Lightbreaker

XXIII

Nicols drove aimlessly and recklessly for a half hour, speeding down two-lane highways that cut through the forested hillsides, that bisected communities smaller and sleepier than Ravensdale. He fled, inchoate sounds issuing from his mouth, with no destination in mind. His hands: one gripping the wheel like a drowning man clinging to a life preserver, one beating against the molded circle. Finally, on a road that appeared to run straight until it was swallowed by Mt. Rainier, he pulled over to the shoulder and got out.

He paced back and forth in front of the vehicle, shouting and raging. In an unintelligible dialog, he started arguments, screamed denials, spat accusations, and choked on the rebuttals. He smoked two cigarettes: the first, in a short series of violent inhalations; the second, in a reflective frame of mind. As he finished the second, grinding it out on the fractured shale, he summoned me from the car with a rigid index finger, indicating exactly where he wanted me to stand.

"Tell me everything," he said as I got out of the car. "I want to hear it all."

I told him about the shipping container, about Kat, about the poison I had been carrying for the last decade. I told him about Bernard and Julian, and the theurgic mirror they built; I told him what happened in the Arena, and what transpired after.

He started to chew on the end of another cigarette when I finished, staring at the ground between us, not seeing the rock. "This library-Van Groenig's."

"Van Groteon."

"Right. You think this is where Bernard found what he needed to build this. . mirror device?"

"Yes," I said. "A man can be swayed with a single book-it takes only a page to convey a secret. But it takes a bunch of books to synthesize the record of human experimentation. Libraries are dangerous; we ably demonstrate that we have a predilection for destroying them-Alexandria, Dr. John Dee's, le Comte de Saint Germain, the Nazis."

"Where did this library come from?"

"During WWII, Hitler was obsessed with the occult; he wanted magickal tools, objects that would make him invincible. That would win the war for his side. Himmler, who was even more obsessed with the occult, had a group charged with collecting artifacts, relics, books, and the like. The Ahnenerbe-SS.

"After the war, most of the artifacts in Nazi collections disappeared. A lot of relic hunters have been chasing rumors and myths for the last fifty years, trying to track down the grimoires, the black-magic reliquaries, the holy and unholy relics-you name it, people have been looking for it."

"People like you."

"Like me. Like my clients. The Watchers have a lot of them; you can be sure of that. But not all of them. There's money and influence to be made in finding the lost artifacts first."

"So Van Groteon beat your friends to it?"

"Somewhat. Gustav Albrecht Van Groteon was an industrialist who made a fortune for himself and his family in the new Austria following WWII. He managed to get his hands on the majority of Himmler's personal library. Van Groteon wasn't an occultist; his interest in the books was more. . protective. He thought that if a non-practitioner had them, then there was less chance of them being used for the wrong purposes."

"But they were."

"Not during his lifetime. The Watchers honored his desire and left the library in his care, though I'm sure they had additional safeguards. Claudia-Van Groteon's granddaughter-doesn't have the same reverence toward the occult texts as her grandfather. I've done business with her; she had to have some scarab rings done by Elsa Schiaparelli.

"I've been to the family house on Glanzinggasse and I've seen the library. It's a very impressive collection. Bacon, Jabir, Agrippa, Flamel, Beato: a lot of alchemical tracts and heretical treatises on magick. I could have sold a number of those books for six figures each, and I'm sure the same thing has occurred to Claudia. She has very expensive tastes."

"And she sold the lot to Bernard." Nicols lit another cigarette.

"No, I think she sold it to the Watchers. She knows they're the only real buyers. Any other party would have just brought their wrath down on her. As long as the library was in her possession, they knew where the books were, and they could keep a Watch on them. They weren't floating around.

"If she ever tried to sell the books to someone like Bernard-some small-time Swiss alchemist-they would have swooped in and taken everything. She would have gotten nothing. No, they probably paid a pittance of what the library was worth, but she got paid at least. And, in her situation, I'm sure the money was already spent."

"So the Watchers gave the books to Bernard."

I nodded. "Or, at least, gave him access so he could finish his research."

He looked around, staring at the trees as if he hadn't noticed them before, hadn't realized how far we had gone into the woods. "Why here? Why not somewhere in Europe? Why travel all the way to the Pacific Northwest to build this thing?"

"Because the Watchers don't participate in experiments. He's a crackpot alchemist with an unsubstantiated idea, but that doesn't mean they aren't curious. They'd want to be sure he wasn't actually onto something. They know the way the old secrets are hidden. Sometimes it is the insane ones who crack the codes.

"Even if they didn't give a lot of credence to his ideas, they'd be inclined to let him try it out. They'd let him set up some experiments in a controlled environment somewhere-a location far from their back yard. Seattle is a long way from the bright lights of Europe; this is the backwater of the magickal world."

"Lovely. Welcome to the Pacific Northwest, where alchemists and meth-heads think no one will notice what they're doing." Nicols snorted smoke from his nose. "Antoine doesn't know what is going on, right? All that crap about talking to God is just bullshit. Bernard's device just takes people's souls."

