My breath hitches at the sight of all those coal-black feathers. I step up to his back, my skin pebbling as those very feathers brush against my skin. I swear I hear Thanatos’s sharp inhale, and maybe I’m not the only one affected by the contact.
I grab one of his forearms, pulling it behind his back, then the other, pressing his wrists together. I bind his hands together with the satchel’s leather strap, making sure to tie the knots extra tight. His body sways.
“I like this, kismet,” he says, “This makes me think very strange, very … human thoughts about you.”
My core clenches at his words.
It’s only as I finish my work that I remember his absurd strength. He’ll get through the bindings in seconds.
Damnit.
I release his bound wrists. “Why don’t you focus on counting—wouldn’t want to give me any extra time,” I say, stepping away.
Death laughs darkly, the sound making the hair at the nape of my neck stand on end. “You’re not going anywhere,” he vows.
My stomach dips at the certainty in his voice.
“Turn around,” I command.
Again, I don’t expect him to follow my words, but he does. The horseman faces me once more, his eyes full of dark anticipation.
He smirks. “What about my wings?” he asks. “Shall you bind them too? I’m rather enjoying being tied up for you.”
I pull out one of the blades from my bag and use it to cut off the bottom of my shirt. This, too, he’ll be able to rip away in seconds, but if he’s willing to play my game for the next ten odd minutes, it’ll subdue him for at least a little while.
Gripping the fabric, I step up to him.
“Kneel.”
Thanatos stares down at me for a long time, that same look in his eyes. Never glancing away, he moves down on one knee, then both.
I bring the cloth up to his eyes, blindfolding him with it.
“Killing me would be easier,” he says.
It would be. I have to hide my swallow. The awful truth is that I’ve come to care about this horseman’s pain. Enough to stay my hand.
So instead I tie the knot extra tight behind his head, ignoring Death’s beautiful features and the silky soft texture of his hair. I can’t help, however, the strange sensations his scent conjures.
Him holding me fast to his chest, his fingers caressing my face …
“Come with me,” Death says softly, as though he, too, is thinking similar thoughts. His voice is gentle, a plea; it’s so unlike him. “Untie these bindings and come to me of your own free will.”
“You said you wouldn’t ask me that again,” I remind him.
“I was wrong,” he says. “Come with me, Lazarus. Let me know what it is like to hold you instead of fighting you.”
To hold me? What exactly does he have in mind once he captures me?
Doesn’t matter, Lazarus, that fate is not for you.
I lean in close to his ear. “No.”
A slow, malevolent smile spreads across Death’s face, and even blindfolded, I find him chilling.
“Then you better run, kismet.”
I do run.
I run as fast as my legs will carry me, clutching two knives in my fists, two more blades crammed into the sheath at my side.
I don’t know what use they’ll be. I have lost the will to hurt the horseman.
You could simply go with him. The thought nearly stops me in my tracks.
I’ve been so used to opposing him, I’ve never actually thought through this option. If I was with Thanatos—well, there are many ways I could prevent him from moving from city to city.
Now I do come to a halt, my chest heaving, my breath leaving me in ragged gasps.
I could go with him.
But then I couldn’t forewarn towns. I’d have to figure out a new strategy. All the while, Death’s dark, penetrating eyes would keep flashing that fight-me-then-fuck-me look. How long would I be able to resist him? A week? Two? I’m probably being generous here. Already his beauty is distracting, but to be alone with him at length? When he’s made it clear he wants to at the very least hold me? I would give in. It probably wouldn’t even take that long. Not when I know he’s already given in to this terrible pull between us.
I begin to move again.
No, fleeing him is still my best option.
I barely make it a block more when the earth begins to tremble. I stop once more, looking up at the buildings towering around me. There’s a parking lot that’s been converted into horse stalls next to a high rise apartment building with broken windows and clothing lines crisscrossing the street. Across the way is another multi-storied structure that’s decorated with brightly colored street art.
It’s all somehow both bleak and strangely lively.
And I’m pretty sure it’s all about to literally come crashing down on me. My fear ratchets up at the thought of being buried alive.
I needn’t have worried.
The buildings don’t come down. It’s much, much worse.
For all around me the dead rise.
Chapter 20
San Antonio, Texas
January, Year 27 of the Horsemen
The corpses that lay strewn on the street are picking themselves up as though they were never dead to begin with. There are four, five, six of them. I spin and count several more. More still are exiting the buildings around me.
Thanatos can raise the dead.
I’m trying not to panic, but Thanatos can raise the dead.
One by one the revenants turn their unseeing eyes on me, and unease pools low in my stomach.
I grip my knives tighter. What are they doing?
Suddenly, all of them begin to walk towards me, the group of them moving almost as a single unit.
My own fear closes up my throat.
Fuck, what is this?
More importantly, how am I supposed to get myself out of this situation?
Overhead, I hear Death’s massive wings. At first, the sound is quiet, but as he gets closer, his wingbeats grow louder and louder.
TWUMP—THWUMP—THWUMP.
I catch a glimpse of him in the air above me, and I watch him circle, then descend down to the street. Thanatos lands no more than twenty feet from me. His wings close at his back, looking like a massive cape.
The corpses halt where they stand, their dead eyes still fixed on me, their faces slack. I shiver at the unnatural sight.
Death walks towards me, his wings swaying behind him. The few revenants between us part for him to pass by.
“How are you doing this?” I ask.
“I have always been able to do this, kismet,” he says. “Up until now I simply chose not to.”
He could’ve been doing this the entire time? My mind races over all those instances I fought him. How many cities had the two of us encountered one another, all while being surrounded by corpses?
Many.
So, so many.
Never once had he raised the dead.
Death has been toying with me this entire time. The realization steals my breath away. For the first time in a long time, I truly fear him.
“Why?” I demand, backing up. “Why do this now?”
“Because you were designed to be mine. And it’s time I claimed you.”
Chapter 21
San Antonio, Texas
January, Year 27 of the Horsemen
I turn from Thanatos. There are dozens of revenants around me, revenants who have gone still while Death approached me.
“Fighting is useless,” he says, coming closer.
Ignoring his warning, I turn on my heel and begin jogging away from him.
All at once, the zombies come alive, only they don’t walk towards me, they charge. They descend on me painfully fast.
My mind won’t let me believe that they’ll actually touch me. They’re corpses, after all, their whole point is to lie still and rot.
So when the first revenant gets to me—a young woman who can’t be more than a few years older than me—I lose a second simply accepting that this is actually happening.
The woman’s cold hand grabs my forearm, and my stomach tumbles at how frigid her fingers feel even through the fabric of the shirt I’m wearing.
I slash out at her—and the other corpses that follow—grimacing as their blood glugs out from the wounds. A dead man grabs the blade of one of my knives, ripping it from me with a jerk. Another rips my two knives from my sheath while I fight off a third revenant.
A dead child steps up to me and wraps a clammy hand around mine. I yelp at the touch and his sightless eyes. He pries my last weapon free.