There was a moment, just a moment, when Piotr thought he could grasp just what Wendy was. Then tentacles of Light punched through her chest in a bloodless spray of glass-green fire, leaving a wound like a lipless mouth where her beating heart should have been. The physical body he had known as Wendy was obliterated now, not a tangled hair or shred of skin left. She was Light and life and a terrible, all-encompassing love that filled him and stretched him and left him feeling shredded into tiny pieces. Where her mouth should have been was a smooth, flat expanse of what he could only assume was skin, her nose was gone, her ears lost to sight. Only her eyes, large and brown and warm, were the same. They gazed at him and for the first time in all his years of endless, plodding existence, Piotr felt weak.
Weighed down by her regard, he dropped to his knees and bowed his head. When he vanished beneath the top of the bedspread Wendy drew her power back inside with difficulty, forcing the banked heat inside to cool, to dim, and wrapped the unspooling ribbons of Light around herself again.
Long moments passed before she was done and when Wendy felt fully in control, felt that Piotr was completely safe from the Light side of her nature, she opened her eyes to find him mere inches from her. His expression was shuttered and she searched his face, desperately trying to puzzle out his state of mind.
“Piotr?”
“You are the Lightbringer.” Flat, cold.
She swallowed thickly. “Yes.”
“You lied to me,” he said and his accent was so thick she had to struggle to make out his words. “For weeks and weeks, you have been lying to me!”
“I didn't lie exactly,” she hedged, feeling miserable, “I just didn't—”
“You just didn't tell me that you incinerate my friends day and night!” He threw up his hands and strode across the room. “Are you the one taking them—our Lost? Did you take Dunn? Or Tommy? As revenge for your mother? The Lost took your mother, so you take the Lost?”
“No!” Horrified that Piotr would think such a thing, Wendy struggled for the right words to calm him, to soothe this troubled situation. “I would never—”
“Never what? Never kill one of the dead? Because you have, I've seen it!” Piotr crossed his arms over his chest and glared at her. “Or do you deny shredding those Walkers? Stabbing them with those…tentacles? What are they? Weapons? Knives for the likes of you?”
“They're ribbons!” Wendy snapped. “I wrap a ghost—”
“So you admit it. You strangle my kind with—”
“Strangle? Strangle!” Wendy sputtered. “I save you—”
“Is that what you were trying to tell me earlier, when you stumbled over your words time and time again? Telling me about your mother, you had such a hard time describing her as Seer. Because you are not Seer! You are more. And if you are more, then your mother must be more, da? Is that why you seek her so hard, Wendy? Are you lonely? Is the burden of killing the dead over and over again too much for you?”
“It's not like that! My mother—”
“TELL ME THE TRUTH! Does your mother kill my kind? Do you?”
“It's not killed if you're already dead!” Wendy yelled before she could stop herself. Wendy's hands flew to her mouth, eyes huge and horrified, but silence followed the proclamation. She'd lucked out; no one seemed to have awoken at her shout. Whispering harshly, she added, “And it's not like I knew any of you before! I was just doing what I was told to do! It's my job!”
“Your mother,” Piotr snorted. “Grandmothers, aunts. An entire family of Lightbringers. Destroying souls as you see fit! Filling us with…that…making us feel small and weak and then ripping us apart! Does it make you feel big to make us feel small before you tear us into nothing with your ribbons?” He spat on the ground.
“You dumbass, we don't destroy anything! I reap ghosts!” Now pushed past all endurance, Wendy strode up to Piotr and poked him in the shoulder. Surprisingly, she made contact and the touch of him was like dragging her hand through dry ice. Yelping, she yanked her hand back and waved it rapidly in the air to warm it. “I don't kill you, I don't destroy you, I send you to the afterlife!”
“I am in the afterlife,” he snapped.
Wendy, fuming over the possible damage to her hand, gaped at his sheer stubborn stupidity. Then, surprisingly, he added, “Did you hurt your finger?”
Subdued somewhat by the question, Wendy held it up. “I'll live.” He snorted and she realized that this fight was getting them nowhere.
