Pestilence by Laura Thalassa

Chapter 26

I wake slowly, languidly, a delicious heat enveloping me. I stretch, my spine cracking as I arch my back. The arm around my waist tightens, the hand stroking up and down my back.

I open my eyes and stare into two blue ones.

My body goes rigid. Pestilence’s face is only inches from mine, and the rest of him is pressed against me. The edges of sleep cling to his expression, and his hair is mussed. It pains me, how attractive I find that.

Unlike me, the horseman doesn’t look surprised to find us so close. He watches me, his gaze both wary and fascinated. Slowly, he releases me.

Kissing, snuggling, and now sleeping together.

Moving awfully fast, Burns.

Technically, this isn’t the first time we’ve slept together. There was that instance back when I was hypothermic.

Feeling somewhat reassured, I push myself out of his arms and run a hand through my wavy brown hair. I don’t look at him as I collect myself, but damnit, I can feel his presence all around me.

Got to get out of this tent.

Shoving on my boots, I slip out of the small space without giving the horseman another look.

Outside, the sun sits high in the sky.

So much for leaving at first light …

The tent flaps open behind me, and the horseman comes striding out. His mouth is set in a grim line, and his eyes are sad when they meet mine. The monster that is my horseman is a lonely, melancholy being.

He grabs his armor and begins strapping it on, moving away from me, towards where Trixie waits.

“Come, Sara,” he calls over his shoulder, “The hour of our departure grows late.”

I glance back at our tent, realizing that he doesn’t mean to take any of our unpacked supplies with him. So I hurry to grab what few things I can’t bear to part with and head after him.

He doesn’t look at me as he slings on his bow and quiver. Nor as I stow away the items I grabbed from our camp. Nor even as he hoists me onto Trixie.

He won’t acknowledge me just as I didn’t want to acknowledge him when I fled the tent. I’m getting a taste of my own medicine, and it’s driving me insane. There’s so much reassurance and connection in a look. Having him withhold it only makes me want it all the more.

“You’re sure we shouldn’t pack the tent?” I ask, throwing one final look at the thing. It looks so lonely next to the remains of our fire. There’s a chance we’ll still be in the middle of nowhere when we stop later today.

Pestilence follows my gaze, giving it a black look. “We won’t be needing it again. Tonight we’ll find a house to sleep in—or we won’t sleep at all.”

There’s more than one way to hurt a person. This time I didn’t have to shoot the horseman or light him on fire to cause him pain. All I had to do was act like last night was a mistake.

And was it?

I want it to be a mistake, and Lord knows I feel bad right now, but not because I kissed the horseman. Or because I snuggled with him. I feel like crap right now because he’s still giving me the same silent treatment hours later, and it’s freaking working.

Driving me mad.

I’ve already told him random stories from my childhood, like the time I chipped my tooth because I literally tripped over my own shoelace, or about how my friends and I had an annual tradition of jumping into Cheakamus Lake as soon as the ice melted from it. I even admitted to him how I developed stage fright. (I fell in front of my entire middle school class as I walked up to the podium—I couldn’t get a word out after that.)

He didn’t react to a single one, though I know he was listening raptly by the way his hand would tense and relax as it gripped me.

So I try poetry for a change.

“‘Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, …’” I begin, quoting Poe’s “The Raven.” I recite the whole poem, and again, I can tell just by the way Pestilence holds himself that he’s listening to me.

But like my stories, he says nothing after I finish reciting it.

I move from “The Raven” to Hamlet. “‘To be or not to be, that is the question …’”

I quote the play for as long as I can, but eventually, the lines get jumbled in my mind and I have to abandon the soliloquy.

Still nothing from Pestilence.

I recite Lord Byron (“Darkness”) and Emily Dickinson (“Because I could not stop for Death”) and more Poe (“Annabel Lee”), and the entire time the horseman doesn’t utter one single word. Not even to tell me to shut the hell up.

I give up.

“What are you thinking?” I finally ask.

He doesn’t respond.

