“Aaron?” she said.

The dog—Charlie or Aaron or some combination of the two—stood up and walked over to her. The movement had a dignity that spoke as eloquently as words. I would never have done this to you. Candace started crying in earnest now, confusion and fear and relief. Aubrey already had his cell phone out. His face was gray and serious. I motioned him to come out to the front room with me.

Candace and her dog needed a moment alone.

Aubrey sat on the couch, explaining the situation in fast, telegraphic sentences. I could hear Ex’s voice compressed to a thin, synthesized version of itself coming from the phone. I stood with my arms crossed, looked out the window into the hot August night, and tried to make sense of my own heart.

My sense of doubt and confusion was gone, and in its place, something richer and stranger was growing. The tattooed assassins, Midian’s curse, Eric’s death. My alleged powers. None of those had been as convincing as the expression in the dog’s eyes.

So, okay, riders existed. Aubrey and Chogyi Jake and Ex and Midian weren’t suffering a group delusion. They were telling the truth. I’d seen the evidence now, and so at last I could really believe.

And Eric. I was standing now where he would have been, doing—however poorly, however uncertainly, with my near total ignorance intact—what he would have done. I was proud of him, and sad beyond words that I hadn’t known what he was when I could still have asked him about it.

There had to be a reason he hadn’t told me. All the things he’d done for me over the years, all the little intercessions that kept me out of trouble with my dad. He’d been watching out for me then, and so maybe he’d been watching out for me in this too. One thing was certain: there were more kinds of danger in this than I had ever imagined.

But he’d also left it to me. He’d left me the keys to the kingdom. So he hadn’t thought there were more kinds of danger than I could handle.

And that, oddly, was the answer I’d been looking for. The warmth in my heart was pride that he’d chosen me to take up his work. To step into lives like Candace’s. It beat the crap out of being a college dropout with a bad reputation and no family. And maybe he’d known that too.

Still lost in speculation, I didn’t notice the police cruiser slowing down until it pulled in behind Aubrey’s minivan. I watched the cop get out, consider the house and the back of the minivan, then turn on the flashing lights and mutter into a radio strapped to his lapel. Aubrey cut the connection with Ex and looked out with me. He muttered something obscene.

“He must have seen the shotgun. We can’t have this guy around when Ex shows up,” Aubrey said. “Let me go see what’s the trouble.”

He’d started walking past me toward the door, then stopped, his weight tugging at me. He turned to look at me, and I realized that I’d grabbed his arm. I hadn’t meant to, but having done it, I knew why I had.

“Don’t. Don’t go,” I said. Then, louder, “Candace? Hey, Candace. Your fiancé wouldn’t be a cop, would he?”

Seven

He came up the same path I’d walked with Aubrey half an hour before, the palm of his hand resting on the butt of his pistol. The flashing lights silhouetted him and hid his face. At my side, Candace was staring out the window and murmuring a constant string of syllables equal parts prayer and vulgarity. The dog stood between her and the door, still and silent and thoroughly undoglike.

From my glimpses through the window, I guessed the man was around two hundred pounds. He had a Taser, Mace, a pistol. He had a badge. For all I knew his murmured conversation on his lapel radio had been calling more police to his cause. Plus which, he was a supernatural beastie capable of God only knew what.

We had Aubrey, me, Candace Dorn, and a very intelligent dog. I didn’t like our chances.

“Okay,” Aubrey said nervously. “We’re going to be okay. We’ll just…we have to just…”

The man reached the door and pounded on it. The house itself seemed to tremble.

“Candace!” the man shouted. “Open the door!”

It was the voice—the anger and power and implicit violence in it—that snapped me into action. I took Candace by the arm, shaking her until her eyes shifted to mine. Her face was pale.

“You need to get out of here,” I said. “You and Charlie head out the back. Go to a neighbor’s or a friend’s. Anyplace it’ll take him a while to find you.”

“That isn’t Aaron,” she said. “It’s his body, but that isn’t Aaron.”

“I know,” I said. “Leave this part to us. Just get out. Do it now.”

The dog nuzzled her hand, whining slightly, then jerked its muzzle toward the kitchen. Let’s go. Candace drew a long, shaking breath while the thing in her fiancé’s body hammered the door again. She nodded, pulled me into an embrace as sudden as it was brief, and then she and Charlie the dog were gone.

“How long until Ex gets here?” I asked, trying hard to keep my voice from shaking.

“Half an hour if there’s no traffic and he’s speeding,” Aubrey said. “An hour if there is and he isn’t. Did you have a plan besides getting those two out of harm’s way?”

“Nope,” I said.

“Then we’ll probably want to keep his attention on us until they’re clear,” he said, as if this was all perfectly sane and acceptable. I saw then how someone could love Aubrey. “Hold on a minute!” he yelled. “We’re coming!”

The thing at the door paused, surprised (I guessed) by a man’s voice and the unhurried, casual tone Aubrey had taken. Aubrey pulled a cloth bag from his pocket and pressed it into my hand.

“Ashes and salt,” he said. “It may help block or absorb anything it tries to do.”

“You mean besides shoot us,” I said. The bag was heavier than I expected.

“Besides that,” Aubrey agreed.

“Open this fucking door and do it now!” the cop shouted.

“Who is it?” Aubrey asked, his voice loud enough to carry through the door. “Can I see some identification, please?”

The shots weren’t like the ones you hear on TV or in the movies. Two dry cracks, quieter than the pounding of the thing’s fists, and the wood around the doorknob bloomed into splinters. The ridden policeman kicked the door open so hard it almost came off its hinges. Aubrey leaped back, diving for cover. I stepped around the corner, the cloth bag gripped tight in my hand.

“Where is she?” the thing in the cop’s body demanded. The voice had lost any vestige of humanity now; the words were flies and saw blades. “Give her over, and I might let you live.”

“She’s upstairs,” Aubrey lied. “Just leave me out of it.”

It surged into the room. I hadn’t been prepared for the change. Its skin was darker than a bad bruise and tinted blue as a storm cloud; the head that canted forward from the shoulders was long-jawed and carnivorous, the eyes the yellow of cat piss. Its chest worked like a bellows, ripping the police uniform and popping the Velcro fastenings of the bulletproof vest. I wasn’t afraid of being shot anymore. I was just afraid.

Aubrey was on his knees, struggling to stand. The creature raised a hand, points of metal or chitin glittering on its fingertips. With a sense of being in a dream, I watched myself swing forward, grab those powerful fingers, and twist from my waist. Something in its wrist popped, and it let out a yell that seemed like it would break glass.

The impact when it slammed me against the wall drove my breath out. Its eyes were fixed on me. I saw Aubrey diving toward it, saw its leg lash out, saw Aubrey fall again. Its good hand was around my throat. The air was getting thin. I scratched at its eyes, my arms faster than I would have thought possible but still not fast enough. I didn’t see its wounded hand cut into my side; I only felt it.

The cut was cold. My blood spilling down my ribs felt like ice water. And then something pushed in under my skin, something slick and cool and ancient beyond words. Instinctively, I knew the rider was entering me, trying to take my body as its own. I felt an answering warmth rise from the base of my spine to my heart to my throat. It felt like a fireball, and I shouted as I used it to push the invader out.