400 Horsepower of the Apocalypse
Chapter 9
By the time Leo throttled the Packmaster down to non-jet-fighter speeds, the town of Arrow was far behind us. So were the remains of my Bonneville, all of my tools, spare clothes and most of my mental health.
We were back on Highway 44, gunning it west toward San Diego. Toward answers, maybe. Though I couldn’t imagine any answer that would make sense of what the hell just happened.
Leo and I both tensed when a dozen police cars, fire trucks and ambulances raced past with their lights flashing and sirens blaring. They were heading in the direction of Arrow… I guess the local emergency responders needed backup when an entire motel exploded.
After the highway went dark again, Leo pulled over onto the gravel shoulder and braked to a stop. The Packmaster’s engine idled quietly under us — at least, quietly as a big-ass motorcycle ever got. It purred like a tiger that had just finished a large meal. I was grateful that meal hadn’t been filet of Jaz.
Leo half-turned in the driver’s seat to look at me. His bare chest was every bit as thickly tattooed as his arms and it shone with sweat as he struggled to catch his breath.
“What the fuck just happened?” Leo asked.
You must leave this mortal, Uriel said. He is the chosen vessel of Death. When the horseman manifests, it will destroy you.
“Shut up,” I muttered.
Leo frowned.
“No, not you,” I told him. I pointed with a shaking hand back in the direction of Arrow. “Okay, this might sound kind of unhinged, but let’s keep the context in mind. Leo, are you hearing voices? Inside your head?”
Leo’s frown deepened, but he looked as though he was actually considering my question.
“No,” he answered at last. “Just the dreams and visions. Are you hearing things?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I am. I might be losing my mind. I hope that won’t be a problem.”
You are not mad, Uriel told me. You are serving a purpose. The purpose of your entire universe.
Of course the voice in my head would say that I’m not crazy.
“Did you get hit in the head during all that?” Leo asked. He rubbed his eyes. “Hell, did I? I may not be hearing voices, but there are some uh… blank parts tonight. What happened after that winged thing hit me?”
That is the influence of Death, Uriel told me. The horseman has not fully manifested, but it will protect itself.
Well, that probably explained the weird chains that threw Gabriel like a rag doll. But Leo didn’t remember doing any of it. Had he been knocked out when the angel slammed him into the ground?
“And what do the voices in your head have to do with that… monster tearing up the motel?” Leo asked.
“Just one voice,” I said. “It says it’s an archangel, like Gabriel back there.”
“Gabriel? That was that thing’s name?”
If a disembodied voice could sniff, that’s exactly what Uriel did inside my mind.
We are older than names, they said. But there are… approximations in the myths of this planet.
“It’s apparently sort of a nickname,” I told Leo.
“What’s yours called?” he asked.
“Um… Uriel,” I said.
“Isn’t that the angel of death?”
I blinked. Both of my parents went to church most Sundays, but I had spent my weekends working since sophomore year of high school. I had to admit that my angelic knowledge was a bit spotty. Leo’s seemed a lot better… But angel of death sounded an awful lot like what Uriel called Leo.
We are opposing but more or less equivalent forces, Uriel admitted. Death and I are the leaders of our respective factions. And so the names found in your stories of us are similar.
I struggled to make sense of that, but Leo was staring at me. I shook my head and grit fell out of my hair.
“Look, it’s not just me,” I told him. “Uriel says you’re some kind of vessel, too.”
“For an angel?” Leo asked, raising an eyebrow.
“No. For… for one of the other guys,” I said. Shit, I felt like I was losing my mind. My cheeks went hot as I spoke. “Death, the horseman.”
Leo’s eyes narrowed to dark, glowering slits.
“What? No,” he said. “Bullshit.”
I spread my hands. “Look, I don’t know if any of this stuff is true. It’s only what the voice in my head is saying. But you were attacked by an angel — or something that looked an awful lot like one. It was telling me to run away from you. And while you were down in the crater… something happened, Leo. These chains came up and grabbed Gabriel. Uriel said that was Death defending itself.”
“I… don’t remember that,” Leo admitted. “But… I’ve had a lot of work done on my bike, and we still must have been doing over two hundred getting out of there. That’s way over spec. And I felt something when I drove, Jaz. I don’t know how to describe it. But it was… good.”
Death’s bond with its steed, Uriel supplied. And it will only grow stronger as Death manifests.
I rubbed my head. It ached and I just wanted to sleep.
“Maybe… maybe we did get sick back there where we found your friends,” I said. “Maybe we’re hallucinating all this shit. I mean, none of this can actually be happening, right?”
Leo looked a little more hopeful at that, but then I remembered something and felt the blood drain from my face.
“Wait, Gabriel said something about one of the other horsemen,” I told Leo. “That Pestilence had already come looking for you. And that’s the name I heard during that hallucination or vision or whatever it was when we found your friends off the highway. What if Pestilence got to them?”
There was a terrible sort of logic to it and would explain how messed up the bikers’ bodies had looked. Leo’s hands tightened on the Packmaster’s handlebars so hard that his knuckles turned into a row of white spots.
“The Knights,” Leo said in a growl. “You’re saying you know what did that to them?”
“No,” I answered. “I don’t know anything, Leo. None of this shit makes any sense. The only answers I have are from a disembodied voice inside my head!”
