Lightbringer

by K. D. McEntire

  All of the Lost had been starved and drained of essence; fear and pain came off them in palpable waves that Wendy could sense in her gut. They watched her avidly, hungrily. Piotr groaned—among them were Dunn, Dora, Tommy. No recognition shone in their eyes.

  Beside the Lost, wrapped in rapidly expanding tendrils of spirit web, were the rest of the Riders. Lily, face slashed; Elle, mouth bloody, and James, both eyes blackened and with one arm hanging at a gruesome angle from his shoulder. It had been an ambush.

  They were trapped.

  “Wendy,” Piotr moaned, the strands of spirit web spinning quickly around his neck and snaking down his arms, “become the Lightbringer.” Walkers held him on each side, half supporting him. “Please.”

  “I can't,” Wendy whispered. “I can't do that to you. I'm not ready for you to go.” More than Piotr's closeness, however, was the matter of the Lost. They had risen to their feet now, each straining against the bonds that held them. The Walkers on each side of the group held a long chain in their hands. All they had to do was drop the chain and the hollow-eyed Lost would be upon her, feeding.

  “Winifred, not even a hello?” asked the White Lady, stepping beside Wendy. “How rude!” In her hand she held a syringe filled with a bubbling, oozing black liquid. “Spirit pollen,” she explained. “And seeds, of course. You've seen my topiary outside?”

  “Yes,” Wendy said through lips gone numb from the intense cold emanating from the woman beside her. “It's foul.”

  “Briar Rose's citadel had a field of pricking rosebushes,” the White Lady said, nonplussed. “European castles had moats. I thought my palace could use some protection to keep the riffraff out. It appears that I was right.” She drifted across the room to James' side.

  “This one,” she said, ruffling his dreadlocks, “isn't as stealthy as he thinks, hmm? He's been spotted in my territory a number of times ‘doing his rounds’ when they were looking for the children, just never this deep in. So we decided to make it a little more challenging for him.”

  She gestured to the Walkers around her. “I had no end of volunteers for the germination process. I'm told it's quite painful.” She laughed at that and Wendy was once more reminded how insane the White Lady really was, despite her air of rationality.

  “You're sick,” Wendy yelled over the tittering laughter. “Sick and twisted. Let them go, everyone here, or else.”

  “Or else what, dear?” The White Lady crossed her arms over her chest, her giggles finally tapering off. “You'll awaken that pathetic little ability that slumbers deep inside? I've seen how long it takes you to rouse the Lightbringer. I could have every last one of them ripped to shreds before you even unlocked your Light.”

  “Think so?” Wendy bluffed. “I've been practicing.”

  The White Lady rolled her eyes. “Please dear, you're embarrassing yourself. There is absolutely no way the likes of you has sped up in a mere day or so.” Casually she reached out and took Wendy by the chin, turning her face from side to side as she examined her. “No, no, dear, my initial assessment still stands. You will never show half the power of the other Lightbringers, I'm afraid. Pity, that.”

  Piotr moaned and his vision fluttered; when it did so, the strands of spirit web began to smoke and burn, catching fire and puffing away in a whiff of smoke. The Walkers hissed but held on; they'd not been told to let go.

  Catching sight of the web burning, Wendy shifted so the White Lady's back was to the blaze. If she could just keep her distracted long enough for Piotr to figure out a way to wrestle free…

  “Let go of me!” Thinking of nothing more than keeping the White Lady's attention, Wendy jerked her chin away. She could still feel the press of those icy fingers, a million times more horrible in real life than in her dreams, burning against her flesh. “I swear, no matter what it takes, I'm going to make you regret—”

  “Threats, threats, threats,” the White Lady said, waving a dismissive hand. “All you do is threaten! In my day we didn't threaten or boast or complain, we just did!” She chuckled again, shaking her head. “But I suppose this was your pathetic attempt to do, eh? Shoddy work, that.”

  “Where's Eddie?” Wendy snapped, carefully keeping her gaze away from Piotr. “What have you done with him? And my mom?”

  “Eddie's close.” The White Lady snapped her fingers and two more Walkers, larger than the others, appeared from the darkness, shambling forward until their stench filled the air and they were only a few feet from Wendy's side. “But first, we have a little business to transact. A bit of a trade to handle.”

