Then it laid hands on him, gripping him at the wrists, and Piotr was filled with cold.
The Walker's icy touch sapped him almost immediately, drawing the strength from Piotr's arms and chilling his fury away. He could still hear Lily's raspy cries of pain but they were distant, unimportant, and slowly, under the Walker's insistent pressure, Piotr's fist loosened and fell away.
Laying a palm flat against Piotr's chest, the Walker hissed in a slow and ragged language. Piotr felt a tug deep inside, a slow painful tearing like a hangnail peeling skin and nail away from the quick. He gasped for air but the pull lasted only a moment before the Walker drew his hand away in disgust.
“Too old,” the Walker snarled, taking Piotr by the back of his neck and shaking him like a naughty kitten. “No years from you!”
“Sorry ’bout that,” Piotr slurred and the Walker flung him away. Once outside the range of that intractable cold, Piotr could feel his will returning with the thawing of his limbs. Crawling on hands and knees, he made his way towards Lily, who'd collapsed in a heap only a few yards away. She appeared unconscious.
“No use,” hissed Piotr's Walker. “No souls here. No life here. Only Rider filth.”
“The White Lady will shriek,” the other said, ignoring Piotr and nudging Lily with the toe of one white boot. “We should lick their bones in retribution.”
“Poshyel k chyertu,” Piotr cursed, reaching Lily's side and blocking her protectively. “And you can rot there, for all I care!” Forgetting Elle's dagger entirely, Piotr fumbled for Lily's bone knives, still clutched in her fists.
His hand was kicked away. Piotr stubbornly stretched for the knives again but the Walker's foot thrust down, grinding his wrist against the dirt. Skeletal fingers clad in loose gloves of their own rotting flesh pressed on his shoulders, pinning him to the ground. Behind him Lily moaned, eyes fluttering open.
“Piotr?”
“Da?” he gasped, trying not to breathe through his nose. The nauseating stench was all around them now, the cold seeping again into Piotr's bones and thoughts, slowing his reaction time to a crawl, and trapping him like a fly in molasses. Frigid molasses.
Her voice came at him from a million miles away. “Piotr? What's that light?”
Flush against his teeth Piotr's tongue felt numb and dumb, his lips frozen shut, forming garbled words in slow motion. “What…light?”
But he could feel it now, the odd warmth that tickled his skin, melting the cold of the Watchers away in rivulets of sharp white light. The pinning hands and foot were abruptly gone, stripped away, and Piotr took advantage of their absence, staggering to his feet. The area lit up in a corona, spilling around corners and through windows, shining with a fierce insistence across the dusty, hardpan yard. It stretched impossibly far, illuminating even the distant highway with bright, clean light.
“Whatever it is, it began glowing and they perked up like hounds scenting a bitch. They followed it.” Lily's voice trembled. Groaning, she pointed in the direction of the southernmost building. “The Walkers left.”
Puzzled, Piotr turned and squinted in the direction she pointed. She spoke the truth. “Maybe they weren't hungry after all?”
“Impossible.” She lapsed into her native tongue, querying. When Piotr, uncomprehending, didn't reply, she switched to English with a frown. “The fox does not relinquish the hare so easily when the kill is moments away. Why would they leave like that?”
Piotr leaned down and scooped Lily into his arms. Though corded with muscle, his old mentor was still light as thistledown, slight, and easy to lift. “Who cares? Let's leave before they change their minds.” Thankfully her leg was already beginning to mend, layers of effervescent tissue bubbling forth over the bone. Healing for their kind was slow without the touch of one of the Lost. Still, he was glad it had been just the two of them. A Walker scenting the Lost often went into berserker frenzy. Piotr couldn't imagine having to protect both Lily and a child against one Walker, much less against two of them.
They had to get out of there, NOW.
“Piotr, wait.” Lily struggled in his grip. “I cannot leave. For many nights I have walked with the moon to track those monsters here.”
“You…Lily, why? You're still camped out in San Jose, da? Why would you chase a pair of Walkers all this way?”
“The death dealers took Dunn. I will not leave without learning his fate.” Her eyes were bright with tears that did not fall.
