Never

by K. D. McEntire

  “That they do.” He spit. “Patient as the grave, Reapers are. No matter though—I didn't like ’em much when I was alive and they'd come round to check up on my girls—sisters and daughter both. They had to make sure none of them showed that special ‘spark,’ didn't they? Never found it though, thankfully.”

  He paused, thoughtful. “I downright hate ’em now that I'm dead.”

  Wendy, startled, twisted to look at Piotr. He smiled thinly at her as if to say, You heard that right. You and Clyde are distantly related.

  Clyde spotted the look; he hooked his thumbs in the straps of his overalls and then addressed Piotr directly. “Do you recollect me, comrade? Maybe remember seeing me around a time or two when I was alive, maybe after I died once or twice?”

  Nodding, Piotr's lips twitched; he was hiding a smile. “I recall that you and I have met before.”

  Clyde tapped the wall brusquely. “Your memory's lost a few of those extra holes, then? Filled ’em up some?”

  “Repaired,” Piotr clarified. “Regenerated. Though they are still growing back.”

  Wendy frowned; was she the only one who saw the flicker in Piotr's expression just then?

  “Reaper do that for you?” Clyde sneered. “Elise?”

  “Seeing as it was the Reapers that caused the damage in the first place, net, it was not. And even if she offered, I would not deal with Elise for any reward.”

  Clyde shook his head. “I sincerely doubt that, son. I really, really do.”

  “Then you do not know me as well as you think,” Piotr replied evenly.

  “Or you don't know the situation as well as you think,” Clyde retorted, idly rubbing his knuckles against his chin.

  “You know why we are here,” Lily said, rising from the table and approaching Clyde. She held out her hands, placating the older man, and smiled. “No Reaper or Walker can reign here, where the walls are as thick in the living lands as in the Never. Wendy would be safe here.”

  “Yes miss, I know I look a bit of a bumpkin, but I'm not dumb.” Clyde scratched his chin and sighed. “This pains me to tell you, kiddies, but I can't help you. I can't and even if I could, I won't.”

  Dismayed, Wendy bit her lip. She could feel the angry tears burning at the corners of her eyes but she'd be damned if she let Clyde see her cry at his decision.

  “Why not?” Elle demanded, leaping up from the table. “It's just for a day. It ain't like us staying here a peck will bother the visitors. We can have ’em out of your hair by nightfall, soon as we find a better place to stash ’em. No fuss, no muss, no bother.”

  “Lotta bother if the Reapers find out,” Clyde pointed out mildly. “Seeing as how I promised Elise's ambassador that I wouldn't let you stay, just earlier tonight.” He shook his head. “In the right light she looks just like you, girlie. Pretty little thing if you don't mind that crazy colored hair and all those tat—”

  “Stop!” Piotr demanded, quietly furious. “Despite your hatred of them, you have met with Wendy's family? Why?”

  “Sometimes there are important reasons that trump a man's personal vendettas,” Clyde said simply. “You've been around forever, kid. Surely you know that.”

  “I cannot imagine any cause that would allow you to resign your moral mores in their favor,” Lily said coolly.

  Clyde pushed a thumb against the brim of his hat, scratching his brow. “You have to think long term. Elise's only one woman and an old one at that. She won't last much longer, and I like the idea of vanishing into nothing even less than I like the idea of Elise bossing around the ghosties of the Never.“

  “Whoah, whoah, wait up a second,” Wendy snapped. “‘Vanishing into nothing’? She threatened to reap you if you didn't listen? Because you have to know this place like the back of your hand. I doubt she'd even be able to find you here, much less—”

  Clyde's laugher cut her off. “Reap me? No, no, nothing like that! You think I'm scared of the likes of Elise? Nothin’ can touch me here, on my missus’ land. The Reapers couldn't find me if they spent a hundred nights trying.”

  “Then why—”

  “You been up city-way lately?” Clyde asked, all business now, arms crossed over his chest. “You feel those tremors?”

  Piotr and Wendy shared a tight glance. How much had the Reapers told Clyde?

  He spotted their look and shook his head. “Foolish, all of you. I'm talking about that great big hole in the horizon, kiddies. The one spitting out nasties and quakes so big I can feel ’em all the way down here.”

