Pestilence (The Four Horsemen Book 1)

by Laura Thalassa

  A surge of relief follows that statement. He can’t just vanish and leave me.

  I stand aside, opening the door wider. “Want to come in?”

  Pestilence’s gaze moves to the apartment beyond me, his eyes sparking with interest and a want so fierce it makes my knees weak.

  My horseman came back for me.

  Carefully, he steps inside, glass crunching under his boot as he does so. His attention is everywhere, taking in each little piece of my humble life.

  “Where are your things?” I ask softly as I close the door, my eyes scouring him again. The bow that’s never more than an arm’s span away from him, the crown that almost always decorates his head, the golden armor that makes him look ever so otherworldly—it’s all gone.

  I surrender, he’d said.

  He swivels to face me. “My purpose is served.”

  What does that even mean? And why does that fill me with dread?

  “And Trixie?” Had the creature served his purpose too? That would kill me.

  Pestilence jerks his chin over his shoulder. Only now, when I manage to tear my eyes off of the horseman, do I bother to look out my window. In the darkness beyond, I catch the barest shadow of his mount.

  Trixie Skillz, the steed whose back I road on all those weeks, snuffles in the darkness, his reins looped about a broken lamp post.

  I turn back around only to find Pestilence standing close, his eyes devouring me like a starving man.

  “How did you find me?” I ask.

  “I never left you.”

  My brows furrow.

  “Come now, Sara,” he says at my confusion, “I wasn’t just going to let you slip out of my life that easily. I’m far too stubborn and not nearly noble enough.”

  What is he saying? That the entire time I made my way back here, he shadowed me?

  “Besides,” he continues, “you were still recovering, and I didn’t trust your fragile body to make the journey back.”

  I can’t take in enough air.

  He cared. Even when he thought I didn’t, he never gave up.

  “So you followed me?”

  He nods.

  And I never knew.

  “Why didn’t you ever show yourself?”

  Pestilence glances down at his boots. “You had made your decision. I wanted to respect that.” He laughs self-deprecatingly, toeing a stray piece of broken glass. “But I couldn’t, in the end.”

  And I’m so glad for it.

  “You stopped the plague,” I say.

  He meets my gaze, his expression turning guarded. “I did.”

  “Why?” I ask, searching his face.

  Pestilence’s eyes are deep and true. “Because love brings out the best in you.”

  I swallow thickly. If the last couple months have been a nightmare, this is some wonderful dream, one where I get everything I want.

  I don’t trust it. I’ve come to expect that things that appear too good to be true often are. Why should the one thing I want more than any other follow different logic?

  “Back at that last house, why didn’t you tell me you cured the sick?” I ask. That would’ve saved months of this agony.

  Pestilence’s gaze is agonized. “My mind was a mess at the time. I … had not committed to my actions, not even after I set them in motion. Nor after I let you go. It took weeks of contemplation for me to come to terms with my decision. My heart spoke first; my mind had to follow.”

  His expression turns fierce. “I should never have let you go. I should have listened to you, spoke with you, fought for you. I’m only now learning how very complex humans are.”

  My heart beats madly at his words. Hope is beginning to surge through my veins, and that scares the crap out of me because all hope does is prime you for a letdown, and I’m not sure I can take another letdown.

  “And the plague—it’s gone for good?” I ask.

  Pestilence gives me a sad smile. “Sara, there will always be sickness and disease—that I cannot change. But my divinely-wrought plague will never infect another. I have … served my purpose,” he says again.

  And again, that one sentence fills me with a strange sort of dread.

  I tug on the sleeves of my shirt. “What happens to you now that you’ve served your purpose?” I’m proud that my voice doesn’t tremble like the rest of my body is beginning to.

  It shouldn’t be possible to feel this much. Excitement and anxiety and fear are all churning inside me. But mostly fear, fear for my horseman. I never asked him what would happen if he simply stopped spreading the Fever.

  I probably should’ve.

