Page 4 of The White Rider
“You can’t be seen outside, Ariel,” Leif warned. “It’s not just that your father is looking for you. The Bubbas have taken a step down the evolutionary chain. If they see a woman they want, they will challenge the man who owns her like she’s property that can be taken. Asher can say you’re his Martha, but someone might decide they want to own you and challenge him. It would blow his cover.”
Okay, ew. That triggered a memory. I was dating an even bigger asshole than Asher when I was still on the roller derby team. I’d had men fight over me before in this dirty little dive bar in Los Angeles. I could officially say I’d been there, done that, and hated it. If one of those Bubbas tried to challenge Asher for the right to own me, I’d beat the shit out of him myself.
I hoped we could develop a plan soon because I didn’t want to be stuck in the Washington Monument for too long.
Chapter 3
I
got this feeling that, out of all the strange places I’d slept since waking up from the coma, I’d probably slept in some weirder ones before I got kidnapped. I didn’t have any proof or memories to go by, but I slept like the dead in that train car, despite being right on top of my father and his armed minions, I didn’t lose a wink of sleep.
The angels were all awake and sitting in the corner talking when I dragged my ass out of bed. Were they planning without me? I accepted that I wasn’t some ancient Horseman of the Apocalypse that was used to planning showdowns with the Antichrist… but they did say I could come, so I needed to be in the loop.
After I ate something, my stomach felt like it was eating itself.
Hot food wasn’t going to be a thing here, but I was okay with that. Or so I thought. Asher had dragged a microwave and mini-fridge in here and plugged them into the wall outlets. He might want me gone, but at least he cared if I starved.
“There's some containers of rabbit stew in the mini-fridge. You can heat it up in the microwave.”
There wasn’t a stove in here. I knew Asher was gifted with a bow and arrow, since I’d been told that already, but none of the angels could conjure food out of nowhere, or Aeron and I wouldn’t have had so many raiding adventures on the way to Mexico.
“Did some Bubba force his Martha to cook it?”
Asher just rolled his eyes at me.
“I cooked it myself, in the fire pit I built outside. You can enjoy the meal guilt-free… unless you want to count the fact that I hunted the meat, foraged the vegetables, and cooked it myself?”
I stomped over to the mini-fridge and pulled a container out. Aeron, Leif, and Dice acted like whiny little bitches if I didn’t contribute to dinner in some way. I couldn’t exactly hunt rabbit with Smurfette, and they’d already told me I couldn’t leave to forage vegetables. So what did he want me to do?
I joined them on Asher’s mattress. He was a dick, but I had to give him credit where it was due.
“This is excellent. Thank you for cooking.”
“I had to cook extra because you tagged along, and I only have the mini-fridge.”
Dick.
Dice smacked Asher on the back of the head.
“Take the compliment and shut the fuck up.”
I changed the subject, because the desire to beat Asher with Smurfette was rising back up. Clearly, I wasn’t going to compliment his cooking again.
“What’s the plan?”
“We don’t have one, yet,” Leif said. “Aeron wants to go all Horsemen of Death on the Bubbas. Dice wants to let him loose, but Asher and I don’t want to. The vote is tied. We’re still arguing the finer points.”
“Can I be the tiebreaker? They’d have no problem kidnapping me and delivering me to my father.”
“Ariel, Aeron will kill anyone who looks at him, including the women. Some of them think Isaiah is the second coming and have no problem being Marthas, but some of them were kidnapped on raids and arehating every minute of this.”
“Can we get them to safety, then unleash Aeron?”
“Too dangerous,” Asher said. “I’ve been around the Bubbas and the Marthas. Most of the kidnapped Marthas who want a way out have learned to fake it. Some of them have been put through so much abuse, and if we approached them, they’d tell their husbands about us to save themselves a beating if the plan failed.”
I let out a little growl. The apocalypse had really brought out the worst in people. My father was giving them permission to regress into acting in the most misogynist abusive ways, and these assholes thought he was the next Jesus for that! I was almost sure the first one had been totally against that kind of thing.
“Asher and I want to save the women and try the men as war criminals,” Leif said. “Dice has totally done this before. We all have enormous problems with what they are doing to the women and want to get them to safety, but that’s not their only crime. People have tried to build safe havens in nearby cities. They’d wait until they stockpiled supplies and got crops going, then organize raids on the community.
