Pestilence by Laura Thalassa

Chapter 41

Trixie lingers right outside the church. As soon as he sees me, Pestilence’s steed shuffles over, his snout nudging my cheek. I can almost imagine that he’s greeting me fondly.

I brush my hand over his face, frowning at the dark stain down his side.

The horseman’s blood.

I hoist myself into the saddle and stroke the steed’s mane. “Take me to Pestilence.”

We were ambushed just around the corner of the church, so it doesn’t take long to return to the site. Even still, by the time we arrive, Pestilence is already half buried in a shallow grave off to the side of the road.

The people in gas masks stand around the grave, dumping shovelfuls of dirt into it.

The stolen gun is still hot in my hand. By the time the first man lifts his head in my direction, I’m already aiming it at him. He makes a surprised noise, dropping his shovel. The other men glance at him before looking around in confusion. They, too, startle when they see me astride Pestilence’s horse, weapon in hand.

Now that I have their attention—

“You all have five seconds to make yourselves scarce. Then I start shooting.”

No one budges.

“One—”

Now people begin to scramble.

“Two—”

One of the men reaches for his gun.

I fire off a warning shot, the gun kicking back in my hand.

They drop their shovels and abandon the grave. A few of them take off running, but some still loiter, not ready to let a woman scare them off.

“Three—”

The masked men move onto the street, backing away from me, a couple with their hands in the air.

Like that’s going to placate me.

“Four—”

They move back a little faster.

“Five.”

I click my tongue, attempting the sound Pestilence makes. Beneath me, Trixie leaps forward, charging down the street.

Now the last of the masked men sprint for their lives. Nothing like having an undead steed running you down to get you going. I fire another shot, just to give them a good scare.

Halfway down the street, I pull on the reins, letting the men get away from us, watching their forms grow smaller and smaller.

These people knew before they saw me that I was traveling with Pestilence.

A foreboding shiver passes over me.

If that gets back to the media, the world will soon know I’m no longer his captive.

I force back a cry when I stare down at Pestilence’s makeshift grave. He’s nearly unidentifiable, his body awash in blood, dirt, and pulpy, fleshy things.

I don’t want to move him out of fear that I’ll hurt him.

Townspeople will come back. You may only have minutes.

That’s what gets me going.

Setting the gun aside, I crouch next to the grave and hook my arms beneath Pestilence’s armpits.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.

And then I begin to pull.

He lets out an agonized cry, the sound garbled by his ruin of a mouth, as I heave him out of his tomb. A silent tear trickles out of the corner of my eye at the noise.

If only my earlier self could see me now. How far I’ve fallen, crying over a thing that can’t die. Over the very thing I was supposed to kill. And look at me now—I’m pointing guns at anyone who tries to take him from me.

Ever so slowly, I tug Pestilence out of the earth. Trixie kneels next to me, the steed anticipating his rider’s needs. I drag the horseman’s body onto the saddle.

Not going to be very comfortable, but it will have to do.

Settling myself behind him, I again click my tongue. Trixie rises to his feet, the two of us balanced on his back, then the steed takes off.

Several shots ring out, and I flatten myself over the horseman as the bullets whiz by me. I glance over my shoulder. The men that I’d so recently driven away now run back into the street from wherever they tucked themselves away, training their guns on us.

Shit.

I jerk on one side of the reins, pulling Trixie’s head to the side, steering us off course. Pestilence’s body slides a little, and it takes most of my strength to keep the horseman on his horse. But at least the bullets meant for me and Trixie miss us.

I yank on the other side of the reins, forcing the horse to change his trajectory again, zig-zagging across the road until the gunshots fall to silence. When I look over my shoulder again, the men in gas masks are out of range.

Safe. We’re safe—for now.

I don’t dare slow the horse until the town is far behind us. Once I do, it’s only so that I can scour our surroundings for a house. Considering my shitty luck today, I’m probably going to choose a home with the meanest asshole living inside it. Without Pestilence to strike the fear of God in him, who knows just how bad the situation might get.

