I glare at him from where I lay. “Then let me go.” Or kill me. Honestly, death might be the kinder option at this point.
“Have you forgotten my words so quickly? I don’t intend to let you go, I intend to make you suffer.”
“You’re doing a good job of it,” I say quietly.
His disapproving look only deepens at my words. Strange, you’d think he’d be pleased by that.
He gestures to the bed where I lay. “Sleep,” he commands.
Oh, like it’s that simple.
Even feeling like I’ve been shitkicked to near death, I can’t just up and fall asleep, especially not when the sun is lancing through the window and I can hear the homeowner getting hysterical on the other side of the door.
“I need you to untie my hands first,” I say raising my bound arms to him.
His gaze narrows all distrustful-like, but he comes over to me and undoes the rope.
He leans in close. “No tricks, human.”
Because I’m so sneaky at the moment.
Once my wrists are free, blood flows through my hands, the sensation agonizing. A low groan escapes my throat.
“If you want my pity, expect to be disappointed,” Pestilence says, backing up to the door.
Honestly, this guy is insufferable—even if he is annoyingly handsome. Actually, that might be what’s making it worse. He’s like the most aggressive form of my already most hated male combo: the hot asshole.
My eyes move over Pestilence as he folds his arms, content to just watch me, a look of mild repulsion on his face.
Feeling’s mutual.
“I’m not going to fall asleep with you just staring at me,” I say.
“Too bad.”
So that’s how it’s going to be.
I sit up and stiffly peel off my outer clothes, which are mostly rags at this point anyway. Tossing them aside, I slide under the sheets and try not to shudder at the fact that I’m lying in the guest bedroom of a woman Pestilence’s plague will soon kill.
This is all so epically twisted.
Beneath the covers, I rub my wrists, and I have to bite down on my lower lip when I realize it’s too excruciating to touch. Even the soft flannel sheets are agony against the raw skin.
Pestilence sits on the ground, leaning his back against the door, and his unspoken message is clear: I’m not going anywhere.
I flip over so that I might for five seconds pretend that he doesn’t exist and today doesn’t exist and that none of this exists.
I lay there for some time. Long enough to wonder if any of my teammates survived the Fever. Long enough to once again fret about my parents. I force myself to imagine them holed up in my grandfather’s rickety hunting lodge, playing poker by the fire like we used to when I was young.
They think I’m dead.
I remember my dad’s tears earlier this week. How shocking they were. He’d been so proud when I joined the fire department. He never wanted me to go to college; it didn’t matter that I’d been obsessed with English literature since I was little, that I went so far as dressing as Edgar Allan Poe for Halloween one year (yeah, I was what wet dreams were made of), or that I spent long weekends writing poems. Once the horseman arrived, college was a beautiful reverie and nothing more.
Too impractical, my Dad had told me. What are you going to use a degree for anyway?
I wonder what he’d say to that now …
“Horseman,” I call out.
Silence.
“I know you can hear me.”
He doesn’t respond.
I sigh. “Really? You’re just going to ignore me?”
He heaves out a breath. Yes.
I pick at a loose thread of my borrowed bedspread. “We drew lots,” I begin. “To decide who’d kill you.”
Pestilence is still quiet, but now I swear I can feel his eyes on my back.
“There were four of us left,” I continue. “Me, Luke, Briggs, and Felix. We worked together at the fire station, and for the last several days before you came we helped the Mounties warn residents that they needed to evacuate. We weren’t positive, of course, that you’d ride through our city. Whistler isn’t all that big, but it lays right on Highway 99, the same highway the news had previously spotted you on.
“By the time we drew lots, all the other firefighters had already left with their families. Those of us without families of our own, we stayed behind.” My father’s face floats through my mind.
You had a family, just like Felix and Briggs and Luke did. You just didn’t have a husband and kids. And in the end, that’s why you all took the final shift.
Fewer people to miss us.
“There were four of us left,” I continue, “and we thought maybe—”
“Why are you telling me this?” Pestilence interrupts.
I pause. “Don’t you want to know why I shot you?” I ask.
“I already know why you shot me, human.” The horseman’s voice is sharp. “You wanted to stop me from spreading plague. All these justifications you’re spewing aren’t for my benefit, they’re for yours.”
That shuts me up.
I was trying to save the world. I’m not evil like you think I am, I want to say. But somehow, his words burn those explanations away like acid.
The room is quiet for a long moment.
“You’re right,” I finally say, flipping over to face him. “They are.”
My reasons make no difference to him; they don’t change the fact that I shot and burned him. That I didn’t listen when he begged me to stop.
The horseman has his forearms resting on his bent knees, his penetrating gaze on me. “What do you hope to gain by agreeing with me?” he asks.
“You’re the one everyone calls Pestilence the Conqueror,” I say. “Can’t you even tell when you’ve won an argument?”
Pestilence frowns.
I pull at that loose string again. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
“About what?”
“Killing you—or attempting to, anyway.” Twice, technically, since Pestilence probably only lived through the gunshot wound because he was undying.
He lets out a hollow laugh. “Lies. You’re only telling me this now because you’re my prisoner and you fear what I mean to do with you.”
It’s true that I’m afraid of whatever terrifying punishments Pestilence wants to exact on me, but—
“No,” I say. “I don’t regret trying to kill you. I absolutely hated what I did to you, and I’ll never be the same because of it, but I don’t regret my choices when I made them. Still, I am sorry.”
The horseman is silent for a long time as he scrutinizes me.
“Go to sleep,” he eventually says.
And I do.
Chapter 7
I wake in the middle of the night, ripped from sleep by the sound of crying.
I blink, looking around.
Thought the neighbors had all evacuated …
I grope for my bedside oil lamp before I realize there is no bedside oil lamp.
Not my room. Not my apartment.
Then the last few days wash over me like a cold shower.
Drawing matches, shooting Pestilence, the brutal runs I’d been forced to endure until I could no longer. As the memories flood in, so do all my lingering pains.
You made this shit sandwich, Burns, now you got to eat it.
The sound of crying cuts through my thoughts, and I remember the homeowner. How many hours has it been since we showed up on her doorstep?
Twelve? More? Less?
I grope around again for an oil lamp; now that power is spotty, people keep lamps and lanterns around. My fingers slide over a bedside table, but what they bump into isn’t a lamp. I feel around the glass of water and the pitcher next to it.
Did Pestilence leave this here?
I balk at the thought. That would be far too kind for the likes of him.
Pulling off my blankets, I get out of bed and slip down the hall, ready to head towards the sound of the crying, which seems to be coming from a room at the back of the house. But then I hesitate.
What are you going to do, Sara? Comfort her? You’re a stranger playing Goldilocks in her house. You think she wants anything to do with you?
I stand there, second-guessing myself, when finally my head catches up to me.
My eyes pass over the dark hallway once, twice, looking for Pestilence. I prowl back to my room and peek inside. The darkness obscures a lot, but it can’t hide a horseman, and there isn’t one in my room.