Phantom Rider

Chapter One

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"Each day means a new twenty-four hours. Each day means everything's possible again.You live in the moment, you die in the moment, you take it all one day at a time. You try to walk in the light."
-Daniel "Day" Altan Wing, in Legend by Marie Lu
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Sky

I'm never taking another fucking 8 A.M. class, I grumble to myself as I yank open my car door. At least it doesn't creak anymore. There's only so much of an old 1940 Ford Coupe I can take before I want to shoot myself in the face. Don't get me wrong, I love old cars, but after fixing the suspension for the 18th time I finally decided that it had seen its last days on the road. Luckily, I now have a shiny new 2015 Chevrolet Camaro to greet me bright and early in the morning. Turning up the volume on the beautiful LED dashboard, I let out another string of expletives at myself for signing up for this stupid class. I had figured that since I woke up at 6 A.M. sharp for four years in high school, 8 A.M. should feel like a walk in the park. But instead, here I am driving to my college as the sun is barely in the sky, waiting for Brendon Urie's magical voice to wake me up. Thank fucking god the drive is only a few minutes or I'd miss this class every single week. I'd gotten half way through Death of a Bachelor by the time I finally dragged myself out of the car, gazing blearily at the hellhole that awaited me. I file into the wave of equally sleep-deprived students, not even sparing a glance at the hulking, light blue form of a demon walking to my right.

I'll deal with it later, I promise myself, making a mental note of the blissfully ignorant student that it followed. Thankfully it wouldn't notice me until I started shooting at it. Watching it pass through the front doors of the arts center, my eyebrows draw together in slight concern. It's actually pretty huge now that I look at it. I keep tabs on all the ones that exist in this town and there's no way one of the three demons that still survived here grew this big in the week since I'd visited.

Must've been a transfer or some shit, I decide, shrugging it off. I take pride in how meticulously I watch over this town, protecting them from the demons that they create. They feed off of negative energy, growing bigger, stronger, and more real as you become more miserable. What starts as a little, translucent, ghost-like creature eventually turns into your worst nightmare. I've only seen it once, and that was two years ago.

I was nineteen at the time, just leaving my calculus class when the screams had begun. I had looked up and saw a demon the size of house, its blood-red eyes whipping around in anger. What had shocked me the most was that it was real. For the first time in my life, I wasn't the only one who had been seeing it. But before I could bask in the knowledge that I wasn't as crazy as everyone had thought, the demon had started ripping the world apart. Its huge crimson claws had raked through school buildings like they were butter; crushing entire houses with a single sweep of its tail. This one had resembled a lion, only without a mane and six more legs. After a moment's hesitation, I'd sprinted to my car, removing my bow and arrow from my trunk. This was before I started hunting demons, so frankly I had no idea if arrows even worked against something this gigantic. Hell, the only things I'd ever shot were the targets in my backyard. The screaming had been deafening, students tearing past me in a desperate attempt to escape. Getting as close to it as I'd dared, I'd nocked an arrow, preparing to let it fly straight into the demon's left eye.

But then the impossible had happened. Well, more impossible than a demon coming to life, that is. Barely audible footsteps had sounded above me, and I'd turned to see a dark figure running across the roof of the building to my right. Even from the ground, dozens of yard away, I'd been able to tell that, whoever this figure was, it was both tall and very much a man. His broad shoulders had rocked back and forth as his muscular arms had moved with his stride, each step emanating with gracefully controlled power. While I'd watched him, an astounding sort of peace had settled over me and, in the middle of the apocalypse, I'd froze. I had stood there, uselessly still, looking on as some guy who couldn't have been much older than me had gone toe to toe with the biggest demon I'd ever seen. If it hadn't been for the piercing screams still raking across my senses, I would've believed that I was dreaming or watching some kind of Sci-Fi movie. He had moved through the battle-scarred landscape as if it was a portrait and he had painted it himself. The man had leapt onto the demon's hulking shoulder from a nearby rooftop, sprinting confidently across its unearthly form towards its head. The creature, previously occupied with the ranks of army soldiers that had been firing at him, had then turned its attention to the presence on its back. It's monstrous form had begun to buck and writhe, trying in vain to eject its unwanted passenger. Barely phased by the movements of the demon below him, the figure had unsheathed a sword that I hadn't noticed until then. Raising it in a deadly arc, the man had poised to drive his blade into the creature's skull. But, suddenly, the demon's head had disappeared from beneath him, forcing the man to retreat to another rooftop as the demon rolled its massive body into a deadly somersault. Without missing a beat, the man had crouched, waiting for the exact moment when the creature'd begun to right itself, then he'd jumped. That day, two years ago, I'd watched in dumbstruck fascination as the man had drove his sword through the demon's forehead just as it'd finished standing up.