by Mark Teppo
"So you want to get out of that shadow, do you?" I asked, unscrewing the bottle. I took a small sip from the water, positioning my hand around the base of the container.
"How marvelous would it be to look upon God? To be free of the illusions of the shadow?" Julian's fingers stilled their movement and the Chorus felt fire bloom within his body. It raced through his blood and began to collect in his palm.
I shrugged. "What makes you think He wants to be Seen?"
His pupils changed, distending to flat black coins. "We are ready," he said, the levity disappearing from his voice. "When the time comes, we will be deemed suitable."
I nodded toward Bernard. "He will be, sure. He's the one doing all the work. You? You're just standing around congratulating yourself for doing, eh, a whole fuckload of nothing."
The Qliphotic influence was in him. It was attached to his flesh and it would be singing to him right now, singing him a song of violence and hatred. I knew how that tune went.
"His hand," I Whispered to Nicols who hadn't moved from his position by the arch. "Watch his hand."
"I mean, you 'separated' those people in Ravensdale," I said to Julian. "What sort of spinelessness is that? Could you even look one of them in the face when you took their soul? Shit, Julian, I killed nine of your boys before breakfast this morning. Sucked and burned every one of them." I took one more sip of water, cool trickle down my throat. "Hell, I even torched your warehouse."
"My warehouse?" The question ground its way out of him, tinged with black anger. His fire quivered.
Focus splitting.
I nodded, a smug grin on my lips as I casually flipped the water bottle at the dining room table. It hit the tabletop, bounced once and rolled against Bernard. Holy water gurgled and flowed out of the open mouth, spilling onto the wood.
Holy water wouldn't do much to Julian, but it would react with the salt on the table, transforming the solid into a liquid. An old alchemist's trick.
XXVII
Split by the material passion raging inside, Julian was distracted by the flight of the plastic container. His gaze drifted, and the orientation of his body changed as well. I came across the intervening space and hit him with a Chorus-hardened hand. The blow staggered him, and he took several steps back.
Flush with fire, he raised his left hand to hurl a spell at me. Nicols' shotgun roared, a deafening sound that shook the walls, and Julian's hand exploded in a geyser of smoke and flame.
The theurgic mirror inhaled and the rising spray of fire and smoke was sucked across the room, elongated tendrils of magick and flesh streaming from Julian's hand.
Nicols pumped another shell into the gun and shot the magus a second time. The shotgun blast spun him around, and the rain of stars over his head twinkled.
Bernard's crown glittered as well, and he hiccupped in the middle of a word, his head going back like he couldn't breathe. The water was compromising his circle. His body froze, all but the muscles in his neck, which worked and worked like they were trying to move an obstruction.
I ran to the table and smeared my hand through the water and salt mixture. "Solve this." I slapped my palm against his throat, leaving salt, holy water, and the hot imprint of my Will on his skin. The flesh bubbled and melted, a chemical reaction from the magicked mixture of hydrogen and chloride. His choking noises became more strident and whatever paralysis holding him vanished. He collapsed on the table, eyes wide and protruding, hands scrabbling at the bubbling mass of his neck.
Behind me, the theurgic mirror inhaled. Its hunger was still immense, but lessening. More diffuse. As if without Bernard's chant, it was directionless.
I distantly heard the boom of Nicols' shotgun, a reverberating echo rather than a local thunder. In its wake came a howl of fire and, through the door on the far side of the dining area, I saw the reflected red glow of flame. A smoke detector went off in the hallway, an alert that passed to the other alarms scattered throughout the penthouse.
I hesitated for a second, torn between going to help Nicols and dealing with Bernard. Julian was going to catch the detective. It was only a matter of time and, at that point, the fight would go badly for Nicols. Bernard was still dealing with his melting trachea. He wouldn't be an issue for a little while yet.
A second later the decision was made for me as Nicols came barreling through the dining room. Flames wreathed the dome of his helmet, chewing at the synthetic material of the bandana. Smoke leaked off the back of his tactical vest and ash darkened his face.
