Lightbringer (19 page)

Sniffing, Wendy shivered. When the White Lady handed her a jacket formed of the strange dream-stuff, she took it without comment and slid gratefully into its warmth. “I have nothing to say to you.”

“Don't you? Not even one question?”

“You're right. I do have one question for you.” Wendy sat up, chin jutted out and glared at the White Lady. “Destroy Dunn yet?”

Patting her thighs and sitting down beside Wendy, the White Lady sighed. “Come now, Lightbringer, don't be stupid. You and I both know that if I had, you'd have heard about it by now. Your fortnight isn't up for two more days.” Her phalanges scraped the edge of the track, digging furrows in the dirt. “But then again, maybe I should. I tire of our constant head-butting. It certainly would prove a point, wouldn't it?”

“I'll back off,” Wendy said. “On one condition. And only that condition.”

“Indeed? Well, please, elucidate. What in heaven or earth could move the mighty Lightbringer to lower herself to actually deal with me?”

“You tell me why you're kidnapping the Lost.” Wendy scowled. “And quit calling me the ‘mighty Lightbringer.’ That shit is getting old.”

“Absolutely not.” The White Lady shook her head. “No deal.”

“You're obviously not feeding them to the Walkers,” Wendy pressed, “and you don't exactly seem the motherly type. Surely there's some reason other than just shits and giggles. Tell me why and I'll lay off the Walkers unless they attack me first.”

“Why are you seeing a dead boy in your room every night? We all have our own reasons for the things we do.” The White Lady tsked softly. “Kissing the dead instead of reaping them? For shame, girl. What would your mother say?”

“You could ask her.” Wendy tapped her tongue ring against her teeth. “Oh, no, you can't, can you? You still haven't found her. All that bluster and you're just as lost as I am—can't find one single ghost.”

“She knows the Never well,” the White Lady admitted. “I'm starting to admire her.”

“Just starting to?”

“Hush, girl. You'll never hear one of my kind praising one of yours.” She sniffed. “It simply isn't done.”

“This isn't me agreeing to a truce,” Wendy warned. “Just so you know.”

“The time for truce is long over.” The White Lady leaned forward so that the remains of her chin rested on her knees, the rest of her face still cast in the hood's deep shadow. “You're right. I can't destroy Dunn…yet. I know you'll never stop hunting my Walkers. So we must agree to disagree, I suppose. No more talks of truce. No deal. Here on out, it's open war between the two of us. Agreed?”

Wendy sighed. “Agreed.”

“When I find your mother—and I will find her—I'm going to obliterate her. Just so you know.” The White Lady laughed and there was a dark edge to her mirth, an underlying anger that Wendy would've been deaf to miss. “I tire of this.”

“You talk, but all I hear is blah, blah, blah.”

The White Lady stood. “Do you even know why you called me here?”

“I didn't.” Wendy closed her eyes. “Get out.”

“As you wish, Lightbringer.” The White Lady began to move away. “But, just a reminder, we're at war, girl. No more nice-nice. If I can, I'll have you torn to shreds.”

“Bring it. You send 'em my way, I'll keep knocking them down.”

“You can't keep up this pace. You've realized that, haven't you?” The White Lady chuckled. “One day you're going to reap too many souls in a row and leave yourself weak. All I have to do is wait.” The wind sighed in the trees and the White Lady sighed with it. “I think I'll have you kneel before me, before I rip your soul apart. Fitting, isn't it? A simple ghostie like me destroying the mighty Lightbringer? Just the idea of it leaves me all a-tingle.”

“Blah, blah, blah. We're done here.”

“Yes, Wendy, I think we are. Goodnight.”

When Wendy opened her eyes, the White Lady was gone. She was still dreaming, she knew, and if she wanted to, she could wake up. But waking up would mean facing the fight she and Piotr had just had; facing reality.

Wrapping her arms around her chest, Wendy conjured up a warm, sunlit beach and sank deeper into her dream. Plenty of time to be miserable in the waking, living world. Right now she just wanted peace.

