The Gypsy Morph

THIRTY-TWO

STANDING APART FROM THE OTHER DEMONS, Findo Gask considered his options in the wake of the destruction of his army. He had watched it all happen from high ground far enough removed from the carnage that he had never been in danger. Until now, of course, when his subordinates began to look at him as something less than infallible. A demon that could lose an entire army of once–men to a mere boy was not as all–powerful as they might have thought. A demon that could sacrifice that many followers without accomplishing anything, no matter the reason, was demonstrably less able than what they had believed.

Which meant, of course, that they were already considering which of them should replace him.

He glanced at them accusingly, and some, but not all, looked away. It enraged him that they should be so bold. Fools, he thought. Not a one of them could do what he had done. Not a one could command his power. They were children in the presence of a master, and he needed none of them.

Still, he would have to watch them closely.

He turned back to the plains, empty now save for clusters of survivors who cowered together like frightened sheep. The loss of his army mattered little to him. It was but a single arm of a much larger force, and replacing once–men had never been a problem. Whatever his needs, there would always be fresh bodies–at least until no more were needed and he could dispose of them all. He would simply send for another supply. The caravan might have escaped him for the moment, but it was a temporary escape at best.

What mattered just now was the boy, the gypsy morph, wielding all that magic.

The fact that he was still alive was proof positive that the Klee had failed. Findo Gask had suspected as much for days, knowing that the Klee must have found the boy by now and yet had not returned. That the Klee had failed was inconceivable. Delloreen, yes. But not the Klee. That anything or anyone was strong enough to destroy it–for it must be dead–was an impossibility he could not fathom. Only he had power enough to destroy a demon as powerful as the Klee. He could not imagine how any of these humans–even a Knight of the Word–could have managed such a feat. A shape–shifter, a trickster, a creature of great cunning and strength, it had proven itself invincible time after time.

But now it was gone. There was no doubting that.

And here was that boy, the gypsy morph, still alive.

The boy lay sprawled on the ground, unmoving. How badly was he hurt? Not all that badly, Findo Gask judged. He had barely been touched in the assault. No, he was merely exhausted from the exercise of his magic. Which was hardly a surprise, given the power it must have required to open up the earth like that. The demon watched as the female Knight of the Word, lying nearby, began hauling herself to her feet, using her staff to provide leverage. But exhaustion had overtaken her, as well, and she fell back again. Then, as if consumed with desperation, she began to crawl.

Findo Gask had seen enough. He needed to put an end to this business once and for all. The gypsy morph had to be destroyed, and this was the perfect chance to do so. Weakened, depleted of magic, it would provide little resistance. Not only would he kill the morph, but he would kill the Knight, as well. It was not a task he would delegate; others would welcome the chance to take credit for such an accomplishment, but he would not allow them to do so. He would handle this himself because it would serve as an object lesson to his treacherous subordinates and enhance his somewhat diminished stature as leader.

Then he could reassemble his army and continue to hunt down those still alive in the ragtag band of misfits the morph had been leading, humans and Elves and others.

He signaled to the pair of skrails hunkered down nearby, beckoning them to him. They came at once, seized him by his shoulders, and lifted off. In seconds they were airborne, flying toward the boy and the Knight of the Word. He glanced across the gorge to where the members of the caravan were gathered on the embankment edge, watching his approach. Some were already yelling in warning. None, he noticed, had made any effort to try to come back. He would give them no chance to rethink that decision. He would make quick work of their precious leaders, of this boy and his protector. He was already relishing what it would feel like when the morph died beneath the crushing weight of his magic. They believed this boy so powerful, but they had no concept of what real power entailed. They had no idea what he could do.

The Knight of the Word was turned about now, facing him as he flew closer, somehow back on her feet, leaning heavily on her black staff. She would die hard, this one. She had found a way to elude him for years, fighting for the compounds in Southern California, salvaging scores of children from the ruins, keeping them from the camps and his experiments. He assumed she had found a way to put an end to Delloreen, no easy task. No, she would not die easily. But she would be dead, all the same.

Angel PEREZ watched the old man’s descent through a film of pain and weariness. She was no match for him like this, but there was little choice. Behind her, Hawk lay unconscious on the ground, unable to defend himself. She was all he had, and she had sworn to protect him. Even if she knew that she would fail, she had to try.

She had mustered strength enough to get back to her feet when she saw the skrails flying the old man toward her. She had known at once who he was and why he was coming. His army destroyed, he must salvage something from his defeat. Killing her would be a start. Destroying the gypsy morph would put an end to everything. He might not know why this was so, but he must sense the truth of it. He would not be hunting the morph otherwise, would not have expended demons like the female creature that had tracked her or the monstrous thing that had come for Hawk.

