Never (9 page)

Piotr could sense Lily and Wendy watching him obliquely, gauging his every move. It was simultaneously aggravating and soothing, knowing that if he collapsed they both would leap to action. His best friend and his love. How did he get so lucky? Then, as if taunting him, the niggling pain gnawed at his gut, nearly bending him double with the intensity of it, rippling through his core. As the pain blossomed, working its way across his torso, Piotr felt the memory unfold around him, soft and pervasive as fresh-fallen snow…

The snow was as deep as his thigh in places and his hands were fading to brown, tacky as the blood dried. The breeze picked up; downy feathers spun, lifted high and drifting down again, sticking to the drying blood on his forehead, to the tears and sweat cooling on his cheeks. Keeping the frozen river to the right, Piotr slogged through the snow, heading for where the village sat, nestled in the vee where the banks of the river split, protected on three sides by the frozen water.

Piotr took another step, fur-clad foot breaking through the ice atop the snow beneath. The Reaper's cloak was dragging the snow beside him, leaving thin, oddly patterned trails splattered with faint pink as the feathers dragged in the drifts. Great black flocks of crows and gulls and ravens weighed down the overhanging evergreens all the way to the end of the forest but not a peep was heard; the forest was unnervingly quiet.

“Mother will know what to do,” Piotr thought, fingers reflexively tightening on the cloak of feathers, ignoring the tickle of blood trickling from his face onto the cloak, absorbed by the feathers and wetting the snow.

The forest was a mottled mass of white-green-black as far as the eye could see, and then, from the corner of his eye, Piotr spotted a flash of red, of silver-grey, and the whip-quick motion of the long braid only a hint of the shape shifting in the tree's shadow, gone before Piotr was sure he'd spotted it.

At first Piotr was confused—this snow was deep, no one he knew could move that swiftly and silently in snow this deep—before Piotr remembered who—what—he was dealing with.

REAPER
.

Piotr was yanked out of his memories when Elle stiffened and pushed Eddie aside, pressing her face against the side window. “SHHH! Do you hear that?”

“I can't hear anything,” Eddie grunted, wincing and shifting beneath her weight, “with your knee crushing my junk!”

“LISTEN,” Elle demanded. Eyes narrowing, she looked left and right and Piotr followed suit, trusting Elle's instincts implicitly. They'd only traveled a short distance due to the forest of webbing; there were still several blocks to go before they reached Nob Hill. Were they on California Street? It was so hard to tell in the mist and amid the dangling webs, but the street was tilted at a crazy angle here, steep and slick.

Snuffle.
Loud and wet.

Snuffle-snuffle-snort.
Loud and wet and
close.

“Go-go-go,” Wendy growled at Jon. “Move-move-move!”

Jon hit the gas, the car struggling against gravity, but it was too late; the beast filled the road in front of them, shoulders as high as the car, teeth as long as Wendy's forearm.

It was like a dog, or a wolf, but not, and a cat, but not. It was furry and huge, filling the front windshield with its bulk, and its legs were corded with strangely-shaped muscles, but it had five legs and bizarre, bulbous knots poking out, eye-like appendages blinking at her, amidst the fur of its chest and legs. Foam, white and stringy, dripped from its jaws as the gigantic dog-wolf-cat-thing dropped its head low and examined the occupants of the car.

“Can dogs have red eyes like that?” Eddie asked in a breathless, high voice, as if the air had been knocked out of him. “All slitted like that?” His voice cracked. “And tails? Tails that snap back and forth like that? That's not possible, right? Right?” He pressed a hand against his mouth. “What. The. Hell.”

Lily laid a hand on Eddie's thigh. “Hush,” she whispered, voice steady but sharp, cutting through the panic in the car instantly. “Be calm. Do not draw its attention.”

“But it's looking at us,” Eddie hissed.

“It may yet be only curious,” Lily replied evenly and Piotr envied the way she held perfectly still. His every muscle screamed at him to flee but Lily was like a predator herself, poised and waiting for the perfect moment to move.

“Be still,” she continued. “Be calm. Whatever this beast is, it senses our fear, it smells your panic.”

The monster growled low in its throat and Piotr groaned in pain, hands reflexively jerking up to his torso, pressing hard against his ribs and belly.

“Piotr?” Wendy asked, untangling her fingers from Eddie's. “Piotr, are you okay?” Her voice dipped down. “Is it the…?” She gestured to her gut.

