Never
Page 7
“Should we go home?” Jon asked Wendy, nervously glancing in the rearview mirror. They weren't being followed.
“Not right now,” Chel said before Wendy could answer, angling the makeup mirror and shifting side to side in the passenger seat, trying to get a good view of the highway behind them. She'd finally finished shaking. “Maybe later, but not right now.”
“Okay, fine, so where do we go?” Jon asked. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his left hand. “If we can't go home, we don't want to drag anyone else into this mess. We can't go back to the hospital—Dr. Mc-I'ma-call-CPS is probably still on duty.”
“Maybe I'm flappin’ my gums here,” Elle said, leaning forward so that Jon and Chel recoiled to the sides from her cold, “but maybe it's time to take a little visit up Nob Hill way.”
Beside her, Lily frowned, uncrossing her legs and drawing them up, tucking her knees beneath her chin as she regarded Elle warily. “The Council? What do you expect to happen should we attempt a meeting with them?”
“Nothing much, but Frank did say he wanted a word with the Lightbringer, right? And the Top of the Mark's solid.” Elle tapped the side of Chel's seat to make her point.
Just then, with hardly a grumble of warning, the street bucked and rolled, the car rocking like a boat as the earth trembled beneath them. Jon, screaming, slammed on the brakes, and the car fishtailed across two lanes of highway, finally butting up against the breakdown lane barricade, facing backwards. The shockwaves shook the car like a dog with a bone. Wendy's teeth clamped down painfully on her tongue as the ground rolled and rolled and rolled.
After long seconds the earthquake slowed and stopped.
“I wonder how solid it's gonna be now,” Eddie muttered, shaking his head like a dog so that his hair hung raggedly in his face. “That quake took forever.”
“Is it just me or did that quake seem…I don't know, to have a direction?” Chel asked, rubbing the center of her forehead with the heel of her hand. Wendy could see that her sister had slammed her head into top of the glove compartment during the worst of the quake. One side of the compartment had cracked and was leaking old napkins and straws, the curled and yellowed edge of the insurance paperwork barely poking through. “It didn't feel like it…normally does. It felt like…like it was coming from the west. Like a wave, rolling only one way.”
“Chel's right,” Wendy agreed, peering out the window. Lights flickered, illuminating the buckled pavement in strobing shadows. “I've been in some biggies and that one was…weird. Different.”
“What's the radio say?” Chel asked, spinning the radio dial. All was music, even the station normally reserved for emergency broadcasts. “How big do you think it was? Four? Four point five?”
“The dial's gonna catch on fire if you don't give it a rest, Chel. Let the world have a sec for people to get up to speed,” Wendy said, forcing herself to stop chewing her lower lip nervously. “I bet everyone who's awake is still picking their butts up off the floor. It's New Years, most of them are probably too drunk to realize it's actually the world spinning around them.”
“So…are we headed into the city then?” Jon said, gesturing for Chel to keep an eye out on the road as he carefully maneuvered the car around. He pointed ahead to where part of the highway was broken and buckled. “We can't go that way. There's the exit but it's blocked off with debris. Thank heavens this car is built like a boat. We're going to have to go around the mess up ahead through the breakdown lane and over some of the torn up sections.”
“That could shred the tires,” Chel warned. “Dad'll be ticked off.”
Jon shrugged. “Or we can wait for the city to get around to this stretch of road.”
Wendy shook her head. “No. Take the breakdown lane and see if you can get all the way to the end of the exit. The next road is a main street so we should be able to pick up on an unbroken stretch at the next entrance.”
“That breakdown lane is damn near coated in broken glass,” Chel muttered, biting the side of her thumb and scowling. “I can even see rebar! Can you make it? Safely?”
“He'll have to,” Wendy said. “That earthquake came from the north. The Council is west. So we go west, rebar or no rebar. Jon? Hit it.”
