Never (12 page)

When they reached the Mark Hopkins Hotel, Jon dropped Wendy off at the front door. The spirit web forest hadn't stretched this far yet, but at the rate of growth it would overtake Nob Hill in a matter of days at best.

“Wait, I shall go with her,” Wendy heard Piotr say as Jon began to pull away. Jon obligingly stopped the car a second time and Piotr hurried after Wendy, leaving the others behind. Wendy waited for him at the foot of the hotel, watching the people milling within. She knew that she ought to feel
something
—anger, or perhaps joy that these people were untouched by the spirit webs—but all she could feel was a heavy, encompassing weariness.

The storm clouds seemed to pulse on the horizon.

“Think I can't handle the Council alone?” Wendy asked pointedly, trying not to let her mind circle back to the way Ada's skin had ripped, the way her teeth gleamed in the dim Never-light.

“
Net
, never,” Piotr said, and held open his arms. “I just wished for a moment alone with you.”

Leaning forward so that his lips brushed the curve of her ear, Piotr's breath fanned her cheek and his hands curled around her upper arms as if he were cupping delicate glass. His thumbs ran idle circles against her flesh and Wendy fought to keep herself from shivering. How did Piotr always know just the right place to touch to soothe her when she was stressed?

“Thank you,” Wendy said. “Thank you.”

Piotr drew her close and hugged her, tucking Wendy's head into the curve of his neck and shoulder, patting her back, relaxing her.

Snuggling into his hug, Wendy took a deep breath, inhaling the
clean scent of him—the evergreen and smoke, cool tang of ice and snow, all underlain with an earthy scent like rich loam and soil, like the fields of fresh-turned dirt warming in the sun Wendy passed when she drove through Napa Valley.

Wendy snatched the moment of peace and calm and rubbed her chin against his shoulder. “I am not looking forward to being skin and bone again. Being like this, here with you, is really nice.”

“I am not…Edward,” Piotr said softly, looking over her shoulder, “I am not alive. But know this: I cherish every moment I have left with you. Every. Single. One. And one day, when you return to your flesh, you will remember this night and know…that I care.”

Wendy flicked a glance in the direction of the disappearing car and groaned; Eddie's face was a pale smear against the darkness. Wendy was too tired and on edge to deal with any sort of jealousy between Piotr and Eddie, perceived or otherwise, but before she could grouch at Piotr for putting pressure on her at a really inopportune time, Piotr's head dipped down.

All was, for one brief and glorious moment, still.

“Wendy,” Piotr murmured as Wendy sighed and, regretfully, stepped away from the hug, “I…I wonder if you would do me a favor.”

“For you, Piotr? Anything.” She said it without thinking, without hesitating and, Wendy belatedly realized, she meant it. She would do anything for him.

“I…think I may remember why I can do…why I can touch some of the living and have them do as I desire.” Piotr held out his hand and Wendy instinctively rested her palm in his. He smiled. “Will you allow me to show you something? Something important?”

“Show me?” Wendy frowned. They were at the edge of the long curved driveway, the car idling at the end of the drive, near the corner. How was he going to show her anything here?

“Show you,” Piotr said. “Do you trust me, Curly?”

Wendy smirked at the nickname. “Of course I do. Fine, fine…show me.”

Taking her other hand, Piotr leaned forward and pressed a small kiss on the tip of her nose. “
Spasiba
. Close your eyes.”

Still smiling, Wendy did so. She felt Piotr's hands grip tighter…

tighter…

tighter…

There was a pulse, like heat, followed by an overwhelmingly chilled flush of air. Opening her eyes, Wendy found herself standing on the edge of the forest, the icy wind whipping her hair into a tangled knot. Piotr, beside her, sighed and took her hand. Wendy wanted to ask him what was going on. It was like what had happened before, where she had been briefly in his head, but this was…more. More vivid. More realistic. More disconcerting. More.

Where were they? Was this a dreamscape or something? But Piotr's expression was so drawn, so grave, that she didn't dare break the silence with questions.

