The Hollow Prince

by Mark Teppo

  The Chorus churned counterclockwise in my stomach, and I gripped the sides of the bin as my gut tightened. I hadn’t eaten anything since early that morning and my stomach only held the two beers I had had earlier that evening, so when I vomited into the bin, it was mostly liquid.

  The local maibock didn’t taste nearly as good on the return. Stomach acid really brought out the acrid flavor of the bitters. The Chorus-touch didn’t help either. My tongue was numb. I closed the lid, and gave the magick-flavored burp-spit a chance to stew. Moving with some care, I crept around the house until I was under the eaves beneath Girard’s position.

  Hopefully the napalm trick with the Chorus had been internal enough that Girard hadn’t noticed. If he had, he was still wondering what the hell it was when it went off. Much like the teardrop of energy I had thrown in the fireplace earlier, the Chorus-touched acid bomb in the bin was more noise and flash than actual magick.

  The bin ruptured as the acid bomb went off, and the clattering noise of the aluminum cans went on for quite some time, like a slow-motion car crash.

  Girard moved, and I gave the Chorus the word they needed: sparge. They slapped against the shingles, scattering several rows like leaves in a sudden wind. His energy signature changed—tightening and then exploding—as he fell. Bounced once, and came off the roof.

  He was still trying to get up when I kicked him—foot to face. Not as intricate as his paralysis spell, but effective in its own way. He made a strangled noise—half an exclamation, half an incantation—and collapsed.

  Girard was taller and beefier than I—than his twin brother, too—but not so much that my shirt wouldn’t fit him. He started to regain consciousness as I wrestled with his coat, and I jabbed a knuckle behind his ear and blasted the Chorus into his brain.

  I managed to swap clothes, lean him against the house, and get one word written on the wall over his head before the hunters showed up.

  One word turned out to be enough.

  IV.

  René was leaning against Antoine’s car and smoking a cigarette. His sight line of the twisted road that went up to the ruined castle was partially obscured by his car, parked downslope from Antoine’s, which meant when I couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see me. He jumped when I appeared next to his car, though more from the sight of the shotgun barrel resting on the hood of his precious car than my sudden arrival. “Nice evening, isn’t it?” I said. “Though, you’ve got the wildlife turned up a bit high. We can hear the distortion down in the valley.”

  René glanced over my shoulder, cigarette hanging carelessly from his fingers. I shook my head, and raised the butt of the shotgun slightly so that the mouth pressed flat against the hood of the car. “Girard won’t be joining us,” I said. “Not for awhile, anyway.”

  He licked his lips, realized he was still holding the cigarette, and put it back in his mouth. “Markham,” he said. “What’s going on? Where’d you get the gun?” Trying for nonchalant, trying to act surprised by everything in front of him. As if he didn’t know. As if he hadn’t been party to all of it.

  “Who killed Pierre?” I asked. “You, or Girard?”

  “Who?” he tried.

  “The guy in the house. Where you left me.”

  “I don’t—”

  The shotgun bucked heavily as I pulled the trigger and blew a hole in the hood of the car. Who knows what the shot did to the engine.

  “FUCK!” René could imagine, though. As he started to pull magick, I crossed the space between us and pressed the mouth of the shotgun against his chest.

  “Don’t.”

  His focus scattered and the spell died, though he didn’t let go of the ley he had reached for. I could sense it quivering behind me, a thin streamer of lambent power.

  “The guy in the house,” I said again. “Who killed him?”

  René’s eyelids fluttered, and his mouth moved silently around the beginning of a word. I pressed the gun more firmly against his coat. Not that word, I thought, and the Chorus sparked down the shotgun barrel and tapped him.

  “Once more: who killed him?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Antoine said.

  I glanced across the courtyard. Antoine and the other two were standing beside the ruined arch of the main hall. Bento and Henri were spread out behind Antoine, equidistant and at a sixty degree angle. Triangular array. Basic. Effective. The standard stance of magickal combat.

  I was a single point facing their geometric strength. Bad odds.

