Never (31 page)

“Kill…you…abom…ab…” Elise whispered, the Light fading from around her body as she became nothing more than a run-ragged old woman once more, the Reaper's power leaving her body in a rush of heat and one final blast of Light. Above them the hole rumbled and blazed. The earth trembled beneath them.

Then, just like that, Elise sagged…and was done.

Kin-killer.

The knife blazed.

Wendy dropped the knife frantically, but her palm had been embossed with marks of the blade. Struggling out from beneath Elise proved difficult—her fingers spasmed and ached; she clutched her hand to her chest as Elise fell to her knees and fell forward, truly dead this time.

“Oh, Wendy,” Piotr moaned beside her. “Oh, Wendy.”

“Enough of this. No more distractions! You! Boy! Go to the roof,” Sanngriðr ordered, passing Piotr Elise's necklace. “Wear this. You know what it is.”

Piotr didn't smirk as he took the forgery. His expression was properly grim, but Wendy could sense the lightness in his body as he took the links from Sanngriðr's hand. Sanngriðr knelt down beside Wendy. “Are you prepared, girl? This will hurt.”

“Wait,” Wendy said. “I…I want to be there.”

“On the roof?”

“Yes. I need to…” Wendy licked her lips. “Let me say goodbye. Please.”

For an instant she thought Sanngriðr would deny her, but instead the Lady Walker laughed. “Love. All my misery stems from
love. Fine. Go. I will follow in five minutes and not a second more.” She waved a hand at the hotel. “Do not make me regret trusting you, girl.”

Leaving Sanngriðr, Wendy and Piotr approached the hotel. A gauntlet of Walkers, both inhabited and not, stood beside the path. As they passed, Wendy paused to speak to the first Walker. “Am I making the right decision?” she asked. “Would you…would you want to go into the Light if you could?”

The Walkers shifted uneasily, and then the one Wendy picked to speak with nodded. “Once, scared of death.” It raised its hooded face to the blackness boiling above. Creatures were pouring from the hole now, directly above the city.

Wendy, distantly, could hear the living screams.

“Now…scared of this.” The Walker chuckled raspily. “Is this truth? Can flesh, can you, end the Never? Make there be no more pain? No more death?”

Nervously, Wendy glanced over at Piotr and Sanngriðr. “I don't know. They think I can. We'll see.”

The Walker indicated the blackness. “Then try. Be quick. Stop you, we will wait. We tire. We wish sleep.”

Wendy glanced around the gathered Walkers. “After all this time…you all really feel this way? You're done fighting? Honestly?”

“Flesh chatty-chatty too much,” warned the Walker. “Time ticking. Go. Finish this.”

Hurriedly, Wendy moved to join Piotr and they both hurried into the hotel, rushing past guests and speeding to the roof.

They had to cut across the Top of the Mark to get to the roof. Frank and the Council watched them pass silently. The mysterious greaser was there, Wendy noted, lounging in the far corner by the piano. He winked at Wendy as she passed and, pulling a comb out of his pocket, began to comb his ducktail. Where the comb ran, the black turned to red…

Startled, Wendy spun on her heel. Surely she hadn't seen that right?

The greaser was gone as if he'd never been, nowhere to be seen. Wendy frowned. Something about the way he moved…

Once they were on the roof, together in glorious privacy, Piotr turned to Wendy and drew her into a loose embrace. He brushed her matted, crooked bangs off her forehead and tenderly kissed the ragged, clotted cut zig-zagging at her temple. “This will scar, I think. We will be a matched set.”

“Let it. I don't care.”

Shaking his head, Piotr sighed and dropped his arms. The normal Walkers below had all retreated from the twisted creatures. More than a few of them were watching the distant skies, the endless ebony expanding beyond the mist, shifting uneasily as the growing mass sucked at the edges of their tattered cloaks, sending the ragged edges fluttering in the wind.

In the distance twisted creatures were dropping, free-falling, from the rent in the sky. Their numbers were small now but the dead were many, the spirit webs expanding rapidly, trapping souls as they flourished and flowered.

“It's time,” he whispered.

To die will be an awfully big adventure
.

—J. M. Barrie,
Peter Pan

Wendy shook her head. “No! I'm not ready. We're not ready. I just found you. I just…Piotr, please. Please. Sanngriðr can give us ten more minutes. Twenty!”

“Wendy.” Piotr repeated gently, “It's time.”

