Lightbringer

asleep? What, you got Freddy Krueger in there, slicing people up? Are you going to drop dead if you fall asleep? Because the way things are going right now, you’re going to drop dead if you don’t fall asleep.”

“It’s my body, Ed.”

“It may be your body but I’ve got a baseball bat. I’ve got no problem letting you sleep off a concussion. Talk.”

“Fine. I spend just about every night avoiding sleep and running around town reaping. I still haven’t found my mom. Her soul’s been threatened by a dead crazy chick with skin like rotting lettuce. I won’t find her unless I keep looking so, neatly put, I have to do this, okay?”

“I get why you’re worried about your mom, but last I checked you were back to reaping anyone you came across, not just the bad dudes who chased you down. Is that still the deal?”

Irritated, Wendy refused to answer.

“So it’s still not just the creepy, rotting bad guys?” He waited for her reply and when it became clear that she wasn’t going to give one, he groaned. “Wendy, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, why exactly do you think you have to do this?”

Easing the car out of the parking space, Eddie settled into the line forming at the edge of campus. Around them other seniors threw their things into their trunks or backseats and revved their engines, lining up quickly behind him and shouting holiday well-wishes at one another. The air was cold, not frosty—not in California—but still chill enough to turn cheeks pink and make eyes sting.

“Why is it that you,” Eddie continued, waving at Pete Abrahms who cheerfully leapt into his dad’s van beside them, “have to go around reaping people who’re already dead? I mean, doesn’t that just seem a touch backward to you?”

They reached the front of the line. Eddie signaled, turned right, caught the tail end of the yellow light, and within moments they were away from the campus and heading towards home. Wendy, at a loss for words, sulked in silence.

Eddie let five minutes pass, turning left, right, and left again as he took the back streets home. “Not getting an answer, huh?”

“It’s my job,” she said. “It’s my mom’s job and it was my grandma’s job and it was her grandmother’s job, yada yada yada, so on and so forth. If you don’t understand that, Eddie, you don’t understand me after all.”

They were passing a park not far from her house where a cluster of elementary kids were learning to skate on the wide paths, holding hands and following a teenage girl in a narrow V like fluorescent-headed ducklings. Watching them, Wendy pressed her fingers to the glass, yearning.

“Hey, after fifteen years of putting up with your crap I think I understand you just fine,” he protested. “Maybe it’s you who doesn’t understand yourself. Maybe you just need to—”

“Stop the car,” Wendy demanded, sitting up suddenly.

“What? Oh, no, hon, I’m not gonna let you be like that.” Eddie shook his head and slapped his hand down on the auto locks. “After all this crap I don’t have to put up with a temper tantrum from you. You don’t get to storm off and—”

“Eds, shut your mouth for one damn second, stop the car, and open the stupid fucking door! I’ll be right back!” Wendy snapped. She kicked at the passenger door, cracking the plastic, and Eddie, bewildered, stopped and unlocked the car. Without another word she was out the door and sprinting across a small local playground, fading out of sight within seconds of her feet hitting the grass.

“Damn it,” he grunted, scowling. “Not again.” Pulling the car along the curb, Eddie parked and waited, eyeing the cracked plastic with a scowl. This could take a while.

Piotr, eyes closed, waited for the first blow to fall. The blow never came.

Instead a slow sweep of sound broke through the clearing, sweet and high, vibrating at the top of the range with a crystal tone. Heat began baking his cheeks and face, and where the warmth touched him, Piotr felt his anxiety drain away, felt the soothing sweetness fill him and lift him up. The hands loosened their unbreakable grip on his wrists; the vile tongue slipped away.

When Piotr opened his eyes the Light was blinding.

The Walkers, lost in the siren song, held open their seeping, mutilated arms and welcomed the Lightbringer’s embrace. Piotr began crawling forward, seeking the Light, and saw Specs doing so as well, both making their way as best they could towards the glorious, aching afterlife.

Before they could reach the edges of the Light, however, the song quieted, faded away. The Walkers were no more, taken with such rapidity that Piotr had hardly noticed their passing, and now only Wendy remained, the remainder of the Light glowing around her edges, eyes wary.

“Well, that’s new,” she said, sinking to her knees, face grave. Wendy held up her forearm. Four parallel slashes, deep enough that Piotr could see the red meat inside, bled sluggishly through the material of her grey overshirt. Wendy stripped the shirt off and wrapped the thin material around her wrist. “Ow,” she complained and glanced at Piotr from beneath her lashes. “Hi,” she said, tying off the makeshift bandage, “I missed you.”

“You too?” Piotr held out his hand. Before Wendy could reach for it, Specs was suddenly there between them, hands outstretched and eyes wild.

“Take me home!” he half-screamed, ignoring Piotr completely. It was as if Piotr wasn’t even there. “I saw it! You hid it but I saw it! I want to go home! I want my mommy! Mommy!” He grabbed Wendy’s wrist with both arms and shouted into her face, spit flying, “I WANT TO GO HOME!”

A burst of energy—purple-cold and fierce—pulsed out from him in a wave so powerful it knocked Piotr a full fifteen feet backwards. It was like nothing he’d ever seen or felt before, like nothing he could have ever imagined. Wendy, trapped by Specs’ tight hold around her wrist, sagged in his grip. Her face, red from the exertion of channeling the Light, bled white within moments and her lips turned bluish at the edges. She began to gag.

Horrified, Piotr struggled to his feet as Specs released Wendy’s wrist and bent over her, shoving his small hands through the flesh of her stomach and pulling something small and round and sharply glowing from deep within her gut. “I see you,” he sobbed. “Let me go home. Please? Please take me home?”

“Specs!” Piotr called, squinting to look at the intense ball of light in the boy’s grasp. “Wendy cannot help you if you’re hurting her! Specs! Specs! Listen to me!”

The boy didn’t hear, only clutched the orb and rocked back and forth, sobbing.

Wendy, face down in the dirt, didn’t move.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Horrified and uncertain what to do, Piotr approached Specs at an angle. Just a glance told him that the ball of light was fragile; he had a sense that if Specs dropped it, the ball might shatter. Gingerly, making sure to keep his movements slow and even, Piotr wrapped one arm around Specs’ shoulders and slid the other hand around the orb. It was white-hot in his hand and he hissed a deep breath, shocked by the sheer magnitude of the pain.

“Wendy, derzhis’. Ne ymiraj,” he whispered. “Stay with me. Do not die.”

Carefully tensing his fingers, Piotr scooped the orb out of Specs’ grip and laid it on Wendy’s navel. At first nothing happened, but then, just as Piotr was wracking his brain for some other way that might return the glowing thing to Wendy’s insides, it began to sink through her flesh. Piotr’s other arm tightened around the boy, both drawing excess energy from him and holding him back. Specs struggled for a moment before faltering, blinking rapidly several times, and shaking his head. “Piotr?”

“Ny ti i idiot,” Piotr said evenly, rolling and unrolling his hand as Specs’ essence worked its way through his system, fully healing his wounds and numbing the excruciating blaze of pain that had enveloped his orb-handling hand.

“I don’t believe that I need a translation for that,” Specs groaned.

“You are okay? You are calm?”

A nod. “Yeah.” Specs wiped his hair away from his eyes, licked his lips nervously. “I think…I think that’s her