GREYTHRONE

by P.S. Lomax

(Chapter 1 of a novel-in-progress)

How much would you sacrifice for love?

Risking life and limb for what we hold most dear is instinctual. Or is it simply impulse that drives us, a kind of madness?

Once—when events had spun out of control and death dogged our every step—he turned to me and said: “The night I found you in the park. As battered and as close to death as you were, you kept on fighting. With all the strength you had in body and soul…you kept on fighting. I knew then that I loved you. That I could never love another.”

“Because of my strength?”

“Because of your spirit. Can you call upon that spirit, that strength now?”

How much would you sacrifice for love?

* * *

Part 1

NEW YORK CITY

The Secret Cave
Catherine

Three tapestries of intricate design hung along the wall of the Great Hall’s west stairway. Stitched by some unknown hand, their colors muted and faded with time, each image told the story of an ancient, epic battle between good and evil.

For those who dwelled in the labyrinth of tunnels beneath the city, the tapestries’ origins, according to Vincent, were a “mystery we’ve never solved.”

“Perhaps they’re enchanted,” he’d said during Winterfest. “I used to imagine that they were magic windows . . . that if I stared at them long enough, and hard enough, that they might open up for me and I could pass through to another world.”

His words seemed ironic at the time, since it was I who so often passed between our two worlds. Every time I found my way to Vincent it was as if I’d entered a new dimension, one beyond time and space. It was always a leap of faith.

Of course, everything has changed now, but in quiet moments I do go back to another day, a day in April that same year. I remember how it all began. And how it ended.

It was spring, the twelfth to be exact, the anniversary of the night I had been left for dead in the park. The collision of our lives was something to be celebrated. For not so long before this, I had begun to question everything about our relationship. And although I had found my way back to Vincent, there are bells between people that can never be unrung.

More about that later. On this particular night, the entire community had gathered together in the Great Hall to celebrate the return of another who had passed through his own enchanted window, and who had made his way back after ten years.

Amiir Conde, one of the tunnel’s favorite sons, was returning.

The Great Hall was a vast space far below the tunnel’s living quarters, a timeless place and the perfect setting for celebrations. Which is why it seemed so odd to see Father and Vincent hovered together beneath the tapestries and having, what looked like, a very serious discussion. As I approached them, Father turned, his furrowed brow swept away and replaced with a bright, quick smile.

“Cathy,” he said. I felt a sudden surge of curiosity, since Father often used my nickname in moments of anxiousness. “You look wonderful. Really, quite . . . regal.”

I had to laugh at that, for no less than an hour before I’d emerged from the ladies’ room near my office at the District Attorney’s Criminal Courthouse and my boss, Joe Maxwell, had told me much the same thing.

“Fit for a queen,” he’d said at the sight of my long, gold gown, “but I hate to tell ya—”

“Tell me what?” I looked over my gold, Renaissance ballgown with concern.

“You’re missing your train.”

“I’m not about to walk around Central Park wearing a train,” I’d said with a laugh, storing my work clothes in a suitcase I’d brought along that morning, while Joe rooted around a nearby file cabinet. “Nothing warrants getting trampled to death. Aren’t you going to the concert?” I asked him.

“A rock concert in the park? You’re kidding, right?”

“It’s not just a rock concert, Joe. There’s a medieval festival. Food, drink. People. Remember people?”

“You realize you’re describing my worst nightmare.” Scowling, he pulled a file from the drawer, then slammed it and turned toward me. “I learned a long time ago, Radcliffe: stay away from crowds of crazies. I’ll be the only person in New York City getting any work done tonight. What about you?” he asked, flipping through the pages of a file and stealing a sly look at me as I touched up my makeup. “Hot date?”

Now, standing in the Great Hall and looking over at Vincent, resplendent in his finest embroidered vest and ruffled shirt, I had the distinct feeling that my plans were about to change. Although he complimented my dress and greeted me with his usual affection and warmth, his smile never made it to his eyes. And Vincent’s true feelings were always reflected in his eyes.