“But it's not fair,” she said, tired now, sagging and feeling the hot tears leak out of the corners of her eyes. Piotr, unashamed, was crying as well, taking both her hands in his and rubbing her knuckles with the pads of his thumbs. Wendy sobbed as Piotr pulled her hands to his lips and kissed her fingers, her wrists, even turning her hands over and placing tender kisses in the cups of her palms.

“Wendy,” he said, whispering the words between kisses, “I waited for you in the breath between moments, in the space between worlds. I waited and I hoped and eventually, after I forgot that I was waiting for you, you finally came. It's been a very long time, Wendy. And I have suffered every day.”

Blinking the tears rapidly away, Wendy nodded once. “I know.”

“Don't you think…” Piotr looked over at the Walkers, some who'd drawn closer to the hotel, edging surreptitiously away from the shadow cast across the sea. “Don't you think that I—we—have earned our rest? Even Sanngriðr has suffered, Wendy. Evil as she is, she deserves to go home.”

Sanngriðr, approaching from the stairs, heard this last bit. Joining them, she rolled what remained of her eyes and laughed
darkly. “Seeing as you never should have been born in the first place, hearing that you believe your time to be nigh amuses me.”

“It isn't?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“Oh it is,” she smirked. “But this is far too graceful an end than you deserve. If it were up to me.”

“Yeah, yeah, Sanngriðr,” Wendy said, shaking her head and forcing a tired, sad smile. She hated the woman but her tears were done. It was time. “And if pigs could fly we'd all have bacon on the wing. Beat it for a minute.”

“Only because the souls are done…only for this reason will I leave,” Sanngriðr said, tilting her head back, smiling at the ever-darkening sky. “But hurry, boy. Our time draws close.” She left, leaving Piotr and Wendy alone again. As she stalked away Wendy spotted the figure hiding around the corner. The red hair. The white cloak. It was a brief glimpse, nothing more, and Wendy
knew
this time that she hadn't imagined it. She thought of going after the figure but decided that, in the end, the spy watching them didn't matter.

Piotr did.

“I am sorry that I said you were being foolish,” Piotr apologized, dragging Wendy's attention back to the moment at hand. “It was unfair of me. You have every—”

“No, you're right, I'm…I'm being selfish.” Then, without warning, Wendy flung herself into Piotr's arms. He caught her just as she pressed her lips to the cup of his ear and whispered, “I'm going to miss you.”

“I'll miss you too, Curly,” he whispered back, wrapping a finger in an errant curl and tugging. “More than you will ever know.”

Resting his forehead against Wendy's, Piotr threaded his hands in hers, took a deep breath and asked, “Are you prepared?”

She wasn't, and she never would be, but Wendy sniffled and nodded just the same. “What happens to you now?”

“I've been a teenager for two thousand years…now…” Piotr broke off and chuckled, shaking his head. Wendy felt the wetness of
his tears as he drew her close again, pressing a damp, warm kiss against her cheek. “I think it's time that I grow up.” He hugged her again. “Thank you, Wendy. For everything.”

Stepping back, Wendy reached into his pocket and grasped the real Brísingamen. It was surprisingly heavy and slippery from Elise's blood still on Wendy's hands, thrumming in her palm. Hands trembling, Wendy slipped the necklace over Piotr's head, hiding it beneath the collar of his shirt, noting the pitch change as the somnolent siren hum at the edges of the purple-white ring of Light ratcheted up several notches. In her periphery, standing at the edge of the roof, Wendy noticed that several of the Walkers had dropped to their knees, and were shaking and rocking back and forth, what remained of their hands pressed flush against the sides of their head, uselessly trying to drown out the song.

“This will hurt,” Sanngriðr warned Wendy, drawing out the knife that Wendy had just used to kill Elise. Sanngriðr had wiped it clean of blood but Elise's Light had warped the blade into a waving shape.

“Do it,” Wendy said.

She held her arms wide at her sides, palms up and open. Piotr's fingertips brushed her wrist. His touch was cool and comforting.

Wrapping her fist around the end of Wendy's cord, Sanngriðr pulled it taut and slashed down, severing the cord from her navel in a stroke and slapping the silver coil into Wendy's palm. Wendy jerked as Sanngriðr jammed her fist into the hole she'd created and sliced the bindings free, gathering up the edges of Wendy's Light and rolling it together. The sensation hurt but was also cleansing, like lancing something inflamed inside her. Wendy felt the heat that always traveled with her stretched and pulled from her veins, from behind her eyes, from deep within her heart. Wendy squeezed her cord to concentrate on holding off the pain and breathed deeply. Sanngriðr was taking longer than the White Lady had, but Sanngriðr knew exactly what she was doing.