  “We've seen it,” Wendy said grimly. “But we don't know for a fact that every quake is a new creature. That's just conjecture.“

  “Guessin’ or not, girl, if that rift opened further then we'd be up to our eyeballs in monsters! Creatures from the deep. Nasties. And the Lady Walker aims to set ’em all free.” Clyde glared and Wendy belatedly realized that a glint of red was glowing in the reflection of the mirror above the mantle. Wendy glanced over her shoulder, trying to make out where the red was coming from, when the red blinked at her.

  Following the direction Wendy was looking, Clyde flicked an angry glance at the mirror and frowned. “Used to be you needed a special spot for a nastie-beastie to mosey on through. A place of power. Now all you need is a cracked mirror and some sad soul as a sacrifice. You're a Reaper, girl, can't you feel how thin the Never's getting in places? How worn out? Can't you sense the spaces in between now?”

  “I…I don't know. Maybe. Sort of,” Wendy said, frowning at the mirror. Surely that blink was her imagination…wasn't it? Did Clyde see what she was seeing?

  “San Francisco…this land…it was always a weak spot in the Never,” Clyde said. “Stop for two seconds, girl, and even the likes of you can feel it. There are holes here, tiny cracks into something like the one above the ocean, the space between the worlds, and if you look close enough, the webs are causing more and more damage. Who knows how much longer it's all gonna hold?”

  “Is this why you agreed to work with the Reapers?” Lily asked archly, flicking a warning glance at Elle and Piotr. “You fear these monsters from the deep?”

  “You would too, if you had a lick of sense,” Clyde growled. “Riders. Useless, the lot of you.” Clyde looked as if he might spit for a moment, but recalled at last instant that they were in his beloved Sarah Winchester's dining room. He refrained.

  “The longer the Lady Walker is left to roam around, the worse this is going to get. The hole is only going to get bigger. More beasties are going to wriggle their way through, because she's doing everything she can to pry that hole as big as it's going to get.”

  Wendy bit her lip. She didn't want to remember the awful way Ada's body had twisted, the nasty ripping sound of her body rearranging itself. “Those creatures…I talked to the Lady Walker. She said that all she needed now was a soul and a creature could be summoned.”

  “She wasn't lying. There are still plenty of regular-Joe spirits up in the city to munch on. People die every day, kiddies, especially with weather like this to hobble the homeless. There's no shortage of fresh-off-the-boat souls wandering around.” Clyde grimaced. “The more will a spirit has, the nastier the beastie ends up. I even heard tell that they don't have to eat a ghost. They can,” his voice dropped to a nervous, gossipy whisper, “take over your body. Invade you, turn you inside out and wear you like an ugly sweater.”

  Wendy closed her eyes, the sound of Ada being torn apart from the inside out rippling through her memory. “Yeah. You've got that right.”

  “There are no Lost in town but one,” Lily said softly, patting Wendy on the shoulder. “We have taken the bulk of their meal from—”

  “You didn't make off with all the Walkers, did you?” Clyde sneered. “I'm stuck here, but even I know that the Lady Walker has been promising the Walkers all sorts of goodies if they follow her for, oh, the past few weeks at least. Elise's been struggling to keep her Walkers on her side. Bribing them, I hear tell. Fixing their faces up and more with her Rea
per tricks.”

  Wendy chewed her thumbnail nervously. “Bribing them?” She thought of the awful Walker with the handsome face and the necklace that fixed his flesh. Elise had sworn that she hadn't sent him, but Elise was known to lie, right? Or had the Walker waited until he'd gotten what he wanted out of her to go to Jane?

  Who could she believe?

  “Walkers-schmalkers. That can't be the only reason why you're so worried,” Elle demanded of Clyde. “It's not like they're knocking on your door.”

  “Not tonight, no, but these things—like that spirit web—have a nasty way of spreading, if you catch my drift. Today the city, tomorrow they'll be sucking all the juice out of my gates.” Clyde jerked his thumb toward the end of the formal dining room and the elaborate archway leading to the rest of the house. “All the thirteen shades of pretty glass and spider web lovelies in the world can't keep that sort of ugliness out forever.”

  “How do you know all this? Did the Reapers bring you this news?” Lily demanded, slapping the table so that the ethereal teacups clattered in their saucers. “For surely you cannot trust everything they say.”

