demons and how they work.”

Simon stared at the military man without
emotion. Then he got up from his seat and walked to the back of the
bus to sit alone. I rubbed my forehead. It was sticky from all the
blood on it.

“Be grateful that we do,” I grumbled. “You
little campers are stronger and tougher with us.”

Josh’s steel blue eyes flashed angrily. He
didn’t want me near his flock, but there was no point in denying
the truth. Demons put their lives in a whole new ballpark of
danger. Josh could hate it to the very core of his being, but he
was going to have to man up and deal with my brother and me. The
world was diseased and overrun with monsters, and I helped make it
that way.

Build a bridge, get over it, then burn
it.

When it was clear that no one was going to
ask me more about demons, I stood up from my seat and walked toward
the back where Simon was sitting. It was a bit of a rickety walk
since we were driving on an uneven patch of road, but it was better
than traveling on foot. I sat in the seat opposite of Simon,
leaning back and trying to look like we were about to have a casual
conversation. Appearances mattered now more than ever.

“How’s your side?” I asked.

Simon didn’t reply, because we both knew it
was fine. I sat there in silence, not sure what to say to make up
for all the ways I’d wronged him.

“I had a good life there, Avery,” he finally
said. I glanced at him, but of course he wasn’t looking at me. “It
wasn’t much, but it was a life. You should have let me live
it.”

Hearing him say that hurt. My brothers and I
never exactly got along, but I liked to think that Simon and I were
close. Well, as close as two of our apocalyptic kind could be.

“If I’d left you there, Ciaran would have
found you and killed you.”

“Maybe,” admitted my brother. “But I would
have lasted longer there than I will out here.”

“Stop it,” I snapped, controlling the volume
of my voice so the humans wouldn’t hear us. “Acting suicidal and
depressed is Logan’s thing, not yours.”