Riders (25 page)

They came forward together, the skater and the homeless man. Harmless-looking, but not. Their stench hit me as they drew closer, the smell of rancid earth and death.

Pyro held out his hand, creating a white flame in his palm. He brought it toward Malaphar’s face, illuminating the older man’s pocked skin and black eyes.

Malaphar’s human face flickered out, then I saw a monstrous creature like Samrael, but deformed in different ways. He had melted features. Sagging skin. He was hideous. A wax figure left out in the hot sun. Then he blurred again and I was looking at Daryn.

She smiled, but it wasn’t her smile. It was nothing like her smile.

I was drawn to Daryn like I was drawn to the sea. But this girl only repulsed me.

“You will die, Gideon. Very soon,” she said.

Daryn’s voice. Her voice
exactly,
but the intonations were off.

“I’ll be twisting the knife in your back when you least expect it.”

I knew it wasn’t her but my body didn’t care. A sharp ache flared in the back of my throat.

Malaphar was laughing as he shifted back to his human form. Back to the weasel with the stringy hair and cratered skin. He laughed in big, hacking cackles that made Alevar duck inside his wings.

“That wasn’t what I was expecting, Malaphar,” Samrael said, his voice light, amused. “But perhaps it was better. Your face is a masterpiece, Gideon. I wish you could see it. I do enjoy my time with you.” He cast a glance toward the female demons, who’d started to prowl restlessly. “But we can’t delay any longer. Ra’om wishes to speak to you. It seems he’s lost his patience for your stubborn—”

I went after him with everything I had, but Samrael was ready. He sidestepped, and swung at me with the long knife in his hand. Our blades clashed, then I dodged and swung again. I met him evenly for a few more strikes, but he was faster. Fluid. Versed in this form of warfare. I couldn’t match him. He backed me against the wall of an apartment with a lightning-fast move and pinned my sword arm.

“Don’t fight it, Gideon.” He slipped the blade against my neck. Then that invisible pressure began over my eyes as he worked his way into my brain. “Stop struggling. Yes, good. I know it’s hard for you but the sooner this is over, the sooner we can find the key … and kill you.”

The world narrowed and pulled away from me. The whirling tunnel of darkness had become a familiar torture. I sank into it.

“You’ll see him soon,” Samrael said, as I sank deeper. Much deeper than I’d ever gone before. The darkness closed around me, swallowing light. Erasing everything until I couldn’t see the street or Samrael anymore.

Until there was only all-encompassing darkness and I was lost in it.

Adrift.

Then I heard a low, reptilian growl and deep red eyes emerged from the dark.

Ra’om.

Demon number seven.

Seven had to be bad.

The red eyes floated nearer. I saw black pupils, sickle-shaped. Then the curve of a heavy brow covered in gray scales the color of wet stone. Each one was inches thick. The size of my hand.

Hello, Gideon.

His voice was a nightmare. Dark. Resonant. The sound of evil.

Fear flowed through me like a current.

Ra’om came closer and a huge snout appeared with long teeth, sharp as swords. His black tongue flicked against them, sizzling with saliva. He shifted, revealing more of himself. Giving me glimpses of his enormous body. Of his wings. Of the spiked ridge of his back.

He didn’t deserve to be called a dragon. I had never seen a dragon as terrifying as this. The dark power I felt from him was hypnotic and hard to even comprehend.

That is the idea, Gideon. And I’m happy to know you feel so. Samrael has told me you’re a tough one. Uncooperative and resistant. But I believe I can persuade you to bring us the key yet.

Ra’om pulled back suddenly, withdrawing into the dark.

Panic crashed through me. This was different than Samrael. I didn’t know what to expect. What was this?

An image took shape before me, rising out of the darkness.

My mother stood on a green hillside, her black dress flapping in a breeze. Tears ran down her face. I knew this image. This place. It was the cemetery in the Santa Cruz Mountains where we’d buried my dad.

Mom looked down at his headstone, and the engraved inscription came into focus.

G
IDEON
C
HRISTOPHER
B
LAKE

Except that was wrong. My dad was Christopher Gideon Blake. My parents had given me his name, only reversed.

I was seeing
my
funeral. I was seeing my mother mourn
me
.

