Never

by K. D. McEntire

  Scrubbing her palm on her thigh, Wendy swallowed several times. Her mouth was sour with bile, her entire body ached from holding herself still until the Lady Walker leaned back, giving her space. “Why? Why let me go?”

  The Lady Walker shrugged but her good eye glittered in the light. “Perhaps I see in you something of what I once was. Perhaps it is a…matter of a debt repaid. What does it matter? The Reapers are no part of you; your mother saw to that. Let me have my vengeance upon them.” She tilted her head up to the canopy of spirit webs. “Let the sky burn.”

  Circumspectly, Wendy's hand dipped into her pocket. She pulled out the handsome Walker's healing necklace and, while the Lady Walker's head was still flung back, Wendy slipped the necklace over her neck and beneath her hoodie.

  “No dice,” Wendy replied. “The Reapers suck, yeah, but I like my sky intact, thank you very much.”

  The Lady Walker smiled. “So be it.” Then she waved a hand toward the car. “Enjoy your slow death and know you begged for it by name. I gave you a chance to flee.” She smirked and turned away, leaving Wendy alone in the mist.

  A thump to the left startled Wendy into skittering right a step. There, on the pavement, lay a woman Wendy had only briefly met, but recognized immediately.

  “Ada!” Wendy gasped and hurried toward the older woman, arms outstretched to help Ada to her feet. The street was growing cold and slick beneath her feet, aggravating her footing upon the already steep slope.

  “No!” Ada gasped, thrusting out a hand to keep Wendy at bay. “Do not touch me! I am contaminated!”

  “What?” Wendy asked, faltering. “I don't—”

  Ada stumbled to her feet and Wendy's words died in her throat. “Oh…oh, Ada…oh, Ada, what…what happened?”

  “This.” Ada's free hand pressed against the gash in her gut. Spirit webs snaked out of the wound, curling up around her torso and down around her thighs, pinning her voluminous skirt to her legs. One long and nasty tendril curled twice around her throat like a thin, deadly choker. The tip of the tendril flirted with her lips, curled in a spiral at the edge of her mouth and probed the corner.

  “Ada believed she could play in the realm of gods,” whispered the Lady Walker's voice from the fog. “She thought she could meddle with what she didn't understand. To explain the way things had become instead of simply accepting the way things are. Foolish, idiot child.” The laughter rolled from the fog, rough and rotten and grating. Wendy fought the urge to cover her ears with her hands.

  “The spirit web poison,” Ada explained. “They injected my own concoction into me.” She smiled and Wendy flinched at the sight of her shattered, jagged teeth. “It works…quite fast. Mary would have been pleased; the vials would have protected you. Even a Reaper…would be helpless.”

  Wendy turned her face away, ashamed at what her mother had wrought. “Yeah. She would have been so proud.”

  “Do not worry yourself,” Ada said, coughing so hard her body shuddered. “I reap what I've sown.”

  “I can't access my Light,” Wendy cried. “I can't burn the growth away, I can't help you!”

  “I know, I know,” Ada soothed. “Piotr managed…” She pressed a hand to her belly, leaned over, and gasped. “How he managed to hold off…the infection…the seed's growth…for so long…amazes me.”

  The Lady Walker appeared behind Wendy, her hands cupping Wendy's shoulders in an icy grip. A Shade lay at her feet, drained nearly dry by clinging spirit webs. It still had the faintest will, and moved feebly beneath the webs, reaching for Wendy's ankles and moaning.

  “Piotr is like me,” the Lady Walker whispered. “Unending. No mere poison could fell him—only slow him down. Drive him insane, husk him out…but not kill him. He is unending. He is eternal. Just. Like. Me.”

  She sighed, her lips too near to Wendy's cheek, her awful, rotten breath gaggingly close. “Last chance, girl, I grant this to you. Your mother paved the way for my rise. Take what I offer. Leave now. Or suffer.”

  “What about Ada?” Wendy demanded, shifting so the Shade couldn't clutch at her feet. She hated to be so cold but Wendy knew that she had to be reasonable; if she had to run the Shade might trip her up. “You claimed you'd free her if I did what you demanded but…you're killing her!”

  “You can't kill what is already dead,” the Lady Walker said, nudging aside the skeletal Shade. “Case in point. However, I will free her, after the Reapers have been dealt with. You have my word.”

