Lightbreaker

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We would have been happy to find any hint of Doug's extracurricular hobbies: printed emails left carelessly in the trash, a desk calendar with circled dates and cryptic references, notes scribbled in the margins of his esoterica, secret society-style robes and objects of office hidden in a valise shoved in the back of the closet. What we found instead was the not-so-subtle suspicion that the place had been cleaned. The condo had been sanitized by Pender so as to remove any occult impropriety. Now, it was just the empty apartment of an energetic investment banker who spent most of his time chasing clients, spending money, and reading pop magic books. Nothing more.

After the dismal return on breaking the law at Doug's, Nicols insisted on getting something to eat. We repaired to the nearest 24-hour restaurant-Minnie's on the corner of First and Denny. Caffeine and starch. Post-midnight brain food.

I was having trouble sitting still as Nicols looked over the menu. My lower intestine was busy knotting itself over the fact that the hunt for Kat was going to have to be abandoned. My small window of opportunity had closed. The back trail was gone, and not only was Pender waiting for me, he was already removing what scant clues I had to go on. Doug's group had gone to ground. I didn't have the time to look under every rock.

No way to them. No way to her.

Seattle wasn't safe anymore. The psychic card in Doug's condo meant Pender had made contact with Paris. The Prince of Swords was the sign that he knew my history, knew what had happened between Antoine and me. He is coming. That was the message of the card.

My stomach took on some of the tension in my lower intestine, the Chorus clawing its way up through my torso. So close. She's so close.

"All right," Nicols said, jarring my internal confusion. "Let's hear it."

"Which?" Why was the Chorus nipping at me like this? They could be persistent, but never as overt as this. It had first started at the barn, and I tried to recall the sensation I had felt there. Hidden layers. The false reality of the surface, like the glassy mirror of a still lake. The sense of awareness underneath.

Could they hide something from me?

"Why you're running from Pender. What that card means. The whole story."

"Why?" Why were they pushing me?

"Because you're getting ready to bail on me. I step away to use the restroom, and you'll be gone when I get back. Just like that card. You keep looking out the window like you're expecting someone, like you're waiting for a signal to run."

"What if I am?"

"Where does that leave me?"

I exhaled, trying to remember the pranayama technique from yesterday morning. "Did I ever give you the impression that I needed a side-kick?"

"No, goddamnit," Nicols growled, "that's not what I'm talking about. Pender. What am I going to do about him?"

"Ignore him," I sighed painfully. "He's only interested in me."

His response was aborted by the arrival of the waitress with a pot of coffee. She managed to pour coffee and take our order with one eye closed as if she had woken up moments ago.

"I can't ignore him," Nicols said after she left. "He works for someone else. It took me a while, but it finally dawned on me that a guy like him-a guy in charge of making problems disappear-wouldn't do it because he's a generous spirit. He does magickal clean-up because that's his job, which means he's got a different chain of command." Nicols smacked the table with his thumb. "His interests aren't mine, aren't SPD's. He'd fuck us all in order to serve his real boss, wouldn't he?"

I shrugged, a "Wouldn't we all?" dismissal of his question.

"You can run and hide. I don't give a shit really. But I don't think it's Pender you're worried about. He's not the one who has the hooks in you. There's something else going on. But hey-" he spread his hands "-not my problem. I'll be quiet. Just sit here until my eyesight clears up, and everything goes back to normal."

I stared at him until he put his hands back on the table. "It's Pender's boss that has you spooked," he said. "And he's coming here, isn't he?"

I tried to repeat my earlier shrug of dismissal, but couldn't pull it off. The gesture turned into an involuntary shiver.

"Pender is a member of an organization known as the La Societe Lumineuse," I started. "They're based in Paris, and their job is to watch. Watch and protect. Magick is supposed to remain. . hidden. Outside of Paris, we call them 'Watchers,' and they've got agents everywhere. Their allegiances are to the organization, regardless of their local affiliations. Yeah, Pender would drive a car over you if it served his larger purpose. The Watchers are. . both myopic and zealous." To put it generously.

"What about you? What are your allegiances?"

"Pender called me a veneficus during my interrogation. Latin, and it means both 'poisonous' and 'sorcerer,' depending on your need. Though, in my case, I think he meant both meanings. I'm. . without a master."

"What does that mean? You're a rogue?"

I nodded. "I belong to no one-no coven, no order, no society. I've never met one of the Secret Chiefs, and I don't know the special handshake of the Mormon Church. I am a wild card-a child of chaos-and the Watchers don't like the unpredictability of adepts like me. . especially when they used to belong to the family."

"They're after you just because you haven't paid your dues?"

"It's more complicated than that."