I would not be disembodied if you would yield control of this form, vessel, Uriel said.
“Jaz, what if that voice inside you is lying?” Leo asked. “We’ve seen what Gabriel is capable of. What if that’s who… who killed my friends?”
I do not lie, Uriel said stiffly. Deceit and disregard for order is the way of our enemies.
“Uriel says that angels don’t lie,” I repeated, but sighed and rubbed my face. I really wanted another shower. “But that might be a lie. I have no clue.”
Leo stared down at the ground and his motorcycle moved beneath me as he shifted his weight back and forth. Just like at Golden Touch Auto, when Leo hired me to leave with him. If I had known what would happen, I’d have told the biker to shove his money where the sun and archangels don’t shine.
“Carlos says he knows what’s going on,” Leo said at last. “He can help us make sense of this.”
“Really?” I asked, scowling. “Your uncle can explain an angel trying to kidnap me and throw you through a motel?”
“I don’t know,” Leo admitted.
He pulled his phone out of a jacket pocket, but the screen was a shattered mess of glass and the whole thing was bent into a distinctly not-factory-standard curve.
“I guess I landed on it when that… angel threw me around,” Leo said.
His expression became uncomfortable as he considered that. There was no way Leo should have survived that hit. Not unless the voice in my head had a point.
“Do you still have your phone?” Leo asked.
I found mine in my pocket and unlocked it, but a red battery indicator flashed briefly on the screen before it went dark again.
“Shit,” I sighed. “I didn’t get to charge it at all before everything exploded. And the cables were in my backpack, so they’re buried under about a hundred tons of motel now.”
“We can buy a new charger somewhere,” Leo said.
I glanced down at the leather saddlebags slung over the tail of the motorcycle. Leo hadn’t removed them — they were probably heavy and hard to unload — so he still had plenty of money. Suddenly, sitting on top of heaps of illicit cash didn’t seem like my biggest problem.
“What now?” I asked. “Either we’re both losing our minds or something really, really weird is going on. I don’t know which one of those is worse.”
Leo looked back toward Arrow. We were too far away to see the smoke or emergency lights anymore, but Leo took a deep breath and shook his head.
“I don’t think we’re crazy,” he said. “We just need to get to Carlos. He has answers.”
“Unless we want to try calling him from a prison pay phone, we had better be more careful. Let’s drive a little slower than a speeding bullet, okay?” I suggested.
Leo nodded. “Yeah, sure. Hey, I’ve got a pair of spare helmets in there.”
He pointed to the saddlebag on my left and I unbuckled the straps. There were more neat stacks of cash inside, but I also found some clothes and a pair of black half-helmets nested together. They wouldn’t cover much of our skulls and weren’t as safe as full helmets with faceplates — there’s a reason that half-helmets were nicknamed brain buckets — but they took up less room in a motorcycle’s limited storage space and fulfilled most states’ helmet laws.
Leo and I might have rented motel rooms with stolen money and run away from the weirdest crime scene in history at speeds that made more sense for a race car than a motorcycle, but at least we would be wearing helmets.
A hysterical laugh escaped me as I held out the larger half-helmet to Leo. When he took it, I pulled on the second one myself while he watched, brows creased. Leo was worried about my sanity, I think, and I couldn’t blame him one bit.
The helmet was still a little too large, but my curly black hair was pretty wind-tossed by now and provided enough cushioning to make it work. Hopefully wearing helmets would avoid giving any cops a reason to pull us over… But if we hit something, my brains would be all over the road.
That meant I had to trust Leo’s driving and his motorcycle. That didn’t seem like a very good idea, but what other option did I have?
You could leave, Uriel said. And you should. This man is Death, vessel, and you sit astride his steed.
I opened my mouth to answer, but I was tired of talking to empty air. Instead, I clenched my jaw shut and concentrated.
No, I can’t leave, I thought out carefully. I don’t have my Bonnie anymore. And Leo’s not the one who cut it in half and leveled a motel. Unless I feel like trying to hitchhike out of here in the middle of the night, I have to stick with Leo.
The subject of my internal argument was watching me, right hand tight on the Packmaster’s handlebars. He hadn’t put on his helmet yet.
“Jaz… thank you,” Leo said.
I stared at him. “For what? I was supposed to fix your bike so you could catch up with the Knights. I haven’t fixed shit and when we found your friends, they were all dead.”
“That’s not your fault,” Leo answered quietly. I had to lean in close to catch the words over the deep growl of his bike’s engine. “Thanks for not running away when things went all to hell. I wouldn’t have blamed you. But you stayed.”
“Yeah, well… It’s not like I have a lot of other options,” I said. “I have no idea what’s happening to me and your uncle is the only one with answers. So let’s get our asses to San Diego.”
Leo nodded and then grabbed a black t-shirt from the open saddlebag. He removed his jacket to pull on the new shirt, then covered himself in leather once more. When he went to buckle his helmet into place, though, I carefully touched his shoulder. Leo stopped and glanced back at me.
“Hey… I’m really sorry about your friends,” I said.
“So am I,” Leo answered in a thick voice. “They were good people, Jaz. They deserved better and I wasn’t there to stop what happened.”
“It’s not your fault.”
Leo put on his helmet and gunned the Packmaster’s engine. I pretty much had to read his lips to catch the answer.
“Maybe,” he said. “But it will be if it happens again.”