“What is it?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I really don’t know.” he said. “Catherine, the strangest thing has happened.”

He gestured behind him at the wall and tapestries. Looking up, I saw nothing to cause alarm, until I looked a little higher at the stair landing and saw it: a new tapestry, one I’d never seen before, hanging on the wall. For a moment, I was speechless. A joke perhaps? Something someone unearthed from a treasure trove of old tunnel finds?

“Where on earth did it come from?” I asked.

Father replied, “We’ve been asking ourselves the same question.”

“It looks just as old as the others,” I remarked as the three of us walked over for a closer inspection.

“Yes,” Vincent said in a troubled whisper. “Yes, it does.”

“Well, I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation,” Father said in an officious tone. “We’ll just have to question everyone who worked in here today. Someone must know something about it.” He spoke in the same dismissive tone he always used whenever he pondered a strange event.

But Vincent remained strangely silent. His thoughtful stare made me uneasy and I stepped closer to examine the tapestry. It looked similar to the others in its design, but this image depicted more than a mere battle. It appeared to be a scene telling some unknown story, with a definable beginning, middle and end. Medieval knights galloped along on horseback and what appeared to be a mob gathered around a dying man. In the middle of the scene, a crude, stone throne sat empty, and beside it the primitive figure of a man dressed in black, bolts of lightning shooting from his fingertips.

A sword lay across the throne, and in the distance another figure stood, its back to the viewer. There was something unsettling about the breadth of its shoulders, the stance. Then again, the entire tapestry seemed vaguely unsettling.

Turning back to Vincent, I shrugged and said, “I don’t know . . . King Arthur?”

Vincent nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

“And him?” I pointed at the sinister figure dressed in black.

“Mordred,” Vincent said, softly. “That would be my guess.”

I did a quick mental review of my Arthurian knowledge. Arthur the King loved Guinevere the Queen, who fell in love with Lancelot. Mordred, Arthur’s illegitimate son, betrayed his father and destroyed them all. But was Mordred a sorcerer? I couldn’t remember.

“Vincent,” I said, pointing at a hill in the upper right hand of the picture. “That’s Glastonbury Tor.”

“You know it?” he asked, stepping closer.

“I’ve been there,” I answered, with a nod. I was very familiar with the hill near the town of Glastonbury, England, as well as the tower of St. Michael that stood on its summit. “The summer before . . . before my mother died.”

I had a flash of vivid memory: walking with my mother toward the hill during a light rain. “Look Catherine,” she said, squatting down beside me on the chilly ground, “there’s Fata Morgana. See how the mountain rises up through the clouds?”

That had been the spring before her illness, and for the rest of my life , whenever I closed my eyes and thought of my mother, I could still hear her say the words “Fata Morgana.” Those two words brought it all back to me: the scent of her hair, the feel of her gloved hand in mine. Of course, once I grew up, I realized that my mother was trying to create some sort of magic for me. Fata Morgana was nothing more than an optical illusion caused by a thermal inversion, not by the hill having a life of its own. Perhaps, I told Vincent, my mother knew that I would need magic in my life to sustain me.

“A shame,” he said. “That dreams and fairy tales make way for real life.”

“Vincent, it’s time,” Father interrupted, peering at his pocket watch. They hurried away and I knew then that the mystery of the tapestry would have to wait. Deciding I could better spend my time helping the others, I went down to the main floor and began arranging the banquet table with Mary, the tunnel’s resident mid-wife.

The medieval theme being celebrated in the park above us had found its way to the world below. Chandeliers blazed with candles; the wall sconces and standing torches roared with flames, and all around lay a heavenly scent mixed with aroma of wood smoke. Everyone was dressed in their finery; banners lined the walls and medieval bunting festooned the rafters. The Great Hall looked, for all the world, like a medieval town on carnival day.

“Mary, how much do you know about the tapestries?”

“Only that they’re very old.” she answered. “They were hung here long before I came to the tunnels.”