I suck in a deep breath. There’s just no helping the situation.

I end up picking a home that’s directly off the road, hoping whoever lives there is long gone. It takes an agonizingly long time to get inside, but on a positive note, the place has been vacated.

I lead Trixie through the door after me, careful to not jostle Pestilence’s slumped body in the process. It’s only once I’ve moved the steed next to the couch that I drag the horseman off. He slides into my arms, knocking me off balance, and the two of us collapse in a heap on the couch.

Real smooth there, Burns.

I wiggle myself into a comfortable position beneath Pestilence, feeling his blood begin to seep into my clothing from his various wounds.

Now that I’m holding him, I find I can’t let him go. His face is still mangled, and it’s been further obscured by the dirt matted to his skin.

With a shaky hand, I run my knuckles over a section of cheek that’s still intact.

You fool. You’ve gone and fallen for this thing.

He moves in my arms, and I nearly yelp. I’d almost forgotten that he’s still in there. Still aware of what’s going on. I feel bile rise at the thought.

To think I did worse to Pestilence than even those men.

“Shhh,” I say, gently maneuvering myself out from under him. I arrange him on the couch, his long form barely fitting.

I take one of his hands in mine, brushing a kiss along his dirt-covered knuckles. “Try to sleep,” I say. “I’ll be right here.”

Pestilence mumbles something—I don’t even know how he’s making noise.

I shush him again, and he quiets, settling into something that, if not sleep, must be somewhat like it.

I make good on my promise, I stay by his side—leaving only to start a fire and dig up rags and water, which I use to wipe us down the best I can. Once I’m finished, I take his hand in mine, holding it closely to me.

As the hours tick by, I’m able to watch the slow but miraculous evolution of the horseman from something that ought to be dead to a beautiful sleeping man.

Looks like something straight out of a fairytale.

With a metallic groan, Pestilence’s hole-riddled breastplate bends back into place, the golden armor ever so slowly returning to its original, seamless surface. Just as wondrously, I watch his face rebuild itself, from sinew and bone to muscle and tendons and skin. Eventually, I even see the horseman’s long eyelashes sprout along his newly formed eyelid.

This is magic. This is faith. This is the barest glimpse of the leviathan that is God.

Even after his body has all but healed, Pestilence doesn’t wake. Beneath his closed lids, his eyes move back and forth.

What do horsemen dream about?

It makes me ache to think of him dreaming. He’s so much more human than I ever imagined him to be.

I had a hand in that—more than a hand if I’m being honest. He eats food because I gave him a taste for it, drinks beer because I offered it to him.

Makes love to me because I opened myself up to him.

Makes love. I worry my lower lip at the phrasing.

The hand I hold now tightens, scattering my thoughts. When I glance up, Pestilence’s eyes flutter open.

I sit up straighter, bringing our clasped hands to my lips.

A smile begins to bloom on his face, but then it’s wiped away, his brow creasing instead. “Are you okay?”

Those are his first words. Just when I thought this man couldn’t gut me anymore.

I pinch my lips together so the truth doesn’t leak out. Because no, I’m not okay. I haven’t been okay since Pestilence was shot off his horse. Even before then, I’m not sure how okay I was.

I’m having more than a little trouble dealing with lovingliking this horseman.

He begins to sit up, looking increasingly alarmed when he sees the blood on me. “Where are you hu—?”

“It’s not my blood, it’s yours. They … shot you.” I whisper this last part because emotion is chocking up my vocal cords. Already my stupid tear ducts are coming online; as I blink, a couple slip out. Now that Pestilence is awake, I’m having trouble staying strong.

He sits up, a frown on his face as he takes in my hazel eyes.

“Are you crying … for me?” he asks, his voice laced with disbelief.

I want to say something snarky. Instead I wipe my cheeks. “Maybe.”

