Heartland tcos-2

by Mark Teppo

  A nearby display showed the system map for this line. De Gaulle, past Parc des Expositions, Le Blanc-Mesnil, Le Bourget and Gare du Nord, to the central hub of Chatelet/Les Halles-Paris' nexus of subway lines. From there we could get a connection to anywhere else in the city. The crowds would help us again. A confusion of lights would make us impossible to track.

  Of course, we'd be coming in on an empty train. One that had been hijacked from the airport. Somehow, I didn't think we'd make it that far before other forces than the Watchers would be surrounding us. We had to get off earlier. Somewhere in the suburbs.

  As I started forward, I heard the rattling sound of a door being opened. The Chorus reacted as a spell ignited, spinning open into a rigid fan behind me. The air in the car crackled, and the windows on either side of the car blew out in a cough of shattered glass. My shoulder glanced off one of the upright metal bars of the seats as I was knocked forward, falling on my side and sliding across the floor. There was a black ring of scorched paint where I had been standing a moment before, and beyond, framed in the narrow door between cars, Charles and Henri.

  Charles didn't hesitate this time. As he charged up the aisle, his right hand snapped down, telescoping out the metal wand in his fist. Violet light limned the shaft and a tiny spark flickered at the tip. I scrambled into a crouch, and dodged his first swing. He caught me on the side of the head with his left fist, and as I shook that hit off, he delivered a short backhand to my right knee with the stick.

  My leg collapsed, nerves deadened and muscles short-circuited by the magickal discharge of his wand. I bounced off the hard plastic of the nearby seat, and barely rolled out of the way of another jab with the stick. I tried to connect with my left foot, but Charles swept the blow aside and I felt my foot go numb from contact with the wand.

  Bad, getting worse. He was just going to keep whacking me with the stick, each shot taking out another body part. With one leg out of commission and the other one as functional as a peg-leg, I was already too slow to avoid him long. Piecemeal attrition. He was going to take me down.

  Charles knew it too. His next swing was slow and clumsy. He didn't have to try too hard. What was I going to do?

  Vis. I grabbed the end of the wand in my left hand, and as the jolt of magick deadened the arm, I pulled him forward. Storming at my command, the Chorus filled the muscles of my right hand as I reached for his wrist. His expression changed as my magick grip compressed the joint. I squeezed and twisted, breaking a few bones, and his grip faltered.

  The spell flickered on his wand, and as it brushed my chest, all I felt was a light tingling on my skin. Clumsily, I swept at his legs with the dead weight of my own, and knocked him off balance. As he fell, Charles tried to catch himself with his bad hand-the instinctive reaction of the lizard brain-and he cried out as bone moved unnaturally in his wrist.

  More importantly, he dropped the rod.

  Falling onto my side, I reached for it, getting a finger on its handle. The Chorus bound the stick to me, and I poured my own magick into its shaft. Ignis.

  Charles was bent over, cradling his wrist. Violet streamers were running along his shoulders and down his right arm. Armor magick. He didn't have time to rebuild the bones, but he could lock them into place so the injury wouldn't stop him. I cracked him on the cheekbone with the rod, and as he reared back, I drove the point into the base of his throat.

  My spell was different, and he knew it as soon as the metal tip burned his flesh.

  Gagging and flailing, he fell back against the edge of the bench seat behind him. I put as much pressure as I could manage against the rod, and he bent back along the bench, trying to get away from the smoldering tip of the metal wand.

  Henri's spell split the light in the train car, fire splashing off the molded plastic and metal struts. The overhead lights exploded like tiny firecrackers, and the car was filled with smoke and flame. Charles was screaming and rolling, trying to put out the flames crawling all over his coat and head.

  I lay still for a moment, still protected by the extended peacock tail of the Chorus. They had reacted before I had known the spell was coming, and as I struggled to sit up and pull myself toward the front of the car, I felt them extending the etheric nets. Harvesting energy from the chaotic spume of fire still howling around the car. I took in the light and heat of the fire, transformed it into a wind, and blew it out again. Fanning the flames, stirring the smoke.

