Heartland-The Second Book of the Codex of Souls

by Mark Teppo

  I edged close to the hole and peered down. The script on the walls of the well went down a long way, deep into old rock of Mont Tombe, like veins running through marble, and I cautiously reached out and touched the cold stone. The Chorus skipped off the spell holding the rock back; it was like touching hot glass. There was a breeze coming up from the hole, carrying a whiff of that familiar salty smell.

  The Chorus couldn't penetrate the surrounding rock, and all they told me about the hole was that it was deep. There was no sign of Marielle, and while she could have kept on going up to the top level of the Merveille, I had no doubt she was down in the hole.

  I kept my arms close to my sides and stepped off the edge of the pit. The Chorus ballooned out in a teardrop shape around me, a long strand running in my wake as if they were reluctant to let go of the surface world. I didn't blame them, but there wasn't any other way down. Descende. Gravity pulled my teardrop down and my skin erupted with goose bumps as I passed the rim of the hole. My vision went white with the warding magick for an instant, an overwhelming rush of the legacy of Philippe's memory and the active magick of his wards, and as my ears popped, the white went away.

  The well opened up. It was nothing more than a narrow throat through the massive stone block of Mont Tombe that led to a large grotto. The bottom was further away than I had expected, and at first, I thought the warding magick was written on the walls down here too, but when the Chorus tightened my focus, I realized the flickering motion on the walls wasn't thousands of lines of script, but worms of ambient energy boiling through the stone of the grotto. The effect of the energy glow was to fill the chamber with a sourceless luminescence. There were still shadows, but they were out-of-focus shapes that capered madly at the periphery of my vision.

  The leys might be gone, but down here, something else was filling that void. The squirming energy was an optical illusion, sort of a heat mirage, and it was more of an echo of history than an actual presence. But something had been here once upon a time, something big enough to fill this space, and it had left an impression upon the stone of this chamber.

  The Chorus felt like a very tiny light in my head, and I flashed on a memory of cupping my hands around a flickering heart. Shivering on a cold stone that floated in an infinite emptiness, trying to preserve the infinitesimal spark of their heat. It was cold in the grotto; the constant fluctuation of energy greedily fed on any available source and our lights were not spared.

  A tiny stream ran across the floor of the cavern, a rut carved in the rock by centuries of slow, steady flow. The smell of blood was stronger as I floated closer to the flow of water and it wasn't clear if there was something in the water or if it was the water itself that was the source of the smell. The stream came out of the wall below the hole to the chapel and flowed in a looping, curving path across the slope of the floor until it reached a pool at the farthest, lowest corner of the chamber. Standing in the pool, the water halfway up its chest, was a statue.

  The most disconcerting thing about the statue wasn't the elongated shape of its head or the vaguely serpentine cords coming off its skull; no, what made me shiver when I looked at the statue was its lack of a face. There was nothing there. Just a ragged blankness, as if someone had come along after the sculptor had finished and had taken a chisel to its features. Stripping it down to a blank slate. But there was still a hint of a face, a patina of shadows that—like the rest of the fluid darkness in the grotto—refused to stay still. It reminded me of Samael and the Qliphoth. There was a hole in the statue's chest, right at the water line of the pool. A narrow incision that looked suspiciously like the sort of wound a spear blade would leave.

  Marielle crouched on the floor near the edge of the pool, bent over a sprawled figure. Reluctantly, the Chorus let me touch the ground, and the soles of my feet tingled at the contact with the energized stone.

  "Is he dead?" I asked, half-hoping.

  She shook her head.

  Caught in Antoine's metal fist, seemingly fused to the silver, was the long blade of the Spear of Longinus.

  XXII

  Like all relics, there's more than one contender for the title, and the Spear was no different. I've seen several over the years, including the spear in Vienna and the one the Vatican keeps in St. Peter's, and while both are imbued with enough history to be effective foci, there's never been any doubt in my mind that all of them are copies. Looking at the object in Antoine's hand now, it would appear that the one on display in the Schatzkammer of Vienna was the most representative copy. Though the Vienna lance had the nail bound to it and the wrap of silver and gold.

