Lightbringer

“Rule number one,” she reminded him, and the dangerous twinkle was back. “Call it research.”

Groaning, Piotr took her by the shoulders and hugged her tightly. Her pulse rippled through him, catching and hooking into his very core. “If I weren’t already dead, milaya moya,” he sighed, tilting her head up and slowly sliding into another kiss, “you’d be the death of me.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Guilt warred with worry as Piotr and Wendy approached the bookstore the next morning. The sun was rather high in the sky and Piotr was concerned that he may have already missed the other Riders. He’d wanted to leave earlier but Wendy, waking early, was gone before sunrise. She’d spent the morning at the diner with Eddie and had come back both sulky and bemused. They had, she declared, made up, though for how long still remained to be seen.

After the previous night he’d decided to give Eddie a chance. Once upon a time, he reasoned, Wendy might have had a thing for this Eddie, but that time must be long gone. And there were more important things to stress about than the people his living girlfriend—his girlfriend!—surrounded herself with.

“Wait here,” Piotr told Wendy, sitting her on a bench across the street from the bookstore. “I’ll go in and explain.”

“Good idea,” she whispered, trying to appear inconspicuous. The streets, even this one, were thronged with milling tourists enjoying the holiday and doing last-minute shopping in San Francisco. Wendy, who’d brought a backpack along, settled herself on the bench and drew out a thick novel, The Stand. Glad that she wasn’t clinging, Piotr dodged through the crowd toward the shop, wishing that he’d thought to bring her here before now. Elle was going to have a fit.

He was right.

To be fair, the remaining Riders heard him through to the end before Elle lost it. Thankfully, his reflexes were as quick as hers, and Piotr was able to duck and dodge out of the way as Elle began chucking books, bags, and whatever other refuse she could get her hands on directly at his head. She pegged him a few good times before Lily intervened, stepping between Elle and Piotr and holding up her hands to catch the missiles.

James, who’d always kept Piotr at a distance, did nothing to help the situation; he merely lounged on the stairs to the second floor and smirked as Elle ranted and raved. Piotr caught his eye once or twice with a wordless plea to step in, but James was having too much fun to intervene. When Lily interceded the smile dropped off his face and he sulked, disappointed that Piotr hadn’t been injured in the barrage.

When she’d calmed enough to do more than throw things and scream, Elle (hands on hips) demanded, “What kind of balled up BS is all this? You get goofy over some hotsy-totsy jane and you expect us to just be jake with it?”

At first Piotr wasn’t entirely sure he’d understood her—when Elle really got going her flapper patois took hold and often even Dora had trouble untangling the verbal knots of her speech—but Elle’s furious expression and pointed sneer spoke volumes. “I expected you to be my friends,” Piotr replied coolly, crossing his arms across his chest and resting against the counter. “The kind that support one another.”

“We are your friends,” Lily began, “and we always will be, but—”

“But? What but?!” Elle picked up one of Dora’s abandoned sketchpads and waved it in the air, shaking it nearly under Piotr’s nose. “I got a beef with ol’ Pete here and I aim to have my say. This palooka’s got some nerve if he thinks he can just waltz on in here and think we’re gonna goosestep in time to his little suicide parade.”

“Suicide? I’m already dead!”

James shook his head. “Man, there are worse things than being dead. You know that. And if this girl Wendy is the Lightbringer like you say she is, then you’re not just playing with fire, you’re downright taunting it.”

“Wendy would never hurt me.”

Infuriated, Elle threw down the pad and began poking Piotr hard in the chest. “Listen to you! ‘Wendy would never hurt me,’” she mimicked in a high nasal falsetto, tucking her tongue between her teeth on each vowel so she lisped. “Maybe not you, but what about the rest of us? What about the Lost? That girl’s job is to exterminate our kind!”

“She’s setting us free—”

Elle snorted and poked him again. “Free! Listen to yourself, Pete! Did what happen to those Walkers look like ‘free’ to you? They were burned up from the inside. That’s sick. That’s just wrong. And you kissed it.”

“This I will not discuss with you,” Piotr snapped. “It is none of your business, Elle.”

“Fine, neckin’ with the freakshow aside, what about the Lost, huh? You said she and the Lost have some sort of wacko connection, right? Well, you ever think that maybe your gal Friday out there was the one who took ’em? Maybe she’s not killing off the Walkers, maybe she’s just in league with them, had them come on down here and scoop the Lost up for her. You yourself said you told her where we all were before you knew she was the Lightbringer.”

“Your point being?”

“My point being that I think it’s awful convenient, her just happening to hang ’round the park when you got yourself ambushed over Specs.”

“It is nothing like that,” Piotr protested. “She could have come and reaped all of us anytime she wanted, but she did not! She’s not that sort of person.”

“Sure she ain’t, Pete. Sure. The glowing tentacle monster that eats our kind up like we were penny candy ain’t like that. I guess that means you, Mr. Petey Optimistic, ain’t stuck on her at all!”

“Do not call her that,” Piotr snarled. “Wendy has a duty—”

“A duty! Hah!” Elle threw up her hands and laughed long and hard, but there was no mirth in the sound, only shrill, venomous sarcasm. “The monster’s got a duty. She’s all about doin’ the right thing, making sure everything in the Never’s copasetic, right? Sure she does! She understands all about duty, I bet. That’s why she kept you, Piotr, not just any ol’ Rider but the big cheese who started the Riders, away from us when we needed you most. That’s why you, Mr. Hi- You’re-Dead-Here’s-How-The-Afterlife-Works himself, was off neckin’ with a monster when you should have been here running a shift!”

“Ny ti i svoloch’,” Piotr said flatly, slapping her poking hand away. “Insane, Elle. I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

“Course you don’t,” she spat. “Ol’ Petey never has a goddamn clue ’bout nothin’ these days, monsters and Riders included.”

Piotr stuffed his hands in his pockets, weary now of the shouting and yelling but at a loss for how to stop it. “Elle, you’re not being fair.”

“I’m not bein’ fair? I’m not? Fine. Fine, Petey, I’ll be fair to you. I’ll be fair because I’m sick of it. I’m sick of protecting you, of playin’ along. You wanna drop us for some livin’ dame? Fine! Then I’m gonna lay a little truth on you before you walk out that door and go back to your precious Lightbringer. I’m gonna talk and you’re gonna sit here and listen! That fair enough for you?” Piotr, frustrated, turned his face away.

Elle twisted until she could look at James, still lounging on the stairs, elbows resting on knees and avidly following the debate. “Jaime-boy, tell the truth. Have I or have I not known this piker for years? Ain’t we had a caper or two?”

“Long as you’ve been dead,” James replied in his slow and thoughtful way, lifting one tightly braided dreadlock and examining the end. “Long as I’ve been dead too.”

“Ha-ha,” Piotr grumbled, “this is not the time. This trick I’ve heard before.”

“So Pete, you’ve known me goin’ on a century,” Elle continued, ignoring Piotr’s protests. “And James for almost two. If I remember right, you found me in a speakeasy and Jaime-boy hauling cotton south of the Mason- Dixon line.”

Terror gripped him, set his stomach boiling with acid and anger. This joke had gone on long enough! “Elle,” Piotr whispered through lips pressed tightly together, edges bled white from the pressure, “stop. This is