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  The Black Rider © 2020

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  The Black Rider

  End of Days Book 2

  JB Trepagnier

  Dedication

  To my family. If you made it through book one and purchased this book because you still think you found my top-secret pen name, it was still other kids. This book will move into the X-rated category. If you insist on proceeding, Thanksgiving will get awkward, and I will not apologize for any weird conversations you might have with a psychiatric or religious professional.

  Table of Contents

  The Black Rider

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  It’s the apocalypse, and apparently, I can’t trust anyone.

  Aeron had every opportunity to explain the horses that were haunting my drawings. I asked him several times about his crazy zombie killing horse. He omitted to tell me he was the Horseman of Death until Leif let it slip he was the Horseman of Pestilence when he introduced himself to me. I don’t know who I’m madder at—Aeron for lying to me or me for just ignoring all the clues and telling myself there was no way it was possible and trusting him.

  I’m trapped in a militarized city in Mexico with two of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They say they are my friends, but are they really? Does Aeron actually care about me, or was that some big ruse to get me here so Leif could take my blood?

  Aeron is apologetic, but Leif seems to want to talk. Maybe he’ll actually tell me the truth about how my blood caused the apocalypse.

  The Black Rider is Book 2 of End of Days, a Post-Apocalyptic slow burn reverse harem romance. The harem will slowly grow as the books progress. The harem features the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

  When He broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, "Come." I looked, and behold, a black horse; and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, "A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; but do not damage the oil and the wine."

  Chapter 1

  W

  ell, shit just got awkward, and I didn’t think the end of the world could get any weirder. The Horseman of Pestilence was still on his knees in front of me, holding my hand, and the Horseman of Death looked like he wanted to murder him. Honestly, the only reason Aeron’s balls hadn’t gotten up close and personal with Smurfette was because Leif was still holding my hand, and no one was talking.

  I was furious. Aeron had numerous occasions to explain why I kept drawing horses. I’d asked about that crazy horse so many times, I’d lost count. Deep down, I’d had my suspicions, but I kept telling myself it couldn’t be possible. Sure, I somehow could draw the future, and there was a lot of biblical shit going on, but I kept telling myself the Book of Revelations wasn’t really coming to life in that way. My father was just somehow making shit happen.

  “Ariel, let me explain—” Aeron started.

  I ripped my hand out of Leif’s.

  “You had every chance to explain when I kept asking about your horse. You could have said something when I tattooed those horses on the pumpkin. You even had a third chance when we got to my apartment, and there were fucking horse paintings all over the walls, you shit!”

  Leif got to his feet.

  “She has a point. You should have gotten her up to speed on the way down here. What were you doing the entire ride down the West coast if you weren’t explaining things?”

  Aeron ran his fingers through his pale hair. He looked madder at Leif than he was at me, and I was the one screaming at him. Leif just had my back. Leif might be defending me, but I didn’t trust either of these men anymore. Everything I could remember about the Book of Revelations was that these fucking men ushered in all the shit I saw in the world.

  How did I know Aeron didn’t try to get on my good side to get me here so that Leif could make something even worse with my blood? Maybe they wanted to wipe out all the people with blood immunity too. How was I supposed to get the fuck out of here when this entire city was militarized, and everyone knew Leif and Aeron had been looking for me?

  “Because of this right here! You know how she reacted the first time we told her. That’s when things were normal in the world. Tell me, Leif, when was the perfect time to break that out when it was just the two of us on the road? If she ran, I might never find her.”

  “How about my apartment when I straight up asked, asshole? What is this? I’m not helping either of you make this worse. You can both fuck off.”

  “Ariel, I didn’t lie to you,” Aeron said. “I said I would tell you everything when my team was together because I knew how you would react.”

  “You don’t get to talk to me about lying. I want the truth. All of it, or I’m out. How do I know your team isn’t the bad guys? You’re the fucking Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I remember my verses. You bring the end of the world when you come!”

  Leif held up his hands in surrender.

  “We need snacks if we’re going to tell a story. I imagine you ate pretty rough on the road. We’ve got our farms up and running here. I can get you a hot meal and snacks.”

  “I got her Cheetos and nachos,” Aeron grumbled.

  I felt this little twinge in my chest. Yeah, he did, and it meant so fucking much to me at the time when I realized he did it for me and not him. He fucking made me pancakes and cooked for me. He tried to make this shit world as better for me as possible. As mad as I was at him right now, I’d developed feelings for him on our trip. I always did have total shit taste in men, but I thought Aeron was one of the good ones, and he even passed the Miss Mabel test.