They could make out the dim shape of Angel Island amid the thick mists pouring across the bay. Eddie leaned over and prodded Wendy in the shoulder. Wendy, too tired to respond, dozed against Piotr's neck, his arm slung behind her and holding her lolling head steady. Eddie stretched to poke Wendy again, when a bump on the Bay Bridge woke her. Blearily she looked at her best friend and yawned.
“What's up, Eds?” she murmured, uncaring for once that he was witness to whatever-it-was she had going on with Piotr. “You okay?”
“Me?” he asked, directing her attention out the window. “I'm fine. I was just wondering…do you see that?”
Wendy blinked and rubbed her eyes. The black, heavy clouds in the distance did not change shape or move. The purple-red flashes of light glowed steadily at the center of the cloudbank, the edges lined with blinding white glimmering Light.
“Yep,” Wendy said, forcing herself to take a deep, calming breath before she hyperventilated. Every single nerve in her not-quite-a-body was singing in a high, terrified pitch. “I do.”
“Holy…what is that thing?” Chel hissed, rolling down the window and craning her head into the chilly wind to get a better look.
Gut rolling, Wendy couldn't tear her eyes away. It had to be her imagination, but it looked like there were shapes, shadows, moving amid the clouds. It was like something plucked straight out of her nightmares…or dreamscapes.
“I believe that that is a crack in the sky,” Wendy murmured, remembering the door in the sand, the ruined-beautiful face of her mother saying words her mother would never say, pointing Wendy in directions her mother would have let her stumble upon herself. That dream-Mary, wearing her mother like a mask, had warned Wendy that a storm was coming. She hadn't been kidding—this one looked like a doozy.
“Just checking,” Eddie said. “Cuz I thought I was going crazy for a second there.”
“Join the club, then,” Elle said, sounding simultaneously bored and aggravated. Then she made a strangled sound Wendy realized was something caught halfway between a laugh and a sob. “Does anyone else wanna play spot the weird?”
“What now?” Lily demanded, twisting so she could look out the opposing window. “Oh…oh, my.” She pressed a hand to her mouth and visibly paled.
Startled at Lily's expression, Wendy's eyes fluttered closed for a moment. She didn't want to open them, to face whatever monstrosity could cause Lily of all people to grow so distressed, but then Jon hissed between his teeth.
“Am I supposed to just drive through that? What'll it do to the car?”
“Keep going,” Piotr demanded and Wendy's eyes snapped open. She leaned over Eddie and there it was, a huge white cloud of shifting, shimmering webs covering the entire skyline of San Francisco. The spirit webs were caught in the wind, tendrils as thin as fine white silk snapping like kites in the sky, sucked by the power of the storm hovering over the bay toward the rip in reality at the core.
“But the car—” Jon protested.
“It is solid,” Piotr insisted. “The spirit webs cannot harm the living much—they suck energy and life, yes, but the vehicle should protect us.”
“Should?” Chel demanded, yanking her head back into the car and rapidly rolling up the window as they reached the outer strings of the spirit webs. “You're not certain?”
“Nothing is certain here,” Lily said darkly. She held out her hand and Elle absently rested her palm in Lily's, fingers twining as they frowned at the waving webs together.
“You called what the spirit webs grew into…you called it a little forest,” Wendy said softly to Lily, “but I had no idea it was this bad. That's not a little forest, that's the whole city!”
“It wasn't,” Lily confessed. She leaned forward and Elle released her hand, curling
her fingers back in her lap. Elle's shoulders hunched and the loose curls at the front of her face hid her eyes in shadow. Lily, sparing a worried glance for her friend, gestured out the window, pointing as she explained, “Twenty-four hours ago, the webs stretched not far at all. You could bypass it with a half hour of steady walking but this…this is a new aberration.”
“This is craziness,” Elle snapped, head jerking up, and yanking her fingers through the tangled curls lying haphazardly against her forehead. “How could it grow like this overnight?” She tilted her head back and tried to see out the side window, shuddering as the tips of spiritual toes, obviously Shades, caught by the webs, slid through the roof above them.
