So… what it really hates is you, I thought. I doubt it cares about some silly little human. But it doesn’t want an angel riding on its back.
Yes, Uriel said. You must leave now, vessel. Before Death returns.
Leo, I corrected this time. And where else can I go? The cops? A psychologist?
To Gabriel. To Michael and Raphael. Find them, and I will lead them into final battle against the horsemen…
I squeezed my eyes closed, tighter and tighter until I could hear only the oceanic rush of my blood. Damn, Uriel really sang a one-note song.
Shut up! I thought as hard as I could. I’m not running off to join your angelic circus! I’m not leaving Leo. He has the bike and the uncle with answers. I need that or I swear I’m going to lose it.
Lose what? Uriel asked.
It was like having a child in my head. One of those possessed kids from a horror movie who can fling shit around with their minds and murders people for poorly explained reasons.
Despite having access to everything I thought about – like shirtless Leo – Uriel was terribly literal. In fact, whenever they weren’t lecturing me about apocalyptic battles and things that wanted to kill me, the archangel was pretty clueless.
I am new to this world, yes, Uriel said. I could practically hear the ruffled feathers. But also ancient beyond your limited ability to understand. We existed before this universe of matter and energy. We created it.
The angel didn’t just speak the words – though they echoed like great bells inside my skull – I could see the emptiness before the universe, the impossibly bright spark of the Big Bang exploding out through the void, filling it with fire and substance.
And this is exactly why I’m going to lose control, I said.
Good. Then I will take control of this body.
I was sorely tempted to run screaming back into the restaurant for about a dozen drinks. A chill like an arctic ice flow ran through me and I felt the vast, powerful presence of the angel tensing itself within me, but then the Packmaster’s motor revved. I jumped back and spun to find Leo jogging across the parking lot toward me. In one hand, he carried a branded plastic bag bulging with snacks and hopefully a phone charger. How long had I been sitting there, staring at the motorcycle and arguing with Uriel?
The Packmaster growled louder as Leo approached us. He cocked his head as I stood up again.
“Did you start it?” he asked.
“Nope,” I said. “Just started itself.”
Leo paused, then ran his free hand over the smooth curve of the gas tank. His motorcycle downshifted and the engine purred contentedly. Leo’s dark-eyed gaze wandered over the Packmaster and a muscle twitched at the angle of his jaw.
“Fuck,” he said. “How bad is the damage? It was shaking a lot last night.”
“I think that’s because your bike didn’t like the passenger.” I pointed to myself. “But there’s no damage at all. Not anymore. It… healed.”
“Fuck,” Leo said again. He took a deep breath. “Alright. Can we ride it? Is it safe?”
“As safe as it was last night, I suppose,” I answered slowly. “It seems ready to go.”
Ready to seek out the other horsemen, Uriel said.
“Uh, Uriel thinks it’s in a hurry to find the other ones… like you,” I told Leo. “Just like Pestilence was trying to find you when it came across your friends.”
Leo looked up from his motorcycle with something burning in his eyes. Not literal fire, thank goodness, but seething rage. I was pretty sure I knew exactly what Leo’s dad saw right before his son punched him.
“Too bad,” Leo said. “We’re going to San Diego.”
The Packmaster’s rumbling engine hitched ominously under his hand. Leo patted the motorcycle once before standing back and running his fingers through his hair. The biker took a deep breath.
“Carlos will know what to do,” he said.
The words were quiet, like Leo was talking to himself. Hey, not that I was one to judge. Uriel said a lot weirder shit and at least Leo was using his own voice.
For now, Uriel reminded me. By the time you hear Death’s true voice, it will be too late.
Can you ease up on the doom and gloom? I asked.
Doom is coming.
I hated to admit that Uriel had a point, but Gabriel and Pestilence were both out there looking for us. We really needed to get moving.
“Did you buy a phone charger?” I asked as gently as I could.
Leo blinked a few times and then looked down at me. He nodded and opened up the grocery bag to show me the charging cable enclosed in its plastic blister pack.
