Pestilence (The Four Horsemen #1)(25)

But right now my mind isn’t that old, reliable friend it once was. Every time the silence roars in, my mind drifts to that plague victim I tended to, or the fact that more are dying with every kilometer we travel. Worst of all is when I ruminate on the man at my back. I’m still his prisoner, but the longer I’m around him, the more muddled my feelings are.

I press my hand against his horse’s neck. “‘Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before …’” I murmur to myself.

“What are you speaking of?” Pestilence asks.

“I’m quoting ‘The Raven.’ It’s a poem by Edgar Allan Poe.”

Pestilence makes a noise at the back of his throat. “I should’ve known that brief flash of eloquence was not your making.”

“Do you even have the ability to speak without insulting me?” I say.

I swear this bastard is just trying to kill my morning buzz.

“Of course.” I can hear the smug smile in his voice. “It is just that there are so very many things about you worth insulting.”

If this hot chocolate weren’t so precious to me, I’d dump the rest of it on Pestilence’s pig head, consequences be damned.

I think the horseman is waiting for me to clap back at him—to be perfectly honest, I think he enjoys verbally sparring with me—but he up and ruined Poe, so I’m not going to give him anything else.

When the silence stretches on, the horseman says softly, “I enjoyed that bit of poetry.”

I let out a huff.

Not going to take the bait, pretty boy. Not even when I really want to—because, Poe.

I begin stroking Trixie’s mane, the horse’s white hair silken beneath my fingertips.

“Tell me about yourself,” Pestilence demands.

I bristle at his tone. Said so high-handedly, like I’m here to serve him. Not to mention that the last few times I’ve tried to chat with him, he was rude.

“No.”

That response gives him pause. I can almost feel him studying the back of my head.

“You are such an odd creature,” he says. “One moment you tell me you won’t stop talking, and the next you refuse to.”

He’s so trying to bait me. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the horseman was quickly developing an appetite for conversation.

He sighs. “Human, you’ve piqued my interest—a rare accomplishment. Don’t squander it.”

“Squander it?” This guy. “You mean by refusing to talk to you?” That’s real cute. “I’ll tell you a rare accomplishment—pissing me off.”

He guffaws. “You mean this hellcat nature of yours is atypical?”

Bringing out all my stabby tendencies.

“You want to know about me?” I practically shout. “Fine. My full name is not human, it’s Sara Burns. I’m twenty-one years old. And a week ago I was taken by an insufferable horseman. Would you like to argue about that too?”

I’m so ready to duke—it—out with Pestilence.

“Hmmm,” is all he says.

No scathing comments or smartass remarks. Just hmmm.

I could kill a bitch right now.

“What is it that you do to fill your days?” he asks.

I have to glance behind me to make sure I’m speaking to the same man who was taunting me literally seconds ago.

He stares at me, looking guileless.

I grimace. “Did,” I bite out. I don’t do anything at the moment, except (joyfully) slow the horseman down. (We all have to get our thrills somewhere.) Facing forward, I add, “I was a firefighter.”

His fingers drum against my waist. “Did you enjoy it?”

I lift a shoulder. “It was just a job. It didn’t define me.” Not the way it did some of my teammates, who’d dreamed of being firefighters their entire lives. I blow out a breath. “I always wanted to go to college and study English,” I confess. I don’t know why I’m admitting this.

“English?” Pestilence says quizzically. “But you speak it fine—if a little odd.”

“Not English as in the language itself,” I clarify, tipping back the last of the hot chocolate. I slide the thermos into one of the saddle bags. “English as in literature written in English. I wanted to study the works of Shakespeare and Lord Byron and,”—my favorite—“Poe.”

“Poe,” the horseman repeats, no doubt remembering the name from earlier. “Why didn’t you study these poets?”

Regret is a bitter taste at the back of my throat, and there’s no more hot chocolate to wash it out.

“Four horsemen came to earth and made a mess of the world.”

When we enter the town of Squamish, it’s just as abandoned as I hoped it might be.

We pass by a gas station whose pumps are rusty with years of disuse, but whose store is filled with rows of preserved produce, nuts, and sweets.

Farther in, recently installed gas lamps still burn, though the sun has been up for hours. The lamp lighter must’ve evacuated before they could extinguish the light.

Like the gas station’s store, the trading posts we pass are still full of goods, a sure sign that their owners fled before they had a chance to stow away their goods. As a result, a few of them have been broken into and robbed.