The Black Rider Read online

  What was I even saying? Of course, they were. Not all of them, but some. The ones that knew better and did it anyway were just desperate. Water was the one thing you couldn’t go too long without aside from air, and Isaiah turned it into a biological weapon.

  Still, my father was arrogant. He always had to have the latest toys and newest fashion. I didn’t really know him on a deeply personal level because he didn’t want me to, and after a point, I didn’t want to either. But I knew he thought it was gauche to wear the same tuxedo to more than one function, and I just knew that fucker felt the same way about mass genocide.

  My father was the Antichrist, but he was also a colossal douche who would consider it tacky to murder everyone the same way twice. He would want something new and original, like all his designer clothes and custom cars. Yeah, he was one of those fucks. He used to buy all my clothes like I was some doll and not a living, breathing person that might have opinions on what I wore.

  I looked up, and Leif was huddled over his microscope, looking at blood. I got distracted because he was muttering to himself. He was kind of adorable like that. He was this massive angel, and he looked a little dangerous with his black hair and eyes, but there he was in a fucking lab coat and huge goggles muttering at my blood like it could talk back to him.

  “Problems there, Tiger?”

  “I’ve never studied Nephilim blood before. I’ve never needed to. This is fascinating.”

  “Are you popping a boner over my blood?”

  “No, but I was trying to hide one when we were snuggling in bed watching movies. You wriggle a lot, and I’d been wanting to snuggle with you for a long time.”

  “You hid your boner quite well if it’s anything like Aeron’s.”

  “You and Aeron…”

  “Oh, god no. I was pissed at him for most of the trip down here for keeping secrets from me, and at first, he was this total asshole to me because he didn’t want to say anything to hurt me. We almost did in a tent when we got here, but then some gang members showed up and wanted to trade me for Aeron’s life. No, I saw him in the showers we had to take before we came in.”

  “You know that sneaky mother fucker snuck into the women’s showers just to show off naked for you, right?”

  “Aeron has a stick up his ass. He does not sneak into women’s showers just to show off his cock.”

  “You rode on Meremoth with him all the way from Washington State to Mexico and didn’t figure out he loves to show off?”

  “That mother fucker. He was probably checking out my tits too.”

  “Nah, if I know Aeron, he was showing off and making sure you were protected. He nearly went crazy, blaming himself when you went missing. The only reason he’s left your side right now is that he knows you’re safe with me, and I’d end up kicking him out anyway when he started distracting me.”

  “Discover anything exciting about my blood yet?”

  “Still looking. Find anything on that hard drive?”

  “Doctor X was trying to create something new with my blood and Patient Q’s blood, but he needed to do something Doctor X said had never been done before to my blood before he could do it. I’m not sure what that is since the Rage Mutation shouldn’t be possible.”

  “Your blood type is AB positive. It’s not common. It represents just about six percent of the world’s population. Everyone alive right now is AB positive, avoided the water supplement, or has managed to avoid being bitten by a Rage Head. Isaiah wants everyone gone. He wants a clean playing field when his years of peace are up.

  “He doesn’t want human interference. What do you think will happen if it gets far enough and humans see angels and demons fighting? You can’t even imagine what demons look like. Even the humans that have started raping and eating people would try to kill them. The ones that think your father is doing an expert job and think sending Rage Heads to Mexico to kill everyone is a good idea would join the fight against demons.

  “Isaiah isn’t leaving anything to chance. He wants to turn the entire world into monsters to help Satan return. Have you noticed Rage Heads don’t eat animals? It’s only ever humans. They got that from Patient Q. If war broke out between Heaven and Hell, they wouldn’t attack demons, but they would be hungry for angels. We’ve already figured that out being in the field with them.”

  I didn’t want to imagine that world. I needed to know how far Doctor X had gotten on his research because I needed to know if something worse was coming. I’d met good people in Gabriel’s Haven, California, and now San Quintin. They couldn’t have survived the Rage Mutation and World War Three for my father’s big plot twist.

  “Then, we need to stop talking and get to work. It’s never been more appropriate than right now to say not today, Satan.”

  Chapter 17

  T

  here were plenty of evil things created by man: War, mass genocide, racism, Teletubbies. Reading the emails between Doctor X and my father made me really see how evil and stupid man could be. My father was the Antichrist. Satan was dear old dad. I could try to excuse his behavior by saying it was in his blood, but it was in mine too, and I wasn’t going around trying to unleash Hell on earth.

  Doctor X had no excuse. I didn’t know his proper name, but if he were on my softball team, we would have nicknamed him Dumbass Supreme and booted him off the team. He had to be smart if he could create the Rage Mutation, but sometimes intelligent people didn’t have a single lick of common sense.

  He could have been creating a cure for cancer or AIDS. Instead, he got with my father and created a supplement to turn people into zombies. And then when the majority of the world was the walking dead, and war broke out, he didn’t want an out even then. He stayed.

  He had no problems with me being put in a medically induced coma so he could do the same thing all over again with the people who didn’t turn. How stupid could you get? Did he really think he would be safe after that? I’m sure my father didn’t tell him he was bringing Armageddon, but I was dying to know what story was given that Doctor X thought he would be safe from his own creation.

