400 Horsepower of the Apocalypse

by Erica Lindquist

  “Killing me will be saving me,” I told him. “You know that. I can’t live with the cost if Uriel takes me. If Carlos can’t fix this shit, then we have to die. There’s no other way.”

  Leo turned and held me tight against his broad chest. “You heard what Diane said. Blue Mountain wasn’t the only SPOT base. There are more of those guys, and they will try to kill us before we reach Carlos.”

  “We’ll outrun them,” I said.

  “And if we can’t?” Leo asked.

  “Then Diane’s people capture us and this ends,” I said. “One way or another. But the Earth survives, and everyone lives.”

  “Everyone but us. I can’t lose you, Jaz,” Leo told me in a low, deep voice that made my pulse race and my breath catch. “My world is the people that I love. You know that.”

  “I don’t want to lose you, either,” I said.

  Leo ran trembling fingers down the side of my face. “There’s so little time left. I don’t know if I can do this anymore, Jaz. That stimulant is supposed to last seventy-two hours, but I’ve already been running for so long.”

  “I can help,” I told him. My heart pounded. “I can keep you awake.”

  I grabbed the front of Leo’s battered leather jacket and drew him toward the bed. I felt the fire and rage of Uriel reacting to Death, but there was something else inside me. Something even bigger, brighter and more powerful than the archangel.

  “Jaz, no,” Leo said. His voice was raw. “I can’t… What if I hurt you? Death…”

  I pulled Leo down into a deep kiss.

  “I’m not scared anymore,” I whispered against his lips. “Not of you. We’ll run together, Leo, as far as we can. Until there’s no­where left to run.”

  Leo stared down at me with dark wildfire in his eyes.

  “Jaz…” he said. “I love you.”

  “Then show me,” I told him.

  Leo lifted me into his arms and kissed me until we couldn’t feel Uriel or Death anymore. There was only heat and desire, sweet sensation and racing hearts. I tore urgently at Leo’s clothes and his already shredded shirt ripped in my hands. Leo growled hungrily as he carried me to the bed. We fell together into the sheets in a desperate tangle, kissing and groping frantically. And then…

  Well, none of your business. Get your own bronzed motorcycle god.

  Let’s just skip all the way up to the morning. Well, nearly morning… The sky outside was still a deep, dark violet, but we had to make an early start.

  Leo and I both showered, but managed to get each other all sweaty again by the time we scooped our clothes off the motel room floor. Neither one of us had slept, but Leo’s eyes didn’t look quite as bloodshot anymore.

  I twisted my wild hair into a pair of knots on either side of my head and pulled my jeans back on, but Leo picked up the shredded and bloodied remains of his t-shirt. There wasn’t very much fabric left intact. Leo smirked, sighed and dropped the ruined shirt into a plastic trash can.

  “All my other shirts burned up with the money back at Blue Mountain,” he said.

  “Oh no,” I managed to answer with a straight face. “Too bad we don’t have time to go shopping. You’ll just have to manage shirtless.”

  Leo laughed, then grabbed his jacket and inspected it. There weren’t quite as many bullet holes and the black leather had withstood the abuse a little better, so Leo pulled it on. It left his tattooed chest bare, so I bit my lower lip and enjoyed the view. Surely we had time for that much, at least…

  Jaz!

  Uriel’s voice thundered through my skull and I clapped my hands over my ears before I remembered that it wouldn’t do any good. The archangel had been silent all night, so why were they screaming in my head now?

  You are under attack!

  There was a loud whoosh and something smashed through the window on a billowing tail of smoke. I threw myself at Leo, trying to tackle him out of the way of a projectile moving a hell of a lot faster than one human woman could run. But I slammed hard into Leo and wrapped my suddenly glowing wings around us both.

  We hit the floor as the motel room exploded into rubble and fire. The thunderclap rang in my ears and flaming splinters of what had been the dresser bounced away. I jumped up to my feet and the glow of my outstretched wings was bright enough to eclipse the morning light now pouring through the broken window. Four of them… Two pairs of angelic wings ex­tended from my shoulders.

  Uriel was getting more powerful.

