Lightbringer

by K. D. McEntire

  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?”

  “Ha-ha, very funny. Okay, so if they can talk, could a horse, I don't know, tell a knock-knock joke?”

  “Not exactly,” Piotr drawled, looking at Wendy oddly, as if she'd suddenly grown a third eye or sprouted wings from her shoulder blades. “Words are an entirely human concept, Wendy. But the Never is different from the world you exist in. Things are far more free-flowing and open. Language exists, yes, but not exactly as you know it. Words aren't always finite over here, they carry ideas straight to the heart.”

  “So specific languages don't really matter once you're dead? You all can understand one another anyway? And get what horses and cats and whatnot are saying?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” Piotr smiled. “I am Russian, da? When a concept is hard to express in English, I still speak my native tongue. The gist is passed on to the others but not the exact words. But they do understand.”

  “So weird,” Wendy said. “I guess it's just one of those things I'll have to be dead to get. Piotr, you are blowing my mind over here,” Wendy laughed, shaking her head with disbelief. “When I get home I'm totally gonna sit down and see if Jabber will talk with me. But you! I still can't believe that you had your very own Mr. Ed.”

  Piotr frowned. “Mister who?”

  “It was this old TV show? From the fifties?” Wendy licked her lips, feeling foolish, and shrugged. “You know, reruns? Nick at Night? No? It's not important. You were probably too busy saving the Lost or whatever to pay attention to television in the fifties anyway.”

  “I'm told the television set is an amazing invention,” Piotr said gravely. “However, most mechanical things, unless they are very, very simple, do not work in the Never. So I've never seen one that worked. The shells of television sets, certainly. Many people pour emotion daily into those boxes, the way they are doing with computers now, so more than a few show up on our side. But advanced machines rarely work for us. They turn on but there is just static.”

  “But my calculator isn't a simple machine. It's got a computer chip in it, right?”

  Piotr shrugged. “I do not know. I died before these computers were created. Perhaps it is simple enough in its own way?”

  “Huh. Weird. Maybe it's a combustion engine thing. I mean, I've always wondered why I saw only certain sorts of cars in the Never,” Wendy mused as they crossed the street with the light. She hung to the back of the pack of lunchtime businessmen so Piotr could avoid being bumped and burned. “Fancy cars mostly, BMWs, Porsches, Ferraris, and such. But they never moved.”

  “They wouldn't. Bicycles, skateboards, skates…simple machines to use and well-loved in general, especially by children. Any of them are real finds.” Piotr indicated a bike messenger, whizzing by at frightening speeds with a stack of red insulated sleeves strapped to the rack behind the seat. “See how that bike glows around the edges? When he finally throws it away it will most certainly come over. It's well used and well loved.”

  “So if you've got bikes lying around all over the place, why don't the Walkers use them?”

  Wendy stopped near a wheeled cart where a man was selling fragrant hot dogs. Piotr's eyes twitched and the cartoons on the cart popped out at him, frantic yellows and reds that screamed across his retinas in a fury of painful color. Piotr turned away as Wendy purchased her lunch, forking over neatly folded bills for a cup of sloshing soda and a long dog oozing onions and relish. They walked across the street and she settled on a bench beside a pocket park, a tiny fountain birdbath festooned with thick fronds burbling merrily only ten feet away.

  Piotr shrugged. “I don't know everything there is to know about Walkers,” he tried to explain as Wendy bit into her lunch. A quartet of teenagers passed the small park, singing Deck the Halls in four-part harmony, unconcerned with the looks they were getting or the warm gust of wind blowing their hair off their faces and billowing the backs of their choir jackets nearly off their shoulders. “But I do know that when Walkers lose their life cord they lose most memories of what it's like to be human. All they remember is what it's like to feed.”

  Wendy, still gazing after the fa-la-la-ing students, took another large bite of her lunch. “It still seems so weird,” she mumbled as she chewed, holding up one hand to cover her mouth. “What in the hell were half a dozen Walkers doing running through town, then? Especially these Walkers. They jumped a bus to get down here, Piotr. Phased right into one and sat at the back. I nearly gave myself a hernia racing to catch the dumb thing.”

  “You are serious?” Stunned at this, Piotr struggled for words. For as long as he could remember the Walkers had struggled with the remnants of living society, preferring to live at the edges and avoid all mention and memory of who they'd once been. Walkers walked—that was what they did. They didn't run and they most certainly didn't catch buses to travel across town. The thought of them doing otherwise sent chills down Piotr's spine. But…was he truly surprised? Really? Because he'd had an inkling about this already, hadn't he? He'd sensed that something wasn't quite right.

  I knew there was something strange about those Walkers in the park yesterday, part of him triumphed. Walkers just don't work in complex teams like that, strategizing their attacks. At least, they never did before.

  “I bet it's the White Lady,” Wendy said. She drank deeply of her soda, pressed fingers over her mouth, and burped behind her hand. “Excuse me,” she muttered. “Anyway, yeah, maybe the White Lady is teaching the Walkers all about technology on top of everything else.” Wendy wrinkled her nose in distaste. “And you saw their faces yesterday, right? More and more of those sorts of Walkers are showing up. You know, mutilated and stitched back together somehow. It looks really sick, if you ask me.”

  “Specs said they were taking him to see the White Lady,” Piotr agreed. “That she had the ability to keep him f
rom walking through walls somehow. What if she has some way of enhancing the Walkers around her, too? Not just mending their flesh, but their minds as well? What if she can make them remember how to use machinery? Or could reteach them?”

  Wendy whistled. “That would be bad. Real bad. They could go anywhere then, not just hang around the cities.”

  “We must stop her,” Piotr whispered. “Not just rescue the Lost, but stop the White Lady herself. Undo everything she's done thus far. Maybe make the Walkers forget what she's taught them. Start over from scratch.”

  “I agree and I'm there with you, every step of the way,” Wendy said. “But the question is…how?”

  The day spun its hours out the way days do. Twilight found Wendy unlocking her front door and stepping into the foyer. In the living room Chel was sprawled out on the couch, arms pillowed beneath her head and snoring as some reality show droned on low in the background. Wendy covered her with a light blanket and went into the kitchen for a snack.

  There was a good smell of cooking there: tomatoes and garlic, onions, and a hint of something spicy and sharp. A pot squatted on the back burner, simmering, and when Wendy lifted the lid and leaned over it she was hit with a cloud scented with rich, creamy garlic. It smelled heavenly and Wendy's mouth filled with water, stomach grumbling.

  “The sauce is okay, but we have to eat it over spaghetti since I messed up the ravioli,” Jon said, entering the kitchen from the back yard. His basketball was clutched under one arm and he was limping, supporting his weight on his right leg. The knee of his jeans had been torn out; gravel and grass flecked the spongy, raw wreck that had been his knee.

  “What happened to you?” Wendy snatched the paper towels off the kitchen counter and hurried to the sink, dampening a handful under the cold tap. Jon slid onto one of the high kitchen stools at the counter and provided his knee for inspection, wincing each time Wendy dabbed the damp edge against the bloody flesh.