Riders Page 8

  “How’s it going over there?” I didn’t know what else to say. And I was done with silence.

  She glanced at me. “Sorry. I’m just trying to figure out how to approach this. I won’t be able to answer everything. Okay?”

  “Okay.” I couldn’t understand why she seemed nervous. Now. Talking to me. How was this the same girl who winked at bikers? “How about this,” I said. “I’ll ask questions, you answer them. What’s your last name?”

  She let out a slow breath, like she was dreading this. “Martin.”

  “How old are you, Daryn Martin?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “What’s your favorite breakfast food? Blueberry pancakes, right? Because if they’re not, I’m going to be crazy impressed by what you did back there.”

  She rolled her eyes, pretending to be annoyed. “The more syrup, the better.”

  “What’s your journal about?”

  I didn’t expect her to answer that one but she came right out and said, “Everything I care about.” She stretched my sweatshirt over her knees. “Those are easy questions. They’re easy ones to answer.”

  “For you, they are. I didn’t know any of that stuff. You’re pretty much expert level on the subject of Daryn Martin.”

  “Maybe.” She turned to her window. “But you don’t want to know about me.”

  Actually, that wasn’t true. But it was fair to say my curiosity went well beyond her, too. “Let’s just keep going. We’ll stop when it’s not easy anymore. You came to find me last night at that party. Right?”

  “Yes.” She peered at me. “But I didn’t expect to be sent for you first.”

  “Because?”

  “Because Conquest is the first horseman, not War. War is the second horseman. But like I said yesterday, none of what’s going on is related to Revelation. The seven seals? The events preceding Judgment Day? This isn’t about that, so I guess the order shouldn’t matter. You’re an incarnation of War. You’ve been given War’s abilities to carry out a mission.”

  “Right. Okay. Right.” I couldn’t drive and have that conversation. I needed to give it my total focus, so I pulled off onto the shoulder and peeled the electrical tape under the steering column apart, killing the engine. A couple of surfers were out on the water, shredding. That looked fun. I wanted to be out there, not a care in the world.

  “So, this guy,” I said. “Conquest. The other horseman. Wait—girl?”

  “Guy.” Daryn was looking through the front windshield like we were still driving. “You’re all guys.”

  “So, no horsepersons?” It sounded ridiculous, but it was an honest question.

  “No.”

  “What are you? Are you, like, an anj—anj—angel?” I’d been joking last night when I’d yelled that at her, but what if she really was?

  Daryn shook her head. “Definitely not. I am definitely not an angel.” She looked at me, really directly. The more anxious she was, the more still she seemed to become. “Seeker. That’s … that’s how I think of myself.”

  “Seeker.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is Seeker higher in rank than horseman? In the grand scheme, are you more senior than me?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “I’m in the military. Rank matters. I just want to know where I stand. If we had uniforms with stripes on the shoulder, would you have more stripes than me?”

  For just an instant, part of an instant, she looked like she wanted to laugh. “You’re unbelievable. Yes. I’d probably have one more stripe than you. I’m kind of the source for…” She paused. “I don’t know. For information. Does that bother you?”

  “Why would it?”

  She just looked at me.

  Did she mean the girl thing? Because I had no problem taking orders from a girl. I’d been doing it my whole life, for one. My mom was the strongest person I knew. And if you were capable, I personally gave no shits what you were. For me character was character, end of story.

  “Okay, this is good.” I shook some sand out of my hair, scrubbed a hand over my face. “Gettin’ some answers. Hangin’ in my Jeep with a Seeker in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Cayucos.”

  “Say what now?”

  “We’re in Cayucos, California.”

  My gaze drifted out to the surfers on the water. Cayucos. Kye-yoo-kuss. What kind of word was that? Spanish? I was definitely focusing on the wrong things.

  “How are you doing with all of this?” she asked.

  “Great. Really great.”

  “Want me to keep going?”

  “Absolutely. Keep going.”

