400 Horsepower of the Apocalypse

by Erica Lindquist

  Leo grabbed the front bumper in one chrome-plated fist and heaved. Thousands of pounds of truck arced up and over the highway, landing with a thunderous crash on the other side. I mentally crossed my fingers that the Spotters inside were all wearing their seatbelts.

  “Jaz, are you okay?” Leo called out.

  His voice had a deep, empty boom that sounded nothing at all like human. I flew alongside the Packmaster, touching tentative fingertips to my forehead. There was no blood or even a bruise there that I could feel. Damn, Uriel’s upgraded armor was tough.

  “I’m alright,” I shouted.

  The red headlight of his Packmaster blazed like fire and Leo groaned. I felt it, too… SPOT wasn’t the only thing chasing us, and archangels and horsemen were both a lot faster than cars. There was the sensation of blazing light against the back of my neck, though the sun had barely risen and the morning breeze was still cool.

  That is Gabriel and Michael, Uriel told me. And Raphael is not far behind them.

  “Shit,” I said. “The other angels are getting close.”

  Leo looked up at me, jaw clenched as he nodded. “Yeah. The horsemen, too.”

  His eyes were brown and so beautifully alive, but dark steel veins were crawling over his bare chest like some kind of terrible disease.

  “How fast can you fly?” Leo asked.

  “Let’s find out,” I answered.

  SPOT knew that we were running to Carlos. They could lay as many traps in our path as their doubtlessly impressive budget would support. The other horsemen and archangels could track us every step of the way… Our only hope was to get to Carlos and somehow get a cure for this before they all converged on us.

  Or discover that there was no cure. If that happened, well… I didn’t want to die, but we wouldn’t have much choice at that point. At least I would die with Leo, and far away from Crayhill.

  Cars streaked past and we were going far too fast to read the green-painted signs. But the blocky silhouette of a city darkened the western horizon and Leo pointed with one clawed chrome finger.

  “That’s San Diego!” he shouted.

  Already? Leo said the city was a hundred miles away… But we had to be going more than two hundred miles an hour.

  More car horns honked and I spotted police lights flashing far, far behind us. The early traffic was still sluggish and half-hearted, but there were plenty of wide eyes and shocked shouts as Leo and I shot past. At least one driver slammed on their brakes at the sight of a winged mechanic soaring down the road. A compact little hybrid smacked right into their trunk and then skidded into the next lane.

  But over the rumbling thunder of the Packmaster and the crunch of metal, I heard the monotone thud of helicopter rotors. It wasn’t a sound I had been very familiar with until re­cently and I really hoped that it was just some local news-copter drawn to the accidents like an oversized vulture. Does Channel 17 have a helicopter with miniguns on the wings?

  The black helicopter dropped toward us and the miniguns spun up. Bullets hailed down on Highway 44, punching craters into the asphalt and through the hood of a nearby SUV. Shit, so much for SPOT avoiding collateral damage. But when the entire uni­verse was on the line, I supposed that somebody’s Escalade was a small price to pay.

  Bullets ricocheted off my armor and the Packmaster’s shiny chrome finish. Leo flipped off the helicopter, then leaned over the handlebars and swerved between the twin lines of minigun fire. I covered him as best I could with my wings, but then the hail of lead suddenly stopped.

  I craned my neck to stare. Had the gunner finally given up trying to riddle us with holes? The helicopter was still pacing us, but the miniguns were spinning down and I cheered.

  Highway 44 rose beneath us and San Diego leapt into focus. Somewhere in that city was Leo’s uncle and our final answer about if we would live or die today. Would you think any less of me if I admitted that I actually crossed my shiny, silver-armored fingers?

  But miniguns weren’t the only weapons mounted on SPOT’s suspicious black helicopter. A pair of rockets streaked out from the underside, trailing white smoke across the blue sky. They weren’t aimed at us, though… The missiles converged on the highway in front of us, where it sloped up over the dark ribbon of some other freeway.

  “Holy shit,” I gasped. “No!”

