Heartland tcos-2

by Mark Teppo

  "No," she said. Her gaze was magnetic and I couldn't look away for a second. "Neither should you." Nothing accusatory in her tone, but I could read it all in her eyes.

  "I'll explain later. We need to go."

  I touched her arm and the Chorus whined at the contact. She was a gravity well. Gravitas. It was as if she were standing on a nexus of ley energies, and they were grounding her. It would take more power than I had at my ready call to move her. "No," she said. "Not after all this time. Don't brush me off."

  I glanced back at the trio of Watchers, and the Chorus could taste the etheric disturbance forming around Henri's head. Viator, I thought. One who has returned from Traveling; a walker between worlds. Seven steps removed from Protector. Enough of a magus to flatten me, given the chance.

  Since I had left Paris, I'd been scatter-shot in my education, learning what I could, when I could. I hadn't been keeping up with the ritualized procession of the degrees within the society. If pressed, I could probably pass the Traveler trial without much preparation. But Viator? Not a chance. Which put Henri way outside my comfort zone. I didn't want to have to face him. Not here. Not now.

  "Your father isn't on this flight," I said to Marielle, rushing past the truth and into the lie. "He's on a later flight. He gave up his seat to me." And before she could ask, I pushed on, compounding the falsehood with some more truth. "He came to see me. In Seattle. Asked me to come back to Paris. But there are some-" My tongue caught on the word. "-circumstances that forced him to stay behind."

  "Why?" she asked. Her eyebrows pulled together as she looked past my shoulder, at the three magi approaching.

  Not here. Not now.

  And then I knew how to unroot her. "They've exposed themselves," I said. "That's why he sent me first. To draw them out. Now we know who they are."

  "But-" she started.

  "Markham," Henri Whispered. That line-of-sight magick trick whereby magi spoke directly to one another.

  Too late.

  "Henri Vaschax," I said, turning to greet the three men. The fabric of Marielle's coat brushed my hand; my suitcase rocked on its wheels, but remained upright. "It's been a while." The Chorus twisted in my throat, some of their old humor lacing my words. "How's the knee?"

  Nunc, the Chorus breathed, echoing a ritual moment two months ago. A whisper of a dry wind, twisting through old bones. Waking old ghosts, beginning the cycle anew.

  This is how it begins.

  II

  I had been part of the family once, one of the many brothers sworn to serve the Hierarch. La Societe Lumineuse had its roots in the early days of Templar history, though its design and intent didn't really crystallize until after de Molay and the others were burned at the stake in 1314. Then, fleeing the greedy hand of Philip the Fair and every other king and bishop who thought they could follow the French king's lead, the organization became invisible. Over the next seven hundred years, they became much better at manipulating events and people from the shadows. The Watchers, as they've become known in occult circles, are True Seeing Witnesses to history. Their charter-somewhat self-appointed-was to keep the mystery mysterious, to protect the rest of humanity from its darker secrets. They need us to be in the shadows.

  Critics of the organization-and there were a few, discreet and careful to whom they spoke of such things-saw them as yet another group of elitists who wanted to keep all the toys to themselves. Their mission of obscuring the occult mysteries was simply another means of control, an act that ran counter to much of the mystical philosophy they protected. How could mankind learn its true place in the universe if all the keys were hidden?

  I hadn't had such quibbles. I wanted access to the secrets; they were granted to initiates. I signed up. Simple as that.

  The Old Man, the Hierarch of the order, was based in Paris, and if you wanted to learn, that's where you went. After the disaster in Tibet, I realized I needed a better education. I needed something organized. Flailing about in the dark was getting people killed, some of them at my hand, and that was becoming problematic. I needed to be smarter.

  They took me in, like they did all wayward children of the arts, and I stayed almost a year and a half, longer than I had stayed anywhere else in the last decade; and, within their embrace, I probably could have learned enough to bury the old hate forever. I might have found a cure for the blackness in my heart; but that wasn't the way things turned out.

  Someone had a different design in mind.

