Page 15 of The Black Rider
“You two are hopeless, but even I will admit these movies are quotable. Some other movies Aeron slips into regular conversation aren’t good at all.”
“That’s because you have no taste,” Aeron said.
I nestled back into their arms.
“What kind of movies doyoulike, Leif?”
“Science fiction and movies based on books, but I always get so mad when they change the plot because they are trying to market it to people who haven’t read the book.”
Aeron snorted.
“He gets irrationally angry about that. He gets on message boards with other geeks, and they nerd complain about it. You don’t even want to be in the theater with him when he’s watching. He rants through the entire movie, and people throw popcorn at him.”
“I can’t remember, but I think it makes me angry too,” I said.
“It does!” Leif said. “We talked until six am about this once!”
That was when it hit me. There was this graphic novel series I had been a massive fan of. It was vampires, but like, twisted serial killer vampires with no remorse about ripping into a carotid and lived underground. It wasn’t vampires going to high school and living off bagged blood or animals. I was into that too, but sometimes I wanted my vampires a little twisted. Oh, shit, if angels and zombies were real, were vampires also?
I got Leif hooked on the graphic novels right around the time a movie based on them would come out. We were so excited, and we wanted that to be our first date, but they still hadn’t dropped the bomb about my father, and I thought they were just two harmless guys I’d met online that would eventually make their way to California and come to a softball game.
Leif mowed his way through the graphic novels, and we kind of had a date. We ordered delivery and talked on the phone until it was time for the movie. We both went alone, then rushed home to talk about it. They totally neutered the graphic novels. All the blood, gore, and group sex were taken out to turn it into some tame love story between one vampire and a human. In the graphic novels, everyone was fucking everyone or eating them.
“Blood Feud!”I yelled. “I just remembered, and I’m still mad about it.”
Aeron just laughed and yanked me back down. Leif snuggled into my back.
“The two of you were miserable in chat after that movie came out. Vampires are totally not my thing.”
“Are vampires real? I mean, I’m lying here with two angels, and Satan paid a visit just to wipe my memories.”
Aeron and Leif both started laughing, and I got the feeling they were laughing at me.
“Usually it’s humans that are the scary thing that goes bump in the night. Vampires, werewolves, and things like that aren’t real. Science created even the Rage Heads out there. Isaiah used something not found on Earth, but it was engineered by human scientists who did it for a paycheck.
“Think about it, Ariel. Your father did this withhumanacolytes. Everyone who mistreated you at that lab was human and had no problems terrorizing a child for the right amount of money. Even if Isaiah lied and said he was trying to do something great with all the blood he took from you, at some point, someone would have realized he had something bad planned. There would have been a whistleblower. Someone would have leaked an anonymous tip tosomeonethat the water supplement would be tampered with. People knew and said nothing,” Aeron said.
“I’ve studied the Rage Heads, Ariel. Angel blood doesn’t do that to people on its own, and neither does Nephilim blood. Angel blood is not compatible with humans. It’s not even the same color, but it can’t bring the dead back to life, and it’s not like your vampires where it has magical healing properties. The reason it took so long for the Rage Mutation is that it took that long to manipulate your blood into doing that and then put it into a form for mass consumption.
“There would have been an army of scientists working on this over the years. There would have been countless people in and out that would have realized what Isaiah’s creation could do if it got out to the public. Aeron and I were here, listening and watching for anything that would lead us to the current Antichrist. If just one of them had thrown us a crumb, we would have identified Isaiah earlier. We probably could have gotten you away from him before you ran. We could have stopped him before it got this far.”
Aeron stroked my arm.
“Hunting the Antichrist gets more difficult each time we are called. It’s not like it used to be where we could just break into a house or lab and read notes. Everything is online and on cloud servers behind firewalls now. You’ve got all these security systems, and it’s not just one bodyguard who is good with his fists anymore. It’s an entire security team with guns. Sure, I could kill them all with just a thought, but that kind of thing brings all kinds of attention now. Back in the day, if I had to take people out, everyone just thought it was a new sickness and burned the bodies. I know you peeked at the gates of California. I can’t leave bodies like that around just to get to Isaiah. If it turns out he’s not home, he’s tipped off, and the entire CDC is looking at those corpses.”
“I know your superpower is killing people. What’s yours, Leif?”
“He’s an insufferable nerd,” Aeron said.
“I understand human disease at an angelic level. Even the ones the Antichrist has engineered, after I study it, I know how it works. Everything that has come before this has come from a single source and manipulated from there. Options were limited during certain periods, and sometimes, vermin were used. It’s different this time because he used you, but I have all the pieces now. I have my Rage Head research, and now I just need a blood sample from you to study the properties. It’s just a big fucking bonus I get to snuggle with you too.”
“We’re still not having an orgy in the Oval Office.”
Chapter 13
A
s much as I wanted to get to work and end this, I slept in. The guys let me do it too, and I knew Leif needed my blood to get started. They weren’t idle. When I padded into the living room, there was breakfast waiting, and they were both huddled over the laptop. I started spooning my eggs into a fresh tortilla with some salsa and wrapped it up.
