400 Horsepower of the Apocalypse
Chapter 18
The smell of coffee woke me in the morning. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. Leo had opened the curtains a crack and sat in a slice of golden dawn light. He held a cup of coffee and the pot provided by the hotel was about half full on the minibar. Leo’s brown eyes were bloodshot.
“Gah, ugh… what time is it?” I asked him in a sleep-roughened voice.
“About seven thirty,” Leo answered. “I cancelled the wakeup call, since I was already up. Somebody from laundry dropped off your clothes, too.”
“You look tired.”
“As long as I still look like me, I can live with that,” Leo said. He yawned. “I got some maps from the lobby. I think we need to stay off Highway 44.”
“Huh? Why?” I asked.
I blinked and then stretched my arms up over my head until my spine popped. We had been following Highway 44 ever since we left Crayhill.
“Pestilence,” Leo answered. “It found the Knights and then us on 44. They’re expecting us to follow the highway.”
“So you’re trying to make it harder for that thing to find us again,” I said. “And Michael had cops watching the highway for us, too. Alright, makes sense.”
“There’s a business center downstairs, so I printed up some alternate routes to get us to California.”
Leo pointed to a small stack of papers on the desk, next to the phone. I rubbed my eyes, willing them to focus until I could make out the printed map that Leo was indicating.
“And I set up a new email account to message Uncle Carlos and the San Diego chapter of the Knights of Hell,” Leo said.
“What?” I gasped. “Leo, you contacted your uncle?”
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and jumped to my feet. Leo watched me with bloodshot eyes.
“I didn’t use my real name on the new account or say anything about where we are,” he told me. “I only wanted Carlos to know when we would get to him.”
Most bike clubs these days had their own website and email lists, and I doubted that the Knights of Hell were any different. Though I didn’t think they exactly posted about robbing banks. Hey everybody, don’t forget the monthly meeting. We’ll have donuts and guns without serial numbers.
Yeah, it was funny to imagine Leo’s badass biker uncle Carlos sitting behind a laptop, maybe wearing some reading glasses as he tapped out emails with two fingers and lots of little skull emoji. But I shook my head.
“You’re the one who told me that we can’t call anyone, Leo!” I said. “What if those armored van bastards are monitoring the Knights’ email server? Or the horsemen?”
Leo frowned and leaned forward in his chair. “What? Do you think they can do that?”
I waved at the window in the direction of the rising sun. “We just talked about how Michael put out an APB on us! We don’t know what the angels and horsemen can do. That’s the point!”
Leo’s frown deepened and he tapped the side of his coffee cup in a thoughtful staccato.
“Look, I know you miss the Knights,” I said. “But you can’t just email your uncle because you’re lonely! We have to be more careful than that!”
Leo’s grip tightened around the mug and it shattered in his hands. Coffee and white shards of stoneware fell into the carpet at his feet. I gasped and jumped back as Leo suddenly stood up. A dark, painful fire burned in his eyes and my heart leapt into overdrive.
“They’re not just gone, Jaz.” Leo’s voice came out deep, rough and raw. “My Knights are dead because Pestilence was looking for me!”
Oh, shit. I felt Uriel tense inside me and light leaked from my fingertips.
“Carlos is all I have left,” Leo snarled. “The only family that matters, Jaz!”
He shifted his weight and a piece of the coffee mug shattered beneath his bootheel. Blood thundered in my ears, but I didn’t back down.
“You’ll see your uncle again,” I said. “We’re running straight to him, Leo. But if we’re not careful, Carlos will be identifying your body in a morgue. Or the one who finally shows up on his doorstep will be Death instead of his nephew. What do you think will happen then?”
Leo stopped. His jaw was clenched hard enough to make the tendons stand out under his tattooed skin, but he nodded and took a long step back away from me.
“You’re right, Jaz,” he said. “And I’m sorry. I… I shouldn’t have messaged Carlos.”
“Hey, I get it. I want to call my mom and dad, too,” I told Leo. I held out my hands toward him. “Are you alright? Did you cut yourself on that coffee cup?”
