Traveller (4 page)

“Hello, gorgeous,” he said, giving Poppy a kiss. Tall, blond, and a horrible dresser, he was a physics major. They had nothing in common, but adored each other.

I sighed, and Poppy heard the sadness in it. “Are you thinking about Michael?”

“Who’s Michael?” asked Nigel, and Poppy glared at him. “Oh, I remember now. Dark, brooding stranger. Sorry, Em.”

“It’s okay, Nigel. I don’t expect you to follow my love life, especially when it exists only in my imagination.”

Nigel frowned. “How is that possible? You are adorable.”

Poppy kissed him and gave me a grin. “See why I love him so much?”

We told him all about the teashop and how Michael had run away. Nigel rubbed his chin. It was a bit stubbly, which just added to his charmingly disheveled appearance.

“I don’t know, but he sounds like a real wanker,” he said.

“A wanker.” Poppy nodded in agreement.

“Or he might be afraid of something,” said Nigel. “I know you don’t seem terribly scary, but fear can be an irrational thing. Perhaps he had a traumatic episode with a curly-headed American beauty queen as a child. That could scar a person for life. It happened to me with clowns.”

He winked at me, and I gave him a dirty look. “Bullocks,” I said, just a little too loudly. We laughed so hard that a girl at a nearby table asked us to be quiet.

An hour later, Poppy yawned. “I have to go, Em.” She was bleary eyed, her fingers smudged with ink from the drawings she’d been working on. Nigel got up and started shoving things into his bag.

I glanced at my watch, not wanting to catch Lucinda mid-coitus on the living room sofa. “I’ll stay a bit longer.”

They tried to protest, but I reassured them. I had my cell phone and was only a few blocks from home. As soon as they left, I pulled out my laptop and punched in
Travellers.
It wasn’t the first time I’d researched the subject, but I couldn’t seem to stop. I wanted answers. Immediately, piles of information popped onto the screen. I clicked on
The History of Irish Travellers
and began to read.

The origins of Travellers were very unclear, probably due to the fact they were a nomadic people and barely able to read and write. They had horrible attendance records in school, a high infant mortality rate, and a life span about twenty-five years shorter than average.

I pulled out my journal, jotted down notes, and then sat back in my chair. It sounded pretty bleak. Different sorts of Travellers went by different names. Gypsies, Pavees, Tinkers, Knackers, and derogatory ones like Pikey or Gypo. They operated on the fringes of society, shunned by respectable people. A cruel and harsh existence.

I thought about Michael, with his nose in an organic chemistry book, and swallowed hard. Most Travellers didn’t get past the eighth grade, but he was studying at university. I remembered the look on his face as he watched me in the window and could finally describe his expression.

Longing.
I wrote that down in my journal because it felt important.
He looked at me with longing.

Maybe this connected to what Nigel said, although his beauty queen idea seemed ludicrous. According to the article, Travellers kept to themselves. Mingling with non-Travellers was definitely frowned upon. Perhaps Michael couldn’t date non-Travellers. Maybe it was taboo.

I rubbed my eyes and looked at my watch. It was almost midnight, and the library would close soon. Surely, Lucinda would be done by now. I stood up and stretched, looking out the window at a patch of sidewalk illuminated by a street lamp. It was very dark, and looked like it might rain again. I reached for my coat and saw him outside, walking with his head down and completely oblivious to the fact I watched him. Michael Nightingale.

Chapter Four

Well, butter my bum and call me a biscuit.

~Grandma Sugar

I threw on my coat and tossed my backpack over my shoulders. As I ran out of the library, I pulled up my hood. My hair made me easily recognizable, and I didn’t want to advertise my identity at the moment.

Instead of my usual skirt, I wore yoga pants, allowing me to follow Michael more easily this time. Seeing his face in the glow of a streetlight made my silly old heart squeeze in my chest. I’d
missed
him.

Once again, he led me through The Shambles. Twice he answered his phone, and although his words were unclear, something in his voice sounded a whole lot like fear. Maybe Nigel was right about Michael being afraid of something, but at least this time it definitely wasn’t me.

