Lightbringer

by K. D. McEntire

  “No, she's on the other line. Do I need to go grab her? Is she on call?”

  “No, honey, nothing like that. I don't have time to talk right now anyway. You just tell her that I got her message and I pulled some strings. The SFPD already sent a unit out to fetch…well, they got someone out of a bad situation. That's all you need to know to let her know, that it's all been taken care of, okay? That's all, and you write it down if you need to. Quote: ‘It's all been taken care of.’ Unquote. I'll talk to her next week. G'night, honey.”

  Wendy wrote the message down, heart in her throat. She never brought it up again, but the next time her mother wanted to go reaping, Wendy went without comment and listened carefully to every instruction she was given. She owed her that much.

  Pulling away from the memories before she started tearing up, Wendy grabbed her soda and gulped it down. The carbonation burned enough to clear her mind and she fought back a loud belch, pressing her hand flush against her lips and letting out a series of tiny burps instead. Setting down the glass, Wendy let her eyes wander around the restaurant, seeking anything to take her mind from her mother, her duty, her life.

  Late afternoon found Piotr hesitating in the bushes outside the Dew Drop Diner. The living heat within was immense, baking through the brick as the dinner rush built. Inside, waitresses twisted through the crowd with beautiful confidence, serving coffee and ringing up orders with an efficiency he envied. The bustle of life was intoxicating…but painful.

  Still, there was nothing to do but get the job done. This was the last place Dunn had been seen. Dora, Specs, Tubs, he thought to himself, drawing courage from the thought of them taken like this, from a place they felt safe and comfortable. He had to find a clue, any clue, to help Dunn, and he had to do it now! There was no room for fear here.

  Taking a deep breath, Piotr centered his will and stepped through the wall. When he entered the diner, Piotr was expecting a mess—Walkers in feed were like rabid wolves; if Dunn had been devoured, the walls would be dripping with his essence—but everything was clean.

  “What the—” he wondered aloud and dropped to his knees. “What happened here?”

  Since her thoughts had been so recently centered on Piotr, Wendy was certain Piotr's appearance was her imagination. She rubbed her eyes brusquely, sure he would vanish, but he was real. Or as real as a ghost could be, anyway. Her fingers itched to open her backpack, dive into the contents, and pull out her binder to compare her sketch from last night to the slim ghost now crawling across the restaurant, his hand gripping a table for balance.

  Wendy's memories of him didn't do Piotr justice. She'd thought that the fall of hair, the dark eyes, even the scar that twisted from temple to neck half-hidden by his hair had been branded into her memory, but those pale images came up short of what he really was. Had any spirit she'd ever seen glowed so bright, so fiercely? Barely transparent, Piotr looked almost real, crouched on the linoleum. He looked alive.

  Piotr, she said to herself. Piotr.

  He was searching for something. Every few feet he leaned forward, peered underneath the booths, and then continued on; his counter-clockwise circuit of the diner would bring Piotr to Wendy's booth within moments. Eddie would understand if she did her thing, of course, but Jon wouldn't and neither would the other customers. The diner was packed, so there was no way to discreetly step into the Never to talk to Piotr face to face on his own turf.

  Torn, Wendy hesitated, not sure what to do.

  While the heat of living bodies was immense, Piotr found it bearable if he kept his mind clear and concentrated on the task at hand. Being dead was all about willpower; you had to have the will to keep yourself coherent. Otherwise, eventually, you'd fade away until you became a Shade, a memory of a soul. It was a terrible, horrible way to go—deaf and dumb to everything, even the Never, drawn back to the place of your death and trapped there until you were a wisp, eventually extinguished.

  Dunn wouldn't have become a Shade, Piotr reminded himself as he peered under a table. He had died too young, too strong. The Lost had too much willpower, too much energy, too much life left in them when they died. Dying a brutal death turned the Lost into batteries, going on and on and on without end, rudderless in a world that quickly forgot their short time on it. It made them a target for Walkers.

  Cannibalism. Eating a young soul. It was the only way for an adult ghost to permanently stave off the centuries and the constant need to be vigilant and alert, to will themselves to remain whole. To continue to exist. Of course, there was a price: every Lost destroyed ate at the ties a soul kept to the Never until the cord was gone, until the salvation of the Light was impossible.

