Pestilence (The Four Horsemen Book 1)

by Laura Thalassa

  I literally have nothing to say to that. I don’t even know whether he’s right or if he just strung enough pretty words together that he appears right.

  Not going to psychoanalyze that one.

  “Fine,” I say, taking a sip of my tea and meeting his gaze. “Look your fill.”

  His eyes stare unwaveringly back at me. “I will.”

  I’m about to look away because it does feel horribly weird to have someone openly appraising you, but then—fuck that. If he’s going to stare, then so am I.

  I take him in, from the arched tips of his golden crown to his dark shirt and soft leather boots. My gaze shifts to his hands—he has oddly attractive hands for a man.

  Of course he does, Sara. Everything about him is attractive. It’s you who’s only starting to notice the fine details.

  Pestilence smiles as my eyes rove over him, and I swear he presses his shoulders back just a little at my inspection.

  “Are you enjoying what you’re looking at?” I ask, even as I drink him in. The comment is supposed to be snarky, but it comes off more like bait for a compliment.

  “Your form is oddly pleasing to me.”

  Like just about everything else Pestilence says, his words bring out two opposing emotions. My blood heats, and yet … pleasing? A painting is pleasing. And oddly so?

  A woman should not be oddly pleasing. She should be a ball-busting, skull-crushing, badass motherfucker who is impossible to forget.

  A line forms between Pestilence’s brows. “I hadn’t expected that—to enjoy the sight of you—just as I hadn’t expected food to entice me, or your liquor to enthrall me.”

  I take another sip of my tea. “What had you expected?”

  “To be unmoved and unaffected by all human ways.”

  It should fill me with hope that Pestilence is affected by those things, and it does, but … I chew on my lower lip. The thing is, it goes both ways. As much as I’m affecting his view of humans, he’s affecting my view of horsemen.

  “You haven’t mentioned God yet,” I say.

  Pestilence looks at me quizzically.

  “You keep mentioning how much you hate humans, how it’s your job to end them, and how shocking it is to like the same things they do, but in all of our conversations, you haven’t really mentioned God.”

  A crease forms between his brows. “Why would I?”

  I lift a shoulder. “Isn’t that what this is all about? God’s wrath?”

  “This isn’t about God,” Pestilence says evenly. “It’s about humans and their poisonous nature.”

  I grab a nearby stick and distractedly poke the logs, causing the fire to jump and spark. “I just figured He was behind your existence,” I say.

  The horseman stares at me, eyes narrowed. “It is not for me to discuss with you the reasons I’m here.”

  “So God does unequivocally exist?” I prod. “And he’s a man? And he put you up to this?” It’s not like he said these things, but he didn’t deny them either when I mentioned them.

  “Sara,” Pestilence says with some exasperation, “surely you know by now that something beyond this mortal world exists. Am I not proof enough?”

  Well, yeah, but he could at least confirm it for the record and all.

  “As far as gender goes,” he continues, “only the feeble human mind could imagine a superior being, then have the audacity to shape that being in their own image—and to give it a gender.”

  Pestilence continues. “God isn’t a man or a woman. He’s something else entirely.”

  “Then why do you keep using male pronouns?” I ask.

  “Because you do.”

  I give him a quizzical look.

  “How do I know English?” he says. “Or wield a bow and arrow? Why do I wear breeches and a breastplate and look like a human? I, like God, have been fashioned into something you can understand.

  “But this,” he gestures to his body, “is not what I really am.”

  “It’s … not?” Having trouble with this one.

  “I am pestilence, Sara,” he says softly. “Not a man. I have a body and a voice and a sentience not for my own benefit, but for yours.”

  Not going to lie, this might be the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had.

  “So …” I say, to bring this full circle, “God isn’t a man.”

  His tilts his head. “You seem surprised.”

  Do I?

  I shift uncomfortably. “I’m not surprised. It’s just …”

  “It’s just what?” Pestilence asks when I don’t finish the sentence. For once he’s actually being halfway open with me.

