Pestilence (The Four Horsemen #1)(60)

But I don’t say these things. Instead I nod and give him another weak smile.

His frown deepens. “I don’t like this look,” he says, studying my features. “You lie with your face. Do you need more time? Three days? Four? You shall have it—only remove this sad, defeated look. I cannot stand it.”

I don’t think anyone has ever told me anything so genuinely frank and kind.

On a whim, I pull him to me, hugging the horseman tightly. At first, he’s stiff in my arms, but as the seconds tick by, he hesitantly wraps his own arms around me, and I feel utterly engulfed by him.

“You’re a good man, Pestilence,” I admit.

And therein lies my problem. He’s not a nice man, he’s not a peaceful man, but he’s good man.

I close my eyes and breathe him in. He smells like cheap soap, and beneath that, divinity. (Didn’t even know one could literally smell divine, but there you have it.)

His lips brush my ear. “You forget, I am no man, Sara.”

A laugh escapes me. “Fine. You are a good harbinger of the apocalypse.”

He holds me tighter, his cheek brushing against my temple. “And you are a compassionate woman.” I feel him finger a lock of my hair. “Far too compassionate, if I’m being honest,” he says under his breath.

I take some solace in the fact that whatever this is that I’m beginning to feel, Pestilence is experiencing it as well. And we might each be bulldozing our morals, but at the very least, we’re doing it together.

We end up leaving the house two days later. That’s about all the time I could take in that messy place. I’m no paragon of cleanliness, but that house … even now, kilometers away, my skin crawls at the thought of it.

I’m pulled from my thoughts when I catch sight of a sign in front of us. After we fled Vancouver, we’d traveled through mostly backroads and places off the beaten path, but inevitably, Pestilence had made his way back to the main highways. And now I see something I’d missed.

I suck in my breath.

Seattle 54 mi.

“What is it?” Pestilence asks.

“We’re in America.”

Somewhere between Pestilence getting attacked in Vancouver and my own brush with death a few days ago, I hadn’t even realized that we’d crossed countries.

“Ah, America,” Pestilence says with distaste, dragging me back to the present. “Here they are made particularly mean.”

A ridiculous wave of fear washes through me at that. “Pestilence, we need to get off the main road.”

“Whatever for?” he asks, genuinely curious.

I can still feel the ruin of his head, cradled in my lap. I’m not ready to go through that again.

“There’s a large city coming up,” I say. “Bigger than the last one.” There were dozens of people waiting for Pestilence in Vancouver; how many would there be in Seattle? “Let’s go around it.”

“I will not be driven off my course by the presence of humans.”

That’s the last he says on the subject.

My dread mounts as we close in on the metropolis. Something bad is going to happen. I can feel it the way you can feel a storm coming; the very air is ripe with it.

Like Vancouver, the slide into Seattle is gradual. First we pass through a sleepy satellite city, which gives way to another that’s a little denser. And then another. A wave of déjà vu washes over me as we pass through the same types of communities that we did in Vancouver.

Pestilence’s arm tightens around my waist. Can he feel it too? The promise of violence flavors the very air.

I pull my jacket tighter around me. It’s only going to get worse the farther south we travel. Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles … The nightmare we encountered in Vancouver will repeat itself over and over again. And even once we’re through with the West Coast, there are entire other countries to cross.

The shadows are just beginning to stretch their spindly fingers across the land when Pestilence leaves the highway, leading Trixie into a neighborhood of tired looking houses that appear as though they’ve settled their old bones in for a long rest.

Pestilence turns Trixie onto the driveway of a darkened house, the horse’s hooves clacking against the cracked concrete. The pale green paint of the place looks timeworn and faded.

We ride right up to the door before Pestilence swings off his mount. Grabbing the doorknob, he twists, breaking the lock and shoving the door open.

I’m just stepping off Trixie Skillz when I notice the hazy glow of an oil-lamp coming from inside, the flame turned way down low. Reclining on the couch next to it is an old woman, her white hair cropped close to her head, her spectacles perched low on her nose. She peers over them at us, the book in her hands entirely forgotten.

We crashed the house of someone’s grandma. Just when I thought we were fresh out of horrors, another one comes.

“We have nothing of any value, I assure you,” she says, her voice surprisingly steady for someone who thinks their home is being invaded.

“I am not here for your things,” Pestilence says. “I am here for your hospitality.”

The woman squints curiously at the horseman. Setting her book aside, she rises to her feet. Age has made her soft and plump, but there’s a certain quiet strength to her.

“Ruth,” a thin, raspy voice calls from another room in the house, “who’s at the door?”