Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men 6)

I knew, in the end, maybe not today, but sometime in the future, Loulou would get where I was coming from.

“He would kill anyway. Zeus just gives him a reason.” Her eyes were so wide and sincere a blue they seemed child-like, reminding me of all those years she’d spent in the hospital, her eyes the only spot of colour in the drab white hospital room.

“‘And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.’” I quoted from Revelation 6:8 in the Bible.

The verse had always resonated with me.

Even as a girl, I wondered why there was no sympathy for Death. He was pledged to rule over a kingdom of restless souls who would never love his own.

How excruciatingly lonely was that?

“You’ve always worn rose-tinted glasses, even about morbid topics like this. You can’t make everything sunshine and roses. Some things aren’t meant to be romanticized, and Death is not romantic, Bea,” Loulou spat. “Trust me, as someone who has flirted with it much too closely, I know that for a fact.”

“Death makes everything romantic,” I retorted. “Don’t you see? The threat of death gives life meaning. It gives it all of its delicious tension. It makes a love like the one you and Z share epic. That man killed for you the first time he met you. He shaved his head when he thought you would lose your hair to chemo and he would lose you to cancer. And Mute? He died for you, and you know what we all know, which is that sweet, perfect man died happy because he knew he’d saved you.”

I paused to heave in a breath, feeling like I was unspooling my soul for Lou. Hoping she might finally understand Priest. Understand me. Maybe even understand us.

“Death is nothing if not romantic, Lou. And if you think it’s insane for me to love a man who personifies it, then clearly you don’t understand that it’s a man like that who makes the best lover. He knows the odds of getting out of this life alive are non-existent. He knows how to suck the marrow out of every moment, how to treat the good things that come as if they are miraculous because they are. He knows what matters because he gets the stakes, and he would do anything, literally anything, for the people he feels loyal to.”

I sucked in air and leveled my big sister with my final blow. “What pains me so much is that he’d do that for you. Anything. Absolutely anything just to make sure you were safe because you’re Z’s, but also because in other ways, you’re his too. Whether you realize it or not. Whether you accept it or not, Priest is the kind of man who would just as easily die for the people he kills for.”

I stared at my big sister impassively as she stared at me, emotions playing across those cerulean blue eyes like a movie screen. Anger, frustration, sorrow, helplessness, and finally, a reluctant kind of temporary acceptance that turned that blue to wet stone.

“You’ve always collected strays, the more mangled, the better. You can’t make every monster a pet, Bea. I’ll admit, you haven’t been bitten yet, but that doesn’t mean you won’t. Priest isn’t broken just because he needs a home. Priest is broken in a way that truly, I don’t think you can fix.”

“I don’t want to fix him,” I told her honestly. “I just want to love him.”

Lou winced slightly then sighed, the long ribbon of it falling onto the bed between us, a kind of white flag. “It’s hard to watch the best woman I’ll ever know make a decision I honestly believe will break her heart or, worse, steal her life. I won’t lie. I don’t trust Priest with your heart, and I wish you wouldn’t either. But, you’re right, I’m not your mother, and I’m not your keeper.” Her smile was small, twisted, and broken as she recalled her past. “I would never want to keep you from what makes your heart sing. Phillipa and Benjamin tried to keep me from Zeus, and sometimes, on bad nights, I think about how hollow my life would be without him, without the family he gave me and the kids we made together. I guess, if there is even a slim chance you could have something like that with the killer of The Fallen, I won’t stand in your way.”

A flash fire or irritation prickled the back of my neck, but I bit back my retort. I wanted to tell her that she was wise, but in this, she was so wrong. So wrong it physically hurt me to hear her speak of Priest like that.