Riders (Riders, #1)(19)
“Do you have any water?”
“To drink?” I was so wrong-footed, and this girl only made it worse.
“Yes, water to drink. I’m really thirsty.” She reached into the backseat, unzipping my duffel, which I’d brought back to my Jeep before Joy’s party.
“Hold on a second.” I grabbed her arm. “You said you were going to explain.”
She froze, so I froze.
“Here’s a question,” she said, staring me down. “Would you like to let go of me, or should I claw your eyes out?”
“Shit.” I let go of her. “I’m not going to hurt you. Why did you kidnap me if you’re scared of me?”
“I didn’t kidnap you—you came willingly—and I’m not scared of you, either. Not the way you think.” She threw the door open and jumped out.
I vaulted over my side, rounded the Jeep, and found her leaning against the door. “Daryn, I didn’t mean to—” She was pressing her fingers into her temples like she’d just been hit with the world’s worst migraine. She looked like she needed a second. That was about as long as I could wait. “I really need some answers.”
“I know you do.” Her hands came down. “I just can’t believe you don’t know anything.”
“Believe it.”
“How am I supposed to explain this to you?”
“With words. That’d work for me. Faster than drawing pictures in the sand with a stick.”
She shot me a look with legitimate stopping power. Then she crossed her arms, turning to the waves, so I took the opportunity to check her out.
It was a calculated assessment for the most part. Pretty much. I was going for clues. Intel that would help me figure out how she fit into what was going on.
What I figured out was that she was on the tall side, five-nine or so, only a few inches shorter than me, and strong. I could tell she was athletic. And pretty. Which I already knew. But reconfirmed. Pretty in a messy kind of way. Sort of camouflaged by tangled-up hair and beat-up clothes. By how still she stood—the opposite of fidgety—and by the intense look on her face, like she was daring you to make eye contact with her. I got the feeling that with a good ghillie suit and the right training, she’d have made a great sniper.
A silver chain hung around her neck. The links were heavy, thick, and disappeared beneath her leather jacket. Daryn looked back at me right as I was looking at her, uh … her chestal region. Because of the chain, Cordero, I swear. But it must’ve seemed different to her. Probably it did.
I expected her to lay into me for it, but she just gave me a super-slow-motion once over, from my running shoes all the way up to my eyes, totally up front about what I’d just done on the sly. “There’s no easy way to say this,” she said.
“Fine. Then say it the hard way. Or the medium way. Just say it.”
I was starting to break a little. My control was.
“Okay.” She looked right into my eyes. “You’re War, Gideon. You are War.”
I did a quick rewind and playback. “Say again?”
“You’re War,” she repeated.
It sounded the same the second time. “Going to war? Yeah, someday. When I deploy. I’m a soldier in the US Army.” I stopped there for a second because it was still new and it felt good, claiming it. “But I haven’t been to war yet.”
“Okay.” Daryn nodded. She pushed her hair behind her ear. “That’s not what I meant but that does makes sense.”
“No. It doesn’t. Nothing makes any sense and if this is your explanation, then it’s a really shitty explanation.”
“Okay. All right. Gideon … you’re the second rider. You are War, the red horseman. From Revelation.”
As she spoke, my heart squeezed like a fist inside my chest. It kept squeezing tighter and tighter. If heart cramps were possible, I had one.
“None of this rings a bell?” she said. “None of this sounds familiar? You have to have seen some signs … something … haven’t you?”
Every single gear in my mind was grinding and clattering, trying to keep up with what she was saying. I turned toward the ocean. Everything I’d seen over the past week, from my fall to Samrael’s monstrous face, was coming back to me. Revelation? I knew so little about it. What I knew, generally, was that it had always scared me. Wasn’t it about the end times? The Rapture? Plagues and fires?
“Gideon, I know it’s a lot to take in, but—”
“No,” I said, something snapping shut inside my brain. This was a dream. A nightmare. I was Gideon Blake in an alternate dimension. “No, it’s fine. I think I’m gettin’ it. I’m War. I’m one of the four horsemen, which means I have three buddies—help me out here. I forget who they are.”
“Conquest, Famine, and Death.”
A chill shot straight down my spine. I shook myself like a wet dog. “Right. Those guys. And we’re supposed to end the world or something?” I wanted no part of that.
“No. You’re only a manifestation of War. You’ve been given some of the abilities of War, but for another purpose, to carry out a specific task.” She sighed. “I didn’t realize I was going to have to explain all of this. I would’ve thought it through better.”