Page 4 of The Black Rider
“So, an angel fucked the Antichrist to create a child to help him end the world? What kind of shit is that? I thought angels were the good guys.”
So, both my mother and father were total shits. They probably didn’t even love each other. It wouldn’t even shock me if he donated sperm in a tube to create me just to get what he wanted.
“Ariel, an angel didn’t help the Antichrist. A Harbinger sees disasters, then goes to observe them and help with the fallout. Your father captured her and probably cut off her wings so she couldn’t get away. We found his reports. He attempted to make the Rage Mutation with her blood first. He tortured and terrified her, but angels don’t have a blood type like humans. He couldn’t use her blood to engineer something that would infect humans.
“So, he raped her until she fell pregnant and killed her after she gave birth to you. He harvested what he needed from her body to help him with the Rage Mutation, then threw her in the incinerator.Thatwas the wild card this time. The Antichrist trapped an angel, and he was a lot more careful this time. This was planned out to the T.”
“What does that mean for me if dear old Dad is the Antichrist and Grandpa is Satan? Am I evil?”
If Miss Mabel was really half angel, why didn’t she kill me when she figured out who my father was? Why did Aeron and Leif become my online boyfriends? It sounded like I had evil running through my veins.Somethingin my blood turned people into Rage Heads. Why were they comforting me instead of just snapping my neck?
“Ariel, Satan is just a fallen angel who wants revenge. Isaiah is the Antichrist, but he’s also a Nephilim, like you and Mabel. He’s half angel, half human. Your mother was a pure angel. You have more angelic blood in your veins than human, and you couldn’t help who your father is. We protect our own. Why would we hurt you?”
“I thought you were Horsemen?”
Leif pulled away from me and stood up. I had no idea why he yanked his shirt off until he started glowing with a bright white light, and enormous white wings burst from his back. His feathers looked so soft, and I was wondering if all of this was some Tequila induced hallucination. I chugged a good bit of the bottle.
“Being the Horsemen are our job, but we are angels too. Angels all have jobs. Your mother must have been a Harbinger if you can paint the future. Mabel’s dad was a Principality. They look out for and guide humans. Mabel should have been called home a long time ago, but her father just kept feeling it wasn’t the right time. I think it was because you two were supposed to meet so you could have a confidant when you ran.”
“Do I have nifty wings?”
Of all the questions I could ask after all the shit they just dumped on me, that was the first thing I blurted out. Way to worry about what’s really important, Ariel. I still had a million questions, and the first thing my lizard brain does was ask about fucking wings.
What I really needed to be asking was how to drop some epic revenge on my father for everything he did. He raped my mother, experimented on me, used my apparent angelic gifts to play the stock market, and he was trying to end the world—someone needed to do something about that. We had the Four Horsemen out there, and one pissed off Nephilim, who just found out what she was and had no idea what she could do.
“How did it get this far this time?” I asked.
Leif went to put his shirt back on to join me on the couch.
“Oh, you can leave that off,” I said, admiring the tattoos on his muscular chest.
Yeah, my priorities totally went to shit after that Tequila and finding out my Grandpa was Satan. I might as well own it.
Leif smirked at me, and Aeron just growled.
“As you wish,” Leif said, diving back onto the sofa with me and resuming playing with my hair.
“Isaiah played it a lot smarter than those who came before him,” Aeron said. “We had no idea he had captured an angel or had a daughter. Leif and I both got called at the same time, so we thought he was planning some sort of virus again like those who came before him did. We don’t just get called knowing who the Antichrist is either. We had to figure out who we were looking for.”
“We knew death and disease were coming, or we wouldn’t be here. By the time we narrowed it down to Isaiah, he had built an entire empire. He had labs all over the world, and some were under shell corporations and took time to locate. Hunting Antichrists in the modern world is a lot more challenging than when there’s no internet and international banks to hide your business.
“We hacked every lab we could find, even the research he wouldn’t want to be found. You have to understand, one way the Antichrist takes over the world is with disciples. A lot of his labs created products with a cult following with carefully branded social media to make it go viral. Instant followers. We couldn’t find anything associated with a virus because he hid you and that lab very well,” Leif said.
“Kidnapping an angel and creating you was an enormous risk. He knew if we found out, we’d risk everything to get you away from him. That’s why when you ran, he didn’t expose himself searching for you. He most likely knew where you were the entire time and made his move to get you back right when he was about to make his move releasing the tainted supplement. At the time, we had looked into it, and it seemed harmless because we hadn’t found all the research yet,” Aeron said.
This was still all my fault. Why couldn’t they see that? This all came down to me and the fact that I flirted with them in that fucking chat room.
“If you had stopped looking for me, maybe you could have stopped this.”
Aeron grabbed my face and looked deep into my eyes. His silver eyes did that glowing thing again, but now I knew why.
“Listen to me, Ariel. We both knew he took you because you were important. When we finally found the research that he used your blood in the supplement, Leif knew you could also be the cure. We couldn’t do a damned thing to stop the Rage Mutation without you.”
“When Dice showed up, we knew war was coming, so we tried to prepare. We had less time to look for you, but we still looked. I set up fortifications around this lab because I knew I would need it. Dice went around helping humanity that seemed worth saving win. That’s why you have places like California, Gabriel’s Haven, and San Quintin. I went around ending some battles prematurely by killing entire squads. I can’t be in two places at once, so I was unable to stop some bombs that dropped,” Aeron said.
“We knew things were about to get ugly when people like Isaiah and those like him started calling for peace. That was when Asher got called. Lines started getting redrawn, and countries and cities started disappearing as other countries and cities claimed them. Asher’s hands were tied. If he killed all these would-be dictators, the world would just go to war again. We had to wait, and we had to find you. You’re the key, Ariel. You can end this.”
“Why is my blood different from any other Nephilim on the planet? If Miss Mabel is also a Nephilim, couldn’t you use her blood?”