  The Chorus used the rest of the energy to break the deadening spell on my limbs. My arm and legs burned as the nerve endings woke up in a rush. I could stand, but barely, and working the heavy door between cars was almost more than I could do. I braced myself and, with one leg feeling like a piece of charred and smoldering oak and the other like a frozen steak, I heaved the door open. Gracelessly, I fell through the doorway, and stumbled against the outer door of the next car. When the door clicked shut behind me, I closed my eyes for a second and breathed air not tainted with the acrid taste of burned hair and melted plastic.

  I could see the track racing by beneath my feet. The space between cars was a narrow platform, suspended inside an accordion of plastic and rubber. There were gaps and openings along the bottom, and I could see, in addition to the track, a variety of hoses and cables. There was probably an elegant way to separate the cars, but I didn't have time to figure it out. I had to keep moving. Fighting the neurological entropic lethargy that magick couldn't vanquish, I muscled the other door open and fell down in the next car. My numb leg-the one that felt like a burning piece of wood-didn't quite clear the threshold and the door banged against my ankle.

  The Chorus swarmed again as Henri appeared in the window to the other car. His eyes blazed with violet light, and a storm of energy crackled and spat about his head. He had an open connection to the ley of the train track, and was marshaling energy as quickly as he could imagine his need. He blinked and the glass shattered in his door.

  Pushing against the floor, I scuttled back, dragging my foot free of the doorway. The metal door closed, and recalling a protection seal, I threw the Chorus at the portal. Confundantur qui me persequuntur. . The Fourth Pentacle of the Moon, one of Solomon's old seals. The Chorus spun around the rim of an imaginary circle, activating the magick, and binding the door shut. A barrier now, between me and Henri. Pavascant illi, et non ego.

  Henri threw his Will forward and his spell devoured the atmosphere between us. My protection spell wasn't all that strong, and it wouldn't hold up to a concerted beating. Henri had more than enough power at his command to chew through my spell, but it would take a little while. He didn't want to wait, opting for the brute-force solution.

  I felt the backlash at the base of my skull, a psychic stab that was going to turn into a raging headache. But it was better than the alternative. My shield cracked, and for a second, it held. Lightning snarled and stormed in the interstitial space between the cars. Henri's Will couldn't go forward, so it splintered in a compass rose against the flat plane of my shield.

  The end of the car jerked and light flared out from either side of the train. A screeching noise of metal against metal rose over the regular rhythm of the train against the track, and the back end of the car became bent and twisted. As if a giant hand had reached out and crushed it like a beer can.

  Henri and the other cars were gone.

  No points for elegance; functional works. My shield had held long enough for all of Henri's energy to be diverted in every other direction. The couplings and the accordion between the train cars had been vaporized, separating me and Marielle from Henri and the others. Their car and the ones behind them were no longer attached, and without the engine pulling them along, the back portion of the train was slowing down, succumbing to friction and gravity.

  Bracing myself on a nearby bench seat, I dragged myself upright, and realized the front part of the train was slowing down too. I had thought we'd be moving faster without the extra weight, but we weren't. The suburban landscape was rushing by slowly eno
ugh to read the graffiti sprayed along a stone wall adjacent to the track. High-rise apartment buildings, ugly remnants of utilitarian architecture banned from Paris proper, sprouted from the landscape beyond the wall.

  Marielle pushed open the forward door of the car. "We're stopping," she said.

  "Why?"

  Her gaze lingered on the damage and lack of more cars behind me. "They've killed the power from the central switch. We're not going any further than Villepinte. We need to get off before we reach the station." Something like a smile touched the corners of her mouth as she turned her attention to the side doors of the train. "Can you walk?"

  "Well enough," I said, leveraging myself to my feet and limping in her direction.

  She invoked her opening spell again, and the wind rushed into the car as the doors slid back. She looked back at me, the wind throwing her hair across her face. "How about jumping?" And then she was gone.