  Both missiles slammed right into the highway overpass and the entire road shuddered as broken concrete blasted a hundred feet into the air. The violent shockwave sent a minivan spinning off through the meridian and the cherry-red sports car behind them hit the brakes, but they were driving too fast and plunged over the jagged edge of what used to be their boring morning commute.

  I fell out of the sky like a bullet and grabbed the back of the plummeting car before I had time to wonder if Uriel’s power made me strong enough for this insanity. My armored fingers punched through the trunk and metal ripped in my grasp, but it held until I lowered the car to the rubble of the freeway below. It landed with a thump, the driver still shrieking safely inside.

  I leapt back into the air, but Leo was less than a heartbeat from the blown-out bridge. If I could catch an entire car, I could certainly grab Leo’s Packmaster and fly it over the ruined highway… But that save had already cost me too much time. There was no way I could get to Leo before he fell.

  But Leo snarled something that I couldn’t hear and twisted the throttle. He wasn’t braking – he was accelerating. The blood-red headlight flared with hellish fire and the front lifted up in a wheelie that I had never seen from a bike that big. Leo hit the torn-up edge of the overpass and jumped, bike arcing impossibly through the air. It landed hard on the other side, leaving a flaming black tire track in its wake.

  “Yes!” I cheered.

  I beat my wings and climbed. If that helicopter followed us into San Diego, I couldn’t even imagine the damage it would do trying to take us out. And since I was the one with the wings, I figured that made handling the helicopter my job.

  The SPOT soldiers inside saw me coming and one of them grabbed for what seemed to be the controls of the miniguns. The barrels spun and hurled bullets, but the twin guns were designed to converge on something much further away than an angel landing on the nose of the helicopter. Inside, the pilot wasn’t masked and the color drained from his face as I scrambled up the hull.

  This armor makes me pretty much indestructible, right? I asked.

  Death and the other horsemen can harm us, Uriel warned me. But you have nothing to fear from mortal weapons.

  I hoped that applied to mortal vehicles, too, and reached up to grab the whirling main rotor of the helicopter. Somehow, I was still shocked when it didn’t shear my hands off.

  One of the blades bent and then snapped, but I held onto the other and the rotor whined to a halt. The helicopter spiraled into a deadly fall, spewing smoke, and I adjusted my grip to seize the central mast of the rotor. I heaved, swore a few times and then guided the damaged machine until it was just a few yards from the ground. Finally, I dropped it into the green-tinged gray of a marshy wetland.

  The pilot staggered out of the helicopter and splashed into a puddle, pulling a compact nine-millimeter gun from his belt. He fired at me and I swiped the bullet away with one armored hand.

  “Stop that,” I said. “Let us go, or I will wing thee to thy rest.”

  I didn’t have time to be proud of my Shakespeare quote. My words rang out like striking a huge gong and I winced. The other archangels were close. The pilot braced his gun with his other hand.

  “But you… you’ll destroy the entire universe,” he said in a shaking voice.

  I shook my head. “We won’t let that happen. If Carlos can’t deal with Death and Uriel, we will die. I promise. But we get to make that decision, not you.”

  The pilot’s aim wavered, and then fell. I didn’t know if he actually believed me or simply realized the futility of trying to kill an angel with a handgun. He holstered his weapon and carefully retreated around the crashed
helicopter to help his gunner, who was pulling weakly at her safety harness.

  I spread all four of my luminous wings and rose up into the open blue sky. With any luck, SPOT was done and dealt with. Now Leo and I just had to get to Carlos before the other angels could catch up with us.

  And the horsemen, Uriel reminded me. They are as close as my brethren. We are so near… It is time at last, Jaz!

  Not if I could help it. I flew up over Highway 44 and picked out the flaming trail of Leo burning rubber into San Diego. He waved at me and his hand glinted chrome in the morning sun. I beat wings of bright light and soared after him with all of the speed Uriel could give me.

  Leo knew his way through San Diego. He had been coming here to see his uncle his entire life… Good thing, because I kept getting distracted by… well, everything. I had never been in a city the size of San Diego and if we somehow survived all of this, I couldn’t wait to explore more of it.

