Reaper (20 page)

There were spiders at her feet, pouring from a hundred holes in the sand just like the one she had stomped. Startled, Wendy tried to back away but the spiders were everywhere, large and hairy and underfoot, crawling over her toes and heaving themselves bodily out of new, larger holes in the sand. Everywhere she turned new holes were opening up, spewing out their eight-legged contents in a scuttling mass.

Fighting back a yell, Wendy scrambled back toward the grass and rock as best she could, but the spiders followed, intent on overcoming her. Overwhelmed, Wendy had no idea if they were poisonous or not, but when one dropped on her hair from above she couldn't help herself. Shrieking, she slapped at her hair, feeling the bulging heat of the hairy thing beneath her hand as she yanked fingers through her tangled curls, praying and crying that it wouldn't get caught in them. Instead she felt the slick, wet pop as it burst against her palm and the burning as what could only be its poison worked its way into the scrape.

Wendy shrieked again and flung the spider corpse away, or tried to. The large dangling legs were tangled in her hair, the cluster of eyes swinging against her cheek as Wendy, sobbing, tried to pry it free.

Just as she was about to go mad from fear a raven leapt up on her shoulder, nudged her hand aside with its beak, and gobbled the spider from her hair. It tugged painfully, but Wendy was willing to lose a few locks if it got that horrible thing off her. Imagining a pair of scissors in her hand, they appeared in the dream, and Wendy snipped the curls free. The raven flew off with the arachnid in its beak, jittering legs scrabbling at its eyes, and several of her curls trailing in the wind.

Sobbing with relief, Wendy hugged herself tightly and eyed the ground. The crows and ravens had been at work; the ground was covered in feathers but no arachnids were to be found. Here and there the birds were beginning to return from their feast; they fluttered down about her feet again, pecking at the holes and preening one another, their glossy black feathers shining in the dim winter sun.

Snorting with a combination of giddy fear and unadulterated relief, it took several seconds for Wendy to realize that the helpful raven, despite its good deed, had managed to crap all over her shirt in the process of freeing her from the spider. Staggering with the insanity of it all, with the unexpected humor of being shat upon by a dream bird, Wendy hurried to her mother.

“Did you see that? Did I imagine it, or did it really just happen?”

Pushing off from the grotto with one hand, her mother drifted away, still silent.

“Mom? MOM!” Shaky and irritated by her close call with the spiders, Wendy was unwilling to put up with any more dream drama. She grabbed her mother by the shoulder. “You don't want to talk? Fine. Just answer me this, okay? Did you know about the natural thing? Did you know that I might be in danger from our own family? Did you? DID YOU? Did you even CARE?”

Furious now, Wendy began shaking her mother's shoulder, spinning Mary around until her mom was in her arms, both shoulders gripped in Wendy's punishing hands. Angry now, furious beyond what Wendy thought she was capable of, Wendy shook and shook and shook her mother, demanding, “DID YOU KNOW? DID YOU? DID YOU!” until, suddenly, her mother's head rolled right off her shoulders.

The crows and ravens scattered.

Wendy dropped the limp body, and above her the gulls screamed in triumph and began diving down, hovering over her mother's body and pecking at her flesh with their cruel beaks, ripping long strips free like human calamari.

Horrified, Wendy waved her arms frantically at the gulls, suffering pecks and scratches to the arms and hands as the gulls fought over their new carrion. Still, Wendy was able to make her way to her mother's head and push away the one gull perched upon it. For such a little bird, the gull was surprisingly heavy; it flopped to the sand and struggled to flip off its side. Wendy didn't care; she didn't want the gull eating her mother's eyes.

Turning her mother's head over, Wendy smoothed the red curls off Mary's cheeks and then, overwhelmed, began laughing hysterically.

“You're not my mom,” she told the head, pushing a stray piece of straw back into the neck hole. “You're a scarecrow.” Black button eyes glinted in the sun as if saying,
Why, you're right! I am a scarecrow! Fancy that! I wonder if your father knows!

The cheeks were drippy red circles, still fresh and wet, and the lips were crudely sewn shut with thick black thread, twisted and knotted over and over again. The flap of extra fabric at the neck, tied with a thin green ribbon, was intricately embroidered with the same Celtic pattern Wendy sported around her collarbone. The hair alone was real, soft and silky, red curls glued to the bag in locks and then reinforced with careful cross-stitches from nape to forehead.