  I’d gathered that much from the emails. I wasn’t the only person who ended up in that lab. Doctor X took blood samples from those who worked there, and a few survivors were kidnapped and tested. Doctor X and my father knew what Leif knew. Everyone who didn’t turn had either avoided the supplement, or they had the same blood type as me.

  They still had enough of the original formula they used to turn everyone, but it was useless against people with my blood type. Isaiah didn’t want to use it again, anyway. It would have been almost impossible to do that many water drops with no military.

  No, Doctor X was trying to tweak the formula so that no one had an immunity to it, which is why he was a dumbass. Not even he would be immune to it. If he thought my father had any loyalty to him for creating bioweapons and would keep him somewhere he wouldn’t turn too when he was done with him, he had to be the dumbest mad scientist who created zombies with Nephilim and demon blood ever to live.

  “Leif? Can you change someone’s blood type?”

  “No, or they wouldn’t be so desperate for certain blood types when things go wrong at hospitals.”

  “That’s what he was trying to do. He wanted another Rage Mutation, but he wanted to target everyone, even with my blood type.”

  “It’s still not possible, Ariel. I can break down the Rage Mutation to you. I’ve studied it. He isolated the regenerative properties of your blood. They flood the pituitary gland of the Rage Heads and keep them animated. That’s why you have to get them in the head. The reason they are strong and fast moving comes from your blood. All the nasty stuff, the blood-red eyes, and eating human flesh comes from Patient Q. He got lucky through trial and error, finding the right components to isolate and put into his formula. He may have gotten lucky, but it doesn’t change the fact that he can’t do the impossible with your blood.”

  “Um, hello, zombies.”

  “A freak mutation
caused by isolating components of angel and demon blood. Doctor X most likely got lucky. Your DNA and Patient Q’s DNA wouldn’t have looked like anything he’d ever seen before.”

  “The apocalypse is because a mad scientist got lucky with some unearthly ingredients?”

  “Oh, he had some help. Every Antichrist we send back to Hell gives a full report to Satan on where things went wrong. When a new Antichrist is born, they always know they are different. They do cruel things to other children and animals. From what we’ve gathered, Satan can pay them a visit in their teens and fill their minds they have a great destiny. They are given instructions and details where their predecessor went wrong.

  “They have planned this for a long time. Satan hasn’t created a new Antichrist in a long time. They used to pop up all the time. Isaiah probably summoned daddy a few times to get help for his pet scientist, but what they were trying to do is not an exact science. It’s never been done before. They probably weren’t counting on the blood type immunity.

  “No one, angel or demon, can change a blood type. I’m sure you’ll find later in the notes they abandoned that and just tried to make a different formula. I doubt they got anywhere. Satan would have gotten fed up. He would have wanted you dead and for Isaiah to just wait it out for him to return. This is the closest he’s ever gotten to returning to Earth. He’s probably pissed he can only come when Isaiah summons him, and he won’t because he wants to do it his way. Satan can’t control his little crotch dropping because he knows he’s gotten further than his previous brothers, and he’s gotten arrogant.”

  “So, how are we going to end this?”

  “We can’t tonight. I still need to study your blood more. Take a break, Ariel. You’ve been reading those emails all night. We need to eat dinner, and you need to sleep. Remember, you were in a coma for a long time, and you lived rough on the road. You can’t save the world unless you take care of yourself first.”

  I shut the laptop and pouted. I knew he was right, but after reading those emails and knowing something worse could be coming, I wanted to end this yesterday.

  Chapter 18

  L

  eif brought me to the front doors instead of back to his apartments. I had no idea what he was doing until I realized Aeron wasn’t back yet. I’d been so engrossed with that laptop, I hadn’t even thought about him being outside these walls. I was a pretty shitty online girlfriend, though if there was anyone you could probably let outside these walls without freaking your shit out, it was the Horseman of Death.

  I saw Aeron walking towards the building with a bunch of soldiers, and I ran to hug him. I stopped dead in my tracks and decided against that hug when I got close enough to smell him. It looked like he got up close and personal with the walking dead. All I could see was the whites of his eyes and his teeth when he grinned at me. The rest of him was covered in black blood. The fucker looked pretty damned proud of himself.

  “You reek,” I pointed out. “You have Rage Head in your hair.”

  “We found a nest a few towns over. They must have made their way in a few days ago and were headed straight for San Quintin. We wiped every single one of those red-eyed mother fuckers out.”

  Leif came up to my side and wrinkled his nose.

  “What did you do, roll around in them?”

  “It was Rage Head Whack a Mole, and they outnumbered us. We all got a little on us.”

  “That’s not just a little blood spatter, Aeron. You aren’t setting foot in my building until you take a shower,” Leif fussed.

  “I know you crashed the women’s shower,” I told Aeron.

  “Technically, you were in the men’s shower, Speedy. I was there with you because everyone in San Quintin knew we were looking for you. There’s been a lot of unknown people here since I left. I was protecting you. Want to shower with me again?”