  I soared between the steel and glass spires of skyscrapers, staring at the people inside. Office workers jumped to their feet, grabbing their cell phones to either take pictures or call the police. Down below, Leo drove far too fast through the streets for the cops to catch, though that didn’t stop them from trying. But while SPOT knew where we were going, they didn’t seem to have shared that information with the local law enforcement, so we lost all of the black and white squad cars easily in the dense urban sprawl of San Diego.

  We wound our way through the close, shining silver jungle of downtown and I almost missed it when Leo turned suddenly left, heading south through the city. I swore, then banked in a half-circle around a tall building with an angled roofline and a slatted latticework dome perched on top. Some kind of library, to judge by all of the people carrying stacks of books in and out. A group of elementary school kids in matching red backpacks pointed up at me and their teacher dropped her latte when she looked sky­ward.

  I winged quickly away, flushing. At this rate, I would end up with my picture posted all over social media. There wasn’t much I could do to hide a woman flying through San Diego, but as the skyscrapers gave way to shorter, more sprawling buildings that stretched out toward the border, I lowered my altitude and flew as low as I dared.

  The Pacific Ocean gleamed blue and silver on my right and from the air, I could almost see Mexico. The dark, tiny shapes of seabirds swooped and played above the crashing waves. It was beautiful.

  We’ve got to be getting close, I thought.

  Yes, Uriel agreed. And so are the other angels.

  I tore my eyes away from the view and glided down closer to Leo again. The streets were becoming a little less crowded as we moved south, and he eased up on the throttle. Leo wove his way down smaller and narrower roads, and then finally stopped next to an old warehouse with corrugated metal walls covered in a colorful mosaic of graffiti.

  I landed hard beside Leo, cracking the concrete of the sidewalk. Oops. Well, that was pretty small potatoes compared to all of the other damage we had caused during this wild road trip.

  In the street, cars slowed down. Drivers craned their necks to look at the big biker in chaps and a jacket made of shadow, and a girl with two pairs of glowing wings stretching out behind her. Then they sped up to hurry the hell away. Someone was going to wind up rear-ended, but we had more pressing concerns.

  Leo’s jaw was clenched tight and I heard his teeth grinding together. The biker’s bare chest was so covered in chrome that I could no longer see any of his tattoos, and it looked like he was wearing armor.

  “Did we beat the other archangels?” Leo asked in that deep, bone-chillingly hollow voice.

  “Yeah,” I answered. “But not by much. My skin feels like it’s on fire.”

  “The horsemen are close, too,” Leo said.

  “How fast are they moving?”

  Leo shook his head. Sweat beaded in his hair. “I can’t tell. But I know they’re near enough to start crawling up my ass any minute.”

  “Are you still in control?” I asked.

  “For now,” Leo said.

  I pulled him down into a desperate kiss. Leo wrapped his arms around me and held me close. His body was cold and as hard as stone against me, but his lips were warm and soft. Beside us, the Packmaster revved.

  “Back off, bike,” I murmured. “He’s mine.”

  My power is growing, Uriel said inside me. And so is Death’s. If you are to attempt this, Jaz, to reclaim your life and prevent the final battle, then it must be now. There is no more time.

  Reluctantly, I broke the kiss and released Leo. I stood back and after a moment of concentration, I dismissed Uriel’s wings and armor. They vanished into glittering sparks, leaving me in my jeans and t-shirt again.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  Leo nodded and I followed as he rolled his Packmaster into a sprawling parking lot in front of the warehouse. There was a long line of motorcycles outside, not a single one of them locked up. Whoever left all those gang tags around the neighborhood seemed to know better than to tangle with the owners of these particular bikes. But when I glanced across the lot, I didn’t see any other bikers. Where was everyone?

  Leo parked his Packmaster at the end of the row, then turned to me with a grin.

  “Excited to see your uncle?” I asked.

  “Like you wouldn’t believe,” Leo answered. He touched one skeletally clawed hand against his chest and took a deep breath. “Alright. He should be inside.”

  “Holy shit,” I said. “This is really it.”