  “Will there be any of her left to free?” Wendy asked. She didn't let her gaze skitter to the Shade though it was a strain not to. The Shade was so thin and wasted as to be beyond age, beyond gender. It was nearly a walking skeleton, just dusky flesh stretched tight over bones. The Shade's eyes were gone—only the gruesome thorns and buds of the spirit web's seeds remained.

  “If her will is strong enough,” the Lady Walker replied carelessly, waving a hand idly as she smiled at Wendy, her remaining teeth gleaming in the pale, gross light. Her waving hand then rested, butterfly-light, on Wendy's shoulder. “She may yet survive.”

  “I am so tired of this crap,” Wendy growled. “No. No, okay? No-no-no. No deals. No bargains. No bullshit. I'm done! Okay? I'm…I'm done. With you. With the Reapers. With all of this! No more!”

  “If you will not kneel or run, then you leave me no choice.” The Lady Walker's hand tightened for a fraction of a second. Then, moving quickly as a scorpion striking, the Lady Walker kicked Ada's ankle; it broke with a terrible crunch. Ada crumpled to the ground.

  “You bitch!” Wendy yelled, dropping to a knee beside the downed spirit. “Ada, can you walk? Hop? Anything?”

  “She won't need to. If you will not deal with me then I am done with her,” the Lady Walker said, leaning down, her hands curling over the top of Wendy's shoulders roughly; one dipped down to cup Wendy's left breast, to slide over her ribcage, the other probing Wendy's hip. Where the flat of the Lady Walker's hand pressed against her chest, a flat, icy chill crept across Wendy's skin, numbing her body and sapping her strength.

  “She is useless. Ada suffers and will continue to suffer…unless you kill her now. Kill her, Lightbringer. Prove to me that you are unlike your brethren. Kill her.”

  “Wendy,” Ada said, shaking her head. “It's a trap. Don't. Don't…listen to her—she's trying to…distract you. Leave me. Go! RUN!”

  “Yes, Lightbringer,” murmured the Lady Walker. “Run.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Wendy asked, hating the begging tone creeping into her voice. “Why can't you just leave everything be?”

  “Why should I? I have the Reapers in chaos, biting one another's tails.” The Lady Walker drew a shining knife from the folds of her cloak and leaned down, casually grabbing the Shade by the hair and hacking its head from its body with three hard swipes. “Thanks to your mother, I have the Never itself at my mercy.”

  “Wait, what about my mo—” Wendy began.

  The spirit web dissolved like black ink in water and the battered remains of the Shade burst into a blaze of brilliant, black-threaded Light.

  Above them there was a wail and a huge sensation of pressure, of sucking, like the three of them were being pulled out to sea by an insistent riptide. Wendy and Ada grabbed the torn and twisted pavement beneath them. Wendy was glad that they weren't further out in the road, where the ice was thickest and the sloping street the most severe. The Lady Walker stood firm, laughing wildly as, with a gigantic whoomph, the ground began buckling and seizing frantically, the soil vibrating and pounding beneath them.

  The earthquake pulsed for several seconds as Ada and Wendy rode the wave, both screaming.

  At long last the earth stopped spasming and the Lady Walker reached down and helped Wendy to her feet. “There are over a hundred Shades within a four block radius,” she said, smiling. “Every Shade I destroy calls another of my…pets…into this world. For every Shade that sees my blade, another terror is born. Tell me your Reapers can deal with that, Lightbringer.”
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  “Wendy…” Ada whispered. “Wendy…help…me…”

  Yanking free of the Lady Walker, Wendy turned on her heel. She had taken only two rapid steps away when she heard the thick, snotty snuffle to her right. She managed a third step before the beast slid out of the closest building and dropped its head low, eye-level with Wendy. It growled, red eyes lighting, and a wave of fetid breath nearly knocked Wendy over.

  Wendy turned aside, shaking, doing her best to ignore the beast though every nerve trembled at the sight and smell of it. “Stop playing with us. We're not mice.”

  “In the eyes of the creatures from between,” the Lady Walker said, drawing a compact out of her cloak and flipping it open, “we're all mice.”

  Wendy briefly spotted her reflection in the small mirror within before the Lady Walker, grinning, leaned down and slammed the compact across Ada's face. The compact cracked against Ada's cheekbone and the broken mirror scored her flesh, leaving a trail of seeping essence. Ada, stunned, crumpled to the ground.

