Lightbringer (23 page)

“I am,” Piotr said. “I'm disappointed. This joke has gone on long enough.”

She nodded, the picture of thoughtfulness. “I have one thing to say about that.”

Straightening to her full height, Elle slapped him.

“You worry about me and I'll worry about everything else,” she snarled. “Maybe, just maybe, if you'd been really worried before, maybe you would've been here when we needed you. Isn't it funny, Pete, how the one time you run off for more than a few days they just magically appear and take us out? Like they knew one of our best fighters was gone!”

“Yeah,” James chimed in.

“Or,” Elle said, gaining steam, “maybe if you hadn't had your head down in your pants and your hands down hers, Specs and Dora would be a little more here and a little less gone!”

Flabbergasted, Piotr could only open and close his mouth, jaw gaping like a fish. His hand drifted to his cheek, examined the heat there, the sting and momentary swelling where her palm had cracked against his cheekbone. Then Piotr grew angry.

“Ej! Smotret' nyzhno!
Listen to me, you—you arrogant bigmouth,” he growled, hands clenching into fists. “Wendy isn't like that. She's great! She's fantastic! And unlike some of the people I know, she likes me for who I actually
am
, not who I'm apparently supposed to be. Or was. Or whatever! And as for Dora—”

“Elle, Piotr, stop,” Lily said reproachfully. She stood, shifting herself once again between Elle and Piotr, and shot James a hard glance for not stepping forward with her or stopping the fight earlier. “This talk is going nowhere. You are thunder booming in the distance. Neither of you is thinking straight and you're only hurting yourselves.”

“Da
, that's obvious,” Piotr said, stepping back. “Wendy's waiting outside. I think I've heard all I need to in here.”

“If this girl's on the level, then she oughta prove it,” Elle called as Piotr stormed away. “She oughta step up and pull her weight a little more; maybe do some real business instead of just bumping off a Walker here and there. If she's all fired up about duty and doin' her job then she ought to go take care of the White Lady herself instead of pickin' on ghosts like us. If you weren't so goofy over this dame, you'd see that.”

“And if you had any faith in me, you'd trust me to know when someone's a good person or not,” Piotr yelled over his shoulder. He paused at the door, hand pressed against the thick wood, and glanced back. They stood in a line in the far archway, Lily and Elle on either side of James like slim bookends leaning against one wide and battered book. The gloom loomed behind them.

“I'll be back,” Piotr added, relenting at the sight of Lily's mouth tucked in at the corners and Elle's wide and watering eyes. “With Dora and the others. I promise.”

“You're going to get yourself bumped off,” Elle said, clear and low, as he began leaning toward the door. “Soon's you let your guard down. I'd lay a million clams on it. Two mil.”

For old time's sake Piotr smiled; the expression felt brittle on his face; he half-expected the smile to crack and sift to dust before he could flee the building. “I'll keep that in mind, Elle,” he called over his shoulder as he stepped through and back onto the busy and sweltering street. “Take care.
Dasvidania.”

Picking his way through the crowd, Piotr expected to find Wendy still sitting on the bench with her book in her hands, but the bench was empty save for Wendy's battered paperback. The wind ruffled the cover back, exposing dog-eared pages and filling Piotr with a sense of foreboding. He glanced left and right, seeking some sign of her, but the sun was high in the sky and the crowd was thick with holiday shoppers using the narrow side street as a shortcut to more fashionable places to be. Wendy was nowhere to be seen.

Tucking himself between the bench and a trashcan, Piotr stood in the small pocket of safety and stared at the crowd eddying by. The heat was immense, but after spending the previous night basking near Wendy's flame, it was almost bearable. At a loss for what to do or where to go, Piotr closed his eyes and turned in place, arms spread wide. Thanks to his night with Wendy, he could feel pressure as his right wrist slid through the top of the trashcan, could nearly sense the chill of the day in the living world on his skin.

When Piotr opened his eyes the flawless sky flickered above him—grey-blue-grey—and the hazy, indistinct shapes of the real buildings solidified for one brief moment, leaving Piotr awash with vertigo at the shifting, melting world around him. Not far away, only a few miles south, the blackened ghostly remains of the Palace Hotel winked out of existence, stuttered, and returned with the wash of grey sky above. There was an ephemeral glitter, barely seen above the hulks of wood and stone, and a short flash of fierce shining light.

