I pause to look up at him. “My grief is in vain?” I whisper. He’s taken my family from me and now he thinks that the one thing I have left—my grief—should go too?
I laugh at him, but I’m so angry. “How dare you say that. You don’t even know what loss is,” I say hotly, rising to my feet. “You’ve never loved anything enough to care if it goes.”
“Lazarus,” he says, his face fierce, “nothing actually goes. It transforms, but transmutation isn’t actually lost or gone at all. You were you before you had a body, and you will still be you when you no longer have one. A caterpillar might become a butterfly—and a human might become a spirit—but it is still the same essence. It has simply been transformed.
“Lazarus,” he continues, searching my face, “if you could see life as I see it, you would know it is all okay—that it will all be okay. That death is the end of suffering.”
“Life is far more than suffering,” I practically yell at him. “Why do you think we all cling to it so desperately?”
His eyes flash. “Because you know no better.”
I shake my head. “You’re wrong,” I say.
But what do I know? I have never been dead. My mom seemed to prefer it. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I’ve been fighting for the wrong side this whole time.
That’s the most chilling possibility of all.
Chapter 63
Los Angeles, California
September, Year 27 of the Horsemen
It’s a hard morning. I feel like I have a sob stuck in my throat, and I’m angry at Thanatos, but then it’s not really him I’m angry at.
I thought I had cracked the secret to life. For a brief instant I’d even entertained the idea that perhaps I could do more than just stop the apocalypse—I could reverse it. But there’s clearly no reversing the damage the horsemen have wrought. So instead I sit in the saddle, my heart heavy.
Death holds me close, his lips brushing my temple every so often. I think he senses how close I am to fracturing apart.
Gradually we enter the eastern edge of Los Angeles, one satellite city at a time. The first thing that catches my eye are the mountains of rusted appliances and vehicles left out here in this bone dry landscape. My gaze sweeps over all of the things people lost use of once they stopped working. Every so often I see a body or two lying amongst the debris, and it’s clear that Death has already flexed his lethal powers.
We pass abandoned shopping centers and sun-beaten neighborhoods, the buildings missing windows and doors and roof tiles and whatever else people might repurpose. The landscaping around the buildings has long since died; all that’s left are the husks of trees and bushes.
The sight of it all takes my breath away.
I don’t know much about this part of the world, but I’ve heard stories about a time when this place was the seat of glamour.
I don’t see it.
Maybe it’s that time and the apocalypse have ground away at whatever beauty was once here, because all I see are collapsed overpasses, boarded up buildings, and mountains of rubble.
And corpses.
The farther into LA we move, the more I see them, littering the highway and sprawled on the sidewalk, their belongings strewn out around them. I even see one lounging on their balcony, their head slumped against their shoulder as though they’d merely fallen asleep.
That ache in my chest grows, the one that makes me feel like all of this fighting against the horseman is futile.
Tell me something that makes this all worth it.
I nearly voice the question, but what would be the point? No answer Thanatos gives will make me feel better, and no arguments I make will convince him otherwise. So I keep my mouth shut and on we ride.
It takes another day for us to hit the literal edge of the United States. And suddenly, startlingly, there’s the Pacific.
I have no words for it. I’ve seen lakes, I’ve seen inlets and rivers, but I’ve never seen the sea.
It’s like a second sky, so vast and blue that it seems to swallow the world whole.
I suck in a breath, all my worries forgotten for an instant.
Thanatos must hear my reaction because he tilts himself in the saddle so that he can see my face. While I take in the water he takes in me.
“What is it that I’m seeing on your face?” he asks.
“Wonder,” I murmur. “I’ve never seen the ocean before.” It’s almost funny, considering just how many thousands of miles I have traveled.
Death is quiet, though a moment later, he stops his horse.