“Whoa! I’m leaving!”
Hot damn.
I slip back out and close the door behind me. “Lock your door next time!” I yell through the walls.
Door probably doesn’t have a lock, you numbskull.
Jogging to the next door, I enter the apartment, this time a little more wary. But the place is empty. I make my way to the window, and grabbing a nearby pitcher, I smash out the glass pane.
Knocking out the remaining shards, I grab an arrow and settle it against the bow. And then I hunt.
In the streets beneath me, War’s soldiers are causing chaos. I aim my arrow at a woman driving her knife through another woman’s belly.
Please don’t miss.
I take a steadying breath then release the arrow.
It goes wide by a meter.
Nocking another arrow into the bow, I aim again, this time correcting for the distance. Pulling the bowstring back, I release the arrow.
I don’t hear the sickening thump of it hitting the woman’s stomach, but I see the arrow skewer her. It’s a wound she might survive, but I don’t bother following up with her because ten meters down the street, a man is trying to pull down a woman’s pants.
I might hit her …
The thought doesn’t stop me from aiming and firing. The man’s body recoils as the arrow strikes him just beneath the heart. He staggers forward, onto the screaming woman. She pushes his body away from her and runs, not looking back to see where deliverance came from.
On and on I shoot from the perch until I run out of arrows.
I leave my vantage point, heading back down the building. I’ve just walked out the front entrance when War rides down the street, his sword bloody. People are screaming and scattering.
Another gun goes off. I don’t have time to see the shooter or wonder at the fact that the firearm actually works. I’m too busy watching War as the shot blasts into him. His body jerks back, the force of the hit throwing that mountain of a man off his steed. His mount continues to charge forward, leaving him behind.
The horseman lies unmoving on the ground, those golden hair pieces dull in the hazy light.
Is he dead? He said he could die.
My skin tingles strangely at the thought. Whatever it is I feel, the emotion is more conflicted than it should be.
War begins to move, and my thoughts banish themselves. He pushes himself off the ground, rising to his feet once more. A malicious smile spreads across his face.
Now I turn to look at the woman holding the gun. Her hand is steady, though her eyes are wide. She’s a little older than me, and the hijab she wears billows in the breeze as she trains her weapon on War. And then she resumes pulling the trigger.
The bullets light up his body, jerking his frame left and right as he strides forward. He spreads his arms and laughs like a crazy fucking bastard as the shots pierce his armor and sink into skin. His blood drips in thick rivulets from the wounds, sliding down his body.
I stare at him in horror.
Dear God, he really can’t die.
The woman shoots until her gun clicks. War gives a low laugh, and his eyes are so, so violent.
Without thinking, I cut across the street, dashing in front of the woman, blocking her from the horseman.
War’s eyes settle on me. There’s a moment of surprise; this is the first time since battle began that we’ve run into each other. But his surprise quickly withers away, and his eyes narrow.
“Don’t come between us, wife,” he says, not bothering to speak in tongues. His guttural voice cuts through me like a cold wind.
“I’m not going to let you kill her.” I don’t know what the woman was thinking, but she better make herself scarce fast.
“Miriam.” War’s voice is as serious as I’ve ever heard it. “Move.”
Be brave.
“No.”
The horseman scrutinizes me, his wounds still weeping blood. “There are thousands of innocents in this town. She is not one of them. Don’t waste your mercy.”
I square my shoulders. “I’m not moving.”
War steps up to me, and I’m reminded of why he’s so goddamn frightening. He’s over two meters tall, and nearly every square centimeter of him is coated in blood.
“You are playing a dangerous game, wife,” he says, his voice pitched low.
I think it’s supposed to be a threat, but I feel that voice low in my belly, and I’m reminded all over again of the horseman’s kiss.
“I don’t consider life and death to be a game. Spare her.”
“And have her attempt to kill me again?” he says. “That’s madness, woman.”
As he says this, I hear a dull clink. I glance down just in time to see a bloody, spent bullet roll along the road.
That … came out of him.
Holy balls.
“What harm would it do? Spare her,” I urge again.
“You like her simply because she tried to kill me,” he says, giving me a look.
Maybe.
“She’s brave.”
He stares over my shoulder at the woman, a grimace on his face. “She’ll cause trouble.”
But he’s actually considering this.
I press my advantage. “Give her a useful task—make her cook things or manage stuff.”
The battle is still brewing around us, and every second that passes the odds of this woman surviving grow smaller and smaller.
War stares at her for an impossibly long time. His upper lip curls.
“This is a waste of my time,” he says. “For the sake of your soft heart, I will let her live—for now.”
He whistles to a nearby soldier and beckons him over. The man jogs to War’s side. Leaning in close, the horseman whispers something to the soldier. The man nods in response, then breaks away.
I glance behind me. The woman is still standing in the middle of the road, though at some point she procured a knife.
Why didn’t you run when you had the chance? I want to ask her.
She shifts her weight from foot to foot, her eyes going to me, then to War and the soldier. She has an angry, desperate look about her.
The man breaks away from War, striding over to the woman.
