“Your wings,” I say, pulling myself to my feet.
He glances at me. “Watorava. Transmutation.”
Nothing actually goes. It’s transformed, but transmutation isn’t actually lost or gone at all.
I laugh through the tears.
I close the distance between us and kiss him savagely.
Chapter 78
Los Angeles, California
October, Year 27 of the Horsemen
Death chose us. In the end, he chose us. Humanity.
And he chose me.
Well, technically he chose me and then I chose him and then he chose me again—or something like that—but whatever, we chose each other.
I can’t seem to wrap my mind around it.
I stare up at him. Those silver flakes still sparkle like jewels in his eyes, and I can see the barest hint of his glowing glyphs around the collar of his shirt, and when I look down at his hands, he still wears that ring with the coin of the dead.
“So, it’s over?”
He nods as he leans in close, his nose brushing against mine. “It is,” he says softly.
I pull away from him and glance around. There are piles of dismembered corpses and twisting plants and broken bits of asphalt. Everything is so quiet.
Deathly quiet.
The other horsemen.
I turn from Death then and move towards the first horseman my eyes fall on, which just happens to be War. I’m afraid of what I’m going to find when I get to him.
The fearsome man lay slumped on his side, a mountain of dead surrounding him. I can’t make out much of his face from this angle, but last I saw of him, he’d been stabbed and his body withered.
I still see blood on his skin, and his hair is hiding his features, but his sword arm … I swear it’s no longer broken.
Still, I hesitate for a moment before I crouch in front of him. Taking a stabilizing breath, I move the hair from his face.
War’s eyes are closed, but he looks … better. Much better. His olive skin has the same healthy glow I remember. As I touch him, I hear him murmur, “Wife.”
A ragged exhale slips out of me.
He’s alive.
“Sorry to disappoint,” I say.
His eyes flutter open. He groans a little as he pushes himself up. “Did he do it?” he asks.
I glance over my shoulder and meet Death’s gaze. He stands where I left him, and without his wings and armor, the horseman looks all the more vulnerable.
“He did,” I confirm, giving Thanatos another small smile. I turn back to War. “Humanity has been saved, once and for all.”
“That … bastard,” War grits out. “I knew he had it in him.”
Spoken as though we weren’t wholly and completely screwed thirty minutes ago.
A short distance away, I see Famine just as he flops onto his back and laughs at the sky.
“I’m mortal!” he shouts. His words are cut short by a sharp, hacking cough. “Fuck,” he wheezes, “I’m mortal.”
“Just wait until you age,” Pestilence calls out hoarsely.
“Looking forward to it, grandpa,” Famine replies.
One by one, the men pick themselves up. Death hadn’t killed them after all. Or perhaps he did, and then he saved them. Or perhaps it wasn’t him at all. Perhaps God—the universe, whatever you want to call Her—meddled once more.
Regardless, it’s a wonder, seeing them alive.
As soon as they’re back on their feet, I tense once more, afraid of the fallout that might come. But if I thought Death’s brothers would hate him for what he did, I thought wrong.
The men leave their weapons behind before they approach Thanatos. And then, when they do close in on him, they give him thumping hugs.
“All is forgiven,” I hear Famine quietly say to him. Death holds his brother a bit tighter after he hears that.
“You put up a good fight,” War concedes. “But in the end, nothing is quite as tenacious as a human woman.” The two men share an amused look.
The last one to embrace him is Pestilence.
“Welcome to mortality, brother,” he says simply. “You’re going to love it.”
Chapter 79
West Coast, North America
October, Year 27 of the Horsemen
Thanatos does love it.
As the Four Horsemen and I travel up the West Coast, steadily making our way to Vancouver Island, Death is forced to learn about the joys of hunger, and going to the bathroom, and so many other little humanisms that his immortality shielded him from.
And … it’s a joy. He’s a joy. There’s a light and excitement in his eyes that I’ve never seen before. Even when he complains about how barbaric shitting is. Or when he grumbles about hunger pains. He really is in love with life; it’s as though before he’d forced himself to hold back from enjoying it. Now he doesn’t need to.