  “No, girl,” Clyde sneered. “I know all this because this was Tracey's plan.” He turned, meeting Wendy's eyes. “Your momma's too. They wanted to destroy the Never. They wanted to bring it all down.”

  Jon yawned. He was so tired, he felt almost sick with it. Sleep had been hard coming but when he'd finally succumbed it had washed over him in a great wave. He didn't know what had woken him but Chel, in the passenger seat beside him, was snoring quietly, curled against the fogged up window. Despite his tender feelings over all the crap she'd said to him before, Jon was tempted to reach out and hold his sister's hand. Chel was spiky and cruel at times, but overall she meant well. She just didn't know how to handle people.

  She didn't know how to handle him.

  It was growing stuffy in the car. Taking care not to wake Chel, Jon unbuckled his belt and eased out of the driver's side, shutting the door behind him as gingerly as he could. It felt weird to be standing here in the orange light of the stuttering parking lot lamps high above, the winter breeze scudding litter across the parking lot and slapping his cheeks. Jon hunched further in his hoodie, hoping that the deep shadows of the hood would keep his face covered.

  Did Wendy mean it, he wondered. Would she really drag them out to the middle of nowhere to camp out? It seemed sort of extreme-

  Movement, flashing quickly across the street. Not in the Never, either. Here in the real world.

  Jon froze. Was it a cop? A bum? San Jose wasn't a bad part of town, not exactly, but even tourist traps like the Winchester had pockets of unpleasant activity at this time of night.

  Slowly, straining his eyesight to catch the movement again, Jon reached for the door handle.

  With a slow, ponderous groan the back end of his car dipped down. The handle slipped away beneath his fingers.

  Jon turned, neck creaking.

  The creature, only inches away from his face, clicked its teeth in warning.

  Clyde turned his back on Elle and Lily and strode to the wall again, this time pushing harder until, with a sharp click, the section of panel slid open, revealing a hole in the wall, dim and lined with cobwebs. “I can see you with those angry eyes but I ain't fibbing to you, girl. Your aunt wanted to end the Never and your momma agreed with her. They made a deal with the Lady Walker toward those ends.”

  “I don't believe you,” Wendy said through numb lips. Her eyes felt painfully dry, her heart seemed to be thrumming in her chest. Carefully she lifted a hand and marveled how the shock of what he'd said had actually affected her spiritual form. She was definitely more translucent. The Riders were right; willpower mattered a great deal in the Never.

  “Why?” Elle demanded. “Why would she do that?”

  “Revenge,” Clyde said offhandedly, squinting into the darkness. “Elise made Mary kill her sister. Anyone's bound to be a touch tetchy after all that.”

  Beside her, Piotr froze. Wendy, slowly, turned and faced him. She could feel the strangest sensation—it was as if blood she didn't have was draining from her face, leaving her not-flesh cold and tingling. “I'm sorry?”

  “Didn't you know?” Clyde asked, cocking an eyebrow and looking between Wendy and Piotr. “Mary was forced to kill her own sister for breaking the rules.”

  “You didn't tell me that,” Wendy said slowly to Piotr. She slid away from his side on the couch, trying to wrap her mind around the idea and doing her best to squash the hot, betrayed feeling burning in her chest. “Mom…Mom wouldn't have…”

  “She did,” Piotr confirmed, hands open and beseeching at his sides. “After the deed was done Mary was filled with great fury. Such powerful emotions drew me to her like a…like a spirit to the Lightbringer. A moth to the flame, seeking and yearning the heat even as it burns.”

  Wendy turned her face away, flushing in anger and dismay. Her hands balled into fists on her knees and her entire body was trembling; Wendy felt pulled taut as piano wire—one poke and she'd vibrate to pieces. “Tell me.”

  Clyde shrugged, as if to say: You asked for it.

  “Back then, Elise was brutal because she liked being on top. Forget the Good Work, forget giving up seconds of her own life to send others on—Elise reaped only when she had to in order to keep from burning up the way you folks do. Make no mistake, Elise was in it for the profit. The Never was just a way for her to make more moolah, to further the family cause. And she was good at it back then. Making money, making connections, hand over fist.”

  “Until?” Wendy asked.