  Eventually the Walkers became monsters, shadows creeping at the edge of the abyss, silver cords obliterated; mere shells of their former selves. Some of the Walkers deemed their damnation a fair trade for the certainty of existence. The Light was a terrifying mystery. The Never was just a darker sort of life.

  For Piotr, there'd never been a question of what to do. The choice had always been simple. Seek out the Lost. Keep them safe. Repeat.

  Protecting the Lost gave him the will to keep going on, as it did for all the other Riders. Over the years Piotr had lost a few of the Lost—some to the hunger of the Walkers and a couple who preferred other Riders like Elle or James—but most of his Lost eventually found peace on their own.

  It took time, forgetting your own death and moving on, but when the Light came, Piotr was always there to help his Lost enter. It could take decades but, over time, the Light almost always came for the Lost Piotr protected. Only Dora had been with him so long he'd forgotten when he'd picked her up. He knew that, given enough time and attention, she too would one day enter the Light.

  Secretly Piotr hoped that this was what had happened to Dunn.

  It wasn't that Piotr didn't trust Lily's word—she was intelligent and her instincts rarely led her astray—but if he could find proof that Dunn had simply stepped into the Light, that the Walkers hadn't dared a restaurant full of living, searing human souls, then Piotr would rest easier.

  It was a best-case scenario, but he was desperate for good news.

  Now, kneeling on the floor of a diner stuffed with living people, their burning hot legs scissoring through him, clipping his hip, his thigh, his shoulder, Piotr moved as quickly as he could among waitresses who poured coffee, chatted, and made change. On hands and knees he crawled, seeking the charred circle that would indicate the presence of the corridor of Light, searching for proof that something might still be going their way.

  So engrossed in his task, Piotr didn't pay attention to the living in the booths. Normally the living felt a chill when the dead were near, a pocket of cold air most noticed only as they were passing through. Most of the dead had the good sense to be still when the living were near—humans tended to pass quickly by, repulsed by the icy cold—so there was less chance of injury for the dead.

  Searching closely for clues, Piotr left a wake of shivering humans behind him. Several called for their waitresses, complaining about the vents. More reached for jackets or sweaters, or cuddled against their booth-mates, seeking body warmth.

  It wasn't until he was resting his hand on the table on the window side of the room that he noticed the girl. Unlike the others, no gooseflesh popped up on her skin at his proximity; she did not shiver or pull away. Piotr would have dismissed this—perhaps she was used to cold—except for the rigid way she held her body, stiff and still but breathing elevated, rapid. He could feel her heat thrumming, more intense than the others, a warmth like banked coals in a pocket nimbus of heat.

  Piotr paused, looking her expression over closely. The girl tensed and her eyelids swept down, the thick concealing lashes feathered across her cheekbones, but underneath Piotr could spot the gleam of her eyes. Testing a theory, Piotr shifted his weight and her gaze, nearly concealed by her eyelashes but not entirely, followed his movement. Piotr frowned, shifted again, and again her eyes tracked him.
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br />   “You can see me,” he said, wonder drying the saliva in his mouth, leaving his tongue thick and furry with excitement. A tingle began in his gut; working outward and leaving the edges of his body alight with a fierce pins-and-needles sensation. “You can see me.”

  The accusation was quiet, no more than a whisper, but the girl's breath hitched and she flushed; licking her lips, she turned away and glanced around the restaurant as if searching for a savior. There was no one.

  “I have to get up. Excuse me,” she told her two boothmates and rose, brushing by Piotr but not touching him, moving swiftly for the door. Piotr followed, heart hammering in his chest, and melted through the wall in time to spot her turning the corner and hurrying through the parking lot, chin tucked to chest and looking neither right nor left.

  The girl was athletic, he noticed, lithe and well-muscled but small in stature, padded in all the right places. Her hair, brilliantly red at the roots and faded black at the tips, had been allowed to grow wild, tumbling down her back in a riot of curls. The clothing she wore wasn't immodest exactly, Elle often wore much less, but the cut of it and the way it clung left little to the imagination, granting the girl a fluid mobility Elle would certainly admire. Oddly enough, she was pierced and tattooed, intricate tribal designs worked around her wrists and collarbone in patterns that hurt Piotr's eyes when he looked at them too long.