Disgusted and shaken, Wendy dropped the head on the sand. Let the gulls get it, she decided, rising and brushing gritty sand off her knees. Her mother had never been here. All this was wishful thinking. Just a dream after all.

A soft creak from the shore made Wendy turn toward the sea. The small boat anchored to the pier creaked as the tide tossed it to and fro, but what caught her eyes was the large raven perched on the bow of the boat. It was huge and glossy and black, spreading its wings so far they blotted out the sun.

Then it opened its mouth.

Wendy expected it to caw or croak but she was wrong. The raven took a breath and the world was filled with screams and screams and screams.

Stunned by the sudden outpouring of noise, Wendy staggered back, stumbling until she fell on her rear, painfully biting her tongue as her hand plunged through the scarecrow's thin temple, the straw and something with the texture of pudding. It squished between her fingers as Wendy grimaced and yanked her hand free with a sucking
schloop
.

“Oh nasty,” she whispered. Her hand was covered with slimy grey-red goop, stray pieces of straw clinging to the heel of her hand, her knuckles coated with chaff.

“Could be nastier, I've seen worse in the ER,” said a voice as Emma settled beside Wendy on the sand. She was dressed in a long black nightgown with a scoop neck that exposed a slim triangle of her intricate tattoos. Pulling her thighs tightly to her torso, Emma dug in the sand at her side and pulled out a large handkerchief, flipping it briefly to clear the fabric of sand. “You look like you need this.”

“What are
you
doing here?” Wendy asked, taking the linen square gingerly between thumb and forefinger and wiping off her hand.

“Believe it or not, I hardly slept last night either,” Emma said, patting her cheeks theatrically. “I figured I might as well get some business done, if I'm wasting all this precious time napping.” She rested her chin on her knees. “Interesting choice of dreamscape, I might add.”

“Thanks?” Wendy finished wiping her hand and hesitated. She wasn't sure if she should give Emma's fouled handkerchief back or not.

“I thought you should know,” Emma continued, running the tips of her long-nailed fingers through the sand, “that I believe you're making a very big mistake.”

“About what?” Wendy watched as Emma traced a lean Celtic knot into the earth, her clever fingers joining the bends and curves without error.

“Training.” Emma looked up from her tracing and Wendy was startled to realize that the doctor was not smiling. Her tone was sweet, but the look on her face was ugly and dark. “You're a little idiot, you know that?”

“Wh-what?” Wendy couldn't believe her ears. “
You
were the one who offered to train me in the first place!”

“Please. As if I thought you'd honestly take me up on it. And what else was I to do? Great-Grandmother was right there, watching.” Emma rolled her eyes. “That you believed me so implicitly tells me that you are clearly not proper Reaper material. You didn't think to ask any of the correct questions! You haven't even found the letter I left for you yet, have you?”

You never ask the right questions
, the White Lady's voice whispered in the back of Wendy's mind.

“But…but there hasn't been a lot of time…” Wendy protested weakly. “And you said you wanted to make a deal. You said that you wanted me to take over the area like my mom did, so you all could go back home…”

“And you took me at my word? That we have nothing but your best interest in mind? How naïve
are
you, Winifred? Didn't anyone teach you that someone like you must take care of your own problems? Must watch your own back?”

Watch your back!
Mary's voice commanded, and Wendy shivered. She balled her fists. “I thought…I thought you were going to help me? And what about Eddie?”

“I am helping you. Get lost, Winifred. For your good, and for the good of the family. Don't come back to the house. Stay away. It's better that way.”

“But what about the binding?” Wendy asked softly. “You said it will last a few weeks, but you never said if you had to take it off or if it just fades away on its own.”

“That will have to be your concern, won't it?” Emma chuckled and rose to her feet, patting Wendy on the head like an obedient dog. “If you're such a mighty Reaper that you deserve to be part of our clan, to reap this area by yourself, then you'll have to ascertain how to unravel it yourself.” She smirked. “Perhaps then, if you can remove it on your own, I will reconsider my stance.”

“Nana Moses—”

“Isn't here, now is she?” Emma brushed sand off her pants. “And please stop calling her that. It's disrespectful. Her name is Alonya.”

