Lightbringer

by K. D. McEntire

  His choice of words struck Wendy as strange and scary. “You know, I never thought to ask this before, but…Piotr, what happens when ghosts fight one another? If a Walker doesn't eat you, you can't kill each other, can you? You can only, you know, hurt one another, right?”

  “That is wrong. We can destroy one another. And some do.”

  Gaping, Wendy pressed cold fingers to her lips. “But that's crazy. You're already dead!”

  “That's what being a ghost is like. Death, existence, and death again.” He smiled sadly. “Unless you find the Light. Then, salvation.”

  Wendy shuddered. “I'd imagine there's nothing worse than dying after you're dead.”

  Piotr disagreed. “Net. The Lightbringer is worse.”

  “Really?” Curious, Wendy sat up. “What's a Lightbringer?”

  Standing now by the window, Piotr leaned forward and gazed out into the early evening, eyes searching and expression grim. When he turned to face her, Wendy was stunned to see how drawn his features had become, how pale he'd grown. He was still, steady, but the haze of his very essence seemed to be shaking, as if he were trembling. Piotr, she realized, was terrified.

  “It's a—” Piotr struggled for the word, “a figure? A figure made of pure light, blinding light, and it sings a siren song that draws us. It's new, a snare like nothing you've ever seen.” Piotr half-laughed, a broken, battered sound. “It has tentacles of light that it uses to spear us with.”

  “Tentacles.” Wendy was starting to get a bad feeling about this.

  “Thin, flexible. The light is bright. If we get too close…” He glanced under his lashes at her and hesitated, quieted.

  The anticipation burned in her gut, a roiling mass of nerves, but Wendy didn't dare show Piotr how his words unnerved and frightened her. “If you get too close?” Wendy prompted, with a fake, sunny smile. The grin wasn't quite appropriate, but he was hardly looking at her, lost in his own dark thoughts.

  “Since the light is like fire to us, if we get too close to it, the light burns us to cinders. It just starts eating away at what we are until we…until our very essence is stripped into nothing.”

  Coldness coiled in her gut. Wendy straightened, clasping her hands together to keep from shaking. A being of light that broke apart essence until it was no more. Surely he couldn't mean…her?

  “Have you seen it?” she asked, studiously staring at a snarl of thread on her comforter. Her fingers, restless, stole out from her lap, picked at the snarl, working the knot until it had come undone. She smoothed it, pressing hard into the fabric. “This…this Lightbringer?”

  “Da.” Piotr shook his head, body sagging with the memory. “The other night. It was the most horrible thing I've ever seen.”

  As Piotr outlined his meeting with Lily and their encounter with the Walkers and the Lightbringer, Wendy remained calm and quiet. There was no doubt in her mind that Piotr had seen her on patrol that night, had spotted her when she'd been forced to reap the nosy Walkers that had scented her and tried to chase her down.

  He'll never understand, she realized, sucking the ball at the end of her barbell between her front teeth. He'll think you're after him.

  And wasn't that, in part, the truth? Hadn't she told herself just the other day that when all this was over, she'd reap him and release his soul into the Light? So who was in the wrong here? Piotr for being frightened of her or Wendy for doing her job in the first place? The job she hadn't even asked for? The job she didn't want anymore?

  He thought she was a monster! Called her ribbons of Light “tentacles” and her glowing “horrible.”

  Piotr hated her. He just didn't know it yet.

  Wendy felt ill.

  Desperate to change the subject, she searched for something, anything to talk about. “I just realized that I forgot to tell you about this crazy dream I had earlier this week.” Wendy settled on the edge of her bed, drew her legs up under her, scooted in. She could feel the coolness banking off him in waves, like the errant breeze from a weak fan. He even smelled cool—evergreens and mint and the slightest hint of something earthy just underneath. The scent of death, his death, which separated them.

  “A dream?” Piotr leaned forward, curious and smiling. “Please tell. There are some that say dreams are gateways for the dead.”

