Owner has a dog or three.
Pestilence rises from where he knelt in front of the hearth, dusting off his hands, a fire taking shape behind him. Backlit by flames, he looks formidable and perhaps a little sinister. He grabs his bow and quiver from where he must’ve set them aside and heads past me.
“Sleep, Sara,” he says over his shoulder. His tone is so brusque that, had he not kissed the life out of me a short while ago, I would’ve said that I’d angered him.
“Where are you going?” I ask, restless at the idea of his leaving.
He pauses, rotating around to face me. “To patrol the area,” he says. “There are always humans who hunt me. They wait in the quiet hours to spring their traps.”
“Is that where you were before, when Nick …”
Pestilence’s face darkens at the reminder. “Unfortunately, this night I missed the danger right in front of me.”
I think that’s his weird way of apologizing.
I bite my inner cheek and nod. “Well, … be careful.” The words sound horribly awkward. Why do I even want my inhuman and undying captor to be careful? What could possibly happen to him?
Pestilence hesitates, his features softening at my words. “I cannot die, Sara,” he says gently.
“You can still get hurt.”
Really, where is all this sentimentality coming from?
The corner of his mouth curves up. “I swear I will do my utmost to not get hurt. Now rest. I know you need it.”
I do. My body feels leaden now that the last of the adrenaline is finally exiting my system.
Once Pestilence leaves, I peer into each of the bedrooms. There are two beds, both which I can use, but there’s just something about them that’s intensely unappealing. Maybe it’s the strong smell of dog coming from them, or the moldering piles of old clothes, broken plates and scraggly dolls that are heaped around them. I don’t particularly want to sleep in either of these rooms.
I grab a few blankets I find folded on the couch and lay down in front of the wood burning stove.
You’d think after the night I had, I’d be lying awake for hours, replaying those fateful minutes in the woods behind Nick’s house. But no sooner have I laid down than I drift off.
I don’t know how long I sleep for, only that I’m awoken by the sound of footsteps.
Going to kill you. He’s going to kill you.
A burst of fear floods my system, and I scramble to sit up, forcing my eyes to focus on the noise.
Pestilence comes over to me, a towel wrapped around his waist. “Be calm,” he says, kneeling at my side. He tucks a strand of my chestnut hair behind my ear. “It’s only me.”
It’s only Pestilence, the one being the rest of the world fears. And the sight of him brings me an embarrassing amount of relief.
I take a deep, stuttering breath. “It’s been a long day.”
The horseman’s wet hair drips between us, and rivulets of water cut down his chest. I feel a rush of heat at the sight of his bare skin. The firelight caresses every dip and curve, and not for the first time, I notice the exquisiteness of his form. His high cheekbones and full lips look all the more extreme as the shadows dance along them. And then there’s the rest of him, which is all so distinctly male, from his sculpted, powerful shoulders to his thick, cut biceps.
My eyes drop to his chest, where his rounded pecs flow into rippling abs. But it’s impossible to look at his torso without noticing the strange, glowing marks that shimmer in the darkness, illuminating the surrounding skin.
I reach out and run my fingers over the letters that curve beneath his collarbones like a necklace. They glow with a golden fire, their form strange and beautiful.
Beneath my touch, Pestilence’s skin jumps. He holds very still, letting me explore his body.
“What are these?” I ask. It’s obvious it’s writing, but it’s a language unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
He stares down at me, his eyes bright. “My purpose, written into flesh.”
The horseman places a hand over mine, effectively trapping it against one of the symbols. Steering my hand with his, he has me trace the marking.
“This one means ‘divinely ordained,’” he explains, releasing his grip.
I raise my eyebrows at him before my attention drops back to his chest. I move my hand over several characters, stopping on one that lays to the left of his heart.
“And this one?” I ask.
“‘Breath of God.’”
I trace the word. Beneath my touch, Pestilence’s skin pebbles.
