Loss (23 page)

Five-year-old Billy sang,
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!

Fifteen-year-old Billy ignored the playful singsong and scrambled to his feet—just in time to see the White Rider take aim. He dove to the right, barely avoiding another blast.

“The end of the world,” said the Conqueror, his voice thick with laughter and menace. “The end of
everything
.”

His arm stinging, his heart pounding, Billy desperately wished he were anywhere but there.
Wishes and horses,
Gramps would have said.
Wishes and horses.

***

The white steed danced in place, eager to move. Even the closeness of Famine’s horse couldn’t soothe it; the black steed nickered softly and tried to nuzzle against it, but the white horse moved out of reach. It didn’t want to be soothed. It sensed its Rider—both of its Riders, the man and the boy—somewhere above, somewhere amid all the White.

Two Riders.

The notion made the horse giddy. Two! Two Riders to carry; two Riders to belong to. It wanted to canter in a circle and give voice to its joy. Two Riders meant the steed would not be left alone anymore, would not be overlooked or ignored—would not be left waiting as the seasons came and went and the world grew ever older, waiting for a Rider to pat its neck and climb atop its back, ready to be borne across the sky in a wave of White. Two Riders meant that the horse was still needed.

Yes. Two Riders meant that the white steed still
mattered
.

The horse snorted with happiness and impatience. It wanted to prance up the snow-covered hill and present itself to its Riders, show them that it was a good steed and would do whatever either one of them, the man or the boy, asked of it. Fly to the highest mountain? Cross the ocean faster than thought? Go deep beneath the earth where the blind things crawled? Whatever its Rider—its
Riders
—wanted, it would do.

The good steed,
the boy had called it.
The good white horse.

The horse jumped in the air and flipped head over hooves. It would prove itself to the boy, to the man, and it would never be alone again!

As it landed on the icy ground, a pale hand patted its neck fondly.

“You
are
a good steed,” Death said, speaking perfect Horse. “He was absolutely right about that.”

If horses could blush, the white steed would have been pink.

“Go on, then,” said Death. “Present yourself. I bet they’ll both be genuinely happy to see you.”

The white steed snorted its thanks and charged up the hill.

***

Billy, still on the snow-covered ground, looked up to see the White Rider looming over him. Cracked lips twisted into a manic grin, revealing rotted teeth; black eyes shone brightly with either sickness or madness. Billy stared into those darkly gleaming eyes, felt the heat of the Conqueror’s insanity, and realized that he was utterly, completely terrified.

“Come watch the end of the world,” the Ice Cream Man said with a giggle. His white-gloved hands began to glow, giving them an aura of dusty moonlight. “It arrives on a sheet of white.”

Billy felt his bladder threaten to let go. He opened his mouth to speak sense, to beg for mercy, to say something, even if it was just noise, but then a whinny pealed across the ice and snow.

The White Rider’s head jerked to the side, and Billy watched as something caught between delight and regret played across the man’s ruined face. “Hello,” he said, his voice brimming with apology. “Did I forget you again?”

A snort, or maybe a sneeze, and then the white horse trotted into view. It looked bigger than Billy remembered, which was crazy because he’d just ridden with it halfway across the world, but he couldn’t deny that the white steed seemed bigger somehow. Taller. Or maybe Billy’s perception was skewed by relief, because damned if the White Rider hadn’t just forgotten all about him. The Conqueror reached out to the horse, murmuring things that Billy couldn’t hear, and the horse bowed its snowy head as its Rider ran white-gloved fingers through its mane. There was a contented sigh, and Billy had no idea if it came from the man or the horse.

Right. He knew a cue when he got one.

Heart careening in his chest, he pulled himself up as silently as he could, paused to make sure that the Conqueror wasn’t looking, then he lunged for the nearest hillock. Once behind the icy hill, he squatted there, limbs shaking with adrenaline as he strained to hear if the Ice Cream Man was coming after him. He caught snatches of the Conqueror’s phlegmy voice, of the white steed’s blows of air, and Billy decided that for the moment, he was safe.