  “Go to hell,” Wendy snapped. “I'm never helping you, and if you think you're getting Piotr, it's going to be over my dead body.”

  “That,” the White Lady said sweetly, grabbing Wendy by the back of the neck so that smoky steam billowed at her touch, “is exactly what I had in mind.”

  The Walkers, one at each side, attacked.

  Wendy screamed, throwing up her arms to block, but she was still in human shape and the Walkers were very quick, very strong. Drawing visible essence from the White Lady in arcs like lightning, their sharpened bones punched through the tender skin of Wendy's midsection, ripping through her skin like tissue paper and spearing the organs beneath.

  Framed in curls of silver smoke, Wendy sank to the floor. Her fingers, blood-bright in the dimming light, curled around her side, pinky curving against the fine copper chain at her waist, thumb indenting the flesh just under her ribs. She was bone pale in that final gasp of day, the warm red that had leached from her cheeks now spilling slowly through her fingers.

  “I did warn you that some ghosts can touch the living,” the White Lady said. “You should have listened.”

  “WENDY! WENDY! WENDY!”

  Pushing against his captors, Piotr struggled against the hands holding him, but these Walkers were old and tough, prepared for his wriggling. He could not wrestle free.

  The White Lady shook her head. “Too late, Rider. Look past her.”

  “Poshel ti na huj!”

  “Tsk, tsk, language! Still, I suppose circumstances are a little volatile. Look.”

  Despite himself, Piotr stilled and did as she ordered.

  There, just beyond the curve of ballroom wall, was a shaft of light where before there had been none. At first it seemed the light was the last glimmer of the fading day peeking through some hole in the ceiling, but that notion was quickly abandoned. The rest of the building was solid and strong, both in real life and in the Never. This light was coming from somewhere else.

  Piotr moaned and the White Lady sighed. The light was vibrant, shimmering, and where it struck the air, it danced with shivering, whirling motes. “The Lightbringer's time has come.”

  “NET!”

  “Yes.” Calm and assured now, the White Lady danced to the ever-shifting stage and settled herself on an ornate chair at the edge. She drew the folds of her robe around her, rubbing her rotting hands together until they sounded like a cicada song. “Now we wait.”

  For long moments nothing happened. The shaft of light—no, Piotr had to admit to himself, that glow was not light but rather Light—fairly hummed with serenity. He tested the strength of the Walkers again; still their grip did not loosen.

  Then, faintly, Wendy's body began to glow. It was not her regular brilliant Light but a gentle, glimmering haze, pale green around the edges and faint white at the center. The strength flowed from Piotr's legs and he wilted to the ground, the Walkers finally releasing him as he sagged to hands and knees, only barely able to hold up his head. “No. Wendy…net.”

  Wendy sat up, leaving her body behind. In her hands was a small glass ball, shining with mindless pulsing fire. Was it her soul or something more? Piotr did not know, but the orb was painful to look at, like her tattoos; its depths glimmered with Light.

  Behind her the Light grew brighter, more insistent, and a low humming, both terrible and inexpressibly lovely, began to fill the room. The volume rose in a slow, sensuous sweep
of sound like a radio being gradually turned up in some distant room, until Piotr's head was ringing with the gorgeous-painful chords. If the Walkers or White Lady heard the cry of the Light, they paid no attention. The Lost were unmoved, the other Riders unconscious and cocooned with the spirit webs. If Wendy heard she paid no mind. Only Piotr, with the song of Wendy's Light vibrating his very teeth, was bent in pain.

  Wendy stood and the sound, blessedly, began to subside. She held out one hand and twisted it back and forth, palm up-palm down, then patted her face, her shoulder, her hip. She ran fingers across her lips, curled her fingers into a fist, and tapped the chair beside her, the one her body still lay beside. Her hand slid through the rotting wood easily.

  She nodded once, her suspicions confirmed. “Well, hell. That sucks.”

  “Good afternoon,” the White Lady said. “How are you finding your death thus far?”

  “Can't say that I like it.” Wendy wrinkled her nose. “Everything smells like rot.”