The dreary, gray snowscape grew brighter as a small band of men, in the distance, trudged down a hill toward them. Piotr's hand tightened on hers. As they neared, Wendy realized that they carried a bloody man on a travois, two in the front, one behind. Despite the startling splashes of red, he was handsome and wiry, strong of jaw with a shock of blue-black hair.

He looked like Piotr.

When they passed close, Wendy waved a hand in front of the closest man hauling the travois. He did not alter his path or look at her.

“This is a memory,” Piotr explained, voice pitched low. “Not my memory—I did not exist yet—but a memory given to me. As I am giving this memory to you, now. With a touch.” He held up a hand. “This is my real strength, Wendy. This is my real power…I can feel so many memories, many of them not my own, thrumming under my skin…given to me so they might carry on. That is what we experienced before…except that you were living a memory then as I made it. In my mind.”

“Memories…given to you?” Wendy asked. “How is that even possible?”

Piotr smiled. “My memories…my recollections of my time on Earth and in the Never…they've been coming back so slowly. Too slowly, I thought. Lily, she said to me, Piotr, be patient, they will come in time.”

He sighed and pressed a hand to his chest. A terrible looking flower was blooming from his ribcage, very much like the one that had been curling out of the deep wound in Ada's side, and Wendy realized that the spirit web really was still inside him. Piotr had been grabbing his chest not just because it hurt but because it was eating him alive from the inside out. His flesh moved as the sprouts beneath shifted beneath his skin.

Piotr rubbed a hand across his ribs, grimacing. “I think…I think whatever we just went through jarred more memories loose. I think…no. No, I remember…so much now.” A tear tracked down his cheek. “Perhaps too much now. Isn't that always the case, though? What you most want is the thing that is worst for you.”

“Piotr…your chest…it's so bad…why didn't you tell me it was this bad—” So many questions—hopefully the right ones—sprung to Wendy's mind but she wanted to remain respectful of this strange place and Piotr's odd, withdrawn expression. She broke off. This, she realized, was the wrong question.

Piotr pulled her close, half-hugging her, and pressed a soft, sad kiss high on Wendy's cheekbone. The spirit web bloom shivered at their closeness but did not hurt her.

“This was my father,” Piotr explained, eyeing the men. “These men are my uncles. The man you waved your hand in front of is…was the youngest in the family. My father was second born.”

“He's…was…hurt,” Wendy said, knowing how dumb, how feeble she sounded, but incapable of not saying anything at all. “Why are we here, Piotr? What is this place?” Then, remembering that he was dead, she added, “
When
was this place?”

“When I was alive,” Piotr said quietly, “when my parents were…alive…we lived upon the vast and snowy steppes. I suppose I could find these ancient rocks on a map if I studied hard enough, if I had the proper coordinates and GPS and whatnot that the living lands are rife with, but even so I could not tell you exactly which year this was.” He chuckled quietly. “Over two thousand years, I think.”

“Really?” Wendy stared at Piotr but his face was impassive. “You're…you're over two thousand years old? Dead. Are you kidding me?”

“I've been taking care of the Lost for so long,” Piotr murmured, resting a palm against the bloom working its way up his chest, “that the only way I know how to tell tales is to begin with ‘Once upon a time.’”

“Hey, however you gotta do it,” Wendy said, shrugging and stepping away. The way he was stroking the flower disturbed and worried her. Piotr was already so pale, so thin…what if it devoured him the way it had devoured Ada? What if it opened him up to one of those creatures?

“Ah so. These stories are so predictable—once upon a time a girl met a boy,
da
? That is how these tales go.”

As if the vision were waiting for Piotr's words, suddenly a young woman appeared beside them. She appeared so unexpectedly that Wendy almost struck her. Only the realization that this wasn't real—that it was nothing more than a memory—kept Wendy from attacking. Wendy felt Piotr's chuckle feather the hair at her temples, sensed the cloying, noisome touch of the bloom brush her side.

“Who is she?” Wendy asked, studying the girl—she was tall, wiry, copper-haired and pale-skinned, with almond-shaped eyes and a full mouth. Her arms and hands looked tough and strong, corded with muscle, but what amazed Wendy was her garb.

