The Black Rider Read online

  I didn’t think this mysterious Doctor X was locked in his little lab with samples of my blood for the good of humanity. The rest of that lab may have thought they were protecting a girl in a coma who was immune and could give them a vaccine, but anyone who went by the name Doctor X was just up to no good. That was a comic book villain name. I felt terrible for some people at that lab that died who were there for moral reasons, but I really hoped a Rage Head ate Doctor X’s face right off.

  I needed to find out what he was doing with my blood. I’d made my decision. Aeron and Leif didn’t get to hog that laptop with answers about my past on it.

  “While Aeron is off killing things and Leif is playing with my blood, I want to go through what was on that flash drive.”

  “You can be an honorary Horseman and help with research,” Leif said.

  “Aeron? Did you find this Doctor X at the facility? Did a Rage Head get him?”

  “How do you think I got his research? I found him in an underground bunker and killed him myself.”

  I think I just fell for Aeron a little harder.

  Chapter 14

  L

  eif’s lab was pretty high tech. I could understand why he initially set up shop here, and they defended this place when the war broke out. The lab was underground and secure. There were so many gadgets here. I couldn’t even imagine what most of them did.

  “What was this secret underground lab meant for before the apocalypse?”

  “Me. I was called here during the Cocoliztli epidemic. Another Antichrist, another engineered disease. At that point, it was becoming a pattern. It was usually Dice, or myself that was called first, and Aeron often followed. The Antichrist has traditionally been a little predictable, no matter when they are born. They usually start with disease or war.

  “I decided it would be an excellent idea to have a lab and a base I could call home instead of floundering around trying to find one every time I got called. It doesn’t matter who is in power in Mexico. They know if shit goes down, this lab will be staffed to save them, and there’s a bank account to pay for upgrades. They don’t know we’re angels, but there’s a lot of superstition around this lab. It’s not just the money or the promise of help. They think it will bring evil luck not to do it just in case.”

  “Well, technically, it is. We’d be fucked without this lab.”

  “I’d make do, but I prefer it here. Do you mind if I take a blood sample?”

  “I hate needles,” I said, holding out my arm.

  “You’re covered in tattoos, and you regularly jam them in people’s skin to create art. How are you scared of needles?”

  “Tattoos are different. Something beautiful comes out of that. Every time I get blood drawn, it just reminds me of those experiments when I was a kid.”

  Leif jumped up and pulled me into an enormous hug.

  “Sorry. That was a stupid thing to say. Do you want to do this later?”

  “No, do it now. I can deal with it. We’re on a time table.”

  I didn’t look, but there was something to be said for Leif’s bedside manner. I barely felt the needle, and it was over before I knew it. I might be covered in tattoos, but any time I had to have blood drawn, I practically had a panic attack because I was four years old again and back in that lab. That didn’t happen this time.

  Leif taped a piece of cotton on my elbow and kissed my hand.

  “All done. I don’t have a sucker, but I can get snacks sent down. Just keep them away from my table so my samples don’t get contaminated.”

  “Who is behind the delicious salsa that magically turns up in your bedroom?”

  “Maria. This lab has been the responsibility of her family since I set it up. They don’t know the full truth, but stories have been passed down in her family about how a man with black eyes will always come when things start getting terrible. They think I’m a bruja, not an angel. Her father is a scientist, but Maria has powerful faith.

  “With a name like Armilus, I didn’t trust that water supplement and kept it out of San Quintin. Juan is a scientist, but Maria is a politician. She helped make that happen. All she knew was that I asked her to help me, and she did. Her father helps out in the lab sometimes. When we narrowed it down to the tainted water, she realized what she had actually done.

  “She didn’t give herself credit for getting it done. I may not have been able to keep the water out if she wasn’t such an eloquent speaker and found better words to say than some mysterious bruja with a secret lab said it was a dangerous thing. Really, she deserves all the accolades for saving San Quintin from becoming Rage Heads, but she puts it all on me. She also happens to be a talented chef and brings me food all the time.”

