Page 28 of Bound to Death

“Who is he?” I demanded again.

The supernatural killer’s eyes lifted from my wrist. I didn’t expect him to answer. He’d kept everything to himself all this time, so why would he start telling me things now? But then his thumb brushed over my wrist, and he sighed loudly. “One of the Four Horsemen. Humans call him Pestilence.”

What the fuck?!

Chapter Fourteen

Thanatos

Weight landed in my stomach after seeing the inky mark circling my little raven’s wrist. The mark of her inevitable death if I didn’t seek assistance from someone who’d never giveit. One of God’s most beloved angels. The only angel capable of purifying a human from Pestilence’s incurable sickness. But she wouldn’t go against God. Not after what she and her lover did. Not when she was banished to the human realm to prove her loyalty to God.

Fuck.

The first call of the day was a warning by War. Ares rarely involved herself in my affairs, but she’d been tracking Zelus because he’d interfered with hers. He couldn’t find his Counter Soul, so he was trying to take the souls of the other Horsemen. Limos—or Famine as the humans liked to call him—was the laziest of the group and hadn’t bothered to look for his. Nor would he if given the option. So, it wasn’t surprising that despite Zelus’s obvious fear of Ares, he’d tried to outwit her. No surprise, he hadn’t managed it. Even I was at a loss when it came to her. Should I ever be on the wrong side of Ares, I’d struggle to evade her wrath.

I quickly realized she didn’t intend to assist with annihilating humanity. Ares had outright rebelled against our function as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Despite what she saw over millennia of the wars she instigated, she loved humans. No matter what ugliness humans enacted on one another, she still believed they were worth saving. Even claimed that in the midst of war and often at its conclusion, she witnessed the true strength and compassion of humanity.

So, the Bringer of Warfare proclaimed in so many words that she didn’t want the world to end and wouldn’t take another soul to do it. Instead, she’d keep her Counter Soul safe until the danger was over.

Honestly, I was speechless.

“I won’t apologize,” she had told me in that strong, no-nonsense tone of hers. “But I won’t try to escape any punishment you see fit to give me. Once the final day comes and goes andhumanity is safe from the unfair judgment God has cast down on them, I’ll return and accept whatever fate you deem worthy of my failure to do my sworn duty as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. You have my word.”

I guess she expected me to punish her for it when she revealed the truth behind why she refused to give up the location of her Counter Soul. Least surprising was she found hers well before I found mine.

If I were clever, I’d lean into my role as leader of the Horsemen and lecture her. But I didn’t. If anything, I was relieved to hear I wasn’t alone. Perhaps because after a week of promising tomorrow I’d take Asha’s soul but always failing to do so, it finally felt as though I wasn’t the only Horseman struggling to do what we’d been created for. Someone who didn’t want everything to come to an end. Rather, I didn’t want to see my little raven gone from this world, never to reincarnate.

So I divulged my weakness—my inability to let Asha go where I couldn’t. I expected War to admonish me for getting too close to a human, but it was the first time I’d heard her laugh in nearly a century.

“So, you do have a soul,” she had murmured, her voice playful. “I never thought it’d be you who’d agree with me about this, but…I’m glad, Thanatos. Maybe there’s still hope.” That was all she said before ending the call.

I’d stood outside for a time, marinating in the idea that we had the power to stop the human world from ending. I wasn’t sure if humanity deserved it, but Asha proved maybe some of them did. Unfortunately, that was the least of my problems.

It was arrogant to think I could outwit Zelus with someone to protect. I didn’t consider he’d use underhanded tactics to claim my Counter Soul, but I should’ve known he’d find a window and attack while I was dealing with another demon retaliationnearby. I suspected he’d led them there. A clever distraction, and one that worked.

Anytime danger was nearby, I lost my head a little. I didn’t think the same way I did before meeting Asha. I was reckless and reactive, not calculated and cool-headed. The number of enemies out to kill her had grown exponentially over the last two weeks. They wouldn’t believe I didn’t intend to take her soul. Death had never failed to do his job, not once. Why would this little human be any different?

The demons wanted to taste her blood, and the angels rebelling against God would drive their blades into her heart to save all of humanity. Either way, Asha wouldn’t be safe until time ran out and we’d failed to bring the end of the world. Not that it mattered anymore. They’d won. Unless I could convince Michael humans were worth saving—which was something I wasn’t even sure if I believed—then I’d lose my little raven no matter what I did.

Fuck.

More determined than I’d ever been for the end of the world, I sighed and looked down at Pestilence’s disgusting mark, knowing it was my oversight that caused it. “We can’t stay here.”

Asha’s eyes widened. “Emily—”

“She’ll be safer if we’re not here. He’ll have no reason to bother her. The only place you will be safe is…my realm,” I murmured, taking gentle hold of her face. I wanted to burn her gorgeous eyes, perfect nose, and luscious mouth into my memory. An acidic burn reached my throat, and I soothed it by kissing her.

She reacted by grabbing my shirt and yanking me harder into the kiss. When I tried to wrap her body in my arms, she took a step back and crossed hers instead, a telling sign that she was about to say something sassy. “The Underworld? Or is it Hell? I don’t know what realm a dude like you would live in. What mythology is right?”

I tried not to smile because my chest was so excruciatingly tight that it felt like it might burst into a million pieces at any moment. “Not where you’d think. As Death, I have a realm of my own, but I’ve never brought a mortal there. I’m not sure how it’ll work once you’re there, but we’re not safe here.”

“Locking me up in a gilded cage until when?” she countered, her eyes piercing mine. “Why? What was he talking about when he said you’d found yours? What’s happening, Than? I’m not going anywhere with you without some goddamn answers.”

Her freckled cheeks puffed out, and I hated how cute she looked when I knew that everything I told her would ruin how she felt about me. Would she hate me with every fiber of her being? Would she cast me away? Would she refuse to leave when I told her that everyone she loved would no longer exist as soon as we delivered a soul for the apocalypse?

I couldn’t take her unwillingly to my realm. She had to be compliant, or it wouldn’t work. That much I did know. I just wasn’t sure if she could leave once I brought her to my isolated space, or if she’d regret coming once she knew the truth—that I was one of the only beings who could keep her company for eternity.

The person I was before wouldn’t care, but Asha had changed me. I no longer took whatever I wanted. I waited for her permission. I waited for her to tell me that being with me was the very thing she wanted.

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