  “Why not?” I asked. Part of my brain chewed through possible scenarios. The shotgun was loaded with shot—fairly heavy gauge—and its lever action was going to be slow. I wouldn’t get many shots, and I would have to be close to do a lot of damage.

  “Pierre Le Fouchain was convicted of child molestation twenty-five years ago,” Antoine said. “After serving two terms in prison, the second for a plea-bargained sentence of manslaughter, he moved away from the constant harassment and attention that was living in the city. To somewhere quieter. Someplace with fewer eyes. Because he hadn’t quite given up on his obsession with little boys.”

  “How long you been Watching him?”

  “All his life. That is what we do.”

  “And how many times did he . . .”

  “None.”

  “So maybe he had reformed. Maybe he just wanted to be left alone.”

  “And maybe he was biding this time. Planning an abduction, for when the time was right.” Antoine shrugged.

  “But he hadn’t. Not yet. So that makes it murder.” The Chorus liked that word, and my hand tightened on the stock of the shotgun. A little squeeze, they whispered, trying to tug my finger.

  “Please,” Antoine said. “You, of all people. Spare us that hypocrisy.”

  The Chorus hissed at his words, and while I was more stung by them than they were, they still retreated from my finger.

  “Where’s Girard?” Henri’s focus drifted, a quick glance toward the edge of the narrow plateau. “Why are you wearing his jacket?”

  All the better to hide the pistol shoved in the small of my back. “He’s a little occupied right now,” I said. “The locals wanted to ask him some questions.”

  For all my questioning of René, I already knew the answer. Girard hadn’t done a very good job of washing his hands. There had been faint crimson arcs under the fingernails of his right hand. Crescent moons of dried blood.

  “Why are you wearing his jacket?” Henri repeated.

  “His shirt, too,” Antoine noted. Some of the light in his eyes died, and the Chorus twisted as they felt the ley tighten. So effortlessly, they whispered, he touches the lines with such familiarity.

  “Yeah, well,” I said, trying not to let their concern show in my voice, “I lost my coat somewhere and, as my shirt was somewhat dirty, he volunteered his. Awfully sporting of him, I thought.”

  Henri took a step forward, breaking the geometry of trinity, and then stopped when Antoine turned his head far enough to look at him. But not so far that he couldn’t still keep an eye on me. Henri hesitated and then flinched as if Antoine had just slapped him.

  And maybe he had. A psychic bitch-slap. Antoine, I was pretty sure, could do it. He could do a lot of things, and for a second, the sheer stupidity of what I was doing threatened to overwhelm me. Three Journeymen, albeit two of them still recently awarded the title, arranged in a focusing stance. And, even without their support, Antoine could pull power faster than anyone I had ever seen. He did it as easily—and as unconsciously—as breathing.

  I would never be faster. I had to be quicker.

  “How far was this supposed to go?” I asked. “You’ve kept your hands clean—I’m sure the others think this was their idea—but the threads stink of you. Was this a test, or were you trying to get rid of me?”

  René didn’t like that implication, I noted distantly; he stopped worrying about the shotgun barrel on his chest and looked back at Antoine.

  “So,” I said, letting the Chorus s
lip into my words, “did they know Marielle dumped you?” Just a little edge.

  Bento took a clear step away from Antoine, breaking the trinity. “Is this true?” he asked.

  Antoine shook his head slightly, his face tightening into a marble mask. His right hand closed to a fist. When Bento repeated the question, he turned his head to address the other magus.

  I stepped forward, shoving the shotgun barrel up René’s chest until it rested on his shoulder. Antoine, slightly out of focus and a smear of light in my Chorus-sight, but right in line. René shrieked when I pulled the trigger and tried to jerk away from the gun, which only put his face closer as I snapped my head down and hit him with the hard part of my skull.

  He went down, and I rolled onto the hood of Antoine’s car. The Chorus registered a blooming mushroom of energy as Antoine’s passive shields flared hard under the barrage of shotgun shot, and they could only gibber a warning before he retaliated.

