Chapter 15 Whitney
Whitney
Xolotl’s one of the fabled horsemen of the apocalypse.
His primary directive is to kill, and he won’t veer off course for me or anyone else. I thought maybe I could change him, but I know now that I can’t.
I made a plan with Leonid to be with him over the next few days, so they can assemble the witches who are willing to fight and all the shifters they can muster, so they have some hope of putting him back to sleep before he can lay waste to most of America in some misguided attempt to balance our society into a healthy one.
Or at least, I think it’s misguided.
The more time I spend with him, the more confused I find myself. I’d have sacrificed myself without a thought in the first few days that I knew him. I’d have done anything to stop him.
But our world is sick.
What if he’s right? What if humans need something dire, something terrible, so that they appreciate what they already have?
What if it’s the lack of suffering amongst humanity that’s causing all the depression, anxiety, and other mental illness we’re all struggling with?
What if we really will only savor the first amazing bite of ice cream when we don’t have a whole bowl sitting in front of us?
I shake my head.
Xolotl’s just gotten in my head. I did the right thing setting up the plan with Leonid.
And as much as I might want to say that I’ll go with Thanatos, I can’t quite bring myself to do it.
He’s never cared about any of us before, his alleged children, so why would he really care now?
How can I be sure my ancestor’s plan isn’t just to purge us all once Xolotl isn’t glaring at him?
At least Xolotl’s had plenty of chances and has kept me alive.
“I’d like to stay with Xolotl,” I say. “Though I’m grateful that you were willing to help defend my life, mortal though it is.”
Thanatos looks at me for a long time, and then he glances up at Xolotl. “I wish you two the best.” He’s smiling when he jumps into one of the ghastly holes the other two horsemen made and disappears.
I should have expected that Xolotl would be beaming—I did pick him. “You wanted to stay with me.”
“Shut up,” I say. “It was the lesser of two literal evils.”
“I wasn’t honest with you before.” Xolotl waves for me to go back into the hotel room.
“It has no door. Why would going in help us at all?”
He shrugs. “Just go.”
I listen without a fight for once. He did just defend me against the problem he created. I suppose that buys him some peace.
He waves his arm and a tower of rubble fills in the doorway. I doubt anyone would know how to move that without making a huge racket, which makes it close to as safe as a door.
“You’re very strange,” I say. “You want me gone, and you seem to hate me. You call your brothers to kill me, and then you change your mind and pick a huge fight with them instead.”
He stretches then, lifting his arms to the ceiling before dropping them, then shifting his head back and forth. “Agreed.”
“Agreed?”
“If you die, the backlash of my power recoiling will put me back to sleep. The bond functions that way on purpose. From the moment we wake, we’re pushed toward bonding with one human—it’s part of the balance.
Their life limits our waking time so we don’t lay waste to the entire human population.
We have a limited time to provide balance, and then when our bonded human dies, we return to sleep, allowing life time to retake death. ”
“I’m really just a walking oven timer.” I snort. “I should’ve known.”
“We don’t usually explain this aspect to our champions, because it makes them edgy. Some of them, though none of mine, have even gone kamikaze and tried to eliminate themselves to put us to sleep earlier.”
“But if you choose a bad champion, like me, it becomes a problem. You’ve done almost nothing so far, which means that my untimely death putting you back to sleep would be inconvenient.”
“Right.” He nods. “I wouldn’t have accomplished my purpose here before my time would be cut short.”
“Your brothers came to kill me and then revive you, so that you could choose another, better champion. Yes?”
“They won’t do that now,” he says. “I’ve made it clear that you’re mine, and I’m keeping you.”
There’s too much to unpack here. I don’t have nearly enough time to deal with it right now.
“You need to sleep. I can tell you’re exhausted.”
“How can you tell? The bond?”
He shakes his head. “You’re pale, and you have dark circles under your eyes. You look disheveled.” He clears his throat. “And you smell.”
I wasn’t expecting that, and it upsets me more than it should that he thinks I stink. “I’ll just duck in to take a shower really quick.” I disappear into the bathroom. I’m in the middle of my shower when the door opens. “Hey! You can’t be in here!”
“I’m just setting clothes on the counter,” Xolotl says. His voice is strangely upbeat for him. “I made you socks this time.”
I doubt he could see any part of me, with the steam covering the shower door, but it’s unsettling that he just walked inside anyway.