There. Wendy had gone in that direction.

Taking his time, Piotr gauged the crowd and the buildings around him. Most were stores full of trinkets: stepping through the walls and cutting through the buildings would be useless this time of year, every shop was stuffed with holiday shoppers and he could easily be burned by some bargain-hunting biddy diving through him for the last knickknack on a shelf.

No, he decided, the streets were safer.

Leaving the narrow pocket of safety he'd found proved easier said than done. Piotr had to wait until a hole appeared in the crowd, a six-foot space between a gaggle of giggling teenage girls and a trio of boys who hung slightly back, checking them out from behind.

Blessing his luck, Piotr stepped into this gap and traveled in relative safety most of the way to the light rail. Once there, avoiding the pulse of the crowds shuffling on and off the train, Piotr phased into a corner and prayed no one would sit where he was standing. He was lucky, the trip was short and most of the living around him were too hyped up on the season of cheer to pay much attention to the pocket of icy air that hung in the corner of the car. Any that approached were repulsed by the chill and soon, despite the crowding on the train, only Piotr's corner was free; the living sat shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip, but no one was willing to situate themselves in his frigid corner.

The light rail was swift and Market Street approached in no time at all. Piotr waited to disembark until all the living had done so before him. It was still crowded and busy here, but it was a different sort of crowded. Market Street sat near the hustle and bustle of downtown San Francisco, only a short distance away from skyscrapers crawling with important businessmen and rich gallerias. North Beach and Union Square were close but still a bit apart; nothing for someone like Piotr who was accustomed to walking, but far enough distant that most of the living preferred locomotion other than their feet to get them from point A to point B. Those who did walk were far less hurried; they milled about and enjoyed the day, tipping their faces up to the broad expanse of sky and sipping flavored drinks out of steaming paper cups. Their relaxed speed allowed Piotr the opportunity to bob and weave among them, following the sweet siren song he could now hear faintly in the distance, calling him.

Piotr found the Lightbringer on Kearny Street, reaping half a dozen Walkers in the shadow of the Telesis Tower. Though he itched to help, Piotr knew now to keep his distance, and instead settled within watching range but far enough away that he wasn't tempted to drift forward and join the Walkers on their journey into the Light.

The wind picked up her voice, tossed it so she sounded near. “Where are they?” Piotr's stomach clenched—Wendy was asking about the Lost!

Drifting as close as he dared, observing her, Piotr's eyesight stuttered strangely again, stripping the ghosts from the scene and showing him the world as Wendy must see it, all angles and glass and hard metal stretching to the sky. In the Never, the Telesis Tower was a tall but flimsy structure, growing more stable as the years of accumulated career-oriented passion within its walls drifted higher, but still relatively fragile in the grand scheme of things. In the living world the Tower was a monstrous beast of a building, wide and tall, a peer of the realm amidst other, older structures. Piotr rubbed his eyes and the Tower he knew returned, shaped of forgotten hopes and dreams, wispy and fragile and new.

Despite himself, faced with the sight of the Tower alternately solidifying and fading before his very eyes, Piotr thought of Elle's recent accusations and Lily's lies. They claimed he'd been changing again, always changing, his memories flaking away and leaving him something new and not necessarily better. What if their claims hadn't been false? What if they'd been telling the truth? This bizarre double vision was certainly something he'd never encountered before, not even in rumor.

What if he was truly changing?

“Idiot,” he muttered under his breath, shoving the traitorous thought away. “They got under your skin. Whatever this is,” he glanced around and winced as the world took on a realistic edge for a fleeting second, “is just some sort of residue from being with Wendy. That's all.”
But
, his mind whispered,
what if it's not?

Lost in his thoughts, Piotr didn't notice the battle end, and when Wendy, shed of the Light, touched his arm, Piotr jumped and stumbled back, hand pressed to chest and eyes wild. “You scared me! Give a man some warning!”

“Sorry,” Wendy apologized, tucking her hands behind her back and hunching her shoulders slightly. “I didn't mean to. I thought you saw me coming.”

