Chapter 14

I can’t describe the thing and hope to do it justice, but here’s my best attempt. It was gray. From head to foot. It was shadow, but wasn’t. It almost seemed to suck all light out of the night, and yet it didn’t glow. A dense mass of matter that’s separate but somehow connected to everything around it. 

It moved with the careless grace of wind and thought. And even as I could feel the shivering pulse of para, I could also feel the immense power that dwarfed me by comparison. It was an oxymoron that totally and completely scared me.

It didn’t walk, exactly, but glided with a strange-yet-seductive allure. I blinked, fighting the thrall. What was this thing?

I didn’t want to find out. I ported. Or at least I tried to. But it was like the air had grown so dense it was an iron cage I couldn’t dematerialize through. I was stuck and contemplated attacking the thing to try to throw if off balance. 

Adrenaline is such an amazing high. It can make people strong enough to lift cars, bend steel, and run like the wind. In my case, however, it helped me focus and see what was really happening outside my fear.

The gray blob—for lack of better word—was definitely a tangible presence. It was also somehow muted. I could feel enormous power roll off it like hot mist, but it felt… wrong. Half substance and half… something else.

Though this mass hemmed me in like a cornered rat in a science experiment, I didn’t actually sense the threat of violence from it. I bit my bottom lip, stood my ground, and hoped against hope I was right.

The closer it drew to me, the more it began to take shape. The mass tightened, pushed in some places, out in others, until I saw what resembled a head, arms, a long body, and then it stood before me. A gray robed figure with two red dots staring out of a black void where a face should be. 

“Peace, I bring you,” he said, the ephemeral voice like a haunting melody echoing on the breeze. 

My heart thudded violently. Call me dumb, but I wasn’t feeling exactly peaceful at the moment.

He—and I use that word loosely, since I really had no clue what it was—stood there, and I kind of got the sense that it really was trying to put me at ease. I put on a brave face, notched my chin, and stepped away from the wall. 

The scent of sandalwood was still very strong around me. Billy hadn’t left; he was close. I could almost feel the sights of a gun trained on my skull. The thought covered me in goose bumps. I glanced up at the metal railings on the sides of the buildings, trying to spot his shadow while still keeping aware of the thing before me.

“Trust no one,” he said with that same lyrical quality.

“What?” I snapped, irritated and tired, and rubbed my forehead. My wound had already begun sealing, but the bone still ached, not fully mended yet. 

He shook his hooded head, and this time I was able to glimpse something, a flash of orange-colored haze. Like the glow that shines off flames, it flickered so fast I wasn’t sure if I’d seen it all. What freaked me out worse was that even through the glow I could see no form. This was moving, breathing, thinking shadow.

“Who are you?” I asked. I’d never seen anything like this before. For that matter, what was it? It wasn’t human, and though it pulsed like a parasite, I know for a fact it wasn’t one of those either. This… thing was an entity unto itself. 

“I am the Gray Man.” 

When he said it, I swear the ground beneath my feet rumbled. “What are you?”

“I am order. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

I shook my head; it was all Greek to me. For an ancient, sometimes I feel really stupid. How come I’d never seen him before? For that matter, why hadn’t I ever heard of him before? I frowned. 

“You tell me to trust no one. Can I trust you?” 

“Friends you think you know, you don’t. Enemies you think you have, you don’t. Trust no one.”

Dread, like a ball of grease, settled in the pit of my stomach. Who was this? Why was he telling me this? Who, or what, had sent him?

“Who do you work for?” I stalked forward. “Who sent you?”

“Tell no one about me. Speak to no one about me. When you think of me, think only of the Gray Man.” His tone was insistent, sharp, and menacing. I blinked, trying to understand the reason for the warning. “If you do, I’ll know.” 

The threat hung hot and heavy in the air, and then violent magick rushed around me. It squeezed my throat, choked the air from my lungs. I gasped, clawing at my neck, trying to shove the dark spell away. I dropped to my knees, desperately trying to breathe in oxygen grown as dense as water.

Just when I was sure I would black out, it was over. I jerked, dragging in the sweet fresh air like it might soon run out. I coughed and wheezed and stared at the thing in dumbfounded horror.

It’d been choking me, and it hadn’t even touched me. 

He stepped back, blending into shadow, form beginning to grow distorted and fuzzy. “I will be in touch,” he said, voice echoing in the hollow silence of night, and then he was gone. 

I shivered, coughed weakly, and rubbed my arms. I needed to leave. Now. I took one last look around and this time was able to port away.