“Yes, you do. You blame me for leaving Bas in there. Why can’t you tell me the truth?”
Unbelievable. This, from the girl who hides everything and disappears any chance she gets. “I don’t give a shit about why you did what you did, Daryn. Only one thing matters and it’s getting Sebastian back. That’s the truth. There. Now you know.”
*
It’s three in the morning by the time we check into an inn in Jackson Hole. The team took the last available rooms. Marcus, Jode, and I will be crammed in a room with a queen and a rollaway cot. As we take the elevator up, Jode and Marcus argue about who’s taking the floor.
I toss my duffel through the door. “I’ll take it.” I won’t be getting much sleep anyway.
Jode looks at me like he’s going to say something funny, but he doesn’t. What’s there to say?
Great to see you and Daryn back in form?
Nice to see some things never change?
Jode’s phone rings. He slips it out of his pocket and smiles. “Anna,” he says. He moves further into the room, his voice goofy and high like he’s talking to a kitten instead of my sister.
This perfect capper on my day makes Marcus laugh.
I shake my head. “I hate you. I’m going to go destroy something.”
“Emergency stairs at the end of the hall,” he says, knowing what I really need. “There’s roof access.”
That’s where I go.
I step onto a small patio with stacked plastic chairs and tables. Underneath the tables, a few grungy piles of snow have still held on. Empty kegs tied with bungee cords lean against the wall. This is probably a great place to hang in the summer.
The rain has stopped and the night has a chill. I move to the edge of the balcony. The small square at the heart of Jackson sits in mostly darkness two stories below. Only a few lights are still on.
Turning back to the patio, I feel the anticipation building. I’d get reamed if Cordero found out I summoned Riot here, in such an exposed location. If people found out about us, the horsemen, it’d be a nightmare. Yes, we’re Death, War, and Conquest, but our purpose is good! Promise!
That’s a losing PR battle, so. You could say keeping our identities confidential is a matter of global security. And you could say summoning a burning horse on the roof of an inn in Jackson Hole is asking for trouble. There are all kinds of things you could say, but no one’s around and I need my horse or I’ll lose my mind.
I reach for Riot.
I’ve summoned him hundreds of times before, maybe thousands. It’s a process Cordero tried to understand for months. How the guys and I can make supernatural horses manifest. How we bring them forward—and our armor and weapons.
Scientifically, there’s no explanation. We have this energy inside of us, this power that we can produce as easily as we can speak words or exhale our breaths. Our horses come from inside us, and retain part of us, but they are not actually us. It’s something in the middle. And something that ultimately originates from a power that’s much, much higher than any one of us. To my knowledge no one’s managed to put hard science around faith or God. Cordero gave it her best shot. Then she just came around to accepting the unexplainable, like the rest of us.
Riot comes up in a quiet whirl of flames stirring on the concrete floor. They build into a small burning tornado that solidifies into thousands of pounds of smoldering horse.
Broad. Red. All raw power.
If he were a real horse, he’d be a medium draft horse, or a warmblood. Not a Budweiser Clydesdale, but you wouldn’t see him winning the Kentucky Derby, either. The guys joke because he’s the biggest of our mounts. A lightweight tank with an attitude. But he’s the greatest companion. The best. I can’t even picture what my life was like before he came along.
His amber eyes find me first, then look around, checking things out, eventually coming back to me.
I smile. It’s not that I hear his thoughts. It’s more that I know them.
Bad day, Gideon? That’s too bad. But I’m here now so you’ll be better. Hey, nice view.
“Come here, horse,” I say, but I’m the one who goes to him. I call up my armor so I don’t have to be careful about burning my clothes. Then I bury my hands deep into his mane, sending a shiver of embers into the night sky.
He makes a low deep sound, telling me he’s listening. That I can tell him what I’d never say to anyone, not even Marcus.
“I screwed up, Riot. Didn’t stick with the plan. Said some really stupid things. Really stupid.”
Ohhh. That’s not good, Gideon. But it happens. Especially with Daryn. Don’t worry. Tomorrow you’ll do your best and try to fix it. I like Wyoming.
I laugh. Then I let my face fall forward, and rest my forehead on his broad neck. Letting his fire spread over me, and through me, and around me.
Warm. True.
Like peace.
CHAPTER 9
DARYN
“Daryn?” Isabel raps softly on my bedroom door. “They’re here.”
“Okay. I’ll be right out.” I stand on my toes and twist, getting a glimpse of the gashes on my lower back in the mirror over my dresser. Blood is still welling from the three cuts the creature gave me, three nice parallel claw marks. At least it’s not pouring freely like last night.
The worst part is that they drag right across the scars I already have from crawling under the fence when I broke out of the mental institution a year and a half ago. My lower back has become a tic-tac-toe board of scars from the worst days of my life. Perfect.
I thought about telling Isabel I was hurt last night after the house emptied but I couldn’t do it. I just needed some time alone after everyone left. And what are cuts compared to seeing your mother swallowed up by flowers? Compared to Shadow still missing or what Bas must be going through?
I’m having a hard time feeling bad that Daryn’s a little tired when Sebastian could be getting tortured or worse.
Ugh. That comment from Gideon keeps haunting me. I didn’t want to stop working, either—it was Cordero’s doing—but that moment keeps replaying in my mind. I see it with perfect clarity. The anger in his blue eyes. The scruff on his jaw and the glint of his prosthetic under the porch light.
I wanted to cry when he said that. And I wanted to head-butt him.
I shake my head at myself and pull on my gray shirt. Then I tie a flannel tight around my waist. I wince at the pain, but this is the best compression bandage I can create on my own.
My notebook is open on my bed with the list I started last night.
A list, not a journal entry or poem. But it was a night for firsts, apparently.
1. My faith in God
2. Seeing Mom again, no matter what she said to me
3. Finding Shadow and Sebastian
4. Isabel’s warm hands and unconditional love
5. Marcus’s smile, perfect
6. Jode’s voice, the charm of it