“Push past the creature, go slowly but faster than this,” Piotr gasped, writhing on the seat as if his very guts were going to come
spilling out his belly. “It…it's not from this world, it doesn't understand…it doesn't understand what we are yet. It's…it's…from the space between the worlds…”

“What? How do you…” Jon hesitated. “I don't—”

“Listen to the man!” Chel snapped and shoved Jon over. Before he could protest Chel lifted her left leg high and jammed it down on the accelerator, missing Jon's foot by half an inch. The car shot forward, swerving as Jon tried to steer around his sister and the beast, confused, darted to the side, sliding against the steep slope and scrabbling for an instant for better purchase on the street.

“You're gonna hit someone!” Eddie yelled, but the way, miraculously, had cleared before them. Cars honked, dimly, from the living lands, but the Never was so thick here Wendy could only just make out the outline of the living world. All around was nothing but death and decay, the spirit webs draining the vitality from every living thing. Here, in the heart of the forest, nothing moved except them, and the Never itself seemed twisted, wrong, like it was bleeding out into the living world.

How had Wendy lived like this, juggling the sight of two worlds laid atop one another, for so long? The double-world vision always made his head ache violently.

Using Piotr's shoulder as leverage, Wendy lifted up in a crouch and twisted to stare out the back of the rear window. Piotr followed her lead and saw that the beast had vanished into the foggy mist, the ropes of spirit web obscuring it from view. They were alone—them, the webs, and the Shades being devoured like flies above them.

“How much longer?” Chel whispered, voice trembling. “I can't see anything but the Never right now.”

“Pahzhalstah,”
Piotr commanded. “Stop. Here.”

Shrugging, Jon obliged, no questions asked. Piotr could tell that Wendy's brother was unnerved but was attempting to act tough. The spirit of her family impressed him; they were a tough lot,
that was for sure. Once upon a time he would have been proud to call all three of them Riders.

“There,” Piotr said at last, when movement in the mass caught his attention. “Look.”

The Lady Walker was backlit against the fog; her cloak a dirtier shade of the same heavy white that crept across the world, curling through the streets on eddies of breeze.

Wendy swallowed thickly. She hated the tremble in her voice as she said, “Okay guys. It's go time. What do we do? How do we want to handle this?”

“We can't run her over,” Jon said. “At least…can we?”

“We could try,” Chel said grimly, but Wendy shook her head.

“No. Use your eyes,” Wendy said, hearing her mother's arrogance creeping into her tone. It was a tone she loathed, a know-it-all texture to every word she said. Wendy tried to temper the urge to imperiously demand that they look closer and instead gently explained, “See how she's—oh, I don't know how to describe it—see how she's firmer than the landscape around her? She's more solid than the car here. We'd slide to either side of her at best.”

“Wendy?” Chel's voice was high and tight but pitched soft, speaking as quietly as she could manage. ”Dreamspace stuff can affect the real world, right?”

“Yeah,” Wendy said, not taking her eyes off the Lady Walker. She reflexively ran her tongue against her teeth, missing the comforting
clink
her tongue ring would have made if the White Lady hadn't ripped it out. “Why?”

“What about stuff that happens in the Never? Can that affect the real—the living—world?”

Wendy thought of her answering machine, the only voice recording she'd had of their mother, and how it'd been crushed in the hands of a Walker—a Walker who'd been sent to fetch Wendy by the woman in the mist before them.

She shivered. “Yeah, Chel,” Wendy whispered, allowing herself a moment's mourning for her mother's mutilated message. “Sometimes…sometimes, yeah it can.”

The Lady Walker beckoned, one long, bony hand curling in their direction, an open invitation. Then—so close it raised the hairs on the back of Wendy's neck—the wet snuffling-sniffle of the beast broke the silence. Its gargantuan head parted the mist and webs to the right of the Lady Walker. It sniffed the air.

“Lovely,” Chel said, the despair creeping beneath her words. “Well, it's been nice knowing you all. I'd say have a nice afterlife, but we all know how that turns out.”

The Lady Walker's hand slashed down, a cutting motion, and the beast stilled beside her. Then it growled, but only faintly, and retreated back into the mist.

“That thing listens to her?” Eddie moaned. “Just fabulous, she's got the hell-Fido trained up good and proper. I wonder if it piddles on the paper, too?”

“Okay, enough! Stop being so damn negative. I'm going out there,” Wendy said, forgetting her ethereal state and reaching for the door handle.

