Never (11 page)

The Ada-beast, now jammed into its new skin, took a step forward and then another. The mouth opened up, the jaws expanding far too wide, and Wendy could make out the spirit web pulsing as it wriggled its way past the corner of Ada's mouth and dipped down her throat. Wendy gagged in sympathy.

Testing the treacherous street with her foot as best she could, Wendy took a step back. The Ada-beast took a step forward. One back. One forward.

Then, just as Wendy had decided to make a run for the car, the spirit web surrounding the Ada-beast's torso shivered and glowed bright. The beast charged forward, skittering like a spider on four horribly jointed arms.

A burning at her chest was the only reminder Wendy had of the necklace as Ada's fingernails scraped across her cheek, slicing her skin. It only took a second for the wounds to close—Wendy had a moment to be glad that the necklace seemed to be working independently of any action she took. The Ada-beast scraped and clawed in circles around Wendy, jabbing hands and feet outward and slicing her repeatedly. The necklace worked its magic and healed her over and over again. Even Ada's quickest touch, like the Lady Walker's, was like a stroke of ice against her skin. Wendy trembled in cold and pain under the onslaught.

Trying to crawl away time and time again, only to hit steep slicks in the street and sliding backward, Wendy, battered and briefly bruised, realized that the creature was
playing
with her. It
either knew or sensed that she wasn't as hurt as she could be, as she ought to be, and was choosing to test her limits, to see if she'd break for it and run. The necklace was like an icy brand around her throat now, burning her with the intensity of its cold; it hurt more than the wounds it was healing.

Hissing in pain, Wendy reached up and hooked a finger around the necklace, lifting it off her skin. The moment she did the beast stabbed forward and hooked a hand-claw around the links, yanking them free and flinging them to the asphalt. The overuse had made the necklace weak; the beast's icy touch was too much. The necklace shattered on impact.

No more healing.

“Shit,” Wendy hissed, scanning frantically left and right for anything she could use as a weapon, before she remembered that Lily's knife hung in the loop on her belt. She'd been so caught up in arguing with the Lady Walker that she'd forgotten it was there!

Pulling Lily's knife off her belt required Wendy to take her attention from the Ada-beast for a moment; the blade was honed to a distressingly sharp edge and Wendy feared for her fingers. By the time she had the knife in hand the beast had circled around behind her, cutting off her escape to the car. Long ropes of drool dripped from Ada's mouth, pooling on the ground. Wendy's thighs burned as she crouched deeply down.

“I have no idea what I'm doing,” Wendy said and gripped the knife. As if it understood what she was saying, the Ada-beast swiped at her and Wendy reflexively jerked the blade forward, slicing into its elongated hand. The creature hissed and yanked back, shaking the jointed fingers. It bled, but only momentarily, sluggishly, before the wound closed.

“No,” Wendy whispered. She'd not been expecting that.

The Ada-beast chuckled, dipped low, and a long shiver raced down its spine, reminding Wendy of a cat wriggling just before it pounced.

It never got the chance.

An arrow embedded itself in the side of Ada's face, releasing a gush of noxious fluid and essence, milky and sour, that ate immediate holes in the asphalt. Wendy stumbled back, searching for the source of the missile.

“Move, Lightbringer!” Elle yelled, notching another arrow as the Ada-beast, annoyed, roared and swelled, batting the arrow free from its cheek. The hole closed up in seconds, completely healed. “Get out of the way!”

“It's Ada!” Wendy yelled. “Don't shoot, it's Ada! Maybe we can save her! Stop! Stop! It's Ada!”

“Get out of the way, ducky! She's gone!”

Lily was at Wendy's side in a moment. “Wendy, Ada is lost,” she said, snatching her knife from Wendy's loose grip. “We will distract the creature as best we can, but it heals too rapidly. You must find another way to destroy it! Go!”

“I—”

“LISTEN for once in your misbegotten life, Lightbringer! GO!”

Wendy fled to the car. Piotr and Eddie were just outside, near the trunk of the vehicle, brandishing makeshift torches from Mary's camping supplies at the waving tentacles of spirit web that were encroaching on the car, crawling and dangling and dropping down.