"I think that was its intention. That's what Bernard sold them: a means of extracting and holding souls. Not like this, but individually. Everyone is interested in Immortality, John, even if they pretend otherwise. An artificial construct that can preserve a soul? That would be worth fighting for."

The Key. The Stone. The Grail. We gave it many names.

"But I think it does something else too," I continued, shaking off the Chorus' interest in the device. "So does Antoine. They used Antoine's Protection to get it made, and they hid its true purpose from him. He won't admit to it-not to you or me-but he got played. Badly. A thousand people died on his Watch. That's a huge failure."

"You think?" Sarcasm from the detective. Good. He was controlling his fear.

"So why did he let them make it?" Nicols asked. "Is this part of the Watcher credo? Watch them build toys that will lay waste to the world? What is that? Some perversion of altruistic occultism that doesn't allow them to take toys away from kids before they hurt each other?"

"They always operate for their own ends."

"That's what I'm saying. We know Bernard's angle, but what did Antoine get out of it? There are only two real causes behind every action: love or power. Everybody wants something; everyone is always thinking: 'What's in it for me?' So what's Antoine's angle? Doesn't it make more sense-God, it's so wrong-but doesn't it make sense that Antoine knew they were going to fuck him? He knew they were going to run off with the device; he knows they want to 'talk to God.' "

I saw the ugly simplicity of his thought process. Like Occam's razor, Nicols cut through the tangle of threads and made the Weave seem simple. Unadorned, yet still a complex pattern of our needs and desires. Love or power: always the validation. Such a simple thing. While the Hollow Men thought they were being clever, Antoine knew what they were planning. And, as I thought about it, I realized how I would keep tabs on their activities.

Pender.

Antoine didn't have to track their progress, he just had to know where their final ritual was going to take place. Pender would know. He wouldn't be so stupid as to be a part of their scheme-a plan that violated every precept of the Watcher credo-without being privy to the final experiment.

Unless-the niggling thought intruded-unless they hadn't told Pender. Unless they knew Pender was the link that could be compromised, and hadn't included him in their plans.

Nicols was still looking at the trees. Silent, natural watchers. "Sarah was killed a little over a year ago by a drunk driver. A hit-and-run incident on the Aurora Bridge. He lived-the motherfucker walked away with barely a scratch on him-but, even with the air bag, several of her ribs were broken. Her right lung was punctured and it took them too long to cut her out of the car. She died during the transport to Harborview. There wasn't a fucking thing I could do.

"In the months since, I've realized how pointless my job is. I catch murderers-people who have acted. I don't do anything to stop them before they take a life. I got the call after she had been killed, even though the driver of the other car was drunk hours before he crossed the center lane and plowed into her car. I only get summoned after the fact. After the deed is done and someone has died. Can you see the futility of that? The pointlessness?"

He realized he had chewed through the filter on his cigarette and threw the whole thing into the road. "Goddamnit, Markham. All I've wanted is to stop something from happening, stop someone before they acted. In the last few days, I thought this-" he waved his hand in front of his eyes "-this magick shit would be the ticket. It would let me See them before they committed their crimes.

"I thought this would help, but it hasn't. I've just been privy to. . God, I can't even. . nine hundred people, Markham. Nine hundred. That's more than the number of people who have been killed in Seattle in the last ten years. In a single night, Bernard and Julian eclipsed the last decade. Hell, SPD isn't-I'm not-equipped to deal with this scale. They aren't serial killers. They aren't random murderers. They're just-"

"Abberations," I said. "On every scale."

"That doesn't change the fact that it happened." He clenched his fists and raised his hands. "What are you going to do about it?"

"What do you mean?"

"They're not done. You know that. So what are you going to do? Are you just going to let them continue?"

"I'm not sure what you think I can do." I shuddered.

"I Saw what you did to Antoine."

"That was a lucky shot. I caught Antoine off-guard. And I hit him with everything I had. If Bernard has access to all that energy he's stolen-and that's got to be a part of what the device does-he's a hundred times more powerful than I was an hour ago."

"You're just going to walk away?"

"I'm not sure what you want me to say, John. Beyond the fact that I don't know where they are, I don't have the skills-or the resources-to take them on. I used up all the energy I took. What have I got left? Moral outrage? A thirst for revenge? Those aren't enough. He won't even notice me." I glanced over my shoulder, looking back the way we had come. "Besides, I've got-" Antoine. Who, most assuredly, wasn't dead. He had resisted the blast for a second which meant he had been able to deflect energy. Deflection meant focused Will. I had burned him-badly-and it would take him time to recover, but he wasn't done. Not now. It wasn't a question of if he would come after me, it was a question of when.

"Is that all you care about?"

"I'm a veneficus, John. The poisonous free agent no one claims, and who won't be counted in any assembly. The only person watching my back is me. Like you said, no one has time for 'altruistic occultism.' We all want to find the secrets of the Universe for ourselves. For power. Not for a thousand-year reign of peace."