Mary was tall and elegant, with a gentle, rather faded beauty. She lived to nurture the children of the tunnels, but there was a secret sorrow about her that made Vincent wonder whether she herself had lost a child. Mary was devoted to Father. I often wondered whether she was in love with him; wondered, too, if he even realized it.

“Does Father ever talk about them?”

“You know how he is about secrets,” she said fondly, stacking plates and napkins on the heavy table.

“Paracelsus hung the tapestries,” a voice behind us said.

It was Pascal, the engineer of the tunnel world who maintained the pipe system of communication. He pulled a heavy cart laden with food up to the table, then pointed to the stairway. “No one ever bothered to take them down.”

Paracelsus. The name sent a chill up my spine. A founder of the tunnel community and once a revered member, Paracelsus lived now in the shadows of our lives, a menacing presence the world below could never be rid of.

Pitching in to help with the final preparations of the evening, I now understood the look I saw in Vincent’s eyes. My thoughts were soon interrupted by the sound of drums and guitars.

Our guest of honor had arrived.

* * *

His surname was Conde, but that hardly mattered anymore. The world above knew him by his first name only.

Amiir.

I’d been stunned when Vincent told me that one of the world’s biggest music stars had grown up in the tunnels, and now, watching him enter the Great Hall, I mentally reviewed everything I knew about him.

Supernaturally gifted as a musician, even as a child, Amirr Conde was one part of a four-person rock band, Greythrone, who’d sold over forty million records. Still a teenager when he signed his first recording contract, he was in his mid-twenties now, a noted producer, songwriter and performer.

Recently named one of People magazine’s fifty most beautiful people in the world, he was a fashion icon—something I found quite easy to believe when I beheld his floor-length gold and black African boubou—who wore his jet-black hair long and lined his enormous doe eyes in dreamy kohl.

But to everyone in the tunnel world, he was simply Ami, brought to them as a twelve-year-old boy who’d been abandoned by his mother and rescued from the streets. Small, even for his age, his gifts were obvious from the start.

“But he never spoke,” Vincent remembered. “It was months before he even made a sound, and then it was only to hum tunes. Perhaps they were songs his mother sang to him. I never asked. It seemed that all he ever wanted was to . . . disappear.”

Ami was entrusted to work with Winslow, a gentle giant who had been the tunnel’s blacksmith until his death four months ago. Together they worked the blacksmith’s forge, and when there was no smithing to be done, excavated new living chambers by quarrying and working the stone. Winslow taught Ami patience and perfectionism, traits he would carry over to his music and to the world above.

Music was everything to the boy, and gradually, with Winslow’s encouragement, he began to open up and accept his new life. By the time he was sixteen and his father, a jazz pianist named Winton Conde, suddenly appeared to claim him, Ami had already mastered twenty instruments.

“How did he ever manage to find him here?” I asked Vincent.

“I suspect it was Father,” he said, thoughtfully. “I think he realized that our world had given all it could to Ami. Someone that gifted . . . needs more than we can provide.”

Now, sitting beside Vincent, watching and listening to Ami play, I couldn’t help but wonder what scars such a tentative existence had left upon the young artist.

For obvious reasons, Father had never allowed generators or loud music in the tunnels and yet I always felt that the stone walls and high ceilings in the great hall managed to provide their own enrichment any time music was played. There was always something timeless and ancient about the Great Hall and we watched, enchanted at the way Amiir weaved his spell with the music, soft and gentle, then dynamic and complex, flowing through the room.

Suddenly, I was reminded of the image of the stone throne and I turned and whispered to Vincent about what I’d heard regarding the tapestries and Paracelsus. Was it possible that he was the culprit?

Vincent shrugged. “Paracelsus always had a keen interest in Arthurian legend. According to Father, he believed in the messianic prophecy.”

“The what?”

Vincent turned to me. “The prophecy that one day Arthur would return.”

I laughed softly. “And what? Lead the world in battles?”