  What I should have done was punch him in his zombie guts covered face and gone back inside with Leif, who hadn’t tried to check out my naked ass so far. But when had I ever reacted normally to anything that had happened since I woke up from that coma? I wasn’t all that offended Aeron saw me naked. I did my fair share of checking him out in the shower too.

  And I wanted to do it again. I worked all day poring over that laptop. I deserved to sexually objectify the Horseman of Death after a hard day of work.

  “Yeah, I’ll take that shower, but you’re staying far away from me because I don’t want my feet in zombie guts.”

  Aeron just smirked at me like he had something planned. Leif just threw up his hands and went back inside.

  “One day, I’m going to get called when science is sexy,” he muttered.

  Oh, I totally found Leif in his lab coat and goggles sexy, but I was still trying to process that and remember him. I liked what I knew about Leif so far, but I wasn’t ready to get naked with him. I had a feeling there should be a yet behind that sentence, and I didn’t know how to deal with that. I still wasn’t fucking their entire team in the Oval Office, but I could admit I felt very comfortable around Aeron and Leif, and I liked them a little more than just apocalypse friends.

  Aeron held out his hand to me like he expected me to hold it. I wasn’t touching that hand until he cleaned under his fingernails because it looked like he even had zombie under there too.

  “No way. You’re filthy, and you smell like someone wrapped shrimp in a dirty diaper and left it in a sweltering room with no ventilation for two weeks.”

  “I do not smell that bad.”

  “You smell more offensive than a militant redneck’s Facebook feed.”

  “You can be mean when you want to. We wiped out an enormous threat that was headed this way.”

  “And San Quintin thanks you, but I think you enjoyed every minute of it. Can we get to the showers now?”

  “I think you just want to see me naked again. I saw you checking me out after you stopped playing in the water.”

  “I think you enjoy being an asshole.”

  “I think you like it when I’m an asshole.”

  “I think I will like it when you get all those guts off you.”

  “So, you can check me out in all my naked glory.”

  “Because you stink. Let’s get in the shower.”

  And yeah, because I wanted to look at him naked again, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. Plus, after so many cold showers, bathing in the river, and stinking to high heaven myself, hot showers were still a treat.

  I tried to stay downwind of Aeron as we made it to the showers. There was this stench to the entire world now that the dead were walking. It was less in San Quintin since they burned anything that died outside the walls, but I could smell Aeron over the prevalent scent of burning corpses that lingered in the air in San Quintin, and he desperately needed that shower.

  Aeron was a gentleman and kept his eyes above the waist while we were stripping off our clothes. I was no lady, and I was peeking everywhere.

  “I hope you plan on burning those clothes.”

  “It’s not like I can hit up a store and buy more. It’s pretty hard finding angel sized clothes when I scavenge.”

  “You’re seriously going to ask someone to wash that for you?”

  Aeron turned the water on and let it get hot. I did the same.

  “Just because we’re angels doesn’t mean we don’t do our own laundry, Ariel.”

  “The Horseman of Death folds clothes?”

  “Not fitted sheets. I don’t think anyone knows how to fold those. I’ve seen people post videos where they’ve figured something out, but who has time to mess with that?”

  “What other totally normal things do the Horsemen of the Apocalypse do?”

  “Chat with pretty girls online.”

  “Are you flirting with me covered in guts?”

  “Well, I’m not as good at it as Leif, but I’m trying.”

  I looked at Aeron. His face was finally clean, and he had this pained look on his face like everything had changed between us now t
hat I’d met Leif and spent all day with him. I thought we came as a set before. Did I pay more attention to Leif before I went missing?

  “Can you tell me what our thing was before I went missing? I remember Leif and I spoke on the phone about books. I know we would have had something like that.”

  “I might be good at killing things, but I’ve always appreciated the beauty in the art humans have created. I’d make it a point to see it when I got called to Earth. I have my favorites over the centuries. We talked about your art and other artists.”

  I so didn’t take Aeron for talking art with me, but a brief memory got jogged loose. Big, gruff Aeron was pretty passionate about art and made it a point to study it. He even taught me a few things. Aeron exposed me to artists I’d never heard of and really broadened my horizons artistically.

  I grinned at him. I remembered.

  “You couldn’t pick your favorite art period. It was a combination of Rococo and German Expressionism.”

  “And you loved every single time period equally except Cubism. You never did like the Cubists.”

  Aeron rinsed the shampoo out of his hair, and all the stink had washed down the drain. Water was dripping down his hard chest, and this angel had a fucking eight pack. His gray eyes got that silvery glow to them again, and he looked a little dangerous. He looked like he wanted to eat me. He turned off his shower and came to stand under my spray.

  Aeron pressed forward until my back was against the wall, and his chest was pressed against mine. He trapped me between his arms against the wall.

  “I don’t want to talk about art right now, Ariel.”

  I could feel his erection pressing against my stomach, and my mouth went dry. Were we finally going to do this after all that tension on the road? Everything was about to come to a head in that tent, and then those gang members showed up.