She felt a great despair fill her at the prospect of failure. Dying was a given in the lives of the Knights of the Word. She had always known that. Johnny had died for a similar cause, trying to save others, trying to make a difference in a savage world. She understood and accepted this, just as she believed he had. But failure of the sort that would befall the human race with the loss of the gypsy morph was unthinkable.

“I must find a way,” she whispered to herself.

The skrails lowered the old man to the ground, leaving him perhaps thirty feet from where she waited, and then backed away, knowing better than to become involved in this, sensing perhaps that he did not want or need their help. He would face her alone. He was intent on making this personal.

He stood where he was for a moment. Even in the sunlight that filtered down through the lingering haze, he was a wispy figure that had the look of something born out of smoke and ash. His body was hunched slightly, perhaps with age, perhaps with the weight of something less measurable, but equally debilitating. His face was seamed and worn, but even at this distance she could see the bright and compelling light of his strange eyes.

A distraction from across the river drew his attention. A handful of youngsters, including several of the Ghosts and Kirisin, were charging back toward the dam, finally come to their senses, determined now to try to help. The old man watched them for a moment, and there was a mix of curiosity and contempt mirrored on his face. Then he glanced at her for just a moment, turned back almost casually, lifted one arm, and pointed. Fire exploded from his fingertips and tracked across the top of the dam wall. Flames rose dozens of feet into the air, burning from end to end, finding fuel where they was seemingly none to be found.

The flames blocked any passage across, and those trying to reach Hawk and herself fell back. The rescue attempt collapsed.

The old man turned back to her and started to walk forward. “Let me have the boy, and you may go!”

he told her.

He made a slight motion as if to go around her, and she moved immediately to block his way. “I don’t think so, diablo. Back away.”

He slowed to a halt. “You don’t seriously think you can stop me from taking him, do you?” he asked her.

“I don’t know what I can do,” she said. She was aware suddenly of fresh pain radiating through her, the consequence of even those few simple steps. She looked down at the ends of the darts protruding from her body like spikes. “Why don’t you find out?”

“I’m going to kill you, you know. I could do it even if you were fresh and uninjured. I could do it even if you had help.” He gave her a searching look. “I’m not like those others you dispatched. Do you understand that? Do you know who I am?”

She nodded. “You are the one.”

She said it without rancor, but it conveyed a good deal more than its tone revealed. She summoned the magic and watched the runes glow dimly beneath her fingers. Too little, she thought. I haven’t magic enough left to do this. I won’t be able to stop him.

“I am the one,” he agreed. He continued to study her, as if seeing something he hadn’t recognized before. “Why not consider the advantages of what accepting that means.”

“Join with you, you mean?”

He shrugged. “Why not? If you live, you would have much to contribute. Others have done so; you would not be the first.”

She had blood soaking through her clothing, and her face was streaked with sweat and dirt. She was aware of how vulnerable she looked to him. Had there been any reason at all to do so, she would have given the matter thought. But there was no reason, of course.

“I would sooner rut with wild dogs,” she answered.

He laughed softly. “No need for that. No need for anything more from you. I asked out of false hope that reason would transcend pride. I should have known. It never does with your kind.”

“Better pride transcending reason than contempt for the sanctity of life transcending a sense of right and wrong.”

She was fighting for time now, for a chance to gain a small advantage, for anything that would work in her favor. She would keep him talking for as long as she could.

He came forward a few more steps and stopped again. “You are all alike, you Knights of the Word. Passionate in your beliefs, dedicated to your causes, blind to everything but your righteous commitment to a faith in something that has doomed you from the beginning. Humans can’t sustain what is needed for such faith, woman, even if you can. Humans lack the iron necessary to see it through. They are so fallible and so easily subverted. You’ve seen it for yourself, time and again. We are where we are, you and I, standing on this empty plain, because of that.”

“Some of us might see it differently. Humans are not perfect; I wouldn’t argue otherwise. But their faith is what sets them apart from creatures like you. They believe in the impossible, in what they cannot see and touch. They think that if you don’t seek to be better than what you are, you live to no purpose. What is the point of life if not to improve it for yourself and others?”

He laughed anew. “Life’s sole purpose is in staying alive for as long as you can. Power facilitates that end. I saw that centuries ago when I shed my human skin to become my demon self. I gained control over magic that you can only dream about. I gained power over my life and the lives of others. Faith in anything other than that is a waste. What can you hope for but disappointment?”