“Perhaps,” he nodded, reflectively. “Not necessarily as a classical warrior, but a great leader of some kind, nevertheless. A warrior fighting the world’s darkness.”

Watching the way Mouse, Janey, Brooke and the other children were listening raptly as Ami played, it occurred to me that Vincent might be right. “There are all kinds of weapons,” I whispered, nodding at Amiir and his guitar.

Vincent looked over at me, tilted his head in his special way he had of showing fondness. “When Ami was a boy, he always complained about being small. Winslow told him that power comes in many guises. It can flow in the most extraordinary ways.”

Looking at Ami, I felt his power and couldn’t help but wonder how he would feel meeting me. For Winslow gave his life trying to protect me from Paracelsus.

No sooner had the thought occurred to me, than the Great Hall’s enormous wooden doors blew wide open and we suddenly found ourselves in total darkness.

****

This anniversary was more than a simple celebration for me and Vincent. I suppose I’d hoped that this could be a renewal of sorts; an adjustment, at the very least.

For following Winslow’s death and the anniversary of my mother’s passing this past winter, I had begun to question everything regarding my life, particularly my relationship with Vincent. In short, I’d lost my faith. In us, in my own ability to straddle our two wildly different worlds. I’d even begun to doubt our empathic connection together.

My mother once asked me what I should do whenever I was afraid. My answer to her: “run”. And run I did, as fast and as far away from Vincent as I could manage on the spur of the moment. I wound up at the Connecticut home of an old friend, but found life unbearable without Vincent. And although I quickly returned to ask his forgiveness, a space had opened up between us that hadn’t been there before.

Now, standing back in Vincent’s chamber and assessing my efforts—a Château Latour opened to chambré, fresh flowers, and my gift to Vincent, a diorama of my apartment balcony, our private place in the world above, glowing beneath a glass cloche on Vincent’s bedside table—I heard a sudden noise behind me and turned.

Amir stood alone in the doorway. He took one tentative step inside, then reached a hand toward me. “Catherine?” he said. “Vincent said I might find you here.”

It took me a moment, but after managing quick introductions between us, I found him a comfortable seat. As he studied the diorama, I couldn’t suppress a light laugh.

“Forgive me for staring, but when I look at you I feel like I’m seeing a thousand magazine covers.”

“That’s why I never look at myself in mirrors anymore.”

His voice was surprisingly deep and warm, flowing in the way of those chocolate fountains you see in restaurants, decadent and alluring. Deciding I’d put it off long enough, I took a deep breath and began to talk about Winslow, when he suddenly took my hand in his.

“I know Winslow went with a full spirit,” he told me, placing his other hand upon his chest. “He was that kind of man.”

“I owe him my life.”

“I think I understand how you feel,” he said, looking around Vincent’s chamber. His smile told of a thousand memories in this place. “I owe this world everything that I am. Everything I’ll ever become.”

“I only wish I could repay him somehow,” I said, standing up to pour and offer him a glass of wine.

“You can,” he said, reaching for the wineglass I offered. “Live well, Catherine. Make Vincent happy and you’ll make Winslow, and me, happy.”

Sitting across from him, I noticed that he was studying the diorama again.

“And this is your world?” he asked, softly.

I nodded. We were close enough now for me to see the beautiful detail of his robe, the finely threaded gold in the weave. He was smaller than I’d realized, slender, with an innate elegance and a kind of latent power. He wore a headband tied behind his gleaming dark hair, and his skin was like burnished mahogany, his eyes flecked with gold. Part man, part child, I thought he was the most beautiful, graceful creature, besides Vincent, that I had ever laid eyes upon.

We talked about the concert and the Great Hall. He seemed uneasy when he said that no one had discovered the reason for the sudden wind and ensuing darkness. When I mentioned the new tapestry, his eyes flew up to mine. A spark seemed to flare in his dark eyes and there was a low urgency in his voice as he questioned me at length about the images as I remembered them.

“What is it?” I asked.

