The Red Rider (End of Days #3) - Trepagnier, JB Page 0,1

take the White House and kill Isaiah.”

Leif just sighed.

“Sorry, Ariel, but you aren’t doing that in my lab, and you can’t do it in public. Use my private chambers, but try to keep the shit breakage at a minimum.”

“I don’t want to break anything, Leif.”

He touched my cheek.

“I know, Speedy. You need to learn. You’re handy with Smurfette, but I’m not sure what you can do with that explosive power of yours. It could be a needed long-range weapon in your arsenal, and Dice is the best person to teach that.”

I knew why I needed to learn this, and it would be nice to have a use for it other than power outages. Still, there was just something about being alone with Dice that made me nervous.

Chapter 2

D

ice seemed to know his way around this lab, and no one seemed to bat an eye about a shirtless man with a mohawk leading a pink-haired girl covered in tattoos down the hallways. Did I mention how much I was loving Mexico? Even with all the gunfire and bombs going off on the other side of the wall, people were pretty chill.

I was less chill about Dice. He was just strolling next to me, whistling with that toothpick in his mouth and his hands in his suspenders. Why did he make me nervous? Probably because I knew he knew I had painted that scene in the White House. Did that make shit awkward? Because it felt awkward.

It was like someone who didn’t know you existed finding your diary and reading all your weird sexual fantasies with them. Like you could ever live that down. If that ever happened, the only thing you could logically do was completely move states and delete all your social media for a while. I’d fucking painted us getting busy with all his angel friends in the Oval Office, and we’d never met before.

How fucking mortifying.

What do you even say when you meet the person in your painting for the first time? Why did this shit always seem to happen to me, anyway? At least I knew it had a name now. I was a Harbinger. Socially awkward shit aside, I did help Mexico stop invading Nazis, so maybe it wasn’t totally horrible.

Dice knew the password to the keypad on Leif’s room and let us in. He blocked the door and wouldn’t let me in right away.

“Okay, Leif is really materialistic when he gets called and likes to surround himself with human comforts we can’t get in Heaven. Given human comforts are pretty sparse right now, treat everything in his rooms like they can’t be replaced. There’s probably a long-ass, sentimental story about even the knickknacks on his coffee table. He hates it when things get destroyed because he’s attached to all his possessions.”

“I thought you were teaching me how not to destroy things. I knocked power out to the entire building.”

“Do you want a congratulation? Only baby angels do that. I’ll be so proud of you when you start shooting laser beams out your hands, little Nephilim.”

Did the Horseman of War seriously just give me a noogie? He was going to mess up my hair. I shoved him away and stomped into the apartment. I pointed Smurfette at his head.

“Never do that again.”

Dice just crossed his arms and smirked at me. Then, he jumped and practically shrieked. I jumped too because when the Horseman of War screams like a woman, something fucked up like a Rage Head mutant rat in the room was probably happening. Out of instinct, I jumped on the sofa and held Smurfette ready.

Dice wasn’t in fight mode. He wasn’t even screaming anymore. He was rifling through the trashcan like he was utterly insane. I stepped off the couch because clearly, there were no mutant rats in here. Dice was just excited about trash.

“Anything exciting in the garbage there, Tiger?”

“Never let anyone say I’m not considerate. I promised Leif we wouldn’t break anything, but you need a target. I’m going to make you one.”

“This is a bad idea. Why can’t we wait until we get somewhere we can do this outside? Isn’t there a place at your base in Florida we can work on this?”

Dice just snapped his suspenders again, then took his toothpick out his mouth and gave me a stern look.

“We’re on a timeframe, cupcake. Do you think mastering divine powers like this is going to be easy? You need to start now, and we’ll still be working on it in Florida