  “It does on this side.” The White Lady waved a languorous hand in the direction of the warped and splintery floorboards, the waterlogged walls. “You grow accustomed to it.” Then, surprisingly, she indicated the shaft of Light. “That is, unless you wish to go to your eternal reward. You have earned it, after all.”

  Wendy glanced at the Light, her expression calm, and shrugged again. “I suppose I could. It does look kinda nice.”

  “It is, in fact, very nice,” the White Lady agreed gravely, then smiled. “It's the nicest thing there is. Why do you think I've been doing the things I've been doing, hmm? For kicks?”

  “I hadn't really thought about it much. I always just assumed you were a crazy bitch,” Wendy said, stepping away from her body and strolling casually across the room, rolling the ball of Light in her nimble hands.

  Wincing, eyes never leaving the ball, the White Lady waved a hand and the Walkers parted for Wendy. She knelt by Piotr. Her hand, far from its usual warmth, was cool to the touch as she ran it across his forehead, brushing aside the sweaty strands of hair that clung to his temples. “Are you okay?”

  “You're dead.” Piotr laughed bitterly. “I'll live.”

  “I can see that.” Wendy helped Piotr to his feet. Weakened, he staggered as he stood, but here she was strong and supported him easily. She handed him the ball of Light; he hissed, it was hot to the touch. “Hold this and let's get out of here before this skank causes even more damage. We can come back for the others.”

  “Language!” The White Lady wagged one finger in a tsk-tsk motion. “You weren't brought up to speak like that, young lady.”

  “Up yours,” Wendy sneered, pressing one hand in the small of Piotr's back for support. “You're not my mother.”

  The White Lady paused, just for one brief moment, and Piotr felt a thrumming in the air. The Light, just a short distance away, began trembling, the motes within whirling wildly. The song, which had faded to a nearly imperceptible hum, rushed upon him in a wave, the exquisite melody breaking with horrible force upon him and sapping his little remaining strength in a tide of unexpected ferocity. Piotr stumbled and fell. As Wendy, crying out in surprise, leaned forward to help him, she missed the White Lady rising to her feet, the quick patter of steps as the woman hurried downstage.

  “Look out,” Piotr whispered and Wendy released him to face this new threat. But the White Lady slowed as she stepped off the last stair, held her hands out in supplication.

  “Oh Wendy,” she breathed, pale and rotting fingers lifting up the obscuring hood, pushing the fabric free so that it puddled loosely on her shoulders, revealing a last few clinging curls of strawberry gold hair and a face etched with crosshatched lines similar to those the surrounding Walkers sported, but deeper, rawer, and real.

  “After all our conversations and all the hints I've dropped, I truly thought you would have figured it out by now. I am your mother. Wendy…it's me.”

  “You're lying,” Piotr said, but Wendy shook her head.

  “No,” she whispered. “She's not.” Making sure that Piotr could support his own weight, Wendy approached her mother, hands clenched in loose fists at her sides. “Mom? What happened to you?”

  “The Lost,” her mother said, her voice see-sawing wildly, alternating between bitterness and tears. “They were scared, wild. They reached for me and broke my Light, shattered it into a dozen pieces, one for each of them.” She ran a hand across her face, grimaced. “Breaking my soul apart hasn't done wonders for my disposition, I'll give you that. It's made me…not at all balanced these days.”

  Wendy glanced over her shoulder at the assembled Lost and did a rapid headcount. Twelve. “But these kids aren't the same ones. I sent those on.”

  “I don't need the same ones,” her mother chuckled, fingers rising slowly up, the tips of the phalanx bones poking through the flesh at the end. She dug her fingers into her face, the bones parting her rough stitches, essence flowing like blood in a wet gush that pitter-pattered against the basement-ballroom floor and soaked the front of her dress. “I just need the one who called their Light. Twelve Lost—even inert, they're like gunpowder, you see—and the one who whiffed out the ones who ripped me to shreds. A match. Combine the two and BOOM, I'm back. Back to the living, back to work. Back to doing what I do best.”

  “Mom,” Wendy protested, “but that's me. It's Wendy.”

  “I know,” the White Lady said, sadness creeping across her face. “Don't you think I know that? But it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make—no, one I have to make. You don't know our ways, you haven't been trained!”