He seemed to search for the right words, then put his wineglass down and sighed. “Catherine, Vincent asked me to meet him here. I have something for him. . . just promise me you won’t let him—”

I suddenly looked up and saw Vincent standing in the doorway. “We were just talking about you,” I said, standing and walking to the dresser to pour him a glass of wine.

Vincent glanced at Amiir, then at me, his eyes falling on the gift, the wine, the flowers. He sighed and smiled, stepping closer toward me as Amiir rose to leave. When he and Vincent passed one another, Amiir said softly to him, “Vincent…I don’t think…”

“Please…Ami,” Vincent said, laying his hands on Amiir’s shoulders, “Don’t worry. Everything will be all right, I promise.”

At that, Amiir reached into his robe pocket and brought out a small envelope. He handed it to Vincent, then turned to me and said, “Catherine, it was wonderful meeting you. I wish…” He looked at Vincent and seemed to resign himself to something unspoken. “Happy Anniversary,” were his parting words as he swept out the door.

When he was gone, Vincent handed me the envelope to open. Inside were two all access passes and tickets to the concert in the park, as well as a gift certificate for two at Tavern on The Green. For a moment, I was dumbstruck, then I looked up into Vincent’s eyes.

“Vincent, what—”

“Happy Anniversary, Catherine.” he said softly. “Tonight, we go above.”

* * *

I could describe the long talk between us, but in the end nothing was really resolved. On this, our special night, Vincent seemed willfully determined to focus on nothing but making my dream come true. And my dream, as he had always known, was to set foot together in my world.

There was a part of me that actually believed it was possible. That it could work. There was a festival above; people would be swarming the park in all manner of costumes. I told myself that we would fit right in, that there was nothing stopping us.

We would simply have dinner and watch the concert, I thought, as Vincent and I made our way to Father’s chamber where a crowd had gathered to greet Ami. When we walked in, Mouse, our resident gopher, Pascal and Father were trying to make sense of what happened during the concert, so Vincent and I quickly found seats and listened as each gave a report of their search of the tunnels and pipes.

Father led the discussion, trying to find a possible reason for the “draft”, as he called it. Draft seemed an inadequate word to me for the powerful wind that had swept the Great Hall and I stole a look at Vincent., but he quickly averted his eyes. It was as though he would allow nothing to interfere with our plans for the evening, not even possible danger to his world.

“The night you returned from Connecticut,” he’d said earlier in his chamber, when I expressed doubts about the plan to go above, “you said you were wrong about many things. But you were right about one thing.” “Catherine,” he said, reassuringly. “We have to move forward. We can’t stay in the same place all our lives. And tonight, with the festival, we have that chance.”

I was jolted back to the present by Amiir’s question. “Is it possible the east entrance seal near the lake gave way?”

“We thought of that,” Father said, “Pascal even went there to look.”

Pascale shook his head emphatically. “Impossible. It’s tight as a drum.”

“The old mine shaft near Seneca Village?” Mary suggested.

“What’s Seneca Village?” I asked.

“Long before the park was a park,” Vincent explained to me, motioning above us with a graceful wave of his hand, “it was home to a number of small settlements, Seneca Village, being one.”

“Vincent and I tried to find them all,” Amiir remembered with a laugh.

“We were the bane of Father’s existence in those days. Devin, me, Winslow…Amiir,” Vincent nodded.

“I’ve lived in this city my whole life,” I said. “But since Vincent and I met, I’ve wondered whether I really know New York at all.”

Father smiled. “I’m afraid it’s all my own fault. I taught them about Seneca Village. It was a settlement of freed slaves who lived here long before the Park came into being.”

“The idea of freed slaves living here lit a fire inside of me,” Amiir said. “I just had to find it, try to unearth some of its secrets.”

“You’d always refuse to leave until we found at least one old relic,” Vincent reminded him. “A bottle, or an old coin.”

“I even found a beat-up, old mandolin once,” Amiir recalled with a smile.

