At the doors, I try to dismount Shadow, but my arms quake under the pull of my weight, and I land on the wooden boards with a choked groan.
Gently, Shadow nudges my side with his nose. I barely stir.
“Pessie?” he whispers, and nudges a little harder. “Can you crawl? We only need to make it through the doors.”
We’re vulnerable.
I hear the unspoken meaning behind his words. I am off my steed, on the porch of a lonely church. We are exposed to the humans should they come across us.
“I can do it,” I grit out.
Despite my determined promise, as soon as I push up onto my hands and knees, a raging fire is let loose through my limbs, charring my bones and scorching my shivering nerves.
A strangled sound escapes me.
I almost collapse again. But before I can, my body is thrown forward with a powerful spasm, and that wretched brown bile slaps onto the wooden slats between my hands.
I spit out the last of it, but the taste doesn’t leave my mouth.
Shadow follows me as I manage to drag myself through the doors and into the sweltering heat of the rotting church. As he prods the doors shut behind us, I wonder if the potent stench of disease comes from me, because I see no bodies. No sick humans strewn about the pews or altar.
“They are here,” Shadows speaks quietly, coming to a stand at my side. “Somewhere.”
I slump against the edge of a pew and look around at the dusty air.
“We’ll check,” I groan, clutching my aching stomach.
It feels like the iron fist of an Elemental squeezing everything in my gut.
My breath comes out in rasps. “Just … a moment’s rest … first.”
Shadow waits patiently.
His brow pinches and he doesn’t take his worried gaze from my slumped body. Not even as my eyelashes flutter with a drifting consciousness does he look away from me.
He’s the last thing I see before I slip into the dark.
Chapter 18
I can’t see the dust in the air anymore. I wake to the night’s pure darkness sweeping through the stained-glass windows.
At some point, Shadow dragged me to the corner of the confession booth. I am slumped against its side, and Shadow sleeps at my feet.
Some candles flicker orange from the altar.
Shadow is a brilliant steed, a wise soul, and a smarter being than most I know. But he cannot light candles.
“Who else is here?” I groan weakly.
Shadow’s head jerks up and, alarmed, he stares at me.
I must have spooked him in his deep rest.
“One sick human,” he tells me, blinking away his surprise. “And many dead ones.”
I nod faintly, gaze locked onto the candle flames.
Cracks in the wood panels let in hisses of wind from the outside. The flames flicker under the assault, and I vaguely think of my health.
Shadow will soon feel it.
We are bonded in many ways. Shared sickness is one of them. But only when I am lost entirely to the plague brewing beneath my flesh will Shadow fall to it.
And he falls as hard as I do.
We mightn’t be safe here.
“The human…”
I force myself closer to my steed and reach for his neck. Blood glistens on my fingertips, fleeing from behind my nails. Sores ooze pus along my palm. Even after all this time, I cringe.
“Where is the human?”
Shadow puffs a warm breath over my hand. It soothes the pain for a fleeting moment.
“In a room.” The guarded look he gives me matches his tone.
“What are you hiding from me, my deceptive friend?”
He looks away.
The candlelight stretches over his long face, illuminating the grey of his coat, darkening the black patches that stain him. His bruises.
“It’s starting.” I run my fingertips over his marks. “Shadow, I need to know where the human is—I must make this place safe for us.”
He turns his gaze down to my clammy feet, wearing the same sweats that smear over my cold body.
Fever is setting in.
With a human on the loose in the church, it isn’t safe for us. I must kill it—and fast, before I lose consciousness again.
“Show me,” I command, tone low as though scraping over gravel.
Shadow and I both struggle to stand, and use the wall for support. If this is a sign of our weakness to come, it has never been more important to eradicate any nearby survivors.
I will not suffer these days in added torment as humans make their useless attempts to destroy us. They will never succeed, but it doesn’t make watching the torture inflicted upon my beloved steed any easier.
The wall is our crutch now. I drag myself along it, Shadow clomping heavily behind me.
We take it down to the end, where it cuts off into a long, gloomy corridor.
I eye it darkly.
“So much for a place of worship,” I mutter, because my voice can’t manage much more than that. “It is darker than a Fallen One down there.”
Shadow can only gather a grunt in answer.
I feel the tension swell in our bond. It thickens, and I think it’s almost suffocating in its density.
Shadow doesn’t want me to go down here. He wants to keep me from the human.
It’s then that I realise—
“Addie.”
I look over my shoulder at my grey-eyed steed.
“Addie is the survivor, isn’t she?”
His lips curl into a sneer. “Will you destroy her now?”
I should.
I must.
But … she is just a girl.
“You have killed many children,” argues Shadow. “Babies, elders, those born with ailments of nature. Your pestilence knows no discrimination—or mercy.”
But my own hands do.
As my plague creeps out of me, then shatters through the world, I have no control over where it leads, who it takes. The direction my plague goes is of its own discretion—everywhere. And all that it touches, falls to it.
But my own hand … that I can control.
I turn back to the corridor. “You said she was sick already.”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps too sick to be of any real threat.”