  “So … from time to time … I get this sort of … download into my mind. Information, like I said before. That’s how I know what I need to do, what my task is. In the last one, I saw you and the three other riders. I learned that I need to bring the four of you together so you can help protect something that’s very powerful. Something that can’t fall into the wrong hands.”

  I nodded, taking a few seconds to let that sink in. “Are you going to tell me what I’m protecting?” It took everything in me not to look right at the silver necklace I’d noticed earlier. There was something unusual about the thickness of the links. Maybe that wasn’t the object, but my instincts were pinging.

  “And what about this?” I lifted my wrist, showing her the cuff. “This showed up a few days ago without a manual. Any idea what it does? How it works?”

  She looked from the cuff to me, shaking her head. “There are certain things I can’t tell you yet. I told you that. It’s safer.”

  “There are certain things you need to tell me, Daryn. Usually on a mission it’s good to have what’s called an objective.”

  “I agree. And right now the objective is to bring the four of you together. The Kindred are dangerous. We’re already outnumbered by them. You’ll be stronger as a group. We will be. The only way we stand a chance is together.”

  That actually made sense. It was the same principle I’d been learning in the Army. Ranger Battalions only worked effectively when they worked together.

  “All right,” I said, but I didn’t feel all right. I had so many questions. A hundred. A thousand. I couldn’t even focus on any one for long. But the thing I wanted to know—needed to know—was if I was good.

  Was I an agent of darkness? Maybe the wrong hands Daryn was talking about were actually the right hands. If all of this was true, then I was War. I had a sketchy understanding of Revelation, but I was pretty sure the horsemen had been unleashed to cleanse the earth of evils. But I felt shaky about how things like war and famine and death could be on the good side—instruments of anything good. And from the minute Daryn had told me I was War, that had become a huge, looming question in my head.

  Am I good?

  Bigger than that, possibly, was my confusion over why I had been chosen.

  Why me?

  I was just a dumb kid.

  But I couldn’t ask either question. So I skipped ahead to easier ones.

  “What about the three people at the party last night? They’re part of this, right? Our opposition? You called them the Kindred. They’re after this secret thing I’m supposed to protect?”

  “Yes. Samrael was the taller one. Ronwae was the girl, and Malaphar was the one in the suit. And there are four more who weren’t there.”

  “How’d they know you’d be there?”

  “They can sense the object when they’re near it. Its power calls to them. That’s why we need to—” Daryn winced, her eyebrows drawing together. “Gideon, we need to stop now. I need to figure some things out before I tell you more. I need to bring the four of you together—that’s what’s important.”

  I let out a breath, my gaze moving to the ocean beyond her. One of the surfers wiped out in style, his arms flailing, his board jamming straight into the water like a tombstone. I watched him come up and swim over to his board. He slid back on, turned toward the waves, and paddled out, ready for more.

&
nbsp; That was how you did it.

  No hesitation. No fear.

  Reaching under the steering column, I pressed the tape around the wires, bringing my Jeep back to life. “Where to next, boss?”

  CHAPTER 15

  “Let’s stop here for a second, Gideon,” Cordero says. “I have a few questions.”

  I nod. Breathe. Breathe and trudge out of the past.

  The chemical taste of the drugs is still in my mouth, but not as strong as when I last noticed it. Cordero’s perfume hasn’t let up, though. It is legit breaking me down. Nose hair by nose hair.

  “Okay,” I say, finally feeling back here. “Shoot.”

  “You trusted her blindly?”

  I have to think about that for a second. My dad would have said trust is blind. If you knew something for sure then it’d be knowing. Totally different thing.

  “I’m not saying I’d bought in completely, but I was willing to go along. I knew she was my best option for figuring things out. But if you’re asking me whether I trusted her from the start? I think I did. It was just a gut feeling that she wasn’t going to lead me astray. But I also knew there was more to her. I could tell she was good at hiding things. At keeping things to herself. And I was right.”