  “I don’t know,” I say. I prod at the fire with the stick I still hold. “Is He—or She, or It—even Christian?” The Four Horsemen, after all, were mentioned in the Bible.

  Pestilence gives me a disparaging look. “You humans and your hang ups with names and labels. God isn’t Christian—just as he isn’t Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or any other denomination. God is God.”

  An answer that will appease pretty much no one.

  The horseman leans back and appraises me. “What do you believe, Sara?”

  I drop the stick and take a sip of my cooling tea. “Before you came to earth, I didn’t believe in anything.”

  “You believed in nothing?” Pestilence is looking at me like he wants an explanation.

  Knowing how he feels about the World Before, I really don’t want to give him this part of me.

  “We had science, and that was its own kind of religion,” I say. “At least, for me it was. It explained why the world worked the way it did—it answered the mystery of it all.”

  “I know enough about your science, Sara. It never answered the most important mysteries, as you call them. What is a soul, where it goes when you die, what lies beyond—”

  I put a hand up. “Point taken, buddy.”

  He frowns at the endearment.

  “I didn’t need answers to those questions. I assumed that this life was all anyone got and we were all deluding ourselves to think there was more.”

  “But you’ve changed your mind?” he prods.

  I give him a sad smile. “It’s hard not to when the Four Horsemen show up and all the world goes to hell.”

  I can hear the fire station’s T.V. in my head, the unending newsreel playing. Political pundits had been replaced with religious leaders and scholars, each one explaining their take on the Bible, the Quran and the Hadith, the Sutras, the Vedas, the Tanach, the Mishnah, the Talmud and Midrash, and a thousand other biblical texts that suddenly pointed The Way to redemption. I half listened as each preacher and priest, rabbi and imam beseeched the world to find God before it was too late.

  “It’s just … religion up until now has been a matter of faith. It hardly seems like religion for me to believe now that there’s proof.”

  What I don’t say is that it’s still hard for me to believe in religion now that our proof comes in the form of four beings who want to kill us. If we’re suddenly all lambs up for slaughter, what is the point of life? And more importantly, if a painful and untimely death is what I’m to expect from life, then what should I expect from the afterlife?

  I half assume Pestilence is going to proselytize to me, but he doesn’t. He just continues to give me that unnerving stare of his.

  I meet his gaze, and I hold it. The smoke makes sleek ribbons between us and the rain dapples our clothing. Even in the firelight, I can see his blue eyes clearly. They’re an appropriate color; I feel like I’m drowning in them, in him.

  A bubbly, warm sensation spreads beneath my skin.

  I once heard that you can fall in love with someone simply by staring them in the eyes long enough. This is not that (please God let it not be that), but it is something.

  Like lightning striking, the realization hits me: despite every wound we’ve inflicted on one another, despite him trying to end my world and my world trying to end him, he wants me …

  And I want him.

&
nbsp; I don’t know who moves first, only that I’ve set my tea aside and he’s getting to his feet. There is no rush to our movements.

  I’ve had plenty of those nights, where you can’t possibly move fast enough because the moment you slow the rush, you’ll realize what you’re doing is desperate and stupid and you really think the other person is annoying but you just want to feel the press of their skin against yours, so you’ll forgive it all until morning.

  Both of us have plenty of time to turn away. To draw that line in the sand where he’s some biblical entity that’s come to end the world, and I’m a human simply trying to stop him. But right now, he doesn’t hate humans nearly so much as he wants to believe, and I don’t wish to defy him as much as I want to believe.

  Before I have a chance to get up, he kneels in front of me. The fire that was once a barrier between us now sits like a sentinel at our side.

  “I cannot decide if you are a toxin or a tonic,” he says, lifting a hand to my cheek. “Only that you plague my thoughts and fill my veins.”

  Pestilence really could work on his compliments.

  His thumb strokes over my skin. “Tell me you feel the same way.”