  Only her face, rounded like a child's, with large brown eyes and full lips, looked innocent. The rest of her whispered danger. But a living girl had seen him, had recognized him for what he was, and that was a siren call Piotr was unwilling to resist.

  The girl approached a blue car, some new model Piotr didn't recognize, and dug through her pockets. Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she opened a cell phone and pressed it to her ear.

  “Hello?” she said aloud, glancing left and right at the empty parking lot. She settled on the back of the car, her weight barely dipping the trunk down. “Yes,” she said, tilting her head towards the main road, studiously not looking at Piotr. “I can see you.”

  Confused, Piotr moved to stand in front of her so she would not be able to look away. “Are you insane? What are you doing?”

  “Well,” she said, meeting his eyes at last but still pressing the phone to her ear, “I've found that I look less crazy this way. You know, talking to myself.”

  “I see,” he said, and he really did. He'd heard of people like her, the soothsayers and fortune tellers who actually had a touch of the Sight in their blood, Seers that a soul could turn to for aid if they were willing to pay a price. In years past, many of those women had been burned as witches. Some, at their death, came to live in the Never, promising rich rewards to the unwary and unwise. This Seer was young, though, and soft around the eyes. Perhaps this was all new to her, or perhaps it had never occurred to her to charge for her care. Most Seers he'd known wouldn't even talk to a spirit unless there was something in it for them; she seemed to be an exception.

  “I am Piotr,” he began, unsure what else to say. He tingled from head to toe now, heart hammering against his ribs, waves of jumbled emotion rocking him with unbelievable force. He cleared his throat. “And you?”

  “Wendy,” she replied shortly, meeting his gaze and giving him a long searching look. Piotr, unsure as to why she was staring at him so hard, broke the contact after a few moments. Wendy's expression was painfully intense; he felt as if he'd failed some vital test. “It's short for Winifred?”

  When he looked back he realized that her lips had thinned into a straight, taut line. She wet them several times, as if tasting her next words. Long moments passed before she sighed, shook her head, and laughed brusquely.

  “You don't recognize me.” Wendy rubbed the side of her hand against her forehead, leaving a pink mark behind. “I guess I shouldn't be so surprised. I'm just me, right? Just Wendy.”

  Startled, Piotr stepped back, taking her in again, carefully this time. Wendy stared at him in turn, eyes tracing his face with something like wonder. He realized that she truly did know him in some way, though she was a mystery in return.

  “Net, I'm sorry.” Nervous now, taken aback, he clasped his hands and rocked back and forth on his heels, a child taken to task for an unremembered crime. Elle's taunts came back to him: that old memory of yours just ain't what it used to be. Annoyed, Piotr shoved the mocking voice away. “Should I?”

  “Curly,” she replied and laughed again. The bitterness was gone now and the warmth had returned to her smile. Wendy rolled her eyes. “You called me Curly.”

  The nickname was familiar but it took Piotr several seconds of actively casting back, thinking hard, before the image of the girl came. Blood-spattered and smoke-dusted, she'd been a tiny thing, eyes dilated in shock from a terrible crash and skin greenish-pale as curdled cream. It had been a car wreck, one dead, and the song of the Light fading away in the distance when he'd rode on the scene.

  “Da, now I remember you,” he said, marveling. “The highway…there was bad weather on your side…the living side, yes?” Without thought his hand stretched forward as if to touch her but he truncated the movement, embarrassed to show wonder at the reunion.

  “Got it in one.” The girl, Curly—no, Wendy—kicked her chunky boots and tilted her head back, staring up at the late afternoon clouds as if willing them to drift down and envelop her, stealing her away. “I thought I was seeing things, but you said I wasn't.” She straightened and drew one knee up to her chest, resting her chin upon it. “In case you didn't remember.”

  “Net, I remember,” he said again, at a loss for what to say, and uncomfortable.