"Shit!" He jerked his gun to the side and dodged toward the living room, avoiding me. He didn't slow down as he reached the leather sofa, tumbling over the back like he was diving for the end zone.
Smoke billowed out of the doorway and flame licked the edges of the arch, darkening the walls. Julian, red fire fluttering along his frame like he was standing in front of an industrial fan, stood in the kitchen like a burning efreet. Smoke poured off the wreckage of his left hand, a black plume that was sucked into the dining room by the gravity well of the artifact.
I was between Julian and the device.
He released his flame as I went to the left, diving for the carpet. A phoenix with bright wings and hot talons manifested through his Will and streaked across the living room. It came apart-crackling fingers of fire-as its magick was shredded by the influence of the theurgic mirror. The firebird scorched the atmosphere, leaving an acrid taint of ozone in its wake, and collapsed into a fiery funnel about the three statues. The windows behind them shattered as the fire was explosively decompressed and absorbed by the facets of the mirror. The light of the fire went from ruddy to pink to pale in the span of a heartbeat.
Wind, shrieking like a murder of outraged crows, swept into the room. Naked flames, still caught on the wall in the dining room, flickered and stretched. Nicols peered around the end of the couch, his helmet askew. Down my back, on the right side, I could feel flesh cracking-I had been tagged by the firebird as it had come apart.
Julian stepped around the edge of the dining room table, the smoke from his ruined hand reduced to a tiny strand of black mist. Fire danced on his forehead, mixing with the stars suspended over his head. His eyes were black stones. The right shoulder of his robe was dark with blood, crimson tracked halfway to his waist.
The mirror's suction was strong. I would need to keep the Chorus tightly bound. I shaped them in a line of psychic barbed wire and cracked it at Julian. Poorly anticipating the drag of the artifact's vacuum, my whip missed its mark.
He snarled at the line of sparks and made a grab at the twisting expression of the Chorus with his good hand. It snaked out of his grasp.
Nicols popped up from behind the couch, and fired the shotgun. Time splintered near Julian's ruined hand and the slug from the shotgun slowed, striking his raised forearm. A slow-motion tracery of blood and fire exploded.
In a fast-forward return to normal time, his Will reached into the gas fireplace. Nicols was knocked down by the explosive eruption from the narrow grate. The furniture caught fire and the molded plastic of the occasional pieces steamed and melted.
With my second toss, I managed to wind the psychic wire around Julian's neck. He grabbed my wire, steadying himself, even though the psychic current of the Chorus was shutting down his nervous system. Napalm dripped from his ruined arm and he hurled a spray at me.
Most of it missed, pulled off course by the mystic gravity well, but some of it spattered on my clothes. The napalm seared, lancing my flesh. Burning deep.
He was too strong. Too much power available from the soul crown. His spells were overcharged, a vicious ferocity I couldn't withstand. My Will wasn't enough.
My focus wavered, flickering for just a second, and he acted in that tiny vacuum of intent. He pulled the psychic wire right out of me, and I staggered, feeling the Chorus tear. Down in my core. Again. Her hand in my chest. That pain. That despair.
He knocked me to the floor with a burst of fire. I tried to breathe, and sucked in fla
me. My throat felt like I had just drunk lava.
Before I could recover, he was on me. His good hand touched my throat and fire sang throughout my head. I beat at his hand, but it was like trying to break stone with a peacock feather. Color bleached from my vision and his skin became opaque. I could see his skull as he leaned close to my face.
A pair of pistol shots. Thunder in an enclosed space. Julian jerked forward, grunting from the twin blows in his lower back.
His hands vanished from my throat and I rolled onto my side, coughing up soot. Each breath felt like I was fueling an inferno in my chest.
Julian held Nicols' arm in his hand, the pistol shaking in the detective's persistent grip. The magus beat at Nicols' vest with his stump, smearing burning napalm on the Kevlar material. Nicols strained against the magus, trying to get the barrel of the pistol lined up. Julian shook his head, and bodily threw the detective against the statue.