“As soon as we stop somewhere with power outlets, we’re good to go,” Leo said. “I also got you these.”
He reached into the bag and withdrew a package of folded bandanas. I snatched them so fast that Leo laughed.
“Hey, your hair is always perfect,” I told him. “Mine rebels when I keep it under a helmet all day.”
I selected a red bandana, then folded it diagonally and tied it into place over my hair. I rolled up the other two and stuck them in my pocket. Leo stuffed his purchases into the Packmaster’s saddlebags and pulled on a new pair of leather riding gloves. He caught his reflection in the bike’s mirror and squinted at his wavy brown hair.
“Yeah, perfect,” I said.
Leo gave me a smile that looked a little bit embarrassed and handed me the extra helmet. He straddled the Packmaster and patted the back of the seat.
“Climb on,” he told me.
The Packmaster revved again and I hesitated. That motorcycle really didn’t like me. Leo choked down the throttle and the engine smoothed out.
Death’s mortal vessel will not remain in control forever, Uriel said. Leave now.
I climbed onto the pillion and the motorcycle bucked hard under me. Even Leo felt it and he glanced over his shoulder.
“Hold on tight,” he said.
I wrapped my arms around Leo. He kicked up the stand and we drove back out toward Highway 44.
I rode through the day on the back of the Packmaster as the bike tried like hell to kick me off. It shuddered and fishtailed, forcing me to cling to Leo so hard that I had the shoulder seam of his jacket more or less permanently printed into the skin of my cheek. I missed my own motorcycle so badly that I cried a couple of times. Luckily, the warm, swift wind whipped the tears away before Leo could see any of them.
At highway speeds, I couldn’t really talk to Leo, which left Uriel my only company. The constant urgings to leave Leo and seek out the other angels was getting repetitive. Really repetitive. At least Uriel could have mixed in a little epic-sounding scripture or something.
Those are not our words, Uriel said.
What? I asked.
Those… church words in your mind are not our words, the angel told me.
Uh, is an angel seriously telling me that the Bible is bullshit?
No, Uriel said. Our influence is there in your book and in all holy writings. In all things.
Good for you, I thought to the angel. But if you don’t mind, I’d much rather concentrate on grabbing Leo’s abs for a while.
I felt the swirl of Uriel’s confusion at that, and it was nice to return the favor for once. But I kept my eyes on the sky and the highway, watching for Gabriel and Pestilence.
Leo finally pulled over around lunchtime. We didn’t need gas and I was pretty sure never would again. Whatever the Packmaster ran on, it wasn’t gas anymore.
But its riders’ proverbial tanks did get empty – I don’t really recommend trying to eat a bag of potato chips on the back of a moving motorcycle – or in the case of my bladder, full.
So we stopped off at a filling station anyway so I could shake out my sore and aching arms. We crammed some junk food into our mouths as we checked the rack of newspapers for anything strange. We didn’t see much, but printed news was a little slower than television.
I used a restroom that looked like it had been the site of its
own apocalyptic battle. When I was done and on my way out of the little station store, I detoured to buy myself a beer and the highest octane energy drink I could find. By the time I emerged from the shop, I had chugged the energy drink and was halfway through the beer.
Outside, Leo stood next to his motorcycle, staring down at it. I groaned out loud as I approached – my ass was two patties of hamburger meat after a day of riding that thing.
“Is it talking to you?” I asked.
Leo looked up from the motorcycle. “What? Oh, no. Nothing like that. Just wondering about this whole fucked-up thing. How can any of this shit be happening?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I guess that’s the point of going to see your uncle.”
I upended the rest of the beer into my mouth and swallowed. I didn’t even like beer that much, but anything to shut Uriel the hell up tasted like ambrosia.
Leo eyed me as I crumpled the can and dropped it into the trash. He frowned.
“Yeah, I know. we make a pit stop and I promptly fill up my bladder again,” I said. “I’m a big girl. I can hold it until the next stop. Promise.”
