Page 11 of The Red Rider
“Aeron’s favorite thing.”
“Shut up, Dice!”
Is this what Leif meant about Dice and Aeron feeding off each other, and his shit got broken? If they got into a fistfight, I wouldn’t be able to break it up. They’d trash this entire room before I could get Leif. Leif was back at the other lab, and I still didn’t have a phone. If I could talk on the whole angel frequency they used to communicate on, no one had taught me how.
“Hey! No poking the Horseman of Death, Dice. Aeron, stop letting him get to you. I thought the two of you were friends?”
“We are,” they both said.
I just threw up my hands.
“Then why aren’t you acting like it?”
“Exactly!” Dice yelled. “You were the one talking her up to me when you dropped the bomb about the painting. If you’ll recall, I wasn’t all that wild to find out a Harbinger painted me kissing her.”
He wasn’t? Well, that was just offensive. I wasn’t wild to have found myself painting an orgy with strangers when I saw it, and I still didn’t want to do it, but what kind of guy found out someone who could paint the future painted you banging and got mad about it? Wait, there were two of them. The Horseman of War and the Horseman of Conquest didn’t want any part of the White House orgy. Which, yeah, I was a little butt hurt they didn’t want to fuck me, but relieved at the same time because I still didn’t think I’d be in a fucking mood after I saw my father again. Even if I did come to care for them like I did Leif and Aeron, I couldn’t see confronting my father again and one of us killing him, and it leading to that.
Could I see myself getting drunk on moonshine and passing out? Totally.
Aeron let out this irritated grunt.
“I know it doesn’t make sense, and I know I tried to talk both of you into this. I swear I was okay with it until Dice appeared and started trying to get Speedy alone.”
I started playing with Aeron’s hair.
“Butwhydoes it bother you? You walked in on Leif and me and we’ve all been together that way. Dice and I hardly know each other. We just talked when he got me alone. I hardly know Dice, and I don’t know Asher at all. Asher seems against the entire thing. Dice may get to know me and think I’m annoying.”
They both just started shaking their heads at me like I had no idea what I was talking about, and they knew better. Iloathedwhen people looked at me like that, even if it was a topic I was totally unqualified to argue against. Just because you knew something someone else might not didn’t mean you had to be a snob about it.
And I was right about this. That painting was totally in my control. We stopped fucking Nazis because of something I drew. None of them would press me if I said no to a fucking free for all next to my father’s corpse. I didn’t think any of them would ask for sex either, even with that painting out in the world now. I wished I had destroyed that thing instead of hanging it over my bed. I wished I could remember why I hung it in pride of place instead of burning it.
“You’re a Harbinger, Ariel. Things are going to be set in motion that by the time we get to the White House, we’re all going to be together. The painting may not progress past you kissing all of us, and it might never have been an orgy. But we will all make it to the White House and we will all at least kiss you,” Dice said.
“Unless I say no. I don’t care what I am, what I painted, or what’s going on in the world. I still have the right to say no.”
Aeron pulled me to his chest and kissed the top of my head.
“She’s going to say no just to prove a point, no matter how she feels when we get there.”
“Yeah, I get that vibe.”
“I’m sorry. I was raised human and it’s weird to be told you’re going to develop feelings for people you don’t know just because of a painting you did. All of you might accept it, but it’s fucking bizarre.”
“With the shit you read?” Aeron scoffed. “You know I readBlood Feudtoo, right? Do you remember that? Your vampire mistress has five fated mates she learned about when she kills a witch. She thinks the witch is full of shit until she’s about to drain the blood from someone else and tastes their blood for the first time. You raved about that entire series and you think it’s weird your painting is going to come true?”
I threw up my hands and shrieked. I was trying really hard not to punch Aeron.
“That was fiction! It was about a vampire coven of assassins that killed and fucked things. Shifters have fated mates too, but we aren’t going around sniffing and biting each other and you don’t have magic dicks that grow when you fuck.”
Dice was looking at me like I had a second head.
“What kind of shit are you reading, Speedy? I can’t even find shit like that on porn sites.”
“You’re looking at the wrong porn then,” I snapped.
Dice perked right up.
“Go on.”