  Pestilence’s blue eyes pierce mine. “Come with me and find out.”

  That ache in my chest expands, but now it hurts with something that is halfway between pain and pleasure.

  “There are so many things between us,” I say. So many insurmountable things. I want him so badly it hurts, but I swear it feels like he’s the one thing I can’t have, even after all his wrongs have been righted.

  Pestilence closes the last of the distance between us. Gently he takes my hands, staring down at my knuckles. “I may no longer be Pestilence the Conqueror, but I will fight for what I want, and I want you.” His eyes rise to mine. “Tell me you want me too.”

  I’m standing on the edge of a cliff. All I have to do is take one single step, and then everything can change. Everything will change.

  He squeezes my hands. “Come back to me,” he says. “Quote me Poe and Byron, Dickinson and Shakespeare. Tell me your human histories, share with me your memories. Let me taste your food and let me drink your wine. Let me make love to you and hold you in my arms until dawn. Share your life with me.”

  I stand there, still frozen, still sure he’s some vision made to haunt my days. Sure I’m going to wake.

  Pestilence’s hands move to cup my face. “I was wrong—about humanity. And I was wrong so many times when it came to you. Forgive me.”

  I press my eyes closed, then open them. He’s still there, still gazing at me with his sad eyes.

  “Come back to me, Sara,” he repeats. “Please.”

  That damn word.

  The world distorts beyond my watery eyes.

  “I’m still going to die someday,” I whisper.

  He nods solemnly. “I know.”

  “You’re okay with that?”

  His thumb strokes my cheek. “Sara, I don’t know how many minutes you get or I get, but I do know I want to spend them all with you.”

  My heart hammers in my chest.

  I look at his face, his angelic face with those sad, solemn eyes. He really could be an angel—maybe he is an angel, if such things exist. I don’t know. I don’t know much of anything, except that joy is a strange thing, and I feel it now with him just as I have felt a hundred times before in a hundred different little moments between us.

  I reach up and wrap a hand around his wrist. “If you are no longer Pestilence the Conqueror, then what would you like me to call you?” I ask, leaning a little into his touch.

  He gives me a shy, vulnerable smile. “‘Love’ had a nice ring to it.”

  “Alright, love,” I say, noticing his whisper of a smile at the endearment, “what minutes I have left—they are yours. I am yours.”

  There is a moment where it doesn’t compute. My horseman’s eyes are still haunted, and he looks like hope utterly abandoned him somewhere back in Washington. But then it does register, and his whole face transforms.

  First his gaze brightens, his eyebrows hiking up, and then a smile that could outpace the sun spreads across his face.

  He leans down and takes my lips, and the kiss is an end and a beginning all at once.

  Chapter 54

  I’d like to say that everything from that minute on was some beautiful, breathtaking fairytale. I’d like to say that I didn’t drag Pestilence’s inhuman ass back to my bedroom and sully the shit out of my sheets like the dirty freak I am.

  I’d like to say a thousand thin
gs to airbrush the crap out of the night, but then, that’s some other broad’s story.

  The kiss has only barely begun when it goes from sweet to wild and desperate. He’s my oxygen and I haven’t been able to breathe for months.

  My fingers moves to the buttons of his flannel shirt, but my hands shake so badly from need and want and allthisgoddamnadrenaline that I can’t seem to undo a single one.

  Pestilence pushes me up against the wall, his pelvis grinding into mine.

  “Missed you so much,” he says between kisses. “Love is unendurable when it spoils.”

  But, miracle of miracles, this love didn’t spoil. It might’ve carved us up from the inside out, but in the end it didn’t twist us into monsters. It stopped Pestilence from killing the world, and it made me strong enough to walk away from him when he wasn’t worthy.

  And, in the end, it brought him back to me.

  I go at Pestilence’s buttons again while the horseman peels my shirt off. The rest of our clothes quickly follow as I lead Pestilence to my bedroom.

