Famine (The Four Horsemen #3) - Laura Thalassa Page 0,148
the one that follows that. It takes him two weeks to arrive in Taubaté. But the moment he does arrive, I know it.
His power detonates, the force of it so strong that I drop the dagger I was sharpening.
In an instant, the entire city of Taubaté is just gone, humans dropping dead where they stand. I sense their lifeforces all snuffed out like a candle. Thanatos doesn’t have to touch them to kill them—he doesn’t even need to make their flesh wither away as I must. He simply wills their souls to leave their bodies, and they do.
It’s that easy for him.
I’m still reeling from the display of power when I realize—
“Ana.”
All at once, I rise to my feet, the kitchen chair clattering to the ground behind me.
“Ana!” This time I shout her name. And then I’m racing through the house, panic rising like a swell within me. “Ana!”
What if she’s dead? What if he took her and—
She comes running out of our bedroom. “What’s wrong?” she says, breathless, her eyes wide with worry.
At the sight of her, alive, my legs buckle, and I fall to my knees.
“Famine?” Now she’s the one who sounds afraid.
She runs over to me. I catch her by the waist and hold her close, my face pressed against her stomach.
Alive, I remind myself again.
“I thought he took you,” I say against her.
“Who?” she says, her fingers slipping through my hair. She tilts my face so that I’m looking up at her.
“Death.” Even as I speak his name, my fear begins to rise all over again.
If he didn’t kill Ana, it’s because he has some plan for her. A plan I want no part of.
“He’s here?” she says.
I nod.
Even now I feel him like a pulse off in the distance, though I can’t sense precisely where he is. He must be keeping to the sky, where he knows I can’t pinpoint him.
“And he’s close,” I say. I don’t bother telling her that everyone else is gone.
The expression is wiped clean from her face.
I take a deep breath and stand. I’ve gone over this moment every day for the past two weeks. What to do, what Ana’s to do.
“Listen to me carefully,” I tell her now. “I want you to hide far away, beyond the fruit trees.”
“But you said—”
I said a lot of things in the last two weeks, some of them lies and some of them truths. Amongst them all, I told her that running and hiding were pointless, which they are. Death knows all souls. He’d find us. He’d find her.
“Fuck what I said. If you stay here, he will kill you,” I say. “That is what he does.”
It’s not the complete truth. Thanatos could just as easily kill her here as he could several kilometers away. The actual truth is that I want Ana to be far away when I face my brother because I want his focus to be on me and me alone.
“What will he do to you?” she asks. Her voice wavers.
“I’ll be fine.” Now I am telling the truth.
“Can he kill you?” she asks.
Can Death himself remove me from the face of the earth?
God help me, but—
“Yes.” I wouldn’t die, but it would be the end of my existence in this form.
“I’m not leaving your side,” she says fiercely.
I feel a swell of love so sharp it’s almost painful.
“Damn you, Ana,” I say, “don’t make me force you away.”
Emotions flicker across her face too rapidly for me to follow.
“I’m not leaving you,” she says stubbornly.
This woman of mine.
I pull her in close and kiss her, my mouth rough on hers.
“I’m not going to die,” I tell her. “He’s my brother, and I know how to handle him. I cannot, however, face him while worrying about you.”
“I am not a liability, Famine, and I’m not going to let him …”
She keeps talking, but I don’t hear her words.
She’s not going to back down. Damn her and her stubbornness.
Before Ana can finish making her point, I scoop her up and carry her outside.
“Famine, put me down.” She tries to wriggle out of my arms.
Only once we’re outside do I set her back down.
Ana huffs, pushing a stray curl out of the way. “Do not manhandle—”
Before she can finish, I flick my wrist. In seconds, a soft, waxy-leafed bush bursts from the earth, twining itself around her as it grows.
Ana’s been a victim of this trick often enough to know she’s not going to like it.