  “What about her father? Will he be down here working with us?”

  “He wants to be, but he’s in his eighties now. He’s still sharp as a knife, but he has arthritis in his back. Maria and I make him stay in bed, and I bring him notes to go over.”

  “Will I get to meet her? She sounds great?”

  “Oh, yeah. She’ll stick her head in soon. She will want to meet you. She knows we were looking for you. I’m shocked she hasn’t already come down to introduce herself. I know she knows you’re here because she sent extra food.”

  “What exactly are you planning on doing with all that blood you took from me?”

  “Compare it with mine and then try to sequence it. I’ve never needed to study Nephilim blood before because no one has tried to weaponize it before. And you’re a little more angel than human. I need to study the properties of your blood before I can figure out how to work with it.”

  “How did my blood manage to do something this bad? If angels are the good guys, how could my blood do that?”

  “If I tell you this, will you stop blaming the apocalypse on yourself? It wasn’t just your blood. Angels aren’t supposed to get scared. It’s not a reaction they program us for. If we are in a scary situation, our bodies release chemicals to strengthen us and make us braver to fight our way through.

  “You have to understand, though, angels are never children. When we are created, we are fully formed with all the knowledge we need to do our jobs. Nephilim are different. They are born babies, and they have to learn. Their blood reacts the same as ours, but they don’t know how to process those feelings. They know they should fight, but most of the time, their angelic parent is gone, and all they see is someone bigger than them threatening them. Their blood gets confused. They don’t fight back.

  “Your father needed you terrorized to get those angelic chemicals pumping in your blood when he took it, but it wasn’t just your blood that did this. There were two blood sources combined to make the Rage Mutation. One was yours, and the other was only ever labeled Patient Q. The notes on you were detailed, but the only notes on Patient Q were that the samples were limited, so don’t waste them. A small sample was analyzed, and it wasn’t human. I’m guessing Isaiah summoned Satan and asked for blood from a creature in Hell. It wasn’t just your blood that created the Rage Mutation.”

  “Well, then how do you plan on stopping this with just my blood?”

  What was this shit? They gave me all this hope that getting here and giving Leif my blood would kill all the Rage Heads. Aeron hadn’t said a word about Patient Q. He let me think all of this was on me. I would kill him when he got back from murdering things. There would be a lot of murdering going on in Mexico today.

  “Your blood gave people with AB negative blood immunity to the Rage Mutation. I think I can not only kill the Rage Heads, but I can also create a vaccine. I can do this, Ariel.”

  “Aeron should have told me about Patient Q,” I grumbled.

  “Aeron zones out whenever I talk about my research. He was probably on a different planet when I got that far. Are you ready to get to work?”

  I looked up, and Leif had slipped a lab coat and goggles on. No one should be allowed to look that sexy in lab wear. He looked like some big, beefy geek, and I was digging it
.

  And I was ready to find out what was on that fucking flash drive.

  Chapter 15

  B

  efore I could start digging into that flash drive, an absolutely stunning older woman came floating into the lab to hug Leif. She ruffled his black hair like he was her son and not the Horseman of Pestilence. Her gaze fell on me, and she gave me a gentle smile.

  “Leif and Aeron talked nonstop about their girlfriend. They were devastated when you went missing. When word got out why, the entire military wanted to help find you. We chipped in how we could until Dice and Asher came. Every hacker in San Quintin was trying to find you until the world went to shit.”

  “I hear you’re the one responsible for everyone in this place not turning into a Rage Head.”

  “No, no. That was all Leif. He was the one who warned me.”

  “You’ve spent time around Leif and Aeron. You know they are special, and they have their gifts, but dealing with politicians isn’t one of them. That was all you.”

  “Politicians are easy. What Leif and Aeron do is not.”