“What language is this?” I ask.
“A holy one.” His eyes are on me, tracking my movements.
If I had a little more courage, my hand would drop lower, where another band of characters ring his hips, the lowest of the symbols dipping well beneath his towel.
But alas, my courage fails me.
“Can you speak it?” I ask.
His hand presses over mine once more, holding my palm against his heart. “Sara, it is my native tongue.”
I stare at the writing wondrously. I feel a presence here in this dark room. It presses in close. I can see it in the back of the horseman’s steady gaze, and I can feel it in the very beat of his heart.
My gaze lifts to his. “Say something for me.”
His eyes shine. “I cannot,” he says gently. “To speak the holy language is to press divine will upon the world.”
I pull my hand away, removing myself from him. “Isn’t that what you’re already doing?” How else am I supposed to interpret Pestilence riding across the world and spreading his plague?
He leans forward, looking lupine and feral as he comes in close. “What is spoken cannot be unheard. It is not for mortal ears. But … I am not above sharing a word or two with you.”
I forget to breathe as his own breath fans against my cheeks, his lips—and the rest of his nearly unclad body—so very, very close.
Just when I think he’s going to share one of these sacred words, he says, “Go back to sleep. I will watch over you.”
I don’t want to sleep, not when I still feel the press of his supple skin beneath my fingers, marked with figures strange and holy. I’m unbearably lonely, my body aching at the lack of a partner, and damn it all, but the partner it wants is him. I want him. All of him. In me, around me, next to me, filling my mind, my body, my life—and that’s so many different kinds of fucked up, and I’m so over it, so over feeling torn.
Pestilence stands, backing away into the darkened recesses of the house. I nearly call out to him. It would be so easy to coax him towards me, to remove that towel and pull him down and feel his weight settle on me.
To my shame, it isn’t my loyalty to humankind that stops me from calling him back. It’s the deep fear that he’ll refuse my advances.
There’s only so many shitty things a girl can take in a single day.
Chapter 30
The good news: this house comes stocked with every food imaginable to man. The bad news: everything apparently expired seven years ago.
That’s what we get for squatting in a hoarder’s home.
At least there’s coffee—and powdered creamer. I greedily drink my cup while sitting in the house’s breakfast nook, the space packed with dirty dishes, mail, and a few more of those empty prescription bottles.
I stare out the window, taking in the yard with its thin dusting of snow, warming my hands on the mug I hold. My gaze drifts from the window to the nearest pile of junk. Resting at the top of it is a flyer with a drawing of Pestilence.
Warning! Pestilence is Coming!
The words are emblazoned in red. Beneath it in smaller print is a paragraph detailing his movements and urging residents to evacuate, preferably for at least a week.
I flip the page over and nearly balk. Staring back at me is my face. It’s not particularly accurate; it has that same look that police sketches have. My face is wider, my cheeks fuller and my chin pointier, but it’s still me.
> Traveling with a Mystery Woman!
The paragraph beneath it says that while evidence suggests I’m Pestilence’s prisoner, I’m likely working for the horseman and to keep wide berth.
Lastly, the page has a map of North America, a red line drawn up the East Coast before cutting across Canada, and ending with the tip of the line curved downward, suggesting that the horseman and I are traveling down the West Coast, which seems accurate enough.
Behind me, the door opens, jerking me to attention. I shove the paper away.
Likely working for the horseman. The warning replays itself over and over in my mind, and I feel every inch the turncoat. Because that flyer nailed my situation, hadn’t it?
“Sara!” Pestilence calls, his heavy footfalls making their way to the kitchen.
He grins when his eyes alight on me, the expression so foreign and wonderful that even in the mood I’m in, my heart skips at the sight.
“Knew I’d find you in here,” he says.
I give him a watery smile back.
It only takes him a few moments to see that I’m troubled.
His grin falls away. “What’s wrong?”