“Perhaps.” He sounds unconvinced.
He hates this—a merciful side of me, new to us both. Uncharted territory to those who have charted every territory.
“Let us see how poorly she is,” I reason, “before we make any decisions.”
The anxiety that rattles our bond is his answer.
I do not like this…
That’s what he tells me. And I can’t blame him.
As much as I’d seen him speared, attacked, decapitated, butchered, on that boat, he’d seen the same. He had felt the hopelessly useless need to protect me, but was not able to break free long enough to reach me.
It dawns on me that this … the threat posed by any human … is as distressful to Shadow as it is to me.
We want to protect each other. And why should I risk him for a little human that I care nothing about?
I can’t. I won’t.
I push into the misery of the corridor.
There are a few empty, grimy rooms along the way. Each door I open leads to something dreadfully dull. Old books. A collection of wine and wafer bread that—sickeningly enough—is supposed to signify the blood and flesh of an overconfident, crucified rabbi.
Ah, the hypocrisy of organised religions. To think I was once one involved in them…
A self-indulgent smile settles on my lips as I remember pieces of my past. My religion has no name now. It died along with my clan before I was taken as a slave. But I remember enough that I know it was a pure belief system. One that worshiped nature. The sky, the grains, the sea, the earth.
The one true God to the people of this world.
We reach the last door, and I know this is the one. Not because it is th
e only room left unchecked—it’s the stink that gives them away.
I know that smell. It’s the taste of bile that wets my tongue, the bitter blood dried at the corners of my mouth, the cold sweat slicked over my body, mucus that swells in the lungs, and—while as a Horserider, I am free from these symptoms, my recollection of them in my last days as a human are forever charred into my mind—the utterly vile stench of urine and excrement.
The door is ajar.
I prop myself against the frame before I press my finger against the door as though it’s a button, and watch it drift open.
First, my gaze rinses over the array of bodies. They are lined so perfectly together, wrapped in torn curtains and robes. Mummified. But the closer to the edge I look, the less refined the bandages are—until it becomes unwrapped cadavers, staring up at the ceiling.
The priest is among the unwrapped.
Robes cover his body, blood-stained and torn in some places, but his face is bare—as stiff and cold as my own right now.
He’s one of dozens.
Townspeople, I imagine. Some have bags tucked by their sides. Not that they’ll be needing them.
I hum and stagger inside, careful to step around the bodies. Shadow is too large for the doorway. He stays in the corridor, watching me.
Every body looks different.
Some faces appear chewed away by wolves, torn and shredded until all that’s left are bones and some strips of muscle. Others are perfectly intact, pale and hollow as though a layer of skin was simply tossed over a skull, but not enough sores to convince me that all in this room died from my plague.
It isn’t uncommon for humans to end their own lives before we can. I understand that. Why suffer when there are … nicer ways to go? Fall asleep, don’t ever wake up.
I hum, and go in search of bloody knives or phials of poison. Anything to betray the suicides that I’m certain have happened in this room.
But I make it halfway through the graveyard when I hear it—the poorly voice that croaks like a voice on its deathbed.
“You…rrr…b-b…akk.”
I still.
Slowly, I turn to look back at the door.
Nestled between it and the wall is Addie. Piles of pillows and stacks of blankets surround her; a rather short fort, I think.
I hate myself for it—I hate her for it. But I feel a tug of pity for the girl. Among the corpses, I have no doubt that her parents are there. Dead. No one to look after the sick girl hidden in the shadows.
And sick she is.
It can’t have been long since my pestilence began to seep out of me and into the air. Only those nearest me will be as deeply diseased as those in the church. The closer they are, the sooner they are infected.
But I didn’t expect this.
Only yesterday did I begin to bleed. Today, the sores cracked and bled pus. Bile burned my throat some hours ago.
Addie is quicker to find the symptoms. It’s never something I realised before now. As my pestilence brews inside of me, the humans already suffer the worst of the symptoms that I have not even felt yet.
They must be weaker that way…
My mouth sets into grim line.
So this is what awaits me. In days, I will suffer what Addie does.
Bleeding eyeballs; hands blackening into the colour of charred wood; sores that have peeled apart into gaping holes, so deep that I see the maggots writhing on her bones.
“I told you to hide underground.”
Not that my advice matters in the end.
I sigh before I drag myself toward the dying girl.
Addie watches me near, a fresh fear in her weary, crimson eyes. The blood must burn; I wonder how well she can see.
Slowly, I slide down the wall beside her and let my aching feet press into the feathery pillows surrounding us. She didn’t build herself a little fort—she built herself a coffin.
In one hand, she holds her fone, and in the other, her book. That book. Its wrinkled spine is so worn that the rosary beads woven through the pages shine brighter than the letters.
“It’s wrong,” I tell her. She doesn’t look at me, but her gaze cuts down to the bible. “A padded book of half-truths. Those pages existed before I did, yet it talks of me.”
Her fingers press into the worn leather, earning a creak.
