It’s the closest thing he gives me to an answer.

Maybe a kilometer or so later, I catch sight of a yellow house that’s seen better days. Pestilence makes a beeline for it, not slowing until we’re nearly at its doorway.

He swings off the horse and gathers me in his arms. In three long strides he’s at the door. His booted foot slams against the wood, kicking the thing inward.

Inside, I hear a flurry of screams.

No, not more people.

“Out of my way!” the horseman bellows.

I catch a brief glimpse of a middle-aged couple and behind them, two curious children.

No.

Pestilence sets me in front of a wood-burning stove, holding me close as I shiver.

I clutch his upper arm and force my eyes to open. “We can’t stay here,” I say, my voice weak.

“I need blankets,” he demands. He’s not even looking at me.

My eyelids keep closing.

Body feels heavy. So heavy.

“Please,” I murmur. I know it’s the wrong thing to say, but I can’t help it. How else should I plead for someone’s life?

“Sshh. Blankets! And more wood while you’re at it.”

A hand brushes my hair back, and I want to look and see who the hand belongs to, but my eyelids are too heavy to pry open. I finally feel safe and taken care of, and that’s all my body needs at the moment. I begin to relax, my head finding the crook of an arm once more.

Such an oddly comfortable place to sleep.

The children!

I begin to sit up again, forcing myself to rouse.

“Sshh, Sara. I’m right here.”

Who?

Not the children.

Not the children.

I come to gradually, getting my bearings bit by bit. A mound of blankets covers me, and in front of me is a wood-burning stove, a fire cheerily burning inside it. I stare at it like it holds the answers to all my questions.

I move slowly, feeling like I drank my weight in bad moonshine then decided to run a marathon before getting hit by a freight train. Yesterday was not my best day.

I groan, beginning to roll away.

As soon as I shift, I feel the wind brush against my bare skin.

What in the world?

Am I naked?

An arm tightens around my stomach, feeling like a band of steel.

… Waitonefuckingmoment.

My mind screeches to a halt.

No.

Nononononononono.

Nooooooooo.

I glance over my shoulder, and sure enough, there’s Pestilence, spooning me like we’re lovers. From what I can tell, he doesn’t have a shirt on.

Deep breath, Burns.

“Did we … ?” I can’t even finish that sentence.

“You were hypothermic.”

Oh. Of course. That would be the logical sequence of events. Not screwing the world’s most hated being. Because that would be so far out of the question that—

Why am I even dwelling on this?

I gather the blankets around me, clutching them against me, and sit up with as much modesty as I can manage.

“Where are we?”

Pestilence sits up next to me, and now it really looks like the two of us were up to some hanky-panky.

“In a house,” he replies.

Ask a silly question …

In the distance I hear hushed voices.

“No you can’t go out there.”

“But I’m hungry.”

“Is that really the horseman?”

“I want to pet his horse!”

“Go back to your rooms, both of you.”

Little feet pitter patter against the floor.

My stomach contracts. Children. That’s right. I rub the heel of my hand against one of my eyes, willing the last twenty-four hours to just go away.

Children. Under the same roof as Pestilence.

“Don’t let them die,” I whisper.

“Everyone dies, Sara.”

I close my eyes. Everything hurts so damn much. My body, my heart, my mind.

They’re going to die.

I twist to face him, pressing the blanket close to me. It has racecars printed all over it. A little boy’s blanket, sacrificed so that I’d be warm. Sometimes it’s the little details that cut the deepest.

“Honestly,” I say, “that is the biggest load of horseshit I’ve heard from you.”

He squints at me. “Every human dies,” he amends, completely missing my point.

“It doesn’t mean they need to die today!” I hiss, trying to keep my voice down for the family’s sake.

“They won’t. They still have at few days yet.”

Suddenly I can’t look at him, and I can’t stand to be near him.

He’s going to kill children. Children.

Of course, he already has killed children. Thousands upon thousands of them. But now the reality of it is being shoved in my face and I can’t stand it.

Wordlessly, Pestilence hands me a pile of clothes, undoubtedly something he swiped from the owner’s. This might just be the worst part of the whole thing. The horseman can think to collect clothes for me even as he lets his damnable plague kill kids.

Pestilence settles back on his forearms, watching me as I dress, his eyes not quite as disinterested in my body as they were the last time he saw it.

I must be imagining things.

I finally meet his gaze. “Change your mind.”

“No.”

My jaw clenches as I stare at him, my eyes accusing. He meets my gaze unflinchingly.

“I am not here to please your every whim.” Pestilence’s voice is steady, unfeeling. “I am here to end the world.”

Chapter 18

It takes three days for plague to kill a man. Four, if you’re particularly unlucky.

This family is particularly unlucky.

I don’t know if this is simply nature at work, or if Pestilence is pulling the strings (either to punish me for pissing him off, or to “compromise” with me and give this family a bit longer to live).

It takes four long, agonizing days of sickness before the entire family passes. Mother, father, son and daughter. All of them taken by this stupid, senseless plague.

Four days I lingered in that house at Pestilence’s insistence while I recovered, four days the horseman made himself scarce, four days that I cared for the family—against their wishes. They wished me gone. At least, they did until they were too weak to take care of themselves.

“Why is he doing this?” the woman, Helen, asked me the day before she died.

I knelt next to her side of the bed. “I don’t know.”

“Why did he save you?” she pressed.

“I tried to kill him,” I explained. “He’s keeping me alive so that he can punish me.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she murmured. “He might have his reasons, but I don’t think punishment is one of them.”

My skin prickled at her words, and for the first time, I felt some uncertainty at my situation.

Why else would the horseman keep me around if not to punish me?

I recalled the torture I’d endured, and my uncertainty vanished. Helen simply didn’t know what Pestilence put me through. That was all.

Of all the members of this family, it’s the father who goes first. He was a big, burly guy who was built like a tank, and out of all of them, I would’ve thought he’d have held out the longest. Instead, in the early hours of the fourth day, he closed his eyes, gave one final, rattling cough, and passed on in the big bed he shared with his wife.