  “You taught me—”

  “I taught you nothing!” her mother spat. “I taught you only the basics, and that was mostly to keep you in line and safe from the Lost! You had years to go before it was your time and even then, did you honestly think it was going to be you who got picked to wake to the Sight? Please. Michelle has more of the Sight in her little finger than you do in your whole body. You didn't even know how to ask the right questions, Wendy, not that night at the house, not ever after that. You just did whatever I said, never questioning the why of it all! That's not how a Lightbringer works.”

  Her mother slapped herself three times across the face, until the last of her stitches parted. She grabbed the flap and tore, waving the loose skin at Wendy like a banner. “And the sight of your face when I showed you my skin flap and tattoo! You just took me at face value! Never thought to question if maybe I was making the whole thing up. If I can make maggots writhe themselves out of the ground, what makes you think that a little flesh is the real thing? Pathetic. You should have known better.”

  “But you never taught me—”

  “My point exactly. I never taught you. If you were meant to be the next Reaper, then you would have figured it out on your own but you didn't. You, as the Lightbringer? No, darling. No. You haven't got the heart for it. Or the instinct.”

  Stung, Wendy shook her head. “That's not true. That first night, you said, in the hospital—”

  “I said what I had to in order to shut you the hell up before you started screaming.” Her mother waved a hand at the assembled Walkers. “You think I don't know how disgusting and foul they look? How nasty I look? I'm not blind, Winifred, nor stupid. A little girl facing one of those? Naturally she'll tell everyone she sees. I had to shut you up.”

  “That's not true,” Wendy said, but her voice was weaker now. “You were worried about me. You love me.”

  “Oh darling, of course I do! But love doesn't matter when you're dead, Wendy,” her mother said sweetly. “That was a fact my own mother drilled into me, and her mother before her. Do you think we've survived against the dead as long as we have by being sentimental? Hardly. We do what we do because we're tough and strong. Two things you have never been.”

  “I'm tough—”

  “Tough?! Look at you!” she laughed. “You quit reaping the minute my body hit the ground. Refused to do your duty! Refused to reap! Your grandmother is spinning in
her grave! Or she would be, if I hadn't sent her into the Light. Kicking and screaming, as a matter of fact.”

  “Mom,” Wendy moaned. “Please.”

  “Moooom-puhleaze,” her mother mocked, and spat. “Listen to yourself. Weak. Pathetic. You were given a gift you didn't earn. And now with your entire life planned out for you, a career as a Lightbringer, your duty, and a boy who loves you, still you whine! My little Wendy-girl, she has to go and mess it all up, doesn't she? Nothing's good enough for Wendy, oh no. Isn't satisfied with just doing her sister's stolen job, no, she's got to go and reap the Lost who tore her mother apart!”

  “I…I can't…” She sniffed, trying to keep from breaking down. Her mother's words were like hammers pounding, each blow shattering a little more of her heart apart. Wendy began to shake.

  “Such theatrics, Wendy! And you haven't even asked yet how I got put back together. Of course, it took you long enough—or, rather, I should say, Piotr long enough—to figure out what happened.”

  “Mom…I—”

  “Didn't know. Yes, I sorted that part out. I assume I'd still be in tiny pieces if it had been left up to you. But there was one person who knew, one person who'd been around long enough to know a thing or two about Lightbringers.” She slapped the skin against her face and strode across the room to Piotr's side. “Even if he doesn't remember it.”

  Piotr, horrified, shook his head frantically. “I would never help you!”

  “Of course you would, Piotr,” she said, and grabbed him by the back of the neck. “You've helped me all along.”

  Piotr screamed and his knees buckled. He fell to the ground, eyes rounded with pain, but held Wendy's Light orb tightly tucked into his chest, unwilling to drop it. Where her hand pressed into his flesh, dark essence poured into Wendy's mother until the skin healed, the flap clinging to the rest of her face by the thinnest threads. Wendy gaped; her mother'd drained him for essence, like Piotr would drain a Lost.

  “So convenient,” she said. “He's like a walking battery for us. Even get near him and our kind gets a boost. You get sleepy at first, but he's like good wine. He grows better with age.”