I almost miss the aviary. The birds aren’t making much noise and everything on the streets is drowning out whatever sounds they are making.
I rush inside, and nearly get beheaded by a middle-aged man with an axe.
I jerk back just in time to miss the blade, but only just.
“I’m not here to hurt you!” I say.
He grips his weapon tighter. “You look like it to me.”
I hadn’t thought through the fact that I might look like the enemy. “I want to send out a message.”
The man brings his arm back, the axe blade gleaming. “I bet you do, you filthy liar. Get out of my building. Now.”
“War can raise the dead,” I rush out. “Did you know that?”
“Get out,” the man says again.
“He has an army, but he uses his dead to kill off everyone,” I rush out. “That’s why no one knew he was coming.”
Behind the man, I see a shaking older woman still in her night clothes. Probably his wife.
“Please,” I beg, looking at her. Already, the sounds are getting louder as the army encroaches outside, and the caged birds are beginning to look a little agitated, fluttering then resettling their wings. “I need to warn other cities. There’s not much time.”
“Why should I believe you?” the man says, drawing my attention back to him.
“Because I’ve seen it.”
He still doesn’t appear convinced.
“Look, if I wanted to do you harm, I wouldn’t try to reason with you. If we can get a message out, we can alert other cities.” And just maybe they’ll have time to evacuate before War’s army arrives.
The woman at the back of the building steps up to her husband. “Listen to the girl.”
The man looks harried. “She’s fighting with the horseman,” he objects.
“If you don’t write down her message, I will,” his wife says, a fire in her eyes.
I feel my throat thicken. This is the piece of humanity that I’ve been missing for so long. Bravery in the face of death.
Huffing, the man heads over to a desk pushed beneath the storefront’s main window. “What would you have me write?” he asks, disgruntled.
I turn to face the door, drawing an arrow, prepared to defend this place while I can.
I take a deep breath. “‘War is coming,’” I begin. “‘The horseman has an army at least 5,000 strong, and he’s been traveling down the coast from Israel.’” I continue. “‘He can raise the dead, and his dead patrol every city he’s raided, looking to kill any who survive—’”
The door to the aviary bangs open, and instinctively I release my arrow. I hit the soldier right between the eyes. The woman screams, recoiling back a little.
I grimace, but nock my bow again, pointing the weapon at the ground while I reach out and lock the door.
I call over to the man. “‘—Port Said is already falling as I write this,’” I say, continuing to direct the note. “‘Warn all you can of what I’ve told you.’”
A stone crashes through the window, just missing the aviary owner. He shouts, dropping his pen as the rock slams into the giant cage behind him, startling the birds.
His wife rushes over to him, grabbing some of the thin sheets of paper and pulling him away from the window. As I watch, she grabs a pen and begins scribbling down the same message.
My heart is beating so loudly I can hear it.
This isn’t going to work.
The fighting is right outside. I can hear other houses being raided, other families screaming for their lives. Worst of all are those cries that suddenly cut out. So many innocent people are being butchered, and behind all this carnage is War.
The door rattles as someone tries to get inside. It stops jiggling a second later, but then I see a man’s face in the window, a sword in his hand.
I level my arrow at his face. “Move along unless you want to die.”
Without another word, the soldier leaves the way he came.
I release a breath. So far, I’ve been fortunate, but it’s only a matter of time before my luck runs out.
The man steps into the communal bird cage behind his desk. Rolling up the note, he slips it into a tiny cylinder on the back of one of the pigeons. Once he’s finished attaching the message, he carries the bird to the back of the building and opens the door.
A soldier is waiting for him.
All I hear is a flutter of wings and a choking sound. Then the man is falling and the spooked bird is flapping into the sky.
His wife screams, dropping her pen and paper to rush over to him.
No, no, no.
I lift my bow and arrow, but before I can get a clean shot on the soldier, I hear the thump of an arrow and I see her body recoil. Another arrow follows.
The woman ran to her husband when she saw him killed. She ran to him. War thinks humans are the scourge of the earth, but is there anything so powerful as the way we love?
As soon as she falls, I see the woman who shot her.
I release my own arrow, and it clips the soldier in the shoulder. With a cry, she stumbles out of the back doorway, and now I’m stalking through the aviary, reloading.
I can’t look at the fallen couple who spent their final minutes trying to relay my message.
Outside, the soldier is trying to yank my arrow out of her flesh. I shoot her again, this time in the leg.
She screams, half in pain and half in anger. “What the fuck are you doing?” she accuses, clearly recognizing me.
I lean over her and grab the arrows from her quiver, adding them to my own supply. Just in case I run low.
“I’m trying to save humanity, asshole.”
With that I stalk back inside and kick the door shut.
I’m going to die today.
That thought has crossed my mind during pretty much every battle, but today it settles on me with cold certainty. A macabre part of me wants to know what War would think about that. He seems to care a great deal about my wellbeing, but he doesn’t love me, and he doesn’t mind death, and he’s brought me into battle once again despite how dangerous it is.
Would he mourn me?
He might, I think.