“What is he doing?” I ask War, alarmed.
The horseman’s upper lip curls. “Sparing her,” he says, a note of disgust in his voice.
The woman raises her weapon as the soldier comes in close, but the man easily knocks away the blade, grabbing her by the shoulder. As soon as the soldier touches her, she goes berserk, scratching and kicking and screaming.
Gritting his teeth, the soldier begins to explain himself to her, gesturing first to the horseman and me, and then to a nearby horse. Whatever the soldier is telling her, it’s causing her to slowly, reluctantly cooperate.
A minute later, he takes the woman to a nearby horse and helps her onto the saddle, murmuring quietly to her.
“Are you sure he’s not just going to slit her throat the moment we’re out of sight?” I ask War while I stare at the two of them. I don’t even know why I’m so invested in this. Maybe it is simply because the woman hurt War.
“No,” he responds as the soldier and the woman ride off, “I’m not. The hearts of men are fickle and cruel.”
I give him a look just as another bullet wiggles its way out of his armor, clinking to the ground.
The horseman steps in close, and without warning, he cups the back of my head and pulls me in for a savage kiss. The world is spinning on its head, but the moment War’s lips touch mine, the cyclone seems to stop.
There’s no more battle, no more death and violence, no more heaven pitted against earth. It’s just him and me.
He tastes like smoke and steel, and my lips respond to his, just as they did last night. It seems I can’t not kiss him, even when he represents everything I’m fighting against.
His mouth scours mine over and over and—
War breaks away from the kiss, and the world rushes back in.
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I stare at the horseman, dazed, as he backs away, his kohl-lined eyes fixed to mine.
“Deimos!” he calls out, not looking away from me.
War’s steed comes galloping to him like it had been just waiting for the order.
The horseman mounts the beast while I stand there, wondering what the fuck I was thinking just now when I kissed him back.
War doesn’t say anything else. With a final look at me, he rides back into the fray.
By the time the fighting is done, no one is left.
The streets are filled with the dead and dying. The buildings are ashes and rubble. The once blue sky is now a hazy red-brown and ash drifts down like snow.
The captives have been taken away, and the rest of us are filtering back out the way we came.
My hands shake from pain and exhaustion and hunger and a deep sense of wrongness. What happened today wasn’t right.
I stumble across the horseman again on my way out of the city.
War is standing at a crossroads, his back to me, a field of bodies spread around him. He’s splashed with blood, calmly surveying the destruction.
He can’t be something holy. He can’t. Nothing pure can be responsible for pain like this.
But then he turns, and his eyes meet mine. Beneath the bloodlust, there’s a weight and a resolve in his gaze. And if I stare long enough, I might even say that he looks a bit burdened.
I glance away before that can happen.
I continue walking on, skirting around the bodies and strolling right past him as though he were invisible.
Not two minutes later, I hear galloping behind me. I swivel around just in time to see the horseman astride his warhorse, Deimos, the two of them heading straight for me.
War leans out of his saddle, his arm outstretched. I begin to move out of the way, but War simply adjusts his trajectory so that he’s still closing in on me. The distance closes between us—ten meters, five, two.
His arm slams into my midsection, sweeping me off the ground. My breath leaves me all at once as I’m dragged onto his horse. I gasp for air as War secures my back to his front.
“Next time, you’ll wait for me,” he says into my ear.
Unlikely.
I scowl at him over my shoulder as he carries me out of town, hating that I’m pressed so close to him.
Once I’ve taken in a few deep breaths, I say, “You made me kill today.” They were his soldiers, but still.
It wasn’t right, none of it was right.
War doesn’t respond.
Of course he doesn’t.
The horseman’s steed slows as we rejoin the last of the army, who has gathered at the edge of Ashdod. I don’t know why War’s soldiers have stopped here, rather than back at camp, or why War is stopping with them.
Deimos comes to a halt, and as soon as he does I slide off the steed. War lets me go, and that in and of itself should’ve tipped me off that something strange was going on.
I feel the horseman’s gaze burning into my back as I make my way into the gathered crowd of soldiers. The people around me look to their warlord like they’ve been waiting for an announcement.
War’s phobos riders fan out around him, the group of them still on their steeds. I stare at these stoic, mounted men, each one wearing a red band on his bicep. Like War, many of them have taken to wearing kohl to darken their eyes.
A hush falls over the crowd, and my skin pricks at the silence. All eyes are still on War.
What is going on?
Wordlessly, the horseman reaches towards the ruins of Ashdod, his palm upturned. His arm begins to shake, his muscles tense beneath his armor. Slowly, he raises his arm, higher and higher as though lifting a great burden.
I glance around me again at all the rapt faces.
Okay, seriously, what the fuck is going on?
For a long minute, all is quiet, all is still.
Then, I feel it at my feet.
The earth begins to tremble. It’s subtle at first—I almost think it’s my imagination—but it continues to intensify until my legs are vibrating from it. Pebbles skitter along the ground and the earth. All the while War sits on his steed, arm uplifted, his features placid.
