Never by K. D. Mcentire Page A

mother saying words her mother would never say, pointing Wendy in directions her mother would have let her stumble upon herself. That dream-Mary, wearing her mother like a mask, had warned Wendy that a storm was coming. She hadn't been kidding—this one looked like a doozy.
    “Just checking,” Eddie said. “Cuz I thought I was going crazy for a second there.”
    “Join the club, then,” Elle said, sounding simultaneously bored and aggravated. Then she made a strangled sound Wendy realized was something caught halfway between a laugh and a sob. “Does anyone else wanna play spot the weird?”
    “What now?” Lily demanded, twisting so she could look out the opposing window. “Oh…oh, my.” She pressed a hand to her mouth and visibly paled.
    Startled at Lily's expression, Wendy's eyes fluttered closed for a moment. She didn't want to open them, to face whatever monstrosity could cause Lily of all people to grow so distressed, but then Jon hissed between his teeth.
    “Am I supposed to just drive through that? What'll it do to the car ?”
    “Keep going,” Piotr demanded and Wendy's eyes snapped open. She leaned over Eddie and there it was, a huge white cloud of shifting, shimmering webs covering the entire skyline of San Francisco. The spirit webs were caught in the wind, tendrils as thin as fine white silk snapping like kites in the sky, sucked by the power of the storm hovering over the bay toward the rip in reality at the core.
    “But the car—” Jon protested.
    “It is solid,” Piotr insisted. “The spirit webs cannot harm the living much—they suck energy and life, yes, but the vehicle should protect us.”
    “Should?” Chel demanded, yanking her head back into the car and rapidly rolling up the window as they reached the outer strings of the spirit webs. “You're not certain?”
    “Nothing is certain here,” Lily said darkly. She held out her hand and Elle absently rested her palm in Lily's, fingers twining as they frowned at the waving webs together.
    “You called what the spirit webs grew into…you called it a little forest,” Wendy said softly to Lily, “but I had no idea it was this bad. That's not a little forest, that's the whole city!”
    “It wasn't,” Lily confessed. She leaned forward and Elle released her hand, curling her fingers back in her lap. Elle's shoulders hunched and the loose curls at the front of her face hid her eyes in shadow. Lily, sparing a worried glance for her friend, gestured out the window, pointing as she explained, “Twenty-four hours ago, the webs stretched not far at all. You could bypass it with a half hour of steady walking but this…this is a new aberration.”
    “This is craziness,” Elle snapped, head jerking up, and yanking her fingers through the tangled curls lying haphazardly against her forehead. “How could it grow like this overnight?” She tilted her head back and tried to see out the side window, shuddering as the tips of spiritual toes, obviously Shades, caught by the webs, slid through the roof above them.
    All of them cringed and ducked low, angling themselves so the Shades didn't touch them as they passed.
    “Those are bodies,” Chel said flatly, titling her head back to take in the full height and width of the mass. “Cocooned bodies wrapped in…what is that? It's foul.”
    “Spirit webs,” Piotr replied, voice and expression dull.
    “Piotr?” Lily asked. “What is it?”
    Piotr flicked a glance at Wendy and she nearly flinched from the raw pain in his eyes. Wordlessly he took her hand in his and pressed her hand flat against his chest. Worried, Wendy took a deep breath and then…
    Piotr.
    It was like she was inside Piotr's head, inside his body, feeling the shift of his rough clothing against his back, the way the hairs on Piotr's arms caught against the fabric and the tug of his pants across his thighs. She could feel the echo of his mind, his thoughts a beat ahead of her own, a hot tingle racing through her skull as