  I just laughed. I knew exactly how it would go down if you stuck Aeron in a room full of politicians. I was still getting a feel for Leif, but I imagined that that would be just as big of a cluster fuck, but no one would get punched in the face.

  “Trust me. You don’t want these guys anywhere near politicians. You don’t want me there either. We’d probably all get banned from Mexico.”

  “She’s right, Maria,” Leif said, waving a vial of my blood around like it was a toy. “Everyone has something they are good at. My team works best in the shadows. If you hadn’t done what you did, San Quintin would be crawling with Rage Heads, and it would’ve destroy my lab.”

  Maria just blushed and changed the subject. One day I would convince that woman she was a hero and made fantastic salsa.

  “Do you need anything?”

  “Nothing for me. I have what I need to try to end this. Ariel is quite fond of your cooking.”

  “Your salsa and guacamole are better than anything I’ve ever had before.”

  Maria perked right up.

  “Then, let me get your snacks. You’re too skinny. You were out there too long before Aeron found you. Any requests?”

  “I don’t think I’m a picky eater. Surprise me.”

  Maria skipped off, and Leif was just grinning at me.

  “You realize you just unleashed a monster, right? She will come back with a seven-course meal. There are still politicians in San Quintin running things. Maria thinks her place is in the lab helping now that we are here, but she’s damned good at helping things run smoothly.”

  “I’d just let her. She grew up believing there was all this mythology around this lab. Now all of you are here and fucking zombies are everywhere. If she wants to help you instead of passing laws, then that’s what she needs right now. Everyone is handling this shit the best way they know how.”

  “Can I say you’re handling your shit pretty well, given everything that’s happened to you?”

  I just snorted.

  “I guess getting experimented on as a child and what my father did for me just set the stage for my life going to total shit later.”

  “Things will get better. I’ve got what I need now, and we still have that White House orgy to look forward to.”

  There was nothing in reach to fling at his head that wouldn’t ruin his lab equipment. He was sitting in front of what looked like a very expensive microscope, and he had a tray with vials of my blood. As much as I wanted to make a point, I didn’t really want to get my blood drawn again because I destroyed the samples. Then again, I played shortstop, so I could probably nail him right in the head. Too risky.

  Instead, I just pointed a pencil at him. Real threatening, Ariel.

  “If any of you whip out your dicks in the Oval Office, I will smash them with Smurfette.”

  “It’s hot when you threaten my cock, Ariel. Enough sexual banter. We do need to save the world. I know you want to see what’s on that flash drive.”

  “Yeah, I do,” I said, cracking my knuckles.

  Time to find out precisely what Doctor X was up to while I was in a coma.

  Chapter 16

  A

  eron must have spent a lot of time in Doctor X’s bunker at that lab. Why hadn’t Aeron ever told me about him? If I had to guess, it was because he didn’t have the full story. He was at the lab looking for me, and he found it crawling with Rage Heads. He wouldn’t have sat there and asked him questions. He would have killed him, downloaded the data from his computers, and come to find me. He wouldn’t have looked at the data. He probably hadn’t even gotten the evil doctor’s name before he killed him. But he got everything off his computer because I had several flash drives laid out in front of me.

  The first flash drive I looked at was his lab notes. I couldn’t even begin to understand what he was trying to do with my blood. His notes read like a movie villain monologue and some fraudulent motivational speaker who was really a dick in real life and had those enormous veneers on his teeth.

  Whatever he was trying, he wasn’t succeeding, so his notes were pep talks and fucking blaming me for not being able to do it. It was somehow my fault as I lie there in a coma with my memories wiped, getting my blood taken without my consent, that it wasn’t cooperating with him. Asshole.

  I wasn’t getting anywhere with his grandiose notes, nor did I have the patience to read any more of his long-winded rants about how amazing he was and that it was my blood that was the problem. Not only was it infuriating and made me want to set his pubic hair on fire, but I also wasn’t getting anywhere.

