Lightbringer

The instant it was out of her face, Mrs. Barry slumped to the floor and Wendy, crying out in disgust, dodged past the nasty thing in Piotr’s arms to push the call button. The nurse was there within moments.

“What happened?”

“She fainted,” Wendy panted. “She was just talking and she fainted.”

In the background Piotr had drawn his dagger and was stabbing the web; each thrust of the knife caused the thing to wail and keen in pain, tendrils thrashing madly. Wendy found it immensely hard to concentrate on explaining Mrs. Barry’s collapse to the nurse while the web shrieked itself to death in the background. The nurse pushed Wendy out of the room and cried for a doctor over the intercom. Wendy, glad to be free, fled down the hall.

“That was disgusting,” Wendy whispered, walking briskly towards the elevators. Her mother’s room was two floors up from Eddie’s. Once ensconced in the safety of the elevator, Wendy leaned against the back wall, pressed her hands to her face, and trembled from head to toe. “Why?” she asked. “What the hell was that thing?”

“It was definitely a spirit web,” Piotr said. “It’s like a rabbit snare; you throw many in the air and go back later, see what you caught.”

“It was feeding off her?”

“It’s just collecting life from her a minute or two at a time. From the look of that thing, it’s been there for longer than Eddie’s been…gone.” Piotr rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously. “When it gets full or the person it takes root in dies, the web detaches and finds its way outside. Spirit webs like to stay warm. It will crawl as high as it can—plant itself on the roof of a building if possible, to be close to the sun—and wait for someone to come along and harvest the life.”

“That is horrible.” Wendy pressed her hand to her mouth. “But if those things are so effective then why aren’t they all over the place?”

He shrugged. “I haven’t seen a spirit web in a long time, Wendy. They’re extremely difficult to produce; you have to find a plant in the Never’s wild and then have a ghost insane enough to be willing to gestate one in their own guts. It gives the seedlings a taste for life essence.” He paused. “Wait. High places…” Had that been what the White Lady was doing at the airport that day? Collecting spirit webs? The air towers certainly were tall enough, and with all the living moving through the area there was bound to be at least a web or two to be harvested in the wild.

“Just when I thought death couldn’t get any more gross,” Wendy complained. The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. She led the way down the hall and Jon and Chel, sitting on either side of their mom, looked up when Wendy entered.

“Mom’s really witty today,” Jon said, scrubbing his knuckles across his face. He gestured to the television mounted in the upper corner of the room. On the screen a pregnant-to-bursting teen was pulling the hair of a skinny blonde girl with one hand and punching her in the small of the back with the other. “I keep telling her that daytime TV is the new opiate of the masses but Mom’s of the opinion that reality shows are where the real money is.”

“I still think Nana’s ‘stories’ top that list,” Chel added, leaning back in the molded plastic chair and crossing her legs. “You can’t beat good old-fashioned soaps.”

“Porn,” Wendy said. “It’s a growth industry.”

Grinning at their groans, Wendy settled into Jon’s seat while he went to find another chair. They could have sat on the opposite bed, but none of them wanted to be far from their mother. Wendy held her mom’s thin, cool hand while Piotr examined the body.

“Any change?” Wendy asked her sister while Piotr probed her mother’s midsection, slipping his hands deep inside her guts.

“None.” Chel shook her head, looking their mother over sadly. “I feel like a jerk for saying this, Wendy, but maybe they’re right. Maybe it’s time to pull the plug. Mom wouldn’t want to be strapped down and cooped up, some vegetable in a bed. She’d rather end it.”

“I don’t know,” Wendy mused as Piotr’s hands slipped out of her mother’s abdomen and rested, relaxed, on his hips. He glanced meaningfully at her mother then at the doorway, drifting out the door a few seconds later. “Mom was a fighter, Chel. She might still be in there, you know, fighting.”

