Page 32 of The Red Rider
Aeron wrapped his arms around my waist.
“Good. Now do it again.”
Well, damn. Couldn’t he just be happy for me? He was right, though. I needed the practice. I blasted that hunk of metal all around Cinderella’s Castle until the screws started coming out, and it was in pieces. It wouldn’t do to hit it again. It was dead. I triumphantly killed a piece of scrap metal with my angel grace. Go me!
Dice looked up from his table.
“Excellent work. I also have the answer to kill the Rage Heads. I just need to get my team on it and let everyone around the world know how to do this. Aeron, why don’t you take her to eat something? I’ll join you soon.”
That was the handy thing about angels.They got shit done.We were seriously doing this. We were going to stop Armageddon and kill my father.
I was technically now dating three of the Four Horsemen, but they already said Asher wasn’t into this, and I wasn’t about to have an orgy with the three of them in front of him.
Chapter 18
C
an I tell you how fucking amazing it was watching people come together after my father tried to destroy the world? Sure, there were still cannibal rapists running around, and Nazis were like cockroaches, and not even the apocalypse wiped them off the face of the earth. But you couldn’t keep good people down, and I’d witnessed that in several places now.
Dice hadn’t been idle, and he hadn’t just ended the war by stealing all the bombs. Florida wasn’t only a fortified state and a safe place to live right now. As soon a Dice had a solution to turn the bombs into a solution to kill the Rage Heads, he had a massive team of civilians and soldiers he’d trained to know what the fuck he was talking about when he started giving instruction.
I didn’t have the slightest clue how an MP3 player could keep my father from talking to the entire United States or how you could drop bombs around the world andonlykill zombies, but all these people around us were nodding and high fiving like they totally did. More power to them. I had trouble understanding Ikea furniture instructions, so this was totally over my head.
I lost Dice and Leif after that. Dice had moved out of the theme park to work in large warehouses where they were keeping the bombs. He was where he needed to be, and so was Leif. I wasn’t some needy girlfriend that needed to go to work with them, and wasn’t that the entire point of having three boyfriends? Aeron didn’t need to go around killing anything right now, so we were entertaining each other.
Aeron was one of those angels that didn’t like being behind four walls. We were back at the picnic tables, and I was drawing him. Honestly, all of the three Horsemen I’d met so far were so disgustingly beautiful, and I wanted to do nude paintings of all of them. The only reason I didn’t have Aeron naked at the hotel so I could sketch him is that I already knew as soon as I got his pants off, he wouldn’t behave himself. And I knew I wouldn’t either because there was just something super addicting about sex with angels.
As I was sketching Aeron, something was still bothering me, and it grew the more Aeron’s visage became visible on my sketchpad. Drawing typically relaxed me, and I went into my own headspace. So, what was bothering me this time? I set my charcoal down and rubbed my face. I was sure I had black smudges all over my face, but that was normal for me when I was drawing.
“What? You aren’t drawing me like one of your French girls, and I’m starting to feel self-conscious about it.”
“Something is not right.”
“Do I need to get naked?”
“No, it’s not that.”
“Is it a vision?”
A vision wasn’t coming on, but that was when it finally hit me. My father locked me in that padded room alotbecause there was something he wanted me to draw. I was sure there were a few things I drew that he managed to profit from, but maybe that was why he took my memories.
“I think I may have drawn something for my father that he doesn’t want me to remember. I rarely got to sleep in my own bed because I was constantly in that padded room. I think there was something specific he wanted to see. I think maybe I eventually drew it, and he wants to make damned sure I don’t remember because it could be a game-changer.”
Aeron slammed his fist on the picnic table.
“After you kill him, I’m going to kill him again.”
“He might know we are coming, Aeron.”
“Oh, that’s a given. Heknowswe are coming. He would have known that from the start. That was probably part of the reason he raped a Harbinger and had you. It wasn’t just your blood. An adult angel would never have cooperated with him, but a terrorized child? You would have done anything he asked, so he didn’t hurt you. I’m going to murder that fuck for what he did to you.”
“Before you go all murder Horseman, we need to figure out if I drew anything that could help him. I was with him up until my teens, and there’s a lot I don’t remember. It could be anything.”
Aeron grabbed my hand and started marching off towards the hotel.
“Dice keeps a lot of hippy shit in his hotel room that can help you, and we know some Harbingers. Dice isn’t the only one who can jog some memories loose.”
“I thought you were worried about the whole going crazy thing?”