W
hen Piotr stormed out of Wendy's bedroom he had no idea where he was to go. Part of him knew he should head north, back into the city, to warn the others that the Lightbringer had a very good idea where they were located. Piotr had even begun the long trek back to Elle's when he realized that Wendy had known about the bookstore for over a month now; if she had wanted to tear every Rider in the Bay Area apart she could have done so already. Instead she'd held off, and Piotr had a sneaking suspicion he knew why. For him.

Unsure which option was best, Piotr skulked around town, refusing to go back to the bookstore but unwilling to head back into his own turf and hunker down at the mill. Lily might understand, but would the others? After all, it was all his fault—Wendy's words haunted him, her revelation that he was the reason she'd begun taking her duties as a destroyer of souls in earnest. He was the reason thousands of Shades and innumerable other ghosts around the city were gone. Their absence had been puzzling the Riders for weeks, but now he understood. It was all his fault.

The worst part wasn't his shame, though. The worst part was the fact that he craved the Light. Like an addict seeking that final, fantastic fix, Piotr had to stop himself from turning around and rejoining Wendy in her room, from begging her to end his existence. She had been something he'd never encountered, something terrible and wonderful, and as much as he hated her, he still yearned for her.

Stomping along the back roads, listening to the distant hammer of the train pounding on the tracks, Piotr played their encounter over again in his mind. Caught in the limbo between spirit and flesh, Wendy had never looked more painfully beautiful. As she sank back into her skin the remains of the Light played about the edges of her body, glimmering with welcome—and excruciating—heat, leaving her almost smaller than before; slighter. Though now flesh, she'd appeared somehow insubstantial to the touch and definitely weaker in both spirit and will.

Driven by instinct, Piotr had perceived the well of flowing years coursing under her fragile living skin, tempting him with its bounty of life and Light. She was fragile in the limbo between spirit and flesh—he sensed that, like a Walker, he could take her life if he wanted to.

All he had to do was strike.

Safely distant, Piotr could admit to himself that he'd hated her then, and loved her, and hated himself for loving her. The blistering cold of his fury threatened to overwhelm him. She was a monster. She was his friend.

Ignoring her pleas for understanding, he'd left. To protect her, to protect himself.

It was the only part of that whole hideous encounter he was proud of.

The touch of Wendy's human hand had been wonderful. The heat of the Lightbringer's spiritual regard had been…more. And Piotr knew that he wanted more from her than she'd ever be willing to give. Sickened and torn, he started to walk faster, to jog, then run. Chased by his memory of Wendy encased in Light, Piotr fled, leaving the valley behind.

Homecoming came, homecoming went, then Halloween. Wendy spent every free moment roaming town, looking for a fight with the roving dead. Sleepless and careless of her safety, Wendy burned with a furious light.

Each night Shade after Shade melted away at the slightest touch and Walkers fell by the dozens. Wendy spent every night purposefully
not
thinking of Piotr and every day drifting between classes and assignments—like a ghost, herself. When she did finally relax long enough to drift off, her sleep was rife with nightmares, some featuring the White Lady watching in the distance, most not. It was as if the White Lady saw no need to torment Wendy further; she was her own worst nightmare now.

More than once she thought she spied her mother in the distance. Wendy would speed up, hurry toward the ghost, only to find a random Shade. Her reaps were fury-driven and none-too-gentle. Wendy hated them all.

Driven now by some deep-seated urge to keep moving, to keep doing as she should have done the moment her mother fell, Wendy quit calling Eddie for help with reaping and instead borrowed her father's car without permission. Jabber stalking at her side, Wendy spent the wee hours wandering all the darkest parts of the Bay Area, seeking out the forgotten places and darkest alleys with suicidal glee.

She quit visiting her mother and deleted the calls that the hospital left on her cell. Wendy had more important things to worry about now. She didn't want to face Dr. Emma's curious concern or her mother's blank and emaciated eyes.