  “Leo?” I shouted.

  The biker sat up, coughing. I grabbed his hand and pulled him upright.

  “I’m okay,” Leo said. “But that was a rocket launcher!”

  Laser sights flashed through the smoke, filling the gaping hole where the door had been with criss-crossing red lines of death. Leo yanked me to one side as the rattle of automatic gun­fire tore through the hazy air and high-caliber shots hammered new holes into the already burning wall.

  Under attack in a cheap motel… Just like old times. So which of our many enemies had crashed this crappy class reunion?

  Bullets pinged off of my wings as though hitting a steel plate. Voices shouted from outside, some bellowing orders and others screaming questions.

  “SPOT?” Leo asked.

  “Unless you managed to piss off an entire national army,” I said. “Yeah.”

  “Are we ready to let them kill us?”

  Silhouettes moved through the smoke, crouched and still firing. I stepped out in front of Leo and spread my wings. Bullets pounded into them, staggering me back into his arms.

  “I’m not prepared to die just yet,” I said. “You?”

  “After last night? Not a chance,” Leo growled.

  I grinned. “How far is it to San Diego?”

  “About a hundred miles.”

  Behind you! Uriel warned.

  An object flew through the gunsmoke haze toward us, and I spun just in time to knock a grenade away with one extended wing. Maybe if we had played baseball with blazing angel wings in high school, I might have been more interested in sports. The in­distinct shapes of SPOT soldiers scattered through the smoke, yelling out warnings and hurling themselves to the ground. The grenade boomed.

  “Let’s go!” I said.

  Leo nodded. He kicked a chunk of flaming bed frame out of the way, then held up one hand. He concentrated, closing his fingers into a tight fist. Something even louder than the shouting Spotters and their guns roared across the motel – an engine. The riderless Packmaster burst through the drywall dust and debris, skidding to a stop about an inch away from shattering my shins. Leo’s bike still didn’t like me.

  The feeling is mutual, Uriel snarled. Jaz, go!

  Leo threw a leg over the Packmaster and I jumped on behind him. I held my quartet of wings up to either side as Leo yanked the throttle. The motorcycle leapt into motion, cutting a path through the rubble that had been our motel room.

  The attacking Spotters had reformed their line and bullets pinged off the glowing barrier of my wings. We charged right through them and out into the parking lot, the Packmaster’s tires leaving flaming skid marks across the asphalt.

  The motel parking lot was full of unmarked black panel vans with more SPOT soldiers pouring out of the back. They shouted and opened fire as we roared past, then threw themselves down behind fenders or armored doors for cover. I thought I recognized a gray-haired woman with her arm in a sling and a bulletproof vest over her suit, but another Spotter had snatched up a new RPG launcher and swung it around, tracking us.

  Uriel, can your wings take a direct hit from that thing? I asked.

  Yes, the archangel answered at once. But the force of the blast will send us considerably off course. Likely through several buildings.

  Shit. I grabbed Leo’s shoulder and pulled. He followed my lead and steered his possessed motorcycle toward the nearest van. I slashed out with a wing and it sliced through the front like a welding torch. Sparks flew and coolant sprayed out from the ruined radiator.


  Another sharp wing cut through one tire and then a second. I smelled burning rubber and the suddenly off-balance van lurched to the side, rolling between us and the RPG-wielding Spotter. By the time he dashed around my impromptu barrier, Leo and I had blazed – literally – out of the parking lot.

  Still shooting, SPOT soldiers chased us out into the road, which was strangely empty. I looked back over Leo’s shoulder and swore. Either Diane’s Society had some serious police ties, or else they were going to get into a hell of a lot of trouble with the cops for the roadblock set up at the end of the street.

  And I don’t mean orange cones and yellow tape – SPOT had cordoned off the entire road with a line of armored trucks and barbed chains across the asphalt designed to tear apart any tires driving over them.

  Leo braked hard and the motorcycle skidded around in a circle. I pulled my wings around us and heard bullets ping off the barrier of light.

  “Shit!” Leo said. “It’s the same fucking thing behind us. Now what?”

  Go through them, Uriel suggested.

  You mean fly, don’t you? I asked, heart sinking.