  My voice cracked. In the next few minutes, I would finally meet Leo’s Uncle Carlos. I would find out if we would live free of Uriel and Death, or die to save the world from them.

  Would Carlos like me?

  No pressure, Jaz.

  Leo took my hand carefully. Mine was shaking and his was made of metal, but we walked close together toward an oversized sliding door painted with a huge flaming red and black helm – the crest of the Knights of Hell. Leo led me across the parking lot, but then stopped dead in his tracks, frowning.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. “You don’t think your uncle will approve of you hooking up with a mechanic from Kansas?”

  “Something’s wrong,” Leo gasped.

  He managed another step forward, then fell suddenly to his knees on the asphalt. Leo clutched his head, sharp chrome claws drawing beads of bright red blood from his scalp.

  “Leo? Leo, what’s happening?” I asked.

  “It’s Death,” Leo groaned. “I can finally hear its voice… and it’s laughing.”

  Holy shit. Uriel, what the hell is going on? I asked.

  No…! the angel hissed inside me. Liars, deceivers!

  The warehouse door ground open with a loud metallic snarl and three figures strode through. I recognized the gaunt, skeletal shape of Famine, and Pestilence in its rumpled suit crawling with shiny green-gray flies.

  Between the pair stood a tall man with long black hair and flames tattooed onto skin turned to leather by years on the road. The fire glowed and danced as though animated by demonic hands, and his eyes burned like live coals.

  “Uncle Carlos,” Leo snarled. “War.”

  The sky that morning had been bright and clear, but now the sun vanished behind a sudden bank of thick, roiling smoke-colored clouds. A jagged fork of red lightning arced high above and a thunderclap made the ground shudder. Down the street, a car alarm went off and people began shouting. A hot wind that smelled like gunpowder tugged at my hair and Carlos – War – grinned at us with sharpened steel teeth.

  “The horsemen are united at last,” it said. “And now it is time to go to war.”

  I grabbed Leo’s shoulder, trying to heave him back up to his feet and away from… whatever the hell was happening here. But Pestilence flicked one scab-encrusted finger and the parking lot heaved like an unsettled stomach. Lightning flashed again, brighter than before, and I staggered as the ground shook be­neath me.

  “Leo!” I cried.

 
War stepped forward and Leo stared up at the thing that had been his uncle with tears bright in his eyes.

  “You lied to me!” Leo shouted. “You said you could help. You were supposed to save us!”

  “I brought you home,” War said. His voice was the auditory equivalent of being hit with a sack full of broken glass and bullet casings. “You were never meant to be alone.”

  “You’re not my uncle!” Leo snarled. “Where is Carlos?”

  “Gone,” War answered. “Just like you.”

  Leo struggled to stand, but War put a hand on its nephew’s shoulder. Leo convulsed, clutching at his head, and screamed.

  “Oh shit,” I gasped. “No!”

  Leo went suddenly still. Terribly, deathly still… and then he turned slowly to look at me.

  Leo’s eyes were gone. Face-to-face with the other horsemen, Death was just too strong. Shadows and chrome grew out across Leo’s tattooed skin, wrapping him entirely in shining darkness. The black of his leather jacket twisted and flowed like stormy waters, closing up over his head in a deep hood. A metal skull gleamed from inside. Death rose to its feet, looming and hooded and terrible – a true Knight of Hell.

  “Leo, no…” I whispered.

  Death raised one long arm and pointed a skeletal chrome finger at me. I gasped as a chill like claws of ice closed around my heart. I fell to my knees on the shuddering asphalt and tears burned in my eyes.

  Uriel, I’m sorry, I thought. I should have listened to you from the beginning. We walked right into War’s trap and now there’s nothing I can do. We lost.

  No, Jaz. You were right in refusing to abandon Leo, Uriel said. And all is not lost yet.

  I had no idea what the hell the archangel was talking about. How could this do anything but get worse…?

  War still had his hand on Death’s black shoulder, and Leo’s uncle grew. Steel and kevlar crawled across its skin, sprouting spines as long as my fingers. Molten, fiery light oozed from its eyes and mouth, and the air all around War shimmered with hellish heat.