His forearm is about to bump right into—
BOOM!
BOOM—BOOM—BOOM!
Chapter 60
War
I wake, as though from sleep, my eyes wincing open. The mortal sun bears down on me, and the ripe musk of the earth is in my nostrils, along with the scent of spilled blood.
It’s the smell of my first memory, the one that formed me. That and anger. Back in my infancy, I was all cunning and anger. I’ve learned since then some of the finer points of men and war.
For a moment, I cannot place where I am or how I got here. I’m lying in some sort of hole and my skin feels new. This is one of those sensations that I doubt humans have much experience with. New skin.
It all comes back to me then—how I was struck down. My riders lured me into a trap.
I feel my rage, like a spark, catch and grow.
They closed in on me and held me at bay and slit my throat damn near to the bone.
My rage doubles and doubles again. How much time has passed? How long did it take for my body to reform? That is the trouble with skin and bones and blood and muscle. They can only repair themselves so fast, even on one like me.
I begin to push myself up, my body feeling new and old all at once.
A thick mass of flesh slides off of me.
This too, is a familiar sensation. How many fields have I watered with lifeblood and fertilized with flesh? How many men have clawed their way out from beneath such death?
Countless.
I’ve given this way of life up, and yet it will always be there as my first memories of existence.
I push away the body as I sit up.
But then my eyes catch on the delicate wrist and the two hamsa bracelets—
Everything within me stills. Everything but fear. Cold rolled fear.
I let out a noise.
No.
“Miriam?” My hands go to the body, but the limbs—the two that are left—are cold.
I don’t believe it.
It’s not her. She wouldn’t be this foolish. She wouldn’t. Please God, she wouldn’t.
I flip the corpse over, trying to wash away the sight of the soft, feminine limbs. Most of the body has been blown away, but there’s some skin remaining around the neck.
My eyes move to the throat, to the holy scar at its base.
Surrender.
“No,” it comes out as a plea. “Miriam.”
There’s not much of her face remaining. There’s not much of anything remaining.
I don’t expect my throat to tighten and my gut to twist at the sight of it all. I am used to dismemberment. I am not used to caring about the creature dismembered. But I always have with her. Her injuries always made me feel odd. Crazed and helpless and human. So very, disturbingly human.
She can’t be dead.
“Miriam,” I beg, tilting her head back. It flops to the side.
A thousand upon a thousand years and so many countless deaths. None of it had cost me anything.
But this one—
She’s not dead. She can’t be dead. Not her and not …
My eyes slip down to what remains of her torso. A third of it is simply gone, along with all the hopes and dreams it carried.
“No,” I sob. “No, no, no …” I cradle her against me.
Desperate, I press a hand to her skin, willing her wounds to heal. But the flesh won’t stitch back together. It won’t even attempt it. It’s stopped functioning altogether.
For one mad moment, I consider raising her like any other undead. But my heart crumples at the thought. It wouldn’t be her. I’ve reanimated enough bodies to know I’m working with a vessel and nothing more. What made Miriam Miriam is gone. Long gone.
I begin to weep in earnest, clutching her tightly to me.
Why, wife?
Why?
I glance around us at the sand and dust that coats our bodies. At the partially caved in wall near my feet. It takes a bit longer to see the few bits of metal scattered about and the charred remains of Miriam’s clothing.
They obviously buried me with the same damn explosives that kept going off when they were trying to kill me. And Miriam … Miriam must have seen them as well.
Which means my wife came for me despite their presence. Was it suicide? She had an unhealthy leaning towards death. Or had she tried to retrieve me?
My gaze goes back to her throat.
Surrender. The word mocks me now.
I feel mortal and powerless.
That thought alone pulls me from my grief. I straighten my shoulders.
I was never powerless. Not when I first woke and not now.
There is still one path that might be open to me, one possibility left.
I hold Miriam’s body to me and I begin to chant in Angelic.
This is my last hope. My only hope.
I close my eyes and the world disappears.
When I open them again, I am somewhere else.
Chapter 61
War
Thanatos stands in front of me like he’s been waiting. He looks unsurprised but vaguely disappointed.
“No,” he says.
Around us, the air shifts and moves. We are everywhere and nowhere all at once. So many voices filter in, so many faces flicker by. The humanity we swore to destroy is still teeming around us.
“Why are you here?” he asks, his dark wings looming behind his back.
“You already know,” I growl.
He eyes me up and down. “You should be doing your duty.”
“I have.” I take a step forward. Men quiver at even this slight show of power. Death doesn’t so much as flinch. “I want her back.”
He tilts his head, his black hair slipping from behind an ear. “I have never seen you want for a human.”
Death wouldn’t understand love, not as he currently is. He hasn’t roamed the earth like I have. It is a sensation one must live to experience.
My voice drops low. “She’s marked,” I say instead. This is something he will understand.
And yet Thanatos appears unmoved. “She served her purpose, and now she’s been called home.”