  Death will not leave its stead, and you cannot leave Leo, the archangel said. Drive through. Now!

  I felt as much as heard the urgency in Uriel’s voice. A hot prickle ran up the back of my neck. The sun was just beginning to rise, but that wasn’t the source. There was another horseman or angel somewhere. Not close, but at the speed of wings or demonic steeds, that distance was going to shrink quickly.

  “Go!” I shouted.

  Leo didn’t hesitate. He gunned his overpowered engine and we raced toward the blockade. I swept my wings forward until they formed a wedge in front of his motorcycle. Incandescence surrounded us, but I could still see through the glow. Bullets ricocheted off the solidified light and someone hurled another grenade – an incendiary one this time, maybe hoping that the phosphorus flames would slow us down. But we drove right through the explosion and Leo’s bike shot out the other side of the expanding ball of flame and shrapnel.

  I really wished that I could have seen what that looked like, but then we were driving over the spiked steel chain, the kind designed for ripping tires apart to rubber shreds. Steel spines stuck into the Packmaster’s front wheel, which carried them up until they impacted the fork. The chain snapped with a shower of sparks and the shards flung free in a hail of red-hot molten metal.

  We didn’t slow down and the Spotters scattered as the wedge of my forward-swept wings hit the line of armored vehicles. The impact shivered through my body and I expected to fly right off the back of Leo’s bike, but I clung on with angelic strength and the SPOT trucks rose up over the angle of my braced wings. They tumbled through the air and then landed on their sides, skidding across the road with matching snarls of tearing metal.

  Leo held up one clenched fist, middle finger raised. I finally lifted all four wings up from the truck-smashing wedge and they stretched out behind me in streamers of light. We were through the SPOT blockade, but that sensation of the closing angel or horseman was growing stronger. When it rained, it really shit-stormed.

  “Do you feel that?” I shouted.

  Leo winced. “Yeah. Feels like more than one of them… Death is getting stronger. Let’s get onto the highway and make some distance.”

  The Packmaster cut through the center of town at NASCAR speeds. We blasted across surface street intersections and left drivers and pedestrians alike gaping at the flaming trail burning in our wake.

  A sign for Highway 44 flashed by in a burst of green, warning us about the sharp turn of the on-ramp. Leo didn’t slow, but leaned into the turn and we angled so low that my wing­tips carved molten lines into the asphalt.

  But we were still moving too fast…! Leo growled and chrome slithered out of his black leather sleeve to cover his hand like armor. He stabbed his fingers right down into the street.

  Holy shit… Death really was getting stronger.

  The Packmaster turned a tight arc around the new pivot point. Leo yanked his hand free and I caught the glint of skeletal metal claws at his fingertips, but we raced up the ramp and onto Highway 44.

  The sun rose swiftly into a clear, bright blue sky and the road was already filling with traffic on their way out to the California coast. A minivan swerved out of our path and the kids in the back seat watched the Packmaster race by with their mouths hanging open.

  I twisted on the pillion, studying the highway behind us, and saw the burning track left by Leo’s demonic motorcycle. But the sensation of encroaching celestial powers was making my entire body tense and tingle.

  When I turned back to Leo, his fingers still ended in sharp chrome claws, and the bullet holes were gone from his jacket. It had… healed. Intact leather whipped and snapped against his bare chest. That wasn’t all that had changed – Leo now wore a pair of studded black riding chaps and knee-high boots buckled in chrome. I hadn’t seen Leo turn it on, but the Packmaster’s headlight burned with light the color of blood.

  Oh no. Please no…

  But Leo looked back at me with his own brown eyes. They were hard and pained, but they were his.

  “They’re getting closer,” Leo said. “And at least one of them is a horseman.”

  And the pissed-off powers from before time weren’t the only ones closing in. Someone honked at the next on-ramp and a little red sedan swerved off the side, almost rolling as it sprang over the rail. A pair of huge trucks roared out into the highway in front of us. Each of them had a machine gun bolted onto the reinforced bed, and grim-looking SPOT soldiers tethered down behind them.

  “Jaz!” Leo shouted.