“I did not,” Piotr said, forcing himself to take a deep and calming breath. “My fault.”

Chuckling nervously, Piotr drew close and hugged her, marveling at the wash of sensation that drowned the initial sting of her touch. Wendy tucked her curls beneath his chin and wrapped her arms around his waist, ignoring the momentary steam that billowed around them. They were tucked off the street away from prying eyes, though to the casual passerby it might seem as if Wendy were stretching her arms oddly forward and perhaps popping her neck as she did so. Still, Wendy didn't dare stay that way more than a few moments, lest her peculiar posture draw unwanted attention.

“Wendy? What is the matter?”

“It was rough going this time,” she admitted, releasing Piotr and stepping back. “You have no idea how much it hurts to hold off on a reap, but I got what we needed to know.”

“You were asking about the Lost,
da?”
Deciding that she had enough on her plate as it was, Piotr declined to mention the strange stuttering his vision had picked up.

“She's at the Palace Hotel,” Wendy said. “The White Lady is holed up there with some Walkers for bodyguards, but no Lost. However, some are due to come in to be drained a few days from now, so we've got time to sort out a plan and see if the other Riders want to help.”

“About that—” Piotr began.

“Later,” Wendy said, pressing her palm to her midsection. “I'm so hungry I feel like I'm gonna puke! Reaping's the best diet I've ever been on, I swear. I need some food, and fast. Come on, let's go this way.”

As she talked Wendy reached into her bag and fumbled out a slim black headset that she tucked into her ear. A small blue light winked from one end. “I'll look like a douchebag,” she explained, pulling her hair back and making sure the headset was visible to the casual passerby, “but that's better than looking crazy.”

“I see,” Piotr agreed. Her fight with the Walkers had drained her somewhat; her face was pale, and dark rings circled under her eyes. “You didn't wait for me.”

“I couldn't. I planned to, but I saw a ghost who I thought was my mom. I went after her but she turned out to be just some Shade. I was about to turn back when that group of Walkers ran by and I had to follow them.” Wendy wiped her mouth and glanced sharply around, making sure there were no ghosts of any variety near enough to overhear their conversation. “It was so weird, Piotr, they were outright booking it! I've never seen a Walker run before. Have you?”

“They can run,” Piotr said slowly, taking time to think while he answered, “but they generally don't. That's why we call them Walkers,
da?
They walk, we ride.” He shook his head, chuckled. “Or we did, before cars.”

“Really?” Wendy chuckled, then pressed her hand to her mouth, looking green. “You know, I never even thought to ask why you all called yourselves that. So you, what, rode horses around all the time?”

“It was the easiest way to escape with a Lost. Riders still need to sleep, at least every now and then, and the Walkers—so far as we can tell, at least—don't. So you'd pile your Lost into a wagon or a buggy and,” he mimed cracking a whip, “vamoose. It'd take them ages to catch up.”

Impressed, Wendy whistled under her breath. “And you didn't have any problems finding transportation in the Never?”

“I wouldn't go so far as all that. Wagons were easy to find, no issues there, but locating a dead horse that stayed in the Never was difficult.” He laughed, remembering, and took her hand in his as they began drifting slowly up the street and back toward the light rail. “Dogs are loyal, they hang around until their master dies. Cats like Jabber will hang about if they like a particular family member.”

“Is that why Jabber's sticking around? He misses Mom?”

“Most likely. But horses? They were worth their weight in salvage; if you found one, you needed to hold on tight.”

“Servitude even when you're dead,” Wendy mused. “Must have sucked to be a horse.”

“Of course not! We'd never force them and most were used to the work. They didn't mind helping. They kept good conversation too, if a man didn't have anyone else to talk with.”

“Animals talk in the Never?” Wendy gasped. “You've got to be kidding me. Like, with words and stuff?”

Piotr looked at Wendy strangely.
“Da.
Jabber's never spoken to you before?”

“Uh, no. Not once. Has he spoken with you?”

Piotr nodded. “All the time. He's very particular about how he's petted. Behind the ears only.”

“Weird! I wonder why he's never spoken to me?”

Shrugging, Piotr hid a grin. “Maybe he feels that you, being alive, couldn't understand where he's coming from?”