War (The Four Horsemen, #2)(98)

“This was bold of you.”

I jolt at that deep, gravelly voice.

“Bold and reckless.”

My head whips to the side, and there’s War, sitting astride someone else’s horse, staring out at the houses with their fleeing residents. He doesn’t look angry, but the sight of his calm, pitiless face chills me to the bone.

“W-what are you doing here?” I say.

“I spared your friend’s boy in Arish, and I spared the survivors in Port Said, all for your soft heart,” he says conversationally. “I was even willing to find your family for you.”

My hands begin to tremble. I know better than to trust his level voice.

He turns his pitiless gaze on me. “And this is how you repay me?”

Being with War has lulled me into a false sense of reality, one where he treats me with benevolence and overlooks my actions.

The back of my neck pricks. I think I misread him.

I force myself to lift my chin. We’re beyond apologies or explanations. I’m not sorry for what I did, and nothing on this earth will pry that lie from my lips.

He scrutinizes my face. What he sees there causes the corner of his mouth to curve up.

The chill inside me expands, reaching my arms, then my legs.

“I knew you were going to be trouble,” he says. “But now, you must see me for who I really am.”

He raises a hand—

“No.”

God, no. Anything but that.

War ignores me, stretching his arm out, as if to grasp the dark horizon.

All around us, people are moving into the streets. I want to say I don’t see the old and the young and everything in between, but they’re all amongst the heaving mass leaving their houses. Some of them glance our way, but no one seems to have any idea that a demon is among them.

“Please, War,” I beg, reaching for his hand, “You don’t have to sabotage this,” I say.

“I’m not sabotaging anything. You defied my will, and now they will suffer for it.”

“Please,” I say again. A horrified tear slips down my cheek.

I have held this man naked against me. He has saved me from the brink of death and brought out feelings in me no one else has.

He is capable of kindness, of goodness. I’ve seen it more than once.

“Please.” My voice breaks. “This isn’t you.”

Isn’t it though? Isn’t this exactly who and what he is?

War ignores me, and beneath us, the earth begins to shudder. The horse he sits on starts to nervously sidestep.

“No,” I say again, this time more hopeless.

I hop off Deimos and take several staggering steps as the earth rolls beneath my feet. Around me, I hear people shout as they grab one another.

I glance over my shoulder at War, but his eyes have gone unfocused. He’s not here, but elsewhere. And he looks nothing like the man I’ve come to care for.

The earth rips around me, and bone-white bodies pull themselves from the ground. People scream as soon as they catch sight of the dead rising. There aren’t that many dead in this area of town, but in the distance, I hear rising screams. There must by a nearby cemetery or a mass grave of some sort.

And now the chilling realization sets in: Mansoura was probably hit by war fairly recently, judging from the look of the city. And in war, there are lots of casualties … casualties whose bodies may have been buried within the city.

The dead around me descend on the living with unnatural agility.

I turn back to War. “Stop!”

Nothing.

I stalk towards him.

His horse is already halfway spooked. I debate scaring the steed into a frenzy before I decide instead to force myself up and onto the horse.

I am mad, I think, especially when War’s mount lifts its front legs halfway up in warning. But I claw myself far enough onto the saddle to grab onto War’s armor, and then I begin to drag the two of us back down to earth.

The action is enough to fully frighten the horse. The horseman’s mount rears back, throwing me and War off its back. A split second later, the horse takes off into the melee.

War lays beneath me. His arm is no longer outstretched, his eyes no longer glassy. Yet still the undead don’t fall back to the earth. Whatever powers he drew on, they won’t be stopped by distraction alone.

I lean over him, and I cup the side of his face. “Please, War. Please find your compassion. Please stop.”

“I will not stop, wife. I will never stop. It is you who must surrender to my ways.”

That damn word.

I push myself away from him, suddenly repulsed at the thought of touching him. Of caring for him. He is a blight and a terror to my world.

Around me the town is descending into full blown chaos. The dead kill the living, and every person cut down only lays still for a moment or two. Then they rise again as the vengeful dead. They turn on the living, attacking the very people they sought to protect only seconds before.

Dead husbands kill their wives, dead parents kill their children, dead neighbors kill their friends. A lifetime of relationships—deep, meaningful relationships—are weaponized in an instant.

I barely register the tears tracking down my face. How did we deserve this? What could we have possibly done to deserve this?

The dead ignore me and War completely. It’s almost surreal, and for an instant, I remember what it was like to watch television. To be like a fly on the wall as some great scene unfolded around you. You watched it, like a specter, but you were never touched by it.