All of them cringed and ducked low, angling themselves so the Shades didn't touch them as they passed.
“Those are bodies,” Chel said flatly, titling her head back to take in the full height and width of the mass. “Cocooned bodies wrapped in…what is that? It's foul.”
“Spirit webs,” Piotr replied, voice and expression dull.
“Piotr?” Lily asked. “What is it?”
Piotr flicked a glance at Wendy and she nearly flinched from the raw pain in his eyes. Wordlessly he took her hand in his and pressed her hand flat against his chest. Worried, Wendy took a deep breath and then…
Piotr.
It was like she was inside Piotr's head, inside his body, feeling the shift of his rough clothing against his back, the way the hairs on Piotr's arms caught against the fabric and the tug of his pants across his thighs. She could feel the echo of his mind, his thoughts a beat ahead of her own, a hot tingle racing through her skull as Piotr fought to keep his mind to himself.
Piotr's chest was aching, the pain ramping up the closer they got to a thicker mass of the webs. He…no, they…pressed a hand to his/their ribs, silently willing the pain to disperse. The last time he had felt this kind of pain had been before Sarah, the Lost girl, had healed the Lady Walker's poison coursing through Piotr's system, before Sarah'd buried her fingers in the diseased, overcome shell that acted as a body and blessedly burned the pain away.
But…when Sarah had healed Piotr, had she destroyed the spirit web seed growing within? At the time Piotr had assumed so—there'd been no niggling pain, no ache in his gut to tell him otherwise—but now the outcome wasn't so certain. Piotr's insides, where they didn't ache, tickled…as if something small was growing there.
Wendy, gasping, yanked her hand free. Lily, frowning, brushed her palm against Wendy's elbow and Wendy twitched away, terrified for an instant that she'd be yanked into another soul's body, but Lily's touch was calming and cool. Nothing like the quiet havoc of Piotr's malfunctioning body.
Troubled, Wendy tucked into her little corner, rebuffing all attempts at conversation as the spirit webs grew thicker and wilder around them.
They left the bridge, headed for the hotel at the top of Nob Hill. The going was slow—even at this time of night, the streets were flooded with people staggering from place to place. Most were laughing, raucous, unaware of the spirit webs wrapping around their bodies and digging thin, pointed tendrils into their hearts, heads, and guts.
One rip-roaring drunk woman stumbled up to their car and pounded on the hood, laughing and demanding a ride. Her face was coated with a thick mesh of web; the tendrils had worked their way past the corners of her mouth and were snaking down her throat. Her low-cut dress couldn't cover the fine weave of web that curled around her entire body—she wore the web like a bodysuit, from head to heels, and the web was growing thicker by the second, feasting on her years and willpower.
Chel cringed away from the window. “Can't you hurry?” she hissed to Jon.
“I'll run someone over,” he snapped back, hunching over the wheel and trying to see past the mass ropes of web dangling down. The closer they got to Nob Hill, the heavier and thicker the spirit webs became. “I'm having a really hard time differentiating between living and dead as it is. Don't make me add to it.”
A long, undulating howl cut through the air, originating deep in the heart of the forest, near the Palace. Even the living stilled as the howl rose and broke on a high, rough note, only moving again once the echoes had faded away.
“I don't like the sound of that,” Elle murmured suddenly, breaking the utter silence in the back seat. “I think our Walker-eating beastie buddy's back, Pete.”
“You may be correct,” Piotr replied, palm pressed flat against his gut. He would not look at Wendy but she found that comforting. She needed a little space after that intense dive into his head. “But we can't concern ourselves with the monster at the center of the forest. It is a dog, da? So long as we do not breach its territory—”
“You mean like we're doing now?” Eddie asked. He'd taken Wendy's hands in his own, their fingers wound together as they sought familiar comfort. Wendy saw Piotr's face twist as he spotted their linked fingers and she felt a stab of sadness at his quickly smothered dismay but she wasn't willing to let Eddie go. They'd been friends forever; Piotr had to accept that.