  Maybe there was something that could be said during this story time that would make falling for the Horseman of Death not seem like the biggest fuckup I’d ever done relationship-wise. It wasn’t like I had a choice about listening. This place was crawling with armed soldiers. Aeron and Leif had been helpful so far, but I had a feeling that would change really fast if I tried to run.

  “Nachos? No shit. Ariel, how do you feel about fresh guacamole and pork tacos?”

  Aeron was looking at both of us with this look on his face. It was pure jealousy. It looked like he was upset with Leif that he could provide fresh food for me. We ate well in California, but there were a lot of nights we ate out of mystery cans and went to bed hungry. Did he think I blamed him for that? Even if I thought he was dangerous and he’d lied to me, Aeron took care of me on the road.

  “That works, but you won’t bribe me with food. I want the truth, and if I don’t like it, I want a car with enough gas to get back to California.”

  “You see why I didn’t tell you
back in California? You would have heard Horseman of Death, and you would have beat me with Smurfette without letting me give you the full story. We’ve had this conversation before, Ariel. You left the chatroom and wouldn’t return texts or calls for us to explain until you started painting.”

  I walked over to Aeron and poked him in the chest with Smurfette.

  “So, you bring me somewhere everyone has guns and won’t let me leave? Way to make me think you’re one of the good guys, Death.”

  “Ariel, I know you’re mad, and you have every right to be. Aeron should have told you when you asked. But he also has a point. You reacted very badly the first time we told you we were the Horsemen over chat. Let’s have this conversation face to face over wonderful food. If Aeron won’t answer a question, I will.”

  “And a car out of here if I don’t like your answers?”

  “You aren’t our prisoner, Ariel. You were our girlfriend, even though we’d never met in person. We don’t just want you to stay because you can help end this. We want to keep you safe from your father, and we want that relationship back. I miss talking to you until three in the morning on the phone,” Leif said.

  “I don’t remember any of that.”

  “I know. And I know why we have to be careful getting your memories back. That doesn’t mean we can’t make fresh memories and explaining what we are won’t hurt you. Just swear to me, you’ll hear us out before you demand to leave.”

  I had a bad temper on a pleasant day, but even I could admit Aeron took excellent care of me on the way down here. I wanted to believe the best about him.

  He was the Horseman of Death, and I saw what he had done to the gangs trying to break into California. I knew what they had written about him. I knew what I saw in the world ever since I woke up from that coma.

  I wanted so hard to believe all of that was wrong.

  Chapter 2

  L

  eif so wasn’t what I imagined a Horseman of the Apocalypse to be like. He looked like pure sin with his black hair and black eyes and swirling tattoos. Someone good inked him because what I could see was spectacular. It was abstract, but it was beautiful. Leif wasn’t intense like Aeron at all. His black eyes were always sparkling with mischief, and he seemed like he was always trying to make sure I was comfortable.

  I was having trouble reconciling this huge, joking man with the Horseman of Pestilence who would work with my father to turn my blood into the rage mutation. A lot of my memories were still gone, but I remembered a lot of what happened in that lab when I was a child. I remembered every face, and I never once saw Leif experimenting on me unless he did it in the shadows.

  Leif led us to his private apartments, which were connected to his lab. They were pretty plush, considering it was the end of the world.

  “I figured we could all just stay here if Speedy approves. The bed is big enough for all three of us, and space is limited. We haven’t given up hope on all of humanity. Sure, there are plenty of shitty people out there, but there are still people trying to survive. We send out parties looking for them and bring them in once we vet them. We may have to expand the walls and build new houses soon.”

  “Speedy wants to hear the exact right words, or she’s getting the fuck out of here and riding out the apocalypse in California,” I pointed out.

  “Come on, Ariel. Can we celebrate a little? We spent so much time in that chatroom, and after everything, we finally found you, and we’re all together. Shots! We should have shots.”

  Leif went bounding to a cabinet. Aeron was still sitting in a chair, just glowering like I was the one who lied to him. I wondered if he would contribute to this big reveal, or he would continue to be a secretive bastard, and I would leave Mexico with a broken heart.

  Leif came back with a beautiful bottle of Tequila right when three people came down with our food. I would admit to being starving, and the food smelled delicious. I wasn’t backing down from this, even if the food was excellent. If they didn’t say the right words, I’d risk the open road to get back home. If my blood could turn the majority of the world into Rage Heads, I didn’t want it in the hands of the Horseman of Pestilence.

  “So, Book of Revelations. That is where we come up,” Leif said. “Man wrote the Bible, and it’s been interpreted so many times, a lot of the texts have been twisted and are now totally wrong. A lot of the Book of Revelations was embellished and not precisely how things were meant to play out.

