Loss (21 page)

It whined, and the itching grew.

Since coming home—since having the new dream about the Conqueror—Billy had felt a nagging sensation near the base of his skull. He’d also felt uncomfortable and irritable, and at first he’d chalked everything up to his regimen of antibiotics. But as the days passed and the nagging itch didn’t go away, he’d started daydreaming about wielding the Bow. Hadn’t it felt right in his hands? Hadn’t it made him strong? All he had to do was summon the Bow, and everything would change. If he held it, he wouldn’t have to worry about Eddie Glass or anyone else, because he would be powerful. Confident. All he had to do was draw back the string and let fly its poisoned arrows. Just wield the Bow, and nothing else would matter.

When Billy had realized what he’d been thinking, he understood what the itching in his mind truly was, and he despaired.

It was the sound of the White calling to him.

And now, as he lay in bed in the midnight darkness of his room, neither the fear of Eddie’s fists nor the promise of Marianne’s smile could distract him from the urge to pick up the Bow.

Thou art the White Rider. Go thee out unto the world.

I’m supposed to be done with this
, he thought as he stared at the ceiling and felt the White crawling around in his head.
Get the Conqueror out of bed and back to work, Death said, and I wouldn’t have to be Pestilence. That was the deal.

But if there was one thing Billy Ballard had learned, it was that deals were rarely what they seemed to be—especially when offered by Horsemen.

He rolled on his side and curled into a ball and wished the whispering in his head would go away.

(
Wishes and horses.
)

He could hear Gramps’s voice—the voice of years ago, back when Gramps was still Gramps and the doppelganger in the old man’s skin was a future yet to come—and Gramps was telling him that if wishes were horses, dreamers would ride. It had been a favorite catchphrase. When Billy was a child, he’d thought that dreams came to people on horseback. Why else would bad dreams be called nightmares? Dreams arrived on horses, and the horses were made of wishes.

The White whispered to him, but now beneath the sound was a thought.
Horses
. Something about horses, or maybe about the white horse . . .

The thought unraveled, leaving Billy uneasy as he lay in his bed, not thinking about school and not thinking about Marianne and absolutely not listening to the maddening whisper of the White in his mind. Until tonight, it had been manageable. But the itch had blossomed into a full-blown rash, and now it was all he could do to not summon the Bow.

He buried his head under his pillow.
Go away!
he shouted at the White.

The only reply was another nagging urge for him to feel the power of the Bow flow through him.

He threw his pillow on the floor. He rolled over. He rolled the other way. He kicked off his blanket. And still the White just wouldn’t shut up. He tried to listen to the silence of nighttime, but it was filled with White noise.

Billy got out of bed and stormed into the bathroom. Standing in front of the sink, he splashed water on his face and stared in the mirror. The cheerful nightlight—a must-have ever since Gramps started wandering out of his bedroom in the middle of the night—threw just enough light on his face for him to see that the white patch in his hair had gotten bigger.

(
Marked.
)

He stared at the white strands, remembered the feeling of being forced out of the Conqueror’s memory and out of the White.

(
Marked so’s you won’t get lost.
)

Had Death grabbed him by his hair and pulled him back into the present? Or had he escaped on his own? He leaned in closer to the mirror as a third possibility loomed: Maybe the Conqueror and Death and War and Famine were all in his head. Maybe he’d lost his mind and just hadn’t noticed; after all, how many times could someone get punched and kicked and slammed into lockers before all the physical damage took its toll mentally? Maybe his brain was severely messed up, and a lifetime of antipsychotic meds awaited him.

Death’s voice, cool and bemused:
It’s amazing to see just how far you people go to lie to yourselves.

Billy slunk back to his room and cocooned himself within his blanket.
Forget about the Horsemen,
he told himself.
Go to sleep, because tomorrow’s going to be a long day.
It was true; whether or not he was making up the Riders of the Apocalypse, he had to return to school in the morning after a week’s absence.

He closed his eyes and saw the Ice Cream Man at the edge of the world, standing on a sheet of white.