  I had felt the surge of energy from the ley blow over me like a breath of hot wind, and knew something was coming. I kept rolling, spinning off the other side of the car.

  Antoine was already there.

  The trinity had been broken, and instead of trying to repair it, he had abandoned the channeling formation, and brought the fight to me instead.

  My feet were barely on the ground, and I was still hunched over—all I saw was his boots and the edge of his long coat—when he dropped an anvil on the back of my head. I stumbled, fighting to keep my balance, and as he swung his magick-enhanced fist at me again, I twisted back so that the blow landed on the side of my head instead of my face. A firecracker went off in my ear.

  Confusion came next: I wasn’t quite sure where I was, nor how Antoine had managed to take the shotgun from me, and I couldn’t hear anything but a cavalcade of bells. Like being trapped in a cathedral bell-tower at vespers.

  Antoine Whispered to me, making sure I heard him. This isn’t your world, Markham. You don’t belong.

  There was blood in my mouth, and I spit it out so I could speak. “You don’t want me here,” I said, and when I couldn’t hear the words myself, I repeated them, Whispering back at him. Point-to-point magus speak. Just between him and me. This has nothing to do with my suitability. You don’t get to make that call, and the Old Man has welcomed me into his home. I’m stay—

  The shotgun blast chewed up the ground at my feet, and I tried not to flinch as some of the shot peppered my boots. Antoine raised the barrel, pointing it at my chest.

  Obstinate and stupid, the adjectives flickered through my head. In the end: that’s how we’ll be remembered. I just couldn’t do it. Even though he might be right, I couldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  “I came to Paris to learn,” I said. I could hear myself now, and I wanted Witnesses to my words. Someone other than just Antoine. “I came to learn how to be free. We’re supposed to guard and learn the secrets, Antoine. And isn’t part of that allowing the rest of the world the freedom to find their own way? Each and every soul. Free to make their own choices, to find their own way.”

  I glanced over at Bento and Henri who had moved away from the fallen wall: Bento toward the cars and the road down to the valley; Henri drifting in the other direction to get behind me. Both wore halos of energy, active power conduits fueling their magick.

  “You, me, Bento, Henri,” I nodded toward the valley. “Them. René. Girard. We all make our own choices.” I paused, took a deep breath. “And that includes Marielle. More so, I would imagine. You think she’d like you more if she knew you were Weaving threads? If she suspected you were influencing hers?”

  Antoine laughed. “You have no idea how the world works, Markham. You are such a child. She will be disappointed with you. Eventually. And when she reaches out—for a hand to hold her, or someone to support her—you won’t be there. I don’t have to touch a thread to make that happen.”

  The Chorus reacted in my gut, and when I touched them, it was like grabbing at a blackberry vine—twisting strand, sharp thorns. Too much wild growth to be easily tamed.

  “Antoine,” Bento called. “The locals.” He pointed to the road.

  I pushed the Chorus away, and they slipped down the hill to read the landscape. A cluster of spirit lights, maybe ten or twelve souls, coming up the road in a cloud lit with fear and apprehension.

  Still, they were coming.

  “Girard isn’t with them,” Bento pointed out. I felt his magick spark, and behind me now, I felt Henri pull energy too.

  “He’s not dead,” I said, forestalling the magick they were making. “I made a deal.”

  “What sort of deal?” Antoine asked. The shotgun was still pointed at me, but the barrel had moved off-center. The Chorus drifted across his shoulders, like the fingers of a casual lover. He shrugged off my inquisition as unconsciously as he might brush a fly off his arm.

  “I traded Girard. I told them a team of specialists was waiting up here, people who could cure Girard and lift the curse on this valley.”

  “Girard isn’t a werewolf,” Antoine said.

  “I’m not the one you have to convince.”

  Antoine looked at the gun in his hands, and a tiny smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “You were just a distraction,” he said. “To keep us occupied.”

  I nodded. “You and I had some things to clear up.”

  “And so we have.” He lowered the gun, holding it with one hand and letting the barrel point at the ground. “I have revealed myself to you.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “For once.”