Leo put his hands palm-up in mine and we both winced as our heads swam with apocalyptic visions. But I inspected Leo’s hands and didn’t see any sign of cuts or burns from the coffee.
“How’re you feeling?” I asked.
“Not great,” Leo admitted. “But I’ve been through worse.”
“Are you good to drive?”
“I should be fine,” Leo said.
I examined his hands one last time, then let Leo go wash the coffee off them in the bathroom. When he came out, he got to work cleaning up the broken cup on the floor. I watched and considered offering to help, but it seemed like the kind of thing Leo should take care of on his own. His mess, his job.
So I went to the washroom and splashed some water on my face, then scrubbed at my skin with a towel and inspected my hair. Which ended in me just staring at my reflection.
You cannot save that man from Death, Uriel said.
No, I agreed. But maybe I can help him save himself.
There is no avoiding what is to come, Jaz.
I ignored the archangel as best I could and when I emerged from the washroom, Leo held out a cup of coffee in one of the remaining hotel-branded mugs. I accepted it gratefully, holding the ceramic between my hands and inhaling the warm brown scent. The smell was sweet, too — Leo had stirred in cream and sugar, just like back in the diner our first morning together. He had been paying attention.
I smiled and took a long drink.
“I can’t get the coffee out of the carpet,” Leo said. “I’ll leave an extra hundred for housekeeping when we go. Which I think we better do soon… in case someone tracked down that email I sent.”
I nodded in agreement. “Yeah. I don’t know how exactly IP addresses are connected up to physical locations, but let’s not risk it.”
Leo did most of the packing while I drank my coffee and then got dressed in my freshly laundered clothes. I laced up my shoes and scanned the room, but there wasn’t much to collect. Everything that I owned had either been destroyed by an overzealous angel, or left behind when well-armed strangers kicked in our motel room door and forced us to run.
As promised, Leo left a stack of money on the sideboard for housekeeping, then shouldered his saddlebags and I followed him out. The door was swinging slowly shut when I gasped.
“Shit, the gun,” I hissed.
Leo jammed his foot into the door and I ran back to the bed. The matte black semi-automatic and its full magazine were still under the pillow. I guess the gun fairy skipped me last night.
In the hallway, Leo waited a moment to see if I would pocket the gun, but I didn’t like the damned things any more than I had yesterday. Leo sighed, then smiled and pulled open the flap on one saddlebag. I looked up and down the hall, then dropped the gun and ammunition inside. Leo buckled the bag shut again.
“Let’s ride,” Leo said.
“Easy for you to say,” I told him. “That motorcycle likes you.”
Not that I minded an excuse to hold onto Leo, but I didn’t really want to get thrown off the Packmaster at sixty plus miles per hour. Would it be weird if I tied myself to Leo?
Yeah, probably.
We hurried to the elevator, but there was a pair of chattering families gathered in front of the doors and talking about their rafting trip, so we took the stairs. Down in the lobby, Tanvi must have gone home and her replacement gave us his own brand-new surprised look. But there were no problems as we checked out and the morning guy — Marco — told us to have a good day.
There was no way we had spent several thousand dollars on drinks and room service, but I noticed that Leo didn’t get back any of the cash he had given Tanvi last night. So it had been a bribe, not a deposit.
I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about losing that much money, but we had far more important things to worry about. Leo and I hurried across the parking lot to the Packmaster.
“We’ll cross the southern tip of Nevada tonight,” Leo said as he draped the heavy saddlebags over the end of his bike. “And then we’re in California. It should only be a day after that to San Diego.”
“Good,” I said. “The sooner we get there, the sooner we get solutions, and you can take a nap.”
Leo laughed at that, but his dark eyes were rimmed in red. “Let’s go pick up some energy drinks from a store. Do you want anything?”
“Pretzels would be nice,” I said. “I’ve been sweating out a lot of salt. Maybe some water, too. Also because of sweat.”
“Sure. We’ll follow the highway long enough to buy some food, then get off the main drag.”
I waited until Leo climbed onto the Packmaster and got the engine started before I carefully perched up behind him. The motorcycle jerked under me and I almost fell.
“Nice to see you again, too,” I said. “Asshole.”