Well. As safe as he could be with the Conqueror about to summon enough plague to blanket the world. Billy let out an exhausted sigh. The White Rider really was going to kill everyone.

He thought he heard Death’s bemused voice:
The nature of life is to be always on the brink of death.

No, that was just philosophical bullshit. The nature of life was to
live
, period. He was only fifteen, but even he knew that. Maybe Death didn’t care if the entire world went up in a sneeze of White, but Billy sure did.

“You walk like a man,” Mita said, “but beneath the skin, you’re inhuman.”

And Death replied, “I never claimed to be human.”

The Riders are human
, Billy thought as he hid behind the icy knoll
, with the Horseman spirit or soul or whatever inside of them. But Death . . . Death isn’t human
.

I don’t think he ever was.

With that uneasy thought, Billy decided to stop pondering the nature of Death—if thinking about the nature of life was just philosophical bullshit, thinking about the nature of death was just grim. His left arm itched madly; when he glanced down at it, he wasn’t surprised to see a score of hives clustered along the length of his forearm, staining the flesh sunburned red. And now that he was focusing on his arm, he realized that his armpit was horrifically sore. As was his neck. He remembered the feeling of something like ashes or maybe snowflakes landing on his exposed skin after the White Rider had tried to blast him. Whatever disease the Conqueror was throwing around, Billy clearly was allergic to it.

Yeah, I’d say I’m allergic to plague.
His stomach roiled unhappily, and he fought down the urge to be sick.
Oh my God—do I have the plague?

His breath started to come in shallow bursts, and he desperately tried to get it under control before it bloomed into hyperventilation. But the White whispered to him, told him that yes, the plague was festering inside of him, that he’d skipped the incubation period and gone straight to bubonic symptoms, and that at this rate he’d hit septicemic plague and then pneumonic plague in a matter of minutes. And then he’d get to see Death again, and maybe he could ask him directly about his nature.

He wanted to throw back his head and howl that it wasn’t fair, but that wasn’t going to change anything. He had the plague, a preview of what was coming for everyone, and if he didn’t do anything about it, he was going to die.

Don’t panic
, he told himself, clenching his teeth.
Can’t think if you panic. Now. Calm. Down.

It took him more than a minute to wrestle his breathing into something close to normal, and by that point his head had started throbbing and he was pretty sure he’d spiked a fever. He leaned his head against the icy knoll and tried to think.

The Conqueror hit me with disease before, and I fought back. I healed myself.

But that had been in the White, floating above a pool of memories. This was the real world. Real disease. When Death had pulled him out of the White, he’d been slammed with bacterial meningitis and was in the hospital for a small slice of eternity.

Yeah, well, that option’s off the table
. Sweat popped on his brow, and his teeth chattered with sudden chill. If he didn’t fight off the infection, he would die. Period.

His eyes slipped closed, and he felt the White slithering in his mind. Desperate, he opened himself up to it . . .

***

. . .
and he feels the
yersinia pestis
inside of him, evading and attacking his white blood cells, feels the bacteria spreading through his bloodstream and infecting his liver and kidneys, decimating his lymph nodes, but now the White is working in him, working with him and creating an antibiotic, one that inhibits bacterial growth, giving his white blood cells the chance to reform and swarm and now the
yersinia pestis
is floundering as the white blood cells soldier up and destroy every invading bacterium and his ravaged organs begin to regenerate . . .

***

In the arctic wasteland, behind a hill of ice and snow, the White saved Billy Ballard’s life.

***

The red horse kept its distance from the others. Even though its Rider was no longer at odds with her companions, old habits died hard.

On the flat expanse of pancake ice, War stood by the Pale Rider’s side. Though their forms did not touch, their shadows intertwined, black on black, in a smoky caress.

“Knew you’d come,” Death said cheerfully.

She smiled, and that slow motion of her lips hinted at many things. “The White Rider divided, and the world on the brink of destruction. How could I stay away?”

“I could set my watch by you.”