“When it was written, there was only one Horserider—the Conqueror. And she is no man.” The look I give Addie is a bitter one. “There were no floods,” I add. “No arks or ten commandments. That book tells you to worship one, but you should worship only this earth.”
Addie looks up at the corpses.
I turn my face to hers. “I cannot stop it.”
Addie won’t look at me. She keeps her distant gaze on the bodies lined across the room. Her parents. People she knew. People she loved and cherished.
Not that I care so much about that part.
“The disease grows within me,” I go on, though I’m not sure she is even listening. “And it releases on its own. Never have I tried to stop it. Do you know why?”
She is listening to me. Her head gives a slight shake.
I smile. A small victory.
“I haven’t tried,” I say, “because it isn’t within my power to try. All I can do is nurture the disease and release it on command. But the pestilence that takes the world—I’m just a body to hold and release it when the time comes.”
I’m not explaining this well. I can tell by the harsh lines at her mouth, making her looker far older than her years, more severe than she should.
“Unlike you,” I continue, “I exist without choice. Do you know what I mean by that?” I don’t wait for her to respond. “Free-Will—I have none of it. It was taken from me a long time ago. Now, my body belongs to those above, and it does what They command. Like your devices…”
I give a lazy gesture to the fone in her slack grip.
“…in the hand of others,” I add solemnly. “We aren’t so different, Addie. We are both controlled by stronger forces. You have no choice in this sickness, and neither do I. So we both must suffer.”
For the first time since I sat beside her, she looks at me.
Shadow reaches out through our bond. What are you doing?
He’ll know soon enough.
I don’t spill secrets and my deepest thoughts to a human child for any grand reason. It’s a small offer of trust. It’s as close to mercy as I can give. Because I need her to trust me.
Addie turns those bleeding, pained eyes on me. I’m certain tears dilute the blood that drips from the hole in her cheek.
Mercy.
She needs mercy.
Slowly, I reach for her. She cringes away from my touch, but her weakness is too great.
I rest my hand on her shoulder as gently as I can manage. A hiss still escapes her gritted teeth.
“Don’t touch me.”
The venom of her words doesn’t surprise me. If I could speak to the ones who ordered my end, I would say much worse.
My hand slips around the nape of her neck until my fingers stroke along her jawline. Almost there.
My voice is a mere murmur; “Rest now.”
I have her now, comfortably in my hold. She begins to sag against me, giving up—and before she knows what I’m doing, I grip her jaw and I yank.
Her neck snaps instantly.
Her body falls onto my lap.
The sickness was too much—too brutal.
This is my mercy. I let her leave the pain of her body, because I remember what it’s like to suffer it before death.
Addie’s mercy was that she didn’t know. She simply … went to sleep.
I look down at her. Eyes still open, pus oozing from sores, a hole so deep that I can see her cheekbone behind the muscle and flesh.
“Goodbye, Addie,” I whisper, stroking her hair back from her face. “May you find peace soon.”
Chapter 19
Midday swelters heat through the wooden walls of the church.
> Shadow and I rest near the door, where a breeze creeps in from the gaps. A slight whisper of relief, cool enough to soothe some of my sores.
After hours of drowning in this heat, my skin has started to catch up to Addie’s. Now I understand why she was so quick to rot. It’s this church. The heat of it, the suffocating air that festers on the sores and peels apart the skin.
Though I can barely manage enough strength to lift my head from the floor, I know the flesh on my hand is gone. I can feel the exposed bones at my knuckles.
Shadow is falling with me.
His harsh, uneven breaths match mine now. And neither of us have moved for hours.
He’s sprawled out at my feet. Every shiver of agony that runs through him pushes his swelling belly against my toes.
I can do nothing for him.
Together, we must suffer. At least I have Shadow with me.
Addie was all alone for the worst of it.
The pain is too great to feel much more than a tug of guilt. It pins down my limbs, fills my skull with hot lead, and turns the inside of my lungs to sandpaper.
I'm drowning in the pain, staring at the stained-glass windows when I first hear it. That familiar heavy thrum in the air.
At first I think I'm imagining it. That my disease has me in such a tight hold that I'm having delusions. But then my steed hears it too.
Shadow wheezes. A strangled sound laced with fear.
The noise thickens the air inside the church and presses against my bleeding eardrums. It's that strange human bird. And it's drawing closer.
My disease paralyses me. All I can manage is a lift of a finger. Even that exhaust me.
The humans are coming.
Too tired to do much else, I reach through the bond.
In my mind I cry out for Death. Hoping he will hear me. Hoping he will come find me.
I'm in no state to face the humans. Little I can do against them now that my plague has been unleashed.
The bond is empty. It's not unlike calling into an empty cave; an echo responds, and I realise I’m alone.
Some of the humans might think I deserve this. I don't.
The thrumming sound is so loud now that I am cringing against the assault. More blood spills out of my ears and slaps onto the floor.
Feared Fables Box Set: Dark and Twisted Fairy Tale Retellings, (Feared Fables Box Sets Book 1) Page 41