Reaper (Lightbringer)

by K. D. McEntire

  This was definitely referring to Piotr, Wendy thought, turning the page with a shaking hand. She could see how if someone like Jane or Elise had never met Piotr she might be wary of him and what he could do but, then again, her mother had called to Piotr, had used him to put her soul back together when she couldn't. So who was right?

  Point 7 – Cleave unto the family, for we alone understand from whence we came and the dangers in the spaces between the Dark and the Light. Do not turn your face away, do not seek to lie or cheat. Listen always to the matriarch and follow her guidance as if it were law. Such is always as it has been, such is always how it should be.

  Point 8 – Follow the tenets of our family closely. Follow the steps of awakening honestly. Drink from the Good Cup when it has been passed into your hands and not before, lest you awaken more than your Sight. Pity those born with the Sight—Naturals and Seers—for they cannot control their will, and the Darkness and Light shall take them, the Never shall swallow them whole.

  Wendy stuck her tongue out. “Well poo on you, too,” she muttered and shifted uncomfortably on the couch. It had been a long time since she'd curled up down here to read. The tough upholstery was scratchier than she remembered, and the cushions seemed to be all lumps.

  Whatever, Wendy thought. First world problems. She'd just deal.

  There were several more rules along these lines and Wendy was rapidly growing bored reading them. Instead she decided to flip through the rest of the book and skim around a bit, to see what was interesting.

  “Blah, blah, blah, ghosts, types of ghosts, Shades, blah,” Wendy said, rubbing her dry eyes. “Walkers…eww, that picture's grosser than an actual Walker, I think. Oh, hey, the Lost and Riders.”

  Startled, Wendy blinked and peered closer at the page, squinting to keep the cramped words from swimming around so drastically. “Wow. That's Lily.”

  The resemblance to the spirit Wendy knew was uncanny; if it wasn't Lily, Wendy would be surprised. Thankfully the blurb below Lily's picture only called her an “elusive spirit seen escorting Lost souls” and suggested that the Reaper in question might wish to consider waiting for the Rider in question to be alone before engaging them in the Good Work.

  “Because she'd kick your ass,” Wendy chuckled to herself. “Oh, no: because apparently the Riders stick together and gang up on Reapers. Huh. They're kinda fractured; they don't do that now. You know, unless you force them to.”

  Seeing Lily in the book had been mildly entertaining, but Wendy was rapidly growing bored. Her head was beginning to ache a little and she really wanted a glass of water, but she was too tired to bother getting up and nabbing one from the kitchen.

  There'd been no mention of Piotr or the Lady Walker, beyond the rule at the beginning. Wendy was starting to believe that Elise and Jane had only dangled that carrot before her to get her to read the manual more quickly.

  “‘How to see into the Never,’” Wendy read aloud, paging through the last, most weather-beaten pages, “how to reap a spirit, how to transmute a silver cord, how to shift through solid objects…”

  And then she stopped.

  How To Transmute A Silver Cord.

  Squinting at the passage, Wendy felt her throat dry up. She hurriedly read further.

  The transmutation of a silver cord is neither simple nor desired. To do so to another is to do a great disservice to the Reaper in question and might be considered an attack upon a fellow member of the family. However, in some cases, it may be necessary to move about the spiritual realm without arousing suspicion from the spirits.

  In order to hide amid the dead, it is necessary that the cord of the living be spun very fine, almost as if weaving the thinnest shroud about one's person, cleaving it tightly to the flesh-essence itself. This is difficult to do to oneself, but not impossible. Know no mistake—the nature of this act is quite destructive. Maintaining this unnatural curvature of the cord will leach the essence and Light from the Reaper in rapid time, weakening both their spirit and living body permanently. The Reaper will fade slowly over the course of months as the pull of their cord binding them in the Never drains their abilities and spiritual power away. NEVER TRANSMUTE A NON-REAPER'S CORD—THIS WILL KILL THEM IN SHORT ORDER (weeks).

  Wendy closed the manual. Was this what happened to Eddie? Had someone—some Reaper—snuck up behind him and twisted his cord up, spread it thin, until it seemed like it was missing? Why? What would the point of that be?

