Lightbringer

Knowing now that Piotr would refuse to believe her until she gave him proof, Wendy wavered between showing him and letting him leave. She could do it, Wendy realized, she could let him walk out the door and wait this drama she’d instigated out. He would come back; they were too close for Piotr to stay away long. They needed one another—she was helping him by destroying the Walkers, even if he didn’t know it, and he had promised to find her mother. But if she did this, if she pushed the issue and showed him what she really was inside, the likelihood of him ever coming back…

“No,” Wendy said. “I have something to show you.”

“Net,” Piotr hissed. “I do not want to see it!”

“I’m so sorry, Piotr,” Wendy whispered. “But you’ve got no choice.” Decision done, she reached inside and began unraveling the firm web of will her mother had taught her to keep tightly woven over her abilities. The heat inside grew, incrementally at first, but then with more insistence as she fed the fire of Light within. The humming, crystal clear in its clarity, heartbreakingly intense, began to fill first her mind, then mouth, then seep out of her very pores.

The air between them, previously still, began to swirl and move. Papers lifted off her desk in the wayward eddies of air, moisture pattered from the ceiling to dampen her bed and carpet; the curtains flapped wildly. Wendy knew they were creating something wrong in her room, something like a mini storm front, but couldn’t help herself. The power was growing, the song rising out of her, and only when she had a reaction, only then could she feel safe enough to stop.

The shadows on her wall in the Never began to lengthen while, in the real world, the shadow cast by the light of her desk lamp began to fade. Going…going…gone.

It was the siren song that did it.

Piotr spun and, seeing the glow pulsing at the edge of her soul, hearing the sweet slinking song, stumbled back. The outline of the girl he knew, red curls brushing against her cheeks and arms outstretched, was rapidly fading under the rising wash of Light. The Light wasn’t as blinding this close, though Piotr’s eyes still gushed water when he gazed upon her, and he felt the song worm its way into his head. High and sharp and lovely, the song vibrated in his back teeth, turning his knees to jelly. The bones he’d long since discarded felt like shattered glass and ground gravel in their sockets and yet, despite the insistent pain, a feeling like exaltation overwhelmed him, lifted him up and made him feel obliquely, absurdly grateful. The Light was horrible and humbling and it was all Piotr could do not to start screaming until his vocal cords were a blasted ruin, his lungs a tattered mess in his chest.

There was a moment, just a moment, when Piotr thought he could grasp just what Wendy was. Then tentacles of Light punched through her chest in a bloodless spray of glass-green fire, leaving a wound like a lipless mouth where her beating heart should have been. The physical body he had known as Wendy was obliterated now, not a tangled hair or shred of skin left. She was Light and life and a terrible, all-encompassing love that filled him and stretched him and left him feeling shredded into tiny pieces. Where her mouth should have been was a smooth, flat expanse of what he could only assume was skin, her nose was gone, her ears lost to sight. Only her eyes, large and brown and warm, were the same. They gazed at him and for the first time in all his years of endless, plodding existence, Piotr felt weak.

Weighed down by her regard, he dropped to his knees and bowed his head. When he vanished beneath the top of the bedspread Wendy drew her power back inside with difficulty, forcing the banked heat inside to cool, to dim, and wrapped the unspooling ribbons of Light around herself again.

Long moments passed before she was done and when Wendy felt fully in control, felt that Piotr was completely safe from the Light side of her nature, she opened her eyes to find him mere inches from her. His expression was shuttered and she searched his face, desperately trying to puzzle out his state of mind.

“Piotr?”

“You are the Lightbringer.” Flat, cold.

She swallowed thickly. “Yes.”

“You lied to me,” he said and his accent was so thick she had to struggle to make out his words. “For weeks and weeks, you have been lying to me!”

“I didn’t lie exactly,” she hedged, feeling miserable, “I just didn’t—”

“You just didn’t tell me that you incinerate my friends day and night!” He threw up his hands and strode across the room. “Are you the one taking them—our Lost? Did you take Dunn? Or Tommy? As revenge for your mother? The Lost took your mother, so you take the Lost?”

“No!” Horrified that Piotr would think such a thing, Wendy struggled for the right words to calm him, to soothe this troubled situation. “I would never—”

“Never what? Never kill one of the dead? Because you have, I’ve seen it!” Piotr crossed his arms over his chest and glared at her. “Or do you deny shredding those Walkers? Stabbing them with those…tentacles? What are they? Weapons? Knives for the likes of you?”

“They’re ribbons!” Wendy snapped. “I wrap a ghost—”

“So you admit it. You strangle my kind with—”

“Strangle? Strangle!” Wendy sputtered. “I save you—”

“Is that what you were trying to tell me earlier, when you stumbled over your words time and time again? Telling me about your mother, you had such a hard time describing her as Seer. Because you are not Seer! You are more. And if you are more, then your mother must be more, da? Is that why you seek her so hard, Wendy? Are you lonely? Is the burden of killing the dead over and over again too much for you?”

“It’s not like that! My mother—”

“TELL ME THE TRUTH! Does your mother kill my kind? Do you?”

“It’s not killed if you’re already dead!” Wendy yelled before she could stop herself. Wendy’s hands flew to her mouth, eyes huge and horrified, but silence followed the proclamation. She’d lucked out; no one seemed to have awoken at her shout. Whispering harshly, she added, “And it’s not like I knew any of you before! I was just doing what I was told to do! It’s my job!”

“Your mother,” Piotr snorted. “Grandmothers, aunts. An entire family of Lightbringers. Destroying souls as you see fit! Filling us with…that…making us feel small and weak and then ripping us apart! Does it make you feel big to make us feel small before you tear us into nothing with your ribbons?” He spat on the ground.

“You dumbass, we don’t destroy anything! I reap ghosts!” Now pushed past all endurance, Wendy strode up to Piotr and poked him in the shoulder. Surprisingly, she made contact and the touch of him was like dragging her hand through dry ice. Yelping, she yanked her hand back and waved it rapidly in the air to warm it. “I don’t kill you, I don’t destroy you, I send you to the afterlife!”

“I am in the afterlife,” he snapped.

Wendy, fuming over the possible damage to her hand, gaped at his sheer stubborn stupidity. Then, surprisingly, he added, “Did you hurt your finger?”

Subdued somewhat by the question, Wendy held it up. “I’ll live.” He snorted and she realized that this fight was getting them nowhere.

“I didn’t mean the Never,” she said dully, sitting on the edge of her bed and tucking her wounded fingers into her armpit. They stung and tingled crazily but she thought they’d be okay. “When I say afterlife I really mean the afterlife. I don’t kill you, I send you into the Light.”

He was quiet a moment. Wendy glanced up and found him standing at the window, looking out. “How many?” he asked, voice low. “How many have you sent on?”

She swallowed thickly. The tone of his voice, the low pitch, didn’t bode well. Piotr had never been a shouter, but he was generally more animated than that. This sudden stillness unnerved her; his unexpected quiet set her on edge. “I’ve never counted. A lot. Hundreds, possibly thousands. Mostly Shades.” She hung her head, for the first time ashamed of what she’d always before considered her duty, part of the natural order of things, even when she’d been avoiding her duty out of fear and guilt over what happened to her mother.

“I told you before, with my mother gone I didn’t want to do it anymore, but because of the Walkers…I’ve had to get up to speed pretty quickly. So…hundreds. Probably more.” She cleared her throat. “I’ve been taking out Walkers while I’ve been on patrol. Ever since we talked. You got me started again. I’ve been helping you.”

“Helping me.” Piotr nodded but didn’t turn. “I must leave.” Leading with his left shoulder, he began to phase through the wall.