Reaper (Lightbringer)

by K. D. McEntire

  “Binding?” Wendy asked stupidly, feeling slow and grumpy. She was annoyed that her mother hadn't even taught her the very basics of the Reaper culture. Half the prattle coming out of their mouths was confusing and strange and the other half was downright aggravating. This latest pause was a sickening mixture of both.

  “It would seem that way because that is exactly what I'm doing,” Emma replied coolly, ignoring Wendy entirely. “Or, rather, have done.”

  “What is a binding?” Wendy demanded more strongly.

  “But you can't do that,” Jane protested, crossing her arms over her chest. “It's overkill, don't you think?”

  “For the last frickin’ time,” Wendy snapped, grabbing Emma by the wrist, “what in the hell is a binding?”

  “Remember that girl, the blind natural?” Emma asked, yanking her wrist free. “If this technique had existed in its entirety back then, she might have survived. As for what it is, look for yourself.”

  Edgy and nervous, Wendy slid into the Light and looked down. Instead of her normal, pulsing mass of incandescent power, she found that Emma had taken pieces of her Light with her knives and whips, carving a dark mesh-like pattern into her ethereal form. Her entire body was nothing but lacy scars of Light, a lightweight layer of blackness stretched over the normal fierce brightness.

  “Okay, I look weird as hell. We'll set that aside for now,” Wendy growled. “The key question here is WHY THE HELL WERE YOU DOING THIS OH-SO-MAGICAL BINDING WITHOUT ASKING ME FIRST?”

  Groaning, Emma rolled her eyes. “I know you're new to all this, but if you'd had any training—”

  “That's not my fault!”

  “—any training at all, you'd have recognized this for what it is. And you'd know why it's preferable to the alternative, at least temporarily. Grandmother and Great-Grandmother ordered it done, it's done. Enough said.”

  “It's kind of drastic, don't you think?” Jane asked quietly. “I mean, yeah, Wendy's a weirdo freak, sure—”

  “Thank you so much,” Wendy snapped.

  “Hey, it's not my fault you're some sort of cutesy-wootsy mutated abomination,” Jane said, pinching Wendy's cheek saucily. “The point is that, weirdo or not, she's still a Reaper, right?”

  “I don't count to three when I give inoculations to children,” Emma replied shortly. “Sometimes they're lucky if I count to two. You do what is best, and this is for Wendy's safety. What's done is done. It's over.”

  “That's it?” Wendy hissed, hands grasped in fists at her side; naked and exposed, she felt as if every hair on her body was puffing out like a cat's. “No ‘I'm sorry for doing something permanent to your soul, Wendy?’ No ‘Hey, Wendy, we had this idea we wanna try out on you’? No ‘This might sting a little’? Yeah, well, thanks ever so much for the heads-up, you psycho bitch.”

  “Cut the drama,” Emma retorted. “I never said it was permanent. What kind of a monster do you take me for?”

  “A selfish hosebeastica?” Jane asked, picking up her sketchbook. “An order-taking, brown-wearing boot-licker?”

  “Spare me. If Grandmother told you to jump, you wouldn't bother asking how high before flinging yourself off the closest cliff,” Emma snapped, pointing an accusing finger at Jane.

  “Enough! From both of you!” Wendy yelled. They fell silent and she breathed heavily for several moments, trying to find an inner calm. At long last she said, “Fine, you did this soul thingy, I can't undo it, great. Now how long is this binding for?” Wendy asked stiffly. “What did you do exactly and what's coming down the pike?”

  “They usually last maybe a couple weeks at most,” Jane said, licking her thumb and flicking to the next page of her sketchbook. “Nowadays a binding is usually used to teach new Reapers control of the Light. It feeds you only little dribs and drabs of the Light at a time. Not enough to stop you up, but enough to keep you from blowing it all in one fell swoop and then being helpless for days afterward.”

  “That's it? It just slows me down?”

  “That's it,” Emma said, voice heavy with disdain. “Now don't you feel bad about assuming the worst?”

  “Not really, considering it's something I still would have liked some input on.” Wendy scowled and concentrated. She could feel the strings of power lying across her soul, across the core of her abilities, like a series of thin ribbons woven and wrapped tightly around her chest. She could move and poke at her power but it was like pressing her hand against a fine, taut mesh, trying to grasp a shiny bauble just beyond her reach. “It's kind of uncomfortable.” She shifted in place. “Like a too-tight corset, really.”