“Get to safety!” Piotr yelled at her and swiped one of the torches just above Wendy's head as a long sticky stream of web thumped down. “In the car!
Beest rayeh
! Hurry! Move!”

Wendy dove inside. “Crap-crap-crap,” she groaned, sliding across the backseat. “Chel!”

“What?!” Chel's voice was high and thin, her sister was shaking and terrified. “What's going on? What the hell happened to that lady?”

“Wendy, what do we do?” Jon demanded.

The beast howled, and the essence pretending to be Wendy's flesh crawled at the eerie sound.

“Okay…okay, um, I have no idea—NO IDEA—if this will work,” Wendy gasped, running shaking fingers through her tangled curls. “But…I mean, what the hell, it's all I can think of right now. I need you. One of you. Both of you. Maybe. But I need you to come with me! Chel!”

“Me?” Frantically, Chel shook her head. “I don't—”

“CHEL! Look, I won't let you get hurt! I mean, I'll try not to, okay? It's the best I can do.”

“But why do you need me?” Chel demanded, clearly panicked. “I don't know what I'm doing!”

“I can't access my Light!” Wendy snapped. “I can't and you, maybe, probably, I don't know, I have no idea…but it's worth a shot, right? Trying to access your Light?”

Still, Chel hesitated and Wendy wanted to smack her sister upside her cowardly head. She smothered the urge. It was something their mother would have done. It wouldn't help. “Will it hurt?”

“The first time? I…I can't remember, to be honest,” Wendy admitted. “But even if it hurts, it doesn't last long.” Wendy leaned forward so that her younger sister could see her face, how serious she was. “You can do this, Chel. I know you can.”

Swallowing thickly, Chel nodded. “Okay. Show me.”

“This way,” Wendy said and slid out of the car, waiting to hear the car door slam behind her before she drew off to the side, closer to where Elle and Lily were darting in and out of the fray like dancers, dealing deathstrikes that only aggravated the Ada-beast.

“Okay, Chel, listen,” Wendy instructed tensely. “You're looking into the Never.”

“Duh,” Chel said. “I can't even see the living world right now, the Never's so thick.”

“Don't remind me,” Wendy muttered. “Come over here to the sidewalk. Careful, it's icy out.” When Chel joined her, Wendy pressed her palm against her sister's chest, just above the sternum. “Here is where your Light lives,” she explained, wishing she could feel the bright burn beneath Chel's flesh. “When you feel it, you'll feel it here first.”

“WENDY!” Elle yelled from the top of a nearby mailbox. “WHATEVER YOU'RE DOING, HURRY IT UP! I AM RUNNING OUT OF ARROWS OVER HERE!”

“I can't—” Chel began, looking past Wendy to Elle. “Is she…is she going to be okay? Shouldn't we—”

“Pay attention to me, not her!”

“But I can't do what you're telling me to do. There's no…no burn or whatever. I can't!”

Wendy slapped her. “Yes,” she said coldly. “You can.”

“Hey!” Chel snapped, hand pressed against her reddening cheek. “That hurt!”

Wendy slapped her again; it was a flat crack, an almost professional sound, like the bang of a gavel or the clack of handcuffs closing. Suddenly she understood how her mother must have felt, all those times she'd protested her ignorance, her fear of the unknown in the Never. “Did it?”

“Look, bitch,” Chel warned, “you might be a ghost or whatever but I can still—”

SLAP. “Can still…what? What can you do to me?” SLAP. “I mean, after all, I'm essentially dead, right? You can burn me a little with your touch, sure, but even then you're like a warm bench on a spring day compared to other Reapers.” SLAP. “You know what? I'm actually kind of digging this. I've always wanted to beat the crap out of you. You and your buffy friends—”

“Fucking hell! That's it, if you do that one more—”

SLAP.

“BITCH! You asked for it!” Chel swung at Wendy and Wendy neatly stepped back, dodging. Then she sidestepped and slapped Chel again.

