Lightbreaker

XXII

Nicols drove past the single shopping complex on the edge of Ravensdale. Swarming the parking lot were off- and on-duty officers from SPD, in addition to King County deputies, policemen from Kent, Auburn, Bellevue, and other local communities. They were like an unorganized hive, a massive interagency effort that hadn't yet settled on its command structure. All the little workers with no work to do. Nicols passed the confusion-it wasn't a nest we were interested in kicking-and angled down the right-hand split of the road just beyond the swarming police presence. A half-block later we hit a T-intersection.

"Which way?" Nicols asked. The view in either direction offered no hint.

I glanced down at the Thomas Guide page in my lap and realized the road we were on was one side of a triangle-three roads that outlined a section of scrub land. "There," I said, looking over my left shoulder. "That's the closest thing this town has to a focal point."

Nicols pulled over, and we left the car to walk up the slope. At the top, we found an area sectioned off with yellow police tape. Five bodies lay on their backs in a circle-feet pointed out-inside the boundary of the yellow tape. Each wore the gray robe of the Hollow Men, hoods pulled up over their faces. Whorls of red paint, spotted with tiny black letters like a trail of ants, ran along the top of each naked foot. I knelt and peeked under one hood. Similarly adorned concentric circles-three of them-had been painted on the corpse's forehead. Sigils.

"The Anointed," I said.

"Excuse me?" Nicols asked.

"They're Hollow Men, friends of Doug. He called them the Anointed. Five who had completed the ritual of Ascension and been judged suitable for 'Anointment.' Doug didn't know what the term meant; he just knew it afforded them access to secret knowledge. The hidden mysteries of the inner sanctum, or something equally as specious. Doug wanted in, and I had gotten in the way."

Nicols didn't ask what had happened to Doug or how I knew these things. He was looking toward the tight cluster of houses on the other side of the main road from this grassy knoll. Shouts, tossed our way by the mercurial breeze, indicated members of the task force were making discoveries. Corpses. Still ambulatory. "They're coming," Nicols said. "The zombies. They're drawn to you, aren't they?"

I nodded and quickly checked the other bodies, looking for a familiar face. Julian wasn't one of them. Kat had said he was Anointed-the first to be so-and Bernard was probably one of the other seven she said she had assisted. With these five, that accounted for all of them. But what was the purpose of being "Anointed"? Was the title just a misleading appellation, a buzzword that disguised their true purpose as sacrificial lambs in an unholy rite?

The area in the center of the circle of dead men was roughly about the size of the mirror's broad base. I shivered involuntarily as I imagined the takwin ibis-hounds assaulting the five as they lay still on the ground. What had they been promised to make them agree to having their souls sucked? Doug's memory was still sharp with outrage. He had wanted that rank; he had sacrificed for the privilege of being one of the special ones. The ones allowed to participate.

The deaths of the Anointed, the deaths in Ravensdale: they were only the beginning.

"Oh shit," Nicols said, his hand suddenly on my shoulder.

There, across the field, a single figure came toward us, walking a straight line from the parking lot and the swarming host. A tall man, dressed in a gray coat that flowed back from his legs like the spread of a heron's wings. Sunlight collected at the end of his right sleeve as if he was holding a mirror, or a star. On the psychic level, he was a shifting apparition, both a hole and not a hole in space.

Antoine.

"Hello, mon ami," he said as he reached the outline of police tape. "It's been a long time." He inclined his head toward Nicols. "Detective." The word was ripe with inflection and subtle echoes. An acknowledgment of a tool's usefulness. You have given your Will to my cause. The Watcher way of making an individual's efforts seem independent of their manipulation and influence.

"Hello, Brother," I said, with a little added gravity of my own. I know what you are doing.

Antoine's smile was the result of generations of breeding and training, perfectly pitched to disarm and charm. His hair, like a lion's mane-full of strawberry and blonde highlights-was combed back from his forehead and flowed gracefully on the collar of his silk shirt. The end of his right arm was covered with a smooth knob of silver.

"You seem well," he said, and the twinkle in his eyes wasn't entirely a trick of the light.

I nodded. "My tragic case of consumption seems to have cleared up." I filled my lungs. "It's the country air."

He gazed at the tall trees and the distant mountain, so close via a trick of the atmosphere. "It certainly does have restorative powers." He inhaled deeply as well. "None of that stink of the city. It is very nice."

"Too bad we're not vacationing."

He shrugged. "Yes, a pity."

"How many, Antoine? How many in Ravensdale?"

"Nearly nine hundred," he said. Nicols made a choking noise, as if the number was caught in his throat. I was cold, through and through, frozen by the magnitude of what had been done. Unprepared for the casual admission of such destruction.

"They're coming back," he continued, a sardonic grin tugging at his lips. "You, so flush with all that blood and life you have taken, are just too bright a lure for them to resist. You, Shiva's dark child, are summoning them with your presence." He scuffed the dirt. "Right here."