A shiver runs down my spine. Something is happening, something …
Around us, the earth begins to split open. People either jump or stumble away as the ground around them parts.
And then—
The ground is moving. Not just opening, but moving. It looks, alive and I can’t make sense of what I’m seeing—until, that is, a desiccated hand rises from the ground.
“Dear God,” I breathe.
From the earth, the dead rise.
Chapter 14
The stories were true. The ones from the east. The ones about the east.
My eyes sweep over the flat landscape. Everywhere my eyes land, the dead are rising. There are dozens and dozens of them. The ground beneath my feet was unknowingly speckled with unmarked graves, and from them, the long gone are coming back to life.
Some of them are nothing more than skeletons; others still have bits of flesh clinging to their desiccated bodies.
As soon as they rise, the dead turn towards Ashdod.
It takes less than a minute for us to hear the distant screams start up.
Dear God. There were still people alive in the city. Only now, hearing those screams …
The horrible, haunting truth sinks in, and it’s paralyzing.
The dead are killing the last of the living. This is why I heard nothing but rumors about those cities gone to the grave. War left no survivors, and without survivors, there was no way to warn the rest of the world that the horseman was coming.
I push my way to the front of the group, just off to the side of the phobos riders. Ahead of me I can see the road into Ashdod. My legs nearly fold as I stare out at the burning city now riddled with zombies.
My gaze moves back to War, with his arm extended.
He’s doing this. Singlehandedly.
Without thinking, my feet are moving me forward, towards him.
A mounted phobos rider blocks my way. “No one disturbs the warlord.”
War turns then, his eyes filled with dark intent. He lowers his arm, though the screams don’t stop.
“Jehareh se hib’wa,” he says.
Let her through.
I push past the rider, feeling the horseman’s gaze on me.
“Stop this,” I say when I get to him.
He stares at me for a long time, his face unreadable. Then, very deliberately, he turns from me, back towards the city.
There is my answer. It’s written in every line of his body.
No.
“Stop it,” I say louder. “Please. This isn’t war.”
This is eradication.
The horseman’s voice rumbles. “This is God’s will.”
I’m forced to wait until it’s over. It’s depressingly quick. From the sounds of it, there is no winning against the dead. If your opponent can’t die, then they can’t truly be stopped.
At some point, the screams begin to lessen. It’s no longer a distant chorus of cries but a whisper. And then that, too, is gone.
Shortly after the screams die away, something around me … changes. I can’t say exactly what it is, only that the air seems easier to breathe. Maybe it’s everyone’s collective tension. The crowd seems to be rousing itself now that the entertainment is over.
War lowers his hand and turns his steed away from the city, steering him over to me.
He stops at my side, extending a hand to me. It’s the same hand he used to raise the dead.
“Aššatu,” he says.
Wife.
It’s clear he means to load me back onto his horse and return me to camp.
I step away from his hand, my eyes rising to meet the horseman’s.
“I hate you,” I say softly, my pulse pounding in my veins. “I think I hate you more than I have ever hated anything.”
&nbs
p; War’s confident demeanor slips a little at my words. I swear for a moment he looks almost … uncertain.
I back away from him then, and he gets the message loud and clear, withdrawing his hand. He lingers for several seconds longer, and again, I sense his deep doubt. For all he supposedly knows of humans, he doesn’t appear to know how to handle our moods.
Eventually, War gives me a heavy, final glance, then steers his horse towards the front of the crowd. I guess he figured I’d follow him back on foot alongside the rest of the soldiers, who are now trailing after him.
I don’t.
I stay rooted in place, watching them all retreat back the way they came.
I swivel around and face the burning remains of Ashdod. My heart aches at the sight of it. Was this what Jerusalem looked like? If I could stand on the Mount of Olives at this very moment and look out over my hometown, would it appear as silent and still as Ashdod?
I take a few steps towards the city, the thought giving me shivers.
This might be my chance at escape. There are undoubtedly bikes and boats and food and all other sorts of resources left in the city. I could arm and equip myself and I could leave.
Throwing a brief glance over my shoulder, I check to make sure that no soldiers are storming back for me. But none of the men and women so much as throw a glance behind them.
Why isn’t anyone stopping me? The worrying thought flitters through my mind only for a second or two before I face Ashdod again.
I take a few more steps forward. It doesn’t matter, I decide, it’s me who needs to stop lingering if I want to actually do this.
Because War will likely come for me, and I can only imagine his wrath.
With that chilling thought, I begin jogging towards the city.
Chapter 15
Ash swirls along the roads of Ashdod, and the air smells like smoke and charred flesh.
It’s just like the stories said it would be. Bones in the streets, cemeteries tilled like fields. Only now do I fully understand.
I crouch down and pick up a femur, leaving the rest of the skeleton where it lays in the road.
The dead came and razed the last living remnants of the city, and then by the looks of it, they went back to being dead. A chill crawls over me when I see the bodies, some who clearly died today, and others, like the skeleton in front of me, long gone.
War (The Four Horsemen Book 2) Page 10