The rising wind whipped flurries of debris about Piotr’s ankles, lifting discarded shopping bags and candy wrappers into drifts like piles of autumn leaves. The brick streets beneath his shoes, warped into strange and twisted shapes by age and tectonic activity, were only the fading memories of the meticulously laid brick roads that had been before. Soon the remainder would crumble away, revealing concrete buckled by the California heat, already warped into rolling hills in the center, collecting water and spiritual debris with every summer storm.
Drifting along, letting the wind guide him as if he were as light as the trash spinning by, Piotr concentrated on the journey home rather than brood on what he’d just lost. It took all his will not to turn around and go back, to accept Elle’s generous sanctuary and learn to move among the living like a shadow. He couldn’t though, even if he wanted to. The sky had opened above him, rain poured down, and there were Walkers abroad.
Night was falling, brought in with the storm, and Piotr sped his pace, skidding down Highway 101’s embankment, kicking aside flattened disks of soda cans and sodden cardboard boxes in his wake. The steel mill, their treehouse sanctuary, was still many miles distant, hidden amid the sprawl of industrial buildings and businesses that once thrived at the edge of the city, near the humid stink of the canal. Carefully maintaining his balance on the rain-slick grass, Piotr almost missed the sharp cry of pain amid the drubbing of rain and cracks of blue lightning across the sky.
He paused and it came again, a brief shout from the tangle of buildings just south of the highway, articulate with fear. Stepping up his pace, Piotr followed the scream, heart thudding in his chest and breath coming in short, harsh bursts.
Just south of the water treatment plant three figures fought, sliding through the fog and reflected highway halogens like skaters across ice. Two were long and lean and white-clad— Walkers—but the third, Piotr was surprised to note, was a short, dark figure he recognized: Lily.
“Lily,” he cried, sprinting now, “hang on!”
Hearing him, Lily’s attention wavered for a critical instant. One Walker was attacking her face-on, but the moment she paused the other swooped in from the side, clawing her deeply across the hip.
“LILY!” Reaching her side, Piotr slammed the second Walker into the wall. Up close he could see a line of jaw beneath the white hood, and the teeth of the Walker where they poked through the rotting holes in its cheek. Coarse black stubble rasped against his hand as Piotr slapped the Walker’s head against the wall over and over again, curling one hand in the white cloak for purchase. A stench puffed out at him from the fabric, rot and wet decay, moist with a black stink like old sour dirt and albino, crawling things.
Then it laid hands on him, gripping him at the wrists, and Piotr was filled with cold.
The Walker’s icy touch sapped him almost immediately, drawing the strength from Piotr’s arms and chilling his fury away. He could still hear Lily’s raspy cries of pain but they were distant, unimportant, and slowly, under the Walker’s insistent pressure, Piotr’s fist loosened and fell away.
Laying a palm flat against Piotr’s chest, the Walker hissed in a slow and ragged language. Piotr felt a tug deep inside, a slow painful tearing like a hangnail peeling skin and nail away from the quick. He gasped for air but the pull lasted only a moment before the Walker drew his hand away in disgust.
“Too old,” the Walker snarled, taking Piotr by the back of his neck and shaking him like a naughty kitten. “No years from you!”
“Sorry ’bout that,” Piotr slurred and the Walker flung him away. Once outside the range of that intractable cold, Piotr could feel his will returning with the thawing of his limbs. Crawling on hands and knees, he made his way towards Lily, who’d collapsed in a heap only a few yards away. She appeared unconscious.
“No use,” hissed Piotr’s Walker. “No souls here. No life here. Only Rider filth.”
“The White Lady will shriek,” the other said, ignoring Piotr and nudging Lily with the toe of one white boot. “We should lick their bones in retribution.”
His hand was kicked away. Piotr stubbornly stretched for the knives again but the Walker’s foot thrust down, grinding his wrist against the dirt. Skeletal fingers clad in loose gloves of their own rotting flesh pressed on his shoulders, pinning him to the ground. Behind him Lily moaned, eyes fluttering open.
“Piotr?”
Her voice came at him from a million miles away. “Piotr? What’s that light?”
Flush against his teeth Piotr’s tongue felt numb and dumb, his lips frozen shut, forming garbled words in slow motion. “What…light?”
But he could feel it now, the odd warmth that tickled his skin, melting the cold of the Watchers away in rivulets of sharp white light. The pinning hands and foot were abruptly gone, stripped away, and Piotr took advantage of their absence, staggering to his feet. The area lit up in a corona, spilling around corners and through windows, shining with a fierce insistence across the dusty, hardpan yard. It stretched impossibly far, illuminating even the distant highway with bright, clean light.
“Whatever it is, it began glowing and they perked up like hounds scenting a bitch. They followed it.” Lily’s voice trembled. Groaning, she pointed in the direction of the southernmost building. “The Walkers left.”
Puzzled, Piotr turned and squinted in the direction she pointed. She spoke the truth. “Maybe they weren’t hungry after all?”
“Impossible.” She lapsed into her native tongue, querying. When Piotr, uncomprehending, didn’t reply, she switched to English with a frown. “The fox does not relinquish the hare so easily when the kill is moments away. Why would they leave like that?”
Piotr leaned down and scooped Lily into his arms. Though corded with muscle, his old mentor was still light as thistledown, slight, and easy to lift. “Who cares? Let’s leave before they change their minds.” Thankfully her leg was already beginning to mend, layers of effervescent tissue bubbling forth over the bone. Healing for their kind was slow without the touch of one of the Lost. Still, he was glad it had been just the two of them. A Walker scenting the Lost often went into berserker frenzy. Piotr couldn’t imagine having to protect both Lily and a child against one Walker, much less against two of them.
They had to get out of there, NOW.
“Piotr, wait.” Lily struggled in his grip. “I cannot leave. For many nights I have walked with the moon to track those monsters here.”
“You…Lily, why? You’re still camped out in San Jose,
“The death dealers took Dunn. I will not leave without learning his fate.” Her eyes were bright with tears that did not fall.
Sympathy welled in Piotr, coupled with abject horror. Losing one of your Lost was a horrible feeling, one no Rider should ever have to go through, but losing a child to the Walkers was worse. He ached for her loss. “Oh,” he murmured.
“There is no sorry,” she snapped, sloe eyes flashing. “Put me down.”
“Let me go!”
Firmly, he tightened his grip, careful of her wounded leg. “No, Lily,” he said, careful to emphasize the English word. “I will not.”
“I hope you rot, Piotr.” Then, viper-quick, she punched him in the nose.
Without meaning to, Piotr dropped her, clapping his hands to his face as the tears streamed down. Piotr heard her limping quickly away, the scrape of her boots loud in the strange, still brilliance filling the courtyard.