  “I’m your prisoner,” I say, sidestepping an answer.

  “That is the least of the wrongs between us.” He leans in closer. “Tell me,” he repeats.

  Without thinking, I press my mouth to his.

  For one long, agonizing moment, he freezes beneath my lips.

  Just when I expect him to pull away, he lets out a small noise, something that sounds like want and defeat and surprise all wrapped into one. And then his lips are pressing back against mine, meeting me stroke for stroke.

  Hesitantly, his hands thread themselves into my hair. He cradles my face, his kiss soft, so exceedingly soft.

  Taking my cue from him, I place my palm against his jaw, my fingers brushing the skin of his cheek.

  He pulls away, his eyes bright with heat.

  “Sara …”

  My skin puckers, even as my eyes meet his.

  I didn’t mean to do that. That’s what I’m supposed to say.

  But the words stay locked inside me.

  His gaze returns to my mouth, and whatever restraint he has left now crumbles. His lips are back on mine, stronger and surer than before.

  The previous kiss could be called a mistake, but not this one.

  He kisses me eagerly, leaning into me until his warm chest presses against mine. I let my hands drift over his face like I’m trying to memorize him by feel. My thumbs brush over his closed eyes and those enviable lashes, they skim over his temples and cheekbones.

  The smell of the earth and smoke and pine needles fill my nose, the falling rain chilling my exposed skin. We’re so far from humanity that right now Pestilence feels more like magic than some ancient blight.

  His arms go around me, and without breaking the kiss, he carries me to the tent. I don’t have time to fear that small space before he brushes the flaps aside and lays me down on the blankets. He kneels between my legs, taking a moment to set aside his crown, his gaze rooted to my face.

  Languidly, he drapes himself over my body, his mouth finding mine once more. I nearly moan as his weight settles over me. It’s been so long—far too long—since I’ve done this, and I find I’m aching for that comfort and connection.

  The horseman’s hands tremble as they brush over me, cautiously exploring. I wonder if this is taboo for him—touching a woman, a victim he’s been sparing. I wonder how he feels about that.

  I wonder, simply, how he feels. How he thinks. I don’t know when I began caring, but now, with him so close to me, it seems important.

  My lips part his, and I begin to explore his mouth.

  Another sound escapes him, this one less surprised and more primal. He crushes his mouth to mine, and our sweet kiss is turning darker, hungrier. His hips grind against mine, and I break away from the kiss to sigh out my need.

  “Sara,” he says, nearly breathless, “I feel … I feel I am losing myself to this sensation—to you.” His eyes search mine. “Is this … is this love?”

  I sober up fast.

  My hands have made their way to the small of his back, pressing his body flush against mine, and somehow my legs have wound their way around him.

  Got more than a little carried away …

  I sit up, gently pushing him off of me. Reluctantly he rolls away. I lick my lips, tasting him on my mouth.

  The last of that sensual hazy feeling retreats completely, leaving a creeping coldness in its wake. I made out with Pestilence—and I’d been ready to do more.

  I shake my head. “No, this is not love.”

  He looks … disappointed. I think.

  I can’t exactly say what it is I am feeling, or why. It’s some sick combo between want and wistfulness and the deep certainty that this is wrong. Very, very wong.

  “Then what is it?”

  “Lust,” I say simply.

  I can’t sleep. Not in these woods as the icy sleet pummels our tent. The chill has claws, and I can feel them digging into my skin through my blanket and all my layers of clothing.

  I lay in my makeshift bed, shivering and feeling utterly miserable.

  I mean for you to suffer. I can hear Pestilence’s words clear as day. Pestilence, who wandered off hours ago and who still hasn’t returned. Pestilence, who didn’t like what I had to say earlier, either because lust is not nearly so lofty an emotion as love, or because feeling anything at all is simply problematic for him.

  He’s been gone for hours, and in all likelihood he’s probably waiting just out of sight for me to bolt so that he can punish me in some cruel and unusual way and force things back to how they once were.