“Too slow,” Wendy taunted. “Too slow, too weak. Not watching your back. Letting me in because you're scared.” SLAP. SLAP. SLAP. “Afraid of hurting me. Afraid of hurting yourself.” SLAP. “Except you're not afraid of screwing yourself up, right? You'll down a bottle of pills a day if it'll make you popular.” SLAP. “Why is it
I'm
the one who's practically dead, when
you're
the one with the fucking death wish, you pill-popping—”

“DAMN IT, WENDY! STOP IT! I'm not MOM! I'm not the one you're mad…mad at!” Gasping, furious and scared, Chel tried to block the next slap but Wendy was too fast; she darted in and under, poking Chel hard enough in the center of her chest that Chel dropped her guard. Then Wendy shoved her sister. Chel, not expecting the attack to escalate, stumbled back. There was a patch of ice behind her.

Coming down hard, Chel cracked her elbow on the concrete trying to avoid tripping over a straggling loop of spirit web and slipping on the ice instead.

“No wonder your boyfriend dumped you,” Wendy said—the cruelest cut she could think of.

There.

Wendy felt it happen. The fear vanished with an audible
pop
, sending a small shockwave through the close space of the Never. Chel's rage peaked in a sharp spike, pulsing in a wave out from her core. Light, bright and brilliant, bloomed in Chel's chest, growing too almost quickly for Wendy to track with her eyes alone.

Chel's breast vanished under the encroaching wave of Light, her torso, her legs and arms and head, until she was nothing but a glowing figure…and then her shape was lost amid the expanding corona of warm Light and sweet, lilting siren song.

“Good,” Wendy whispered, expecting the fear of the Light to overcome her any moment, the same way Piotr had described all spirits felt around the Light, but she wanted to point her sister in the direction of the Ada-beast first. If Wendy had to sacrifice herself to wake Chel to the Light, so be it. So long as Piotr and Eddie and Jon were safe—that was all she cared about.

“That way, Chel,” Wendy said, reaching into the Light's fire and taking her sister by the shoulders. She turned Chel toward the Ada-beast, but Wendy needn't have bothered; the creature had heard the siren song and was barreling toward them.

“I've got this,” Chel said and Wendy shivered at the tinkling cadence of Chel's voice. She didn't feel attracted like a moth to the flame, the way Piotr described the Light to her, but it would probably come at any moment. Wendy sat back to wait.

The creature, growling, flung itself forward. Wendy thought that the encounter would be over in moments—it was a ghost, twisted and terrible, but just a ghost nonetheless.

Instead, the monster, snarling, nearly tore Chel's face off. It shot forward, snapping at her head, and Chel fell back and grabbed the beast around the torso. Tendrils of Light spun out from Chel's body—Wendy hadn't had time to describe how to control the ribbons of Light, but Chel managed to feel her way soon enough—and stabbed down, impaling the beast through the eyes and mouth, stripping the spirit webs from Ada's flesh with a wet ripping noise.

The web came away and Chel's tendrils darted forward again, cauterizing the exposed tendons in one fast swipe. There was a stink like burning fur and spoiled meat, all overlaid with the coppery smell of spilled blood and the too-sweet scent of dripping essence.

The beast howled and jabbed a sharp-fingered hand out. Chel yelled in pain—Wendy found even her pain sounded startlingly musical—and staggered left, half-supporting herself against a thin and twisted tree planted in the sidewalk.

“Ada is burning away,” Lily gasped, joining Wendy and taking
her by the shoulders. She held her side and staggered with each step, as if hurt. “We must step back…Lightbringer, please, being this close…it hurts. It is dangerous. Please…we must flee…”

Startled, Wendy looked at Elle and Lily. Both wore highly pained expressions; Elle had wrapped herself around the mailbox to keep herself from moving toward the Light. Both were shaking with the urge to fling themselves into the Light.

“She…she's calling to you?” Wendy asked stupidly, unbelieving what was right before her eyes. If Lily and Elle were so affected, why wasn't she?