I wrapped my arms around Leo’s waist and we drove through the parking lot, along a steep frontage road that let out onto the highway. We stopped at the first convenience store that we could find, then detoured to a grocery store when the clerk wouldn’t take any of Leo’s hundred-dollar bills. She was afraid they were counterfeit.
So we filled up a green plastic basket with caffeinated energy drinks, bottled water and as many snacks as we could imagine eating. At checkout, a suspicious clerk scribbled a marker across one of the bills. But Leo’s money was stolen — not fake — so it checked out just fine.
When we finished our shopping, Leo and I loaded up the Packmaster’s saddlebags, then examined the map that he had collected from the hotel lobby while we ate. After comparing it to the printed directions and taking a few minutes to gripe about our lack of GPS, we settled on a route that looked like it would keep us off Highway 44 without wasting a lot of time on winding scenic roads.
I crammed the last handful of pretzels into my mouth and Leo chugged his second energy drink, then he mounted up on his Packmaster again. But the motor guttered and coughed. Leo frowned.
“We’re leaving,” he said.
Leo gave the engine some gas — or whatever the demon-bike used instead of gasoline — and the motorcycle wheezed. Then it stopped again.
“I know we’re going a different way,” Leo said. “Because it’s the way I want to go. Now start!”
The Packmaster whined and then rumbled reluctantly back to life. Pretty much literally… The engine’s pitch dropped into a menacing growl as I gingerly climbed on behind Leo. I gulped.
“Jaz is coming with us,” Leo told his angry bike. It revved and he yanked back hard on the throttle. “Yes, she is. Because I need her!”
The deep grumble finally eased grudgingly up into a throaty idle more like what a non-possessed motorcycle would make. I finished settling my weight and then steadied myself awkwardly on Leo’s broad shoulders.
“Who were you talking to? Death or the bike?” I asked.
“Uh… Both, I think,” Leo answered. “They’re sort of the same thing. Or at least related.”
Well, that sounded creepy… As if to underscore the point, I felt Uriel poised and ready to fly if I released control. But Leo put his helmet on and then patted his stomach, so I pulled my own helmet on, too, and wound my arms around his waist. Leo kicked the Packmaster into gear and we rolled out.
Leo drove us past signs and arrows all pointing back toward Highway 44, and then out onto narrow, winding rural roads that reminded me of being home in Crayhill… if the corn fields were replaced with banded red and yellow stone. Within an hour, sweat ran down the back of my neck and Leo’s soaking wet shirt clung to his skin. It wasn’t even that hot, but the Arizona sun was unrelenting.
The Packmaster snarled and sputtered all throughout the morning. Its shocks bounced me on the pillion, making me hold on tight to Leo. My arms grew swiftly tired and sore again, and I was seriously reconsidering the awkwardness of tethering myself to Leo.
He didn’t seem to be doing much better, though. Leo grunted and swore as the Packmaster fought every turn. It growled and pulled, swerving like the very first day Leo and I rode together… Back when I still had my Bonneville.
Damn, I missed my Bonnie. And my tools.
The momentary reminiscing almost cost me when the Packmaster suddenly shuddered and began decelerating. Leo cursed again and shifted, but the motorcycle slipped out of gear with a loud metallic thunk. Leo twisted the throttle again, but his bike only wheezed, still slowing down. A rusty pickup truck swerved around us and honked as the motorcycle coasted to a stop on the gravel shoulder of the road.
“Uh, what happened?” I asked, looking over Leo’s shoulder. “That didn’t sound like we ran out of gas or anything.”
Leo shook his head. “It fried the clutch.”
Okay… that happened to bikes sometimes, if the rider feathered the clutch too much and too often. But it didn’t typically happen to bikers as experienced as Leo, and motorcycles sure as hell didn’t do it themselves on purpose just because they were cranky about their route or passengers.
The kickstand snapped out and the Packmaster whined like a petulant puppy — a puppy made of half a ton of leather, steel and chrome. Leo kicked the stand up again.
“No, I’m not turning back,” he told the motorcycle.