“When Dad comes home, I'm gonna tell,” Chel declared one night when Wendy snagged his keys off the nail in the garage. Jon, sitting at the kitchen counter, took one look at Wendy's face and abandoned the area, taking his half-eaten mixing bowl full of mac ‘n’ cheese with him. Chel, ignoring her twin's escape, pushed on, sliding between Wendy and the door to the garage.

“Where do you go, anyway, when you take off like this? You're not visiting Eddie, I checked. Pick up a skanky boyfriend you're ashamed of, Wendy?” She eyed Wendy's bare arms, peering knowingly at the hollows of Wendy's elbows. “Or maybe got into something a little worse?”

“I go out,” Wendy replied, and thrust a twenty from the grocery fund into Chel's hand. Money normally shut her nosy little sister up. “Like you can talk. Keep your trap shut or I'll tell Dad how you're slutting it up with that walking disease you call a boyfriend.”

Pushing Chel easily aside, Wendy reached into her sister's purse, hanging on the hook beside the door, and pulled out a half-full bottle of Phentermine. “Or about these.”

Humiliated, Chel was in tears; she snatched the bottle back. “Fuck off!”

“Go to hell,” Wendy snapped back, pushing past her, and slammed the door behind.

Part of her felt bad about Chel. She knew her little sister was starting to run with the wrong crowd, starting to get in over her head both at school and after, but there were Walkers left to reap. Life, as her mother used to say, could take care of itself. Wendy just had to watch her own back. As she pulled out of the driveway, Wendy glanced up and saw Jon sitting in his windowsill, shoving spoonful after spoonful of cheesy pasta into his mouth and shaking his head. She ignored him, punched the volume on the stereo up, and spun out into the night.

Weeks passed. Wendy hunted.

Thanksgiving was subdued. Dad had left earlier; he wanted to spend the evening with Mom at the hospital, and Nana had tottered off to the guest room by eight, leaving Wendy to stuff the vast remnants of their Thanksgiving fare into her mother's weathered margarine tubs and wash the dishes by herself.

It was a dismal job. The stuffing had been soggy, the turkey underdone, and Nana's cranberry sauce had been the wrong kind, not the canned sort that you sliced in paper-thin layers but the other type, full of pits and twigs and gooshy blobs. Chel had picked at her plate—shredding her roll and feeding it to Nana's ancient poodle under the table, hiding the dollop of green bean casserole under her mashed potatoes—but Dad hadn't noticed.

Jon, on the other hand, ate more than enough for the both of them. He was starting to get round in the face and when Wendy, pitying him, had tried to convince him to join her in a pickup basketball game after dinner, he'd turned her down, preferring to mix up a batch of fudge instead.

“Fine,” she snapped, irritated that he wouldn't help her take her mind off things—off having a holiday season without Mom. “It's your gigantic ass. Do whatever you want with it.” Wendy stalked away, ignoring the bewildered hurt on Jon's face.

Life without Mom, she thought hopelessly, had finally begun to fall apart. In her room Wendy hid in the back of her closet, pulled Jabber into her lap, and cried herself to sleep with the ghost of her mother's cat in her lap.

Weeks passed. Wendy hunted.

Three months. It had been three months—twelve whole and seemingly endless weeks—since Piotr had learned that Wendy was the Lightbringer. Piotr haunted the trails between the city and the valley, lost in his thoughts and brooding.

To keep himself from literally haunting Wendy's home, Piotr wandered. He crisscrossed well-known trails and streets until he was not a person in the strictest sense of the word, merely a restless spirit walking; striding through the hours of the day in agony until the only face he could see was hers, his every thought tangled around the pain they'd caused one another. Time away from her had given him some hard-earned perspective. Piotr understood why she'd lied about being the Lightbringer at first, but couldn't wrap his mind around why she'd continued to do so. Didn't she trust him? Didn't she owe him that, at least?

This brooding lasted until Piotr, finally closing the circuit towards the city, found a pair of thick-rimmed glasses just outside Elle's territory. Piotr leaned down, picked them up, turned them in his hand. They were black plastic, horn-rimmed, and familiar.

