Pestilence (2 page)

He sounded skeptical, spitting in the dirt near their feet, his gaze dispassionate. Such bitterness from the youngest Horseman might have seemed strange, but Death had the most difficult job. Escorting the dead to the judgment gates after helping orchestrate massacres or pandemics could make even the most optimistic person sour. Death had started out cynical, and had grown more so over the centuries.

They watched medical personnel scramble to fight the diseases Pestilence brought to their temporary homes. So many worrying about the poor and the helpless caught between power hungry men. It helped restore Pestilence’s hope in mortals when he saw the doctors and nurses fighting to keep the sick alive.

“I wonder how many will die tonight?”

Death’s coldness unnerved Pestilence, driving home all the reasons why he avoided the pale Horseman. Death shot him another glance, but there was something different in his gaze this time.

“I told you to leave, Pestilence. Retreat to your jungle and try to erase this place from your memories. For good or ill, this camp and its people will be gone within two months.”

Whirling away, Pestilence strolled to where his mount stood. The pure white stallion with blazing red eyes waited for him. He wrapped his fingers in its mane and leaped astride. With a fierce snort, the horse tossed his head and pawed the dirt under his front hoof.

Before he left, he looked over his shoulder to see Death studying him. He thought about waving, but doubted his comrade would appreciate the gesture. Pestilence shifted his weight forward and the stallion broke into a gallop. As he leaped into the air, Pestilence heard Death’s voice on the wind.

“Someday you will let your guilt go and the forgiveness you seek will be offered, my comrade. I hope you have the courage to accept it.”

What was Death saying? Pestilence didn’t have time to fully process the words as white light engulfed him and the sound of a door closing rang through the air.

Thunder boomed over the Amazon as Pestilence appeared in a flash of light in the middle of a clearing. After he dismounted, his stallion faded away. Pestilence strolled over to the pool, stripping his clothes off as he went. He looked around once as he took off his last piece of clothing. The coast was clear, so he dove into the water, letting it wash him clean of all the dirt and grime coating his skin after strolling through the refugee camp.

After resurfacing, he floated on his back, staring up through the canopy of leaves above him at the blue sky beyond. The birds and monkeys started to sing again, and the familiar noises relaxed him. Pestilence loved living in the Amazon for many reasons, but mostly because of the isolation he could achieve. If he needed solitude, he didn’t need to see any mortal for months, or even years.

Aside from the ability to never see a human if he wished, the greenness of the rainforest eased him, and it was so different from the village he’d lived in when he was mortal. The jungle helped erase memories of his last heartbreaking days as Aldo, the medico who couldn’t save his own family.

* * * *

Bart Winston pushed through the last curtain of vines and stumbled over a root into the camp. As he straightened and glanced around him, the scene greeting his gaze explained why the jungle remained so unnaturally silent. No one moved around the camp and only his tent remained. All the equipment, boxes and people were gone.

He stalked to his tent, hoping Jasper had seen fit to leave him directions to where they’d moved. Bart had gotten lost on his way back to base a few times, but he’d been caught up in the new information he’d gathered about the flowering plant and missed the correct fork in the trail he’d been supposed to take.

If Jasper had told him they were moving, he wouldn’t have gone out to take another look at the plant. Bart grimaced as he swiped an arm across his forehead, wiping the sweat from his skin. One would think, after spending several months in the jungle, he’d be used to the humidity, but lately, it seemed like it was hotter than usual. He dropped to his knees and shoved aside the netting covering the opening of his tent.

“What the fuck?”

His personal pack and journals were gone. There were two boxes sitting on his blanket, and he crawled in to open them. Packaged food and bottled water greeted his gaze when he tugged the top apart. All he had to carry his provisions in was the bag he used to carry his specimens. As a biologist out in the field, he rarely went anywhere without a bag to carry his tools and vials in.

Bart backed out of the tent and stood, hands on hips, glaring in every direction before cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting, “Very funny, Jasper. Where the fuck are you?”

The porters had told them not to make any more sound than necessary because drug runners moved about the jungle with ease. They’d look on Bart as a gift, whether for ransom, selling into slavery, or using as a drug mule. Or they just might kill him if they found him out here.