You know the noise a switchblade makes when a badass in the movies whips it out to carve someone up into lunchmeat? That’s the sound the Packmaster made as it shot out its kickstand again. Leo climbed off the bike with a snarl and I followed. No way I wanted to be alone on that thing. It might not run Leo into a brick wall, but I was pretty sure the motorcycle had no such qualms about me.
“Now what?” Leo asked. “Jaz, can you fix the clutch?”
I blinked. “What? Me?”
Leo nodded.
Holy shit, I had entirely forgotten the reason I was here in the first place. I was Leo’s mechanic… That had just become so unimportant next to the war between archangels and demons.
“Um, yeah,” I answered after a moment’s thought. “I can fix it, in theory. I’ll need some stuff to do it, though. I don’t have my tools anymore and we’ll have to get new throttle plates.”
Leo wedged his bootheel under the Packmaster’s kickstand and heaved it back into place, then grabbed the handlebars. He cocked his head toward a green aluminum sign.
“There’s a town about seven miles away,” Leo said. “I guess we’re walking.”
Seven miles wasn’t very far when you were driving, but it was one hell of a walk — especially in the midday desert heat while pushing a pissed-off motorcycle. The Arizona sun beat down so hard that I worried Michael had caught up to us again. I didn’t feel any burning angelic tingle, though, and Uriel assured me that none of their buddies were nearby.
Unfortunately, Uriel said.
It was way too hot to talk, so I let Leo focus on rolling the Packmaster along the side of the road. I felt like I should help, but walking a motorcycle is kind of a one-person job and I didn’t really want the demon-bike taking a chunk out of me this far from civilization. We couldn’t even call an ambulance if something happened… I missed my cell phone almost as much as my Bonnie.
The Packmaster didn’t make the trip easy. It kept applying the brakes until Leo growled at the motorcycle, then sulkily allowed him to heave and shove it another mile down the road.
It senses the rift between Death and its vessel, Uriel said. Leo cannot control the horseman’s steed.
Good thing he has me along to fix it, then, I thought.
The road wound through hills of banded orange and yellow stone, spotted with low shrubs that had silver-green leaves and bright red cone-shaped flowers. They might have smelled nice, but I was sweating so hard that all I could smell or taste was salt. There were a few wispy clouds earlier that morning, but they had all burned away before the clutch did and left the sky a sun-bleached blue so pale that it was almost white.
The town seven miles down that heat-baked strip of asphalt was called Jasper, located just outside of the Petrified Forest. Jasper was a mid-sized tourist trap with a lot of brick buildings designed to look older and more rustic than they actually were. By the time we rolled the broken Packmaster into town, Leo and I had drunk everything we bought back in Flagstaff.
We stopped at the first store we saw. It was one of those little shops that sell bits of local stone and shot glasses with the town’s name etched onto them. But there was also a refrigerated refreshment case, so Leo and I grabbed two drinks a piece. We paid with some of the change from the grocery store, then each finished a bottle off before we even left the shop.
“We need a break,” I said.
The suggestion was more for Leo than myself. I was certainly tired, sweaty and seriously dehydrated, but Leo was the one who had heaved his busted motorcycle all the way here.
“No, I can’t sleep,” Leo said. He cracked open another drink, an iced tea this time with enough caffeine that it would have kept me amped for hours. “But it might be nice to get off my feet for a few minutes.”
I glanced up and down the road outside. There was no shade that wasn’t under someone’s porch — and even that was watery with heat shimmer.
“Motel room?” I asked. “I could use a shower while I figure out how we’re going to fix a broken evil bike.”
I felt a little bit guilty for calling Leo’s motorcycle evil, but he just nodded and finished his iced tea. He tossed the bottle into a nearby trash can, then began wrestling his Packmaster down the street.
Do we have the time to stop? I asked. How close are the nearest angels?
The pull grows stronger as we near, but it is weak at the moment, answered the voice in my head.
“Uriel seems to think we have some time before any of the archangels start crawling up our butts,” I told Leo. “Any sense of where Pestilence or the others might be?”
“I’m… not sure,” he said. “I don’t have the dialog with Death that you do with Uriel. But I don’t feel like there’s an electrical storm brewing inside my skull. So we’re in the clear for now, I think.”