  And, furthermore, this stuff was in the frickin’ beginning Reaper's manual! Emma was a smart chick, why wouldn't she have known already that it was possible to do this to someone? Why would she ask to study Eddie if the answer was right there in “Reaping for Dummies” all along?

  Unless. Unless she did know and had been playing dumb about it. But would Emma do that? Wendy didn't know.

  “Whatever. It doesn't matter,” she said, setting the manual on the coffee table and stretching. It was so warm in here…had Chel turned up the thermostat again?

  What was important now, Wendy decided, stripping off her hoodie, was finding Eddie. Finding him and fixing him, if that transmutey-thing was what was really wrong with him. She hoped it was. It sounded…sort of simple to fix? And maybe Jane could help if Wendy couldn't do it alone.

  Wendy reached into her pocket, searching for her phone. She'd just call Eddie up and have him meet her…

  Wait.

  “Wendy, you dummy,” Wendy sighed, running her tongue over dry and cracked lips. “I'd like to see the rate plan on cell service in the freakin’ Never.”

  Grumbling, she stood up and headed for the side door. A sick headache was beginning to pound at her temples and her neck felt like a pillar of solid, painful, stone.

  Thankfully Eddie's house was just a short walk away, Wendy soothed herself. With any luck he and the others would still be there—where else did they have to go, after all?—and she could lay hands on his spirit, try and fix whatever nastiness had been done to him. She might not be able to step into the Never now, but Wendy'd been able to grab that rake. Grabbing Eddie's cord the same way might be a piece of cake…she hoped.

  Crossing her backyard left Wendy feeling exposed and wondering if her bluff had truly scared off the Walkers or if they were cleverly laying in wait somewhere else in the yard. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms against the light evening chill.

  Wendy thought that they might have been chased off, but if the Lady Walker was as scary as everyone seemed to think she was, then she wouldn't take too kindly to her boys running away after only a few pokes with a garden rake, no matter how pointy.

  Wendy would worry about it later. First Eddie and Piotr, then deal with Miss Phantom-of-the-Opera-Face. After that…

  Wendy was near the back shed when a sudden, unexpected heavy pressure shoved her forward, sending Wendy sprawling to the ground.

  “What the hell!” Wendy struggled to her feet and then the shove came again, twice as powerful this time around. Her hand smacked against the side of the shed, her forehead banged against the window. Twisting and cursing, Wendy managed to flip over, expecting to have to kick out against her assailant, to scratch and scream…

  Nothing.

  There was no one there. Not in the Never and not in the living lands. No Walkers, no Lady Walker, nothing.

  Perplexed, Wendy began to sit up when the pressure forced her back to the grass, a heavy weight that pinned her down from her collar to her hips, shoving down with so much force that Wendy struggled to breathe.

  Spaces between worlds, Nana Moses’ voice whispered in the back of her mind. Creatures and creatures again, drawn by your Light.

  The world began to grey around her, just as it had when Jane's ribbons of Light had twisted so tightly.

  Reaching forward, Wendy concentrated on where the bulk of the pressure was, where Jane's ribbons had twined the tightest. She didn't know if this would work, but it was her only chance.

  There. There it was. Her Light.

  Wendy
felt it, right there at the edge of her fingertips, banked and roaring deep inside her, a bonfire somehow swept into a little hearth that promised to burn the house around it to cinders. She could feel how the mesh of the binding had been twisted tight and knotted, a wrap around the heat, threatening to burst and break her apart in the process.

  Tapping into the Light, wedging her fingers under the very thinnest of mesh edges, Wendy was able to bend the bindings on her power just a little. Not enough to break them, no, but the heat of her power blazing on the other side was just enough to wriggle a fingernail's width of space free. Not much, a miniscule amount, but enough for the moment.

  With hands encased in Light, Wendy reached into the invisible, punishing mass and squeezed.

  A terrible shriek ripped the air above her and for a brief, glorious second Wendy was able to breathe as the invisible pressure loosened. Then, before she could do more than gasp a few mouthfuls of air, it was back and gripping tighter than ever.

  Marshalling what energy she could, Wendy squinted into the Never, hoping against hope that this time she'd be able to make her enemy out.