The fear welling up in Bart wasn’t just from the threat of the drug soldiers. Where the hell had Jasper and the others gone? And why had they left him behind? If a tribe of natives or the bad guys took them, would they have left him food and water? Wouldn’t they have laid in wait for him to come back and take him as well?

Every instinct in Bart’s city slicker body told him he’d been abandoned. But could the man he’d been sleeping with for the past year be callous enough to dump him in the middle of the Amazon without a guide to lead him back to civilization? As much as he wanted to say no, the evidence said the opposite. Jasper had left him behind to figure his own way home. Plus, it looked like he’d taken all of Bart’s money and the papers he needed to get through customs.

Exhaustion hit him and he dropped to the dirt where he stood. Wrapping his arms around his legs, Bart rested his head on his knees and rocked slowly. The other thing he didn’t want to admit was the fact that he was sick. He’d been running a low grade temperature for several days, but hoped it had more to do with jet lag and the hostile environment than getting ill. None of the over-the-counter pills he’d taken had cured it and now he feared he might have contracted some unknown disease and he’d die out here in the Basin.

He glanced at his watch and grunted. It was too late in the day for him to pack up and try to find his way to the river. He’d eat something, give himself a quick sponge bath, and try to get some sleep before heading out tomorrow. After making the plan, he felt a little better. It shouldn’t take him that long to get to the river and he could flag down a boat to take him to a city. From there, he’d contact the American embassy and figure out what he had to do to get back to the states.

When he got back to Harvard, he would hunt Jasper down and kill the bastard for running off on him.

Chapter One

Crashing sounded through the forest and Pest raised his head, tracking the noise as it came closer to him. A jaguar chasing a capybara wouldn’t make hardly any noise, and it would be faster. He’d spent centuries learning every sound and scent of the Amazon.

The animals were silent, so the creature blundering amidst the foliage wasn’t native. Should he move further back and let whatever or whoever was out there wander past him? It was rare for Pest to be bothered by indecision, yet he admitted he was getting bored. When the boredom struck, he’d visit one of the indigenous villages where they treated him like a god. They told legends about him throughout their history and he found their worship far easier to accept than any friendship they might have offered him.

Frowning, Pest listened to another loud crash echoing through the trees. It wasn’t an animal or a native. He hadn’t been alerted to any expeditions going on in the Amazon basin. His friends in the Brazilian government tended to contact him if there were any tours or scientific trips underway, so he could avoid them. He owned a satellite phone and used it occasionally to keep the cover story he’d created alive. While he rarely mingled with mortal society, he did have to deal with them once in a while. Pestilence would tell them he was researching undiscovered infectious diseases in the Amazon.

“Help me,” drifted through the humid air and Pest closed his eyes, trying to zero in on where the plea came from. It was weak and definitely human. Pest stood and froze. What did he think he was going to do? There wasn’t any way he could help whoever it was.

He stared down at his pale hands, scarred and rough from the life he’d been forced to live. Once, his hands had been soft and gentle as he’d gone about his practice, helping to heal his patients. No more. He’d turned his back on those days after his family had died. While he could have been like Death, and lived among humans, Pestilence had chosen to leave society and the presence of mortals.

His option of whether to ignore the human or help was taken from him as a figure stumbled into the clearing that Pest had picked to have his mid-day meal in. He watched as the man took two steps in his direction before collapsing. Sighing, Pest fought the need to rush to his side and examine him. He couldn’t touch the man unless he wanted the stranger to die for sure. Yet all of his training as a doctor screamed at him to make sure the man wasn’t dead.

“You can touch humans, Pestilence. Just ensure your own hands are covered.”
Death’s advice rang in his ears, spoken centuries ago when Pestilence was new to the job of a Horseman. He’d never figured out how Death knew he’d wrestled with the terrible irony of a doctor becoming the Horseman known as Pestilence. All his mortal life, he’d fought disease until he’d met one he couldn’t defeat.

The Black Death—or the Bubonic Plague—had hit his town and so many had died while he had fought with all of his knowledge and strength to save them. Guilt had eaten away at his soul as he’d watched his family die, one by one.