We’re supposed to be enemies, but despite everything, I kind of like you. Oh, and the rest of humanity has figured that bit out too.
I shake my head. “Just … tired.”
He comes over to me, clad in all his accoutrements. There’s nothing like seeing Pestilence dressed in his finery to make a girl feel like three-day-old road kill.
He bends down and, studying my face, presses his thumb right beneath my eye.
“You’re getting exhausted,” he notices.
Scratch that—seven-day-old road kill. We’re talking the really fucked-up bits of critters that remain plastered to the asphalt long after they’ve expired.
“All the traveling has taken a toll on me,” I admit.
The stress, the long days stuck in the saddle, my mounting injuries, the relentless winter chill, the unreliable meals—I’ve done my best to muscle my way through it, but it only takes Pestilence’s notice for it all to come crashing back into my awareness.
Exhaustion probably won’t be what kills you, I remind myself.
Pestilence frowns. “Then you shall rest. We’ll linger here for—” he glances out the window, taking in the weak winter sun, “two more days.”
I don’t have the heart to tell him that two more days isn’t going to make much difference. That it hasn’t made much of a difference. We’ve been pausing for days at a time.
It’s never going to get easier with Pestilence. Care though he might, he’s always going to be impervious to the things that will kill me, and so he’ll always push me harder than what I’m capable of.
But I don’t say these things. Instead I nod and give him another weak smile.
His frown deepens. “I don’t like this look,” he says, studying my features. “You lie with your face. Do you need more time? Three days? Four? You shall have it—only remove this sad, defeated look. I cannot stand it.”
I don’t think anyone has ever told me anything so genuinely frank and kind.
On a whim, I pull him to me, hugging the horseman tightly. At first, he’s stiff in my arms, but as the seconds tick by, he hesitantly wraps his own arms around me, and I feel utterly engulfed by him.
“You’re a good man, Pestilence,” I admit.
And therein lies my problem. He’s not a nice man, he’s not a peaceful man, but he’s good man.
I close my eyes and breathe him in. He smells like cheap soap, and beneath that, divinity. (Didn’t even know one could literally smell divine, but there you have it.)
His lips brush my ear. “You forget, I am no man, Sara.”
A laugh escapes me. “Fine. You are a good harbinger of the apocalypse.”
He holds me tighter, his cheek brushing against my temple. “And you are a compassionate woman.” I feel him finger a lock of my hair. “Far too compassionate, if I’m being honest,” he says under his breath.
I take some solace in the fact that whatever this is that I’m beginning to feel, Pestilence is experiencing it as well. And we might each be bulldozing our morals, but at the very least, we’re doing it together.
We end up leaving the house two days later. That’s about all the time I could take in that messy place. I’m no paragon of cleanliness, but that house … even now, kilometers away, my skin crawls at the thought of it.
I’m pulled from my thoughts when I catch sight of a sign in front of us. After we fled Vancouver, we’d traveled through mostly backroads and places off the beaten path, but inevitably, Pestilence had made his way back to the main highways. And now I see something I’d missed.
I suck in my breath.
Seattle 54 mi.
“What is it?” Pestilence asks.
“We’re in America.”
Somewhere between Pestilence getting attacked in Vancouver and my own brush with death a few days ago, I hadn’t even realized that we’d crossed countries.
“Ah, America,” Pestilence says with distaste, dragging me back to the present. “Here they are made particularly mean.”
A ridiculous wave of fear washes through me at that. “Pestilence, we need to get off the main road.”
“Whatever for?” he asks, genuinely curious.
I can still feel the ruin of his head, cradled in my lap. I’m not ready to go through that again.
“There’s a large city coming up,” I say. “Bigger than the last one.” There were dozens of people waiting for Pestilence in Vancouver; how many would there be in Seattle? “Let’s go around it.”
“I will not be driven off my course by the presence of humans.”
That’s the last he says on the subject.