  It wasn't some terrible monster from the deep, she realized, just a bird: an enormous, furious seagull with dirty, stinking wings, mostly camouflaged by the shadows and the night and gripping her torso with all its might. It squawked and tightened its immense, mutated talons around her chest. Where she had touched it, the essence smoked. The scaly leg burned from her touch.

  The gull was a fighter, though. It wasn't going to let Wendy get away. When she tried to twist free, it flapped foul, sea-rotted wings in her face and darted downward, tearing a large chunk of Wendy's arm in a deep, jerking gash. For a brief moment Wendy thought that the awful bird had actually cut her corporeal flesh, but then she felt the hole where her outer essence should have been.

  What little of her banked power she'd been able to grab was now almost gone. Wendy squeezed harder and was rewarded by the nasty beast pecking at her eyes and gouging her left cheek. Wendy buried one hand in the bird's chest, futilely yanking out only a handful of filthy feathers.

  The world began to dim, and just as Wendy gave up, she heard a sharp, loud chittery growl and smelled a clean, evergreen scent. Forcing her eyes open, Wendy spotted a huge black shadow darting as a raccoon slammed into the gull, pinning it down.

  The gull screamed and Wendy, at a loss for how to help, used the very last of her remaining power to squeeze the gull's leg again. The gull made an almost-human yell of pain and surprise and flapped off her chest, choosing to combat the raccoon over its weakened and torn-up prey.

  Scuttling over the ground in fast, darting motions the raccoon and gull went at each other with a startling fury, the raccoon darting in and out of the fray with sharp, quick swipes, the bird doing its best to peck the raccoon's eyes out. The gull was strong but the raccoon was quick, and within moments the gull was missing great patches of feathers from its chest and neck. The air was filled with dirty white-grey fluff. The bird's skin was speckled with red.

  Finally, realizing that it was outmaneuvered, the gull managed to take wing and escape. The raccoon, hissing furiously, leapt into the air after the gull and tried to snatch it back down, catching only a few tail feathers for its effort.

  The raccoon, clutching the feathers in one paw, waited until the gull was long gone before it sauntered over to Wendy and began grooming its paws and face.

  “Hello again,” Wendy said, coughing painfully. She thought about trying to sit up, but even the idea of moving made her woozy. “I thought you were done with me. Decided to stick around for some more giggles, huh?”

  Wendy ran her hand along the raccoon's back, luxuriating in the strangely slippery feel of its dense fur coat. The raccoon, dropping the feathers, preened under her touch and Wendy got the impression that if it could purr, it would have. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I appreciate your help.”

  The raccoon flicked an ear at her: Chips? Crackers? Tacos? Chocolate chip cookies?

  “I still don't have a snack for you,” Wendy apologized, chuckling helplessly at the situation until a sharp spike of pain along her temples made her stop. “At least, not one you can eat in your current, you know, dead state. I'm really sorry. Though…I don't know…maybe we can salvage some nommables for you later?”

  She coughed again and this time was dismayed to feel a thick bubble break at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were dry and hot in their sockets.

  “I really am running a temperature now,” Wendy told the raccoon. “Whoo-nelly, I feel sick.”

  A normal Reaper might last weeks or days but a natural would burn up in a matter of hours, Emma's voice reminded her. How long had it been since the binding? And how long since Jane had tried to remove the binding?

  Wendy shivered. Time seemed to be speeding up, and not in a good way.

  “I know you're hungry,” Wendy said aloud, staggering to her feet. “Believe me, I know. I promise, when I can I'll…” She coughed again and wiped her wrist against her damp lips, ignoring the pink tinge in the faint streetlights.

  “Actually,” Wendy told the raccoon, rubbing the back of her neck, “now that I come to think about it, maybe I'll take that shower, after all. Eddie's not going anywhere, right? Right. Cool off a touch, then go fix him right up.”

  The raccoon said nothing, merely bounded across the yard and through the kitchen wall, leaving Wendy to follow. When she entered the house the raccoon was waiting patiently on the stairs. It flicked an ear at her and darted to the second floor, leading the way.