Billy’s eyes snapped open. He could still see the afterimage of the Conqueror, burned behind his gaze as if he’d been staring into the sun.

(
Come here, Billy.
)

Heart slamming in his chest, Billy sat up. The incessant, nagging itch that was the White tugged at him, but now there was a frantic quality to that feeling—less temptation, more desperation. The White wasn’t trying to lure him into summoning the Bow; it was begging him to feel the Bow’s weight in his hands.

(
Come and see the end of the world.
)

Billy was tired, and scared, and horribly uncertain. But deeper than the exhaustion and the fear and the uncertainty was a simmering rage. He was sick of being shoved into responsibilities too great for him to bear, whether at home with his grandfather or in the world with the Conqueror. More than that, he was sick of the constant sense of terror and dread, sick of the never-ending feeling of his nerves being pulled taut because he never knew where the next punch or kick would come from, never knew if his grandfather would be compliant or violent.

And most of all, he was sick to death of not doing anything about that terror, that dread, sick of allowing other people to control his life, to control
him
. Sick of just taking it. Sick of not fighting back. Sick of his life being in a rut that he’d dug for himself without knowing it.

Billy Ballard was sick of being sick. He’d had enough.

As fury worked its way through him, he thought he heard a girl laughing like fire.

Before he could think better of it, he summoned the Bow. It appeared with a soft pop of displaced air, hovering in front of his hand, waiting for him to claim it for his own.

Billy took a deep breath, and then he wrapped his fingers around the grip.

A surge of power flooded through him, rocking his head back. Part of him wanted to cower, to run, to hide from that skin-crackling energy that threatened to drown him. But that was the part of him that still believed in sandcastles. Billy said goodbye to that five-year-old boy and opened himself up to the White
—

***

—and he’s working his way along a twisted mass of power knotted together to keep it contained but as he moves he sees the strands are fraying and he knows that when the final piece snaps it will bring the end of everything in a sheet of White because the Conqueror is there he’s already there he’s standing on top of a mountain of ice and his arms are raised high as he calls the diseases of the world to attention and it doesn’t matter what she’s saying to him because her words are nothing but a memory and he’s concentrating on the sounds of sickness the soothing music of coughs and wheezes and groans the sounds of humanity succumbing to pestilence the sounds that will let him conquer all and save the world . . .

***

Nauseated, Billy pulled back. The White still coursed through him, but at the quiet flow of a brook instead of the scream of a waterfall. His fingers still gripped the Bow, but they shook from tiny aftershocks, either from the power itself or from the horror of what he’d just witnessed.

“He’s insane,” he said aloud.

“It’s not his fault.”

He looked up to see Death standing by his bedroom door, the outline of his blond hair barely visible in the dark room. Maybe Billy would have been surprised by the Pale Rider’s sudden appearance if he weren’t in shock over what the White had just shown him. “The Conqueror thinks he’s saving the world,” he said numbly. “He thinks he can claim humanity through sickness, that he can protect everyone from death. From you,” he said, staring at Death.

“Yes,” Death agreed.

“I felt it,” Billy said, shivering. “I felt what he’s doing. It’s not colds or allergies or anything small. He wants something permanent. He’s going to unleash the plague.”

“Yes,” Death said again.

“He’s going to kill everyone.”

“Quite possibly.” This said in the same tone that a weather forecaster would use when saying there was a chance of rain.

Wide-eyed, Billy shouted, “You have to
do
something!”

“I can’t,” said Death, lifting one shoulder in a casual shrug. “Pestilence is not my demesne.”

The Bow suddenly weighed a thousand pounds.

Voice hoarse, Billy asked, “Why are you here?”

“You already know the answer, William Ballard.”

And he did. “That’s why I still have the Bow,” he said bitterly, tossing the weapon onto his bed. “So I can stop the Conqueror.”

“You have it because the White Rider didn’t take it back.” A pause, and then Death added, “It’s not like he needs it to spread disease. It’s a tool, nothing more. It gives him focus. What he’s doing now requires no such focus.”