  I tried another flash drive, but it was all scientific data about my blood which was way over my head and the experiments he was attempting to do. Leif might understand this information, but I didn’t.

  All these flash drives looked exactly the same, and I had an idea. I got up and grabbed some medical tape from where Leif drew blood. I found one of his markers for labeling samples. I labeled the first drive I went through Super Villain Monologues. I just put Leif’s name on the second because he was the only one who would understand that shit.

  I slid the next flash drive in, and that was when I hit the jackpot. I could just kiss Aeron. He downloaded all the emails between Doctor X and my father too. They were sent on an encrypted server, and luckily, it looked like Doctor X made no attempt to clean out his inbox. There were thousands of them—just the kind of evidence I needed.

  I didn’t speak scientist, but I already knew from experience my father wouldn’t tolerate failure or some long-winded speech blaming others for it. I learned that pretty quickly living with him. I could remember that much.

  It took some scrolling, but I got to the first email from Doctor X to my father.

  “The sedation is holding, and everyone here still believes I’m working on a vaccine, but I can’t recreate the H2Z3 mutation without Patient Q’s blood. I only have a little bit of it. It’s enough to work with, but I’m not sure what you want me to do with her blood is entirely possible scientifically. It’s never been done before.”

  I looked up. Leif was crouched over his table with a needle in his arm.

  “What the fuck are you doing there, cowboy?”

  “Comparing your blood to mine.”

  “Doctor X was trying to do something to my blood to do something new with the Rage Mutation, but he only had limited supplies of Patient Q’s blood.”

  “Well, we know it’s not a vaccine. He may be trying to make the Rage Heads more dangerous or find a way to make more. Where did you find that?”

  “I’m labeling all these flash drives. There’s one here with his research on my blood that I can’t read. The other is just his rants. I haven’t gone through all of them, but Aeron thought to download his emails too. That’s what I’m going through now. I haven’t gotten through the rest of them.”

  “Stick with that one for now. It’s probably got the best in
formation on it. I’ll look at the one with his research on your blood a little later.”

  My eyes were glued to the blood filling the tube connected to the needle in his arm. My blood definitely didn’t look like that. My blood was red when it was outside my body.

  “Is your blood fucking gold?”

  “Yeah. And I’m guessing Patient Q had black blood. Satan would have had to cut one of his demon’s throats and drained it to get it. That’s why it was in limited supply. Hell would revolt if demons started disappearing and they traced it back to Satan so he could leave Hell.”

  “If our blood isn’t the same color, what are you hoping to gain by comparing it?”

  “I’m guessing Doctor X was one of the original scientists who worked on the Rage Mutation. He wouldn’t have even known how to run a DNA sequence on your blood. He wouldn’t have even known what he was looking at. He probably never could for you and Patient Q. Making the Rage Mutation was probably trial and error, and that was why it took so long.”

  “Then how do you have any hope of fixing this?”

  Leif pulled the needle out of his arm and grinned at me.

  “Because I’m an expert on angel blood, and we have his research from the original mutation, and I can go through what he was trying to do at the lab. Do you doubt me, Speedy?”

  “Just still trying to process that my blood is the cause and cure for all this. I think I will look at these emails again.”

  I focused on the laptop again. My father was a petty bitch about the email. Leif was right. He wouldn’t get more demon blood. He warned Doctor X not to waste a single drop of Patient Q’s blood and told him if he was smart enough to create the Rage Mutation the first time, he could do the impossible with my blood. I just wish he had fucking said what that was because I still didn’t know.

  It wasn’t a vaccine. I had a feeling whatever it was, he would say it was a vaccine because his water supplement magic trick wasn’t going to work during the apocalypse, even though I was pretty sure more than one person had gotten murdered for a stash of water they might have had. Besides, Aeron had gone around warning a lot of people. Clean water might be scarce in certain parts of the world, but surely people weren’t dumb enough to fall for that a second time.