  I think it would do us both good, to have things go back to the way they were. But there’s no way that’s going to happen. You can’t unmake a kiss, or unsee a look. We’re both so screwed.

  It’s late by the time Pestilence returns, and the rain has all but stopped. I can hear his boots as he crosses over pine needles. He doesn’t try to mask his approach.

  A moment later the tent flaps are thrown open, and the space is filled with his unearthly presence. For several long seconds he doesn’t move.

  Eventually, the horseman kneels next to me. He painstakingly takes off his armor and his crown for the second time that evening. And then he slides into the space beside me.

  “I assumed you didn’t sleep,” I say. My voice seems to echo in the silence.

  There’s a pause. After a moment, he says, “I do not need it, but I can.”

  He moves closer to me, and after a hesitant second, the horseman drapes an arm over my body and pulls me in close.

  I close my eyes at the sensation, torn between enjoying his touch and knowing that I shouldn’t. My body shakes against his, shivering at the temperature.

  “You’re cold,” he says, surprise coloring his voice.

  I’m more than just cold; I’m pretty much a human Popsicle at this point.

  “I’m fine.”

  He tucks me even closer into him, throwing one of his legs over mine, pinning me against his body. Motherfucking snuggling. I don’t even have the dignity to be upset by this because I’m so bloody grateful for Pestilence’s heat.

  You also like the way he fits against you …

  “Try to sleep,” he says, his voice deep. “Tomorrow we leave at first light.”

  Awesome.

  Freaking hate waking up early—along with the cold.

  Once this is all over, I’m moving to Mexico and sleeping in as long as I want.

  Pressed against the human furnace that is otherwise known as Pestilence, my frigid body soon warms. Not long after, my eyes begin to droop.

  Just as I’m on the very edge of sleep I think I hear Pestilence murmur against my hair, “This is not lust I feel, dear Sara. And I hope you are half as frightened of it as I am.”

  But I was probably just dreaming.

  Chapter
26

  I wake slowly, languidly, a delicious heat enveloping me. I stretch, my spine cracking as I arch my back. The arm around my waist tightens, the hand stroking up and down my back.

  I open my eyes and stare into two blue ones.

  My body goes rigid. Pestilence’s face is only inches from mine, and the rest of him is pressed against me. The edges of sleep cling to his expression, and his hair is mussed. It pains me, how attractive I find that.

  Unlike me, the horseman doesn’t look surprised to find us so close. He watches me, his gaze both wary and fascinated. Slowly, he releases me.

  Kissing, snuggling, and now sleeping together.

  Moving awfully fast, Burns.

  Technically, this isn’t the first time we’ve slept together. There was that instance back when I was hypothermic.

  Feeling somewhat reassured, I push myself out of his arms and run a hand through my wavy brown hair. I don’t look at him as I collect myself, but damnit, I can feel his presence all around me.

  Got to get out of this tent.

  Shoving on my boots, I slip out of the small space without giving the horseman another look.

  Outside, the sun sits high in the sky.

  So much for leaving at first light …

  The tent flaps open behind me, and the horseman comes striding out. His mouth is set in a grim line, and his eyes are sad when they meet mine. The monster that is my horseman is a lonely, melancholy being.

  He grabs his armor and begins strapping it on, moving away from me, towards where Trixie waits.

  “Come, Sara,” he calls over his shoulder, “The hour of our departure grows late.”

  I glance back at our tent, realizing that he doesn’t mean to take any of our unpacked supplies with him. So I hurry to grab what few things I can’t bear to part with and head after him.

  He doesn’t look at me as he slings on his bow and quiver. Nor as I stow away the items I grabbed from our camp. Nor even as he hoists me onto Trixie.

  He won’t acknowledge me just as I didn’t want to acknowledge him when I fled the tent. I’m getting a taste of my own medicine, and it’s driving me insane. There’s so much reassurance and connection in a look. Having him withhold it only makes me want it all the more.