  “The end of the world was never meant to happen the way it goes down in the book. We don’t really know how the world will end, but we know there will be those who try. That is where the Horsemen come in. We’ve been on Earth during different periods to stop things, but it’s never gone this far before,” Leif said.

  “It’s never been all four of us before,” Aeron said. “At most, two of us have walked the Earth at the same time. When Leif and I contacted you, he and I were the only ones who had been called forth. We knew disease, famine, and death were coming. If I hadn’t fucked things up and they had taken you, Asher and Dice wouldn’t have been called. We might have been able to stop this before World War III broke out, and Isaiah became a dictator.”

  “Are you saying this has happened before?” I demanded.

  “Think of the major plagues. They created those just like the Rage Head mutation. It’s just I quietly swooped in and killed the man responsible and tried to contain the spread. History blamed it on things like rats or tried to figure out where it came from, but they never tied it to the person responsible,” Leif said.

  “Think of mass genocide. Everyone thinks they know who was responsible, but they don’t know who was whispering in the murderer’s ear, twisting them into that. Humanity took out the mass murderer, and I quietly took out their silent partner,” Aeron said.

  “Everyone thinks they can pinpoint wars to one specific event, but one person engineered most. Dice was giving military strategy to the good guys while hunting down that person.”

  “Asher hasn’t been called in a very long time. There used to be a time there would be one person funding all this expansion and conquering other countries. Sometimes, it was just a greedy king, and Asher wasn’t called, but sometimes, it was one he had to take out.”

  I was listening with rapt attention, but I was also mowing my way through these delicious tacos because if I had to up and leave Mexico, I would go back to being hungry again. I was pretending like this was my last meal. It may very well be because a lot of this wasn’t making sense.

  “All of these stories involve one person. That makes little sense. How can just one person be responsible for all that destruction? My father had a lab.”

  Both Leif and Aeron looked extremely uncomfortable, like they didn’t want to tell me something. I set my taco down and glared at them.

  “Out with it, or I’m out of here.”

  “Promise you won’t freak out?” Leif said.

  “Promise you won’t beat us with Smurfette?”

  I couldn’t leave my trusty blue bat out of this conversation. She was resting across my knees, and I needed her there to have this conversation just in case they were lying about letting me leave. I’d smash as many heads as I needed to on the way out.

  “I said I wanted the truth. I meant it.”

  “Well, do you remember the Book of Revelations? We told you a lot of it is embellished, and that’s not how it’s supposed to go down, but most of the major players are correct. You’re sitting with two of the Four Horsemen. Who causes chaos during the end of the world?”

  “I’m not in the mood for guessing games, Leif. Get to the point.”

  Leif just sighed and took a massive bite of guacamole. He didn’t speak until he took a shot of Tequila.

  “The Antichrist, Ariel. There’s not just one. Satan has had several sons throughout history, trying to end the world. We’ve managed to stop all of them, but it was different this time.”

  I choked on my taco. Leif pounded on my back. It was different
because of me. What was so fucking important about me? Oh, shit. If Isaiah was the fucking Antichrist, what did that make me as his daughter?

  We were past the time for shots. I grabbed the entire bottle of Tequila and started chugging. My throat burned, and my eyes began watering as it went down my throat and warmed my belly. I slammed the bottle on the table and wiped my mouth.

  “It’s high time you tell me what the fuck I am and how I caused the end of the world.”

  Chapter 3

  I

  had no idea how I handled this shit the first time I heard it, but I was on the verge of hyperventilating, and there wasn’t enough booze in this apartment to calm me down. I wasn’t even in the mood to eat the rest of these delicious tacos. It was like my stomach had been pumped full of acid, and I would barf at any moment.

  I knew my blood caused the Rage Mutation, but I thought that was just something done in a lab outside of me. I was the daughter of one of the fucking Antichrists, and now drawing the future didn’t seem cool at all. All I ever painted was disaster and death. What other evil was I capable of?

  Leif and Aeron were on me in seconds. They wrapped me up in some Horseman hug. Why were they even trying to comfort me if all this was my fault? Why not just kill me and get it over with?

  “Hey, Ariel. Remember, we are getting it all out on the table. You didn’t cause this. Your father did,” Aeron said.

  “With my blood!” I yelled.

  “We need to tell her everything. Even the things we haven’t told her yet,” Leif said.

  “It gets worse?”

  “Mabel trusted us,” Aeron said.

  “Mabel would want her to know now. It’s time.”

  “What the fuck does Miss Mabel have to do with anything?” I screeched.

  Were they about to ruin my surrogate mother for me too? Was she some demon from Hell Satan sent to manipulate me? I couldn’t deal with that shit if she were. I told her everything. I trusted her.