By the time the dots had quit dancing in front of his eyes, Piotr had lost sight of Lily, but, unwilling to let her face the Walkers alone, he raced after, toward the light. Within moments crossing the distance grew difficult; the air had grown thick and syrupy, yet still comfortably warm, like wading through the midsummer surf, tidal in its intensity.
Just ahead Lily knelt, hands resting on knees, eyes cast forward. Further on by quite a distance the two Walkers cut their way through the air, moving rapidly toward a shining figure, lit from within. Even at this distance, Piotr could feel the heat the creature gave off, and the prismatic fire at its core was near blinding.
“Lily?” Piotr knelt beside her. “What is it? What’s wrong? Are you hurt further?”
“Piotr,” she breathed, “do you see her? Do you see
“Who?” Piotr touched Lily’s shoulder. She was trembling.
Shameless with joy, Lily cried and rocked back and forth on her heels, humming under her breath between words. Passionate and vivid, lit by the light, her voice had taken on a lyrical, musical quality, almost a chanting tone. “I had heard rumors of a creature made of light…but I never believed them. Yet here, now, in this forsaken place, in these grey lands, I’ve finally found the Lightbringer.”
Dazzled and confused, Piotr turned to look again. The figure was small, but brilliant, lit up from within by the intensity of the light pouring from every pore. As he watched it raised two arms outward, seemingly embracing the oncoming Walkers. The faster one reached the figure, only the outline of its cloak setting it apart from the light.
Something about the sluggish way they moved struck Piotr as strange and wrong. The deadly grace of the two Walkers was stripped away, leaving only wooden puppets lurching toward the light like moths…like moths flying straight at candlelight.
“Lily,” Piotr whispered harshly, scooping the young woman again in his arms, “it’s time to leave,
Suddenly, from the depths of the creature, tentacles of light shot out, spearing the Walker through the chest, arms, and legs. They were horrific to look at—unnaturally long and quick, the fluidly shifting tentacles were spiky with light and energy, pulsing around the edges in a purple nimbus.
One after another more tentacles, over a dozen in all, burst from the Lightbringer’s chest, stretched, and wrapped around the other Walker, downing it in a moment and dragging it kicking and shrieking forward. It fought, kicking and lashing with the sharpened finger bones, but the Lightbringer only shuddered under the onslaught, barely budging.
A smoky stench, sickly sweet and cloying, drifted downwind as the creature lifted the Walkers up, each impaled on the end of the long and thick tentacles. The scent was like leaves burning; the screams painfully shrill.
Then the first Walker started to flake apart before their eyes, cinders of its essence peeling from the core and floating in the light before burning crisply away. The second Walker doubled its shrieking but the tentacles never wavered, the screaming never stopped.
“No. No-no-no—” Lily gasped and, turning her face daintily aside, retched on Piotr’s shoes. In the distance, after long moments, the shrieks finally wound down and the rich, thick smell of burning began to fade away.
Slowly the creature turned towards them and Piotr could feel a sinuous urge seep into him—he wanted to get closer to the light.
“I think,” Lily said, wiping her hand across her mouth, “that perhaps that may not be
“The Lightbringer,” Piotr whispered, using all the willpower he had to take one stumbling backward step and then another. Turning his back on the creature, he closed his eyes to the light and concentrated on putting one foot before the other until they reached the highway and the urge to leap into the light miraculously subsided.
There, worn and weary, he sank to the earth, and it was Lily’s turn to watch over him.
CHAPTER THREE
Half-sliding through her bedroom window, Wendy winced as the edge of her stocking caught on a splinter and ripped. Her book bag thumped to the floor and she froze, listening carefully for sounds from her father’s room.
Blessed silence.
Shimmying the rest of the way inside, Wendy chucked her bag onto her bed and paused by the mirror to take stock of her appearance before her dad saw her. The rain had washed away most of her makeup, leaving her with raccoon-eyes and lipstick faded to a dull, smudged lilac. The temporary dye was almost gone; once again her hair shone coppery red at the roots and black at the tips, straggling over her shoulders in sodden hanks. Specks of mud dotted her cheeks and neck.
Tonight’s search had been hard, even her nail polish was chipped, and she’d lost one of her sneakers hoisting herself over the treatment plant’s back fence. The laces had caught on a snarl of wire and she’d pulled herself to the other side before realizing it’d slipped off her foot.
“Guess I’m gonna have to spring for boots after all,” Wendy sighed, toeing off the lonely sneaker and tossing it in the trash. Downstairs the grandfather clock chimed twice.
Crap. It was late and she still had homework to do!
Stripping quickly, Wendy wrapped herself in her rattiest robe and tiptoed past her dad’s door to the bathroom. Ten minutes in the shower and a quick visit to the kitchen later, Wendy settled down at her desk to tackle Algebra II. The problems were easy but she was having trouble concentrating. Patrol always left her edgy and after what she’d seen tonight, she had every right to be. Jabberwocky, the ghost of her mother’s favorite Persian, was curled on the windowsill, eyes slitted closed and purring up a storm. Jabber had gotten a lot friendlier after he’d died. Before, no one but her mother could pet him, but now he spent nearly all his time in Wendy’s room or just beneath her window, lounging in the tree.
Though the steady rumble of Jabber’s purr was soothing, Wendy still couldn’t focus. Setting aside her half- done work, she loosely grasped her pencil and stared out at the moon, mindlessly doodling on the back of her notebook. At first the lines were aimless, loops and swirls and hearts and stars, but then she drew a thickly lashed eye and followed with the curve of a slightly aquiline nose. Thick lips, sensitive at the corners, offset by high cheekbones, giving the face—his face—a faintly amused expression. Black hair waved over the forehead and past the chin, concealing all but a hint of the scar that puckered from temple to neck.
Picture complete, Wendy sat back. She knew where she’d seen these features before, but what she couldn’t imagine was why she was bothering to draw them.
After all, they belonged to a dead man.
After the accident four years ago, it had taken the paramedics and firefighters half an hour to peel the car apart far enough to pull them out of the wreckage.
Between the two of them, Eddie had been the worst off—when they bustled him into the ambulance he was a bloody, bleeding wreck barely clinging to life. Hardly scratched and only slightly bruised, Wendy drifted through the rescue with barely a thought or word, barely noticing when the ambulance peeled away with sirens screaming, Eddie strapped inside.
Shock, the police officers said, and wrapped her in blankets, pressing a cool bottle of water between her fingers while they waited on a second ambulance to transport Wendy and Mr. Barry’s corpse to the hospital.
Condition stable, Wendy sat halfway into the back of a police car and sipped water mechanically as adults eddied around her, asking questions and barking orders. Every inch of her skin felt calm and cold and distant, but far down inside her chest there was something expanding—like some strange, fierce fire, previously banked, had begun burning deep, deep inside.
It stung like nothing she’d ever felt before, but Wendy knew there was nothing wrong with her physically. The