  Often the addition of another holy relic made up for one's lack of possessing the real thing. Lancea et clavus Domini. If you repeat a lie long enough, it may become true.

  The blade in Antoine's hand had no adornment, and no nail bound to its side with wire. It was a piece of metal forged for functionality: a narrow shape streamlined to slice, with a tapered point that was long enough to reach all the way to the back of a man's chest cavity. The blade was permanently etched with a black stain, and the discoloration made the head of the spear appear to have a shadow, as if there was a light side and a dark side that one could be cut with.

  It appeared that the one thing the Vatican lance had right, though, was the broken tip. One of the competing myths about the Spear was that the broken tip was part of another relic (a crown of thorns that had been lost since the French Revolution).

  Antoine must have made fingers to grasp the blade, but his magick had evidently started to slip and, as if he were trying to hang on desperately to a slick surface, his fingers had become a slurred mess of ridges and bumps.

  The Spear radiated heat, like a hot stone pulled out of a fire, and when I looked at it with Chorus-sight, it was nothing more than a series of flickering shadows—the two edges sliding in and out of focus. As if it were constantly moving, always slicing the world around it. Never standing still. Always seeking a target. Always seeking to draw blood.

  It wasn't an evil weapon—that would imply some consciousness residing in the blade—but it had one purpose, and it afforded that purpose to its wielder with all the force and energy it had at its disposal. It was a tool; a tool that, once you put your hand on it, made its intent known to you. Very clearly.

  I wondered at the psychic cost of physically binding yourself to the blade. I noticed Marielle was careful to keep as far away from it as possible.

  Cradling his face in her hands, she continued to whisper to him, calling him back from the Abyss. The Chorus felt a strong pulse in his body still; his soul was still anchored in his flesh. He was in there somewhere, and I had no doubt Marielle knew how to coax him out.

  I walked to the edge of the pool and looked at the blank-faced statue. I didn't have any memory of it; there was nothing in Philippe's history of this sculpture and I couldn't place the style. There wasn't enough of it exposed to be really sure of the physiology, which made dating it difficult, but the work was too smooth—too precise—to be something from as far back as Greek antiquity. Even with a few thousand years of exposure, a statue wouldn't acquire the smooth surface that more modern tools provided. And yet, it still had that patina of age that typified the High Classical Period.

  "I don't like this," I said, the Chorus echoing in my voice. "Why was the Spear here?"

  This is where it is kept, Cristobel offered, his presence rising out of the squirming storm of the Chorus. The heart of the rock.

  I looked at the hole in the statue's chest again. The little rivulet of fresh water fed the pool, and yet the water level remained constant, so there must be a drain somewhere. I crouched, and touched the rock. Still damp. My finger came away with a delicate rose color, a stain that wiped away easily enough. But a stain nonetheless.

  Behind me, Antoine made a noise deep in his throat, and Marielle's whispering stopped. He moved slightly, pulled back to this world by her voice, and the tip of the Spear dragged across the rock. The sound was like
nails on a chalkboard, and all the fine hairs on my neck stood up.

  "Help me carry him," she said, looking up at me.

  "Why was the Spear here?" I repeated, not moving.

  "We can talk about it later," she said. "We need to be out of here before the leys come back."

  "Why?"

  "Michael—" She reconsidered her tone, and her voice softened. "There isn't much time. Please."

  I considered arguing with her. Playing hardball and seeing what it got me, but I saw something in her eyes which made me reconsider. It wasn't fear—she had too much armor up for me to see that deeply—but it was something akin to affection. Hiding beneath the exhaustion that dimmed her eyes was a recognition of the pain we were all carrying. The heavy baggage that had brought us here, and that we were going to carry with us for some time yet. What stole a little more light from her face was the tired acknowledgement that it wasn't Antoine that we were going to carry out of here, but the weight of some decision as well.

