War (The Four Horsemen, #2)(75)

Tucking a strand of hair behind my ear, I scoot away from the horseman, an action he notices. I keep letting myself forget about War’s true nature.

“You have seen me kill many times, Miriam, and yet this bothers you?”

“Of course it bothers me,” I say. “It makes me not want to touch you.”

War’s face … that violence is back in his eyes, but for a single instant—a single, brief instant—I see his hurt.

It’s almost preposterous to think a force of nature like War is even capable of feeling hurt. But maybe I’m not the only one who gets vulnerable when you strip them down.

“But you will keep touching me,” he says. “So long as you want your aviaries to remain intact, you will—and I don’t need to remind you how easily I can undo all of the progress you’ve bought your kind.”

“Bought,” I repeat. Now it’s me who feels hurt—hurt and used and dirty. Forget that this situation was my idea, or that that’s exactly what I did—I bought my fellow humans the barest possibility of survival—it still burns me raw to hear War talk about it like it’s some cold, emotionless transaction.

I get up, completely naked, not really giving a fuck what War sees. “I’m glad we both know that’s all this is.” I begin to pull on my clothes. “I would hate for you to get the impression that I actually want you.”

“Oh, you want me.” The horseman sounds almost smug.

I shove my feet back into my pants. “Fuck. You.”

“Not until you surrender everything.”

Done, done, done with this. I finish getting dressed and begin to walk away.

“You will be riding back with me,” War commands from behind me.

I give him the finger in response.

I’ve barely walked twenty meters when I see movement out of the corner of my eye. I turn just in time to see the zombie from earlier loping towards me.

I manage not to scream, but I’m not going to lie, I pee myself a little at the sight of the creature sprinting towards me.

Behind me, War stands on our blanket, pulling his pants back on as he watches the scene.

“What are you doing?” I yell at War, never fully managing to rip my eyes from the zombie.

The dead man—pretty sure it’s a man at least—is hurtling towards me.

Fuck it—I begin to run.

I make it half a kilometer before the creature tackles me. The two of us go tumbling into the sandy earth.

Dear God, the smell. Like someone is raping my nostrils. I gag a little on it. And now when I do see the creature, I really do scream. This one isn’t as freshly dead as the men I fought a city ago. His skin is a greyish hue and it’s rotting away in areas, revealing his decomposing innards.

The zombie drags me to my feet just as the horseman rides over on Deimos.

He stops at my side, reaching out a hand. “Come, Miriam.”

I glare up at War. “No.”

“Then my man will be forced to escort you home.”

I think I have bits of that decomposing man in my hair. I definitely have them smeared across my shirt and pants.

Going to have to burn these clothes. Damnit.

“At least he’ll be better company,” I say.

War frowns at me, looking frustrated and bothered all at the same time. “So be it. Enjoy the walk, wife.”

And then he rides off.

Bastard.

It takes nearly an hour to make it back to camp, and the entire way the dead man has a grip on my upper arm. The stench of him is too much, and I vomit four separate times. Eventually I simply plug my nose and breathe in and out of my mouth.

In spite of this, I don’t regret my decision to walk back. Not even a little.

Right now the dead man is still better company than War.

I don’t see the horseman again for days. He doesn’t call on me, and I stay the hell away from his tent, spending my time reading, making weapons, and visiting with Zara and her frightened nephew.

So I’m surprised when, on the day we pack up camp, I’m given a horse and instructed to wait for War.

I almost don’t.

I’m no longer upset about the revelation that War’s dead haunt all the fallen cities of the world. It’s terrible and shocking and it makes the horseman even more barbaric than I already imagined him to be, but it is what it is, and now I know.

I’m not even upset about the nauseating walk back to camp—though I had been for a while after I returned.

At this point I’m just pissed off because I’ve been pissed off, and I don’t know, the emotion has developed some inertia of its own.

But then War comes riding through camp, looking like a red sun rising on the horizon, and I feel eager to see him—eager to be angry with him, eager to hear his deep voice and to gaze at that face. And maybe to even touch him. I may not like the guy, but I think I’m addicted to him.

The horseman stops when he gets to my side. His stares at me for several seconds.

“Wife,” he says. I cannot tell what he’s thinking.

“War.”

He gives me a slight nod and takes off again. I follow him to the front of the procession, feeling the eyes of the entire army on us. And then they’re behind us and it’s just me and War and the endless road ahead of us.

The horseman is the first one to speak.