“You don’t have a watch.” Her smile broadened into a grin. “An hourglass, maybe . . .”

“Please, not another joke about a scythe . . .”

She mimed zipping her mouth shut.

A pause, as they listened to the sounds of the boy healing and the man summoning doom.

“I like him,” War said.

Even though she hadn’t specified whether she meant the boy or the man, Death smiled and nodded. “Me too.”

“You like everyone.”

“Well, yes.”

The two shared a quiet laugh, their voices mingling in perfect harmony.

A longer pause, and then War asked, “What of Famine?”

“What of her? She’s not mine. Not yet, anyway. She will be soon enough.”

The Red Rider slid him a look. “That’s cold, even for you.”

“Eh, just practical.” A shrug. “Everyone comes to me eventually. It’s the journey that makes it interesting.”

“Such a people person!”

He flashed her a grin. “My best quality.”

“Oh,” said War, sliding her gloved hand into his pale one, “I can think of others that are better.”

***

Shaking with exhaustion and the aftereffects of adrenaline, Billy opened his eyes. He was still leaning against the hillock, and part of him wanted to just curl up and sleep for a month. But he didn’t have time.

Time. How much time did he lose?

Where was the White Rider?

He cocked his head and listened, but he didn’t hear anything over the sound of his own heavy breathing. Had the white steed’s appearance knocked some sense into the Conqueror? Maybe the two had flown off for some Rider/steed bonding. Maybe Billy didn’t have to save the world after all—which would be fine with him, thank you very much, because what he really wanted was to sleep. And eat. Maybe eat while he was sleeping.

Up
, he told himself.
Sleep when you’re dead. Which will be soon, if the Conqueror gets his way.

Suppressing a groan, he forced himself to his feet. God, he felt like he’d been pureed in a blender. He swayed for a moment, teetered on the point of collapse, then forced himself to stand tall. Okay, good start.
A
for effort. Trying not to think about how wrecked he was, he peered around the side of the knoll—and then he quickly ducked his head back. One glance had been enough to show him that the White Rider was once again standing on the icy ground, his arms up and his head thrown back, a sickly aura surrounding him in filthy white, purity gone corrupt. By his booted feet, the Black Rider hadn’t moved. The white steed was nearby, waiting as its Rider worked.

For the Conqueror was, indeed, working. Now that Billy wasn’t distracted by his exhaustion, he sensed the slow, steady building of pressure, as if the world were preparing for a massive storm. But this would be a storm of disease, a tempest from which there would be no shelter.

In Billy’s head, the White churned violently.

He needed to do something—but what? He could fight back disease within his own body, but on a global scale? Death had told him that it was the Crown that made the White Rider the Conqueror of health and disease; all Billy had was the Bow.

His eyes widened.
The Bow!

Fight fire with fire, the saying went. Well, he could fight White with White.

He held out his hand and commanded the Bow to appear. It did, with a soft pop of displaced air, hovering for a moment before his fingers closed around it. The White surged in his mind; power danced along his skin. The warmth of confidence flooded him, spiced his blood and made him stand taller. He was Pestilence, the White Rider, and he wielded his Bow.

More than that, he was Billy Ballard, and it was time for him to make his stand.

He stepped away from the safety of the hillock. Raising the Bow before him like a staff, he called out, “Mita! Stop!”

The Conqueror’s head jerked, and then he turned toward the sound. His gaze fixed on Billy. This time, there was no sign of either madness or acceptance in his eyes. Billy watched recognition dawn, quickly followed by rage. Maybe the Ice Cream Man hadn’t understood who Billy was before, when he hadn’t been wielding the Bow, but now there was no question that the Conqueror recognized Pestilence. And he clearly didn’t like what he saw.

Cracked lips peeled back in a sneer.
“You.”

“Me,” Billy agreed.

The White Rider bellowed, the sound of his wrath thundering over the ice and snow, filling the white-streaked air. And then he attacked.

Chapter 21

This . . .

. . . is Billy Ballard, fifteen years old, standing on an icy peak as the Conqueror bears down on him—