“And only you could get music from it,” Vincent reminded him.

Pascal said impatiently, “All right then, what about the Ramble cave?”

“Out of the question,” Father snapped.

Like every New Yorker, I was familiar with the Ramble, a maze of garden trails in the park that made up the “woodland” between Seventy-third and Seventy-eight Streets. “I didn’t know the ramble had a cave,” I said.

“Amiir!”

We all stood as Narcissa walked into the chamber, led by Mouse. A squat, tiny woman who dwelt alone in the tunnel world’s depths, I’d not seen her since Winterfest. She’d nearly been killed at the hand of Paracelsus then, set alight by the torch he held, then wantonly disregarded as she fell down the tunnel shaft near the Great Falls. Her eyes clouded by age and cataracts, her body still racked by her injuries, Father had insisted Narcissa stay with the community until she was fully recovered. Dressed now in her finest robes—in Amiir’s honor, I was certain—Mouse led her over and straight into his embrace.

“My boy… my boy,” she said. “Here, let me look at you,” she said emotionally. And look at him she did, in the only way she knew how: by running her hands along his shoulders, arms and torso. She saved his face for the end, then stepped back and said sternly: “Much too beautiful for your own good.”

Amiir laughed and embraced her again, very gently this time until Narcissa stepped back and surveyed him further.

“But this boy…he is missing someone,” she announced, smiling brilliantly. “A very lovely, young someone. Do I speak the truth?” she said.

“Narcissa,” Vincent said, “you don’t really expect him to answer that, do you?”

Narcissa smiled and looked Vincent’s way. “Vincent, my child. So happy to see you.” She clucked her tongue and her head shook from side to side. “But you are worried again, no? Always worried, this one. And who is this?” she asked, her eyes darting in my direction.

I took her hand. “It’s—

“Catherine…yes. I—” Her smile vanished, her eyes widened. I felt a strange, undeniable thrum of energy at her touch when she said, “There is danger. Danger coming. For you, my dear. You must take care.”

“Oh, I’m sure—”

“Take care!” she warned. “Take care,” she said again, softly before Mouse led her away.

After she’d gone, I looked around, smiled weakly and shrugged. Father stared keenly in my direction, and I wondered whether he knew about Vincent’s plan to go above. Deciding that there had been enough excitement for one day, I didn’t ask.

* * *

“Sheep used to graze here, on this spot,” I said to Vincent. “Did you know that?”

“You see,” he said, smiling. “Now it’s you, teaching me.”

We sat together on the patio of the Tavern on The Green, where Amiir was treating us to dinner before the concert. This was the last restaurant my parents had taken me to before my mother’s illness. As the late afternoon shadows lengthened on the patio, I told Vincent that it was the last time I was ever really part of a family.

“You were so right, Vincent,” I told him, taking his hand. “This is a dream come true.”

Ami had planned it all beautifully. We had a small, intimate table. The treetops, draped with tiny lights, tossed in the wind like ladies’ hats, and beautiful music surrounded us. I felt remarkably, absurdly happy; all of my earlier concerns vanished.

It had been a day for memories, making new ones, and reliving the old. And in spite of the hundreds of people dressed in costumes, it had still taken some time for us both to adjust and feel comfortable.

I’d balked a little just before we emerged from the tunnels. Vincent checked to make sure all was clear, then we cautiously stepped out and into the daylight. He held onto my hand and we walked into the sunshine. It felt like being born again into a world of lemon-bright goodness; the sun sparkled across the lake like diamonds. Vincent could hardly take his eyes off of it.

“It’s almost painful,” he remarked as we walked together along the shore.

Strangely enough, I’d never even considered how the change from below to above would affect him physically. Like a man newly released from prison, he seemed to revel in the sunshine and warmth, and when he stopped suddenly to gaze at the New York skyline, he said, “I’ve never seen the city like this, except for photographs in books.”

Now, as we lingered over our desert, a bit of the unease I’d felt earlier that afternoon crept up on me again and I said, “Vincent . . . maybe we should go back early? Not press our luck?”