Sympathy welled in Piotr, coupled with abject horror. Losing one of your Lost was a horrible feeling, one no Rider should ever have to go through, but losing a child to the Walkers was worse. He ached for her loss. “Oh,” he murmured. “Zhal, Lily. I'm so sorry.”
“There is no sorry,” she snapped, sloe eyes flashing. “Put me down.”
“Net, I cannot.” Piotr shook his head and started towards the highway. “They almost killed you and were going to chew on us to round out the evening. I won't let you serve yourself up for a second helping.”
“Let me go!”
Firmly, he tightened his grip, careful of her wounded leg. “No, Lily,” he said, careful to emphasize the English word. “I will not.”
“I hope you rot, Piotr.” Then, viper-quick, she punched him in the nose.
Without meaning to, Piotr dropped her, clapping his hands to his face as the tears streamed down. Piotr heard her limping quickly away, the scrape of her boots loud in the strange, still brilliance filling the courtyard.
By the time the dots had quit dancing in front of his eyes, Piotr had lost sight of Lily, but, unwilling to let her face the Walkers alone, he raced after, toward the light. Within moments crossing the distance grew difficult; the air had grown thick and syrupy, yet still comfortably warm, like wading through the midsummer surf, tidal in its intensity.
Just ahead Lily knelt, hands resting on knees, eyes cast forward. Further on by quite a distance the two Walkers cut their way through the air, moving rapidly toward a shining figure, lit from within. Even at this distance, Piotr could feel the heat the creature gave off, and the prismatic fire at its core was near blinding.
“Lily?” Piotr knelt beside her. “What is it? What's wrong? Are you hurt further?”
“Piotr,” she breathed, “do you see her? Do you see Awonawilona?”
“Who?” Piotr touched Lily's shoulder. She was trembling.
“Awonawilona, Piotr. The bringer of light.” Tears coursed down her cheeks, wetting the curtain of her thick black hair. “I've been here so many years, Piotr. So many years, almost as many as…” She hesitated then forged on. “My people, my shaman, I thought they were all mistaken. They weren't. Awonawilona does exist.”
Shameless with joy, Lily cried and rocked back and forth on her heels, humming under her breath between words. Passionate and vivid, lit by the light, her voice had taken on a lyrical, musical quality, almost a chanting tone. “I had heard rumors of a creature made of light…but I never believed them. Yet here, now, in this forsaken place, in these grey lands, I've finally found the Lightbringer.”
Dazzled and confused, Piotr turned to look again. The figure was small, but brilliant, lit up from within by the intensity of the light pouring from every pore. As he watched it raised two arms outward, seemingly embracing the oncoming Walkers. The faster one reached the figure, only the outline of its cloak setting it apart from the light.
Something about the sluggish way they moved struck Piotr as strange and wrong. The deadly grace of the two Walkers was stripped away, leaving only wooden puppets lurching toward the light like moths…like moths flying straight at candlelight.
“Lily,” Piotr whispered harshly, scooping the young woman again in his arms, “it's time to leave, da? If that…thing…is a god, I don't know about you, but I don't want to be around when—”
Suddenly, from the depths of the creature, tentacles of light shot out, spearing the Walker through the chest, arms, and legs. They were horrific to look at—unnaturally long and quick, the fluidly shift
ing tentacles were spiky with light and energy, pulsing around the edges in a purple nimbus.
One after another more tentacles, over a dozen in all, burst from the Lightbringer's chest, stretched, and wrapped around the other Walker, downing it in a moment and dragging it kicking and shrieking forward. It fought, kicking and lashing with the sharpened finger bones, but the Lightbringer only shuddered under the onslaught, barely budging.
A smoky stench, sickly sweet and cloying, drifted downwind as the creature lifted the Walkers up, each impaled on the end of the long and thick tentacles. The scent was like leaves burning; the screams painfully shrill.
Then the first Walker started to flake apart before their eyes, cinders of its essence peeling from the core and floating in the light before burning crisply away. The second Walker doubled its shrieking but the tentacles never wavered, the screaming never stopped.