I lay my hand over the one that presses against my stomach, securing him to me. “Pestilence?”

His hand flexes.

“Last night I could not decide which you were—a tonic or a toxin,” he says. “Today I’ve discovered you’re both.”

I wince a little at his words.

“You have woken in me things I did not know slumbered,” he continues. “Now that I am aware of them, I cannot ignore their existence. I fear I am becoming … like you. Human and full of want. I need this longing to go away.”

“Longing?” I almost choke the word out.

“Don’t tell me I am mistaken in this too,” he says bitterly. “Love, lust, longing—you cannot refashion my feelings. I know my heart, Sara, even if it’s alien to you.”

What did I walk myself into?

“What do you want from me?” I ask.

“Nothing! Everything! Fuck,” he swears, the profanity shocking coming from his tongue. “This is so confusing.”

I’m about to speak when he cuts in. “I want to taste your lips again. I want to hold you like I did in the tent. I don’t understand why I want these things, only that I do.”

My face heats. Is it wrong to feel flattered when Pestilence is clearly having an existential crisis?

No?

Alright.

“Love, affection, compassion—these are the few redeeming qualities your kind has,” he says, “and now I’m being tempted by them and it is breaking me in two.”

Ever been stuck in a situation you desperately want to get out of, but there’s no escape? That’s this moment, sitting here on Trixie Skillz and listening to Pestilence tell me about all his feels.

“I can sense you drawing away from me,” he says. “The more I want from you, the more reluctant you are to give it. And I don’t know what to do.”

I do. “Stop spreading plague.”

He laughs humorlessly. “I cannot help what I am any more than you can help what you are.”

Is that really true though? He spared me, which means he has at least a tiny bit of control over his lethal ability.

“We are locked into these roles, you and I,” he says, “and I do not know what to make of this misery.”

He sounds so desolate, so hopeless.

I squeeze his hand.

My heart hurts again. This man is so much worse than all the other men I’ve ever known, and yet I feel chafed raw by him.

I reach up and tilt his head down to mine, and then I brush a kiss against his lips.

I can feel his sweet agony in the kiss. He leans his forehead against mine. “This is misery, Sara,” he repeats. “But it is the sweetest misery I have ever felt. I don’t want it to stop.”

I hate myself a little when I say, “It won’t.”

It’s the middle of the night before we come across a house. We’ve already passed through a city, so it’s not like there weren’t other options, but driven by whatever supernatural force controls him, Pestilence pressed on without stopping.

As I dismount, I squint into the distance. Perhaps it’s just my imagination, but I swear I see faint specks of light. Another city? At the thought, some residual fear from Vancouver rises up. I can still hear the gunshots, see the panic, and feel Pestilence’s warm blood against my skin.

The horseman passes me, his armor and weaponry clinking dully as he makes his way to the front of the house.

He grabs the doorknob and twists, cleanly breaking the lock. The door swings open, creaking as it does so.

“You know, you could always try knocking,” I say.

“And allow your fellow humans to grab their guns? I think not, dear Sara.”

Pestilence steps inside, not bothering to mask his entrance.

Farther in, I can hear furious whispering, and then stumbling footfalls.

“Whoever you are,” a man hollers, “you have one minute to get the hell out of my house. Otherwise, I’ll blow a fucking hole in your head.”

I glance at Pestilence’s form. “Seems like the guy’s going to grab his gun anyway.”

It’s too dark to see the horseman’s reaction, but I already know he wears a grim look. I hear rather than see Pestilence grab his bow and notch an arrow into it.

The man’s footfalls get louder as he gets closer. He must be carrying an oil lamp because our surroundings subtly brighten. I can make out a cluttered living room with odds and ends stuffed into every nook and cranny.

Just as the man steps onto the entryway, his oil lamp coming into full view, Pestilence’s bow makes a small twang. A second later, the man across from us lets out a shout, dropping something heavy—something that suspiciously sounds like a gun.

“What the fuck!” he yells.