Would that be enough to persuade you?
Ra’om asked.
Or would this?

The image faded out, then another faded in.

Anna. My sister was on the floor of an empty room, rocking in a ball on the grimy concrete. She cried and ripped out chunks of her dark hair. She tore at her own face with her nails and made herself bleed as she begged me to make it stop.

Me.
Like
I
was doing that to her.

Yes. I’m getting to you, aren’t I? What about this, Gideon?

The image changed again, and I was seeing a party, everything dark and blurred except the golden shine of Daryn’s hair. I moved toward her, fighting through the crowd. As I finally reached her, I saw that she wasn’t alone. She stood tucked beneath a guy’s arm, smiling up at him like they were together. Then he looked right at me, and I saw that it was Samrael. And, somehow, I knew that she was with him because I’d failed. Because I’d let her down.

It was destroying me to see them together, but I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t even speak.

All I could do was watch.

Then it was me. I saw myself standing on the warped shingle roof of a yellow bungalow in Half Moon Bay. At my feet, my dad clung to the gutter, about to fall. He looked at me and asked for help. If I didn’t help, he was going to die.

I reached down. I picked up the yellow pencil from inside the gutter. Then I stood and watched the strength leave his fingers. Watched as he fell and hit the red bricks of the walkway below. I just stood there.

More, Gideon? Or will you bring me the key?

C
HAPTER
39

After that, I lost some time. I wasn’t conscious but I wasn’t unconscious, either. I was trapped in the middle somewhere.

I only remember pieces of what happened next. The dread-locked woman lifting her head and letting out a long, baying sound. Samrael releasing me and leaving with the other Kindred. Responding to a threat that was beyond me. No more Ra’om—that was all I cared about—but I wasn’t free yet.

Nausea hit me. Stomach-clenching nausea, like a concussion and motion sickness, plus the sensation that my brain had been thoroughly ransacked.

I bent over my legs and heaved, riding out the shaking in my muscles, the coughing, and the bitter taste on my tongue. It took me long minutes to regain some control. As I straightened and looked around me, I still felt weak and disoriented.

The darkness Alevar had released from his wings was lifting. Under the glow of the streetlights, the wet cobblestones looked like gold, the apartment windows like crystal. Night had never seemed so bright to me before.

I realized I didn’t have the sword any longer. I had a vague recollection of calling it back just before Samrael had introduced me to Ra’om. I’d tapped into the same feeling as when I’d summoned it. A singular purpose. A clear intention. I was almost sure I could achieve that again.

So at least one good thing had come out of this.

As I found my composure, I became aware of someone watching me from the end of the street. A guy in a dark coat sat on one of the apartment stoops. Blond hair. About my age, from what I could tell. I had a feeling he’d been there for the past few minutes while I’d hacked up my intestines. I also had a pretty good idea of who he was thanks to the cuff, but I didn’t go after him yet. I didn’t trust myself to.

“Gideon!”

Daryn and Marcus came running from the other end of the street. Daryn flew into my arms. I yanked her close and hugged her hard, needing to feel her realness. Ra’om had knocked down some part of me that still couldn’t seem to get back up.

“What happened?” Daryn said, drawing back. “Gideon, your nose.”

“Don’t know.” I felt it now, the swelling and the pain. And I tasted blood on my tongue. “Busted it. Daryn, where were you?”

My voice sounded like it had gone through a shredder, and I was having trouble concentrating. Daryn was right in front of me, but I had to keep telling myself that she was okay. That my mom and Anna were, too.

Marcus looked away, noticing the guy on the stoop.

“We had to leave,” Daryn said. “I tried to get you on the radio. I know you wanted us to stay, but Alevar saw us, then left. We thought he was going to get the rest of the Kindred.”

She looked at Marcus, waiting for him to jump in and help explain.

“Has he been there a while?” Marcus asked, his eyes still locked on Conquest.

“Ten minutes.”

We didn’t say another word, but we both knew what needed to happen. We took off like heat-seeking missiles.

Conquest jumped up when he saw us coming. He ran down the steps and tore down the street, but Marcus turned it up, cutting off his escape route. I came up behind him. We had him boxed in.

Conquest looked from Marcus to me, like he couldn’t decide who posed the lesser threat. He faced me. Wrong choice.

