Famine by Laura Thalassa

Chapter 20

As usual, Famine makes good on his word the next day—by the time the sun has risen, we’re already back on the road, and the house we stayed in nothing more than a mostly-forgotten dream.

My wound throbs as I wiggle my feet. I finally have another pair of boots on—scuffed, mud-covered boots that are certainly not mine. I took them anyway, despite the knot of guilt I felt. They fit surprisingly well.

I also happened to take a leather belt, which I used to cinch the billowy white garment I wear, which, in the light of day, is nothing more than a nightgown.

I look ridiculous, but at least I’m alive. That’s more than I can say for most other people around these parts.

“The day we first reunited,” Famine says, interrupting my thoughts. “Why did you seek me out?”

Here I am thinking about belts and nightgowns; meanwhile, the horseman’s going all existential on me.

“I didn’t seek anything out,” I say. “You came to my town.”

“You could’ve fled,” he says.

“You would’ve eventually caught up with me.”

“Mmm.” One of his hands rests on my hips, and now it idly strokes the material there. He leans in close. “You thought I’d recognize you.” His voice and the nearness of his mouth give me chills.

Yes. Of course I thought that.

After a moment, the horseman speaks again.

“I remember exactly what you looked like the day you saved me,” he admits. “If I was truly looking for it, I would’ve recognized you, but I have spent the last five years not truly seeing anyone.”

I remember how angry Famine was right before he destroyed my childhood home. I don’t know the specifics of what happened to him while he was imprisoned—those secrets died with the people who hurt him—but it’s obvious that whatever happened to Famine, it made an already cruel man much, much crueler.

“Why did you save me at all?” the Reaper asks.

It’s not the first time he’s asked me this, but apparently, he wants to hear my answer again. Or maybe he wants a different answer; I don’t think human altruism sits well with him.

“Because I was young and foolish.” A touch of bitterness enters my voice.

I can feel those intense eyes boring into the back of my head. I shift under his scrutiny, and I feel the need to explain myself further.

“I lost my mom when I was an infant and my father when I was twelve. After my dad’s death, his sister took over raising me. She … wasn’t kind. She already had five children, and she didn’t want another. She made it clear I was a burden.”

I take a deep breath. “When I saw you lying there, covered in mud and blood and rain, your body …” I can’t even find the words to describe the state he was in. “It was awful.” It truly was. It didn’t matter who he was or what he did. No one deserved to be treated like that.

“Even once I figured out you were the horseman, I couldn’t leave you.” I swallow, glancing down at my nails. “I knew what it was like to be unwanted. I spent my teenage years feeling as though my family didn’t care whether I lived or died. If it were me laying on the side of the road, I would want someone to care. So I helped you.”

I feel the burn of Famine’s gaze. For a moment, his grip on my hip tightens.

“So you saw yourself in me,” he says, his voice a little hoarse. “I should’ve known at the very heart of it, you’d have selfish motives.

I glance heavenward. Lord give me strength. “It’s called empathy.”

“I’m aware of what you humans consider kindness.”

“Oh, and like you’re some shining example of compassion,” I snap.

“I never said I was—though I should point out that I did spare you all those years ago.”

“Me and no one else,” I respond. “You killed the last of my family when you destroyed my hometown.”

“Was I supposed to save your aunt?” He sounds remorseless. “You said it yourself—she wasn’t kind.”

I glance over my shoulder at him, giving him a look like he’s mad. Maybe he is. “What’s the point of sparing me if there’s no life for me to return to?”

Famine gazes back at me curiously, and I think he might legitimately believe that people don’t need each other the way we so obviously do. “They didn’t save me, when they could’ve,” he says. “You did.”

“You didn’t have to kill all of them.”

I feel him stiffen behind me in the saddle, his already unforgiving armor all the more uncomfortable against my back.

“Did I ever tell you how I came to be a prisoner?” he asks far too calmly.

I shake my head, a shiver sweeping down my spine.

His voice is as low as a lover’s when he whispers into my ear. “I spared a family who was kind to me.” As he speaks, his fingers stroke my hip, his touch menacing. “They didn’t save my life—not like you—but they welcomed me into their home. They fed me, let me sleep in their bed even knowing what I was.