  When we became initiates, we were taught the metaphor of the Weave. It's an inexact explanation for the way etheric energy works, but it suffices for newly opened minds. Even now, I still default to thinking of the morphological Akashic energy patterns that way. The world was a Weave, and each of us was a single thread woven through the complex canvas. The higher-ranked Watchers do more than Watch. They also twist and wind the threads, manipulating people to create new patterns in the Weave. The Old Man was the one who Saw more of the Weave than anyone else; his windings went deeper and further than the rest of us could imagine.

  And some of us were a little overeager to begin twisting threads.

  My stay in Paris started to unravel after a little collegiate-style hazing gone wrong. Someone died, someone got their feelings hurt, and Henri took a couple of bullets, one that had left a lasting impression on his left kneecap. I had been in a bit of a rush, and had only meant to slow him down. Not that, after all this time, he'd be interested in an apology. I had a suspicion his memory of that night in Bechenaux was permanently twisted around the bullet in his kneecap.

  Silver will do that, silver and energized Will.

  It had been his brother, Girard, who I had really wanted to put a bullet in, but he hadn't been available. It was probably a bit unfair that I had taken it out on Henri, but he had been an accomplice to the whole affair. Still, judging by the tension in his jaw and the way etheric lightning was arcing off his skull, he was looking forward to some closure.

  I had taken that from him too, when I had fallen in the Seine six years ago. I hadn't come back up, not in Paris anyway, and to the organization, I had died. At least, that had been my hope: if I stayed invisible, they wouldn't have any reason to think otherwise. Sure, I had left a number of things unresolved, but I had made peace with that.

  The Watchers, however, didn't like loose ends. Those were the threads that could create knots.

  The disturbance around Henri's head was a halo of light. "Venefice," he said, using the old term for a rogue magus. "Adversarium te nomino."

  Marielle took a step forward, and my hand came into contact with her hip. The Chorus swirled in my arm, resisting the strong pull of her gravity.

  Adversarius. Henri had just Witnessed me, labeling me in a way every Watcher would have to acknowledge. An enemy of the fraternity. The Adversary.

  "I guess an apology is out of question now, isn't it?" I said.

  Jerome and Charles weren't up on our history, and the sudden course of events was putting them off-guard, unsettled with the direction of the conversation. Henri was the ranking Watcher present, and they were beholden to his command, but the public nature of this confrontation was making them nervous. There were too many people, too many unsanctioned Witnesses who would remember what they might see. Not to mention the local law enforcement. The French took their terminal security a little more seriously than the Americans did.

  It wasn't what they had been told to expect, the Chorus articulated.

  "Step away from him," Henri said to Marielle.

  "No," Marielle said, and the weight of her nexus increased. My fingers tingled with the tightening pulse of energy.

  "With all due respect, Mlle. Emonet," he said. "He's-"

  "I know who he is," she said, cutting Henri off. "And if I were beholden to your rules, I would question your summary judgment of his character. But-" Her voice got even harder, and I saw Jerome flinch. "Even if I were to find your pronouncement valid, this is neither the time nor the place to exercise your rig
ht of combat."

  Henri hesitated for a second, caught by an old respect, but that was shoved aside by a stronger need. One that was quite plain in the smile that creased his mouth. "Of course," he said. "You are not beholden to our rules, and as such-your blood, notwithstanding-neither am I beholden to take orders from you." His lightning stormed. "Now, stand aside."

  "I am staying," she said. "Right here." And I felt the emphasis of her words more than I heard them. I felt the strong lock she had on the flow of energy beneath. Grounded.

  Jerome and Charles took half-steps back, violet light blooming in their eyes as currents of energy coursed through their bodies. A guttural noise started in Henri's chest, and in the frozen second that followed, I made a decision and reached toward the yawning pit of energy beneath Marielle. I felt it through her, as if she were suddenly not there, and I was teetering on the precipice of an endless drop, the vacuum of that infinite hole pulling at me. Like a black hole, sucking all light and energy into its maw.

