Page 34 of The Red Rider
He let out this triumphant cry and pocketed the drawing. When he left the room, he didn’t close the door and lock it, like I could actually leave and go back to my room now. I knew better. It could be a trick he was using to beat me again. I wasn’t leaving my padded room until he told me out loud it was okay. I grabbed my blanket and pillow and went to sleep on the floor like I always did.
I started planning to run before I fell asleep. Whatever that drawing meant, I knew I needed to be as far away from him as possible when it came true.
I gasped and tore myself away from the safety of Aeron’s arms to look him in the eyes. Because even though I drew them face down and couldn’t see what they looked like, I knew who those four dead angels were now. I was practically hyperventilating.
“I drew youdeadwith I think Satan and Isaiah standing over your dead bodies! That’s what he wanted me to draw in that room. That’s what he didn’t want me to remember. Hewantsyou to come to him because he’s going to summon dear old dad to kill you!”
Aeron grabbed me and jerked me back to his lap.
“Think, Speedy. That was the vision decades ago. We have put things in motion to change that. He doesn’t have you prisoner to warn him when we are coming anymore. He doesn’t know about the second painting where he’s dead, and we’re all fucking over his dead body.”
“How does that work if I’ve painted two different endings to the end of the world? I thought Harbinger’s visions always come true? That’s not really possible if there’s the real ending, then the director’s cut alternate ending.”
Aeron kissed the top of my head.
“I love that you turned that into a movie reference. That’s easy. Think about the Nazis. You changed that vision because you warned us, and we got involved. A lot of different decisions changed the drawing you gave Isaiah. You ran, we reached out to you, you decided to work with us. We aren’t dying, Speedy, but that orgy is totally happening.”
I felt sick to my stomach, and I couldn’t say a damned thing about the orgy this time. What Aeron said made a lot of sense, but it still didn’t make me feel better.
I was way less gung-ho about ending up at the White House and killing my father.
Chapter 19
T
hat horrid bad tequila and jalapenos feeling in the pit of my stomach was back, and it didn’t matter what Aeron, Dice, or Leif said to me. Dice and Leif came back around dinner, and we were back at the picnic table. We weren’t getting a pig roast again, but there was some sort of stew. Dice said it was rabbit. I’d never had rabbit before, but it wasn’t half bad, even if it was light on the meat. There were plenty of potatoes and vegetables to fill me up.
“We aren’t going to die, Ariel,” Dice said.
“It’s true,” Leif said. “We might have if Isaiah had wiped your memories and kept you in D.C. with him to warn him we were coming, but he made a massive mistake keeping you in that coma trying to tweak the Rage Mutation. I hate to say this because both scenarios are awful, but if he wanted to make absolutely sure that painting was going to come true, he should have wiped your memories and pretended like you didn’t know him so you would help him.”
That just made me feel even worse. Either situation was fucked up, but it would have been even worse if I had been back with him helping him because I couldn’t remember. Would it have even gone down like that? He couldn’t pretend around me forever. He’d have some sort of meltdown about something, and I’d see him for what he was. Even if I didn’t remember who he was, I’d know he was a bad person.
It would have been like growing up with him all over again, except now he was President and had men with guns doing his bidding. He had my fear and that padded room when I was growing up, but he wasn’t above letting every single one of those men rape me just to keep me in line.
I let out a shaky breath.
“Guys, this is the shittiest pep talk you’ve given me so far.”
I was suddenly enveloped in some massive three-part Horseman hug, and they were squeezing me so tight, I almost couldn’t breathe.
“How can we make it better, Speedy?” Dice asked.
“I have no idea. You all say my paintings always come true. I know it makes sense that I later drew us winning because of the decisions we all made, but I don’t know how all this works. What if we do something or Isaiah does something that makes the first drawing come true?”
I pressed my face into Leif’s chest, but he pulled back a little and tilted my chin up to look him in the eye.
“Ariel, do you have a clear memory of the first drawing?”
“I wish I could forget it. Satan is horrible.”
“I know. Forget him. Wereyouanywhere in that drawing?”
“No, I wasn’t. The Oval Office was totally trashed. There were walls completely smashed through, and it broke all the windows. The furniture was all totally destroyed. There were four men dead on the floor. I knew they were angels because their wings had been ripped off and were scattered around the room.
“I knew this was why he had built that padded room and locked me in there, but I didn’t want to draw anything else that could help him make it happen. I started plotting to run after that. I started stealing things Isaiah wouldn’t miss, but people would pay a lot of money for at school. I built up a little nest egg and ran when he couldn’t watch me. I was in gym class and said I really had to go to the bathroom. I grabbed my gym bag out of my locker, put a hoodie on, and walked to the bus station. I was terrified, but I got away.”
“Don’t you see, Ariel? If you hadn’t run, we would never have gotten close to you. We wouldn’t have your blood to create the vaccine or the kill serum. Things would have been totally different when we confronted Isaiah. We wouldn’t have waited to take him out because we were trying to find you. Isaiah would be the one with a Harbinger in his pocket, not us. You running changed everything!” Leif said.