With another slick sound, a second arrow is notched into Pestilence’s bow. “Move for the weapon, and my aim will be a little better.”

The man lifts his lamp a little higher, getting a good look at the horseman. He curses as he recognizes him.

“Get the hell out of my house!” he roars.

I take a step back, the force of his words enough to drive me out into the night. Pestilence grips my upper arm, keeping me in place.

“We mean to stay,” the horseman says.

“Like hell you do!”

From the hallway I hear more voices. I close my eyes when I realize this is another family. More children I’ll have to watch die. Another set of footsteps heads our way.

“The devil will dance on my grave before I host you,” the man says to Pestilence. His eyes slide to me. He gives me a cruel, mean look, like I’m less than the dirt on his boot. “You and your whore.”

In the next instant, Pestilence takes two strides to the man. Grabbing him by the neck, he slams him against the wall, causing the drywall to buckle.

A woman—clearly this man’s wife—steps into the foyer, a scream catching in her throat as she takes in Pestilence and then her husband, who’s currently in his clutches. She covers her mouth, her eyes darting back down the hallway where her children are.

“It is one thing for you to insult me,” Pestilence growls, ignoring the woman altogether, “another for you to insult her.” He jerks his head my way. “One will earn you my ire, the other, a painful death.” He squeezes the man’s neck tight enough to hear him choke. “Do you understand?”

“Get—out,” the man says.

Pestilence shakes him a little. “Do you understand?” he repeats, a dangerous edge entering his voice.

The man glares at Pestilence, his expression full of malice, but he holds his tongue and nods.

All at once, the horseman drops him, and the man crumples to the ground.

“Now,” Pestilence says, turning to the woman who’s still watching all of this with her hands covering her mouth, “my companion needs food and a bed.”

“We have no food or beds to spare,” the man says coldly from where he lays, rubbing his neck.

At that point, I decide to walk out of the house. Behind me I can hear more threats coming from the horseman. I just don’t have it in me to watch as we ruin yet another family’s life.

I find a large boulder on the edge of the front yard and I sit there until my hands and nose go numb.

I hate that I’m seen as in league with Pestilence. I might be attracted to the horseman, but I by no means agree with what he’s doing.

Eventually, I hear heavy footfalls making their way to me.

“There’s bed and a hot meal waiting for you inside,” Pestilence says.

I toe a bit of grass. “I’m fine.”

“So you’re just going to stay out here all night?” he asks, squinting up at the stars.

If my body were as tough as my will, I would.

“Why do you have to invade people’s homes?” I ask instead.

I know even as I say it that the horseman doesn’t do this because he wants to; he does it because I’m the one who needs food and rest. It’s me he dotes on, even at the expense of his victims.

“All the world is mine,” Pestilence says. “Even this ogre’s house.” He scowls back at the place.

Maybe this sick feeling is survivor’s guilt. Or maybe it’s remorse for my shifting loyalties. Either way, the horseman’s words worm under my skin.

All the world is mine. Of course Pestilence the Conqueror would believe that.

“Is it not enough to die by your hand?” I say. “Do we also have to kiss it on our way out?”

Because that’s essentially what the horseman is doing when he forces these people to do his bidding.

“You rather enjoyed the act, last I remember,” he says softly, his eyes dipping to my lips.

I’m happy that Pestilence can’t see the flush that spreads across my cheeks. I glance away.

“Are you mad at me?” he asks.

I sigh. “No. I just … this is misery,” I say, harkening back to the horseman’s earlier words.

He studies me for several seconds. “Come inside,” he says gently.

My eyes move back to him slowly. Now when he looks at me, I notice more than just a pretty face. I see the first stirrings of compassion in his eyes.

That’s new.

All my resolve folds under the ardor in Pestilence’s eyes. No one’s ever looked at me that way. I stand, entranced by the look. A whisper of a smile touches the corners of his mouth, as I let him lead me back inside.

The horseman has learned how to feel. Nothing good can come out of this.

Nothing at all.