It’s two nights later when a burning hot hand presses over my mouth, rousing me from sleep.

“Not a word,” the gruff voice commands.

I blink my groggy eyes open.

What’s going on?

I squint into the darkness, half expecting to make out Pestilence’s striking features. But it’s another man who glares down at me, his face coarser, meatier, and frankly, uglier than the horseman’s.

I feel the cool bite of metal under my jaw.

“Get up,” Nick demands, his voice hushed.

My mind is furiously trying to catch up with what’s going on. Gun. Nick. Waking me up in the middle of the night.

Throwing off the ratty wool blanket, I carefully slip off of the futon.

He pushes me forward, across the living room and towards a door that leads to his backyard. “Out the door, quietly.”

Fear rattles through my bones, but the emotion is so very weak. I’ve lived through too many fires to be frightened of death. The only thing that keeps me moving towards the front door is the ridiculous worry that Nick’s sons or wife might get drawn into this—or they’ll have to bear witness to it.

Behind me, in one of the far off rooms, I hear a wet, rattling cough.

They have enough worries as it is.

I let Nick lead me outside, my bare feet going numb as I walk over fresh snow. More flakes of it drift down, kissing my face and tangling in my hair.

Ahead of me, there’s no back fence to enclose Nick’s yard from the thick forest pressing in on it. I can just make out the icebox and the area where Trixie was secured to earlier. The horse is gone, presumably with its rider—who I haven’t seen since dinner.

Nick pushes me forward with the barrel of his gun. “Keep walking.”

If tonight goes according to this guy’s plans, I know how it will end. Nick and I take a stroll into the woods and only one of us will leave.

I’m not going to let that happen.

“Where is Pestilence?” I ask.

“You mean your boyfriend?” he says, his voice dripping with malice. Nothing and no one in the world can take the ugly hatred out of this man.

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

Just need to bide my time until we reach the forest. It’s hard to shoot someone when there’s a tree in the way.

“No?” Nick says, feigning surprise. “So you’re just whoring your body out to that thing to buy yourself a little time?”

This guy’s family is on the brink of death, and he’s worried about my sex life?

“You know, I don’t even blame him all that much,” Nick continues behind me. “Who wouldn’t want to tap a piece of fine ass if they got the chance? But you,” he says accusingly, “you’re the one who turned your back on your own fucking kind when you started screwing that monster.”

I don’t even bother telling him that I’m not screwing that monster. The truth won’t save me.

“What do you possibly hope to accomplish by killing me?” I ask, stepping past the first of the evergreen trees that border the property. I can barely feel my feet at this point.

Need to make a move, and soon.

“Vengeance for my family.”

I raise my eyebrows even though he can’t see the action. I know the horseman likes kissing me, but I doubt my death would shake him all that much.

“Pestilence won’t care,” I say. “You’ll just be killing me to kill me.”

Nick’s boot slams into my back, sending me sprawling into the snow.

Whatever chance I had to escape, it’s gone now. My feet are too cold, my body too prone. I squandered the time I had chatting with this angry man.

“What is one more death?” he asks, staring down at me. “We’re all fucking dying here anyway. I’ll be glad to rid the world of one traitorous whore.”

Up until now, the horsemen, the plague, the dying electronics, none of it had truly felt apocalyptic. Not even seeing those empty cities Pestilence and I passed through, their occupants hidden away.

It’s this moment, lying in the snow, a gun at my back, where it sinks in. This truly is the End of Days. Because even with all its hardships, in the world I grew up in, we didn’t turn on each other. Not like this.

I flip over and stare at the rifle.

Nick pulls the bolt back, sliding a bullet into place.

Shit, he’s really going to do this.

There are worse deaths than gunshot wounds, I think, staring down the barrel.

“Put the gun down.” The stoic voice comes from the forest behind me.

Both Nick and I glance over my shoulder.

Standing in a patch of moonlight, looking ever so much like a deity, Pestilence holds his bow at the ready, his crown gleaming in the dim light.

Nick readjusts his hold on the weapon. “Save my family, and I’ll let her go.”

“I don’t bargain with mortals.” Pestilence takes a step forward, his aim never wavering.

“Stay back!” Nick calls. “If you want her to live, keep your distance, horseman!”

It’s all playing out wrong, like a loose string unraveling cloth.

“I assure you, I won’t.”

I take a steadying breath. Just staring at the horseman’s cool demeanor calms me.