“Foolishly I enjoyed their hospitality, lingering a little longer than I should in one place. They didn’t mind my killing so much—or at least they never complained of it. And that whole time I assumed I was above harm.

“But word eventually got out that a human family was housing me.

I left their house to lay waste to the crops surrounding a nearby village. When I returned, the family—husband, wife, and three young children—were butchered.

“There I was captured and killed. The next time I awoke, I was in an abandoned building that had been turned into a makeshift prison. And that’s when the true horror began.

“There aren’t words to describe what happened to me—the inflicted agonies, the twisted violations. And even if there were, I doubt a human mind could understand the depth of what I suffered. You have never had your head kicked in, your teeth ripped from your gums, your eyes gouged out, or your fingernails pried off. You’ve never been staked, burned, disemboweled, or dismembered—sometimes at the same time. You have never been killed, only to return to life and bear it all again and again and again.” His lips are soft against my ear, even as his words fill me with second-hand dread.

“I saw the true extent of the pain and suffering humans can inflict on each other, and I endured every conceivable manner of torture.” As he speaks, his voice rises.

I swallow.

“I believed in my task before I was captured, but after what I went through, it’s become personal. Each death is reparation for the atrocities committed against me.”

No wonder Famine savors our misery, lapping it up like cream.

“I’m sorry,” I say, “that they did that to you.”

Again his grip on me tightens, but he doesn’t respond.

We’re both quiet for some time, his words lingering in the air between us.

“So,” I eventually say, deciding to lighten the conversation. “Where have you been for the last five years?”

“You mean since we first parted ways?”

I make an affirmative noise.

Famine leans back in the saddle, exhaling. “A better question is where haven’t I been.”

That has my breath catching.

Five years ago Famine left a trail of dead from Montevideo to Santiago before disappearing from South America altogether. Foolishly I had assumed … I don’t know what I had assumed. Clearly something far too optimistic.

“Just how much of the world is gone?” I’m almost afraid to ask.

“Much of Europe and Asia is gone, as well as some of Africa, Australia, and the Americas.”

For a moment, I can’t breathe. While I went about living my life, whole continents were getting decimated. I don’t know how to put in words the thought of so much of the world just … gone. So I don’t.

We go over an hour in silence, and during that time I make peace with this frightening reality of mine. We’re really all going to the grave. It makes my earlier attempt to run from the Reaper all the more ridiculous. The man was right, where would I even go? Eventually he’ll kill us all.

But if that’s true, what happened to his brothers? I know at least one of them had ridden the earth before Famine—perhaps two, though the reports were a bit unclear on this second one. If they were successful, why did they disappear—or did they not? And why did they leave so many humans alive?

“How is it?” Famine asks, interrupting my thoughts.

“What?” I have zero idea what the horseman is talking about.

He touches my upper arm, near my injury. I glance at it, only to realize I’ve been cradling the arm. At some point, the constant movement in the saddle started to make the cut throb in a funny, tearing way.

And he noticed.

I frown. “It hurts, but I’ll be fine.”

The Reaper says nothing, and we continue on for another minute. But then I hear Famine mutter something under his breath. Abruptly, he stops his horse.

“Has my oh-so-benevolent captor decided to give me a bonus pee break?” I say as he swings himself off his steed.

The Reaper ignores me, striding away. Without meaning to, my eyes drink in his wide shoulders and tapered waist. His bronze armor gleams under the sun.

He glances over his shoulder at me, that caramel colored hair blowing about his face, and my breath catches. He looks like a hero from some bygone age, his features painfully perfect.

Those shocking green eyes glint like jewels as they take me in. “Are you coming?”

I hesitate, not just because his beauty caught me off guard.

“My arm …” The truth is, it hurts more than I’m willing to admit.

His expression changes subtly.

Famine comes back over to his horse. Silently, he grabs me and pulls me off his horse. I hiss out a breath as my injury is jostled.

At the sound, the Reaper’s lips press together in a displeased line. He sets me down on the ground.

I begin to walk off to do my business.

“Wait,” Famine says.

I turn back to him. “Don’t tell me you want to watch. I didn’t peg you for having that sort of fetish.”

He gives me a hard look, like he really doesn’t want to deal with my shit.

“I’m kidding,” I say. “You’re just too much fun to tease.”

“Come here,” he says.

I return to him, unsure what this whole stop’s actually about.