“Leather armor, no helmet, basic wooden shield,” Wendy murmured, impressed, stepping closer to the girl. “No sword that I'm seeing, either. Nice, not many ladies can pull that off. I wouldn't want to walk up to those guys dressed in much less, especially in the middle of woodsy nowhere.”

Piotr smirked. “The armor is for show. It changes with each person she visited—for a rich man she would have come clad in chainmail. For my father leather was the best she would wear. But that is not what is important here, Wendy. Look at her cloak.”

Wendy squinted. “It's a cloak? I don't know what I'm looking at here, Piotr. It's covered in…what? Jay feathers? Maybe crow feathers? Is that important?”

“And she rode on the wind's back, and came to him, and kissed his lips,” Piotr said, his voice lilting strangely, in a lyrical cadence that sent shivers down Wendy's back. “In her cloak of feathers plucked from the crow-tails of Huginn and Muninn, gathered from ravens and swans and other beasts of the sky, the lady Eir flew from battlefield to battlefield, attending to her orders. She was a shield woman, a warrior, a Valkyrie sent to collect souls from snowy battlefields…but they weren't known as Valkyrie in that time, in that place. She was a Reaper. She was Death's handmaiden. And she was on a mission from Freyja herself.”

The girl beside Wendy smoothed her hair and straightened her cloak. Her cheeks were crimson with the cold, her eyelashes rimmed with frost. Piotr moved to stand behind her and reached a hand out, not quite touching the imposing figure, his fingers a scant inch from her mane of shining hair. “As the sun reached the apex of the sky, the Reaper Eir lit upon the snow-driven hill, and heeded the blood on the snow, and bided her time, for the soldier was not yet dead.”

“Piotr?” Wendy whispered but he didn't answer. A tear tracked down his face and Piotr's lips twitched, his brows drawing close; he swallowed thickly. The bloom at his chest pulsed, petals opening and closing, as if it were drinking.

The Reaper beside Wendy bit her lip, frowning at the young men below who had paused to build a fire as the youngest, the one Wendy had nearly touched, sorted through their bag for dried meat.

One of the men—Wendy assumed he was the oldest—scooped snow into a cup of bone and set it near the slowly smoking fire to
melt. Curious, Wendy drifted over to them, marveling at the way she didn't even have to move her legs—a thought alone took her from place to place. Wendy just appeared as if she, too, were like the strange, copper-haired maiden.

“Wait a second. He's our age,” Wendy realized, leaning over the travois, getting a closer look at Piotr's father. “He's not even eighteen…”

Wendy flicked a look at the copper-haired Reaper, Eir, and paused. The shape of her lips, the arch of her eyebrows, the way she tilted her head as she moved to kneel beside Wendy, beside Piotr's father on the travois, and examined his battered face…it all struck a cord deep inside Wendy.

“Piotr?” Wendy whispered, forgetting about the flower, about the car wreck, about her worry for her family and the hole in the horizon in the sudden, stunning realization that Piotr was far beyond what she'd originally thought him to be. She'd always known he was special, but never imagined
how
special. “Is this…is this Valkyrie, this Reaper, whatever…is she your mom?”

“Unlike my mother, my father was a farmer,” Piotr said, smiling ruefully and kneeling on the other side of Eir, still examining his mother rather than looking at Wendy. “Not a soldier. He was very bad with a sword.”

“Looks like,” Wendy agreed, eyeing the dried brown stain on the cloak spread across the young man's gut.

The three of them knelt there, in the snow, for what seemed like ages.

Wendy was long past nervous and edgy. Getting used to the idea that Piotr was half…strange…allowed herself to return to wondering what was going on in the Never without them, hoping that Jon and Chel were okay, when the brothers, coughing and grumbling, rose and cleared camp, preparing to gather the travois to travel on.

“Piotr—” she whispered. “They're moving.”

Piotr's father opened his eyes. “Oh,” he whispered, looking at Eir leaning over him, her long glimmering hair surrounding his face like a protective cocoon, “so you are the one I was waiting for.”