Cordero’s dark eyes hold steady. “You’re saying the horse came from nothing.”
“She didn’t come from nothing. I don’t think anything comes from nothing. What I am saying is that I watched her materialize in front of me.”
Now she does pause.
“The horse took up a defensive position for you?”
This comes from Beretta, surprisingly.
Cordero spreads her hands. “My next question as well.” She sounds a little peeved.
“Yes,” I answer, “but she didn’t do it for me. She did it for Sebastian. My horse, in case you’re wondering, came up the same way as Bastian’s, except as fire. He started out as a flare, then became this small blazing inferno, then bam. Horse. Huge red horse that made a ghost trail of flames when he moved.”
I force myself not to add and he was even more kickass than Bastian’s! I get competitive about my horse. We all do.
“And these horses,” Cordero says, “they appeared and simply awaited your commands?”
She had to ask, didn’t she? Don’t answer, Blake. Just this one question. Don’t don’t don’t here I go. “No. My horse, he um … He came up and charged me. Again. Like on the beach.”
Texas grins big, his teeth surprisingly white and straight behind the shaggy beard.
“He charged you. And you stopped him?” Cordero asks.
“No. Not me. Sebastian’s horse set him straight. She let out a loud neigh and my horse fell in line. Then he was two thousand pounds of lethal, fiery trouble, shooting past Sebastian’s mare, taking up position less than ten meters away from Samrael.”
So much for taking the humble high road.
“And Samrael’s reaction?” Cordero asks.
“Well, I’m not sure because like I said, Bastian and I got out of there pretty fast. But I think he pissed his bad-boy pants.”
“Really, Gideon.”
“I’m serious. You have to understand, Cordero. My horse stood like a wall staring Samrael down. Red as sunset. Head high, his breath pumping in and out. He had sparks coming out of his nostrils. Flames rolled up his legs and flowed off his tail. These horses … they’re not normal. They’re predators. Warriors, a hundred percent. None more so than mine. When Bastian’s horse glided up next to him like a nightmare, like a beautiful freakin’ nightmare, both of them standing there, fearless … just fearless … I think Samrael probably soiled himself. I know I almost did.”
Cordero rolls her eyes, which makes me smile.
“I do remember looking back one last time as Bastian and I rounded the corner. Samrael was standing in that fake New York street, watching the horses with this extreme focus. With awe. He seemed to be discovering for the first time what we actually were. Horsemen. And to be honest, that was pretty close to how I felt right then, too.”
CHAPTER 21
After we left the Kindred behind, we met up with Daryn in the garage. She was waiting right by the Jeep as planned. The relief at seeing her there, unharmed, stopped me in my tracks for a second. Samrael had shown no hesitation in killing the studio guard. I didn’t want to think about what could’ve happened if he’d caught her.
We piled into the Jeep and I drove. Daryn and Sebastian traded quick hellos. I gave Daryn a summary of the studio lot events. Then we spent sixty miles quietly and individually processing the extreme suck of the situation.
With my pulse finally evening out, I looked up, meeting Sebastian’s gaze in the rearview mirror. I was pretty positive he’d just seen his first violent death too. We were stuck in this thing, the two of us. This was happening to us both.
“I don’t even know how to thank you for what you did back there,” he said.
Daryn stirred, her gaze moving between us. Sebastian and I had been quiet, but she’d been more than quiet. She had a way of sinking so far into her thoughts, it felt like she went away somewhere.
“You just did,” I replied. “Sorry about your flying disks, though. Those were pretty cool.”
“You mean the scales,” Sebastian said. “Famine has scales. In the Book of Revelation.”
He paused after every comment, waiting for some sign of recognition from me. I couldn’t give it to him. I’d remembered a little more about the four horsemen, but it still wasn’t much. Just another reason I didn’t understand why I’d been given the job. I knew they rode horses of different colors and that they were involved in the end times. I knew generally about sacred seals being broken, setting a series of cataclysmic events into motion before Judgment Day. But Daryn had said we weren’t doing any of that. We were incarnations of the horsemen, manifested for a different mission. The mission, so far defined, being the protection of an object no one except Daryn knew anything about.
“Anyway, no worries,” Sebastian said. “I have them right here.”