I head back over to the desk and grab the scribbled messages from where they lay. Between the husband and wife, they managed to get two more notes written. I take them both and fold them up, cramming them into tubes attached to the back of the first two pigeons I reach. Clutching the birds close, I rush back outside.
The soldier I shot is still there, leaning against the wall, trying to remove my arrows.
“What you’re doing is pointless,” she huffs, watching me as she works.
“Yeah, right back atcha,” I say, eyeing her futile efforts to remove the arrowheads.
I release the birds, watching them rise into the morning air. I don’t linger long enough to see whether or not they make it out of the city. I think it might crush the last bit of my hope if I saw them fall.
I head back inside. There are five more birds in the cage. Between three people, we’ve only managed to release three birds.
I grab the pen and paper from where the woman dropped them, and I begin to scribble out the same message I instructed the couple to write.
It’s an odd sensation, fighting against the horseman—fighting against God Himself, apparently. This is about the time that people pray. Instead, I’m trying to sabotage War’s efforts. I don’t know where that puts me on the scale from good to evil. I always assumed good was synonymous with God. I don’t know now. But this feels right. I have to assume that’s worth something.
I miraculously manage to get two more birds out with messages before a phobos rider hops through the window.
Our eyes lock and a bolt of recognition shoots through me.
Uzair, the man who caught me spying on War and who caught me killing another phobos rider.
“You,” he says. He stalks towards me.
My bow is resting over my shoulder and my dagger is stil
l holstered. Before I can reach for either, Uzair grabs me by the hair and yanks me forward. I stumble, yelping when a clump of hair rips free. My hands go to my head, my eyes pricking at the blinding pressure on my scalp.
“What are you doing?” I demand. But I already know.
This is about the phobos rider I killed back in Arish. It might also be about the second rider that War killed, the one who challenged the horseman when he removed me from the lineup of traitors.
Without answering me, Uzair drags me outside, where smoke from several burning buildings now obscures the morning light.
I knew I had a rocky relationship with War’s phobos riders, but I didn’t realize it was this bad. They are, after all, relentlessly devoted to their leader.
I guess that devotion doesn’t extend to me.
Hussain had warned me to watch my back. I just hadn’t listened carefully enough.
Uzair throws me into the street. As I hit the ground, I hear an ominous wooden crack come from one of my weapons.
Please let that be one of my arrows. Anything but the bow.
“Get up, you filthy bitch,” Uzair demands.
Gritting my teeth, I push myself to my feet.
“Eating our food, sleeping in our camp,” he says, prowling towards me. “Sucking the warlord’s cock.”
He closes in on me and, pulling a fist back, he swings. I stumble out of the way, just barely managing to avoid the hit.
“Just because War won’t let you suck it himself doesn’t mean you have to get jealous.” I’m goading him. I don’t care.
The phobos rider comes at me again. Swinging once, twice, three times. I evade the hits—each by a hair’s breadth.
“I was hoping I’d come across you,” he says. “I thought you’d be smart enough to stay away from the fighting. It’s so easy to die out here.”
His meaning is clear: it’s so easy to make you disappear.
And it really is. People don’t pay that much attention. Everyone else is busy killing or saving themselves. It was sheer bad luck that this man caught me killing his comrade during the last battle.
I grab War’s dagger and unsheathe it.
Uzair smirks at the sight. He pulls his own sword out, which is much bigger and longer.
Fuck me.
In fighting as in sex, bigger tends to be better.
Never going to win this way.
My eyes sweep over the street—over the combatants and the carnage. Far in the distance, I see War. He’s hard to miss on his red steed. But this far away he can’t possibly recognize me in my black pants and dusty shirt. I’m just another civilian about to die.
My attention returns to Uzair, who’s closing in on me again.
Screw it.
I turn on my heel and take off in the opposite direction.
“Fucking coward!” I hear him shout, followed by the sound of him sheathing his sword. “Come back!”
It’s too good to hope that Uzair will just let me go. I mean, I do hope it, but I’m not surprised when I hear the pound of his heavy footfalls behind me.
If he gets ahold of me, it’s game over. He’s a better fighter and he has a better weapon and a longer striking range. And he’s undoubtedly had much more practice than me at killing.
I pump my arms and legs, running towards War, even though he’s far away. Too far away.
To my right are several burning buildings. Making a quick decision, I dart for the nearest one, dashing through the gaping doorway.
Inside, the air is hazy with smoke, but I catch sight of stairs just as I hear Uzair closing in behind me. I sprint for the staircase, coughing as I breathe in lungfuls of smoke.
“You’re not getting away!” Uzair calls after me. “Not today. Our warlord can’t save you out here!”
I take the stairs two at a time. When will this asshole give up?
As soon as I reach the second floor, I stagger a little at the sight I’m met with. The hallway stretches out in front of me, and the far end of it is blazing, thick plumes of smoke rolling away from the flames.
This was a bad idea.
I charge forward anyway. So long as Uzair hasn’t given up the chase, I need to keep running.
I squint against the thickening smoke and the blistering heat; I can barely see where I’m going.
Behind me I hear the phobos rider’s persistent footfalls.
Fuck.