“You can hope for a world in which living things flourish, not one in which they are systematically destroyed. You can hope for a world where power for its own sake is disdained. You can hope for a common ground that fosters compassion and understanding provides space for all living things.”

“A very pretty image.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“What I understand is that a world of living things is overrated.”

She sensed a change in his stance, in the expression on his face. She held herself steady, using her magic to buttress her failing strength, a little here, a little there.

“You struggle so hard in the service of the Word,” the old man said quietly. “But in the end, you die anyway.”

She had summoned what magic she could to defend herself, but it wasn’t enough. The old man’s bright fire exploded into her with pile–driver force, knocking her off her feet and sending her sprawling. She felt all the strength leave her, felt pain rip through her body. Smoke rose from her clothing in wispy trailers. She lay helpless on the ground, the black staff clutched against her body.

Help me, Johnny, she prayed.

“Such a waste,” the old man said, shaking his head as he approached across the flats.

Sudden movement caught her eye. Feeders, thousands of them, were oozing from the ground like the ghosts of the dead come back to life. They emerged like strange, twisted trees, their black shapes liquid and sinuous, their eyes bright with hunger. They were there to feed on her.

The old man saw them, too, and he smiled approvingly, until a sudden explosion of fire generated by a magic that was not hers caught him squarely in the back and threw him to the ground.

SIMRALIN AND LOGAN TOM watched in disbelief as the boy Hawk used his gypsy morph powers to open the earth and swallow the demon army whole. They stood atop the embankment until the shaking of the ground forced them to their knees, and then they remained kneeling as the shock of what they had witnessed left them momentarily frozen. How could any creature possess power enough to do what they had seen this boy do?

But then the skrails flew the old man over the empty flats to con–front Angel Perez, and Logan Tom was back on his feet instantly. He could hardly believe what he was seeing. It was the enemy he had searched for all these years. He knew him instantly, as if he were eight years old once more and standing amid the bodies of his family and the destruction of his home, as if seeing that sly smile and those cold, hard eyes, as if feeling anew the other’s tacit approval of his killing of the once–men with the Tyson Flechette.

He turned at once to Simralin, and she saw everything he had told her about the old man reflected on his face. “Is that him?” she asked.

“It’s him. I have to go down and face him. I want you to wait until he is engaged with me, and then I want you to slip around behind us and get Angel and Hawk on their feet and across the bridge. Can you do that?”

She nodded. “But I want to go with you.”

He shook his head, backing away. “I can’t be worried for you when I do this. I can’t bear thinking of him hurting you, too. Don’t ask it of me.”

She let him go then, not because she had no other choice, but because she understood the kind of determination that ruled him in this matter and knew there was no point in questioning it. They were close enough by now that he didn’t need her to tell him so to know that it was true. There was something in her eyes at the last, just before he turned away, but there was no time left to consider what it meant. He did not look back, hurrying down the embankment and onto the flats, intent on reaching the old man, who had already been set down by the skrails and was walking toward Angel. He felt the adrenaline pump through him; he was almost light–headed with expectation. This was the reward the Lady had promised him all those weeks ago. By finding and protecting the gypsy morph, he would have his chance at avenging his family. He had wondered all along if the promise had meaning, if it would be kept. Now he found himself wondering if he could make it count.

He was a long way out yet when the demon set fire to the dam to stop the futile rescue attempt from the eastern bank of the gorge. He was still too far away to be effective when the demon tried to go around Angel, and even though she was clearly wounded and sapped of her strength, she blocked his way. He wasn’t much closer when the two began talk to each other, and the feeders began to appear. He saw all this in glimpses as he passed through curtains of residual smoke and floating ash. The tableau played itself out in small snapshots, as if an album of pictures taken of a single event. He kept thinking that he was going to be too late to save either Angel or the boy, that the old man would kill them both before he could get close enough to prevent it.

But suddenly he was through the last of the haze, and the confrontation between the old man and Angel Perez was taking place right in front of him. Neither saw him, and he did not wait for them to do so. Levering the black staff, he summoned the magic of his order, letting it build until it was so thickly gathered within him that he could no longer contain it. Then he released it in a blinding explosion that ripped through the still afternoon air with a sound like metal tearing.

The demon was unprepared for the attack, its attention focused on Angel. It had no defenses in place, save the ones that its preternatural instincts allowed it to summon at the last minute. The Word’s fire slammed into it, lifted it off its feet, and threw it to the ground, singed and smoking. Logan did not slow. He came on, walking toward the slumped form, catching a quick glimpse of the hard old face as it turned to him, feeling the sting of those terrible eyes.