“I’ll shoot her!” Nick threatens, his anger morphing into panic as his moment of revenge slips further and further from his reach.

“Do so at your own peril.”

My eyes cut to Nick’s, and I see the moment he decides that killing me is still the better option.

I never see his finger pull the trigger.

The air stirs next to my ear, then—

Thwump—BOOM!

My entire body jerks at the sound.

Dear God.

My hand moves to my chest. But the pain I expect to feel never comes. It’s only after I take in several frightened breaths that I realize I haven’t been hit.

Thwump. Thwump—thwump—thump.

Faster than I can react, Nick’s body seems to dance as it’s riddled with arrows. He grunts, dropping his gun and falling to his knees. His fingers go to his chest, where the arrows protrude.

I look over my shoulder at Pestilence, who’s striding towards us, his face filled with grim determination. “She is not yours to kill,” he says.

Turning back around, I crawl over to Nick and push the rifle out of his reach. My eyes move over his injuries, and my paramedic training kicks in. It doesn’t matter that I have a serious hate-on for Nick; I begin to assess his injuries all the same.

“Don’t … touch me … plague fucker.” Nick says between laborious breaths. “You’re nothing but … a goddamned … whore.”

I hear the strain of oiled wood, and when I look up, Pestilence has another arrow already notched, the point of it trained on Nick. “I let your poisonous words pass the first time,” the horseman says, “but I won’t a second.”

Nick heaves in a breath, the sound wet. “You and I … both know … it’s true. How many times … did she have … to suck your … cock before—”

The arrow hits him in the shoulder with a solid thump. He lets out a garbled shriek.

“Test me again, human.”

“Do it,” Nick goads. “It would be … a faster … death than … what you’ve … given my family.”

“Don’t,” I say to the horseman. He stopped Nick from shooting me. He’s no longer any sort of threat.

Pestilence walks over to the man and stares down at him, arrow still pointed. “If I know any mercy,” he says, “it’s Sara’s doing.”

If I know any mercy, it’s Sara’s doing.

Only days ago I’d told Amelia that the horseman was incapable of it.

You’re changing him just as he’s changing you.

Nick must want death because he says, “Fuck you and this cunt—”

The final arrow rips through Nick’s throat, and now he’s choking on his words, drowning in them.

“Vile human,” Pestilence says, looming over the dying man. “You could’ve spent your final breaths pleading for your family, but I see only hate in your heart.”

I can’t hear what Nick says, but I doubt whatever he mouthed at the horseman was particularly kind. It takes less than a minute for Nick to bleed out, and he leaves the world with a glare in his eyes.

My shoulders slump with exhaustion.

Pestilence slings his bow over his shoulder and kneels next to me, his hands skimming over my body. “Are you hurt?” he asks, concerned.

I shake my head, pushing myself to my feet. “I’m fine.”

The horseman takes me by the arm. “I was wrong, Sara, this cursed home is no place for even my wrath. Come.” He leads me to Trixie.

I eye the horse, then glance down at my icy feet. “Um, I need shoes … and my coat—and a bra. And everything else.”

Pestilence looks me over, from my borrowed pajamas down to my toes. I swear I can see him putting together what happened—how I was pulled from bed and led into the woods for a midnight execution.

Does he realize Nick wanted to kill me to hurt him? Does he understand human motives well enough to piece that together? And if Nick had been successful, would the horseman have even cared that I died?

Without another word Pestilence scoops me up.

I yelp as I swing into his arms. “What are you doing?”

“Helping you,” he says, carrying me back into the house. He sets me down on the floor of the living room, where the fire is nothing more than a few dying embers. Kneeling in front of me, he takes my feet and, one by one, rubs heat back into them.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask, watching him carefully.

He shakes his head, but doesn’t answer me.

Once I’m warm again, I grab my clothes and slip them on. All the while, the rest of the house is utterly still.

We leave shortly after that. And even though it’s the middle of the night and the snow is coming down harder, I’m so freaking relieved—to be alive, to be leaving that house, to feel Pestilence at my back, his arm gripping me tightly.

We’ve barely made it to the highway when Pestilence jerks on the reins, bringing Trixie up short.

I look around in confusion. “What are we … ?”

Pestilence tilts my jaw and then his mouth slams down on me, his other arm crushing me to him. It’s the kiss of a desperate man. Like he’s trying to inhale me into himself. Whatever initial clumsiness he had with the act is gone, replaced by this ferocity.

He eventually breaks away, his lips swollen.

