I wake to the feel of a hand at my throat.

“Of all the vile humans who’ve crossed my path, you just might be the worst.”

My eyes snap open.

A monster looms over me, his face pockmarked with bloody holes, his skin charred and twisted and missing in places.

I wouldn’t recognize him except for the eyes.

Angelic blue eyes. The shit they’re always painting on ceilings of churches.

This is my horseman.

Alive from the grave.

“Impossible,” I say, my voice hushed.

He smells like ash and burnt flesh.

How could he have survived that?

He squeezes my neck tighter. “You foolish human. In all the time I’ve existed, had you really never thought another hadn’t already attempted what you failed at?

“They tried to shoot me in Toronto, gut me in Winnipeg, bleed me out in Buffalo, and strangle me in Montreal. They tried to do all that and more in so many other towns with names I doubt you’d recognize because you fickle humans never bother to look beyond yourselves.”

Someone else has already … tried?

Tried and failed.

It’s like taking a glass of ice water to the face. Of course someone else has tried to end him. I should’ve known better. But I hadn’t seen footage of it, hadn’t heard any reports of the attempts. Whoever had tried to take him out hadn’t managed to alert the public that he can’t be killed.

“Everywhere I go,” he continues, “there’s someone like you. Someone who thinks they can kill me to save their malignant world.”

It’s hard to stare at his face, grotesque as it is. And yet it looks so much better than it did when I left him, back when he was nothing but ash.

Pestilence pulls me in close. “And now you will pay for daring to do so.”

He yanks me up by the throat.

Whatever vestiges of sleep clung to me, they’re now gone. I reach for his hand, yelping when I touch bone and sinew.

How can he possibly use a hand when all that’s left of it is bone and tendon? His grip is like iron, unyielding.

Pestilence drags me out of the tent, throwing me to the ground. My palms and knees sink into the shallow snow.

A moment later, a knee digs into my back. He runs his hands over my torso, feeling me for extra weapons. I shudder at the sensation. He’s touching me with raw bone. He reaches for my pockets, emptying them of my Swiss Army knife and my matchbook.

In the deep blue, pre-dawn glow, the forest has an almost sinister feel to it. It’s silent as the grave, its former inhabitants long gone.

Pestilence pauses after his inspection. “Where is your fight?” he asks derisively when I continue to just lay there. “You were fast to act before. Where is that damnable human fire now?”

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that the lump of smoldering flesh I walked away from last night has somehow regenerated. And it talks.

“You have nothing to say to that? Hm.” A moment later, he grabs my wrists, binding them together over my head with a rough twine rope I’m pretty sure he nabbed from my things. “Well, it’s probably for the best. Mortal conversation always does leave something to be desired.”

The pressure against my back abates.

“Up,” he commands.

It takes me a second too long to process the order, so he uses the rope to drag me to my feet. Once again I get a good look at him.

He’s even more monstrous than I first thought. His hair is gone, his nose is gone, his ears are gone, his skin is still blackened. Hardly a man at all, and certainly nothing that should be alive.

His golden armor remains in place, looking unblemished even though it should be charred and bullet-riddled. I can’t see much of his arms under the armor, but they must be in bad shape judging by the way the metal rattles loosely around. And his hands … his hands are nothing more than white bone and bits of flesh, as are his feet and ankles.

At his waist, he wears one of my blankets, which he must’ve snatched while I was sleeping. I cringe at the thought.

Pestilence leads me back to the road by my bound wrists. I blanch when I see his white horse waiting patiently for its master, its flank coated with scarlet blood. It paws the snow-covered asphalt, huffing. When it sees me, it anxiously whinnies, sidestepping away.

Heedless of his horse’s mood, Pestilence secures the other end of the rope to the back of his steed’s saddle.

I glance between my tied wrists and his mount. “What are you doing?”

He ignores me, hoisting himself onto his horse.

“You’re not going to kill me?” I finally ask.

He turns around, that mess of a face looking embittered. “Oh no, I’m not letting you die. Too quick. Suffering is made for the living. And oh, how I will make you suffer.”