She felt it the instant the Light was gone.

“Done,” Sanngriðr said triumphantly, snatching Wendy's cord from her hand and smoothing it between her palms, encasing the Light in the glossy, satiny length.

The silver length was cool and soft to the touch, like slippery satin in her palm. Wendy rolled it in her hand; she felt hollowed out.

“Now, boy,” Sanngriðr said. “It's your turn. End this. End our suffering.”

The hair on the back of Wendy's neck rose as, in the distance, the wail of the hole in the sky lengthened and rose to a high-pitched scream. The Walkers and creatures on the ground were writhing now, shaking and twisting on the stone. The noise was deafening.

“Are there words?! Some spell or something?!” Wendy shouted, trying not to stare at the jittering Walkers. The blackness was close now, maybe only a few miles out to sea, the heavy space between the worlds teeming with shrieking, screaming faces and watching, filmy red eyes.

“As was done,” Sanngriðr yelled, “let be undone. The stipulations of my penance, of Piotr's penance, have been met. The Never is no more! WE ARE FREE!”

“Are you ready, Piotr?” Wendy yelled, straining to be heard over the cacophony. The creatures within the hole could see what was happening. The noise from beyond the Never was so loud it filled the world, setting even her teeth to aching.

Standing at the edge of the roof, Piotr grabbed Wendy and kissed her. “Time to fly,” he said and shoved Wendy's Light into his own chest.

The blast of Light drew the fracturing sea up, a reverse rainstorm pattering against the underside of the bubbling, frothing clouds. The raging sea whirled up and up, huge waves crashing up and out. The creatures of the dark shrieked and screamed, furious to be losing their prey, and were thrown back, the space between worlds flung far, far away once again.

“Freyja, you bitch,” Sanngriðr snarled. “I'm coming for you!” She ran at the hole and jumped, her body twisting in midair, becoming a dirty-winged gull and vanishing into the darkness.

Cupping her cheek one last time, Piotr winked at Wendy and ran at the edge of the hotel, flinging himself over the rim, and falling through the hole stretching across the sky.

The moment he vanished the Never began to crack apart in earnest, huge silver cracks spreading from beneath the hotel and swallowing the writhing Walkers whole. The distant darkness at the very edges of Wendy's vision were swallowed by the wash of Light, the world, the universe, everything cradled in a sudden siren song.

Uncaring, Wendy stood alone at the edge of the abyss, numb as the Never broke like glass and shattered around her. Across the water a brilliant beam of Light streaked across the sky, spearing the city and cracking across the Top of the Mark, stabbing down in one sharp burst.

At last, everything was Light. She stood upon the last shreds of Never as the cracks neared.

“I never said goodbye,” Wendy realized, laughing as the ground peeled away.

Arms encircled her from behind. They were pale and thin, but strong, and the perfume was familiar.

“Mom,” Wendy whispered. She felt a brief pressure against her cheek, the barest touch, and felt more than heard her mother's throaty chuckle against her cheek.

It was good.
She
was good. But the illusion was not quite good enough.

“You're not my mom,” Wendy said and could not stop the tears from burning her eyes, pooling and spilling down her cheeks. “It's been you this whole time, hasn't it? I saw you earlier, hiding around the corner. I…I kind of had an idea. You were the greaser at the Westglen, weren't you? You were the White Lady. You were in my dreams.”

“I have been with you since your birth,” the woman using Mary's voice murmured as, all around, the Never crumbled. “My touch alone kept your soul from burning you alive. I have walked with you through the darkest nights looking for your mother. I marked you; you are my redemption. Even gods can err…I needed a living soul to undo what I have done.”

“That's it? That's all you have to say for yourself?” Wendy asked bitterly. “That's everything?”

The arms tightened for an instant and Mary's smell filled Wendy's nose; the sweet, silky scent of curling in her mother's lap when she was sad, the scent of sharing a midnight box of Oreos after a good reap, the scent of popcorn and movies, of Christmas and funerals, of hot summer nights and chill February fevers.

The scent of home.

Wendy swallowed thickly. The cracks were nearly at her feet. “What do I do now?”

“Close your eyes,” Freyja whispered in Mary's voice, her breath feathering the hair at Wendy's temple. “Close your eyes and dream.”

Obediently, Wendy closed her eyes…