We both fell silent as a dusty brown park ranger car rolled past along the road. They would surely know where to find the nearest motel, but flagging down a pair of armed government employees wasn’t a very good idea. The rangers slowed as they drove past, both eyeing me and Leo, but then seemed to decide we were harmless. Or at least that we were a police problem, not a ranger one.
Their car had vanished into the bright sunlight by the time we reached the next intersection, but as it turned out, we didn’t need help finding a motel. Tourist towns liked to post the locations of useful places for visitors to spend their money, and there was a sign bolted onto the corner streetlamp that pointed white arrows toward food and lodging.
We selected the second one and followed another road down to a small, single-story motel. Leo was panting hard when he finally kicked out the stand on the Packmaster and left it in an empty parking spot. I swear the damned bike hissed at Leo as he walked away.
We stopped in the lobby and just savored it. Not because the sight was pretty — unless fake-ass mass-produced country tacky is your thing — but because… well, air conditioning. We stood there under the ceiling vent until an old man in a cowboy hat asked us if we wanted a room.
“Oh, right,” I said. “Um, yes. Please.”
The motel clerk set down his novel and glanced over a pair of reading glasses.
“Looks like you two are ready to cool off for a bit. Single or double beds?” he asked.
“Single,” Leo answered. “I’m not sleeping tonight.”
“Oh? Maybe you’re looking to heat up, then,” the clerk said, then winked at me and tittered.
That’s a naughty giggle, right? Yeah, the guy tittered.
He asked us how long we needed to stay and seemed a little disappointed when I said that it was just overnight. But he took Leo’s money without any weird looks and handed us a key with a miniature brass horseshoe dangling from it. We headed for the door again and he told us to have a good time.
I wish, mister.
We dragged ourselves into a room that matched Leo’s receipt and I flopped down onto the bed. Most of it was done up in that chintzy faux-country stuff, but there was a real quilt on the bed and the air conditioning was going full blast. It was heaven.
“You can shower first,” I told Leo. “You pushed that cranky demon-bike the whole way.”
Leo nodded limply and then shambled into the washroom. I heard the water start and then the heavy thud of boots hitting the floor, but was too tired to even indulge in a few fantasies. I buried my face in the quilt and closed my eyes.
Wake me up if anyone tries to kill me, I told Uriel.
I will.
I fell asleep for a little while, half out of heat exhaustion and half out of the regular kind. I didn’t have much choice but to trust that Uriel would give me a prod if something happened… Or that they wouldn’t try to possess me like Death had Leo. Or that the biker wouldn’t lose the battle for control of his body and burst through the washroom door with murder in his eyes and no pants on.
The possibilities were endless, shitty, and I was far too tired to sort them all out, so I just napped until something touched my knee gently. I jerked upright on the bed with a shriek as Leo jumped back, hands raised. He was wearing a fresh shirt and some new jeans, but his hair was damp.
I knew for a fact that Leo hadn’t taken any clothes with him into the bathroom. So he had dressed afterward, probably out here in the main room.
You couldn’t have woken me up while Leo was changing? I asked Uriel.
It did not seem dangerous. Is it?
I sighed and left Uriel to rummage through my brain if they wanted an answer for that. Groaning, I stood up. My legs were sore and my feet hurt from the walk into Jasper.
“Sorry,” I told Leo. “I guess I’m getting a little paranoid.”
“Can’t blame you,” he said. “Your turn in the shower.”
I stretched and looked Leo up and down. He hadn’t dried off very well and his shirt clung tightly to his skin, showing off the muscles beneath. Leo’s eyes were still pretty bloodshot, though, and he headed for the sideboard to make some coffee. While the water started heating, Leo grabbed a pop can from the minifridge.
My nap couldn’t have been very long, but watching Leo flop wearily down into the desk chair, it seemed positively luxurious. I stopped stretching and walked stiffly into the washroom. There was still plenty of hot water and I stood under the shower spray, rinsing off the dust and sweat. The heat felt good on my tensed muscles, too, though it didn’t entirely do the job of unknotting them.
My life had gotten too damned dangerous and too damned weird for one shower to soothe away.