  "Shit."

  From one threshold to another. No time to consider the possibilities. I limped to the doorway as fast as I could, and jumped after her.

  I was committed now.

  III

  I landed badly, my right leg not up to supporting my full weight, and I tumbled across the rough ground. My palms were scraped raw, and a particularly sharp rock collided with my shoulder as I rolled. When I was done sliding across the ground, I lay still, staring up at the sky for a minute. Happy to be motionless.

  Marielle's boot touched my shoulder, gently rocking me. "Get up, wolf," she said. "It isn't time to rest yet."

  I squinted up at her, moving my head slightly so that I was in her shadow. The sun bled around her frame, lighting her up. Or maybe it was the glow of magick. I couldn't quite tell. Adrenaline and the flush of the Chorus were still ping-ponging through my bloodstream.

  Wolf.

  There was only one other person who referred to me by that term. Piotr Grieavik, a fortune teller based in Seattle, who had used it to remind me of the hunger that had driven me to his corner of the Pacific Northwest. Before that, it had been five years since the New Year's morning when Marielle and I had said goodbye. When she had last used that word to name me.

  The morning of the duel beneath the bridge on the Seine. The morning I had supposedly died, falling into the Seine and vanishing from the Watcher fold, vanishing from her sight.

  She retrieved her cell phone from a jacket pocket while I groaned and sat up. She speed-dialed a number, and didn't wait long for someone to pick up. "We need transport," she said. "No. . there were. . complications." She made a half-turn, her eyes partially closed, and the gravity well of her magick tugged at me. "Yes, I know. We were on that train, and now we need transportation. RATP cut the power to the rails." She glanced up, examining our surroundings. "West side of the tracks," she said. "Just outside of Villepinte. About a hundred meters from a crossing. I can see a billboard for Lagerfeld."

  When I stood up, I could see the sign too. Rail-thin models draped in clothing that hung at weird angles. Everything was black and silver, monochromatic if there was any color at all. Must be the spring line. In the distance, I could also see the other part of the train, and the prismatic strands of Henri's magick.

  "This way," Marielle said. "I have a car coming." She started walking toward the crossing.

  I followed. The ground was rocky and unkempt, and my legs were still a bit rubbery. As I stumbled along, I did a quick visual check of my extremities. No unnoticed shrapnel, no smoldering edges, no numbed breaks in my skin. Other than some scrapes suffered in my headlong plummet from the train, I was doing pretty well.

  My coat, on the other hand, was a lost cause. There was a large patch of charred fabric on the front, and a couple of the buttons had melted into soft watches. I checked the inner pockets. The key, the ring, and the cards were still there. All the important things.

  A silver BMW sedan with smoked windows met us a half-block from the train tracks. Marielle opened the back door, and gestured for me to climb in. I paused, reading the energy signature in the car. My teeth involuntarily chattered.

  The front passenger window slid down, and the blond-haired driver smiled at me. "Hello, my friend," Antoine said. "This is an unexpected surprise."

  I started to shiver: partially from the adrenaline comedown of the last half-hour, partially from the presence of the man driving the car, and partially because of the tone of his voice. The Chorus thrashed along my spine, like a massive fish hooked on a line.

  Marielle stepped back from the car, hearing the same thing. There was a quaver of excitement in Antoine's voice. He was usually able to hide his emotions extremely well. Part of his mystic armor was an unnerving inscrutability; this hint of delight was unlike him.

  Was it the fact that I was still alive; that, like Henri, he had a chance to finish the business we started beneath the bridge five years ago? If so, he was acting out for her sake, as he had recently been in Portland. He already knew I was still alive, and we had put some of the past behind us. Because there was a bigger game afoot. One in which we had both been played like cheap pawns.

  I waved a hand toward the track and the approaching storm of energy. Henri was walking along the track, drawing power from the ley beneath the rail, and with each step, his storm was growing wilder. "Can we do this later?" I asked. "I realize this isn't the reunion any of us expected, but can we-" I swallowed the acrid taste of the Chorus' concern. "-can we just get out of here?" I didn't want to get in the car either, but Henri's approach was reducing my options. Antoine was playing at something, and I needed a minute to figure it out, but right now, he wasn't the problem.

