Riders (Riders, #1)(28)

“Did you grow up in a state that starts with the letter A, M, or T?”

Her lips did this twisty thing to the side.

“Isn’t that how we’re doing this? Process of elimination?”

Daryn brushed some sand off her jeans. “The less we do of this, the better it’ll be for both of us.”

I started laughing. I didn’t know what had just hit me. Daryn laughed too, more at me than with me, but it didn’t matter. I enjoyed it.

“You run a pretty good defense, Martin. You know that?”

“I’ve gotten better.”

“Does this mean you’re not going to tell me about the downloads you get? Or how often you get ’em? Or how long you’ve been doing this? Like, is this your first assignment, or have you been seeking—seekering?—your whole life? And, like, when you saw me—you said you saw me—was I excelling at protecting secret powerful objects? Doing epic War shit? How amazing was I, is basically what I want to know. But in specifics. Did I look really-really awesome or just kind of good? Wait, wait—I looked prime. Didn’t I, Martin?”

“Are you done?”

“With my opening questions?”

She shook her head. “Wow.”

“You don’t have to answer.”

“I know I don’t.” She reclined her seat and put her feet up on the dash. I thought the subject was closed because she shut her eyes, but then she said, “It’s not often you meet people who are so persistent.”

“How often do you meet people who are War?”

She peered at me and gave a little shrug, like you’re really not all that special. Then she closed her eyes again. “I can’t tell you what they’re like. Seeing the things I do. Knowing things I can’t actually explain. You’d never understand.”

“Okay.” I got that. It was like telling someone what jumping out of a plane felt like. I could describe how it felt when your feet left the deck and the air came up and hit you. How the world looked spread out below you. I could try to explain the feeling of falling. Of being so far up you felt protective of the earth, proud of it, of the entire planet. I could talk all day but it was nothing like actually experiencing it. Some things you just had to live through.

Daryn looked at me. I think my reply surprised her, the fact that I understood that I couldn’t understand, and this cool sort of vibe happened, both of us connecting over things we could never really share.

I hadn’t been joking when I said I’d only just scratched the surface of the things I wanted to ask her. I had questions about the Kindred. Samrael, specifically. I wanted to know if I was mortal. Could I even die? Fast healing was one thing. Being immortal was a whole different ball game.

I also wondered about the red horse and whether it had really been on fire, and if I controlled when it showed up or not, and what its purpose was in everything because I didn’t need a horse. I’d never ridden one in my life. And riding something that was on fire seemed like a truly bad call. Really, no thanks. Pass.

I had an endless amount of questions. They were all I had. My world felt like it had entered a zero-gravity chamber. Things that had had weight my entire life suddenly seemed to be floating around me, moving without reason or order. There was so much to try to understand. My level of confusion was so extreme that answers didn’t seem like they’d even cut it. I was on overload and Daryn was done handing out intel, so.

I reached down and pushed the Pearl Jam cassette into the player. The song that came on was “Nothingman.” Hands down, my favorite. Even on cassette and through crap speakers, Eddie Vedder’s voice laid down the law.

He sang to us the rest of the way to LA because it turned out Daryn loved Pearl Jam too, which was a cool coincidence. No one our age loved Pearl Jam. I only did because of my dad, and I didn’t ask why she did. I didn’t want her to ask me that back. But it was okay. It didn’t need qualifying. We were rock solid on it.

Pearl Jam?

Awesome.

It was something. One thing that still had gravity.

Right then, I needed it.

*

As we approached the LA area, Daryn sat up and twisted her blond hair into a knot on top of her head. “Don’t freak out, okay?”

I wanted to tell her that was the worst possible way to keep someone from freaking out—aside from just screaming in their face—but I nodded and said, “Okay.”

Her hand drifted over the silver necklace, then came to rest on the dash. She watched the freeway, studying the exits, the buildings in the distance, her stillness and concentration growing more and more intense.

“We should take the next exit,” she said.

I did as she instructed.

Her directions continued. Take a right here. Left at the next signal. Stay in this lane.

How was she doing this?

I kept having to consciously relax my grip on the steering wheel. Awe didn’t begin to cover what I felt. I’d seen a lot I couldn’t explain over the past days, both with regard to me and to Samrael, but this was my first direct experience with Daryn doing something that was literally unbelievable.

We ended up at a high-rise in Studio City, where I pulled into the underground garage and parked. In a short amount of time, everything had changed. No more long sunny stretches of highway with the roar of my tires, the rattle of the soft top, Pearl Jam playing. Now the quiet hummed in my ears and we were surrounded by concrete lit by the glare of fluorescent lighting.