  “It's meant to be,” Jane said, jokingly. She elbowed Wendy and winked. “Hairshirt for your powers, right? That'll teach you to be born a mutant, ya spaz.”

  “Quit calling her that, even jokingly. It's not funny,” Emma growled. “Wendy, if you concentrate, you can still slip in and out of the Never. You won't be able to reap a spirit, but you can still train with me.” She cleared her throat. “If you still want to, that is.”

  Wendy wanted to tell Emma and Jane both to go to hell. Instead she sighed and straightened. “Fine. I'm behind every other Reaper in actual knowledge and control. I need to suck it up and just do this. But you and me, Emma? We're not okay and we're not going to be for a long time. You got that?”

  “Understood,” Emma said and gestured for Wendy to raise her knives again. “Now. Come at me.”

  Eventually, after several more minutes or hours or days of being pummeled mercilessly, Wendy began to sort out which direction Emma might probably attack from. The tricky part was figuring out how to block her, since she pounced simultaneously from both the Never and the living world. However, just knowing the direction allowed Wendy to get the knives up in time, which would occasionally block the worst of the Light.

  Then, when Wendy's legs were shaking from exertion and her heart was thudding painfully in her chest, she spotted it. It was just the barest of movements, the faintest of faltering, but even tired as she was, Wendy caught the motion. Emma was not, in fact, simultaneously attacking in both the Never and the living world, Wendy realized. Emma was switching back and forth so fast that she appeared to blur between worlds.

  Amazing. Simply amazing. Stunned, Wendy took two thwacks to the shoulders before she was able to pull away.

  “Okay,” she said aloud. “You're not magical, you're just stupid-fast. I can do that. I think.”

  Ignoring Jane's chuckle, Wendy concentrated on speeding up how fast she opened herself to the Light. It was hard—Wendy had learned long ago to keep a tight rein on the Light. Her mother had insisted on it, and as such Wendy only drew on her power when absolutely necessary.

  Yanking rapidly at the mental hold she erected to keep the Light safely tucked away was surprisingly painful, but Wendy kept at it until she was able to fling her hold aside in a moment. She still wasn't as fast as Emma, but each time she did it she got fractionally faster and infinitesimally more confident.

  “Better,” Emma said from her right and then her left. “Still not as fast as the newest of our girls, but better.” She snapped a whip of Light forward and Wendy caught it with the knife.

  “Not as fast as a novice, huh?”

  “No. But do that two more times in a row and you'll get your truce.” Emma's Light flashed forward again and Wendy felt it bite painfully into the side of her face.

  “Fine,” she ground out. “Block you three times in a row. Got it.” Over and over again they circled one another, Emma growing bolder with her attacks, leaving herself open, and Wendy, attempting to keep from being stung again.

  Finally, at long last, the knife cut through the Light a third time and Emma, sweating and pale, nodded once at Wendy as she stepped back. “Excellent job, Wendy,” she said. “I am proud of you.”

  “Yeah,” Jane added, standing up and stretching. “That only took, what, the morning to get the hang of it? Emma was razzing you there. Normally it takes newbs at least a week to figure out the tric
k. You're quick; I'm jealous.”

  Emma took the blades from Wendy's stinging, sweat-slicked hands and dried them off, sheathing them in an intricately designed set of leather sheaths that Wendy could have sworn she'd seen somewhere before.

  “You'll do,” she said critically, brushing coppery hair out of her eyes as, behind her, Jane gathered up their clothing to bring to the combatants. “Your mother might even approve.”

  “No she wouldn't,” Wendy said, smiling bitterly as Jane approached with Wendy's Hello Kitty undies waving in the air and a broad smirk plastered on her face. “That I can assure you.”

  As Emma dressed away from them, Jane leaned over and, for Wendy's ears only, whispered, “If you get tired of that binding, call me. I can't guarantee I can fix it…but I can try, okay?” She held her knuckles up for a fist bump. “Reaper homegirls for life, yo.”