  “So I found out.” Wendy explained how she'd met the White Lady in her dream, but carefully kept their conversation streamlined, never mentioning why exactly the White Lady had chosen to single her out. “She's threatening my mother's soul,” Wendy finished. “I think…I think that maybe she's upset that I'm meddling.” It was close enough to the truth, Wendy reasoned. She was meddling, after all, just more than Piotr could ever know.

  “This is no good,” he declared when she'd finished, pounding a fist into his palm. “She cannot be allowed to do this!”

  “I don't know how I'm gonna stop her from it,” Wendy replied dryly. “But at least I can wriggle away if I need to.”

  “Spies,” Piotr said softly. “This makes sense. If she had eyes and ears other than the Walkers, it would be much easier to time the kidnappings.” He frowned. “I shall have to take this news to the others.”

  “That won't be easy. Aren't you guys spread all over?”

  “Net, no longer. Once it was this way, but now all the Lost in the city have gathered together,” he explained. “Close to the humans, safe. But this arrangement cannot last for long. Squished as we are into one little building…tempers are already simmering.” He shook his head. “In truth, I should be there now. I've been shirking my patrol shifts and letting the others pick up the slack, trying to pick up traces of Dunn instead.”

  “Then why'd you come tonight?” She hesitated, tapped one finger on her temple as if searching for a memory. “I thought you wanted to bring, um, what's her name? Lily?” Wendy was proud of the way the name rolled flawlessly off her lips.

  “Lily, in all her wisdom, believes I can learn more about Seers on my own.” Chuckling, Piotr ran aimless fingers across her bedspread. “Besides, James arrived earlier today. Lily wanted time with him.”

  “Time?”

  Piotr raised his fingers in air quotes. “‘Time.’”

  “Ooooh. Wow.” Wendy relaxed, relieved. “I didn't know you still did that sort of thing.”

  Finding a loose thread in her comforter, Piotr ran his fingers through it over and over again. The thread wavered after several seconds of intense effort. “Why not?” He shrugged. “We're dead, not…uh…dead. Da?”

  Wendy couldn't help but laugh. “Yeah, I think I get it. So, wow. This Lily chick sounds sort of like Eddie. She really likes this James guy, huh?”

  “Indeed. Their territories are close but they can only meet infrequently. With other Riders there to watch the Lost, they can spend a while alone.” He smiled. “I am very happy for her. She works much too hard and the loss of Dunn has been a blow for her. James will offer the comfort she needs.”

  Pausing a moment to make sure she wanted to pose the question after all, Wendy casually asked, “What about you? Do you have anyone special over there? Anyone you need to be comforting right now?”

  “Special?” Piotr looked at her blankly, confused, before he understood what she was getting at. Then he laughed, flushed, and clasped his hands together in his lap. “I have in the past, da, but not for years. Since the early thirties at least.”

  “Thirties?” Wendy was stunned. “The nineteen-thirties?” How old was Piotr anyway?

  “That sounds right.” Piotr began tapping one finger against the outspread digits of the other hand, counting off the years. “The thirties, possibly the forties. One of the world wars had just ended. And I was with Elle for a while. Not long. She's…a wild child. I dated Lily as well, though only for a short time.” His half-smile drooped. “James still hasn't forgiven me for that.”

  Amused that the dead had relationship drama just like anyone else, Wendy laughed merrily and a touch unkindly. This was something her mother's
training had never even hinted at. “They'd broken up?”

  “I thought seeing Lily in such a manner would be acceptable,” Piotr complained, sounding eerily like Eddie for one brief moment. He waved a negligent hand. “But apparently net, it was not. I gave it my best, but it lasted a year. James,” he grinned, “is a very persistent rival.”

  Hearing this guy, this boy who was her own age in physical years—if not actual years spent on the earth—sound just like her best friend, annoyed with some small fact of life, lifted an invisible weight that had been pushing Wendy down.

  For the first time, she began really seeing Piotr—not just the peculiarities of him as a dead man, but as a person with quirks and foibles like herself. He was no longer simply a ghost she found attractive and would one day have to reap, but a guy near her own age, with his own problems and history, brimming with stories to tell.

  Tension broken, they sank deep into conversation about the merits and perils of dating within one's social circle, what the dead did for fun, and talked the rest of the night away.