Run, run, run!
I flee down the hall, where the fire is worst. I don’t know what I’m doing. By the time I realize that I might be able to jump out of a window, I’ve passed the rooms still intact enough to do so.
I don’t hear the metallic hiss of Uzair’s sword when he unsheathes it behind me, but I feel the tip of it catch the back of my neck when he swings, the blade slicing open my skin and loping off a chunk of my hair.
I trip, sprawling out across the ground, the arrows in my quiver scattering. The floor is hot to the touch.
He tried to behead me!
I can feel my blood dripping down the back of my neck, the heat evaporating most of it. The rooms to my left, my right, and ahead of me are all engulfed in flame.
Trapped.
I flip onto my back as Uzair looms over me, swallowing down my rising fear. I still have my dagger gripped tightly in my hand, but it’s next to useless at this point.
This is my end.
Wife. I can almost hear the horseman’s voice in my head. Don’t die on me now.
“War won’t forgive you for this,” I say. This might be the first time I’ve openly acknowledged what I think I mean to the horseman.
“He’s not going to know it was me,” Uzair replies.
I suppose he won’t. War might not find my body at all. The thought sends my pulse thundering. I’m not sure why it bothers me, only that it does.
I take a deep breath and stare up at the phobos rider, my forearms braced against the scorching ground.
Uzair pulls his sword back, the blade already caked with blood.
He swings downward, aiming for my neck, his attack controlled. I watch that blade fall, and I almost let him get me.
I’m not ready.
There are things I haven’t said to War, things I haven’t done and things I still haven’t even admitted to myself.
I roll away, barely missing the blow.
The phobos rider swings again at me, and this time, the edge of his blade opens my arm and trails across my chest. And Goddamn, it hurts like a bitch.
I bring my boot up and kick Uzair’s wrist. The impact jars his weapon from his hand, and the sword clatters to the ground.
He reaches for it, bending down within striking range. And that’s when I lunge.
I plunge my dagger into the rider’s neck, grimacing when his blood spurts out like a fountain.
He stares at me, furious, like that wasn’t supposed to happen. I was just a helpless, defeated woman.
Uzair tumbles forward, next to me. By the time his body hits the ground, he’s all but dead. I pull my dagger from his throat and stagger to my feet.
Need to move. The walls are on fire and the ground is becoming unbearably hot, even through the soles of my boots.
Now that the fight is over, however, I move slowly, my muscles leaden. I heave in several deep breaths, but I can’t seem to pull in enough air. Instead, smoke burns my lungs.
I’ve only taken a few steps forward when, ahead of me, part of the ceiling caves in, barricading me in and turning my only exit into a thick wall of fire.
My stomach bottoms out.
Should’ve let Uzair kill me. It would be a better death than the one I’m going to get. I walked myself into my own grave, coming into this building.
The flames stream up the walls like some savage orange river. I cover my mouth with my shirt and squint against the smoky darkness.
Can’t see, can’t breathe.
I stumble towards the obstruction, even as more of the ceiling crashes down around me. I’m starting to feel faint from
all the smoke inhalation.
This is the end.
BOOM!
A shadow bursts through the debris, the flames licking its sides. From the darkness, I see a blood red shape take form—War’s horse, I realize. Deimos gallops towards me.
My eyes move up, and I meet the violent, turbulent gaze of the horseman himself.
His eyes burn brighter than the fire—and his expression! Like heaven itself couldn’t stop him.
War swings himself off his horse and runs towards me. When he gets to my side, the horseman cups my face, his hands cool against my burning skin.
“What were you thinking?” His shout resonates above the roar of the fire.
I touch his face, my breath labored. My lungs are on fire, and I can’t seem to stay grounded. The only thing that’s keeping me present is War’s panicked expression and his grip on me.
“You could’ve died!” he says.
And then he kisses me.
He ravages my mouth like it’s a city he’s set to destroy. His lips part mine, and then the taste of him fills my mouth.
It’s like savoring heaven and hell and earth and death and all the things there aren’t names for.
This doesn’t feel like all our other touches, the ones where we owed each other something. War’s massive body trembles with anger and need and want. Want and want and want and want—
I think I’m faint with relief and lust—that and the darkening air must be to blame for the black dots that cloud my vision. But then I feel my legs buckle, and then I feel nothing at all.
Chapter 38
I don’t remember War catching me, and I don’t remember us mounting his steed. But I do wake in time to see us charge through the burning building.
The horseman’s hand is under my shirt, his palm nestled between my breasts. Even now, when we’re still in danger, he’s dead set on healing me.
The ceiling and walls are falling around us like tears, and yet Deimos remains steady through it all, even as embers drop onto his dark mane. I swipe them away, though even that small action causes my vision to darken.
We clamor down the stairwell, the jostling ride causing me to cough until I’m breathless.
There’s no gradual shift from darkness to light. One moment we’re inside the smoky building, and the next, we’re outside, daylight blazing about us. I can barely see the sun through the burning haze of the city, but still the sight of it—bright and bloody—causes a sob to slip out of me.
War (The Four Horsemen Book 2) Page 25