I feel a part of myself break at his words. I am her home. Not the Great Everafter.
Stepping forward, I grab his shoulder and squeeze. We have always been close, he and I. Surely he will work with me the way we have always worked together.
“I beg you,” I say, my voice low, “bring her back.”
Death’s eyes narrow. “When have you ever begged?” He appears put off by it. “My sure-footed, vengeful brother, you take.”
And yet I cannot take this.
“Please.”
Thanatos’s wings stretch, then resettle. He’s intrigued, which is an improvement from unmoved. “You and I both know she cannot live,” Death says. “That’s not our task.”
“You spared Pestilence’s woman.”
Thanatos had mercy then.
“A curiosity I will not repeat,” Death says. “Besides, his woman was … retrievable. Yours is not.”
“She’s already crossed?” I ask, that sense of hopelessness flooding me all over again. But of course she’s crossed. The moment life released her from its clutches, she must’ve.
My brother’s demeanor softens. “She’s fine—as is the child.”
The child. My child.
When I first woke as a man, and then when I fought—all that time I thought I had nothing to lose. I thought the end necessitated the means. Humans—all humans—were doomed to die. It wasn’t personal.
I feel like I’m choking on my old beliefs now.
“I will do anything,” I say.
Death’s lips press together. “There is only one thing that can be done.”
I don’t breathe.
“Surrender your sword, War.”
My one purpose. My existence and identity wrapped into one.
Surrender. The single sign written on Miriam.
I suck in a breath.
He’d always known. I was the one who’d been a fool in my certainty. I’d basked in my utter confidence that Miriam was mine by divine right and that nothing could change that.
Nothing can change that. This isn’t over. It doesn’t have to be.
Surrender.
Nothing comes without sacrifice—this least of all. Miriam was right, love and war cannot coexist. I can have one or the other, but not both.
My sword wasn’t with me when I left the earth, but it’s here with me now, settled in its scabbard like we were never separated. I reach for it. The metal sings as I withdraw the weapon from its sheath.
“So that is your choice,” Thanatos says, curiosity and disappointment rolled into his voice.
“It is no choice.” I will cast my lot with the mortals. The fallible, complicated mortals.
I begin to hand my blade over, hilt first. Thanatos reaches to take it from me.
At the last moment, I pull back the sword, withholding it. “The child comes too.”
Death’s dark eyes study me. “What is the point, brother? She was barely a possibility.”
She. A girl then.
“She comes back,” I insist.
Death looks at me with his dark eyes. He’s judging my heart just as much as I’ve judged humankind’s. Eventually he nods. “Enjoy what time you have left with them,” he says honestly. “I hope it is worth it.”
With those words, a change overtakes me.
I’m stripped bare of my bloodlust and my immortality. It lifts like a weight from my shoulders.
I’m no longer proud War but a penitent man.
“You are released.”
Chapter 62
Miriam
I blink my eyes open. It’s bright, and my skin tingles. I don’t feel quite right.
War leans over me, and my eyes focus.
I gasp in a breath at the sight of him, whole and unmarred.
“Wife,” he says, his own voice shocked. And then he pulls me against him.
War buries his face in my neck, and his huge body begins to tremble. It takes me a moment to realize he’s weeping.
“You’re alive,” I say, amazed, running my fingers through the hair on his head. I’d feared that this death was going to be his last.
But how … ?
“You shouldn’t have come for me,” he says, his voice hoarse.
I pull away a little to look at him, and I touch one of his tears. I’ve never seen the horseman weep.
“I love you,” I say. I bottled up those words until it was nearly too late. They rush out of me now. “I will never not come for you because I love you.”
War’s face is naked emotion. Disbelief and joy fill his features, chasing away his tears.
His hands clasp my cheeks and he searches my eyes. “I am having one of your human dreams,” he says. “This is too wonderful to be real.”
“I think this is real.” Right?
I glance around me. We’re not in the grave anymore, but we’re nearby, the dead still scattered around us. I remember that—and I remember trying to save War. I’d been so close, but then his hand slipped. I don’t remember an explosion, but I don’t remember anything else either. My memory simply stops.
“What happened?” I ask.
War’s throat works. “When I woke …” he draws in a shaky breath, “You were gone.” His eyes are wild with emotion. “You came to save me and I couldn’t save you.”
I glance down at my body. My clothes are in charred tatters. Just seeing the state they’re in … there must have been an explosion. One that I don’t remember and never felt.
I take in my outfit again. The fabric is almost completely burned away, and yet my skin remains unblemished.
The abrupt end in my memory … I must’ve been hurt badly enough to black out. Which could only mean that War somehow healed me.
“You did save me,” I reply, confused. How could he say he hadn’t done so? If he hadn’t, there would be wounds, and I would be in pain.
“Not with my own two hands,” he admits.
My brows furrow. I don’t understand.