Pestilence eyes me as though he can’t make sense of the sight. “You know I can’t be killed,” he says quietly.

“But you can be hurt.” And they hurt him so badly.

“That bothers you?” His voice gentles.

I gesture to my wet cheeks and red eyes. “Yes.”

His gaze goes soft. “Sara.” He says my name lovingly, and it’s what undoes me.

I lean forward, and my lips are on his. His arms come around me, half pulling me onto him as his mouth responds to mine, devouring me just as eagerly as I am him.

It’s easy to forget how strong he is when he’s hurt, but now that he’s regenerated, I feel his strength as it envelops me.

Still, he’s bloody and I hate that. And I hate that I hate that, but not nearly enough, and I’m making no sense, but honestly, absolutely nothing in my life makes sense right now, so …

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry for what those people did to you, and for what I did to you—and for what everyone else has done to you since you arrived.”

Pestilence came here with a grisly task, and he armored himself against the atrocity of it by convincing himself that humans were monsters. And we proved him right every time we attacked him.

That’s what hate does—it brings out your worst.

He’s only caught glimpses of our goodness, and yet that’s all it’s taken for his deeds to weigh on him.

Because that’s what compassion does—it brings out your best nature.

“I’m sorry for every stupid thing I said earlier,” I continue. “What we did together meant something to me. You mean something to me.”

Pestilence holds me close. “Does this mean you’re going to marry me?”

I laugh through my tears. “No, I don’t do pity proposals. But I’m open to make up sex.”

Pestilence kisses me again, one of his hands sliding reverently up my cheek and into my hair.

“It wasn’t a pity proposal, dear Sara,” he murmurs.

He sits up, my body tucked tightly against him, then stands, cradling me in his arms. His lips find mine once more, and we resume the kiss. I’m barely aware that we’re moving through the house until Pestilence lays me out on the bed in the master suite.

I shiver at the sight of the horseman above me as he removes his refashioned armor, his gaze searing me the entire time. He takes his crown off last, setting it on the bedside table.

Stripped bare of his golden adornments, he’s no longer my noble, otherworldly Pestilence, but my flesh-and-blood lover.

He comes back to me, fitting his body over mine.

“Sara, Sara, Sara,” he breathes, kissing my eyelids, my cheeks, my lips, my chin. “I confess, your earlier apologies have moved me, but they are unnecessary all the same. You needn’t ask for my forgiveness—you already have it and more, if you’ll but take what I offer.”

I think he means marriage … and for the first time, the thought intrigues the crap out of me.

I could marry him.

He kisses the column of my throat, right down to the hollow at the base of it. “You have my mercy, my mind, my adoration, my body, my … life.”

I could’ve sworn that for a moment, he was about to say another four letter “l” word, but maybe that’s just my imagination.

And for the first time, I’m disappointed that he didn’t say it. But that makes no sense.

Life is a big enough promise coming from an immortal man.

I’m just a greedy bitch.

Pestilence makes quick work removing his shirt. I almost sigh at the sight of his thick arm muscles and his tapered torso. My hands move first to his pecs, then to his abs, for once ignoring the markings that ring his skin. Beneath my fingertips, his muscles tense, like his skin is hyper-sensitive to my touch.

The horseman flashes me a purely masculine smile, enjoying my exploration. He sinks back down onto me, lifting my shirt to expose the skin of my belly.

I shiver at the feel of the chilly air along the band of bared flesh, but then Pestilence’s warm hands are moving over it, and his lips are claiming it kiss by kiss.

“Once again, I have you to thank for protecting me—saving me,” he says against my skin.

Saving, that’s a big word coming from him, the man who is impervious to death and who believes he is too powerful to need rescuing—or at least he used to believe that. I don’t know when things shifted in his mind, only that they have.

“Tell me, dear Sara,” he continues, “how might I repay you?”

I shake my head, staring up at him. “That’s not something you ever need to repay me for. I didn’t do it to make you owe me. I did it because I care about you.”

