Gypsies

It was like that time in the department store, she thought, ru

But the Gray Man was relentless behind them— she could feel him—and Karen was growing wearier by the minute. Worse, she began to suspect (and it was a grim, unwelcome intuition) that they were being somehow herded; that Michael’s ru

Too much for him, she thought.

Clinging to his hand as if it were the only real thing in this chaos, she thought, Oh, Michael, I’m sorry—

Because the fatigue was numbing, the distance was too great to bear.

She put her head up helplessly and saw a cold moon sailing through a black sky, worlds and worlds away from home.

And then she stumbled.

She fell. It was prosaic. She was, momentarily, as embarrassed as she was frightened. Her hand slipped away from Michael’s; and she felt cut off, suddenly alone. But then Michael was with her, urging her up; Laura was lifting her.

Karen thought, I know this place!

She had slipped on the cobbled wetness of the alley. It was a dark night, wintry night, old gray moon in a black cheerless sky. Beyond the alley mouth she saw sooty Tudor-style houses with white ice bearding the eaves. A cruel wind came in from the sea.

It’s always cold here, Tim had said.

It was one of his places, a cloistered industrial town by the sea, and she had been here before—once in her childhood and often in her dreams.

It might be some part of the Novus Ordo, a port town there, or it might be some analogous but unco

Therefore, a dangerous place.

Michael tugged at her hand. “Hurry,” he said, but she could not; the fall had taken the last of her stamina. She looked at Michael helplessly and understood there was no need to explain; he had felt it in her touch. His eyes widened and then narrowed.

“Go without me,” she managed.

Laura put an arm around her. “I’ll stay. Michael, you go on. Maybe you can draw him away—”

“Just run,” Karen said. “It doesn’t matter, run.”

But then obviously it was too late, because the Gray Man was there with them, standing in silhouette at the mouth of the alley with the sea wind spitting at his back.

For a long moment no one moved.

“Go,” Karen hissed. She felt dizzy with it, her own futility, Michael’s silence: it was like watching him stand dazed between the rails with a train bearing down. And nothing she could do—nothing to save him. “Michael, go,” she said, but it was useless now, because here was the Gray Man reaching out, and she could see the stupid, implacable calculation in his eyes; and his hand, reaching, seemed to glow with dark electricity, strange ultraviolet lightnings.

3

Michael stood his ground.

He wanted to run. No, more than that. It was not just wanting to run. It was an urge so profound it went beyond fear, it was a screaming need to run… and yet he knew without thinking that, if he tried it, his legs would fail, the muscles would knot and bind.

He-looked at the Gray Man and felt the keening of his own terror, a high note pitched beyond human hearing but which radiated through his body.

Nevertheless he stood his ground.

Because his mother was here, Laura was here… and because there was nowhere to run. He had exhausted the possibilities. Some final entanglement of binding magic had led him to this place and this was where the battle would be fought … if it amounted to a “battle” at all.

Michael, lucid in the maelstrom of his own fear, registered the absolute certainty in Walker’s eyes.

He remembered the little girl on the beach, discarded into chaos like a rag.

Thinking, as Walker took another step closer, But I’m not that little girl—I’m more powerful than that.

Hadn’t he proved it already? Hadn’t he escaped the prison magics of the Novus Ordo?

But this was different.

The Gray Man was a killer, a destroyer: that was his nature. Michael didn’t have those skills.

Now Walker took another step forward, fierce engine of death. Everything was in tableau: Karen struggling to stand up, Laura with her spine pressed up against the cold brick wall of the alley. The yellow streetlights flickered and hissed; the moon was bright and utterly still.

Michael remembered what he’d told Willis that time: I could drop you down through the floor… I could do that. But could he? Could he do that to the Gray Man, to Walker? No… not likely… but he squared himself and summoned a feeble trickle of the power, thinking, But I must.

It was a gesture. It amounted to nothing. The Gray Man smiled.

4

One more magic, Walker thought. One more trick.

There was a trick the mages had taught him, a trick he had never needed to use. Which, perhaps, he did not need even now; except that the boy was still in some ways an unknown quantity, a vehicle of unexpected strengths. So: magic.

Walker smiled and rearranged his own face.

It was less a physical change than a matter of suggestion, a spellbinding. The change was subtle but distinct, and he registered the effect in Michael’s eyes, the shock and sudden terror.

Wearing his new face, the Gray Man moved closer. His smile was broad and authentic. He felt on the brink of completeness. Soon he would recover the lost thing. Soon he would be whole.

He regarded Michael with something like love.

“I came for you,” he said.

5

Michael witnessed the transformation without understanding it. He was overloaded on all circuits and he could only register this figure, which had been the Gray Man… but which was now his father, was Gavin White, was Michael’s own father holding out his arms and repeating those words—“I came for you”—

I came for you.

Yes. Please, God. Take me home.

Daddy, I’m tired. But it wasn’t Daddy.

It was a phantom, a monster. It was the Gray Man.

The Gray Man lunged out a hand and Michael felt the mask slipping, saw Walker like old paint through the chipped patina of this image. He raised his own band to defend himself—or at least ward off this creature—but the shock of recognition had been profound; the power had drained out of him; he was empty as a cup.

Walker came to embrace him, and the cup filled up with fear.

6

Karen, watching, thought, You will not have him.

It was only that, a thought, barely articulate. But it rang in her mind. Everything was in slow motion now, a terrible ballet—Laura crouched to one side with an expression of helpless horror, Michael dazed and motionless, the Gray Man advancing by inches and millimeters, a slow trajectory, like some deadly thing falling out of the sky. And Karen, alone now in the sterile light of a streetlamp, thought to herself, You are the oldest. You have a responsibility here.

Daddy had been right about that. In that one thing, he was absolutely correct. It was her job; it was the job she had taken on herself. It was the job she had assumed in that crowded Christmastime department store a thousand years ago. And it was her weakness, too; it was the way they had seduced her. She thought about Baby, the doll this deadly man had given her. Your firstborn son. It was the weakness they had used to trap her, dangling images of Michael down the dim fortress corridors of the Novus Ordo. But maybe it was not only a weakness.