  Only a faint oil lamp flickers in the darkness here—well, it and my horseman’s strange markings, the latter which haven’t dimmed in the least.

  I touch them reverently as he lays me down on the bed. “They’re still here,” I say.

  He trails kisses from my mouth, up my cheek, to my ear. “Of course they are, Sara. They can’t just walk off of me.”

  I turn and laugh into his lips. “Earth has given you a smart mouth.”

  “Earth has given me a smart woman and she has given me a smart mouth.”

  His hand goes to my breast, and I gasp at his touch as it kneads the soft flesh.

  Pestilence was right to call love unendurable. I can’t fathom how I managed to go this long without him touching me.

  I wrap my legs around him, wanting more—needing more.

  “It’s been so long,” I whisper, and my eyes prick.

  Oh God, I’m going to cry. We’re about to bone, and I’m going to cry.

  But then Pestilence is there, his lips pressing first to the corner of one eye, then the corner of the other.

  “Far too long,” he agrees. “But that’s all over now. There’s no need for sadness anymore, Sara. Your people are safe, and you are in my arms.”

  His mouth moves lower, now too busy tasting my flesh to tell me all sorts of pretty things. Which is probably for the best because my core is throbbing something fierce.

  He kisses my breasts, taking first one peak, then the other, into his mouth. I writhe against him as his ministrations light me on fire.

  All the while, Pestilence’s cock burns against my thigh. How he has patience for foreplay right now is beyond me. Then again, I was always the kid who peeked at my Christmas presents before they were wrapped, so … maybe when it comes to fun shit, I’m just overzealous.

  Pestilence draws away long enough to line us up. For one instant he looks backlit, his golden hair luminous, his body glimmering in the darkness. And in that instant, he’s a heavenly thing. Then the moment passes, and he’s a man once more.

  He pushes into me, his cock thick, the pressure of it exquisite. I can feel him everywhere.

  My horseman let’s out a breath, staring down at me with beautiful, terrible eyes. “God Almighty,” he whispers.

  If I weren’t feeling so damn emotional right now, I might’ve made some quip about not taking the Lord’s name in vain (he learned that bad habit from me). I might’ve even laughed as I reveled in the intense connection being the two of us.

  Instead, I take his face, his glorious face, in my hands.

  “I love you,” I whisper. He needs to hear it. I need to say it. Those words have been trapped beneath my sternum for so long.

  He moves in me, his eyes riveted to mine. “I love you too, Sara Burns.”

  And then he shows me just how much he means it.

  Afterwards, the two of us lay in a tangle of sheets, and I could stay right here forever, my ear pressed against his chest, his heart pounding beneath me.

  He strokes my naked back. “There is one thing I kept,” he says. “One thing my crown and armor were still good for. Would you like to see it?”

  I nod against him, though I don’t really have any idea what he’s talking about. I’m just too unbearably happy to think about anything else except for the fact that Pestilence is here in my arms.

  Gently, Pestilence moves me aside so he can slip off the bed and pad into the living room. I can’t imagine what’s coming.

  I gather up the sheets to my body and sit up as Pestilence comes back into the room. He kneels next to the bed and lifts his hand, his fist tightly closed. One by one his fingers uncurl, and in his palm rests a small gold band.

  His eye glint. “Marry me, Sara. Please.”

  My breath hitches as I stare at the ring, which looks impossibly perfect.

  Made from the last of his golden trappings.

  That’s what he meant when he said he’d kept one thing from his crown and armor.

  My gaze rises to him. And then I smile. “Yes.”

  I’m going to marry a horseman of the apocalypse.

  I extend my hand and let him slide the band onto my trembling finger.

  I’m going to marry Pestilence.

  “Wait,” I say sharply.

  My horseman raises his eyebrows. “Wait?” he repeats, looking incredulous. “Are you having … doubts?”

  I can tell he has a hard time getting the last part of that sentence out.

  “No, but … I want to call you something other than Pestilence. Not just an endearment but an actual name.”