“Maybe.” Chel squeezed their mom’s hand and rose, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’ve been having these crazy dreams about her. You know how bad flu dreams get—you start running a little fever and suddenly you’ve got Wonderland camped out between your ears.”

Chuckling, Wendy nodded. “We’ve all had a couple doozies. Why, what happened?”

“I can’t remember,” Chel said, shrugging. “But I was at the park, you know, the one up the street? I was sitting on the old rusty swingset, not the new plastic one but the old one that would burn your butt in July? Anyway, it was one of those dreams you get where you can watch everything happening but you’re not really there? Like you’re watching a movie? You were there, talking to Mom, right? You were yelling at each other. She was saying that you had to try again but you didn’t want to. And I wanted to try since you didn’t want to, but I didn’t know what you were trying. Then she slapped you and told you to grow up. Weird, huh?”

A chill shivered down Wendy’s spine. What was it the White Lady had said about dreams before? She was so tired and stressed out about her mother and Eddie that she couldn’t remember.

“So,” she asked, forcing lightness, “did you ever get a chance to try?”

“Nah. My alarm went off and I woke up.”

“Shame,” Wendy said. She brushed a loose strawberry curl back against her mother’s face. “I think I’d do anything she wanted, no matter how hard it was, to get her back.”

“Me too,” Chel said, skirting the edge of the bed and hugging Wendy with one arm. “We all would.”

Embarrassed but secretly pleased at the embrace, Wendy cleared her throat. “Does she need her nails cut or anything? I see you brushed her hair.”

“They do a good job here,” Chel said, patting their mother’s hand. “She looks okay overall. No bedsores or anything.” She lifted their mom’s hand higher and twisted her wrist gently. “You know, I’ve seen these tattoos before but I didn’t realize until today that these are the same ones you’ve got all over you. When’d you get yours again?”

“About a year ago. Dad had that fit, remember?”

“Right, cause Mom signed off on you getting them without checking it by him first. He was so pissed!”

“He just doesn’t want us to grow up,” Wendy said. “Mom understood that it had to happen sometime.” That wasn’t the real reason she sported the same lines and knots her mother had embedded deep into her flesh, but Chel wasn’t a Lightbringer and wouldn’t understand the need for the supernatural protection the ink provided. It wasn’t much, it only created an aversion at best, but every bit counted, no matter what the White Lady claimed.

“She let you get matching ink permanently poked into your skin and a dozen earrings, but freaked when I wanted to bleach my hair.” Chel shook her head. “I love her but sometimes she can be such a hypocrite.” Her voice dropped. “I didn’t want to say this before, but I used to hate you for that. It just wasn’t fair.” She sighed. “I guess I got over it, huh?”

Saddened and embarrassed for her sister, Wendy shrugged, uncomfortable with the direction this conversation had turned. “I’m just different than you, Chel. Different rules apply to me, I guess.”

She snorted. “Why? Because you’re older?”

“Nah,” Wendy said. “Because I’m Batman.”

“Right, right,” Chel said, laughing.

“I hear the Joker’s hiring,” Wendy continued. “And you do have a wicked laugh.”

“Yeah, but those clothes! Not in a million years.” Coughing, Chel pressed a hand to her forehead. “Ugh, I feel like crap, Wendy. I wish this fever would break already.”

“I know, honey,” Wendy said. “Visiting hours aren’t over yet, but we don’t have to stay if you don’t feel up to it. You know how Nana likes to cook a ton of food for lunch—”

“Yeah right,” Chel snorted. “The idea of eating makes me want to puke.”

“And that’s different from normal, how?”

“Haha, very funny. I’ll find Jon and we’ll see Eddie before we leave.” Chel squeezed their mother’s fingers once more and laid her hand back on the bed before brushing a soft kiss across her forehead. “Love you, Momma. I’ll be back soon, okay?” Then she brightened. “Oh, I almost forgot. This got left for you. Here.” She dug in her purse and pulled out an envelope, roughly folded and addressed to Wendy in neat, blocky letters. “I guess some