  Exhausted and amused, Wendy bumped fists. She didn't know if she'd take Jane up on her offer—the idea of precision control over her abilities appealed to the part of Wendy that still smarted over the White Lady's biting insults—but it was kind of her to offer. Terrible sense of humor or not, Jane was a pretty decent girl. Wendy just hoped that the rest of the family turned out to be like Jane and not like Emma or her Grandmother.

  Unfortunately, seeing as her mother had distanced herself from her family quite effectively, Wendy had a sneaking feeling that her hopes were in vain. Well, there was Jane at least. Wendy gripped that thought tightly and quickly dressed. She needed to get home and check on the spirits in her bedroom. Who knew what they'd gotten up to in her absence?

  In the ten minutes it took Wendy to feel presentable again, if still slightly skeeved out by how nude she'd been in the presence of near-strangers, Emma and Jane had topped the rise and were walking toward the beach. Jane spun in the morning sunlight, arms outflung and laughter drifting back to the bunker as Wendy hesitated by the door. Should she lock it? They hadn't left the keys.

  The faintest glimmer out of the corner of her eye caught Wendy's attention. She turned and only just spotted her, peering out from around the corner of the bunker, a battered backpack clutched in one thin hand.

  The little girl couldn't have been more than seven or eight when she'd died. Her clothing was nondescript—jeans and a plain white tee shirt, bare and dirty feet. The wisps of hair that tumbled out from beneath her grubby grey Giants baseball cap were dirty blonde and fine, tangled at the ends. She had a smudge across her left cheek and Wendy had to fight the urge to lick her thumb and wipe the filth away.

  “Um, hi?” Wendy said and the girl flinched, staggering back a step. She was like a rabbit, all sinew and nerve, ready to flee in an instant.

  “My name's Wendy!” Wendy said quickly. Hurriedly, she pawed through her purse. There, at the bottom, was a trinket she'd thought silly when she'd picked it up from Piotr's old haunt earlier in the week, but it'd reminded her of him and his Lost, of Specs in particular, and she had stashed it in her bag anyway.

  “Do you like books?” Wendy asked, holding out one of Spec's battered copies of a Nancy Drew mystery. “Here. It's yours.” She glanced over her shoulder; the Reapers were still walking by the water. They hadn't seen her talking to the Lost.

  “What do you want for it?” the little girl asked, eying the book speculatively but not getting any closer.

  “Nothing,” Wendy said. “It's yours if you want it. I picked it up because the boy it used to belong to went into the Light.” She smiled half-heartedly. “It reminded me of him.”

  The little girl tilted her head, looking Wendy up and down speculatively. “I was watching you all in there, dancing around all naked. You're her, ain't you? That Lightbringer girl everyone's talking about?”

  Wendy flushed. Was there a single soul in San Francisco who hadn't heard about her yet? At this rate she ought to take out an advertisement and start charging. “Maybe. Why do you ask?”

  “You're different, right?” The Lost was edging slowly backwards, eyes trained firmly on Wendy's face. “You don't attack ghosts unless they want you to.”

  “You've got that part correct,” Wendy said soothingly. “Unless you're a Walker, I only send on spirits who ask.”

  The girl stopped backing away and nodded. “Okay. That's cool.” Then, making a face like she expected Wendy to refuse, the little girl held out a hand. “Can I still have that book? I mean…may I? May I still have that book?”

  “Of course!” Glad that she seemed to have made a connection, Wendy tossed the book underhand to the girl. “I hope you like it…um…what's your name?”

  “Sarah,” the kid said, tucking the battered novel into her bag. Once it was safely stored, she straightened and scowled. “So is that it, then? The Reapers are back? This place is my haunt now. You all left ages ago; no fair with the backsies.”

  Horrified, Wendy realized that the girl was near tears. “Oh honey,” she whispered, uncertain how to comfort the girl. “Don't cry…”

  “It's fine,” Sarah said, scrubbing her face with a grubby hand. “Stuff's gonna be like it was before? Fine. I'll manage. You seem nice, but the rest of ’em…nuhhuh. Not happening. I don't deal with Reapers.”

  “Okay, my family's back,” Wendy said softly, glancing over her shoulder at Emma and Jane in the distance again. “But hopefully not for long.”

  Sarah snorted. “If it's anything like before, it'll be forever. Reapers like to hunker down, boss everyone around, and generally stick their noses in everyone's business. And those are the nice ones. Like you.”