  More than three weeks passed like this, each night spent deep in conversation, getting to know one another as only friends can do. After that first night, Wendy told Piotr to meet her at midnight and no sooner. Exhausted after her long nights and longer conversations, she sank easily into sleep with Piotr holding her hand. Despite his presence, her dreams grew worse.

  The dreams weren't the only stressful change in her life. Determined to piss off the White Lady at every opportunity, Wendy now made a point of going out of her way to reap every Walker she saw instead of resorting to only self-defense.

  At first, relaxing the personal ban on reaping ghosts had been utterly nerve-wracking—seeking them out was absolutely nothing like coming across them and defending herself. Trembling each time she dug inside herself and released the Light, Wendy forced herself to focus on taking every soul she spotted, returning to the habit of reaping with fierce concentration. She had to make up for all those souls she'd abandoned, Wendy reasoned. She couldn't let them continue to suffer.

  Though she had to work back up to the regimen she'd been familiar with before, Wendy still felt a pang of fear every time she slid into the Light. Reaping ghosts was still excruciating, but dealing with the pain grew easier with every reap—as if spending time with Piotr was painting a spiritual target on her back, or as if she gave off a ghostly pheromone even when in her regular state.

  Within a week, ghosts—Shade and Walker alike—sought her out at every opportunity: school, the diner, even on the bus. Since she couldn't become the Lightbringer around the living, being accosted in public was difficult to ignore. Wendy learned the art of ducking into alleys and running for the closest bathroom whenever a ghost was near. The ghosts generally followed.

  Worried about what might be happening to her mother in the chaotic world of the Never, between the White Lady's threats and her Walkers, Wendy kept her searching patrols as close to home as she could easily manage. Eddie often drove her on patrol and did his homework in the car.

  More than once on these whirlwind patrols, a ghost would approach, dim in the light, and Wendy would think it was her mother. She'd check her impulse to send the spirit on until it was close enough. Then, always, she'd feel the crushing disappointment.

  Those reaps were always painfully quick.

  Keeping to such a steady schedule soon made a major difference. In a matter of weeks, Wendy had Santa Clara swept clean of Walkers and Shades alike. There seemed to be more of the dead than ever before, and the Walkers grew crueler as the nights passed. Soon it became a struggle to reap them. The Walkers, originally loners, began traveling in pairs and then in packs. Perhaps they had other Walkers observing from the shadows, or maybe after so many encounters they were beginning to learn, but they began concentrating their attacks in the brief moment that Wendy took to become the Lightbringer. She could be wounded here, in that brief instant between physical form and ethereal. Despite their jabs, however, Wendy was still strong, even when outnumbered, and yet, as fast as Wendy was, she wasn't infallible. The smartest and quickest Walkers would attack and run, escaping her grasp before the siren song could lure them back, returning to report to the White Lady on a semi-regular basis.

  Through it all, though she looked high and low, ducking into every building she could, Wendy never saw her mother's soul.

  Ironically, during their discussions Piotr worried that the Lightbringer would stumble upon the Rider camp at Pier 31, never realizing that he'd ensured its safety by letting Wendy know exactly where it was located.

  “It makes no sense,” he complained to Wendy. “A beast like that should be drawn to us. We are like a great feast for the likes of it! But there is nothing, not one sighting near the pier. It's all south of there. I'm starting to wonder if I imagined the thing.”

  These comments both pleased and hurt Wendy, confusing her deeply. Though it was her duty, the duty her mother had instilled in her from the very start of her training, Wendy was unwilling to reap the souls gathered at the Pier yet, though she knew that one day, one day very soon, she would have to. The thought of this undone responsibility pained her. Letting them sit there, still absent from the Light, went against all her mother's teaching, but Piotr, she knew, would be heartbroken at their loss.

  She kept away from the nest of Riders and Lost for him.

  When Dunn is found, she promised herself, I'll send them all on. She meant it, too. The moment the cap vanished, she'd finish them all off. But the hat was still whole, and Dunn's essence was still strong. It was a mystery.