  “About which part? That you could trust her or that she kept secrets?”

  “I still trust her, even though she lied to me. I’ll get to that part. And she did hide things from me, but for my own good. I’ll get to that, too.”

  Cordero falls silent. I think I’ve confused her. Welcome to knowing Daryn.

  I picture her the last time I saw her, in Jotunheimen. Night. The fjord burning around me. I’d been with the guys, waiting to be airlifted out. Waiting for Daryn to join us. Then I’d yelled my head off when I’d realized she’d chosen to stay behind.

  Nice, Blake. Way to keep remembering this. Real helpful.

  “Why did you wonder if you’re good?” Cordero is asking me.

  I’ve checked out again. I need to focus. Finish this and get back to work. The Kindred are still out there. “Because I wasn’t sure.”

  “Why weren’t you sure?” she asks.

  I glance at Texas and Beretta. I know I’ve already said plenty that’s highly personal, but this … it’s something I’ve never admitted to anyone.

  “Why wasn’t I sure?” I hear myself say, and I know the whole story’s on its way out. My mouth won’t stop. I’m hemorrhaging memories and personal failures. These drugs suck. “You have to understand something, Cordero. Before my dad died, I had friends, decent grades, some promise in baseball. I had everything. After, I tried to keep my life the same. I tried to hang on to all that. But it was like when you’re hanging on a pull-up bar. You’re good for a little while. Then your muscles start to shake, but you keep telling yourself hang on. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. But eventually it’s not up to you anymore. Your muscles give out and you drop. That’s what happened to me. I held on for a while. Then I dropped. I dropped, but I didn’t want my mom or my sister to worry, so I tried to hide how far down I was.

  “I kept going to school, but my grades slipped. I stopped playing baseball, but I’d still go to the games. For a while, I’d still go to parties with my buddies but, mentally, I just wasn’t there. I didn’t care. About anything. It all seemed meaningless. How was I supposed to care about calculus when my dad was gone? All I had was anger. Anger that was … immense. Immense and burning, like I was carrying the sun around inside me. I only let it go when I was alone, hiking or running. Camping. Around other people, I worked my ass off to keep it inside. I buried it deep, except for this one time when I didn’t.”

  “What happened the one time?”

  “I screwed up.” Hold, Blake. Hold the line here.

  Cordero waits.

  “It was after a baseball game senior year. I wasn’t playing. I was up in the stands, watching my old team take on one of our rivals. They always played dirty and the game was tense from the beginning. In the last inning, it got a lot worse when the pitcher for the other team purposely pegged my buddy Griffin, who I mentioned earlier, while he was batting. The ball hit Griff’s helmet, probably going around eighty-five miles an hour. A missile. He went down hard. His helmet was cracked. He could have died, but he didn’t. He was okay, but I wasn’t.

  “People don’t understand how easy it can happen. How fast everything can just … change. I watched the rest of that last inning without seeing it. I was thinking about Griff and if he’d died. Thinking about the pain his family would feel. His little brothers, Reed and Caden. His dad. His mom. The whole time that anger in me was stirring up. Pure fire. I waited until the game was over. Until the pitcher was heading to the parking lot to get on the bus. Then I jumped him.”

  “You attacked him.”

  “I did. I got him down on the ground and I hit him until people pulled me off. I only threw a few punches but I messed him up. The guy had to have stitches around his eye and his mouth. He needed one of his teeth replaced.”

  I pause and notice that my legs and my arms have tensed up and my muscles are twitching. Thinking about that night always starts an earthquake inside me. It makes me want to run until there are no thoughts left in my head.

  “The only reason his parents didn’t press charges was because Half Moon Bay’s a small town and, as it turned out, his dad had met my dad once or twice. This guy, Mr. Milligan, he was an ex-Marine and I guess some kind of loyalty among warrior brothers kicked in. No police report was filed. I wasn’t eighteen yet. Nothing went on my record, so … I got away with it.”