“No. No-no-no—” Lily gasped and, turning her face daintily aside, retched on Piotr's shoes. In the distance, after long moments, the shrieks finally wound down and the rich, thick smell of burning began to fade away.
Slowly the creature turned towards them and Piotr could feel a sinuous urge seep into him—he wanted to get closer to the light.
“I think,” Lily said, wiping her hand across her mouth, “that perhaps that may not be Awonawilona after all.”
“The Lightbringer,” Piotr whispered, using all the willpower he had to take one stumbling backward step and then another. Turning his back on the creature, he closed his eyes to the light and concentrated on putting one foot before the other until they reached the highway and the urge to leap into the light miraculously subsided.
There, worn and weary, he sank to the earth, and it was Lily's turn to watch over him.
Half-sliding through her bedroom window, Wendy winced as the edge of her stocking caught on a splinter and ripped. Her book bag thumped to the floor and she froze, listening carefully for sounds from her father's room.
Blessed silence.
Shimmying the rest of the way inside, Wendy chucked her bag onto her bed and paused by the mirror to take stock of her appearance before her dad saw her. The rain had washed away most of her makeup, leaving her with raccoon-eyes and lipstick faded to a dull, smudged lilac. The temporary dye was almost gone; once again her hair shone coppery red at the roots and black at the tips, straggling over her shoulders in sodden hanks. Specks of mud dotted her cheeks and neck.
Tonight's search had been hard, even her nail polish was chipped, and she'd lost one of her sneakers hoisting herself over the treatment plant's back fence. The laces had caught on a snarl of wire and she'd pulled herself to the other side before realizing it'd slipped off her foot.
“Guess I'm gonna have to spring for boots after all,” Wendy sighed, toeing off the lonely sneaker and tossing it in the trash. Downstairs the grandfather clock chimed twice.
Crap. It was late and she still had homework to do!
Stripping quickly, Wendy wrapped herself in her rattiest robe and tiptoed past her dad's door to the bathroom. Ten minutes in the shower and a quick visit to the kitchen later, Wendy settled down at her desk to tackle Algebra II. The problems were easy but she was having trouble concentrating. Patrol always left her edgy and after what she'd seen tonight, she had every right to be. Jabberwocky, the ghost of her mother's favorite Persian, was curled on the windowsill, eyes slitted closed and purring up a storm. Jabber had gotten a lot friendlier after he'd died. Before, no one but her mother could pet him, but now he spent nearly all his time in Wendy's room or just beneath her window, lounging in the tree.
Though the steady rumble of Jabber's purr was soothing, Wendy still couldn't focus. Setting aside her half-done work, she loosely grasped her pencil and stared out at the moon, mindlessly doodling on the back of her notebook. At first the lines were aimless, loops and swirls and hearts and stars, but then she drew a thickly lashed eye and followed with the curve of a slightly aquiline nose. Thick lips, sensitive at the corners, offset by high cheekbones, giving the face—his face—a faintly amused expression. Black hair waved over the forehead and past the chin, concealing all but a hint of the scar that puckered from temple to neck.
Picture complete, Wendy sat back. She knew where she'd seen these features before, but what she couldn't imagine was why she was bothering to draw them.
After all, they belonged to a dead man.
After the accident four years ago, it had taken the paramedics and firefighters half an hour to peel the car apart far enough to pull them out of the wreckage.
Between the two of them, Eddie had been the worst off—when they bustled him into the ambulance he was a bloody, bleeding wreck barely clinging to life. Hardly scratched and only slightly bruised, Wendy drifted through the rescue with barely a thought or word, barely noticing when the ambulance peeled away with sirens screaming, Eddie strapped inside.
Shock, the police officers said, and wrapped her in blankets, pressing a cool bottle of water between her fingers while they waited on a second ambulance to transport Wendy and Mr. Barry's corpse to the hospital.
Condition stable, Wendy sat halfway into the back of a police car and sipped water mechanically as adults eddied around her, asking questions and barking orders. Every inch of her skin felt calm and cold and distant, but far down inside her chest there was something expanding—like some strange, fierce fire, previously banked, had begun burning deep, deep inside.