I lingered until the water cooled off, then stepped out and wrapped myself in a towel. I couldn’t bring myself to get dressed in my sweaty, grimy clothes again. And I just had them washed… I sighed.
As long as we were stopped over in Jasper, I was determined to buy something new to wear. Clean jeans and a few shirts that were actually my size. Not that I particularly minded Leo’s big t-shirts, but they had a tendency to whip and snap in the wind when I rode behind him.
I made sure the towel was secure and then carried my dirty clothes out of the washroom, dropping them next to the bed. Leo looked up from the television remote, eyes widening as he took in how little I was wearing.
My heart sped and I burned with heat that had nothing to do with the Arizona summer. What would happen if I kissed Leo? What would Death do? Leo stood, looming over me.
“What now, Jaz?” he asked.
The answer that I really wanted to give heavily involved the motel bed and probably some broken mattress springs, but we had far bigger concerns than how long it had been since I last got laid. I tore my gaze away from Leo to glance at the window, where his motorcycle was parked outside.
“We have to get that Packmaster up and running again,” I said. “I don’t suppose Death can do anything about it?”
Leo closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. He seemed to be thinking, or maybe trying to speak to the demonic entity living inside him.
“Death could heal… fix… the bike,” Leo said after a moment. “But it won’t. As far as I can tell, Death is angry because I refuse to give it control. It’s like a toddler throwing a tantrum. But instead of demanding a sippy cup, Death won’t go anywhere until I murder you.”
“Charming,” I said.
“Well, it actually wants me to kill Uriel. It doesn’t give a shit about you.”
“Is it telling you all that?” I asked.
Leo shook his head. “Death still isn’t talking, exactly. I just… feel it.”
I covered up a wince by searching around the motel room until I found the slender yellow volume of a local phone book crammed into a drawer, next to a battered bible. I spread it open on the desk and paged through, then brought my finger down on one of the entries.
“Chain Gang,” I said.
Leo crossed the room to look over my shoulder, standing so close that I could feel the heat of him. I forced myself to breathe evenly.
“It’s a garage here in Jasper,” I told Leo. “And it looks like they specialize in dirt bikes. I guess people drive them around the desert out here. They should have all the tools I’ll need to fix your clutch.”
“The Packmaster isn’t a dirt bike,” Leo said stiffly.
I smirked. “Easy, big bad biker boy. Functionally, there isn’t much difference between the biggest Harley and a dirt bike.”
“I can’t let them touch my motorcycle,” Leo said.
“What? Why not?”
“My bike… bit you, Jaz,” Leo answered. “It doesn’t like being fucked with and I don’t want it slicing up some poor bastard just trying to finish his shift.”
I nodded in agreement. “And I don’t think we can let anyone else see what’s going on with the Packmaster. That’s a good way to end up with tabloid headlines about hot bikers and demon motorcycles.”
A slight flush crept up under the lines of ink tattooed along Leo’s neck. He cleared his throat and shook his head.
“But you said you can do the work, right?” Leo asked.
“Yeah, I can fix the clutch,” I said. “I just need to convince the mechanics at Chain Gang to let me borrow some of their tools. I… haven’t quite figured that part out yet. We could walk in and offer up a bunch of cash, but that’s going to be suspicious as hell.”
“Or we go in tonight, after hours, and get what we need,” Leo suggested.
“After hours?” I repeated with a frown.
“Breaking and entering,” Leo elaborated.
I crossed my arms. “What? No! We can’t just steal their tools. Trust me, those things are really expensive. If I had sold mine, I could have left Crayhill a long time ago… But that would have been like selling my leg.”
Leo glanced down past the hem of the towel I had wrapped around myself, at the smooth brown skin of my legs. His flush moved a little further up, darkening Leo’s cheeks.
But he took a stack of hundred-dollar bills from the pocket of his leather jacket.
“We’ll only borrow what you need, and we can pay for all of it,” Leo said. “We’re just not going to ask for permission.”
“Leaving a big wad of cash on the counter is still going to be suspicious,” I pointed out.
“Yeah,” Leo agreed. “But by the time they find it tomorrow, we’ll be long gone.”