  We were already too late to stop whatever had been set in motion. Even if we wanted to. It was like our tumultuous ride on the RER-B train, only this time RATP wasn't pulling the plug. They were giving us more power to hurl ourselves along the track. We couldn't stop the train. Our only hope lay in riding it out and hoping we could get off before it crashed at the end of the line.

  Nodding curtly, I helped her get Antoine upright. We did an awkward dance for a moment, trying to figure out how to carry him and keep the Spear away from our bodies, and I ended up dumping him over my shoulder like a sack of grain while she held his arm out. Staggering and slipping occasionally, I made my way back toward the hole.

  Ascende. The Chorus formed a lattice beneath us, tightening into a disk of force that I could use to lift all three of us back up to the basement of the cathedral. Marielle stood close, wrapping an arm around my waist; and the Chorus struck sparks from the floor as they became solid and pushed away from the ground.

  Antoine flinched and his legs kicked. I tightened my hold on him, and Marielle's hand disappeared from my waist. "No," he groaned, kicking again, and this time his foot caught me on the hip. My hold on the Chorus flickered, and the disk wavered. Antoine flailed in my arms, and I tucked my shoulder down and threw him off.

  He sprawled on the ground, and the Spear cut across the rock with a high-pitched whine. A line of fire burned on my upper arm, right below the shoulder, and as I fell the short distance back to the grotto when the Chorus' elevator disk vanished, I noticed the thin slice through my jacket and shirt.

  I put a finger in the hole and touched the cut. The Chorus sizzled in my fingertip as I felt blood.

  Antoine struggled to sit up, and Marielle knelt beside him, keeping a wary eye on his right arm. "No," he muttered again, his eyes half-open. "We need to leave it here." He dragged the Spear across the ground again, the stone shrieking at the touch of the cold weapon.

  I was about to point out the basic problem when the Chorus flooded my spine and skull, erupting into full defensive mode. "Magi." I looked up as if I could see something beyond the noisy haze of ward light. "We've got company coming."

  She pushed her hair back. "Can you deal with them?" she asked. "They don't have access to the grid; you should be strong enough." The commanding tone was back in her voice. That tenor of a woman who expected her words to be obeyed.

  I hesitated. I am not your agent. "What are you going to do about the Spear?" I asked. Her teeth were starting to chatter. She had used up too much of her reserves getting here, and this chamber was leaching her core temperature too fast. Mine too, for that matter, but I was better equipped to keep the suction at bay. Without the leys to bolster her resources, she was fading quickly.

  "There isn't time to argue," she said, biting off the end of her words. She grabbed Antoine's shoulders and sat him up. There isn't time. She was berating both of us. "Go, wolf. Show no mercy."

  I was going to object, but the Chorus blossomed into a stalk of energy, lifting me away from the ground.

  She Whispered one last command to me. In case I hadn't gotten the hint clearly enough. "Kill them all."

  The Chorus sang in reply, and I shot up faster toward the chapel.

  I had some vain hope that the Chorus had warned me early enough I could get back to the Châtelet as it was a nicely defensible position, but I wasn't going to get that lucky. I got as far as the large chamber known as the Ossuary before I met the Watchers.

  There were five of them, clustered near the far end of the Ossuary, and for a moment, we froze, staring at one another. Familiar faces—some of them going back a few days, the rest going back a few years: Charles and Jerome, the two Watchers who had accompanied Henri at the airport; Charles looked pleased to have an opportunity to finish our tête-à-tête from the train car; Henri, of course; and the somewhat expected presence of his twin brother, Girard.

  Prior to getting shot in the leg and gaining the limp, Henri and his brother had been nearly identical. Physically, they were mirror images of each other, and like most identical twins, the divergence lay in temperament and character. Henri was the more empathic of the two. I should have shot Girard as he had been the one who had done more of the bloody work back in Béchenaux. He had been the one who had really deserved a couple of steel-jacketed rounds, but as I had given him over to the enraged villagers as one of the architects of the werewolf plot against them, there hadn't been time or opportunity to put a bullet in him.

  The last man wore a pair of wraparound sunglasses, and now that I got a good look at him, I knew him.