My dread mounts as we close in on the metropolis. Something bad is going to happen. I can feel it the way you can feel a storm coming; the very air is ripe with it.
Like Vancouver, the slide into Seattle is gradual. First we pass through a sleepy satellite city, which gives way to another that’s a little denser. And then another. A wave of déjà vu washes over me as we pass through the same types of communities that we did in Vancouver.
Pestilence’s arm tightens around my waist. Can he feel it too? The promise of violence flavors the very air.
I pull my jacket tighter around me. It’s only going to get worse the farther south we travel. Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles … The nightmare we encountered in Vancouver will repeat itself over and over again. And even once we’re through with the West Coast, there are entire other countries to cross.
The shadows are just beginning to stretch their spindly fingers across the land when Pestilence leaves the highway, leading Trixie into a neighborhood of tired looking houses that appear as though they’ve settled their old bones in for a long rest.
Pestilence turns Trixie onto the driveway of a darkened house, the horse’s hooves clacking against the cracked concrete. The pale green paint of the place looks timeworn and faded.
We ride right up to the door before Pestilence swings off his mount. Grabbing the doorknob, he twists, breaking the lock and shoving the door open.
I’m just stepping off Trixie Skillz when I notice the hazy glow of an oil-lamp coming from inside, the flame turned way down low. Reclining on the couch next to it is an old woman, her white hair cropped close to her head, her spectacles perched low on her nose. She peers over them at us, the book in her hands entirely forgotten.
We crashed the house of someone’s grandma. Just when I thought we were fresh out of horrors, another one comes.
“We have nothing of any value, I assure you,” she says, her voice surprisingly steady for someone who thinks their home is being invaded.
“I am not here for your things,” Pestilence says. “I am here for your hospitality.”
The woman squints curiously at the horseman. Setting her book aside, she rises to her feet. Age has made her soft and plump, but there’s a certain quiet strength to
her.
“Ruth,” a thin, raspy voice calls from another room in the house, “who’s at the door?”
Did he miss the part where we broke into their home?
Ruth’s gaze stays on Pestilence for a long time, moving from his bow and quiver to his crown, before settling on his face. “I believe it’s one of the Four Horsemen, dear.” Her eyes flick to me. “And he’s brought with him a lady friend.”
“What in the—?” Shuffling sounds come from the back room.
Whatever shock came over Ruth moments ago, now dissipates. All at once, she begins to move, hurrying over. “Well, come now, you both must be cold. Come in, come in—and for the love of the Good Lord, shut the door behind you.”
Pestilence looks quizzically from her to the doorknob, which hangs at a funny angle. I push the door closed behind him.
Ruth comes to me and helps remove my coat. Her dry hands brush against mine. “Heavens, girl!” she exclaims, cupping one. “You’re going to catch your death out there. You’re as cold as ice.” Ruth clucks her tongue at Pestilence. “Shame on you for letting her get cold.”
The horseman stares at Ruth in shock, and I try not to smile. It’s clear he’s never encountered a sweet old lady before.
Just then, an elderly man limps out from a hallway branching off to the left. He comes to a stuttering stop.
“Lord Almighty!” He places a hand over his heart. “You weren’t kidding, Ruthie,” he says, staring at Pestilence.
Warily, he steps closer, his eyes drinking in the horseman. “Truly, you are real?”
Pestilence’s chin is lifted at an almost haughty angle, though his expression is more piqued than arrogant.
“Of course I am,” he says calmly.
Out of nowhere, the old man lets out a husky whoop. “Well, I’ll be damned. Come, sit. Mi casa es su casa,” he says.
This has got to be the weirdest situation I’ve ever been in. And considering the last few weeks of my life, that’s saying something.
The two of us follow the elderly couple into their kitchen, Pestilence with far more reluctance than me. He stares at the couple suspiciously, his hand edging towards his bow. He clearly doesn’t know what to make of this hospitality. Truth be told, neither do I.