  Where had he come from? Rapid-fire questions searing across my brain. How did Marielle get to the airport in the first place? Had someone driven her? Was this the car? The Chorus churned around these questions, seeking possible answers, seeking connections and patterns. You don't have to always read the future to understand the Weave. You can also examine where you've been, exploring the knots that lie in your past.

  One scenario-a likely one: Antoine drove Marielle to the airport, ostensibly to meet her father, who was supposed to be returning from Seattle on an overnight flight. No one knew why he had gone, and he wasn't beholden to any of the others enough to tell them. But Antoine would have known because there was only one person in Seattle the Hierarch of La Societe Lumineuse would visit. A visit we had been waiting for.

  The larger canvas. Think beyond your narrow thread. The back of my tongue tingled with the frustration rising from the Chorus. Why Antoine?

  Antoine ducked his head slightly and peered out the front windshield. Moving with the grace of a man with all the time in the world. "Who is it?" he asked. "Did they know you were coming?"

  Marielle was looking at me too, the same question in her eyes.

  "No," I said. "They didn't know. They were just there." As well as the man in the sweatshirt and sunglasses. He had been Watching too. For the Hierarch, I realized.

  "Why?" Antoine asked.

  Before I could respond, Marielle's face crumpled. "No. . " she whispered.

  I hadn't been ready with a good lie. Or even a bad one. I was still trying to figure out who all the players were, and as a result, I wasn't ready to distract her from the truth. The look on her face said she suspected, and in not leaping into the void following Antoine's question, I only fueled the fear starting in her heart. A spark of doubt became a conflagration of outright despair.

  "No!" she howled, launching at me, her fists raised. I caught the first blow, but the second shot hit me square in the face. There wasn't much power in it-not yet, but she was pulling energy. My cheek stung, and the Chorus snarled at the psychic impact of the blow.

  "I'm so-" I tried, and took a shot in the mouth for attempting to talk my way out of it. My head snapped back, and the Chorus coalesced between us. Their attempt to shield me wasn't enough, and she kept coming. Kept swinging. I had to retreat, or hurt her. I took one more step back and bumped against the car.


  So much for the path of least resistance.

  Catching her hand was like grabbing a red-hot poker, but I held on, and the Chorus slithered through my arm, redirecting the burning bleed of energy before my skin crisped and my blood vaporized. "Marielle. Stop. It's not like that."

  "You son of a bitch," she spat. "You killed my father."

  Okay, it was like that. Well, not entirely. Not that she was in the mood to listen to me split hairs.

  Antoine grabbed her other hand and held her back. Neither of us had been aware of him getting out of the car, but there he was. He was radiant with magick, filled with all the power of the Protectorate, and his Will was stronger. She pulled at him once, and it was like trying to topple a mountain.

  "Mari," he said, softly, his words cutting through the writhing haze of her anger. "It's done. You can't undo it."

  She pulled out of my grip and clobbered Antoine, actually snapping his head around. "You knew," she snarled. "You knew what he was going to do."

  Antoine shook his head, and though his expression was still serene and filled with empathy for her pain, there was a spark of anger in his eyes. "No," he said. "I wouldn't have let him go if I had known."

  After the detonation of the Key in Portland, Antoine and I had talked. We had realized that the Hierarch was working on a design much larger than either of us had imagined. We had been twisted to be his agents, but to what end hadn't been clear. The only real way to find out was to ask the Old Man directly, and that task had fallen to me.

  Our best guess was that he would, eventually, come to Seattle. All I had to do was stay put and wait him out. But, the Old Man had outfoxed us. He hadn't come to talk; he had come to die. At my hand, and in doing so, his problems became my problems. His wisdom became mine.

  And what did that leave for the Protector to protect? came the whisper in my head.