The Shambles looked very different after dark. There were still people about, but they seemed seedier and more dangerous, and the smell of beer and vomit permeated the air. I ignored catcalls from the occasional drunk, kept my head down, and focused only on Michael’s back. I didn’t want to lose him. Not again.

Soon we reached a part of York I’d never seen before, darker and poorer than the area where I lived. Garbage bins lined the streets, and lights were few and far between. I hung back as far as I dared. There weren’t as many people here, making it harder to blend in. I couldn’t risk being seen, or Michael would most certainly disappear again.

He turned down a dark alley, and I followed, sticking close to the buildings and moving slowly. Three young men stood in the middle of the alley, right under a streetlight, staring down at what looked like a body on the ground. I came as close as I dared and hid in a doorway.

“What happened?” Michael’s voice sounded clipped, rough. He knelt down next to the object on the street. Definitely a body, and one wearing black high-top tennis shoes.

One of the boys standing next to him shifted nervously. They all had close-cropped hair like Michael, and similar taste in clothing. They looked like a motorcycle gang. I wondered if this was standard Traveller garb.

“Tad never goes out alone. He knows the rules, Mikey.”

“Then what the hell happened?” Michael’s voice was quiet, but filled with anger and sadness.

A noise from somewhere on the rooftops made Michael leap to his feet, his eyes scanning the buildings. The four of them turned in unison, backs to each other, protecting the body.

“Defensive positioning,” I murmured to myself.

Being a military history professor, my father had introduced me to more than
The Art of War
. I’d been fed a steady diet of books like Mao Tse-tung’s
On Guerilla Warfare
and General Carl von Clausewitz’s
On War
my whole life. I loved
On War
so much I’d brought it to preschool for show and tell. My teacher had not been amused.

My father was a scholar, not a fighter, but because of him I knew about enough about soldiers to realize these boys weren’t part of any motorcycle gang. They had military training.

Michael pulled something out of his jacket. It shone in the light of the streetlamp, a bright flash of silver.

“A
sai,
” I said under my breath, feeling a little jealous.

Oriental weapons were my passion, right after books and chocolate. The one Michael held in his hands was a thing of beauty. Shaped like a fork with one long middle blade, it was rather ineffective as an offensive weapon, but nearly perfect for defense. They were primarily used in pairs, but Michael only had one. His other hand was balled into a tight fist.

The other boys pulled out weapons, too. One held a short sword, a classic weapon dating back to Roman times. Another had a
katana
, recognizable because of its elegant curve and blood groove, the indentation on the sides of the blade that released suction and allowed the blade to slip out of the body easily. The third boy held a bearded axe, a Norse weapon designed for hacking, so powerful it could split a metal helmet in half. All combined, a pretty impressive show of weaponry for a street fight.

Something large and dark swooped down from one of the buildings. It stood a foot taller than Michael’s six-foot frame, and as soon as its feet hit the ground, it lifted its face to the sky and roared. I sank deeper into the shadows. That thing wasn’t human, and unlike any animal I’d ever seen. It stood almost like a man, but had several rows of teeth and cruel, yellow eyes. It smelled, too, like something left outside and rotting.

The creature had dark gray saggy skin that hung loose on its body. Long claws protruded from its front and back paws. It had a long snout and the pointy ears of a wolf, but I’d never seen a hairless wolf walking upright. And it was definitely a boy monster. Other than the obvious male appendage, it was a living, breathing gargoyle.

The beast moved toward the body. Michael blocked it very effectively with his
sai
, and then used his fist to slam the monster in the snout.

I stood watching in horrified silence as the four men fought the monster, never leaving their protective stance, working like a well-orchestrated unit. The monster seemed oblivious to their punches and the jabs of their weapons, only interested in the dead body on the ground. Wounds covered its body, gleaming with blood, but the creature didn’t care. As it lunged once again, Michael, in a blur of flashing silver, shoved his
sai
deep into the beast’s abdomen.

The beast clawed at him, howling, but Michael ignored the scratches on his arms and the blood dripping from his hands. With one sudden movement, he thrust his
sai
upward into the beast’s chest cavity. The creature’s entire body jerked in a giant spasm, and then fell limp into Michael’s arms. He pulled out his
sai,
wiped it on his jeans, and shoved the carcass aside.

