400 Horsepower of the Apocalypse
Chapter 23
The little concrete room was full of shouting voices and staticky radio chatter as the SPOT soldiers called… everybody, as far as I could tell. The close air smelled of sweat and gunpowder. Inside me, Uriel tensed like a snake ready to strike.
What is happening? the archangel asked.
I had no idea. I threw my hands into the air, but every single eye and gun was trained on Leo. I didn’t know what I wanted to happen here, but I was pretty sure a hostage situation and an awful lot of big guns pointed my direction wasn’t it.
“You’re going to lead us out of this maze,” Leo told Diane. “Then Jaz and I will climb onto my motorcycle and leave. After that, we’re done.”
“You’re fighting the wrong people, Mister Valdis,” Diane said. Her voice was tight with pain, but otherwise way calmer than I would be. “We’re all on the same side here.”
“Maybe,” Leo agreed. “But you’re not God, lady. You don’t get to decide who lives and dies.”
He shoved Diane toward the door. The Spotters parted reluctantly and kept their assault rifles pointed at him. I jogged after Leo, wondering what the hell to do.
“You know what Death will do if it ever gains control over you,” Diane said as Leo propelled her down the concrete hallway. “The strain of holding the horseman at bay is obvious. How much longer can you keep this up?”
Leo narrowed his dark, bloodshot eyes at her. “We still have options.”
“Your uncle, Carlos Medina?” Diane asked. “We intercepted your communications with him, if you recall. But what in his extensive criminal history — on both sides of the border — makes you think that he can help you?”
“I don’t know,” Leo answered. “But we’re going to find out. Which way?”
We came to an intersection of gray halls and Diane pointed to the left. The stark concrete corridor didn’t look familiar, but that didn’t mean anything. I was completely lost — in every sense of the word.
Leo pushed Diane down the hallway she had indicated. Her soldiers fell back a little, but not nearly far enough. They crept after us warily, keeping us in their gun sights. I could still feel their weapons aimed at our backs and their boots drummed out the same panicked, galloping beat as my heart.
“Jasmine, is this what you really want to do?” Diane asked.
She tried to look back at me, but Leo pressed his gun into her temple, forcing the SPOT director to keep staring straight ahead. I swallowed hard.
“No,” I said. “I don’t know what I want anymore. But I don’t want to die.”
“And you’re not going to,” Leo told me.
“How many other people need to die?” Diane asked. “What we’re asking seems unfair… and it is. I know that. But you can’t run away from the angels and horsemen forever. When they find you, Jasmine, your life is over. Uriel will be all that’s left. And they will break the world in half to get at Death.”
“Maybe Carlos can help us,” I said in a shaking voice.
We came to a wide set of metal-shod double doors, but they weren’t the big steel ones that led out of the mountain base. Leo kicked them open and we hurried through into some sort of cafeteria. It was full of tables — enough to seat perhaps two hundred people — but they appeared to have been emptied in a hurry. That must have been what all the radio chatter was about. There was still food and steaming mugs sitting on the tables. I guess the coffee wasn’t that bad…
A squadron of SPOT soldiers was waiting for us in the cafeteria. They had shoved several tables out of the way and held assault rifles at the ready. I squeaked as the doors banged open behind us and Diane’s original guards ran through. They fanned out, surrounding us, and Leo jerked to a stop in the middle of the huge room.
“You led us into a trap,” he said.
“Yes, I’m afraid I did,” Diane agreed. “Mister Valdis, did you really think that I would ask you to sacrifice your lives and not be willing to do the same?”
Oh shit.
“Open fire,” Diane ordered.
Her soldiers didn’t hesitate. They fired, but Leo was already moving. He shoved Diane down to the floor and threw himself at me. Gunshots boomed and I fell with Leo’s arm around my waist. I was too shocked and scared to even scream. There were bullets everywhere, slamming exploding craters into the concrete and blasting holes through the tables.