  “He must be hidden somewhere,” Piotr theorized one night, almost a month after they'd met. It was after midnight and the entire house was asleep, save Wendy. Her father was out of town again. Chel and Jon had also temporarily made up, and Eddie had a new girlfriend, though he swore if Wendy changed her mind he'd dump the new girl in an instant. Wendy, laughing, declined. Life had, for the most part, smoothed out somewhat.

  Except for Dunn's continued absence.

  Deep in contemplation, Piotr was sitting on her bed, legs outthrust, brainstorming out loud. It was a habit of his, she'd found. He liked to discuss what was on his mind and found her a safe repository for all his musings. After all, who would she tell?

  “Dunn is being kept somewhere,” he repeated, hunching over and rubbing one finger along the edge of his shoe, smoothing away a scuff. Jabber, who'd grown to tolerate Piotr over the past month, darted and dodged at the shoelace he dangled along the floor with his other hand.

  “Somewhere, somewhere…but the North Bay has been scoured high and low! Lily wants now to search south.” Piotr paused, and peered at her through a fall of his messy hair. Watching him shove the thick strands off his face, Wendy wondered if there were combs in the afterlife. “What of you, Wendy? Have you yet seen anything out of the ordinary during those walks you take?”

  Only fourteen Walkers hanging out near the park tonight, she thought to herself, but kept quiet and shook her head. Wendy had three more equations to pound out before she could quit and get ready for bed. Piotr, who she suspected had never had homework a day in his life, kept rattling aloud in the background.

  “This is insanity!” Piotr continued. Wendy scowled at the cracked screen on her graphing calculator and wished she had the money to buy a new one. She'd fallen hard on her backpack a week ago during the most recent Walker ambush, and had crushed it. It was a miracle the calculator still turned on. There was no way she was going to ask her father to buy her another one. Recently they'd developed a truce of sorts—she stuck to jeans and tees around the house, he pretended that she didn't stay out to all hours of the night.

  “I need a job,” she muttered under her breath. Jabber, ghostly bell tinkling, darted between her ankles.

  “What's that?” Piotr peered over her shoulder. “You said something?”

  Wendy slammed her book shut. “I said, ‘I need a job,’” she grumbled, burying her face in her hands.
r />   “I don't understand.”

  “My clothes are mostly ripped up, calculator's damn near broken, my bag's got a rip in it. Money's tight, Piotr, and it's a necessity for living. At least these days.” She rolled her eyes and added sourly, “Not like you've got that problem.”

  Startled by her tone, Piotr was silent a moment, chastised. Then he brightened. “You need one of those for your schoolwork?” He pointed to her nearly shattered TI-86.

  Forcing herself to keep her tone civil, Wendy sighed and nodded. “Yes. I do. But—”

  She didn't get to finish her question—Piotr had dropped through the floor.

  “Good going, Wendy,” she groaned. “Way to scare him away.” Upset with herself for her poor attitude, Wendy glumly returned to her homework, berating herself for the fact that Piotr would probably not be back tonight, if at all. So when his face appeared at her window twenty minutes later, Wendy jumped in fright, nearly falling off her chair.

  “Pros`tite,” he apologized, sliding through the wall and grinning sheepishly at her. “I was going to climb the stairs but the tree beckoned. It was fun!” Then he reached into his back pocket and drew out a package. “Is this the one?”

  Wendy leaned forward, confused. “Is that…a calculator?”

  “Da! Since you can touch me,” he explained, setting the ghostly TI-86 on the edge of her desk, “and Dunn's cap, I reasoned that you might touch this too.”

  Resuming his normal position, Piotr propped himself against the headboard of her bed. “The packaging must be removed, pros`tite. My apologies.”

  “No, no, it's great. Thank you.” Wendy picked up the calculator, marveling at the way one moment she could easily see through it and the next it solidified in her hand, opaque to the eye. “Does it work? Where'd you get it?”

  “If it works, that is a mystery.” Piotr shrugged and clucked his tongue at Jabber, trying to lure the cat to come play again. “Sometimes electronics do, sometimes they do not. Often it is not. No one knows why. I found them outside an electronic store…Costco? I was foraging for Dora's art supplies and learned that old merchandise is destroyed in the back. I go back frequently to check—I am the scavenger king!”