The bookstore was in chaos when he arrived. Most of the Riders were gone, as were the Lost, leaving only Elle, Lily, and James. When Piotr arrived he found Lily meditating cross-legged in a corner beside James. James, battered about the head and neck, puffy with bruises and gashes, sported several even more severe wounds on his arms and legs. As Lily's hands moved over them the cuts knit closed, but they were not seamless or pretty. Lily did not have a Lost's healing touch.

“What happened?” Piotr asked, but knew it was a useless, futile question. He was a tracker and what had happened here was clear. Footsteps in the dust were marred by long, swishing swipes. Rider essence lay in puddles, silver pools that dried to dark and tainted grey. The floor was riddled with dime-sized holes, bored through in Swiss cheese patterns, and there was an unmistakable smell of wet rot in the air.

The Walkers had grown tired of trying to pick the Lost off one by one and had staged a mass assault.

“Those hoods snatched Dora,” Elle told him later, after they'd gone through the remnants of the Lost to assess the damage and estimate a sort of head-count of the taken. “Specs too. The rest of the Riders are on the lam, heading east. I sent Tubs with Kurtz, for safety.” Elle rubbed the bridge of her nose with one hand, filthy with dust and the day's fight. Her other arm lay in her lap, lumpy at the elbow and oozing a thin stream of essence, snapped in four separate places. Large hunks of her golden hair were sheared away at the skull; she now had a jagged cut that wound across her forehead and diagonally down one cheek. It matched his scar.

Catching him examining her face, Elle's eyes flashed warning. “I told them to pack their glad rags and get a wiggle on, no turning around. Kurtz took charge and they're heading for Nevada. They ain't ever coming back.” She almost spat the words.

So that was it. They were alone. Why was he not surprised?

Piotr nodded, numb, and left Elle's side, wandering through the bookstore. He picked up an item here, an item there. Dora's sketchbook had been left behind. It was not made of the same stuff she was; he would not be able to tell if she was safe by looking at it. All the same, Specs' glasses were whole, and that indicated that Specs, at least, was unharmed. It was hope. Piotr seized on that.

Without one of the Lost there to help, the healing process took a few weeks. When James was up and on his feet again, he and Elle organized a citywide search program. “If we can't find them like this,” he claimed, his dangling cornrows brushing the edges of the map Elle had scrounged from amid the rotting books, “we won't find them.”

Enough time had passed that it was looking like the remaining Riders weren't going to find more than scattered clues. The Lost appeared permanently gone, but at least Dunn's hat remained solid, as did Specs' glasses and Tommy's cloak. They were still alive—at least, in a manner of speaking.

Practical by nature, Piotr set out each day expecting nothing and came back with exactly that. So it was to his great surprise when, traveling through the edges of Mountain View towards San Jose, a copy of the map with the search parameters in one hand and a flare in the other, he spotted a quartet of Walkers. One of them was struggling with a small and shrieking figure. A familiar figure.

“Specs!” Piotr yelled and, without thought or plan, dropped the paper and flare, flinging himself into the fray.

The Walkers had changed and not for the better. These beasts had faces elongated into unimaginable abominations, twisted and warped into monstrous shapes, with stitches of sinew thick as twine holding the gaping flaps of their essence together. These Walkers had been healed and then marred again. The purposeful scars were doubly hideous, lying so starkly against the fresh flesh.

Piotr, approaching at speed, drew Elle's dagger and leapt at the Walker holding Specs. The Walker went down—end over end—and Specs, yelling with surprise and glee, tugged free.

“Piotr! Piotr! I knew you'd come! I knew it!”

Mindless with rage, Piotr began slashing at the Walker. Every cut he made—shallow and deep alike—broke fragile skin and spilled a foul-smelling, noxious liquid. It was not essence; it was too thin, too runny, and when it touched his hands, it stung.

Another fine spray of droplets flew, dousing him, and Piotr felt the burn of it eating into his skin, his pants and arms. Now he knew what the holes had been—these Walkers bled something beyond mere essence. Whatever they bled was acid to ghosts, essence-burning and foul, like unadulterated death. Piotr ignored the pain and continued stabbing.