  “What—” Wendy began, but was cut off as the hellbeast beside her surged forward, darting for Ada's prone body. It seemed to fall apart as it drew closer to the mirror; for a moment the beast was insubstantial as smoke…and then it was gone.

  “What happened?” Wendy asked before she could stop herself. She glared all around, demanding answers. “Where did it go?”

  But the Lady Walker was gone. Wendy was alone with Ada.

  Slowly, Wendy gathered Ada by the elbows and supported her up to her feet. Falling to the ground had knocked Ada's bun loose, and her hair lay in a messy tangle about her face. She leaned on Wendy heavily.

  “What was all that about? Here,” Wendy said, glad that the Lady Walker had left without further confrontation. She pushed a hank of Ada's hair off her wounded cheekbone. “I think I have a spare scrunchie in my—”

  Ada bit Wendy's hand.

  Screaming in surprised pain, Wendy yanked her hand back while Ada, growling, dropped to all fours and swelled, doubling in size in seconds. Her proper dress split at the shoulders and arms, the nipped-in waist tore to shreds as Wendy, dumbfounded, watched.

  “Oh hell,” Wendy whispered and staggered several steps back. She hit a patch of ice and nearly tumbled, catching herself at the last second. In the moments she spent struggling with her balance, Ada's body twisted 180 degrees, torso spinning so that her arms snapped backwards to support the convolutions. There was an awful cracking noise as joints appeared in the middle of her biceps and calves. Ada now hung upside down, arched like a spider, and her fingers lengthened, nails digging into the street. Wendy watched in mingled horror and pity as Ada's skirt, stretched to splitting, fell aside, leaving Ada's body naked and slit apart, her skin ripped and bleeding, essence streaming off her in rivulets.

  “A…Ada?” Wendy whispered, arms outstretched at her sides. “Are you…oh, ick, are you in there? Ada?”

  The Ada-beast, now jammed into its new skin, took a step forward and then another. The mouth opened up, the jaws expanding far too wide, and Wendy could make out the spirit web pulsing as it wriggled its way past the corner of Ada's mouth and dipped down her throat. Wendy gagged in sympathy.

  Testing the treacherous street with her foot as best she could, Wendy took a step back. The Ada-beast took a step forward. One back. One forward.

  Then, just as Wendy had decided to make a run for the car, the spirit web surrounding the Ada-beast's torso shivered and glowed bright. The beast charged forward, skittering like a spider on four horribly jointed arms.

  A burning at her chest was the only reminder Wendy had of the necklace as Ada's fingernails scraped across her cheek, slicing her skin. It only took a second for the wounds to close—Wendy had a moment to be glad that the necklace seemed to be working independently of any action she took. The Ada-beast scraped and clawed in circles around Wendy, jabbing hands and feet outward and slicing her repeatedly. The necklace worked its magic and healed her over and over again. Even Ada's quickest touch, like the Lady Walker's, was like a stroke of ice against her skin. Wendy trembled in cold and pain under the onslaught.

  Trying to crawl away time and time again, only to hit steep slicks in the street and sliding backward, Wendy, battered and briefly bruised, realized that the creature was playing with her. It either knew or sensed that she wasn't as hurt as she could be, as she ought to be, and was choosing to test her limits, to see if she'd break for it and run. The necklace was like an icy brand around her throat now, burning her with the intensity of its cold; it hurt more than the wounds it was healing.

  Hissing in pain, Wendy reached up and hooked a finger around the necklace, lifting it off her skin. The moment she did the beast stabbed forward and hooked a hand-claw around the links, yanking them free and flinging them to the asphalt. The overuse had made the necklace weak; the beast's icy touch was too much. The necklace shattered on impact.

  No more healing.

  “Shit,” Wendy hissed, scanning frantically left and right for anything she could use as a weapon, before she remembered that Lily's knife hung in the loop on her belt. She'd been so caught up in arguing with the Lady Walker that she'd forgotten it was there!

  Pulling Lily's knife off her belt required Wendy to take her attention from the Ada-beast for a moment; the blade was honed to a distressingly sharp edge and Wendy feared for her fingers. By the time she had the knife in hand the beast had circled around behind her, cutting off her escape to the car. Long ropes of drool dripped from Ada's mouth, pooling on the ground. Wendy's thighs burned as she crouched deeply down.