  Henri released his lightning and it arced across the space separating us, seeking the ground. The Chorus flexed, straining to build some sort of reflective shield, but I held them back. Right here, she had said. Marielle hadn't been talking to the Watchers. She had been telling me where to find help.

  The splash of lightning struck me squarely in the chest, and the front of my jacket smoked and flaked into ash. The electric touch of Henri's power raced through my nervous system, and as quickly as it bit, it was gone, racing down my arm and out through my fingers. Leaving me and going into Marielle. My palm burned and her flesh got hot, but the lightning passed through us, drawn down through Marielle's conduit to the ley energies.

  Henri hesitated, confused by the lack of result from his lightning spell, and I leaped forward, driving the palm of my burned hand into his nose. Some of the residual energy on my skin was transformed by the impact, and I felt the cartilage splinter. Blood flowed.

  The Chorus formed themselves into a six-inch psychic spike extending from my knuckles as I pivoted and hammered Charles in the sternum with my charged fist. His eyes went wide, and he lost his magick as his lungs seized up.

  Jerome was frozen, transfixed by a vision behind me. I wanted to look, far more curious than I should have been, and as I started to turn my head, the Chorus seized my spine. All I could do was keep looking forward. Or up.

  Up, along the curved ceiling of the terminal. I spotted several of the tiny metal spiders of the fire suppression system. Sprinkler heads. The kind that trigger in the presence of smoke. Or having their tips knocked off. As the Chorus released their hold on my neck, I squeezed them and flicked a drop of force toward the ceiling. A knot of Willful energy with a specific task to accomplish.

  Keeping my gaze toward the floor, away from the fading edge of Marielle's glamour, I reached back and grabbed for her hand. She met me, and came easily when I pulled, no longer bound to the nexus of force.

  The Chorus spark reached its target overhead and ignited, a blip of energy unnoticed by everyone but me. Lights and sirens and water followed. The sound and fury and deluge of the Apocalypse, judging by the near-instant panic that flooded the terminal. Everyone was a little on edge in the airport these days.

  "Your suitcase." Marielle tugged on my hand.

  "Leave it," I shouted. "There's nothing important in there." It's just baggage. All I needed was in my pockets already.

  We fell into the silver stream of souls, the suddenly torrential rush of lights for the exits. Marielle's hand was hot in my grip, and the Chorus buzzed at the touch. It felt like I had bees under my skin, racing up and down my arm. Behind us, I could sense Henri's outrage. His voice was lost in the noise and chaos of the terminal, but I could feel him pulling energy again. A broken nose wasn't going to stop him.

  Marielle stopped suddenly, and her hand was nearly torn from my grip by the tide around us. Beyond the glass doors of the terminal, the flood of bodies became a swirling and disorganized mass, like river water that, having rushed thousands of miles through canyons and beds cut in the earth, suddenly spills into a delta at the sea. All the channeled energy suddenly finds itself no longer squeezed through a narrow passage and it spins out into a confusion of disparate currents. In these currents, uniformed officers were struggling to direct the flow, but they were like rocks in a river-obstacles more than channel markers.

  My vision failed, a black curtain cutting everything off, and I couldn't breathe. The Chorus swarmed against the suffocation spell Henri had just hit me with. I had been less experienced the last time someone had tried this on me, and I hadn't known how to fight it. I had panicked, which was part of what made the spell effective. The lizard part of your brain kicks in, primordial survival instincts that spring to the surface. You can't see. You can't breathe. All that runs through your head is: fly, fly, fly!

  The Chorus tore through the first layer of the spell, and like active sonar on a submarine, they pinged my surroundings and constructed an etheric overview: hot spots marking the three Watchers, starburst flare at my side, the ghostly streamers of the flood of people moving around us. Marielle supported me; slowly dragging me away from the door.

  Henri tightened his Will, and my Chorus sight flickered. I flailed-physically and mentally-at the hood about my head, and failed to make any sort of contact. Henri, it seemed, had gotten better at this spell, too. I couldn't find a seam to force the Chorus into. If I could locate a crack in his magick, I could force my Will through. He was too far away to hit him effectively with the Chorus-not without more energy, and my reserves were already low.