His eyes find mine, soft and bright and burning with so much … love.

Or am I imagining this too? All I know is that the look is too tender to be lust and too passionate to be kindness or compassion.

No, my eyes aren’t deceiving me. Now and only now am I seeing his feelings for what they truly are.

Love.

I have bound this man to me. I’ve cultivated a very human appetite in him, and this is the result. Love.

I should be frightened at the thought, but a strange sort of thrill rushes through me.

This time, it’s Pestilence that takes the lead. His hands rove over me, tossing away my blood-soaked clothes one piece at a time, his touch strong and sure.

My passion rises; along with it is this delicious uncertainty—like the horseman knows forbidden things that I don’t, and tonight he’s going to introduce them to me.

I think Pestilence means to move slow—I know I do—but in the end our movements are hurried. The last of our clothes come off, and then it’s just leagues and leagues of glorious skin.

His tanned arms bulge as he dips lower and lower down my torso, kissing a trail down my body. He pauses when he gets to my core, staring at it for a long second. Then he kisses that too.

Involuntarily, my hips rise off the bed.

Whoa.

Pestilence spreads my legs wide, giving himself an unobstructed view of me. He drinks the sight in before moving back up my body settling his hips between my thighs.

I feel him thick against me, his cock pressed against my entrance. Without warning, Pestilence drives himself inside. I nearly moan as he fills me, coating himself in my wetness.

“I missed this,” he says as he pulls out. He thrusts into me hard again, his movements deep and demanding.

I run my hands up his back, drawing out goosebumps along his flesh. “Me too.”

Now that he’s this close to me, this alive, I finally, finally am able to banish the last thoughts of this morning to the hinterlands of my mind.

Pestilence cups my face. “This is not fucking.”

He chooses now to make his point?

He stares at me as he works my core, and I realize he expects an answer.

Can’t remember my own damn name at this point.

“Mmm,” I say. That’s noncommittal enough.

His hips piston in and out, in and out.

“This is love-making,” he states—no, demands.

He’s really latched onto that term with gusto.

“Tell me your thoughts,” he all but orders. “I need to hear them.”

How can he even think right now? But one look in his eyes has me sobering up real quick. This is important to him.

“This isn’t fucking,” I agree, and I mean it. There’s far too much emotional subtext here between us. Each rushed touch is filled with longing, with lov—

“It’s love-making,” Pestilence agrees, like the two of us are on the same page.

I shake my head. Am I in denial? No? Yes?

“Love-making is slower, more reverent …” That’s all I’ve got.

The horseman’s brows furrow and his pace—damnit—his pace slows. But his thrusts deepen, his cock thick and throbbing inside me, and he unshutters his gaze so that everything he feels is right there staring down at me. He’s gazing me as though I’m beloved.

His thumb brushes my cheekbone. “Like this?” he asks as he pumps slowly in and out of me.

“Yeah,” I say, unnerved as hell because the full-force of that adoring gaze is staggering, “just like this.”

His eyes dip to my lips, even as he moves deep inside me. “And if I kiss you, will I still be making love to you?”

I nearly forget to breathe. “It’s all about your intent.”

His mouth follows his gaze until I feel the sweet brush of his lips against mine. The very sweep of them as they pass over my mouth seems tender, loving. And when he coaxes my lips open and our tongues touch, that too seems to be done as though he reveres even the very taste of me.

He pulls away. “Was my intent clear?”

“Very.”

Pestilence goes slow and deep for a while, but then, perhaps in response to my own feverish need for more of him, he begins to speed up, his thrusts becoming fast and rough.

“Want to keep making love to you, but I cannot resist this need—”

“Then don’t.”

My words are permission enough. He takes my mouth again, and this time his kiss is savage. His pace doubles on itself, as though he can’t help but move deeper, faster, until the headboard is rocking against the wall.

I twine my legs around his, needing him to touch as much of me as possible.

