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back if we waited long enough.” It licked its lips. “You stink of female flesh, Lightbringer flesh, still. We knew you would come.”
    The anger drained away and Piotr was swept with sudden chills. Lightbringer . Wendy.
    “We have parted,” Piotr said carefully, certain now that he could hear rustling in the deepest, darkest shadows. He counted the individual movements that he could make out and was dismayed. Piotr's conversation with the Walker in front of him had allowed the others to sneak rather close. He put the count at somewhere between two and five more, each taking turns shifting closer.
    “Maybe you part from living flesh, maybe not.” The Walker leaned in from its ridiculous height, bringing with it a puff of air stinking of maggoty meat and pond scum roasting in the summer sun, and said, “The Walkers who are left think not. We talk about flesh, we talk about Lightbringer, and we say to ourselves, ‘Why would they part?’ It makes no sense, flesh. It is senseless.”
    For a moment, just the briefest of seconds, Piotr was tempted to laugh. Senseless indeed. He'd struggled with the decision to leave Wendy the entire time she lay comatose; endless hell. She'd looked so small and fragile in her hospital bed, childlike with her black-tipped curls tangled damply against her cheeks.
    Piotr had loathed himself in those long hours, watching her sink deeper and deeper into the twilight-world of her own mind with no way to reach her, no way to draw her into the waking, burning heat of the living world. He knew; he'd tried everything he could think of to reach her soul, even once going so far as to kiss her, hoping it would be like a fairy tale, that she would wake in his arms and love him. He'd failed.
    “I left her,” he said to the Walker stiffly, “for her own good.” And it was the truth, so far as truth went, even if there was more to it. Wendy had found herself in the hospital because he'd been unwilling to step away from how he felt about her, because he wouldn't allow her to become her mother's pawn; he'd been unwilling to sacrifice the Lightbringer's soul for his fellow Riders or even the Lost. He'd sworn to protect them and, when faced with a choice of losing Wendy or the Lost, had let an explosion of Light obliterate everyone in the room instead.
    Somehow, out of them all, he alone came out unscathed. How he'd survived…well, that was still a mystery.
    “The Lightbringer needs the likes of you?” The Walker chuckled again and its bones rattled in mirth. Piotr felt a wave of cold come off the Walker, a chilly breeze that reminded him not to let the Walker get too close lest it freeze his very essence and trap him there to be shredded apart. “Rider flesh has a high opinion of itself.”
    “You said you were waiting for me,” Piotr snapped, annoyed now and revving up for a fight, trying to stay out of the cold air pockets but feeling pressed upon on all sides. He glanced left and right, trying to pinpoint exactly where the others would come from, or how he might turn their numbers to his advantage. “So what is it that you want? Some sort of deal, like the White Lady had with you? You wish this territory?”
    “Want? Flesh wants to bargain with us?” Rocking back on its heels, the Walker shook its head and laughed its gravelly laugh. “There is no bargain with Walkers, flesh. You have bothered others too long.”
    “Others?” Piotr asked. “What others?”
    “Others matters to flesh? Now? How funny! We come for you now because it is time. We are paid, we take care of you. You are example. To other Riders. To Lost. To Lightbringer. I am bored. We are done here. Goodbye.”
    The rustles had grown very close now. He could feel the encroaching cold, the ice that clung to branch and rock wherever Walkers trod. Now his breath frosted the air. Piotr knelt down.
    He was tensed, preparing for the attack, when a long, yodeling war cry cut the air. Twin blades flashed as a slim, dark-haired woman