  The gun barrels swiveled to aim at us. I jumped up to my feet on the back of the motorcycle, steadying myself on Leo’s broad shoulders until I realized that I didn’t have to. I wasn’t going to fall – I was going to fly.

  I leapt over Leo and beat my quadruple wings, soaring up into the morning. I was using those wings to fly, so they weren’t protecting my body, but Uriel’s voice rang through me like a bell.

  You have my armor, the angel said.

  Uriel’s aura of bright light rippled over me. I grinned and folded my wings. I dove at one of the trucks and slammed down to land in the back like a ton of divine bricks. The entire vehicle bottomed out, leaving a line of sparks and scraped metal down the highway. I couldn’t hear the driver in the cab, but I saw him fighting for control. The overtaxed suspension groaned and the truck bounced as it veered into the next lane.

  The soldier clung to his wildly wheeling mounted machine gun and yanked it around to aim at me. He pulled the trigger and high-caliber bullets hammered into the glowing nimbus of light surrounding me. Uriel’s aura kept the shots from tearing me to bloody rags, but it was still enough to make the breath whoosh out of my lungs in a pained gasp and slammed me staggering back. My knees hit the armored tailgate of the truck and I fell.

  For a heart-stopping moment, I plunged toward the highway racing beneath me, but then I remembered my wings. I beat them desperately and spiraled back up into the cloudless dawn sky. I thought that I heard Leo shouting my name, but it was hard to make out over the rush of wind and the roar of engines below.

  Your people have created powerful weapons, Uriel said.

  Yeah, we’ve got some ridiculously huge guns in this country, I thought. And those aren’t even the scariest shit that our military makes. War would love them… I think. Are they too much for your powers?

  If an immortal, disembodied force of order could snort derisively, that’s precisely what Uriel did. When I raised my hands, the light clinging to my skin flared and took on a metallic sheen like silver or steel.

  Mortal weapons will not stop us, the angel said.

  Below me, Leo was having no trouble keeping up with my angelic pace or the racing SPOT trucks. He pulled alongside one of them as the gunner struggled to track him with the mounted machine gun. Leo lifted a hand and his skeletal chrome claws lengthened into curved blades. He brought th
em down through the barrel, slicing the thick steel tube and sending it bouncing off across the highway. An oncoming hauler braked suddenly as the sheared metal nearly punched through its windshield.

  I swooped and desperately wanted to get close enough to see if Leo’s eyes were still his own, but the other SPOT gunner was aiming right at me again. I didn’t land in the bed this time, but held an impossible hover above the truck. The Spotter yanked his gun up to as steep an angle as the mount could manage and fired. Only a few of the big lead slugs hit their mark and I didn’t even feel them, not through Uriel’s armor. The SPOT soldier stared, probably wide-eyed and gape-mouthed behind his black mask and goggles.

  “Leave us alone,” I suggested.

  And by suggest, I mean that I reached down and grabbed the barrel of the machine gun. The hot steel dented in my armored fingers, but I wrenched the gun up off the mounting and flung it out across the highway. The weapon went cartwheeling through the grassy meridian and hurled clods of dirt in every direction.

  I soared out ahead of the disarmed trucks and experimentally flexed my wings. Well, I flew before with only two of them, so I really hoped I didn’t need all four to stay in the air now. I slashed with one of my new wings, and it cut just like a light­saber through the front tire and most of the bumper. The nose of the truck dipped precariously under the weight of the engine and armor. The truck’s ruined fender slammed into the highway, gouging a deep furrow through the blacktop and kicking up a fountain of sparks. It spun out off the road and then plowed into a heaped dirt berm. One truck down.

  I whirled toward the other truck, but the driver had rolled down her bulletproof window and aimed an oversized handgun into my face. She pulled the trigger and the shot impacted right between my eyes. I tumbled back through the air.

  “Jaz!” Leo roared.

  He swerved into the side of the Spotter’s truck. By all rights, the much smaller and lighter motorcycle should have bounced right off, but the armored truck skidded into a wild spin. The driver shouted and dropped her gun to grab the steering wheel in both hands, trying to wrestle her vehicle back under control.