A decision must be made.
My fingers tighten on Lazarus. At the sensation, she murmurs in her sleep, then her eyes flutter open and she gives me a sleepy smile.
She’s about to roll over and fall back asleep when I caress her cheek. “In all of my existence, I have never come across anything worth forsaking my duty for until I met you,” I say fervently. “You are my everything, kismet.”
She wears a sleepy smile. “It’s not fair to say such pretty things when I’m too tired to process them.” She leans forward and gives me a kiss, her body brushing against mine. My grip tightens on her.
In response, she shifts herself, spreading her legs in an invitation. I am an angel, but even I cannot resist this.
With a single hand, I remove her panties, then push my way inside her, hissing at the intoxicating feel of her around my cock. I nearly come undone right then and there. Instead, I pump in and out of her with a franticness that she mistakes for passion, each deep thrust pulling moan after moan from her until, all at once, her pussy clenches around me and her moans turn into a cry, my name on her tongue.
At the feel of her orgasm and the sound of her release, I can hold out no longer. I drive into her, harder than I should, bellowing her name as I come.
Before I have even slipped out of her, I pull her to me.
Lazarus’s face nuzzles into my chest, and I can feel in this moment the trust she has for me. Here she lays in my arms, naked, vulnerable, with my seed spilling out of her as though she’d choose no other fate for herself but this one.
And I feel loss, bone-cutting loss, at what I know I cannot have.
Because I know I cannot have this, a human life—one full of laughter and children and … Lazarus.
Always Lazarus.
Without meaning to, I clutch her tighter.
I will not let her go.
The entire world could burn to ash, and I would not care, but I will not give Lazarus up. Not my Lazarus.
I was given a brief human experience—one filled with horror and tragedy but then, most powerful of all, beauty and hope and love. I was given it, and tonight I almost slipped wholeheartedly into that existence, I nearly threw away everything for it.
That’s what Pestilence did.
It’s what War did.
It’s what Famine has been trying to do.
It is what I cannot do.
I’ve questioned my own motives for too long. But this must end. It is what we horsemen were sent here to do. It is what I will do.
And nothing, nothing—not even Lazarus—will stop me.
Part III
Chapter 68
Los Angeles, California
October, Year 27 of the Horsemen
Lazarus
The next morning, I pad into the dining room where a spread of eggs, toast, and fresh fruit waits for us. I’m so distracted by it that I almost miss Thanatos. He stands at the back of the room, in front of the massive windows that look out onto the yard and the ocean beyond.
“I was wrong,” he says, his back to me.
I round the table.
“Good morning to you too,” I say, reaching for the steaming mug of coffee that’s been set out for me. Snagging the nearby creamer, I pour a little in.
Death still doesn’t turn around. It’s a small thing, but it pricks the back of my neck all the same.
“What were you wrong about?” I ask, my voice wary. I pull out a chair and slip into the seat.
“Staying here.”
I raise my eyebrows as I grab a piece of toast. Ah. He needs to keep moving, and no amount of beach sex can distract him from that.
This had been a blissful escape, but I’m also eager to leave, to go get Ben. Now that we’re on the West Coast, he seems tantalizingly close, even if hundreds and hundreds of miles still separate us.
“Do you think any of this was random?” Thanatos says, out of the blue. “That God hasn’t reached Her hand in and played you like a puppet?”
My brows pull together. Right now the horseman has this ominous energy about him that’s setting me on edge.
“What are you talking about?” I say.
“Did you really think it was random when your mother found you as a child?” he says, still staring out those windows. “Or when you found Ben alive in a city of dead, despite the fact that he is painfully mortal—did you think that was random too?”
His words make the hairs on the back of my neck stand on edge.
“How about our paths crossing? What about that? Or when you met the other horsemen just in time for them to save your son and take him away?”
Death turns to me then, and his eyes look so sad. “Do you really think any of it was random? Because it wasn’t. That was intercession. It happens to humans all the time, but you’re all so blinded by your own perceptions of reality that you miss it. You miss the most potent forces of magic in your lives even when they unfold right before you.”