Riders (Riders, #1)(43)

But, Death. He was strong and fast and relentless. Even when I’d manage to pin him, I couldn’t keep him there. He was ferocious and I was taking a beating, but it only spurred me on. Because seriously? I was War. My pride was on the line.

“Stop!” Daryn’s voice broke into the night. “Gideon! Marcus!”

We flung ourselves away from each other, a human supernova. Panting for breath, standing at a safe distance, we eyed each other. He stood awkwardly, favoring his left leg. I was favoring the entire right side of my body. My ears rang. My knuckles throbbed. Blood gushed from my nose and ran into my mouth.

Sebastian stood next to Daryn, looking concerned.

I leaned over and spat onto the dirt. “You knew his name?” I asked her.

At the same time Death, Marcus, said, “How do you know my name?”





CHAPTER 25

I took him in at a glance—black, my height, ripped. Hair as short as mine, shaved almost to the scalp. Worn-out clothes. Cuff on his wrist. A pale cuff—that was all I could tell. Right guy, unfortunately.

“I’m sorry about him,” Daryn said.

I looked at her. Him was me? She was apologizing to Death about me?

“We just came here to talk,” she continued. “We didn’t mean to scare you or to get. Into. A fight.”

She said the last part like, Gideon is ruler. Of. The idiots.

“Who are you?” Death asked her.

“I’m … I’m Daryn. Marcus, I think you’re…” She glanced at me, then at Sebastian, clearly struggling to explain. How often did she have to do this? Fit the incredible into words? “You’re involved in something that we know about.”

“Nuh-uh.” Marcus shook his head. “You don’t know nothin’ about me.”

“Just shut up and listen to her,” I said.

“Man, who’re you telling to shut up?”

His tone. The hatred in his eyes as he looked back at me. I couldn’t accept them.

I charged him. He backed away, dodging aside. Why? Why dodge now?

Then I realized I’d made a huge mistake.

A cold burn seeped into my fingers and my feet. It spread through my hands like ice water moving into my arms and legs. I locked up. The ground beneath me began to pull away, and a crack split across the desert soil. It went wider and wider, showing a gap in the earth that was endless. My shoes perched on the edge. Any breath I took, even the slightest twitch, would send me over and I’d fall. I’d never stop falling.

I started shaking, quaking down to my bones. I’d never shaken out of fear before but my body rang like a bell, totally beyond my control.

“Gideon?” Daryn’s voice was far away. “Marcus, stop!”

This was it. Death’s ability.

Fear.

I considered opening up the rage floodgates on him, but what good would it do to make him more aggressive?

Daryn was yelling for him to stop. She took a few steps toward Marcus, then staggered and came to her knees. She clutched her stomach, hugging herself, and started to rock. “No,” she said. “No, no, no. Please, no.”

Anger consumed me like nothing I’d ever felt before. Burning rage that shot through my cold, shaking muscles. The ice that had trapped me splintered, no room for it anymore. Not with the rage roaring through me. The crevasse disappeared in front of me, sealing closed, and I felt power—true power stirring inside me. A singular purpose. Determination to do what was right, what was necessary—and what was necessary right then was to help Daryn.

And I felt something else, too. Something in my hand that hadn’t been there a second ago.

A sword.





CHAPTER 26

In my training in the Army, I’d been exposed to a variety of weapons. Rifles. Handguns of all makes and models. RPG launchers. I’d shot a fifty-cal a few times—now, that’s a weapon. The fifty’s legit. So I think you can understand, Cordero, when I say that a sword was a little disappointing.

Sword fighting was fine in the movies, for gladiators or fighting trolls or whatever. But actually using a sword in combat? Nope. It felt tardy by a couple of centuries. Of course I’d just been in an epic fistfight, but everyone knows fisticuffs is a timeless art. Point is I wasn’t thrilled about the sword, but it was better than no sword, so I rolled with it.

In about a millisecond, I assessed the weapon in my hand. It was made of the same metal as my cuff—smooth, putting off the red halo of light—and the style was a mix of modern and old, a sort of a sleek claymore. Kind of cool-looking.

The fear-hold Marcus had over me had fallen away completely by then. Same for Daryn, who had stopped rocking. Bastian helped her to her feet. Seeing that she was okay, I turned my focus to making Marcus pay.

I stepped toward him, doing a badass figure eight in front of me, which I’d perfected with a lightsaber when I was seven and thankfully could still do. Part of me wanted to psych him out a little. The other part of me wanted to get a feel for the weapon. The sword wasn’t weightless, exactly. It was just weight that felt known, like lifting my arm or my leg. Even stranger was that it didn’t feel like I was gripping the sword, but more like the sword was gripping me.

“You want to mess with me, Death?” I said. “Let’s go!”

Daryn looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Gideon, what are you doing?”