Of course not; destruction was easy. Five-year-old Billy knocked down a sandcastle, and sand soldiers fell to their deaths. He shuddered as he felt the White flowing through him, quiet now, patient. Waiting.

Waiting for him.

“I am not charging you to do anything more,” Death said gently. “You can simply live your life.”

Billy spluttered, “But the world is going to end!”

A soft laugh, like sand blowing in a desert wind. “The world is
always
about to end, William Ballard. The nature of life is to be always on the brink of death.”

Knowing that didn’t make Billy feel any better. “You stopped him before,” he said desperately. “When he was hiding in the Greenwood. You came for him and told him to ride or die.”

“He wasn’t doing his job then. Now he is. Granted, he’s doing it radically, and the results may not be ideal. But it’s still his job.” Death flicked a smile. “I’m many things, but not a micromanager.”

Billy squeezed his eyes shut as another shudder ran through him. If he were brave, he’d tell Death that sure, he’d stop the Conqueror. But he wasn’t brave. He was fifteen, and any hint of confidence had long since been pounded out of him. His spine was already broken; he couldn’t bear to have the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“I don’t have to do anything,” he said.

“No,” agreed Death.

“But you want me to.”

“What I want has little to do with it. Whether you decide to try to stop the Conqueror is up to you and you alone.”

Billy could do nothing. He knew this. He could do nothing and live his life, going through the motions until the very end, whenever that would be. He could pretend that everything was fine, pretend that things would eventually get better while the truth sucked away at him like leeches. Or he could try to do something to change the way things were—risk getting hurt more brutally than ever before, risk failing completely.

He thought of his mom, his grandfather, his absentee dad. He thought of Marianne and her heartbreakingly beautiful smile. He thought of Eddie and Kurt and Joe, of beanpole Sean and the PE instructor and his classmates. He thought of Mita touching his daughter’s cheek as he told her goodbye for the final time. He thought of all of these things, and many more, all in the space of a handful of heartbeats.

He could do nothing, but then he would never know if he could have done something.

Billy opened his eyes. “How do I get to the Conqueror?”

In the darkness, Death smiled. “You ride.”

Chapter 19

For the Second Time . . .

. . . Billy followed the Pale Rider out the front door. He wasn’t exactly dressed for world saving, not in his ripped T-shirt and baggy sweatpants and bare feet, but once he’d made the decision to stop the Conqueror, he hadn’t wanted to stop to change clothing. He might have lost his conviction while rummaging for a hoodie.

After he shut the door softly behind him, he paused on the front stoop and felt his nerve drain away.

There, in the dark, the pale horse waited. It seemed bigger than before—which might have been possible, given that it was really a horse/car. And Billy could have sworn it was smiling at him. Before he could ask Death if there was another option for the whole riding thing, the horse snorted and stepped aside to reveal a second horse.

Billy’s mouth gaped open.

Spotlighted by the moon, the white steed stood quietly. It was a tall animal, but its neck was bent in a way that made it appear smaller. The body was sleek with muscle, and it would have made another horse seem powerful, even majestic. A tremor worked its way along the white steed’s frame, there and then gone, like a shimmer of heat in the summer. Its nostrils flared and contracted as it blew out a breath. Half hidden beneath its mane, its ears quivered. Its eyes, though, were what made Billy’s breath catch in his throat. Those eyes were pale, leeched of color and hinting of sickness and emptiness. If a cough had a color, it would be the color of those eyes. But as Billy looked deeper, he saw the emotion swirling there, hiding behind the glaze of disease. And as he looked within those eyes, he saw fear, and loneliness, and resignation, as if the horse were waiting for the next betrayal that surely was to come.

Billy Ballard looked into the eyes of the White Rider’s steed, and he saw himself.

“Pestilence, meet thy steed,” said Death. And then he neighed. It wasn’t the sound of a human mimicking a horse. It was truly a horse’s neigh, coming from a human mouth. The white steed’s ears flickered in response.

If Billy hadn’t seen Death’s horse turn into a car, he probably would have been more weirded out by the whole thing. “Um,” he said. “Hi.”