“Catherine, no…Not yet. I don’t want to go back. Our time together is too precious. And this time most of all.” Smiling one of the most glorious smiles I’d ever seen from him, he leaned back and opened his arms wide. “If only I could stop time right now. I’d do it. For you.”

“For us.”

“Yes. For us.”

But something nagging at me would not be silenced, and he knew it. “You can tell me, you know.”

“It’s the tapestry,” I admitted. “Amiir seemed concerned. And I know there’s more to it than you’re telling me. Do you really think it’s a warning from Paracelsus?”

“It’s hard to say,” he admitted, sighing. “After his escape at Winterfest…I don’t know. I hoped that he was out of our lives, at least for a while. But I know better. Paracelsus always returns. Like a wave. But we can’t let it ruin this time together.”

Vincent was right, of course. All around us, the park teemed with color and activity. Along the grassy berm in the distance, troubadours and maidens danced to lutes, and beyond them an assortment of drums and bells accompanied jugglers as they tossed pins high into the air. I caught a quick glimpse of a slim young man in a black tabard and gave a little start, thinking about the figure in the tapestry. But when I looked across the table at Vincent, I threw caution to the wind and reached for his hand.

It seems incredible to me now, looking back, but at that moment I truly believed that Vincent and I had all the time in the world.

* * *

The night air smelled weirdly of ozone and rain, yet stars were visible to the east. The throb and sensual rhythm of the music surrounded us. A strong wind, similar to the one that had engulfed the tunnels earlier, kicked up again, and Vincent took off his coat and draped it across my shoulders. He held me close, wrapping his arms around me like a protective seal. I had never felt so safe, so warm.

The last notes of the opening band’s set drifted away like smoke rings into the night air, and we stood silently among the huge crowd gathered on the Great Lawn, watching the techs and roadies set up for Greythrone. Every so often, Vincent would direct my attention toward the stage where graduated seating for a string and horn section and a grey, stone wall were magically erected. Battlements and enormous catapults were constructed with almost lightspeed efficiency until finally a gigantic screen flashed to life just behind the stage.

“Look,” Vincent said as images of the band’s latest album, Mist and Bone, lit up across the screen with an eerie blue light. A chill went through me when I noticed the album’s cover: a lit throne made of stone and covered with crows.

We barely had time to process the photograph’s implications when Jamie, Mouse, Brooke, and others from the tunnels surrounded us, screaming and laughing. When the lights dimmed, the roar of the crowd was deafening in the darkness.

The crowd went wild as Greythrone took the stage. Amiir stepped gracefully into the spotlight followed by lead singer Rio, and lead guitarist Gabriel Lacroix. Moving about in the eerie blue light, they picked up their instruments as Elaine Tanner, the band’s keyboardist, sat on a dais to the right of the band, her long blond hair gleaming beneath the lights.

I leaned back against Vincent as the opening rush of music filled the air. I had rarely felt as happy in my life as I felt at that moment, standing with Vincent in the middle of the crowd of chanting fans as the music washed over us.

It may have been an hour or more later—I was too swept away by the rush of emotion and the steady embrace of the man I loved to notice the time—when I suddenly became aware that Jamie, a young woman from the tunnels, was pointing and yelling something to Vincent.

“Mouse!” she shouted through the din and we turned in time to see Mouse darting off in pursuit of a figure in a heavy cloak. “Stay here,” Vincent said in my ear before he tore off after Mouse.

I watched him run into the crowd. I don’t know how much time passed, and I can’t say for certain when I first became aware of the presence standing beside me. But I was suddenly very conscious of someone there.

Lightheaded, my heart hammering against my chest like a caged bird’s, I finally found the nerve to steal a glance to my right. What I saw made me quickly turn my head back to the stage, the blood rushing to my ears. It was the man I’d seen earlier from our table at the restaurant, the young man wearing the tabard of black.