  He inclined his head slightly. The closest I’d get to a confirmation that I’d bested him. “Well, Henri,” he said to Girard’s brother. “It looks like we have some negotiating to do. Though, I think we can do better than a shotgun in trade. We could trade Markham. This night might not be a total loss.”

  “Actually, I think I’ll just go,” I said as I reached under my coat and produced the pistol. Antoine raised an eyebrow as I pointed it at him. “You can manage without me.”

  “Markham,” he said with a hint of exasperation in his voice. “You couldn’t hurt me with the shotgun.” He shook his head. “How is that pop gun going to make any difference?”

  “It has silver bullets,” I said.

  He laughed. “We may be wolves, Markham, but we’re not lycanthropes. And, even if we were, folk mythology only works if you believe—”

  “I licked them,” I interrupted.

  “Wh—” was all he had time to say before I pulled the trigger. His word dissolved into a grunt as the silver bullet—marked by my magick—cut through his passive shielding. A hole appeared in the smooth fabric of his coat.

  Henri went active, and I whirled, shooting him twice. Low, in the legs. Painful and distracting, but not critical.

  Power was layering over Antoine like a flower folding in on itself, and a thin line of white smoke rose from the bullet hole in his coat. I shot him again, and he laughed as the bullet smeared into a spray of liquid silver.

  I emptied the clip as I backed away toward the edge of the plateau. Not that it made any difference. Antoine just kept laughing, and the sound followed me all the way down the hill.

  V.

  From darkness to light. The sun, cresting the building on the other side of the street. The tables outside of Deux Magots, no longer in shadow. Her face, in sharp relief as the morning makes her skin glow. Her smile, as she spots you crossing the street. Her lips, touching each of your cheeks as you bend down and let her greet you. Sitting down across from her, the small table between you. Yes, this is where you are.

  But there is a gulf separating you now. This is as close as you will get.

  “Good morning, Journeyman,” Marielle said. “Congratulations.” Her foot found my leg under the table. “A long night of celebration?”

  I tried to find the right sort of smile. “A long night.”

  “Ah,” she said. “Did you boys end up somewhere rough?” There was gravitas in her tone, a
sense that she saw through my efforts, that she knew something had been broken since the last time we had seen each other.

  “A little bit.”

  The waiter came by, and I gratefully accepted his offer for coffee. It had been a very long night, even with the cat-nap on the train.

  She tried for levity. “What is that phrase?” She mimicked a rough American accent, something that might have come from watching John Wayne movies. “‘You should see the other guy.’ Yes?”

  “It was Antoine.”

  She was strong, and didn’t look away, but for an instant, she wasn’t seeing me.

  And there, caught in that tiny fragment of time, I knew Antoine was right. It wasn’t me that she would turn to in her moment of need.

  All the way back to Paris, I had been haunted by his laughter. Each bullet I had fired had melted against his energized armor. I couldn’t touch him, and his laugh was enough to cut through my defenses. Right down to my core. There isn’t any place in her life for a man like you. Taunting me with the knowledge that even though I had Seen him, he Knew me. My threads were in his hands.

  The morning sun warmed my face, and if I sat in the metal chair long enough, its heat would soak through my skin enough to warm my bones. But it would never warm the black pit in my chest; it would never dispel the cold fist of the Chorus, wrapped around my heart.

  Deep inside, shivering in the perpetual darkness, a frightened animal whimpering. The wolf. Always an outlaw. Always on the outside.

  Like Béchenaux: a lonely old warrior in his hillside castle—outside the village, outside of time—chasing phantoms that didn’t exist. Waiting to die. Waiting for some explanation of why. Why him? Why had he survived, when all that he had believed in had died?

  There isn’t any place for a man like you.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It wasn’t—”

  Marielle leaned forward and picked up my hand. She pressed it against her cheek. “I know,” she said. But knowing didn’t—couldn’t—change the truth in her heart.

  From darkness to light. And, then, to darkness again.