“No!” Eddie said, grabbing her wrist. “What is meeting up with the rotting wonder going to accomplish?”

“Anything is better than this…this dread, Eddie,” Wendy replied, shaking him off her arm. “Stay here.”

“I shall go with you,” Piotr said.

Rolling her eyes, Wendy shook her head. “Stay here. Protect the twins.”

“Hey,” Chel protested, “we don't need our big sist—”

“Shut up,” Wendy said kindly. “Listen to Piotr. Understand?”

Chel, mutinous, tried to look away. Wendy poked her sister hard in the shoulder, ignoring the sizzle from Chel's living flesh. “Michelle. Do you understand me?”

“Yeah, fine, whatever,” Chel grumped, rubbing her shoulder. “Hurry it up, Suicidal. We don't have all day.”

Wendy waited until Eddie, scowling, sat back and allowed her to pass without further incident. Then she was outside, leaving the mud-splattered car behind, lost amid the swirling fog and facing the Lady Walker down in a world like a washed out western. Wendy, amused, paused to picture tumbleweeds blowing past as the Citibank clock struck midnight. Even in the Never it was hard to walk up the steep slope of the street. Wendy hid her struggle by walking sedately toward their meeting, smirking the whole while.

The Lady Walker, seeing her smile and sensing her amusement, hesitated. “You find this funny, Reaper?”

“Not even close,” Wendy assured her. She sighed and thrust her hands in her pockets. “Do you have anything to do with that rip in the sky, by any chance?”

The Lady Walker grinned, the sagging and rotten half of her face sliding loosely over her bones, exposing yellowed teeth and shredded tendons. “If I did? What would you do about it, girl?”

“Nothing,” Wendy said, shrugging. “But I hear that the Reapers are ticked off over it. Elise even tried to bribe me to ‘take care’ of you a few days ago.”

Surprisingly, the Lady Walker began to laugh, a broken, rusty sound, as if she'd spent her entire life with a three-pack-a-day habit. “Did she now? Good.”

Smirking, so that Wendy could see the wriggling things moving behind her terrible smile, the Lady Walker wiggled her fingers at Wendy. “You Reapers amuse me. You are family, a clan, yet you fight among yourselves, attacking from the shadows, and laying blame on nature running its course. And all the while I taste your tears and laugh and laugh and laugh.”

“Nature…do you mean that vortex thing up there?” Wendy glanced over her shoulder. They were deep in the spirit web forest—Wendy had no idea why she kept expecting to see clear sky above and the rip in the distance—but all she could see was the sagging shapes of cocooned Shades twisting in the breeze.

“I mean the old woman, and the fretful way they fuss and blame you,” the Lady Walker said. “It was simply her time. It comes to us all. Except Piotr. Except me.”

“Because you're the Unending Ones,” Wendy said, wondering how the Lady Walker already knew about Nana Moses’ death. “How'd you two manage to land that gig?”

The Lady Walker patted her hip and for the first time Wendy realized that the Lady Walker had a swatch of fabric hanging there, a thin curl of cloth that hung nearly to her ankles. “The how of things is of no matter. It is the
why.
”

“Are you going to let us keep going?” Wendy snapped, suddenly tired of this rotting woman and her horrible riddles. She reminded Wendy unpleasantly of the White Lady, not because she was rotting and awful to look at, but because even the cadence of her voice had a lilting, tortuous rhythm to it. Every conversation with them both was nothing but riddles and rhymes and Wendy was sick to death of it. “Or is that animal
thing
going to block the way?”

“I contracted with Jane to bring you to me. She failed and yet, poof, here you are.” The Lady Walker's fingers played with the rotting hole in her face, drifted up and brushed the horror that had once been her eye. “I am lucky.”

“Maybe,” Wendy said, resting her weight on one foot, prepared to run like a rabbit if she needed to. “Maybe not. Why did you want to talk to me?”

“I have heard…many things, girl. Many whispers make their way to me. I have heard that you do not reap the unwilling spirits anymore. Is this true?”

“Yeah, it's true,” Wendy said, narrowing her eyes. The way the Lady Walker was swaying back and forth was giving her the heebie-jeebies. “What of it?”

The Lady Walker tilted her head far too far to the left, looking at Wendy quizzically through her ruined face. “Why? Do you hope to gain from the remaining spirits the way Elise and the Reapers do?”