They were coming out of the woods now, staggering slowly and awkwardly. Newborns learning to walk. Their ruined eyes and black mouths were holes deep enough to drown in. How many, Lightbreaker? whispered the wind issuing from those holes. Did you not enjoy it?

"This was your Watch," I said, focusing on the bigger issue. "You didn't know what was going on. You let this happen."

"Did I?"

"You were too busy fucking around, leaving me notes and hiding in the shadows. You should have been taking the Hollow Men apart, not wasting your time with our little vendetta. You played right into their hand by being distracted."

"Was I?"

"Son of a bitch." Nicols drew his gun and pointed it at the Protector. "He knew they were going to do this." Antoine stared at me, ignoring the weapon. Watching my expression, Watching me untangle the threads.

Nicols' conclusion certainly seemed like the one Antoine was intimating, but I wanted to be sure. I wanted to See the threads, and make sure there wasn't some subtlety I was missing. Why would he condone such an experiment? Antoine wasn't being smug-he was as inscrutable as ever-and that made me consider the possibility there was some strand not yet revealed. "Bernard's an academic; he's not part of the family. He worked for you."

"Bernard du Guyon was a professor of Medieval Studies at the Sorbonne," Antoine agreed. "But there was a scandal, disputes about his methodology and awkward questions concerning a rare manuscript in the university's possession. He fled to Bonne, and became an alchemist.

"Well, he always had been an alchemist, really. Teaching gave him access to the university's collection of Renaissance and Medieval manuscripts, and the one in question was purported to be the second part of Ficino's Theologia Platonica de immortalitate animae. M. du Guyon believed the text was filled with technical marvels, mechanical ways of realizing Ficino's theories."

"But that was his job, wasn't it?" I said. "To find heretical works and magickal grimoires in the archives. He knew you would pay him well for such artifacts."

Antoine shrugged. "Possibly. But we already had a complete catalog of the Sorbonne's collection. We've had it for sixty years. Anything dangerous had already been purged. The claims of both Bernard and the university as to the identity of this pamphlet couldn't be true. No such text exists. Nor has it ever."

"He thinks he's reconstructed The Book of Thoth. The real one. Where did he find the pieces? This second part of Ficino's Theologia. Was that part of it?"

Antoine shook his head. "It doesn't exist."

"A lot of things don't exist," I said. "That doesn't mean he hasn't read it."

Antoine smiled at that, his eyes flickering toward Nicols and the gun. "The mysteries of the occult. Seeing things that aren't there. Reading books that weren't ever written. All very confusing, don't you think, Detective?"

Nicols held the gun steady. "You haven't answered his question," he said. "Where did Bernard find the pieces?"

"Ah, you are going to be tenacious about this." Antoine sighed. "Well then, perhaps he had access to a very private collection. One that had all the right pieces. Maybe a complete copy of the Kitab al-Zuhra, for example."

"Someone tainted by a manuscript scandal isn't going to get access to any private collection," I pointed out.

"One came up for sale recently."

"Where?" I had three or four clients who would have leapt at a chance for Jabir's Kitab al-Zuhra. I should have heard about a copy going on the market.

"Vienna."

"The Van Groteon library?"

Antoine nodded, a glimmer of amusement on his lips.

"The whole library?"

He continued to nod.

"Who bankrolled him?" I couldn't keep the amazement out of my voice.

"Who indeed?"

"Fuck this verbal tap dance," Nicols said. The pistol shook in his hand. "You bankrolled him. You let him perform this experiment. You let this happen." His voice rose. "What the fuck did he do to these people!"

"He seeks the Key to Immortality," Antoine explained patiently.

"The what?" Nicols steadied his arm. His voice cracked on the word, his nerve dangerously close to breaking.

"The Way that allows access to God." Antoine was unmoved. "Given the opportunity, wouldn't you take it? Don't we all have questions we'd like to ask Him? About Sarah, for example?"

"Mother-" Nicols nearly fired his gun. The tendons in his neck were hard, and his face was wound into the spot between his eyes.

Antoine watched him, and nothing changed on the Protector's face. He just watched the other man struggle with his demons. Sarah. Don't we all have questions?

"Leave him out of this," I said. "He doesn't deserve to be kicked around." Nicols gasped at the sound of my voice, and realizing what he had almost done, he turned away from Antoine. His arm dropped to his side, and he held on to the gun tightly.

With the barest glimmer of disappointment, Antoine surveyed the tightening circle of zombies, the once-living population of Ravensdale, as they lurched and staggered toward the small hill upon which we stood. The members of the task force had stayed back, avoiding the shuffling soul-dead. "He's part of the Weave, Markham. Just like you and me." He raised his shortened right arm, and waved it to encompass the surrounding zombies. "Just like all of them. I can't cut him out of the pattern any more than you can."

"Stop trying to twist him, then. Let him find his own way."

"And you haven't twisted him? Is it not your interference in the Weave that set him on this path?"

"I've tried to guide him-"

"Like you've guided yourself?"

The flush in my cheeks spread to my neck and made my voice shake. "He's an innocent."