  "Hello, René." René Bataillard had been in Béchenaux too. I hadn't shot him, but I had put a shotgun round through the engine block of his car. He had loved that car, so it had almost been worse that putting a bullet in him. I hadn't recognized him earlier because he had been wearing less flashy clothing. As much a clothes horse as a whore for his car, the best disguise he could wear was simply generic clothing—nondescript grays and black. Not only had I spotted him on Batofar, where he had been the man I had mistaken for a centurion, but he had been at the airport too. He'd been Watching, like a true brother. At least, until he'd tried to warn Henri on the bridge. "You their hunting dog?" I asked.

  Trying to charm your way out of trouble again, aren't you? Lafoutain noted dryly as the Chorus rippled through my skin, rising to the willful challenges evident in their auras. There was another tension in the air too as if each inhalation drew in a denser atmosphere.

  The leys, coming back.

  René ignored my jibe. "They're back there," he said, pointing with his chin. "In the next chapel."

  Girard cracked his knuckles, an ugly smile splitting his face. "Henri said you were back," he said. "I'm glad he didn't kill you. I wanted that pleasure for myself."

  There was some new scar tissue around his right eye, and the iris canted inward. I caught myself wondering if he had gotten that from the mob at Béchenaux. I had gone to ground for some time after Béchenaux, staying away from the old haunts, so I wouldn't accidentally run into the Vaschax brothers. Of the five who stood against me that night, Bento had been the only one willing to let it all go. I had said my piece on the bluff, calling Antoine to task for winding all of our threads, and that had been enough for me. But for Henri and Girard—and to a lesser extent, René—the matter hadn't been satisfactorily resolved.

  Nor for Antoine, really. But, then, I had been specifically targeting him. The rest got caught in the middle of our pissing match.

  "You sure you boys want to do this?" I asked. The Chorus danced on my fingertips, energy angels ready to strike. "Here. Now. You think you have enough strength?"

  Jerome and Charles had come prepared. They side-stepped around the brothers, pulling guns from beneath their coats.

  The Ossuary wasn't laid out like a regular chapel space. Not so much as an afterthought, but more from the long period over which most of the buildings on the mount were raised, the Ossuary became a hodge-podge of pillars and vaults. Nothing
really matched, and other than the space along the inside wall, there weren't very good sightlines. Which made it easier for me to raise the Chorus' peacock shield and get behind a pillar without taking a bullet.

  The report of their firearms was close thunder in the room, and the bullets whined as they ricocheted off the walls.

  Karma, I thought, the circle always closes. Last time, I had been the one with the gun.

  The Chorus had already put together an overlay of the Ossuary, marking each of the Watchers for me. The Vaschax brothers, for all their bluster, knew I was a distraction, and under the cover of the Travelers' guns, were making a move toward the Chapelle Notre-Dame-sous-Terre. René wasn't hanging back like I expected him to; he was creeping along the eastern wall, trying to surprise me from the other side. I couldn't really afford to play cat and mouse among the bays and niches of the Ossuary. There were too many of them. I needed to take the fight to them, and quickly. Jerome and Charles had the only guns—so far—and they were semi-automatic hand cannons from the sound, but the others would be able to do some magick. Nothing big and dramatic. Just the quick and dirty sort of spells that had been my bailiwick for years.

  I went to my right, toward René, and nearly took a barrage of gunfire in the face. The rounds left floating star marks in my etheric shield, exploding nimbuses wreathing the hot metal. I ducked behind another pillar, spitting out dust and rock chips as more bullets chewed the column near my head. In illo tempore. I squeezed time for a brief instant, and the Chorus traced the trajectory of three bullets as they splintered through the stone. I retreated to the west wall as the Chorus scooped up the tumbling shells and brought them to my outstretched hand.

  Hot and misshapen, they sizzled in my palm when I spit on them, and the Chorus outlined each bullet with violet light. Steam rose between my fingers as I squeezed them tight, marking them with saliva and flesh. Videte nostros hostes, I whispered to the Chorus, and noting the phantasmal positions of the souls in the room on my psychic overlay, I darted to my right.