  “So…you've been here a long time then?” Wendy said, choosing her words carefully. “With no Rider? On your own?”

  “Riders boss you around in other ways,” Sarah said primly. “I'm my own boss.”

  “I can see that,” Wendy said wryly. “Okay, Sarah, well…I have a proposition for you then.”

  “Knew it,” the girl said, rolling her eyes. “What?”

  “I have a friend, a Rider, who isn't feeling well.” Wendy hesitated, not sure how to explain the hook Lily had described. “He…he got into a fight with some Walkers and they hurt him.”

  Sarah scratched her neck. “Like, hurt how?”

  “Stabbed him,” Wendy said baldly, deciding that Sarah had most likely been dead long enough to have seen a Walker fight or two. She might still be a vulnerable little girl, but something in her eyes said that Sarah was tougher than she looked, that she'd seen more than Wendy could ever imagine. “His wound won't heal.”

  “Ever since the White Lady came the Walkers are twice as nasty as before,” Sarah said, scowling. “I watched one rip a Shade to pieces a few days ago down by the docks. It didn't even give up any essence; the Walker just wanted to hear the poor guy scream.”

  Wendy winced. “I'm not surprised.”

  “Your Rider friend…he won't try to take me in or make me join his group, right?” Sarah crossed her arms over her chest and glared at Wendy. “I heard all about how those other groups of Lost got nabbed by the White Lady, even out from under the Riders’ noses. That ain't happening to me.”

  “He doesn't have a group anymore,” Wendy explained, “but if you don't want to stay with us, none of us will make you, I promise.”

  “And if I help him…what do I get? I don't work for free, you know. Will and essence ain't cheap.”

  “Anything you want,” Wendy promised fervently, surprised at the overwhelming surge of relief pouring through her system. “Sarah, I swear to you, I will salvage anything I can just for you. And if the Reapers leave this town to me the way they want to, I will make sure you don't get sent on until you are good and ready. Is that okay?”

  “Yeah, all right then. I'll help.” Sarah scratched her nose. “But you know that I can't go with you in your car. Your Reaper buddies spot me, they'll—”

  “I know,” Wendy agreed, giddy with quiet joy. “And you're right. You have to get there on your own.” She glanced up at the sky; it wasn't noon yet, but the morning would soon be over. Wendy had
no idea how Piotr was faring, but she didn't want to risk waiting too long for Sarah to arrive. “I live in Mountain View. Do you know where that is?”

  “Yeah.” Sarah paled. “Your buddies are coming back!”

  “Here,” Wendy said, stepping forward so her body blocked the line of sight to Sarah. “Go into the city. Near Pier 31 there's an old abandoned bookshop, it used to be a haunt for this Rider named Elle and her Lost. Hunker down and wait there. I'll come get you as soon as I can, okay? Or I'll send someone.”

  “Yeah, I know the place.” Sarah shook her head. “Dealin’ with Reapers and Riders. I must be nuts.”

  “You're a saint,” Wendy promised. “Now go! Hide!”

  Sarah obligingly vanished into the brush behind the bunker just as Emma and Jane edged around the rise, sandy and smiling. Emma, though tired, seemed to have relaxed some, and her hair hung down in damp, salt-dripping tangles. For once the uptight doctor actually looked to be having fun and Wendy wondered for a second if she'd made the right choice by sending Sarah away.

  “Got her good,” Jane boasted. “Now let's head on home, ladies. There's a shower calling to me.”

  Tempted as she was to make sure Sarah was gone, Wendy kept her head facing forward as she and the Reapers retired to the car. It may have been her imagination, but as Emma pulled away, Wendy thought she saw a shadow of the girl creep out from behind the bunker and stand at the edge of the dune, backpack dangling from one hand and the other shading her eyes.

  “Wait a second, hold up,” Jane said suddenly and jammed her hand down, yanking up the emergency brake. She was shimmering with Light in an instant and out the door, speeding toward the bunker before Emma had stopped cursing.

  “No,” Wendy whispered and struggled to go after her, ramming the passenger seat with her shoulder and stretching frantically for the door handle as Emma killed the engine. “No-no-no!”

  “What's going on?” Emma yelled as Wendy took off after Jane, running as fast as her legs would carry her.