Pestilence’s blue eyes are luminous. “You came … too close to death for my liking.”

It’s like he’s only now really processing it. And right here is the answer to my earlier question—my death would have affected the horseman.

Discreetly, I press a hand to my hammering heart. I mean something to him. What a shock.

He casts his gaze to the dark horizon and clicks his tongue, and we resume our punishing pace once more.

“How long do you plan on keeping me captive?” It’s an almost hilarious question, considering how muddled our roles have become.

Pestilence is quiet.

I glance up, only to see him staring down at me, his eyes deep.

“Until my task is complete, you and I shall ride together,” he says.

Until his task is complete. That’s such a simple statement, but it encompasses a vast, nearly unimaginable task ahead of us. To travel the entire world on horseback, watching millions fall to plague. How many months would it take? How many people would I have to watch die before my mind broke? How many more brushes with death would I have to face?

It would be unendurable.

“So I’m going to travel the entire globe?”

“Yes.” He sounds pleased.

I’m going to die.

Not by Pestilence’s hand, perhaps, but there will be someone in some city who will do what Nick could not.

That was always the plan, Sara. From the moment you pulled that blackened matchstick, you knew you were a dead woman walking. Don’t get remorseful now.

Of course, my continued existence bothers me nearly as much as my impending death.

I search his face in the darkness. “Of all the people whose paths you crossed, why did you pick me?”

He’s quiet for a long time. So long, in fact, that assume he’s not going to answer. It’s only as I’m about to face forward that he does.

“I felt God’s hand move me to spare you,” he says.

Surprise washes through me. I imagined that he might feed me his story about making an example of me. But this …

God told him to spare me. I have no idea how to feel about that.

He frowns. “I thought … I came to this world to mete out His wrath, but that night, and every one since then, I have wondered …”

I wait for him to finish the sentence, but this time the silence stretches on until I realize that’s all I’m getting. It’s a whole lot more than he’s given me in the past, so I’ll take it.

“What’s God like?” I ask.

“That is not a subject I can discuss with mortals.”

Of course it isn’t.

“Well, then can you at least tell me what it’s like?” I ask.

“What what’s like?” Pestilence’s grip has moved so that he’s now cupping my arm, his thumb rubbing circles into my flesh.

“I don’t know—death. The Great Beyond.” I hold out my hand to catch a flake of snow

“It would be easier to explain sight to the blind,” Pestilence says. “It can’t be understood by description alone; it must be experienced.”

What is the use of having a horseman around if he won’t answer any of the fun questions?

I drop my hand back into my lap. “Can you at least tell me whether humans have souls or not?”

“Of course humans have souls, Sara.” I can hear the amusement in his voice. “I wouldn’t be here if they didn’t.”

Pestilence’s hand moves back to its usual spot—pressed against my stomach—and I can just make out a ring he wears on his index finger, a round, dark stone at its center.

Not for the first time I realize there is so much to this man that I’m completely unaware of, despite kissing him, sleeping with him, living and riding with him.

Ever so gently, I run my hand over his ring. His fingers flex at the touch.

“Tell me about your life,” I say distractedly, still focused on the ring and the hand that wears it.

“What is there to tell?” Pestilence’s voice rumbles behind me.

“I don’t know, tell me a memory.” Anything to know him by so he’s not just some otherworldly horseman.

“My memories would disturb you,” he says curtly.

As opposed to my reality where people die painful, tormented deaths?

“I still want to hear about them.”

He takes a deep breath. I don’t know how he does it, but he manages to make something as simple as drawing in air ripe with reluctance.

“What do you want to know? Shall I tell you about man’s first cities? I remember stirring awake, my attention caught on their attempts to elevate themselves from other creatures. I saw them divert water from rivers and plant the first crops. I watched them build crude houses and tame wild beasts. I admit, I was awestruck at the sight of man molding nature into something pleasing, something he could use.

“Then came towns and cities, kings and law. The world moved faster as man built and created and innovated and conquered. I was there for it all, and I’ve been here ever since.

“I’ve stood in ancient bazaars, I’ve walked through city centers, I’ve lingered in castles and alleyways and everything in between. I’ve stayed in a thousand different houses, and I’ve kissed the brow of countless humans, and I’ve lain with each one.

“I came to earth and I touched and the world knew terror.”

Jesus.

“I am Pestilence, and my memory is longer than recorded history—it is even longer than man. I came before him, and dear Sara, I will outlive his end.”