He steps in close, then reaches for my shift, tugging the loose collar carefully down my shoulder.

I stand impossibly still, my heart beginning to pick up speed.

“I need you to free this arm.”

“I’m going to have to take the dress off,” I say.

In response, he steps back, presumably to give me room to disrobe. When, however, I begin to struggle at removing my belt, Famine steps forward again, helping me first pull it off, and then the nightgown.

I stand there, off to the side of the road, my tits out, wearing nothing but the grannie panties I also happened to lift from the house this morning.

Famine doesn’t so much as blink when he sees my breasts. Instead, his focus is on my shoulder. Carefully, he unwinds my bandages. Whatever he sees makes him frown.

For my part, I refuse to look at the wound. It’s one thing to feel the pain, another to see the grotesque proof of it.

The horseman reaches towards the injury, then hesitates.

“What are you doing?” I say.

He drops his hand, his cold gaze flicking to mine. “Repaying an old debt,” he says.

“So you’re attempting to kill me?” I ask half-jokingly.

The barest hints of a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. “I believe I already tried that once.” His eyes dip meaningfully to my stomach before returning to my shoulder.

After a moment, he backs away from me, heading to his horse. He rifles through one of the saddle bags, eventually pulling out a glass of some clear alcohol.

“You’ve been holding out on me,” I say. I am all for day-drinking. Especially while injured … and in the horseman’s company.

He comes back over and uncorks the liquor. Lifting the bottle up, he tips the liquid onto the wound.

I hiss through my teeth. Shit, but that hurts.

“You don’t need to do that,” I rasp out.

In front of me, the Reaper stiffens, his shoulders tensing, and he doesn’t look at all thrilled that I’m in agony at the moment.

“I’m repaying a debt,” he repeats.

Semantics. He’s trying to help, which is completely mind-blowing, considering the hate this man harbors for all human life.

Famine sets the alcohol down, then unfastens his breastplate, shrugging it off before setting it on the ground. His fingers go to the hem of his black shirt, and I have only a moment to wonder what he’s doing before—

Riiiiip.

He removes a strip of material from the bottom of his shirt, bringing it up to my shoulder.

Famine’s eyes settle on mine for a moment. “Do not read into this.”

Oh, I’m planning on reading the entire fucking series of Famine Acting Abnormally Kind and What it Means.

His fingers fumble and his expression is increasingly tumultuous as he wraps the cloth around my wound. By the time he knots off the bandage, he seems openly angry.

He picks his breastplate up and slips it back on. “Let’s go.”

The Reaper stalks towards his horse, not waiting for me to follow.

I stare after him for a moment, before I pick up my discarded dress and clumsily pull it back on, gritting my teeth when I have to move my injured shoulder. My belt is equally difficult to secure, but this time the horseman doesn’t try to help.

“Ana,” he calls out again, clearly irritated that it’s taking so damn long for the injured woman to dress herself.

Famine may have his moments of kindness, but he is still such an ass.

My gaze drops to the bottle of spirits lying on the ground. Over the last five years, I’ve drank precious little liquor, and what little I did drink was done far, far away from The Painted Angel. Elvita had a strict rule against drugs and alcohol, one she forced all her girls to comply with.

But now Elvita is gone.

I pick up the liquor bottle and tip its final remnants into my mouth, enjoying the harsh burn of it.

Another thing I’m going to read into: the fact that at some point, Famine managed to find better alcohol to clean my wound with, and he packed it. That’s a level of consideration I can’t even imagine the horseman having.

“Ana.”

I drop the bottle and head back over to Famine, letting him help me back onto his steed. When he joins me in the saddle a moment later, I jolt a little at the press of his body against mine. And when his hand drapes itself over my leg, I feel awfully happy about it.

Please, God, tell me that’s just the alcohol’s doing.

It’s quiet for one tense, long minute.

“So,” I finally say, “are we going to talk about what just—”

“No.”

“Not even—”

“No.”

“But—”

“Damn you, Ana—no.”

Someone’s uncomfortable about tending to me.

I smile a little. “Awww, I think you don’t half mind my company.”

“You’re making me reconsider.”

“Nonsense.” I lean back against the horseman, letting myself enjoy the feel of him around me. “And guess what? I don’t half mind your company either.”

This really had better be the alcohol’s doing.