Being unable to touch a mortal with his hands without making them sick was one of the many changes Pestilence had had to get used to over the centuries. The strangest thing was that he could kiss a person, or make love to him or her, but he couldn’t touch his bare hands to their skin. He remembered how shocked he’d been the first time he had realized his dark hair had gone completely white, and the whites of his eyes had been taken over by black, so there was no color whatsoever.

“Please help me.”

The breathy words jerked him back to the present and the man lying face down on the ground a few feet away from him. Pest dropped to his knees, ripped open his backpack, and tugged out the black leather gloves he’d stuffed in there when he had left his hut earlier that morning. After slipping them on, he went to the prone body.

“Easy now. Are you hurt anywhere?”

Pest caught the rattle of the man’s breath in his chest and decided he couldn’t wait for an answer. A sour scent hit his nose and Pest grimaced as he realized it came from the man.

“My name is Pest and I’m going to turn you over now. Let me know if anything hurts. I’ll try to be as gentle as I can.”

A barely perceived nod got Pest moving. He wedged one hand under the man’s chest and placed the other on his back, rolling him as best as he could without hopefully causing any more harm.

As he raised his gaze, Pest grimaced at the stench of illness coming from the man. He hated having the ability to smell sickness. The man had been sick for some time and it was probably eating him up inside. Pest gripped the man’s chin and shook it.

“I need you to open your eyes and look at me.”

Pest watched as the man wrinkled his nose and curled his lip before opening his eyes to meet Pest’s gaze. It was like getting socked in the gut when those bright green eyes met his. Even feverish, they were brilliant, the most perfect emerald Pest had ever seen.

“Are you an angel?” Lifting a shaking hand, the stranger rubbed a lock of Pest’s white hair between his fingers.

“Oh man, you’re going to be very disappointed if you believe in angels,” Pest muttered.

A frown marred the man’s forehead. “Who are you? Where am I?”

“What’s your name? Tell me that and I’ll tell you mine again.”

Pest didn’t pull away from the man’s touch as he studied him. A lightly tanned face spoke of a different heritage than the usual Latino descendants Pest ran across in the jungle. Strawberry blond hair stuck up in spikes from sweat, and Pest realized it was from the fever ravaging the younger man’s body rather than the humidity in the air.

“Bartholomew Winston, the third.”

Biting his lip to keep from smiling, Pest said, “Really?”

Nodding, Bartholomew whimpered and wrapped his arms around his stomach. “Will you help me? I think I’m dying.”

“There’s no think about it, Bartholomew.”

Pest didn’t believe in pulling his punches anymore. There wasn’t any sense in lying to the man. He pushed to his feet and Bartholomew reached out to grab his leg.

“Don’t leave me here. I don’t want to die in this forsaken jungle.”

The bitterness in Bartholomew’s voice caught Pest’s attention. Someone who didn’t want to be out here, which was odd, since most people only came to the Amazon because they wanted to visit.

“I’m not leaving. I’m just going to pick up my backpack, and then I’ll come get you. We should get out of this clearing and back to my place before night fall.”

“You have a place here? I didn’t know anyone except for head hunters and cannibals lived in this part of the jungle.”

Pest snorted. “Well, you better hope I’m not either one of those, or you’re completely screwed.”

“I think I’m screwed either way. I’m probably dying of some strange unknown disease and I have to rely on a man who definitely doesn’t look like a native, but must be crazy because he lives out here all alone.” Bartholomew winced as Pest eyed him.

Pest snatched up his pack and slung it over his shoulder before returning to Bartholomew. “Kid, you must have a death wish. You do realize I’m your only hope and calling me crazy isn’t going to help your cause any.”

Bartholomew gasped as Pest picked him up. Pest wasn’t sure if the gasp came because of Pest’s touch or because Bartholomew finally got a close view of Pest’s eyes. He knew how shocking they were. Pitch black without any white or pupils. They marked him as one of the Horsemen, creatures of legends and nightmares. He’d asked Death once about their eyes, and the Pale Horseman had said it was something that happened to all the beings tasked with keeping good and evil in balance.