“That was for our Tad,” he said, kicking it with his combat boots.

I stood there, trying to give my mind a chance to catch up, but it wasn’t working. Michael had just performed a sort of angry evisceration on what looked like Wolfman Jack from the
Friday Night Frights
show I’d grown up watching on TV back home in Bowling Green. That show had scared the crap out of me on a weekly basis, but nothing had ever scared me quite as badly as what I’d just witnessed. I shook from head to toe.

I’d been playing with fire. Michael really was dangerous, and in ways I never expected. As soon as Michael and his friends left, I planned to run as fast as possible in the other direction and never seek him out again.

I heard a small, shuffling sound and smelled something putrid and rotting just before an iron-strong arm wrapped around my chest. One of those creatures had me, and held me so tightly I could barely breathe as it pulled me into the light of the streetlight. Michael and his friends turned with their weapons at the ready.

“Emerson,” Michael whispered, his eyes full of fear. No doubt about what had scared him this time, and it wasn’t clowns or beauty queens. I’d fallen into a whole heap of trouble, and knew it.

The creature pulled down my hood and pushed my hair out of the way. I heard a noise from deep in its chest that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle, and tried not to gag as it ran its nose up and down the side of my neck. Michael took a step forward and it squeezed me even harder, making me gasp.

“You want this, Traveller?” The monster’s voice was a low, terrible hiss.

Michael nodded, swallowing hard.

“Throw down your weapon.”

He tossed the
sai
to the ground, and his friends did the same. The rattling of their weapons as they hit the damp cobblestone street pierced the quiet of the dark alley with a sharpness that made me flinch.

“Very good, Traveller. I will enjoy this.”

The creature stuck out its tongue and licked my neck. His tongue had the same sandpapery texture as Grandma Sugar’s old cat Miss Sally. I wanted to close my eyes and pretend Miss Sally licked my neck instead of some nasty wolf-monster-thing, but I couldn’t. I was firmly trapped in this present nightmare situation.

A muscle worked in Michael’s jaw. Apparently, this was a little hard for him to watch. I kept my eyes fixed on his, trying to find my center of calm and strength. I knew what to do, but needed the courage to act. I took a deep breath, let my body relax, and slumped in the creature’s arms like an old rag doll.

This took the creature by surprise, exactly what I’d hoped for. A basic move from Self Defense 101, a class I’d taught at the senior center for Grandma Sugar and her friends, it proved very effective against both muggers and monsters, apparently.

As soon as my body went limp, the monster released his hold on me just enough that I could swing my head forward and back, slamming him right in the face. His head flew backwards from the impact, but he still gripped my arms, his claws digging into my skin. I kicked him in the knee with everything I had, happy to hear a cracking noise and a little yelp of pain. I swung around, preparing to shove my palm into his nose so hard it would smash right into his nasty little brain, but as soon as I saw him, I paused, frowning. He didn’t have a nose. He had a snout. That hadn’t been part of the equation.

I stopped the momentum of my attack and lost my advantage. The monster grinned, something knowing and evil in its glowing, yellow eyes. It reached over and yanked out a few strands of my hair with its clawed, hairy hands. Michael shouted, and the creature let out a howl, pushing me away so hard I stumbled and fell onto my bottom on the wet stones of the street. It limped away, and even with an injured knee it moved with the speed and agility of a monkey climbing a tree in the jungle as it scaled the building next to me and disappeared.

I stood up slowly, rubbing the spot where the beast had pulled out my hair and spitting mad. “Get back here. I’m not done with you yet.”

“Quiet, Emerson.”

Michael had been down the street from me, but, suddenly, he stood at my side,
sai
in hand, and shoved me against the building. He had his back to me, obviously trying to protect me. Reassuring, but I was too angry to appreciate the gesture at the moment.

“Get out of my way.” I pushed against his back, but it felt like trying to move a brick wall.

“Be still, you wee idiot.” Michael clenched his jaw. He was angry, which did nothing to improve my mood. I started pounding on his back, but he ignored me.