Rationally, I knew it was impossible, but some instinct told me that he was the same figure depicted in the tapestry. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t felt terror before. I’d endured a kidnapping and faced death on more than one occasion. But nothing prepared me for the horror I felt at that moment. There was nothing about his looks that would frighten anyone. In fact, he was amazingly handsome, with dark, shoulder-length hair and finely cut features. And it’s not that he made any sudden movements; he barely moved at all until I noticed him lifting his hands and sliding them into a pair of dark gloves.

Still, every instinct in my body told me that I had to get away from him; I couldn’t bear the thought of standing there one more moment. Beyond rational thought, beyond worrying about Vincent or Mouse or anything else at that point, I only knew that I had to put distance between myself and this stranger in black.

I turned away from the stage and blindly shoved my way between the crowds of costumed people. Pushing my way past French kings and queens, a man wearing a dancing bear costume, and more than one buxom pub lass, I finally broke free of the crowd and headed south toward the Seventy-ninth Street traverse. From there, I could turn west toward the natural history museum and make my way home.

Vincent would find me there eventually, as he did most nights. Once we were together, on the small private world of our balcony, we could sort things out, make some sense of everything. I calmed myself with that thought as I made my way past the Delacorte Theatre. The lights of the Belvedere Castle shone in the distance; the crowds were thinner now and the music diminished, so that by the time I reached the traverse, my anxiety had eased enough for me to stop for a moment and take several deep breaths.

Still clutching Vincent’s jacket, I took it from my shoulders and, pushing my arms deep inside the sleeves, zipped it up and shoved my hands deep into the pockets. The road was nearly empty, with most of the park visitors crowding the Great Lawn. Looking around, I saw no trace of the man in black, so I turned and began heading west. Walking toward the Eighty-first Street exit I was relieved to see the streetlights up ahead, until something compelled me to stop.

He was almost close enough to touch, huddled in a copse of trees not twenty feet away, his silhouette barely visible in the dim glow of the street lamps. It was Vincent and my heart leapt with a relief so overwhelming I nearly burst into tears. Until I walked toward him and saw that it wasn’t Vincent at all.

He had the same silhouette, the same broad shoulders and flowing mane of hair. Yet when he turned, a stranger’s face looked back at me with a kind of sinister hatred and I was swept by a revulsion to intense that I fell back on the edge of the pavement, scraping my palms and jarring my bones. Crabbing backward, sliding on my heels and palms, I finally jumped up and ran blindly into the grass beyond.

Once, as a child, not far from this very spot, I’d happily approached a large dog from behind, only to have it turn and snarl at me. I had much the same sensation of fear now as I ran, picking up my skirts and stumbling blindly through the darkness. I kept running; I had no breath to scream, just a painful stitch that made me grasp my side. Gasping, I finally stopped when I recognized Bonfire Rock, and realized where I was.

The Ramble.

What about the Ramble cave?

It suddenly occurred to me that I’d been herded somehow to this spot but I knew that was ridiculous. Then I turned again to run, and stopped in terror. The man in black and the twin Vincent were standing right in front of me. Somehow, inexplicably, they had swallowed up the distance between us with lightning speed.

Unable to move, rooted to the spot where I stood in the grass, I watched, horrified, as the man in black walked calmly around behind me. I could hear my own sobs as he took my arm with an iron grip and the three of us were lifted together off the ground. My body felt frozen as we sped through the air. A barrier like a wall of water seemed to surround us.

We passed by others, but they seemed completely unaware of our existence. Nauseated, I was helpless as we were propelled forward together. I was only prevented from falling by the force that somehow held us together. The muffled sound of voices came to my ears from somewhere in the world I’d left behind, and I could have sworn that I heard Vincent bellowing out my name.

We finally came to a stop in front of a pile of stone steps leading up to a rough wall of rock. I knew that I had finally found the Ramble cave. I opened my eyes wide, just in time to see the man in black stretch out a hand and score the rock face with lightning before the world went completely dark.