Thanatos can raise the dead.
I’m trying not to panic, but Thanatos can raise the dead.
One by one the revenants turn their unseeing eyes on me, and unease pools low in my stomach.
I grip my knives tighter. What are they doing?
Suddenly, all of them begin to walk towards me, the group of them moving almost as a single unit.
My own fear closes up my throat.
Fuck, what is this?
More importantly, how am I supposed to get myself out of this situation?
Overhead, I hear Death’s massive wings. At first, the sound is quiet, but as he gets closer, his wingbeats grow louder and louder.
TWUMP—THWUMP—THWUMP.
I catch a glimpse of him in the air above me, and I watch him circle, then descend down to the street. Thanatos lands no more than twenty feet from me. His wings close at his back, looking like a massive cape.
The corpses halt where they stand, their dead eyes still fixed on me, their faces slack. I shiver at the unnatural sight.
Death walks towards me, his wings swaying behind him. The few revenants between us part for him to pass by.
“How are you doing this?” I ask.
“I have always been able to do this, kismet,” he says. “Up until now I simply chose not to.”
He could’ve been doing this the entire time? My mind races over all those instances I fought him. How many cities had the two of us encountered one another, all while being surrounded by corpses?
Many.
So, so many.
Never once had he raised the dead.
Death has been toying with me this entire time. The realization steals my breath away. For the first time in a long time, I truly fear him.
“Why?” I demand, backing up. “Why do this now?”
“Because you were designed to be mine. And it’s time I claimed you.”
Chapter 21
San Antonio, Texas
January, Year 27 of the Horsemen
I turn from Thanatos. There are dozens of revenants around me, revenants who have gone still while Death approached me.
“Fighting is useless,” he says, coming closer.
Ignoring his warning, I turn on my heel and begin jogging away from him.
All at once, the zombies come alive, only they don’t walk towards me, they charge. They descend on me painfully fast.
My mind won’t let me believe that they’ll actually touch me. They’re corpses, after all, their whole point is to lie still and rot.
So when the first revenant gets to me—a young woman who can’t be more than a few years older than me—I lose a second simply accepting that this is actually happening.
The woman’s cold hand grabs my forearm, and my stomach tumbles at how frigid her fingers feel even through the fabric of the shirt I’m wearing.
I slash out at her—and the other corpses that follow—grimacing as their blood glugs out from the wounds. A dead man grabs the blade of one of my knives, ripping it from me with a jerk. Another rips my two knives from my sheath while I fight off a third revenant.
A dead child steps up to me and wraps a clammy hand around mine. I yelp at the touch and his sightless eyes. He pries my last weapon free.
“Enough.” Death’s voice echoes in the air.
The revenants fall to the ground, my weapons clattering from a few of their hands. They are all lifeless once more.
I turn just as Thanatos steps over the scattered corpses. He comes to me, and I don’t even have time to protest before he pulls me into his arms.
At first I think he means to fly off with me, and maybe he does, but he hesitates. After a moment, Thanatos whistles, all while holding me in his unyielding grip.
I hear the echo of hooves against asphalt, and then the horseman’s steed charges down the city streets, expertly maneuvering around the strewn bodies. He’s already saddled and ready.
Death gazes down at me with those obsidian eyes, his expression filled with wicked intent. His dapple gray horse slows to a stop next to us, and in one fluid motion, the horseman lifts me onto his mount.
A split second later, Thanatos is hoisting himself up behind me. And then his powerful thighs are hugging mine and his armor-clad chest is digging into my back, the metal unforgiving.
Death wraps a muscled arm around me, pinning me in. He clicks his tongue, and his steed takes off once more, galloping down the road.
We tear through the streets of San Antonio, the buildings and the dead blurring by us.
“You are finally mine,” he says, his words exalted.
They send a strange mixture of dread and excitement through me. How I long to stop this monster. How I have to keep fighting my ridiculous attraction to him.