"No one is innocent," Antoine countered. "There is just ignorance and enlightenment."

I nodded toward the approaching line of zombies. "Is this enlightenment, then? You gave Bernard what he needed to build the mirror; you let him activate it. As a result, all these people have been collected. They've been harvested. For what purpose? Making Qliphotic shells? There is no 'Way' here. This is just carnage."

For an instant, Antoine's guard slipped and I saw the abject sorrow hidden beneath. Like a scar on his heart, he would never reveal the true temperament under his impenetrable psychic armor. Not to me. Not now. Even though we shared similar grief about what had happened, we stood on opposite shores, separated by a gulf of our own making. Separated by steel.

"You are summoning them. Like moths to your flame," he said, a grin smoothing over the break in his armor. "I will offer you a deal, mon ami. Divest yourself of your stolen energy and we shall talk about the past. And the future. You will not dissuade me from what must be done, but we can at least end it with some civility."

"The alternative?"

He sighed. "I have no time for distractions. Your thread in this part of the Weave is done. You will be removed. Decisively."

A single zombie was already halfway across the field, a staggered row of shambling soul-dead not far behind. They wanted my light and, in the same way I had obliterated the old man by the road with a blessing of that energy, Antoine wanted me to dismiss the dead of Ravensdale. One massive pulse, a coruscating stroke that would drive away all the darkness. A final blessing for the restless dead.

I have no time.

I had thought Bernard and the Anointed Hollow Men had planned to use their newly learned psychoanimist techniques to take over Antoine. But Bernard had hinted at a larger purpose for the theurgic mirror. If Antoine had bankrolled the creation of the mirror and this experiment, then why was he here? Why wasn't he with them?

Because they weren't finished. Ravensdale was just a test run, the first part of something else. But it couldn't be about theft. What was the point in taking all this energy? Unless. . there was a way to use it somewhere else. To do something. .

He seeks the Key to Immortality.

And not just Bernard, but everyone. Why wouldn't Antoine want it as well? But he had lost control. All of his coy obliqueness aside, his Watch had failed. He was on the defensive, reeling from this sudden reversal. Key pieces he had thought were under his control had disappeared.

I was a thorn, an old wound that refused to heal. He wanted me removed from the Weave. One less thread to follow. One less mischievious child-

They all had a plan. Antoine. Bernard. Pender. They all saw me as the chaotic element that could disrupt the other team, but I was also the veneficus, the uncontrolled poison. I didn't belong to any of them.

Certainly not Antoine. Why had I run from him for all these years? Because I was afraid of him, or was it because the Chorus knew how fear worked on me? They knew my secrets, knew which strings to pull.

I hadn't backed down when Antoine had challenged me in Paris. Was I going to start now?

"Okay," I told him. "I'll take your deal."

Before even they could read the lie, I split the Chorus open, tearing them like I was rending roses. Petals falling through my fingers. They keened and whined, fighting the assertion of my Will, but I dug through them and tapped the storehouse of the energy I had stolen.

Antoine narrowed his eyes slightly as he sensed the bloom of power. Nicols raised a hand to shield his eyes from my abrupt brilliance. The nearest zombie increased his speed, his head twitching back and forth. A light-blinded moth, unable to stop its suicide dive at a hot bulb.

I gathered what was left of the Hollow Men, and raised it through my frame, letting it bleed through my lungs and heart and throat. A twisted knot formed over my head, a ball of lightning that thrust angled shadows across the field. I let the outer edge of the ball spit flares like an aroused sun as if I couldn't quite keep the sphere of power in control. As if my Will wasn't completely focused.

I waited for Antoine to tire of Watching my engorged Will, to turn his head and Witness the demolition of the dead. I waited for him to look away. As his attention shifted, I released the ball of coalesced Will.

He knew he had made an error the instant my Will realized itself. Phosphorescent streamers erupted from his frame as the energy wave struck. He held his ground, clothing vaporizing and skin tearing as the annihilating angel of my Will flayed him. His muscles and fat started to sizzle and burn, and then the true weight of the spell hit him and he was hurled from the field.

In the time it took to exhale, Antoine was thrown more than a hundred yards. What was left of his body inscribed a shallow arc across the landscape, a low-flying meteor of burning tissue. The arc of fire that filled his wake dispersed in a crackling rush and the trees bent with the echo of the atmospheric discharge. His body crashed into a parked car in the shopping mall lot.

The nearest zombie was blown into ash. Behind it, others were knocked down, while those still further afield were disoriented. Their magnet was gone, swallowed by a rush of fire and fury. The only bright light remaining was the ambient swirl of energy coming off Antoine's burned shell. It was enough to turn their hunger, and they drifted away from the field, staggering toward the smoking wreckage of the car.

I grabbed Nicols' lapel and dragged him away from the circle. "Let's go. Before he gets up."

"What?" His feet stumbled as he tried to keep up with me. "He's still alive?"

The Chorus read a vibration. I knew it. I knew it well. "Yes," I said. "And I've just made him angry."