“Worry not for us. Ada is…being…saved,” Lily replied, shivering and clinging to Wendy now, using the Lightbringer as support, rather than holding Wendy back. “We…we must go now. We can stay no longer. It's growing…hard to con…concentrate.”

“But Chel…” Wendy shook her head. Chel was holding her own, but not winning. “It's not dying. That thing…this isn't what I was expected. Give me your knife!”

Lily, shaking, managed to free her blade and hand it to Wendy once more. Wendy slid the knife to Chel's side.

“CUT THE THROAT!” she screamed. “BEHEAD IT!”

Chel didn't take the knife. Instead the tendrils of Light, the sweet ribbons Wendy was used to handling, spun into a tight rope of Light in Chel's hands. She used the Light in ways Wendy had never thought of, looping the Light rapidly in a controlled spin that she slipped over the Ada-beast's head.

“What is she doin—” Wendy broke off, gaping, as her sister snapped the Light closed like a garrote, slicing Ada's head off her body in one rapid yank. The beast's body jerked twice and fell over, bleeding sluggishly all over the sidewalk.

Her Light shut off as if Chel had cut it closed with a switch and Lily, sagging beside Wendy, giggled like a drunk woman and shook her head. “That…that was unexpected.”

Blooming with the remnants of Light, like a distant afterimage,
Chel bounced on the tips of her toes, grinning. “That thing almost killed me! And I kicked its ass!” she yelled giddily, laughing like a loon. “I wanna do it again!”

“Wooboy,” Wendy sighed, taking Chel by the shoulders and wincing at the heat. Her sister had most certainly unlocked her Light; Wendy could now feel the heat of it just beneath Chel's skin, like coals of a banked fire. “Well, don't go crazy with it yet, cowgirl. There's a ton you still have left to learn, and I don't even know half of the stuff I was supposed to learn either. We're still nothing close to a match for a normal Reaper.”

Piotr and Eddie limped up to the side of the car. The spirit webs were backing away from the vehicle now, giving them enough of a berth that Wendy was positive they'd be allowed to continue on. Piotr, though pale, did not seem to be in as much pain as before.

“It is the webs…and the beast,” he explained when Wendy, without speaking, strode to his side and pressed her hand against his chest. “They are connected to one another and I…I am somehow connected to them.”

“We are going to talk,” Wendy said pointedly. “Not now, no time. But soon. You and I. And we're going to talk about keeping your mouth shut when you're in pain—i.e. how you're NOT to be all silent and manly if you're hurting. And…and about that mind-meld thing. Understand me?”

Sheepishly, he nodded.

“Great,” she said. “Now…um, about Ada.”

“She's gone,” Elle broke the news bluntly. “Sorry. At least Chel here did the deed and not the Lady Walker. Chel was…surprisingly efficient, actually.”

“I knew that Ada had passed into the Light,” Piotr said, squeezing Wendy's hip as she slid through the car door into the backseat. Wendy absently swatted at him but smiled as Eddie, sagging and tired, slid into the seat behind Jon.

“How's that?” Jon asked, peering into the Never in front of
them. Wendy could see thinner spots now, places where the webs had retreated, leaving them enough space to squeeze through.

“The fabric of her dress has faded,” Piotr said. “As Specs’ glasses did when he passed into the Light, and Dunn's cap.” Piotr brushed a hand across Wendy's wrist. “She did not turn to dust; her soul was set free. I wish her well on her journey.”

“So, wait,” Chel said, turning in her seat, “I sent a ghost to Heaven?”

Wendy sighed. “What happened to being an atheist-maybe-agnostic-at-best?”

“Screw that noise,” Chel declared, bouncing in her seat. “That was amazing! I'm totally calling myself an angel now! Angel of…dumdumdum…DESTRUCTION!”

When Chel laughed again, Wendy shook her head and met Jon's eyes in the rearview. Chel needed time; she was hurting, and reacting poorly to what they'd just seen. They knew their sister—she was not like this.

“Soon,” Wendy mouthed, and Jon nodded, revving the engine and pulling slowly forward.

The spirit webs parted before them, allowing them passage. They were on their way to the Top of the Mark and the Council once again.