He sent the Word’s cleansing fire burning into it a second time, a long, sustained stream that engulfed the gray–cloaked demon and set it aflame. Logan watched it burn as he closed on it, fighting his way through fresh waves of smoke and ash. He was filled with a fierce, terrible joy. For my mother and father, he thought. For Tyler and Megan. He kept the magic of his staff burning into the demon until he felt his strength begin to sap. Then, and only then, did he pause his attack to measure the results.

He was very close by then, but flames and smoke hid much of what he needed to see. He moved closer still, wary now, his instincts warning him that this might not be over, that he might not be seeing things as clearly as he should.

His instincts were correct. Just as he realized that the smoking, flaming lump in front of him was only empty robes, he was struck a terrific blow from behind and sent sprawling. He managed to hang on to his staff, but only barely. As he tumbled to the ground, he caught a quick glimpse of the skeletal form that had been standing at his back, stick–thin and hunched over, the demon in its old man form.

Then its killing fire was burning into him, and all of his concentration was on mustering sufficient magic to ward it off. He did so at terrible cost to his own reserves and only barely managed to keep the flames at bay. The demon had tricked him, giving the impression that it lay helpless on the ground when in fact it had slipped away after that first strike. He had been too ready to accept what his eyes told him. His eagerness had blinded him to the truth.

The demon fire ceased, and Logan rolled away from a scorched patch of earth so hot that it made him cry out. He tried to rise and couldn’t. Feeders hovered at the periphery of his vision, crouched and waiting. With his black staff shielding him, he faced the demon from a prone position, looking for a way to fend it off. Again, he had misjudged. This demon was so much stronger than any other, and he had not been sufficiently prepared to defend against it.

The demon was approaching him now, a strange look on its face. It moved a step closer to Logan, as if needing to see him more clearly.

“I know you,” it hissed, its voice a whisper that spoke from the depths of a bottomless well. Surprise reflected in its wicked green eyes. “You’re the boy from the compound, all those years ago …”

Logan screamed in fury and counterattacked. Only his rage at the knowledge that the other recognized him gave him the strength to do so. It felt as if the demon had claimed a kind of ownership over him, and he could not bear that. But the effort was futile; the other’s power responded instantly, eroding his own, beating back his defenses, collapsing his shield. Even when he was close to being consumed by demon flames, his skin beginning to sear, he fought to regain his feet, lurching to his knees, struggling to rise.

It was not enough. He could not save himself. The feeders were all around him now and closing. He felt his magic giving way. Despite everything, he was going to die.

Then a wave of blue fire struck the demon from behind, a fire so bright and pure that Logan was almost blinded by its intense glow. He watched it envelop his attacker and saw the look of shocked surprise that crossed the hateful face. His first thought was that Angel had regained her feet and was trying to help him. But this was not Word fire, and Angel still lay where she had fallen, barely risen on one elbow.

He shifted his gaze, and through billowing clouds of dust and smoke he found Simralin.

She was standing not a dozen feet away, the Elfstones gripped in both hands, her face a mask of concentration. Blue fire erupted from between her fingers, burning into the old man. Logan was stunned. She must have disobeyed him and followed him down. She must have decided she would help. And against all odds, she had found a way to master the power of the Stones.

Fighting through pain and rage, the demon began to turn toward her, shifting his own magic to defend himself. The Elven fire illuminated his bones as if he were transparent, and his head was thrown back in concentration. The moment he began to turn, Logan lurched to his feet. He threw off his weariness and his fear of failure, recovered his shattered determination, and walked toward the demon. When he was right on top of him, he jammed one end of his black staff into the other’s back, penetrating skin and muscle and bone, and summoned the magic.

Instantly the Word’s fire responded, ripping into the demon, an explosion of power released from a place inside himself that he did not know existed.

In a flood of dark shapes, the feeders were all over Findo Gask.

The demon half turned, pinned between the killing fires, eyes bright with madness and hatred. Lips skinned back from pointed teeth, and its gaze conveyed to Logan Tom its terrible loathing. But Logan did not relent; he pressed his attack even harder. He pressed it until it was all there was left of him, until the entire world disappeared beneath the weight of his resolve to see the demon destroyed.

There was a moment in which Logan could feel a shift in the tides that marked the battle’s momentum. The demon twisted and thrashed, changing as it did so into something unspeakable, a creature from an older time come at last to the end of its life. The feeders clung to it, ripping and tearing, driven into a frenzy.

Then it exploded into flames and smoke and ash, and Findo Gask was gone forever.