Nicols groaned from the impact, and he dropped the gun. Flailing his arms, he tried to regain balance against the gravity of the mirrored sphere. His left arm drifted against the silver ring in the middle and, feeling something solid against his wrist, he reached with his hand to steady himself.
He touched the sphere.
A primal howl ripped out of him, a scream echoed by the hidden fear in my heart. The Abyss. The sound one makes when confronted with that nothingness, that complete emptiness. Nicols' cry was filled with both despair and anger-the nihilistic sound of enlightenment of an abandoned Heaven.
A string of soft lights coursed down his arm and vanished into the mirror. Much like the ibis-hound had sucked energy from Kat, the facets of the mirror drank from Nicols' soul, draining his spirit through the contact afforded by his flesh. He tried to break the connection, but his hand was fused to the mirror.
I tried to reach him, but Julian grabbed the collar of my coat. The iron force of his Will wrapped around me, and kept me from reaching John. Nicols swung his free arm out and our fingers just missed.
Julian wrapped his bloody forearm around my chest, tucking his body against my burned back. My raw skin twitched from the hot contact and I felt the napalm of his blood dripping down my chest, scouring tracks as it flowed. "I want you to watch," he whispered in my ear. I struggled, straining to move closer to the mirror and John-almost close enough to touch-but the effort only tightened Julian's cage about me.
Nicols tried to reach me again, but his strength was fading too quickly. Each pulse of light down his arm lessened his life force. Already he could barely stand, his knees leaning against the statue for support. Tears ran from his eyes, and when he tried to speak, his final words weren't loud enough to be heard.
When his head fell forward and rested against one of the bronze shoulders, Julian released me. I reached Nicols' body as the mirror let go of his fingers, the contact no longer needed. The body was just an empty shell. Detective John Nicols was gone.
I cradled his body across my lap and his face stared sightlessly at the ceiling. His expression was like Gerald Summers' face. The flesh, wondering why its light had failed.
Julian capered nearby, waving his bloody stump over his head. "One more," he shouted over the sound of the fire alarm. "One more for the party." He danced close and bent down toward me, bringing his stump to the side of his head. "I can hear him. Right in here."
My hand touched the leather holster of the unused pistol on Nicols' belt and, in a smooth motion, I pulled the gun out and pressed it into Julian's left eye socket. "Right here?" I pulled the trigger.
The back of his head came off in a spray of pink and gray that contorted in flight as it became subject to the mirror's pull. His legs went rubbery and he fell back on his ass. Mouth working like an out-of-water fish, he struggled to form a thought with half his brain missing.
I unceremoniously dumped Nicols' meat on the floor and put two more rounds in Julian's chest-right through his heart. Just one more thing for him to try to think about. As long as he had the crown of souls, he could still manage to put himself back together.
Grabbing the front of his blood-stained robe, I dragged him over to the window. I thrust my hand into the skein of stars floating above his skull, feeling the crown's electrical surge in my finger joints. The wild lines of the crown fit into the Chorus like bridle bits in the mouths of race horses. "Time to leave the nest, little bird," I said to Julian as I pushed him out the window. His head snapped back, caught for a moment before the crown ripped free, and then he fell.
I raised my star-filled palm to my cheek, pressing the fading rain of lights against my flesh. I could feel them, just as he said, I could feel all of them.
And the Anointed too. Bright lights against the skein of stars. They pulsed, flexing and swelling like gas bubbles. I felt a jolt of energy jerk elsewhere.
To Bernard.
He was standing next to the table, his throat a vein of silver and pink. His voice box was ruined, but he didn't need to actually speak for me to hear him. "It is done," he Whispered. "Fiat lux."
The mirror collapsed. Its implosion was a gravitational well. Deep in the scarred darkness of my gut, something vital tore, something already ripped-not once, but twice. Something I could never replace.
Everything froze, dim shadows against the burst of pure light that came from the artifact. Nothing changed for a split second as the world came apart at an atomic level and then reassembled itself. The same, but fractured, broken, and hurriedly put together without care for a proper fitting of all the microscopic pieces.