“Hey, man,” I said. “Are you Jode?”

“Who are you?” he said, scowling at me with bloodshot eyes.

No mistaking his accent. He was English. And rich, judging by his threads. Double-breasted coat. Fisherman-style, but the kind you saw on runways, not gangways. He was weaving in place and reeked of alcohol.

That sealed it for me. I hauled off and punched him.

He fell gracefully. Knee, hip, shoulder. Like some part of him had decided,
What the heck. I’m passing out tonight anyway. Might as well get started now.

“Gideon!” Daryn gaped at me. “What did you
do
?” She rushed over, kneeling beside him.

There was no way to explain it all. I couldn’t shake the fears Ra’om and Samrael had planted in my mind. Something felt different inside me. Darker. And we didn’t have time to stand around and try to convince Conquest to join up. I wasn’t going to say all that, so I shrugged and said, “I came. I saw. I conquered.”

Daryn sprang up. “That’s not funny!”

I hadn’t intended it to be funny. But I didn’t clarify that either. My logical, rational mind was slowly coming back online. I had to get us off the street. Daryn and Marcus had been spotted in the Fiat, so we had no wheels anymore. We also had no Sebastian, but my first priority was getting present company to a safe location.

I crouched by Conquest and rolled him onto his back. A bruise was spreading over his cheek where I’d hit him. He let out a big snore, which got a laugh out of Marcus that honestly surprised me. I hadn’t known he
could
laugh. I pulled Conquest’s sleeve up. His cuff was bright white and had clean lines, more like mine than Sebastian’s and Marcus’s. Right guy.

Then I checked the pockets of his fancy not-fishing coat and found a wallet made of butter-soft leather. Moving through the contents quickly, I came up with a small stack of euros in crisp new bills, credit cards, and a student ID for Oxford University issued to James Oliver Drummond Ellis. No wonder he went by Jode.

Between the wallet, his clothes, the gleaming watch at his wrist, and the pretty boy face, I was starting to worry I had a Wyatt Sinclair on my hands.

Checking his other pocket, I finally found what I wanted. I held up the hotel security card. “The Great Gatsby’s staying in town.” I pulled the radio from my pocket and checked the address on the GPS. “His hotel’s less than three miles away.”

“Really?” Daryn said. “That would be so
doable
if we could all
walk
.”

Three minutes ago she’d been hugging me, all worried. Now she looked like she wanted to finish the job Samrael had started.

“No problem,” I said. I grabbed Jode’s arm and pulled him over my shoulder. Thankfully, he had a light build. A buck fifty and five-nine or so. Also thankfully, I’d done a lot of this in RASP. Carrying Cory on my back on forced road marches had prepared me. Cory was my size. One eighty and six-one. I knew I could handle Prince Conquest.

“Race you guys,” I said, settling him over my shoulders.

Marcus and Daryn looked at me like I was a nut, which felt normal and gave me a needed morale boost. Then we were off, trudging along the dark city streets of Rome.

By the time we came to the Ponte Sant’Angelo, I was sweating bullets but the adrenaline was finally leaving my body. Some of the fear, too. But I still felt like if I closed my eyes for too long, the images Ra’om had shown me would come right back.

I tried to focus on my surroundings. According to my guidebook, the bridge had stood for almost two millennia. As I passed one angel statue after another, I felt the centuries the bridge had seen. All the days and nights it had spanned the waters of the Tiber below. Looking at it, I felt insignificant. Linked to every human on the planet. Everything seemed awesome now that I wasn’t in the mental clutches of a demon.

“What are you thinking about?” Daryn asked. “At this very second?”

“I was thinking that this is great,” I said.

“No, you weren’t.”

“Was so. I’m in the moment, Martin.” This moment was a lot better than the ones I’d just been in.

We walked for a little more. Marcus was ahead of us, out of earshot. He wasn’t clutching his shoulder anymore. Maybe it was already healing. “Is this really what you do all the time?” I asked. “Run all over the world like this?”

Daryn shook her head. “Not like this. This is by far the most challenging thing I’ve ever done.” She glanced at me, her eyes sparkling. “In large part because of you.”

I grinned. “But who doesn’t love a good challenge, right?”