Each stroke makes me burn hotter and brighter. It’s like I unleashed a storm. I guess that’s what you get when you fit a force of nature into the body of a man.

His eyes lock with mine. The moment stretches on and on. Something passes between us, something I won’t put a name to, but something that comes from me every bit as much as it comes from him.

Something that worries me deeply.

I hold on until I can no longer, but that look. I’m powerless against it.

With a cry, I come, sensation lashing through me as I call out his name. He bellows as I tighten around him, his own climax riding on mine. Pestilence grips my hands in his, pinning them to the bed as his harsh final thrusts batter against me.

And then the moment’s over.

Pestilence gathers me to him, and even after he’s no longer inside me, he still seems keen to keep me close.

His lips brush my forehead. “I like making love to you, Sara Burns.”

My stomach somersaults.

“I think it might be my new favorite thing in the world, next to this.” His hold briefly tightens.

I run my hand over his chest and down his abs, smiling softly. “You prefer this to my mad conversation skills?” I tease.

“Ask me again tomorrow when we’re in the saddle,” he says, grinning. “I’m sure my answer will change.”

That smile! The sight of it causes my breath to hitch.

“You’re just saying that to get on my good side.”

“Sara, you only have good sides. I’m saying this because each moment with you is my new favorite.”

You’d think I’d start to get used to his flattery, but like always, Pestilence’s words have a way of overwhelming me.

The two of us are quiet for a while, and I’m blissfully happy simply laying against him, enjoying how his hand lazily strokes my back.

But the longer I lay there, the more worrisome my thoughts become. This morning bubbles back up, even more gruesome now that Pestilence is in my arms and I can feel the weight of my emotions pressing in from all sides.

These attacks will keep happening. I know it as certainly as I’m sure Pestilence does. I’m not sure why this is some sobering revelation now. I was, after all, one of those people who tried to take him out. Of course it’s going to keep happening.

Humankind is desperate enough, stupid enough, courageous, self-sacrificing enough—

Vindictive enough.

Because at the end of the day, even if humans can’t stop him, they can at the very least make him regret landing on God’s green earth.

They. The pronoun stops me cold. That last thought, I had said they, not we. I cut myself out of the group.

It’s another one of those moments, where the axis of my world tilts.

This whole time I’ve been so focused on how I’ve changed the horseman that I haven’t been paying attention to how he’s changed me.

“I’m not your prisoner,” I whisper.

Pestilence’s touch stills. He doesn’t respond.

“I’m not,” I insist. “Not anymore.” I’m drawing a line in the sand.

The edge of his mouth curves up. “Accept my proposal then.”

His mood is light—sex has a way of doing that—but I’m in a somber mood.

“I’m serious, Pestilence. Earlier today I stole a man’s gun and threatened him with it. I would’ve killed for you if I needed to.” That admission hurts coming out. “So no, I am not your prisoner,” I reiterate, “not any longer.”

For a long moment, he says nothing.

“Alright,” Pestilence finally agrees. “You’re no longer my prisoner.”

The truth is, I don’t think either of us knows what I am. I may no longer be his prisoner, but I doubt I could freely walk away from him either. At this point, I’m conceding to the realization that I don’t want to walk away, that I care for this terrible, wonderful being.

“What’ve you done to me?” I whisper, searching his face.

I set out to destroy this man, not to protect him.

“The same thing you have done to me, I imagine,” Pestilence says, brushing a lock of my hair aside. “You want your people to live, but you’re unwilling for me to be harmed. I want your people to die, but I cannot harm you. Each of us is trapped between our minds and our hearts.”

“It’s not the same,” I say, hoarsely. “You’re only saving me because God sent you a sign.”

Pestilence brushes a kiss against my temple. He’s shockingly good at cuddling.

“God might’ve interceded on your behalf once,” he says, “but He hasn’t needed to since. You are mine, and nothing—nothing—will change that.”