Page 2 of The Black Rider
“I know. And I know why we have to be careful getting your memories back. That doesn’t mean we can’t make fresh memories and explaining what we are won’t hurt you. Just swear to me, you’ll hear us out before you demand to leave.”
I had a bad temper on a pleasant day, but even I could admit Aeron took excellent care of me on the way down here. I wanted to believe the best about him.
He was the Horseman of Death, and I saw what he had done to the gangs trying to break into California. I knew what they had written about him. I knew what I saw in the world ever since I woke up from that coma.
I wanted so hard to believe all of that was wrong.
Chapter 2
L
eif so wasn’t what I imagined a Horseman of the Apocalypse to be like. He looked like pure sin with his black hair and black eyes and swirling tattoos. Someone good inked him because what I could see was spectacular. It was abstract, but it was beautiful. Leif wasn’t intense like Aeron at all. His black eyes were always sparkling with mischief, and he seemed like he was always trying to make sure I was comfortable.
I was having trouble reconciling this huge, joking man with the Horseman of Pestilence who would work with my father to turn my blood into the rage mutation. A lot of my memories were still gone, but I remembered a lot of what happened in that lab when I was a child. I remembered every face, and I never once saw Leif experimenting on me unless he did it in the shadows.
Leif led us to his private apartments, which were connected to his lab. They were pretty plush, considering it was the end of the world.
“I figured we could all just stay here if Speedy approves. The bed is big enough for all three of us, and space is limited. We haven’t given up hope on all of humanity. Sure, there are plenty of shitty people out there, but there are still people trying to survive. We send out parties looking for them and bring them in once we vet them. We may have to expand the walls and build new houses soon.”
“Speedy wants to hear the exact right words, or she’s getting the fuck out of here and riding out the apocalypse in California,” I pointed out.
“Come on, Ariel. Can we celebrate a little? We spent so much time in that chatroom, and after everything, we finally found you, and we’re all together. Shots! We should have shots.”
Leif went bounding to a cabinet. Aeron was still sitting in a chair, just glowering like I was the one who lied to him. I wondered if he would contribute to this big reveal, or he would continue to be a secretive bastard, and I would leave Mexico with a broken heart.
Leif came back with a beautiful bottle of Tequila right when three people came down with our food. I would admit to being starving, and the food smelled delicious. I wasn’t backing down from this, even if the food was excellent. If they didn’t say the right words, I’d risk the open road to get back home. If my blood could turn the majority of the world into Rage Heads, I didn’t want it in the hands of the Horseman of Pestilence.
“So, Book of Revelations. That is where we come up,” Leif said. “Man wrote the Bible, and it’s been interpreted so many times, a lot of the texts have been twisted and are now totally wrong. A lot of the Book of Revelations was embellished and not precisely how things were meant to play out.
“The end of the world was never meant to happen the way it goes down in the book. We don’t really know how the world will end, but we know there will be those who try. That is where the Horsemen come in. We’ve been on Earth during different periods to stop things, but it’s never gone this far before,” Leif said.
“It’s never been all four of us before,” Aeron said. “At most, two of us have walked the Earth at the same time. When Leif and I contacted you, he and I were the only ones who had been called forth. We knew disease, famine, and death were coming. If I hadn’t fucked things up and they had taken you, Asher and Dice wouldn’t have been called. We might have been able to stop this before World War III broke out, and Isaiah became a dictator.”
“Are you saying this has happened before?” I demanded.
“Think of the major plagues. They created those just like the Rage Head mutation. It’s just I quietly swooped in and killed the man responsible and tried to contain the spread. History blamed it on things like rats or tried to figure out where it came from, but they never tied it to the person responsible,” Leif said.
“Think of mass genocide. Everyone thinks they know who was responsible, but they don’t know who was whispering in the murderer’s ear, twisting them into that. Humanity took out the mass murderer, and I quietly took out their silent partner,” Aeron said.
“Everyone thinks they can pinpoint wars to one specific event, but one person engineered most. Dice was giving military strategy to the good guys while hunting down that person.”
“Asher hasn’t been called in a very long time. There used to be a time there would be one person funding all this expansion and conquering other countries. Sometimes, it was just a greedy king, and Asher wasn’t called, but sometimes, it was one he had to take out.”
I was listening with rapt attention, but I was also mowing my way through these delicious tacos because if I had to up and leave Mexico, I would go back to being hungry again. I was pretending like this was my last meal. It may very well be because a lot of this wasn’t making sense.
“All of these stories involve one person. That makes little sense. How can just one person be responsible for all that destruction? My father had a lab.”
Both Leif and Aeron looked extremely uncomfortable, like they didn’t want to tell me something. I set my taco down and glared at them.
“Out with it, or I’m out of here.”
“Promise you won’t freak out?” Leif said.
“Promise you won’t beat us with Smurfette?”
I couldn’t leave my trusty blue bat out of this conversation. She was resting across my knees, and I needed her there to have this conversation just in case they were lying about letting me leave. I’d smash as many heads as I needed to on the way out.
“I said I wanted the truth. I meant it.”
