I stared into the barrel and thought of my dad.
Debris clattered as movement came from my right. He moved with purpose, striding through the missing door to carve a path through the rubble.
His hood was pulled low, but the light cut from the side. He lifted his hand, and something flew from my side. Green sparkled as the ring slipped onto his hand.
“You don’t touch her,” the stranger growled as the ring cast its emerald glow across Kris’s face.
The bastard stilled, and then shook. The gun slipped from his hand, falling to the floor. I had a moment before the shadows closed in…one blinding moment where I saw it all.
Death…disease, as Kris’s skin turned black and split before my eyes. He was alive…for one fleeting second, before he turned to ash and was gone.
Rubble crunched. Footsteps sounded.
Fingers brushed my cheek and then slipped from my jaw to my neck and felt for a pulse. I was lifted, carried, stolen away by the shadows and this man.
I dug my nails into the light and held on.
But with the light came the merciless pain, tearing, shredding…leaving me stranded.
“I’ve got you now, Harlow,” the familiar voice whispered.
I held onto that voice with everything I had.
For he was the Horseman in my dreams.
16
The brutal sounds of barking filled me, and howls so savage they cleaved my head. “Please. Please, enough.”
“It’s your damn dog,” he answered, his breath hot against my neck. A shudder raced through me, carving through flesh to find a home in the valley between my thighs as he finished. “I don’t think she likes me.”
Smells invaded…the sweetness of mint that grew on my window sill. The cold, crisp taste of water and concrete on the tip of my tongue.
I sighed and the movement pushed my spine into the soft downy comforter of my bed. Home…the feeling surrounded me. I’m home.
Hands touched me, flesh on flesh, the slight scrape of a nail as he found my fingers. They entwined…mine…his…knuckles to knuckles as another’s touch skimmed my belly and moved to my thighs.
“Is she ready?” someone asked.
I didn’t know that voice. The thought wrenched me higher, all the way to the surface. I opened my eyes to find him in the dark. He stood beside the window in my room, head turned to the shadows, hood pulled low.
Something moved in there, something that wasn’t quite here…but wanted to be.
“Not yet,” the hooded figure whispered and turned his head toward me. “But she will be.”
Darkness slammed into me, wrapping me in a sinister embrace…and in a second I was back there, fighting the darkness for the light. “You.”
He said nothing, only stood there, waiting while recognition dawned. “I know you…” I whisper. “I. Know. You.”
Memories surface. The sting of a needle in my arm, the rush of sweet comfort as he lifted his leg, one leg kicked high, sole flat against the wall. The light danced across his face, revealing the lower half of his face.
It was those lips. Those perfect lips that seized me as he answered. “I told you it was the last one, Harlow. But you didn’t listen.”
The room spun, melting past into present. The drug, Nirvana…the dreams…blood filled my mind, screams of salvation and sin…the light—my breath caught…and he was…he was…
“Your name,” my voice was hoarse and raw. But I needed to hear the words. “Tell me your name.”
The corners of his mouth curled as he skimmed fingers through his hair and shoved the hood backwards.
Perfect brown eyes held me as he shoved from the wall to cross the room, and I was captured by the sight. Brown no longer seemed adequate to describe the color as he moved closer.
Deep cocoa melted into golden rays that circled an eclipse, and I was stolen, just like the sun. Agony consumed me as I wanted him. So beautiful…so very beautiful in a lost kind of way—the bitter tang of desperation flooded the room.
I couldn’t stand to look at him, and yet I can’t look away. I’m in purgatory, nailed to the bed and yet my body betrays me—trembling, as he answered.
“Pestilence…isn’t that what you want to hear?”
I swallowed hard, dug my heel into the mattress, and shoved. My head smacked into the headboard. I glanced right, to the open Bible beside the bed.
He followed my gaze and snarled. “Reach for it…see if it saves you this time.”
I wrenched my head to where he stood. Brilliant white flashes stole the room, leaving me with a washed-out view. “Get away. Get away from me.”
I take a breath, and then another, and I’m lost…lost to my home, lost to the light.
I’m falling…falling as heavy steps rebound through the room to match the thud of my heart.
Lips brush mine and he whispers against my mouth. “Sleep little lamb.”
17
Pestilence
I ran a finger along her arm as War moved close. Her eyelids fluttered, breath turned panicked and fast.
“The preacher is coming.” War whispered beside me. “He’ll turn her against us.”
Hate filled those words until they were nothing more than chiseled ice.
“She’ll learn to hunt us, learn to hurt.”
A shudder raced through her body, trembling those lips as he leaned down. Phantom fingers gained substance the longer he touched. But he wasn’t quite here, stuck in that place of nowhere, trying…always trying.
“Everything has a price.” I watched his fingers slide over the swell of her breast and, under her smooth, perfect skin, her vein throbbed harder against my fingers.
“Her body betrays her,” War murmured as he moved higher.
Her eyelids fluttered open as he took her mouth, and it’s like I was seeing her for the first time, down there in the darkness…waiting for the end.
I need…her words surfaced, filling me with desire. I need something.
I gave her more than she asked for, and in return she took a great deal more…my desire, my motivation.
Her eyes fluttered open with his touch, but she wasn’t there…not really.
She lingered in that place where we could come to her—the edge of salvation and sin. But this was a cruel blade, one slip…
Her lips parted with a shudder as phantom hands dragged the sheet from her body. War lowered his head, brushing his stubble across her chest and moving lower.
And in an instant, I wanted the lips on her to be mine…sharing was one thing, but having to stand there and watch was torture.
I turned my head to the two figures behind us. Famine and Death watched with hungry eyes.
“She can never know,” I murmured. “Whatever happens.”
They stared at me like a lion with a fresh kill, eyes alight with ferocious desire.
A moan slipped from her lips. I turned back to the bed. My breath caught as War made his move, shoving the sheets aside to slip his hand between her thighs.