  Her smile was swift, bittersweet. “Yeah, you seem to, now.” There was a clicking noise, faint but precise, and Piotr realized that Wendy had a metal rod through her tongue that she tapped thoughtfully against her teeth. He stared at it, fascinated. Why would someone do that to themselves? It boggled the mind.

  “So, Piotr,” she said at last, “what were you doing in there? Don't the dead usually avoid the living? Or am I just an exception for you?” Her chuckle was light and sweet.

  Piotr's heart lurched and he felt like a fool, imagining what it would be like to get real, honest laughter out of this girl. Seers were by their very nature dour people. If time and contact with ghosts hadn't soured her against the dead yet, it would. It always did.

  Still, Piotr decided, there would be no harm in telling her. Wendy was, after all, able to see his kind and might, if fate was kind, have been a witness to whatever happened to Dunn.

  “Looking for clues,” Piotr began, choosing his words carefully. He liked this girl and he didn't want to upset her unduly, but the situation merited a need for a certain amount of detail.

  In the end Piotr outlined the bare bones of the situation, leaving out the horror that was the Lightbringer and the nightmare that was his recent encounter with the White Lady, stating only the rumors that the White Lady was ultimately behind the unrest among the dead and the recent rash of kidnappings. He told her about Dunn. Wendy listened in attentive silence, nodding her head at the right moments and clicking the bar against her teeth at others.

  “So what you're telling me is that the Walkers,” she said the word far easier than Piotr had anticipated. It slipped easily between her lips, as if she had practice, “are kidnapping the souls of little kids all over town?”

  “We call the children ‘the Lost,’ but da, this is correct. Before…before, the Walkers always devoured the Lost,” Piotr confirmed. “As soon as they got claws on them. But now…” he left the sentence unfinished.

  “They're acting weird, traveling in packs. Grabbing instead of chowing down.” Wendy switched the phone to her other ear. A car pulled into the space beside them and Wendy nodded to herself, muttering, “Uh huh, okay, I get it,” until the passengers had turned the corner to the diner's entryway.

  “Da! You understand, but…you've…had experiences with them?” Piotr knew he shouldn't be surprised at this,
but the dichotomy of the thin, shocked girl huddled by the highway and this young, powerful woman was still fresh and startling to him. He supposed he would have to adjust.

  “I've met the Lost before. Not often, but every now and then. Once I even spotted a Walker, uh…feeding.” Wendy paled and she wrapped her free arm around her stomach, hunching over. “It was…it was horrible,” she said. Piotr ached for her but didn't know how to comfort the living over the obliteration of the dead. “Nasty.”

  “So you know. You have seen.”

  “Well, yeah. I've been spotting Walkers wander all over for weeks, but I didn't realize it was this big a deal. And you think they're taking their marching orders from this White Lady chick? But why? Aren't they the ultimate evil on your side of the line? They've clearly got you and yours on the run.”

  “The White Lady can give them something no one else can,” Piotr admitted. “Flesh. Before now, the Walkers would look out only for themselves. Then the White Lady came. Somehow, with her touch, she can reverse their deathrot. It was a mark of their darkness, the rot. It showed us that they fed on the young. To so casually reverse the marks of such blasphemy…she's zloj…evil.”

  “Gee, ya think?” Wendy sighed, rubbed a knuckle against the bridge of her nose, and tilted her head back, scowling up at the endless expanse of sky. “Great. Just what I need right now. An army of undead cannibals on the warpath.”

  Piotr searched for a tactful way to express his surprise at her reaction. “Why would this concern you? You are alive. The worries of the dead, surely they are nothing to you?”

  “You'd be surprised,” she replied shortly. “The concerns of the dead are sort of a big thing to me right now.” Her expression softened. “In more ways than one, apparently. Count me in.”

  “You wish to help me?” Piotr was flabbergasted. “But why?”

  Rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand, Wendy shrugged, flushing. “Couple of reasons, I guess. One, I don't care if they're alive or dead, no one should be messing with kids. Secondly, you were the first ghost I ever laid eyes on, so I sort of feel like I owe you. You know, for keeping me company when I had no clue what was going on. And finally, well, I've got my own selfish reasons, okay? I scratch your back, and vice the versa. I help you out, maybe you'll think about helping me with a problem I've got going on.”