  The Chorus had another idea and they moved on their own, rushing through me like a rain of pebbles. They burst through my shell, extending on either side like a pair of butterfly wings. They bent themselves against the current, and I realized they weren't wings. They were nets, and as each spirit light moved past, the Chorus scooped off a little energy. Each pulse fed back to my central nervous system, keeping me alert. Keeping me from passing out.

  Instead of pulling energy from the leys, I was pulling energy from the river of souls moving past me. Each scintilla of energy was clean and pure too; there wasn't any sort of spiritual ephemera attached to it: no memories, no histories, no emotional detritus. I wasn't stealing from their life force. I was harvesting the natural bleed of power.

  What I know, I pass to you. Father. Son. Holy Spirit.

  Henri's light flared, a split-second warning of a power spike, and as this energy was channeled by his Will into his spell, there was a tiny hiccup as the hood relaxed around me. Almost as if I could feel the difference between inhaling and exhaling. Time was getting sticky, and as I dove for that narrow gap, I had to keep my focus tight so as not to forget what I was trying to do. This entire exchange was happening on an ethereal level, outside the perceivable decay of the cesium atom, but it still felt like running the hundred-yard dash through three feet of mud.

  I squeezed the Chorus into a knot, twisted it once, and when he squeezed again, the knot squirted through the hood, throwing a microdot of my perception on the other side. I could fight back now. I could touch him. Sequere lucem. Leaping through the conduit of power looped around my head, the Chorus arced back along the strand of energy for the steaming spark of his soul. I couldn't break his shell-too many layers of psychic armor-but I could break his concentration. I could deflect his Will. On the nose. Like hitting a dog with a stick.

  The hood dissolved, and the air I sucked in was heavy with water. Staggering, finding and leaning on Marielle's arm, I tried to reconnect with my feet. The sprinkler system was doing a good job of reducing visibility as it reacted to the non-existent fire. The crowds were lessening, even though the doors were blocked with a confusion of bodies. The Watchers were still behind us, though Henri was trailing behind the other two. His nose was bleeding again, and steam rose from his head and shoulders.

  "This way," Marielle shouted in my ear. She pulled me at an angle to the major flow. Moving like an elongate
d eel, we knifed through the press of bodies. Back into the terminal, parallel to the outer wall. It would take us too long to force our way through the crowd. We had to find a different way out. Marielle was more familiar with the terminal layout, and I let her lead.

  "They're going to lock this place down," I Whispered to her. Making ourselves heard over the din would be too time consuming. Magi-speak was quicker, and more private as well. No point in revealing what our plan was to anyone close enough to hear us shouting. "If they haven't already. We need transportation."

  "The train," she Whispered back.

  "It won't be running," I countered. "They'll have shut it down."

  She glanced at me, a tight smile on her shining face. "I hope so. That'll make it easy."

  She was right. Getting the train moving was the easy part.

  The RER-B train was in its bay beneath the central terminal, and though we had to force our way downstairs through a throng of confused people-the panic caused by the fire alarm was only now spreading to the other terminals-we managed to reach the landing beside the smooth bullet shape of the train.

  The doors were closed, and the interior lights were dimmed; no one was in the front blister of the cockpit. De Gaulle security was already reacting to the fire alarm and the psychic confusion of our spells as if the airport was being subjected to a terrorist attack.

  Marielle whispered a tiny invocation as she ran her fingers across the access panel beside the doors. With a sigh of compressed air, they slid open. Once I was inside, she pinched the loop of her magick, and the doors closed again with a tiny pop.

  She went forward to get the train moving, and I stayed in the back to watch for the others. Shortly thereafter, the lights brightened and the train jerked forward a few feet. This aborted leap became a shuddering crawl that shook the whole car, and as the train picked up speed, the vibrations lessened. Archways and marbled partitions flashed past, followed by longer stretches of open sky as we left the terminal.