  “Until your grandma started thinking that maybe using the dead like that wasn't such a good idea. That maybe those old books they make the young'uns read were saying more than just the how of it, like some sort of instruction manual. That maybe there was a history, a purpose there.”

  “So Mary's momma got high-minded,” Elle drawled. “I bet fancypants cousin Elise didn't like that one bit.”

  “No miss, Elise didn't. When it was suggested that maybe they needed more girls out there doing the Good Work, not fewer, that maybe they ought to be giving them the Good Cup to drink sooner rather than later…that they, as a family, had a job to do and that maybe they weren't doing it the way they were supposed to…well, Elise took to the idea of reaping for just reaping's sake, for no profit and no glory for the family, like a duck to lava.”

  Wendy frowned. “What about Nana Moses?” Clyde gave her a funny look so she clarified, “I'm sorry, what about Elise's mom, Alonya? What did she have to say about Elise and my grandma getting into it? I know my grandma was her niece and Elise was her daughter but I've met Nana…Alonya and she didn't seem too thrilled with Elise in general. Whose side did she take?”

  “Alonya? Neither. No time. She was back east, in New York, when the roosters came home to roost. Elise was running the show on this coast and Alonya was forever away. By time Alonya found out, the deed was long since done.”

  Wendy felt her stomach sink. “How'd Elise make it fly with the other Reapers? How'd she get them to go along with it? With flat out murder like that?”

  Elle snorted. “What would you do if you were in Elise's shoes? Elise runs your clan like a gaggle of goodfellas. I bet she found out your grandma's biggest, closest secret and used it to beat her nosy cousin down.”

  “Mary told me once that her mother was a natural,” Piotr said softly, suddenly, rubbing his temples and grimacing. Wendy didn't need to ask him what was going on; Piotr was remembering. “That talented blood all tangled and twisted together; her momma's parents—your great-grandparents—were third or fourth cousins, twice removed or some odd thing. They didn't know it when they got married since the families were far enough apart to not concern them—no deformed babies—but their blood was still close enough to make interesting connections.”

  Clyde grinned. “Got it in one, comrade. There are a lot of people in this town with a touch of Reaper blood in them, not even cou
nting the entire families who were discarded from the main family tree for little reasons.”

  “Like you,” Piotr said.

  Clyde sneered. “My own grandma was the last Reaper in my line. When the family ran low on good Reapers they sure came around to check my ladies over. Eventually, when my girls turned out to be duds, they dropped my branch from the family tree completely. There are a whole lot of people in this state with a drop or two of Reaper blood in ’em, most who never have a clue. Walking around, possibly spotting ghosts every now and then, when drunk or drugged but they pass it off as hallucinations. Nothing to see here but the rotting dead. Move along.”

  Jon hadn't gotten to see much of Wendy's fight with the creature before, so he was startled by how vivid the creature was up close. It was like something out of a horror movie, too ugly to be real, except for the fact that it crouched on the hood and roof of his dad's car, denting the metal with sharp pincer-like hands and drooling wet ropes of slimy substance that was flecked with pink foam and tiny, writhing bugs.

  Once, he realized, it had been a gang member. The tattered remains of a shredded plaid shirt hovered somewhere near what Jon could only assume was the beast's waist. Torn jeans dragged behind.

  Gagging, Jon staggered back a step, then another.

  The creature, clicking, followed him.

  “You're not real,” Jon told it. His entire body was shaking, shivering like the last leaf clinging to its branch in the face of an oncoming storm. “You're…you're not supposed to exist in the real world.”

  The creature chuckled, dark and wet, as broken sounds wrenched from its throat. It took Jon several seconds to realize that it was trying to speak.

  “Rrrreeee-prrr. Rrrreeeeeeeee-prrrrr.”

  Reaper.

  “Luuuuudddddeeeee Waaaaallllhhhheeeerrrr sssshhhpppeeeekkkk toooo uuuuuuu.”

  Lady Walker speak to you.

  “The Lady Walker wants to talk to me? The Lady Walker?” Jon swallowed. “I don't have any say in the matter, huh?”

  The creature slowly shook its head, slobber sloughing off its shredded face and sinking into small pools in the parking lot. A hand dropped down on Jon's shoulder and he barely bit back a scream.