Wendy shook her head. “You're…I don't…”

“Please. Stop being so weak.” Emma reached down and grabbed Wendy by the chin, yanking her head up so that their noses were only inches apart. Her nails cut into Wendy's chin; the breath fanning across Wendy's face smelled strongly of mint and bourbon. “And
you
honestly believe that you have what it takes to be a Reaper? Pathetic.” She shoved Wendy's face away, her long nails leaving deep scratches across Wendy's chin. “Go back to sleep, little girl. Leave the reaping to the experts.”

Wendy stiffened. “You know what? Go to hell, Emma.”

Emma smiled shortly. “Already there, dear. Already there.” Then, glancing around the empty beach, Emma stretched and smiled. “Such a weak little dreamscape, Winifred. Weak space for a weak mind.” She snapped her fingers and the sand beneath Wendy began to tremble. Wendy, a life-long resident of California, knew instinctively what was coming. She jumped to her feet.

The quake, when it hit, tore the pier from its moorings and sent great waves twice as tall as Wendy to batter the upper shore. Trees bent over backwards under the onslaught of water and wind, and the ground began vibrating in large, concentric circles, spreading out in a shockwave of buckling earth and sand.

Wendy, rather than fighting the wave, let it roll over her, absorbing as much of the brute force as she could, imagining a bubble of safety in a radius around her, picturing that the air that she breathed was calm, that the earth beneath her feet was solid and firm.

After long minutes, the chaos was done and Emma was gone. Wendy looked at her tiny space, unaffected by the disaster, and the shredded landscape surrounding her for miles around. Fish were floating belly-up on top of the water, great flocks of birds had been plucked from the sky and littered the sand and sea as far as the eye could see. The stench of rot and mold and death was nauseating.

But still, despite the ruin of much of the dreamscape surrounding her, Wendy's small space was untouched.

“You know what, bitch?” Wendy said, kneeling down and combing out a small square of shell-covered earth at her feet. “You want me to give up? Screw you. Now…now I'm pissed. You want to keep me from being a Reaper? Maybe, maybe if you'd asked nicely I might have thought about going some other route. But now? Now, it's on.”

In his dreams, Piotr walked and walked.

The snow was knee high, sometimes as deep as his thigh, and the blood on his hands was drying from a dark red to a sticky brown. Downy feathers caught on the breeze spun around him, lifted high and drifting down again, sticking to the gummy blood on his forehead, to the tears and sweat drying on his cheeks. Piotr slogged through the snow, keeping the frozen river on the right of him, heading for the “V” where the banks of the river split and the village sat, protected on three sides by the frozen tide.

Mother will know what to do
, Piotr thought as he took another step, fur-clad foot breaking through the brittle crust of ice atop the deeper softness of the snow beneath. The cloak was dragging the snow beside him, leaving thin, oddly patterned trails occasionally splattered with faint pink. The forest was intensely quiet all around; despite the great black flocks of birds weighing down evergreens as far as the eye could see, not a peep was heard.

The world was white-green-black, and then, from the corner of his eye, he spotted the motion—a flash of red, of silver-grey, and the whip-quick motion of the long red braid.

Snapping his head left, Piotr caught only the briefest hint of the shadow darting beneath the trees, gone before he was sure he'd spotted it. At first he was confused. In snow this deep, no one should be able to move that swiftly and silently. And then he remembered who—no, what—he was dealing with.

“Reapers,” he whispered, hot breath puffing out in a white stream. “Harpies from the deep.” He inhaled, savoring the pinpricks of pain as the icy air surged into his lungs. “I KNOW YOU'RE THERE!” Piotr screamed, his raw throat protesting every syllable. “SHOW YOURSELVES!”

Crows and ravens and blackbirds took to the sky all around him, their wings beating the air, their beaks open and screaming and cawing, their feathers spinning down through a sky briefly black with movement.

“Fool,” said the woman from behind him. Piotr would have turned to face her, but he knew there was no point in doing so. If he tried to look death in the face, death would be hidden once again. The Reapers were funny that way.

“You got your wish,” Piotr said, spitting on the snow beside a close feather. His spittle was bright red, the feather black. His hand tightened on the cloak. “My father's dead.”