Leo just nodded and held the Packmaster steady until I had climbed on. The motorcycle immediately began jerking like a mechanical bull and I threw my arms around Leo. When I was as situated as I was going to get, he drove back out onto the highway and we raced west.
And I do mean raced. There was an angel and a horseman out there with our names on them, but we also needed to avoid getting our asses handed to us by the cops. Leo pulled back on the handlebars of his motorcycle like the reins of a horse to keep it under a hundred miles per hour and barely managed it. Sweat ran down the back of his neck.
I could still feel Uriel in my head, but they didn’t seem to be grabbing for my reins. Maybe the angel was watching for Pestilence, too, or trying to locate Gabriel again. Or maybe it was the beer… I had guzzled it pretty fast and I wasn’t a large girl, so I was already a bit buzzed. I wondered what a drunk angel would sound like, which prompted Uriel to renew demands that I ditch the horseman and go find myself a nice archangel.
Or three of them, to be precise.
Shut up, shut up, shut up…! I told Uriel in a sing-song voice inside my head. I swear, I’ll brain myself with a wrench if you don’t shut the hell up.
Uriel didn’t shut up.
Leo and I followed Highway 44 through rocky hills that rose steeply into tree-covered peaks labeled with green signs along the roadside as Cibola National Forest. We stopped in a pretty mountain town called Zamora Canyon.
Sunlight fell across the road in horizontal amber lines that danced with motes of dust and pollen. It wasn’t dark yet – and the Packmaster had a perfectly good headlight – but I think Leo was eager to stop and get my cell phone charged. The beer and energy drink had finished their own journeys and I was ready for another pit stop, too.
Zamora Canyon had a Mexican restaurant on the main thoroughfare that was a welcome change of pace from the roadside diner food we had been eating. We sat next to a window where we could watch the sun finish setting behind the mountains and keep an eye on the road outside.
When our waiter dropped off some fresh chips and several kinds of salsa, I ordered a plate of enchiladas dripping in cheese and a pitcher of margaritas.
“Skip the drinks,” Leo said.
I frowned and the waiter looked back and forth between us, but Leo’s voice was hard. The waiter didn’t make any cute jokes – he just scratched the pitcher off his order pad and left. Quickly.
“Um… what the hell?” I asked. “It’s not like I’m driving. I can’t drive anymore, remember? My Bonnie’s probably been smashed into a paperweight at some scrapyard by now.”
I choked a little on the last words and Leo crossed his arms on the tabletop. The thick muscles were tensed under his colorfully tattooed skin.
“Drinking isn’t going to make this shit go away, Jaz,” he said.
“Yeah? Look, you’re not the one with a chatty angel in your head,” I snapped.
“My friends are all dead!” Leo hissed right back.
“Then why aren’t you drinking?”
“Because it doesn’t make the problem go away.”
“Talk to me again when you’re mentally wrestling a demon,” I said.
“I am,” Leo answered.
Now I froze like a rabbit caught in headlights. “What? Is… is Death talking to you?”
“No,” Leo told me. “But there’s a reason I believe you about what’s happening here, Jaz, and it’s not just because of what happened in Arrow. I can feel Death, I think. That urge to throw you off my bike and drag you behind me down the road until…”
Leo bit off the sentence with obvious difficulty, but a line of cold sweat was already running down the back of my neck. Shit. Shit! Death was really in there, somewhere inside Leo.
I warned you, Uriel said. Leave this place. Leave this man, vessel!
I grabbed the edge of the table, wondering how fast I could sprint for the door. What was I going to do once I got outside? I doubted that the Packmaster would let me steal it… There were no other motorcycles in the parking lot.
Could I steal a car? No, someone would see me and then it would take about five minutes flat before the cops were dragging me out of the driver’s seat by the hair. Could I even hotwire one? It looked easy enough in the movies, but I knew engines better than to believe that shit.
Give me control and I will get away, Uriel urged. I have no need of wheels. I have wings.