  Cordero thinks for a moment. “You think what you did makes you bad?”

  “It doesn’t make me good.”

  “Would you have kept going?”

  “I might have. I know I wasn’t slowing down when they pulled me off him. I might’ve kept going. How many people have you met who have the potential to kill, Cordero? How many people have that capability?”

  My eyes drift to Beretta and Texas, who’ve become marble lions at the door. I know they have it too, this ability to turn to darkness.

  “More than you think,” Cordero replies. “You’d be surprised. Sometimes the most average-seeming people are killers. You’d never know it by looking at them.”

  It’s my turn to study her this time. Psychiatrist? Is that what she is? Something stressful. Small lines of tension crackle away from the corners of her eyes. I hadn’t noticed them before.

  I wonder what she’s seen.

  Has she met worse than me?

  Cordero shifts in the chair. She rubs her knuckles, then laces her fingers together. “I probably shouldn’t say this, Gideon. I know I shouldn’t but”—she purses her lips, unhappy with herself—“I don’t think that incident necessarily defines you as bad. I think it makes you human. And I believe you would have stopped yourself. I think that’s what makes a person good. Not that you make mistakes, but that you recognize them. You feel remorse for them. You want to correct them and do better.”

  It’s a surprisingly decent thing to say. And I think she’s right. When I think about that day, I can’t ever imagine that I’d have kept going. I do think I would’ve stopped myself. That day was a low point, but it woke me up. It turned me around.

  Thank you doesn’t seem like the right response, considering Cordero’s pretty much interrogating me, so I nod.

  She gives me a nod back and then draws a deep breath, putting that small moment of humanity behind us. “Where were we? I think you’d just agreed to help Daryn, and the two of you were heading to…?”

  “LA. To find Famine.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Before we left Cayucos, I snapped my Jeep’s soft top into place. It wouldn’t eliminate all the noise on the freeway, but Daryn and I would be able to hear each other a little better. The day was sunny and clear as I drove us south, the ocean and sky to my right, blue and bluer.

  I kept the conversation going. We’d finally started talking and I didn’t want to stall out.
I told Daryn about my parents and Anna. People get extra curious when they find out I have a twin, so that took some time. Then I told her I used to play ball before senior year.

  “Catching is like quarterbacking. It’s a real mix of strategy, aggressiveness, and quick reaction. You’re managing the pitch count, watching the runners on base. You control the whole game behind the plate.”

  “Is that what you liked about it—being in control?”

  “Definitely. Control’s my favorite.”

  Daryn’s smile was a quick flash. I could tell she didn’t hand them out easily. “Baseball. That explains this sweatshirt. Thanks, by the way. So why did you stop playing? You said you played until senior year.”

  Why had I said that? “Outgrew it, I guess,” I replied, avoiding the truth. I’d left out the part about my dad not being alive when I’d mentioned him. “Decided to go the Army route.”

  “But you didn’t enlist during high school, right?”

  “My contract started right after graduation, but I wanted to be ready. I spent most of this spring working out, doing stuff that would prepare me.”

  I was building a pretty good house of cards. The part about me doing all that stuff was true, but I didn’t want to get into the trigger that got me to enlist.

  The guy I’d messed up at the baseball game? His dad, Mr. Milligan, had come to the house a few weeks after it happened. Evidently he and my mom had been talking on the phone a lot. He came by one afternoon and sat on the couch in our living room and told me I needed to get my shit together. Except he said it in a really decent paternal way that made me feel like crying my head off. I didn’t, though. I’d tried a bunch of times after my dad died, but I could never manage it. I had a jam in my tear ducts or something. As he left, Mr. Milligan gave me an Army recruiter’s number on a yellow Post-it, which lived on my desk for a few weeks until I finally accepted that it was exactly what I needed.

  I had no idea why I was lying to Daryn about my dad. Lying sucked. I guess I didn’t want her pity. Being pitiful sucked more than being a liar. At least right then that was how it seemed.