“I didn't mean the Never,” she said dully, sitting on the edge of her bed and tucking her wounded fingers into her armpit. They stung and tingled crazily but she thought they'd be okay. “When I say afterlife I really mean the afterlife. I don't kill you, I send you into the Light.”
He was quiet a moment. Wendy glanced up and found him standing at the window, looking out. “How many?” he asked, voice low. “How many have you sent on?”
She swallowed thickly. The tone of his voice, the low pitch, didn't bode well. Piotr had never been a shouter, but he was generally more animated than that. This sudden stillness unnerved her; his unexpected quiet set her on edge. “I've never counted. A lot. Hundreds, possibly thousands. Mostly Shades.” She hung her head, for the first time ashamed of what she'd always before considered her duty, part of the natural order of things, even when she'd been avoiding her duty out of fear and guilt over what happened to her mother.
“I told you before, with my mother gone I didn't want to do it anymore, but because of the Walkers…I've had to get up to speed pretty quickly. So…hundreds. Probably more.” She cleared her throat. “I've been taking out Walkers while I've been on patrol. Ever since we talked. You got me started again. I've been helping you.”
“Helping me.” Piotr nodded but didn't turn. “I must leave.” Leading with his left shoulder, he began to phase through the wall.
“Piotr, wait!” Wendy jumped to her feet, hands outstretched, but before she could take the half dozen steps to the window, he was gone.
In her dreams, Wendy ran.
She was on the track at school, circling the field over and over again, the stitch in her side ablaze with pain, her legs trembling, the soles of her bare feet pounding the pavement in a rhythmic staccato. Stinging sweat ran in her eyes, blurring her vision, and every inhalation burned. Even her teeth ached, though whether from the cold or the exertion, Wendy was unsure. All she knew was that if she stopped running, even for one moment, she'd see that dim silver flicker at the edge of the field and she would have to follow it. She'd force her way through the woods again, nettles stinging her calves, burrs catching in her socks, branches whipping across her face, until she found the man again, still under the fall of eucalyptus deadwood.
She didn't want to see him again. She'd had enough of death and ghosts.
It was too much. She couldn't go on but she forced herself to take the next step and then the next. Wendy pushed on, pushed on, and when her leg gave out, knee buckling and calf tightening in an excruciating charley horse, Wendy shrieked, hitting the ground with shoulder and hip. She cried, writhing on the ground, hair pooling beneath her head. The pain sunk deep, angry fingers into her muscles and twisted. Wendy screamed and screamed and screamed.
It took a long, long time for Wendy to realize blessed, numbing cold was working its way through her leg. Her cries tapered off; sniffling, she wiped her wrist across her face and struggled to sit up.
“I'd be careful if I were you,” the White Lady said, sitting back on her haunches and rising in a creaking, graceful arc. Where her hands had pressed into Wendy's leg, blue flesh rimmed in ice slowly warmed. “Push yourself too hard and you'll never catch up with me.”
“Go away.” Wendy flopped back to the ground and glared up at the stars above. She tried to find the Big Dipper but couldn't. The stars were different here, bigger and brighter, closer to the earth. The air was startlingly cold, especially for a California night. Wendy wished that she'd dreamed herself a jacket.
“The Rider i
s an idiot,” the White Lady said, moving her fingers to the back of Wendy's ankle, rotating the cuff gently. “Even I can see that you provide us a good service. I don't appreciate you meddling in my affairs, don't get me wrong, but certain Shades have been clinging to the last vestiges of life for far too long. They need to be put out of their misery.”
Irritated that the news of her fight with Piotr had flown so fast to the enemy's ears, Wendy gritted her teeth and feebly swiped at the White Lady's icy hands. Chuckling at Wendy's irritation, the White Lady released her ankle. “You didn't hurt anything. You'll be sore in the morning, but nothing tore.”
“Didn't I just tell you to go away?”
“Would that I could. You called me here.”
Wendy snorted. “I did not.”
The White Lady shrugged. “Suit yourself. Feel free to leave, then. You won't see me shedding a tear. If I can still cry.” She chuckled. “I haven't tried.”
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.
When 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.
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