It stung like nothing she'd ever felt before, but Wendy knew there was nothing wrong with her physically. The paramedics—including one or two she'd previously met while shadowing her mom at work—had already looked her over, so surely she must be imagining the pain. The fire blooming inside.
“I think,” she said out loud, “that this is what going crazy feels like.”
“Da, that is entirely possible,” a gentle voice said and Wendy nodded, squeezing the bottle so the plastic crackled under her fingertips and the water sloshed against the sides. “But I think it is unlikely.”
A figure knelt down beside her, hunkering so that his hands dangled between his knees. Unlike the others, his voice was kind but not sympathetic, very matter-of-fact, and he had a slight accent—not easily placed, unimportant just then, though years later Wendy realized it had been Russian.
He touched her wrist and his fingers were pleasantly cool. “Were you in the wreck?”
“Yeah,” she said. Her attention wavered a moment, and she looked at his hand on her wrist. There was something not quite right about his gentle fingers, or about that moment altogether. Wendy tried but she couldn't wrap her calm, yet muddled, mind around the puzzle; couldn't figure out just what was different about this boy.
She looked up finally, taking in his scarred face, his serene eyes. He was older than Wendy but not by much, only a teenager. When he smiled, quiet and amused, it slowly dawned on her that she could sort of see through him. Oh, that's what's weird. He's a ghost.
Wendy was relieved to have pinpointed the oddity so quickly.
“I'm Winifred,” she said because, despite his translucence, it seemed the polite thing to do. “But everyone calls me Wendy.”
“Piotr,” he replied, smiling gravely, and offered his hand. Wendy took it and marveled at how, when she concentrated, his skin darkened and became solid, firmer in her grasp. Thin steam rose from between their hands, curling into nothing only moments later. At first Piotr didn't seem to notice, but when he did, he frowned. “That is odd,” he said. “Doesn't hurt, it's just strange.”
Bluntly she asked, “Are you dead?”
“Do I look dead?” Unoffended, he released her hand and stood up, patting himself on the chest and arms. There were faint rustling sounds where he patted but, away from her touch, he'd faded back to his initial translucent state.
Wendy nodded and Piotr chuckled. “Well, I suppose I must be dead, then.”
She frowned. “But I'm not dead.” Tentatively Wendy rapped the window of the police car. It felt real. “Am I?”<
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“I can see you,” Piotr said as he looked around the scene of the accident. “And it seems that they can see you. So I don't know, curly-haired girl.” He reached out and gently brushed away the copper-colored curl hanging in her eyes. “Maybe da, maybe net, but my best guess is net. Doesn't look like you're dead to me.”
Wendy couldn't help but smile. “Your accent's funny.”
Piotr pressed one hand flat against his chest in mock offense. “My accent is funny? What about yours, malen'kaya printsessa?”
“What?”
“Little princess,” he translated. “It is a very nice thing.”
“Are you gonna take me away?” Her voice trembled.
“What?” He seemed horrified at the suggestion. “Curly, no, no, net. I'd never do that.” Piotr knelt at her feet again and took her hands, gently rubbing her knuckles to soothe her. Again, where they touched, thin steam rose and drifted away. This time he didn't seem to notice.
“It is…it is just my job, you understand? To make sure you aren't lost, that's all. Sometimes, after accidents like this, children are shocked and scared and they can become…confused. Sometimes they wander off and are never found. I stop that.”
“But only if I'd died?”
“Only if you'd died.” He squeezed her hands one last time and stepped back. “You're a nice kid, Curly. Stay here and they'll take you where you need to go.”
“Are you an angel?”
Piotr laughed and his fingers brushed his twisted scar. “Net, sorry to disappoint. I'm just a boy. But if I see one I'll certainly let them know you're on the lookout.”
“That's okay.” Wendy hesitated and then, shyly, “Will I see you again?” She couldn't help the waver in her voice, but so far Piotr was the only one who seemed to care more about her than about cleaning up the mess on the highway.
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