One of Leo’s hands came down on top of mine and I nearly screamed. He leaned over the table and fixed me with an intense stare.
“But that’s not what I’m talking about,” Leo said.
“Wait… what?” I asked. I had lost the thread of the conversation entirely. “That’s not what?”
“Death isn’t the demon I’m looking at right now,” Leo told me. “Look, I get what you’re going through.”
“Yeah, I really doubt that.”
Leo’s big hand tightened on top of mine. It felt like there was an electric current running through his skin and into me. I bit my lip.
“My dad was a shitbag,” Leo said. “He was a privileged asshole who went down to San Diego on vacation and knocked up my mother. So he brought her home to Chicago to knock her around. Her life hurt, so she took heroin to make it stop. Eventually, it did – she overdosed when I was in high school.”
“I… I’m sorry,” I stammered.
“Jaz, listen. You know my dad was the same with me. Hit me a lot, threw me through a glass table once, and left a lot of scars. So for my tenth birthday, Mom gave me a needle.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Don’t judge her,” Leo said. “My mom loved me. Heroin was the only good thing in her life and she wanted to share it with me. And you know what? My life sucked, so yeah, I shot up. Dad came home and hammered on me, but it didn’t matter anymore. I missed weeks of school, and that didn’t matter, either.”
“Leo…” I whispered, but then trailed off.
What could I say? The biker’s broad shoulders hunched, but his hand remained firm on top of mine.
“Remember those summer vacations I told you about?” Leo asked. “When Uncle Carlos came to take me out of Chicago for a few weeks?”
“Yeah,” I answered. That trip must have been the best part of young Leo’s life each year, a chance to get away from his father.
“And I told you he saved my life,” Leo said. “When Carlos came that summer and found me, he knew exactly what was going on. He never got my mom – his sister – off the heroin, but I always looked up to Uncle Carlos. I wanted to be Carlos when I grew up. Nothing hurt him. Nothing could. I needed to be strong like that.”
I wanted to point out that of the two of us, Leo was the one not melting down and speaking to voices in their head. But he was still talking.
“I wanted to be a Knight of Hell like him,” Leo said. “But there were rules, Uncle Carl
os told me, and one of them was no drugs. If I ever wanted to be a Knight, I had to kick the habit. And then he left me there in Chicago, all summer.”
“What happened?” I asked. “I mean, you’re here, not dead from an overdose. And you obviously joined the Knights of Hell. So what did you do?”
Leo finally sat back, smiling a little. “At first, I was just pissed off. I broke pretty much everything that I could in my bedroom, including my window. Which earned me a few smacks in the mouth from my dad.”
I winced.
“But Carlos was right. If I wanted to join up bad enough, I could do it,” Leo said. “So I made it through the heroin withdrawals. Barely. That fall and spring, I made it through school and my dad’s fists. Barely. When summer came around again, so did Uncle Carlos. He took one look and told me to get on the bike.”
I could imagine that, little ten-year-old Leo – though I guess he would have been eleven by then – jumping onto the back of a big-ass Harley to drive halfway across the country.
“That’s the summer Carlos started teaching me,” Leo said. “How to ride, and how to fight when I had to. He taught me to be strong like him. I just wish I could have taught my mother. She tried to get off the heroin, too, but it would never stick for more than a few weeks. She kept going back. And she did her last pop when I was sixteen.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” I said.
Leo sighed. There were tears in his eyes again, but he didn’t try to wipe them discreetly away before I could see them or claim it was just dust. This was old pain, and Leo wasn’t afraid of it anymore.
“After she died, then it was just me and my dad. He hit me, and my mom wasn’t there begging us to stop anymore. So I hit him right back,” Leo said, then smirked. “Might have been more than once.”
“That’s what got you sent off to prison, right?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Leo answered. “I was seventeen, but I got tried as an adult and spent a year in prison. When I was in there, it was hard not to go back to the heroin.”
I blinked. “In… prison?”
400 Horsepower of the Apocalypse Page 10