Thoth's Key. Bernard had activated it.
The crown of souls clutched in my hand, I jumped out the open window. A desperate attempt to flee the realization of the artifact's purpose. I tumbled from the top of the Tower as lightning split its dome. I fell.
Driven headlong from the pitch of Heaven, down into this Deep.
An incendiary burst bleached the surfaces of the surrounding buildings as if the sun had come to Portland. Nova stella, the light atop the tower burned away the night.
I hadn't jumped from a building for a few years, and never without a chute, but the body remembered. The Chorus streamed behind me, grabbing at the air, and my descent was somewhere between a headlong fall and a clumsy glide.
As I neared the ground, the last glitter of energy from the crown faded, and I Willed it into a whirlwind beneath my feet, a fluffy soup of air that supported me as I reached the grassy lawn. Not far from Julian's shattered body. Face-down on the grass. Not much of a flyer. Not much of a witness either. Facing away from the very cataclysm he had worked to bring about. Missing everything. That seemed fitting.
There were other witnesses, though. Cars in the street, their occupants peering out open windows at the source of the hard illumination that slew every shadow in the street. Couples on the sidewalk, their faces turned upward.
I crossed the landscaped lawn and jumped the low hedge at the property's edge. A middle-aged man with a bushy mustache was half-out of his stopped sedan, twisting his body so he could stare up at the peak of the tower. He neither blinked nor turned his head as I approached his vehicle. His expression rapturous, his eyes were fixed on the star. I blocked his view with my palm and nothing changed; the light still dazzled his eyes.
He was blind to the physical world. Free of the illusion made by shadows. Free to look upon God.
Suddenly, the pure light vanished, and so physically abrupt was the loss that I gasped as if the wind had been knocked out of me. The man in the car winced as if he had been struck in the jaw, but he kept looking. The glittering light in his eyes remained. Even though the star had gone out, his rapture remained.
I looked up. At the top of the building there was a hole in the sky, a swelling ball of emptiness. It was expanding and, floor by floor, the lights went out in Eglanteria Terrace. The darkness was absolute as if the expanding edge was devouring everything it touched. As if it were unmaking the world by degrees.
With the Chorus gibbering like terrified monkeys in my
head, I ran. I had no idea how far the dissolution would spread-Was the whole world coming undone? — but I fled the vacuum regardless.
It seemed like a futile, animalistic effort. As if I could outrun the disintegration of reality. But, in my heart, I wasn't ready to face this end. Not my choice. I wasn't a willing participant. What drove me wasn't the primitive part of me that wanted to live; what gave me the strength to run was the void left by the Qliphoth. I had been swallowed by this sort of emptiness once. Never again.
Etched on my palm was the faded imprint of the crown of souls. The conduit had failed as I had fallen; I hadn't the opportunity to integrate my Will to the skein of stars. Bernard's crown had remained strong. I had only broken his incantation. I hadn't taken away his connection. He was still there, at the heart of the vacuum. Most likely, the crown was protecting him. That was why he and Julian were both wearing it. They anticipated surviving this implosion.
I stumbled to a stop. I was more than a block away and, between two tall buildings, I could see the curve of darkness as the vacuum spread. A realization of its purpose cut through the chattering noise of the Chorus. Solve et coagula. The dissolution and then the final recombination. There's room for many more yet. Thoth's Key wasn't destroying the world; it was harvesting the souls within it.
The eyes of the man in the car had been transfixed by the light. Not because he had seen the face of God but, like a deer in the road, he had been stunned by the illumination. The shockwave following was the rippling gravity wave of the artifact as it sucked in all the light.
How far would it go?
The river. I had seen the Hawthorne Bridge from the penthouse window. Would it cross the river?
The wave of darkness came through the building across the street, a line of nothingness that swallowed the lighted windows and the white stone facade. It wasn't silent. I could hear the sound of the Key's harvest, a chattering echo of a thousand knives being sharpened. The sound of soul-death.
The river was my only chance. I ran, the metallic roar of the gravity wave pursuing me.
