BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The rain has stopped, but the lightning hasn’t. Bolt after bolt strikes Thanatos, the onslaught so intense that the skeletal mantel that overlays Death’s face and body looks permanent. His back is arched, his wingbeats a bit erratic. Beneath the skull that shrouds his face, I can see that he’s grimacing. Shared power or not, this is doing something to him.
Near me, War is shouting a battle cry while he fights. He slices into the dead two and three at a time. The bodies are piling up around us, but every second, more are coming.
“I’m down to my last sheaf of arrows!” Pestilence calls out.
I glance up at Death just as, at last, he folds his wings and falls.
For an instant, the lightning stops as he hits the wall of foliage about a hundred feet from us.
My ears ring in the sudden silence.
The revenants are still coming and still attacking, but Thanatos lays slumped in the branches, his wings laying funny.
I take a faltering step towards him, my heart thumping madly.
There is no relief or victory in this. I should be pleased, but all I feel is panic at his state, and grief over the situation.
I slice through more revenants, my gaze locked on my horseman.
As he lays there, the plants around him seem to wither away to dust, the dead caught in their clutches free once more. Death falls to the debris-strewn highway.
War bellows, dragging my attention away from Death. Two undead are grasping the warlord’s sword arm, and the arm itself is bent at a funny angle. Broken.
War tosses his sword into his other hand and begins swinging the blade like it makes no difference. Still, my stomach drops. It’s clear enough that he can no longer fight at full strength, and already revenants were swarming him faster than he could kill them off.
War glances at me, and nods.
Fuck, this is where I come into play.
I grip my dagger tighter, my earlier nausea rising once more.
I take a tentative step, then another, bracing myself for what I must do.
I can make Death’s end swift. It won’t be forever. He put his duty towards God above me; I can put my duty towards humanity above him.
Still, it feels wrong, every agonizing step I take.
Around us, Los Angeles no longer resembles itself. The buildings have all come down, and mountains of rubble sit in their place. The dead are moving over that rubble, and there are so many of them.
They’re all headed this way.
I’m nearly halfway to Death when one of his wings twitch.
Seconds later, Famine’s lightning bolts are back.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
They slam into Death, the force of them so intense, I lose my footing and fall into a pile of squirming limbs.
The smell, the texture, and the movement, all of it is too much. I turn to the side and retch, though nothing comes out. My stomach has already given up all its contents.
“Lazarus!” War bellows. “Now!”
I glance up at Death, breathing heavily. He’s only fifty feet from me, but it feels like an ocean separates us.
I force myself to my feet, even as my legs quiver. Lightning continues to strike Thanatos, but as I watch, the horseman’s wings move some more, and I can’t be sure, but I don’t think it’s a reflexive movement brought on by the lightning.
Then, Death’s arms move beneath him, and that’s definitely not reflexive.
I slog through twisting corpses, my skeletal guards moving with me.
Death gets a leg under his body, then pushes himself up as lightning continues to strike him. It’s hard to see around the skeletal mantel overlaying him, but I think his dark eyes glint with fury as he stares down Famine.
He reaches out, his fingers looking half like bones, half like the flesh they are.
Abruptly, the lightning halts. I glance back at Famine in time to see him stumble into the living bars of his cage, his eyes and cheeks sunken in.
Pestilence fires off an arrow, which embeds itself into one of Death’s wings, then another that impales him right through his throat.
Thanatos reaches behind his head and drags the arrow out from the back of his neck, his wound healing right before my eyes.
“Death!” I shout at him, stepping over another body.
But he’s still focused on Pestilence, who’s now raining arrows down on him. The wind kicks up around Thanatos, knocking the projectiles away.
Hurry, I tell myself, quickening my pace as I stumble over wriggling human remains.
There’s only twenty feet between me and Death now. Twenty feet of carnage.
Pestilence makes a choking sound, and his back arches. His bow slips from his grip as he falls to his knees. His quiver and the few precious arrows clatter to the ground, and as I watch, the horseman, the very one who took my parents so long ago, now withers before my eyes.