My ears rang, and I smelled smoke and cordite; each breath choked me with the stench. Leo lay on the ground, one arm over me and blood pooling beneath him. It spread across the cold gray floor, seeping into the cracks and following their lightning-bolt paths in every direction.
“Leo!” I screamed.
I grabbed Leo and rolled him onto his back, but he didn’t move. There was a spray of holes across his chest, all ringed in liquid red. Leo was unconscious and bleeding out. Quickly.
“Please, help him!” I cried.
One of the Spotters was heaving Diane to her feet. Blood ran down her sleeve from a wound in her shoulder. The rest of the SPOT soldiers held their guns ready and moved forward slowly, closing in around me. Laser sights cut glowing scarlet through the swirling gunsmoke, angling for a clear shot at me over Leo’s body.
“I’m so sorry it had to come to this, Jasmine,” Diane said. She looked up at her soldiers. “Shoot her.”
The wall behind Diane exploded inward, hurling concrete and twisted rebar through the dining hall. Leo’s motorcycle shot through the rubble toward its master like a missile, bowling over tables and SPOT soldiers without even slowing down.
But that thing wasn’t Leo’s Packmaster anymore. The motorcycle had… changed. It was beyond custom now. Death’s steed was bigger than any bike I had ever seen, as predatory and sleek as a panther. It trailed dark smoke and the headlight shone red like the caldera of a volcano.
Shouting, the soldiers spun to face the new threat. They fired through the smoke and dust, bullets pinging off the motorcycle’s perfect obsidian finish. The engine revved, sounding more than ever like a roaring dragon, and the chrome casing shifted. Long chains lashed out from the bike in clanking, clattering whips.
It was Arrow Lodge all over again… but worse. The Spotters’ shouts turned into screams.
“Holy shit,” I whimpered. I pulled at one of Leo’s arms, but he didn’t move. “Shit! Come on, please wake up! Leo, we have to go!”
I had no idea how to get away now that Leo’s motorcycle had turned into Satan’s moped. But I knew that we had to escape.
I tried to heave Leo up again, but the biker was twice my size and the downside of all that well-sculpted muscle was that I could hardly budge him when I needed to.
A soldier ran through the thrashing chaos toward me, still bent on carrying out Diane’s original order. He aimed a big automatic rifle at me, but the motorcycle’s engine roared and it burst from the swirling smoke. It slammed into the Spotter, spun on one oversized black tire and then raced off across the dining hall once more, billowing black shadows in its wake.
The soldier’s body hit the ground next to me, shattered and broken. Not just broken, ruptured. What had once been a man was now literal roadkill with the demon-bike’s tire tracks cutting through half-burned meat. I screamed and clapped my hands over my mouth.
Leo moved. His fingers curled into claws and raked through the spreading halo of blood to clutch at his chest. His fingertips gleamed strangely in the smoky light, like they had been dipped in something. Blood…? No, Leo’s hand had turned to metal. His chrome fingers convulsed, grabbing a handful of leathers with metal claws.
“Jaz,” Leo said. “Jaz, I need…”
His voice was a deep, echoing boom and his eyes snapped open, but they were no longer bloodshot. Leo’s eyes weren’t even there… A pair of empty black sockets stared up at me from his pale face.
No. No more. I couldn’t do this.
I hit my limit for terrifying and violent supernatural bullshit. The animal part of my brain took one look at that meat-pile that used to be a human being and Death’s hollow eyes, and it threw in the towel.
I ran away. I jumped to my feet and over a tumbled table, then scrambled through the hole in the concrete wall. My sleeve caught on broken rebar and I shrieked as I ripped my way free.
The smashed hole let out into the main tunnel and up ahead were the tortured and twisted remains of the huge steel doors. Death’s steed had torn right through them like paper.
But I couldn’t help myself — I looked back once through the shattered wall. Leo was on his hands and knees in a pool of his own blood as a cloak of darkness spread from his convulsing shoulders. He grabbed at the front of his black leather jacket like a man trying to tear out his own heart.
Chains and seething shadows lashed, tearing apart anything that moved in the ruined dining hall. I turned away and ran as fast as I could.