When I finally finish and step out of the shower, there’s another red dress waiting for me by the sink.
There are, as he promised, also black socks and tall black boots resting on the floor.
I can’t help smiling as I pull the clothing on.
He’s a millennia-old magical creature who kills.
That’s all he does. Except now he’s making clothing for me, in two colors since I complained about them all being the same.
And he fought his brothers to keep me safe.
Plus he makes tiny aquatic creatures. He tried food for me, too.
His face as he ate all those burgers, his eyes so bright and his expression so animated, will always make me smile.
He’s become a bundle of strange contradictions.
“Are we leaving?” I ask. “It’s only about three and a half hours until dawn, and we need to be at Travis when that happens.”
“First of all, as you said before, they can wait on me.” He arches one imperious eyebrow. “But secondly, you need sleep.” He points at the bed. “You will sleep until it’s time for us to go.”
“We need to go really soon,” I insist. “It’s still nearly two hours from here to there.”
“If you can locate photos of the place we’re going, I can simply teleport us there.”
“Teleport us?” I can’t help sputtering. “What the hell, Xolotl? You could have done that all this time? Then why are we stealing money for cars and traveling by horseback?” I throw my hands into the air.
“First, I was unaware you could locate photographs of places until I stopped killing long enough that tech didn’t melt.” He clears his throat. “And also, there’s usually some value in traveling the landscape.”
“Traveling the landscape?” My blistered feet are so annoyed.
“Besides, you were supposed to be training on our way to this California, where you said we should go to find a lot of people.” He frowns. “Quite soon we’ll begin to set things to right for them.”
“Knowing you’re planning a mass slaughter in a few hours, how do you think there’s any chance I’ll be able to sleep?” I shake my head. “Let’s just go now and wait for dawn.”
“Lie down.” He points at the bed.
I stare.
“Whitney, why do you have to fight me on every single thing I ask?”
“I walked right in here without a fight.”
He tilts his head, as if that was not much of an example.
“Fine.” I huff. “I’m not sure why I always have to fight things. I’ve always been a contrarian—ask my mom. If someone tells me up, I go down. If they say we’re in a rush, I drag my feet. It’s just who I am.”
He looks annoyed, but his lip twitches, and I wonder how he really feels.
I wish I had his ability to read minds, and I’m simultaneously relieved it doesn’t work very well on my dark-light brain.
He walks over to the bed and pulls his boots off, and then he collapses on it, the springs complaining when he does.
“This is a pretty comfortable mattress.” He pats it.
“Yes, for a small and unimpressive hotel, it’s not bad. ”
“It doesn’t look very clean.” I scrunch my nose.
“Don’t worry,” Xolotl says. “I killed all the bugs on the mattress.”
“Bugs?” My voice comes out as a high-pitched screech.
“They’re the kind that feed on humans.”
“Fleas?” I cringe.
He shrugs. “I’m not sure, but they’re dead now.”
“There’s no way I’m sleeping there now, you lunatic, not once you said there were bugs.”
“Dead bugs.” He stares at me.
I don’t budge.
“I didn’t want to have to do this.” He hops to his feet and comes after me.
I scramble backward. “Wait. Do what?”
He’s still walking toward me, his cobalt blue eyes intent on mine. “Whitney.”
“What?” When I back into the rubble-pile-door, I pivot and start off again toward the right. “Stop stalking me.”
He’s smiling, now. “I find that I quite like doing it.”
“Well, I hate it.” I’m near the bed now, so I reach behind myself and grab a pillow, and then I throw it at his head.
My aim’s good—it beans him right on the nose.
He roars, and then he speeds up, jogging after me.
He manages to pin me against the wall only three feet away from the bed.
The only thing I can see around his massive frame is the shattered end table I stole the chair leg from to defend myself against his insane brother.
His face is inches from mine when he says, “Whitney, you will sleep beside me, and you’ll be just fine.” His lips curl upward into a smile again. “I quite liked it last time.”
“You—you did?” The words barely emerge audibly. “I—” I swallow. “I really don’t think I’ll be able to sleep anyway.” I feel 110% awake right now. 120%.
His hands slide behind me so quickly that I barely realize what’s happening until he’s holding me under my knees and behind my back, and then he sets me gently on the bed. He shifts me over, and then he climbs onto the bed beside me. “I’ll keep you safe, little one. Now, sleep.”
I feel a push as he says it, and a wave of exhaustion rolls over me.