Riders (Riders, #1)(66)

Between the wallet, his clothes, the gleaming watch at his wrist, and the pretty boy face, I was starting to worry I had a Wyatt Sinclair on my hands.

Checking his other pocket, I finally found what I wanted. I held up the hotel security card. “The Great Gatsby’s staying in town.” I pulled the radio from my pocket and checked the address on the GPS. “His hotel’s less than three miles away.”

“Really?” Daryn said. “That would be so doable if we could all walk.”

Three minutes ago she’d been hugging me, all worried. Now she looked like she wanted to finish the job Samrael had started.

“No problem,” I said. I grabbed Jode’s arm and pulled him over my shoulder. Thankfully, he had a light build. A buck fifty and five-nine or so. Also thankfully, I’d done a lot of this in RASP. Carrying Cory on my back on forced road marches had prepared me. Cory was my size. One eighty and six-one. I knew I could handle Prince Conquest.

“Race you guys,” I said, settling him over my shoulders.

Marcus and Daryn looked at me like I was a nut, which felt normal and gave me a needed morale boost. Then we were off, trudging along the dark city streets of Rome.

By the time we came to the Ponte Sant’Angelo, I was sweating bullets but the adrenaline was finally leaving my body. Some of the fear, too. But I still felt like if I closed my eyes for too long, the images Ra’om had shown me would come right back.

I tried to focus on my surroundings. According to my guidebook, the bridge had stood for almost two millennia. As I passed one angel statue after another, I felt the centuries the bridge had seen. All the days and nights it had spanned the waters of the Tiber below. Looking at it, I felt insignificant. Linked to every human on the planet. Everything seemed awesome now that I wasn’t in the mental clutches of a demon.

“What are you thinking about?” Daryn asked. “At this very second?”

“I was thinking that this is great,” I said.

“No, you weren’t.”

“Was so. I’m in the moment, Martin.” This moment was a lot better than the ones I’d just been in.

We walked for a little more. Marcus was ahead of us, out of earshot. He wasn’t clutching his shoulder anymore. Maybe it was already healing. “Is this really what you do all the time?” I asked. “Run all over the world like this?”

Daryn shook her head. “Not like this. This is by far the most challenging thing I’ve ever done.” She glanced at me, her eyes sparkling. “In large part because of you.”

I grinned. “But who doesn’t love a good challenge, right?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes a challenge is just a challenge,” she said, but she was smiling.

Jode was feeling heavier by the minute, but I had to deal. I’d knocked him out. He was my responsibility. “So what’s your typical kind of work?”

She shrugged. “There really is no typical. It’s all kinds of stuff. Always different.” She pulled her hair from beneath the strap of my backpack and twisted it into a knot. She was carrying both my pack and hers. “But for example, I’ve found lost hikers and helped them back to trails. I’ve kept a couple of kids from running into the streets. I’ve made dozens of emergency calls. I kept a scared woman company when her car was stranded on the side of the road in the Oregon wilderness. I’ve stopped four suicides. All amazing experiences. I’ve been to a lot of parties—high school and college—where I’ve prevented rape. Those make me sick. Physically, I feel ill after those. So … it’s things like that. Smaller, you could say, compared to what we’re doing. But still really important.” She frowned. “Why do I tell you so much?”

“I don’t know. Do you resent it?”

“Telling you stuff?” She smiled. “Yes. Every word.”

“That hurts, Martin,” I said, but I knew she liked talking to me. Probably not as much as I liked it. Everything she said only made her more incredible. And she was helping me forget Ra’om. “I meant being a Seeker.”

“No, I don’t resent it. It’s not always easy but it’s a privilege. It was harder in the beginning, before I got used to it. There was one point when I felt so lonely, I wasn’t sure I could take it anymore. I ended up working with another Seeker, this really great woman named Isabel. She helped so much. She’s the one who told me to start keeping a journal, which helps a lot, too. I see her once in a while, whenever I need her. She’s become like an aunt to me. And there are people all over the world who open their homes to me. Good people who will feed me and give me a room to sleep for as long as I need it without asking any questions. I get to see so much kindness because of this. And I’m helping people. I can’t think of anything I’d want to do more than that. What about you? Do you resent it?”

“Being a horseman?” I shifted Jode onto my left shoulder. “Undecided.”

My gut was telling me that no, I didn’t. I’d met her because of it. I’d seen some incredible things. I knew the answer to humankind’s most fundamental question. I couldn’t look at the stars without feeling like God was right there watching over me. Over everything. A lot of hugely positive aspects. The parts I didn’t love were the Kindred. And Marcus. My horse. Maybe the rage powers. Dropping out of RASP had sucked. Making my mom worry did, too. And leaving the Jeep at LAX. But other than that, being a horseman was cool.