"I'm sure it is completely byzantine," he said, raising an eyebrow as he sipped from his cup. "So boil it down for me into something resembling a simple explanation."

I looked out the window. It had started raining again. A thin mist streaked the window, and the pools of water in the street were filled with yellow and green reflections. Minnie's was warm, and the smell of grease and burned meat was neatly hidden under an effluvium of gardenia and peppermint. Other than a quartet of young students on the other side of the triangular-shaped room, we were the only customers.

It was nearly 3:00 a.m. on a weeknight. If Antoine was on a flight from Paris already-even if he had gone straight to de Gaulle after hearing from Pender and caught the very next flight to Seattle-it would be midmorning before he arrived. At least.

Getting out of town was easy. One Suggestion to anyone driving north, and I could be across the Canadian border by the time Antoine arrived. Vancouver was large enough to confuse my trail. I could extend my head start there.

That wouldn't deter Antoine though. Not now, not when he knew my death had been faked. Hiding in Vancouver-or anywhere, for that matter-would just delay the inevitable. He'd never stop looking for me. Did I want to run for the rest of my life?

What other choices did I have?

Kill him, the Chorus insisted. Finish what he started. Cut a deal with the Watchers. Face them instead of showing your back. They twitched, sending a ripple of energy up my spine. Stop running.

And behind that suggestion lay the ever present lure of finding Kat, of returning the favor done to me a decade ago.

This isn't about revenge?

I tried to shake off Nicols' question from the car, but it was stuck in my head. Revenge? Was that all that drove me?

And Antoine? What do you think drives him? Is it any different?

It was like a whole section of the past had been overwritten. We had been seekers of knowledge, students of the arts who only sought to comprehend the luminous divinity of creation. Instead, we had become creatures driven by something as primitive as revenge. Had we drifted so far?

"A few years ago, I was in Paris. Studying to be a Watcher," I told Nicols, choking down these questions as if they were a glob of poisonous bile. "I had made the second rank-Journeyman-and fell in with one of the 'rising stars'-one of the golden children who was slated to ascend far in the ranks. Antoine Briande. He's from a long line of occultists-his father's father and that man's grandfather were both Watchers. Heresy and alchemy are an inextricable part of his heritage, the sort of pedigree that opens all manner of doors to an eager student. Me? I was just a mutt from the streets who showed promise and passion. We had nothing in common but, well, we discovered a common fascination."

"A woman," Nicols offered.

"No," I started, thinking of the philosophical curiosity we had both shared. But that wasn't the truth. Not entirely. "Yes," I corrected. "A woman. Her name was-is-Marielle."

Summoned by my confession, the memory of that last morning in Paris flooded my brain. An act of re-creation brought about by the power of her name. The magick of names, and the power they hold. Over their owners, and over those who believe in them.

Marielle. Standing on the apartment balcony-the stolen hideaway we had tumbled into the night before-blowing soap bubbles toward the morning sun. The dawn of my last day in Paris, the last hour before my relationship with Paris had been severed. All ties cut, with one stroke. Her. My friendship with Antoine. My future with the Watchers. Everything.

I struggled to find my voice, lost as I was in the past. "Antoine invoked an old Law of the organization, and challenged my right to membership. Ritus concursus. Trial by combat; I had to prove my worth. He went old school, and demanded a duel with swords. No magick."

"Since you're here, I guess you won. What's the problem? He challenged you."

"Nobody won." I toyed with my silverware, seeing the table knife as a longer, deadlier weapon. "Well, they thought I was dead."

"Ah, I see."

That morning, beside the Seine, on the walkway beneath the Pont Alexandre, Antoine had delivered a decisive stroke, piercing me front to back. The pain had been intense, a febrile fire that had devoured my insides. Somehow I had managed to stay conscious; I had managed to continue fighting. Antoine had been caught off-guard, his sword still stuck in me.

"I took his hand," I told Nicols. "I cut it off before I fell into the Seine. They never found my body."

I could still remember the impact of the river, how it had hungrily filled my mouth and throat in an effort to drag me down to the bottom of its channel. But the Chorus hadn't been willing to die. They had filled my lungs with hard shadows, forcing the water out. The mixture of gore and water in my wound had been transmuted into tender flesh, sealing the hole. Making me whole. Again. I had been carried away from the bridges and cathedrals of Paris by the river, a tiny submersible filled with secrets and regrets.

"Antoine couldn't reattach what he couldn't find." I smiled. "My permanent reminder of what he had lost." I had lost both the sword and his hand in the river. Buried in the mud and muck.

The waitress approached with our food: eggs, bacon, toast, and home fries for Nicols; eggs and a strawberry waffle for me. She came back with more coffee, and we let the conversation hang for a minute while we ate. Like my existence for the last five years, frozen in place, waiting for resolution to matters interrupted.