“Then how?” I ask.
He strokes my hair back. “I am free, Miriam.”
I must’ve hit my head really hard because I’m not following. “Free of what?”
“My purpose.”
It’s as much as he’s admitted before, but this time, I truly process his words. “You really aren’t going to kill anymore?” I say.
He shakes his head. “Not unless it’s to protect you—or our daughter.”
I raise my eyebrows, then glance down at my stomach. “Our daughter?”
He smiles at me, and that smile seems to stretch to every corner of his face. He’s so painfully gorgeous. “Sorry to ruin the surprise.”
Our daughter.
“How did you find out?”
“I told you, I didn’t save you. My brother did.”
“Your brother?” I say quizzically.
“Death.”
With that one word, my light mood vanishes.
There’s only one reason why Death himself would save me.
“I … died?” I can barely force the words out.
War stares at me for a long moment. “For a time.”
Oh God … I died.
I touch my stomach again, panic clawing up my throat. “And the baby—she’s still alive?”
“I made sure of it.”
I begin to weep then—because apparently crying is contagious right now.
I don’t understand. I went from dying to living. As did War. As did our child.
“I surrendered,” I say nonsensically.
War pulls me tight against him. “So did I.”
For a moment, the two of us simply stay like that. His body is as solid as ever; he feels unchanged, and yet things must’ve changed.
“What’s the catch?” I ask him.
Everything I love, I lose. Now, when it seems like I have regained it all, I’m afraid it’ll slip away from me again.
“There is no catch,” War says, “unless you count the fact that now I am well and truly mortal. I will live and age and die as you will.”
When he said he was free of his purpose, he meant it literally.
Whatever happened while I was … gone … it came at a steep personal cost to War. So steep that he lost his immortality.
My heart breaks a little at that. I’ve seen enough of death to last me at least twenty-seven lifetimes.
“And Deimos?” I ask.
“He will endure the same fate.”
“What about the other horsemen?” The ones who haven’t yet walked the earth.
War’s expression turns grim. “My brothers will not stop, and they are even stronger than me.”
So the world still isn’t safe—but it isn’t beyond saving, either. Pestilence and War laid down their weapons. Not all hope is lost.
Besides, that’s a worry for a later time.
I’m alive, War’s alive, and my child’s alive. Oh—and there will be no more killing.
The corner of my mouth curves up as a thought hits me. “Are all your powers gone, or can you still speak every language that has ever existed?”
“San sani du, seni nüşüna ukuvı?”
Can you still understand me when I do?
A laugh slips out. “I can.”
War and I stare at each other, and for the first time, it truly sinks in.
It’s over. It’s really over. The fighting and killing and suffering. I get to have this man and my child and a future too.
My smile slips away. “What do we do now?” I ask him.
“I don’t care, wife, so long as I do it with you.”
Chapter 63
Two years later
My heart is in my throat when I knock on the blue door in front of me. The house, like many others in Heraklion, Crete, is picturesque, despite showing some signs of weather damage.
Maybe we got it wrong again
. It wouldn’t be the first time, unfortunately.
On the other side of the door I can hear muffled voices, then the sound of footfalls approaching.
It’s taken me a long time to get to this moment—nearly a decade if I tally up all the time that’s passed. If, of course, this is in fact the moment I’ve been waiting for.
The door opens, and I don’t breathe as I take in the woman standing on the other side.
I got it right. I know it in an instant.
She looks different—much, much older than I remember—but all the familiar features are still there.
“Mom?” I say.
For a moment, my mother just stands there, her face blank. She studies my own face, like this might be a joke, and then—there it is. Recognition flares in her eyes. She covers her mouth with her hands, her eyes welling up.
“Miriam?”
I draw in what feels like my first breath. I nod, blinking back my own tears. I’ve waited so long for this.
Can’t believe it’s happening.
“It’s me,” I say, my voice shaky.
She lets out a sob, then opens her arms wide, sweeping me up into her embrace.
My mom is really still alive. And I’m hugging her.
Years of pain and separation dissolve away in that moment. I dreamed of this embrace so many times.
Her entire body is shaking. “My baby. My daughter.” She’s now openly weeping and rocking me against her, and I can’t see straight through my own tears. She pets my hair back as she holds me. “For years I prayed to whatever god would listen,” she says, the apology thick in her voice. “I stayed here, on Crete, because I wanted to be close in case—”
I shake my head against her. I’m not here for explanations. I understand. Everything I went through had to happen for me to find War and end up right here, and it all started with my miraculous survival from that first explosion.
“It’s alright, Mom. I found you.” And you’re alive. This is my wildest hope come true. “It’s alright,” I repeat again.
Now she clings to me, like I’m the mother and she’s the child. “My daughter, my intelligent, resilient daughter. There are so many things I want to know about you—so many years and memories …”
“Mama?” a woman calls from inside the house.
War (The Four Horsemen Book 2) Page 41