“We should be fine,” Piotr insisted, but Wendy knew that he wasn't so certain. Wincing, he gripped his chest again. No one else seemed to notice his increasing distress but Lily. She said nothing but Wendy noted the knowing look in Lily's eyes, the drawn frown that darted across her lips. Piotr's pain had caught her attention, she wouldn't be willing to pretend everything was fine for much longer. Wendy was thankful that Lily was a good friend. She would hold her tongue for now, but Wendy knew that if Piotr didn't disclose the cause of his pain quickly, she'd call him out. Wendy wondered if she should beat him to the punch but it seemed…invasive, rude, to tell the others of his worries.
Piotr could sense Lily and Wendy watching him obliquely, gauging his every move. It was simultaneously aggravating and soothing, knowing that if he collapsed they both would leap to action. His best friend and his love. How did he get so lucky? Then, as if taunting him, the niggling pain gnawed at his gut, nearly bending him double with the intensity of it, rippling through his core. As the pain blossomed, working its way across his torso, Piotr felt the memory unfold around him, soft and pervasive as fresh-fallen snow…
The snow was as deep as his thigh in places and his hands were fading to brown, tacky as the blood dried. The breeze picked up; downy feathers spun, lifted high and drifting down again, sticking to the drying blood on his forehead, to the tears and sweat cooling on his cheeks. Keeping the frozen river to the right, Piotr slogged through the snow, heading for where the village sat, nestled in the vee where the banks of the river split, protected on three sides by the frozen water.
Piotr took another step, fur-clad foot breaking through the ice atop the snow beneath. The Reaper's cloak was dragging the snow beside him, leaving thin, oddly patterned trails splattered with faint pink as the feathers dragged in the drifts. Great black flocks of crows and gulls and ravens weighed down the overhanging evergreens all the way to the end of the forest but not a peep was heard; the forest was unnervingly quiet.
“Mother will know what to do,” Piotr thought, fingers reflexively tightening on the cloak of feathers, ignoring the tickle of blood trickling from his face onto the cloak, absorbed by the feathers and wetting the snow.
The forest was a mottled mass of white-green-black as far as the eye could see, and then, from the corner of his eye, Piotr spotted a flash of red, of silver-grey, and the whip-quick motion of the long braid only a hint of the shape shifting in the tree's shadow, gone before Piotr was sure he'd spotted it.
At first Piotr was confused—this snow was deep, no one he knew could move that swiftly and silently in snow this deep—before Piotr remembered who—what—he was dealing with.
REAPER.
Piotr was yanked out of his memories when Elle stiffened and pushed Eddie aside, pressing her face against the side window. “SHHH! Do you hear that?”
“I can't hear anything,” Eddie grunted, wincing and shifting beneath her weight, “with your knee crushing my junk!”
Snuffle. Loud and wet.
Snuffle-snuffle-snort. Loud and wet and close.
“Go-go-go,” Wendy growled at Jon. “Move-move-move!”
Jon hit the gas, the car struggling against gravity, but it was too late; the beast filled the road in front of them, shoulders as high as the car, teeth as long as Wendy's forearm.
It was like a dog, or a wolf, but not, and a cat, but not. It was furry and huge, filling the front windshield with its bulk, and its legs were corded with strangely-shaped muscles, but it had five legs and bizarre, bulbous knots poking out, eye-like appendages blinking at her, amidst the fur of its chest and legs. Foam, white and stringy, dripped from its jaws as the gigantic dog-wolf-cat-thing dropped its head low and examined the occupants of the car.
“Can dogs have red eyes like that?” Eddie asked in a breathless, high voice, as if the air had been knocked out of him. “All slitted like that?” His voice cracked. “And tails? Tails that snap back and forth like that? That's not possible, right? Right?” He pressed a hand against his mouth. “What. The. Hell.”
Lily laid a hand on Eddie's thigh. “Hush,” she whispered, voice steady but sharp, cutting through the panic in the car instantly. “Be calm. Do not draw its attention.”