  “I have no idea what I'm doing,” Wendy said and gripped the knife. As if it understood what she was saying, the Ada-beast swiped at her and Wendy reflexively jerked the blade forward, slicing into its elongated hand. The creature hissed and yanked back, shaking the jointed fingers. It bled, but only momentarily, sluggishly, before the wound closed.

  “No,” Wendy whispered. She'd not been expecting that.

  The Ada-beast chuckled, dipped low, and a long shiver raced down its spine, reminding Wendy of a cat wriggling just before it pounced.

  It never got the chance.

  An arrow embedded itself in the side of Ada's face, releasing a gush of noxious fluid and essence, milky and sour, that ate immediate holes in the asphalt. Wendy stumbled back, searching for the source of the missile.

  “Move, Lightbringer!” Elle yelled, notching another arrow as the Ada-beast, annoyed, roared and swelled, batting the arrow free from its cheek. The hole closed up in seconds, completely healed. “Get out of the way!”

  “It's Ada!” Wendy yelled. “Don't shoot, it's Ada! Maybe we can save her! Stop! Stop! It's Ada!”

  “Get out of the way, ducky! She's gone!”

  Lily was at Wendy's side in a moment. “Wendy, Ada is lost,” she said, snatching her knife from Wendy's loose grip. “We will distract the creature as best we can, but it heals too rapidly. You must find another way to destroy it! Go!”

  “I—”

  “LISTEN for once in your misbegotten life, Lightbringer! GO!”

  Wendy fled to the car. Piotr and Eddie were just outside, near the trunk of the vehicle, brandishing makeshift torches from Mary's camping supplies at the waving tentacles of spirit web that were encroaching on the car, crawling and dangling and dropping down.

  “Get to safety!” Piotr yelled at her and swiped one of the torches just above Wendy's head as a long sticky stream of web thumped down. “In the car! Beest rayeh! Hurry! Move!”

  Wendy dove inside. “Crap-crap-crap,” she groaned, sliding across the backseat. “Chel!”

  “What?!” Chel's voice was high and thin, her sister was shaking and terrified. “What's going on? What the hell happened to that lady?”

  “Wendy, what do we do?” Jon demanded.

  The beast howled, and the essence pretending to be Wendy's flesh crawled at the eerie sound.

  “Okay…okay, um, I have no idea—NO IDEA—if this will work,” Wendy gasped, run
ning shaking fingers through her tangled curls. “But…I mean, what the hell, it's all I can think of right now. I need you. One of you. Both of you. Maybe. But I need you to come with me! Chel!”

  “Me?” Frantically, Chel shook her head. “I don't—”

  “CHEL! Look, I won't let you get hurt! I mean, I'll try not to, okay? It's the best I can do.”

  “But why do you need me?” Chel demanded, clearly panicked. “I don't know what I'm doing!”

  “I can't access my Light!” Wendy snapped. “I can't and you, maybe, probably, I don't know, I have no idea…but it's worth a shot, right? Trying to access your Light?”

  Still, Chel hesitated and Wendy wanted to smack her sister upside her cowardly head. She smothered the urge. It was something their mother would have done. It wouldn't help. “Will it hurt?”

  “The first time? I…I can't remember, to be honest,” Wendy admitted. “But even if it hurts, it doesn't last long.” Wendy leaned forward so that her younger sister could see her face, how serious she was. “You can do this, Chel. I know you can.”

  Swallowing thickly, Chel nodded. “Okay. Show me.”

  “This way,” Wendy said and slid out of the car, waiting to hear the car door slam behind her before she drew off to the side, closer to where Elle and Lily were darting in and out of the fray like dancers, dealing deathstrikes that only aggravated the Ada-beast.

  “Okay, Chel, listen,” Wendy instructed tensely. “You're looking into the Never.”

  “Duh,” Chel said. “I can't even see the living world right now, the Never's so thick.”

  “Don't remind me,” Wendy muttered. “Come over here to the sidewalk. Careful, it's icy out.” When Chel joined her, Wendy pressed her palm against her sister's chest, just above the sternum. “Here is where your Light lives,” she explained, wishing she could feel the bright burn beneath Chel's flesh. “When you feel it, you'll feel it here first.”