There were a lot of other memories of my time there: the endless nights exploring Montmartre; the week I took him climbing in the Pyrenees and showed him how to jump off cliffs; the trip to Chartres with Marielle, where we three finally acknowledged the tension binding us together; or the night spent in the catacombs beneath Paris where Antoine and I faced the ancestral spirits. We had been friends. Until the end. Until our blades had touched. Our bond was dissolved by blood and water, washed away like so much history beneath the bridges of Paris.

I had taken his hand, an irreplaceable part of him. Just like Kat had taken something from me. I knew what he faced every day, what each dawn reminded him: he was not whole. I had created his imperfection. He wouldn't forget.

And maybe in our imperfections was where our innocence died, where we gave up wanting to know the truth of the world. Where we decided, instead, that we would be defined by fear and anger.

"So he wants his pound of flesh?" Nicols asked. "Just like you with Kat. But neither of you will call it what it is. It's just old-school vengeance."

The forkful of strawberry-covered waffle turned to cloying ash in my mouth as the Chorus swarmed up my throat and bled darkness on the back of my tongue. I spit the food out on the side dish where I had scraped the excess whipped cream. The damp mass sizzled through the fluffy mound like a hot rock melting through snow.

Like a magma dome growing in the cone of an ancient volcano, something was rising inside me. Something that fed the Chorus. It had lain in darkness a long time and now, with Kat near-with Antoine coming-it was growing.

Vengeance. Wipe away the hurt by hurting those who wounded you.

I wiped my mouth. "I'm a fallen-" I was going to say "Watcher," but I got caught by the previous word. Fallen.

It was Milton who made Lucifer human in Paradise Lost, who gave a name to that which consumed the fallen angel. I had read the book in high school, loved it for some reason, and had come back to it several times since. Milton said that Lucifer was consumed by revenge. He wanted to pull down the gates of Heaven because they were closed to him. Not privy to the complete scope of the Father's plan, Lucifer had dared to ask. All those children who dared to question the plan, to peek behind the curtain, to look inside the box, or to eat from the tree: all of them fell from grace.

"Fallen-?" Nicols prodded me to finish the thought.

"Revenge," I said. "It is like Pride, or the sin of Ignorance. It is a failing of the flesh."

He shrugged. "The Catholic Church has been saying that for centuries. I can't believe this is a new concept for you."

"No, that's not it. The Church can't claim to have invented these sins. One of the antecedents of Catholicism was an Egyptian writer named Hermes Trismegistus. His discussion of the soul and the flesh wasn't marred by all the histrionics of organized religion. He argued that demonic influences held sway over the flesh by means of the baser appetites, and that the soul was held back from its reasoned ascension by these influences."

When the Chorus had rescued me in Paris, they had revealed a venomous intent of their own. I hadn't consciously realized how or why they would act in such a way. I had been. . distracted, and as quickly as their secret had risen, it had vanished again. Hiding inside me until such time as it could poison me again. This was the source of my desire for revenge, what railed at me now to continue my search for Katarina.

Qliphotic. That old familiar darkness, so comfortable with the idea of vengeance.

Nicols still didn't see my point, and I realized I wasn't articulating it very well because the more I tried to concentrate on the source of my dis-ease, the more it squirmed away from me. Like a shadow trying to avoid a flashlight beam. "The Prince of Swords," I said. "On one level it's a reference to our duel. But on another, a purely symbolic level, it represents Mind without Purpose. The Prince acts, but may not understand why. Revenge, John. We are driven by it, but what is the root of it?"

"Ah, maybe the hand you took?"

I sighed. "Not Antoine. Me." He couldn't see inside my head, couldn't see the way my memory was fraying. "You're right, John. Part of me wants to run and hide from Antoine. But it's an endless cycle. I'll always be running. But another part of me wants to stay, is arguing quite strenuously to stay and fight. Face Antoine because he stands between me and Kat."

"You can't let go of her, can you?"

I shook my head. "And why can't I? Is it just revenge that I want?"

"We all have our demons," he shrugged. "If that's what you're trying to tell me. I get it. I'm not going to absolve you of any action you might take, but I understand it."

"No, I'm not sure this action-this need-is mine." The Chorus tugged at my spine, unease drifting through their rank like dank smoke. "There's something else." I shook my head, trying to shake something that clung. "Uh, maybe. Yes."

"Yes what?"

"Another perspective. I need a second opinion."

"Now?"

"Why not? I don't like the idea of running, but I suddenly don't trust my own motives for staying. I need another opinion. From someone who can more objectively see through me. I need someone who can read the Weave. I need a fortune teller."