  For better or for worse, he’s a man. He needs a proper name.

  “You mean, like Tricksy?” he asks, completely serious.

  God no. Not like that.

  “Um, a human name.”

  I instantly regret mentioning the word human—it’s one of his triggers. But Pestilence doesn’t look repulsed by the idea.

  In fact, he seems … intrigued.

  He mulls it over for only a second or two before he says, “Alright.”

  “Alright?” I echo.

  Seriously, it was that easy?

  He laughs a little at my surprised expression. “I confess, I have thought on this since we parted ways.”

  Last we spoke, he hadn’t believed in personal names. He was Pestilence and Pestilence was who he was. He was his purpose, and that was all anyone needed to know. Sometime during all of those days and weeks we were separated, he changed his mind.

  “What would you like to be called?” I ask.

  His thumb twists the gold band round and round my finger.

  “Victor,” he says, a shadow of a smile creeping along his face.

  I raise my eyebrows. I don’t know what I was expecting. It’s not like Victor is any less appropriate that Bill or Joe. It’s just that Victor is really … normal. I wasn’t expecting normal.

  Just be happy he didn’t decide on Elmer or Wolfgang.

  “Victor,” I repeat, beginning to grin as I stare at him. I like it. A lot. “It’s perfect.”

  His smile reaches his eyes.

  “What made you choose it?” I ask.

  He climbs into bed and takes me into his arms once more. I melt into the delicious heat of him.

  This still feels like a dream. Will it ever not? Will I ever wake up one day and not be amazed at the force of nature I fell in love with?

  “Victor is not so very different from conqueror, is it?” he says, ponderously.

  I tense at that.

  Laughter rumbles deep in his chest.

  “Worry naught, dear Sara,” he says. “I am not clinging to my former ways.” He takes my hand and presses it to his heart. The steady beat of it thumps against my palm.

  “Rather, I am your victor. You see, I came to conquer this land and its people,” he explained, “but instead, one of its people conquered me.”

  I know my eyes have gone soft. It’s a good reason—no, a grea
t reason—one that makes my toes curl.

  Pulling his head down to me, I kiss him, my lips making long, languorous work of the task.

  Once the kiss ends, I ask, “What happens now?”

  “We go away—or we stay and hope the world learns as I have learned. Either way, we do it together—for all the minutes we have left.”

  Epilogue

  Year 10 of the Horseman

  The sun is setting when it happens.

  Victor drops his book, the spine hitting my legs, which are draped over his lap.

  I glance up from my own novel, my gaze going from the book to his ashen face.

  “What is it?”

  Gently, Victor moves my legs aside and stands. He walks a few feet before he leans heavily against the nearby wall.

  I set my own book aside, alarmed. I pretty much have to kick a path through the scattered children’s toys to get to him.

  “What’s the matter?” I ask.

  Is he having a heart attack?

  Is that even possible?

  When he meets my eyes, there’s an old and familiar torment in them. “You may have stopped me all those years ago, Sara, but I am afraid …” He trails off, his eyes going to our home’s large balcony, which overlooks the Pacific. “I cannot stop my brothers.”

  A chill slides through me. We haven’t even talked about this subject in months. For it to come up now, and so ominously …

  Victor heads outside, driven by some force I can’t sense, and I’m helpless but to follow him.

  He stands at the ledge, his hands gripping the railing so tightly I can hear the wood beginning to splinter. Amazing to think that those hands that can hold me so gently can also do this.

  “The wheel of fate has been set in motion,” he says. “It still turns without my help.”

  Despite my unease, I smooth my fingers over his hand. Beneath my touch, his hold on the railing loosens.

  “I can feel it,” he says, not bothering to meet my gaze. His eyes move restlessly over the land. “My brother is waking.”

  I go cold all over. “What?”

  He won’t look at me, his body forced into a rigid stance.

  “Pray for the world, dear Sara. War is coming.”