  Stumbling upstairs, Wendy staggered into the bathroom and slammed open the cabinet door, pawing through the jumbled morass inside until she found the old thermometer. It was ancient and probably hardly worked, but if all else failed she'd go looking for a newer one in Dad's bathroom. She was alarmingly dizzy. Small grey spots were beginning to swim at the edges of her vision. How hard had that gull hit her, anyway?

  Using the old thermometer seemed to take forever. Wendy squinted at the readout and then shook the thermometer.

  102.9.

  That can't be right, Wendy thought. Her temperature had skyrocketed far too high, far too fast.

  And that was going-to-the-hospital temperature, wasn't it? Wendy wished she could ask her mom what to do. Mary had been an EMT for years; she'd know how to handle this.

  Slumping to the bathroom floor, Wendy rested her cheek against the cool tile. Her mind was a tangle of thoughts and worries and missing her mother. She'd never really had the time to mourn Mary; she'd been in the hospital, unconscious, until the day after they'd buried her.

  “What did Emma do to me?” Wendy asked the floor tiles, absently rubbing a spot of dried gunk under the cabinet door lip, cleaning like Chel might if she'd known it was there.

  Rolling over onto her back, Wendy dug in her pocket for her phone. She pulled out her old tongue ring, stared at it a moment in confusion, and then pocketed it again. She knew she was forgetting something important about the ring, something about where she'd seen it last, but right now contacting Emma was more important. It seemed silly to think that Emma was working against her. It seemed crazy.

  Wendy laughed at the absurdity of calling the only doctor she knew over a panic about a little fever. “Be all like, ‘Yo, Emma, I gots a temp, guuurl, and it's all yo fault. Now whatchoo want me to do ’bout it?’ Oh yeah, she'd looove that.”

  The raccoon said nothing, but it leapt down off the toilet and nudged the hand holding her phone.

  “Oh, hey,” Wendy said as image after image of travelers at a nearby rest station appeared clearly in her mind. They were holding their phones up, obviously trying to get reception.

  “That's a great idea. Sicker than snot? Smartphone to the rescue!” Wendy patted the raccoon on the head. “You, little guy, are one smart…mammal…thing.”

  The raccoon said nothing but preened under her petting and licked its snout again.

  “Here we go,” Wendy muttered, pulling up Google
and checking WebMD. “High temp,” she typed, rolling so that her other cheek now lay against the melting tiles and cold floor while she waited for the page to load.

  “Have to save Eddie,” she said. “Have to cool off, have to save…Sarah? And Piotr. I can do this. One step at a time. No problemo. I am Wendy, hear me roar. Or whimper. Whatever.” She coughed. “Did I save Sarah? I didn't, did I? She got…she got sent on.”

  Squinting at the screen was making her dry, raspy eyes water, and the salt tears stung. Looking away eased the discomfort; Wendy was dismayed to realize that glancing back caused stabbing pain behind her eyes.

  “Light sensitivity, fever,” Wendy muttered, shading her eyes and trying to read the WebMD article in quick, snapping glances. “Skin tight? Yeah. No sweat? Damn it, yes.”

  Heat stroke.

  Wendy thumbed her phone closed and flipped it upside down, setting it face down on the tile. She waved weakly at the light switch and, to her surprise, the raccoon hopped up on the countertop and scrabbled at the switch with its paws until the light, blessedly, turned off.

  “Did not know you could do that,” Wendy said and pressed herself as flat to the floor as she could manage. It kept the world from spinning quite so rapidly. “Well, you learn something new every day, huh?”

  Now only the dim light coming in from her father's bedroom window down the hall lit the bathroom; Wendy used this weak illumination to twist the cold knob and flip the stopper, resting her hot forehead against the cool fiberglass while the tub filled and the world melted and spun.

  “Gonna throttle Emma when I get my hands on her,” Wendy whispered to herself. “Gonna show her.”

  Stripping her jeans and shirt seemed to take forever; by the time she was done the water was lapping the overflow hole. Easing into the icy tub, Wendy grabbed for the towel rack for support and sent the towels sliding to the floor. She thought about picking them up but instead welcomed the cold water slinking up her legs and caressing her hips, tummy, chest.