All I had was a chance for a head start. I could run and hide somewhere. Try to figure out what I was going to do about this hole in my heart. Vengeance wasn't enough to fill it.

Now that the blush of the Hollow Men's soul energy had worn off, I could see how I needed something that wasn't tainted by the past. I needed a new directive and, as long as I was running from the past, I wouldn't have any chance to find my own way. I would be continually pushed. Never finding my own pace, my own way. I wouldn't submit to Antione, but that only meant our antagonism continued. And would do so until I found a way to break free.

The path out of the dark wood had to be earned; it couldn't be stumbled upon by accident. I had to find my own way.

He chewed on the inside of his lip, staring at me. Seeing me. Watching me. "How many in the warehouse?" he asked finally.

I flinched. "Nine." He knew.

He nodded and took out his pistol. "Okay." He raised the gun and pointed it at my head. "Landis Markham, you are under arrest for the premeditated murder of those men. Put your hands on your head, turn around, and get down on your knees."

"John-"

He half-squeezed the trigger, rocking back the hammer. "Do it. Now."

I complied, and my hands were wrenched down to the small of my back where they were cuffed tightly. With a hard shove from his foot, he sent me sprawling on the shale, my cheek grinding against the broken rock. Nicols walked out of my field of vision and I heard a car door open and shut before he returned.

I rolled onto one shoulder to better see what he was doing. His gun held in one hand, he fumbled through a folder of loose pages, scattering paper across the shoulder of the road. Finding the page he sought, he bent down and shoved the paper in my face. "Nine or nine hundred," he said, shaking the page, "It matters. Every one of them matters."

The page was a photocopy of a tarot card-the Tower. A single bolt of jagged lightning split the crown of a tower, spilling the two inhabitants out. In the margin and beneath the picture was the unorganized palimpsest of Nicols' notes. Two words in block letters across the top: "MY FUTURE." Beneath, an underlined sentence. "Nothing is ever lost; it is simply transformed."

Nicols had gone back to Piotr and had his own reading. The last card had been the Tower. Destructive change. This was the future Piotr had shown him.

"I'm sorry, John-" I started.

"Are you?" he interrupted. He didn't so much as drop the page as throw it at me. "Hasn't this all been about you, about your obsessive quest for this woman? When haven't you been focused on your own fucking redemption?"

I didn't have an answer for him.

He stepped back, raising the pistol and resting the barrel against his head. "Every one of them matters, Markham. So you don't care about nine or even nine hundred. One more shouldn't faze you a bit."

I shook my head. "Don't do this."

"Stop me," he said. "Show me altruistic occultism. Show me that I'm wrong. Isn't this how you cross the Abyss, Markham? By being selfless?" The hammer on his pistol was still cocked. It wouldn't take more than a tiny squeeze for him to pull the trigger, and I knew he would do it. He hadn't been able to shoot Antoine. Not then. But now, when all of the last few hours had had a chance to sink in, when he had realized he had Seen too much. Lost too much. He was on the edge of the Abyss, and the Monster there-Choronzon-was coming to tear him apart. He wasn't ready to leap the gap, no more so than I had been a decade ago.

Was I any more ready now? Or was I inured to the pain? Had I become such a hollowed-out shell that I wasn't yet aware of how much I had truly lost? If it were me that Choronzon sought, was I any more prepared?

How long are you willing to run?

I closed my eyes, falling inward to find the boiling storm of the Chorus. They unfolded, arranging themselves into an icy fractal pattern. They came at my bidding, subdued by what I had seen at Ravensdale, but they still came at my command.

"Open 'em, you piece of shit." Nicols' voice quivered. "Look at me or I will-swear to God-put one in your belly before I shoot myself. Look at me, you son of a bitch."

I did, and the frigid snowflake expression of the Chorus froze him in place. Another burst of their magick, guided by my Will-convertant in fraxina-and the handcuffs dissolved into white ash. I stood, shaking the metallic dust from my wrists, and took his gun from his stiff fingers.

How long?

I pointed the gun across the road, over the trees, and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked, and the roar of the shot echoed for a long time. I stood there, and listened to it until I couldn't hear it anymore. And, after a little while, the wind came back and the trees started whispering again.

How long would you run?

I sighed, and-libertas-released my hold on Nicols. He jerked wildly for a second, and then caught up in time.

"One isn't the same as many," I said, offering him the gun. "It's a far cry from making a true difference."

"It's a start," he conceded. He clicked the safety on with his thumb as he took the gun. He holstered his weapon and offered me a crooked smile, a wan expression filled with both trepidation and relief.

"I don't know what to do," I said, answering the question in his eyes. "I can't save everyone. I'm doing a shit poor job of saving myself." Fill the void.

"You and everyone else." His grin straightened out. "Just don't run away on me, Markham. That's all I'm asking."