War (The Four Horsemen, #2)(101)

War watches me, his face inscrutable.

The horseman swallows the rest of his drink down, then he pours another and kneels down in front of me to hand me the glass. When I don’t take it, he sighs and polishes it off himself.

“Why do you care if I kill myself?” I ask, from where I sit. My temper still burns hot, but right now, curiosity is overpowering my hate.

War rises and returns to the table, pouring himself another drink. Once again, he returns to my side and offers it down to me. I hesitate, then stand and take it from him.

“This isn’t a peace offering,” I state. He can’t buy my forgiveness. Not after what I saw and what he did.

“I didn’t intend for it to be one.”

I move to the table and sit down. I don’t know why I’m playing nice at all. War just did the most godawful thing I’ve ever seen. But then everything that’s come after that event has diverged from the appropriate script. I’m supposed to kill him, and he’s supposed to punish me, yet none of that is happening.

War fixes himself another drink, then sits down across from me.

The undead soldier comes back inside the tent, carrying a steaming pitcher of water. Silently, he pours it into the bathtub at the back of the tent, then exits, pausing only to pick up more of the weapons War deposited onto that pile.

“How can you want us all to die?” I ask.

“I don’t want you all to die.”

“Right, it’s your boss who wants us gone.”

“Believe it or not,” War says, looking tired, “there are other creatures on this planet worth saving—creatures that humans have systematically wiped out. Have you ever considered the fact that even if you’re God’s favorite child, you’re not his only one?”

“So you’re doing this for the mosquitos then?” It should be funny, but I’m still so angry I want to throw my drink at the tent wall.

“There have been several extinction events on this planet, Miriam. And before my brothers and I appeared, the world was heading for another—all thanks to humans.”

So we’re being killed off to protect everything else that lives on this rock. I hate that the bastard actually manages to sound altruistic after this evening’s events.

“Your very nature is flawed,” War continues. “Too inquisitive, too selfish. And too brutal. Far too brutal.

“But no, Miriam, I don’t want all humans to die. My very essence was borne of human nature. Without you, there is no me.”

A chill runs down my arms. With every swing of his blade, the horseman is killing himself.

“So you’re not sorry for tonight,” I say.

“I cannot change my task, wife,” his kohl-lined eyes hold an age-old heaviness to them.

“You can decide not to do it,” I say.

“And why should I?” he challenges.

“Because your wife begs you to.”

War stills a little at the word wife. It’s not often that I acknowledge who I am to him. I know he thinks it means that I believe in this strange marriage of ours, and maybe I was coming around to the possibility. But right now I only say it because I know it gets under his skin in a way few other things can.

“Humans have the luxury of being selfish, Miriam—but I don’t.”

It doesn’t feel selfish, trying to spare countless people from slaughter, but I can also tell from the sharp look in War’s eyes that tonight, my words will fall on deaf ears. I’m too emotionally invested, and he’s too adamant about his cause to be swayed.

I take another sip of my drink. The dead soldier has come back inside, carting more hot water to the basin and scooping up another handful of weapons on his way out.

The bath is for me, I know it without even asking. So I finish my drink and leave the table, stripping on my way to the tub. I don’t care what War sees, nor do I care right now if the corpse comes back in and gets an eyeful of boobs. Some of my anger really has ebbed away, but only so that a terrible kind of numbness can set in.

I step into the shallow bath, and I begin to wash myself because I smell like a corpse. I keep my back to the horseman, not interested in seeing him or talking to him or interacting in any sort of manner. Halfway through cleaning myself off, the zombie does come back in and I don’t bother covering myself. It doesn’t matter; his sightless eyes stare at absolutely nothing as he completes his task.

“So is that it, wife?” War’s voice rings out. “You’ll now pretend I don’t exist?”

“That would be impossible,” I say, so quietly I’m not sure he hears it.

The horseman’s chair scrapes back, and I think for an instant he’s going to approach me. After a moment’s pause, however, his footfalls move in the opposite direction. The tent flaps rustle, and then War is gone.

I towel off in the grim silence of the horseman’s tent. I’m exquisitely alone, and yet I can feel the horseman’s eyes everywhere. I know his dead lurk just outside the tent, waiting for me to run.

I toss my towel over a chair and slip into some clean clothes—clothes that someone else washed and dried and folded. Clothes that aren’t mine and don’t feel like mine, just like the rest of this place.

Then I move back to War’s table and I pour myself another drink, my eyes going to the flickering lamplight around me.