by Mark Teppo
"I can't ignore him," Nicols said after she left. "He works for someone else. It took me a while, but it finally dawned on me that a guy like him-a guy in charge of making problems disappear-wouldn't do it because he's a generous spirit. He does magickal clean-up because that's his job, which means he's got a different chain of command." Nicols smacked the table with his thumb. "His interests aren't mine, aren't SPD's. He'd fuck us all in order to serve his real boss, wouldn't he?"
I shrugged, a "Wouldn't we all?" dismissal of his question.
"You can run and hide. I don't give a shit really. But I don't think it's Pender you're worried about. He's not the one who has the hooks in you. There's something else going on. But hey-" he spread his hands "-not my problem. I'll be quiet. Just sit here until my eyesight clears up, and everything goes back to normal."
I stared at him until he put his hands back on the table. "It's Pender's boss that has you spooked," he said. "And he's coming here, isn't he?"
I tried to repeat my earlier shrug of dismissal, but couldn't pull it off. The gesture turned into an involuntary shiver.
"Pender is a member of an organization known as the La Societe Lumineuse," I started. "They're based in Paris, and their job is to watch. Watch and protect. Magick is supposed to remain. . hidden. Outside of Paris, we call them 'Watchers,' and they've got agents everywhere. Their allegiances are to the organization, regardless of their local affiliations. Yeah, Pender would drive a car over you if it served his larger purpose. The Watchers are. . both myopic and zealous." To put it generously.
"What about you? What are your allegiances?"
"Pender called me a veneficus during my interrogation. Latin, and it means both 'poisonous' and 'sorcerer,' depending on your need. Though, in my case, I think he meant both meanings. I'm. . without a master."
"What does that mean? You're a rogue?"
I nodded. "I belong to no one-no coven, no order, no society. I've never met one of the Secret Chiefs, and I don't know the special handshake of the Mormon Church. I am a wild card-a child of chaos-and the Watchers don't like the unpredictability of adepts like me. . especially when they used to belong to the family."
"They're after you just because you haven't paid your dues?"
"It's more complicated than that."
"I'm sure it is completely byzantine," he said, raising an eyebrow as he sipped from his cup. "So boil it down for me into something resembling a simple explanation."
I looked out the window. It had started raining again. A thin mist streaked the window, and the pools of water in the street were filled with yellow and green reflections. Minnie's was warm, and the smell of grease and burned meat was neatly hidden under an effluvium of gardenia and peppermint. Other than a quartet of young students on the other side of the triangular-shaped room, we were the only customers.
It was nearly 3:00 a.m. on a weeknight. If Antoine was on a flight from Paris already-even if he had gone straight to de Gaulle after hearing from Pender and caught the very next flight to Seattle-it would be midmorning before he arrived. At least.
Getting out of town was easy. One Suggestion to anyone driving north, and I could be across the Canadian border by the time Antoine arrived. Vancouver was large enough to confuse my trail. I could extend my head start there.
That wouldn't deter Antoine though. Not now, not when he knew my death had been faked. Hiding in Vancouver-or anywhere, for that matter-would just delay the inevitable. He'd never stop looking for me. Did I want to run for the rest of my life?
What other choices did I have?
Kill him, the Chorus insisted. Finish what he started. Cut a deal with the Watchers. Face them instead of showing your back. They twitched, sending a ripple of energy up my spine. Stop running.
And behind that suggestion lay the ever present lure of finding Kat, of returning the favor done to me a decade ago.
This isn't about revenge?
I tried to shake off Nicols' question from the car, but it was stuck in my head. Revenge? Was that all that drove me?
And Antoine? What do you think drives him? Is it any different?
It was like a whole section of the past had been overwritten. We had been seekers of knowledge, students of the arts who only sought to comprehend the luminous divinity of creation. Instead, we had become creatures driven by something as primitive as revenge. Had we drifted so far?
"A few years ago, I was in Paris. Studying to be a Watcher," I told Nicols, choking down these questions as if they were a glob of poisonous bile. "I had made the second rank-Journeyman-and fell in with one of the 'rising stars'-one of the golden children who was slated to ascend far in the ranks. Antoine Briande. He's from a long line of occultists-his father's father and that man's grandfather were both Watchers. Heresy and alchemy are an inextricable part of his heritage, the sort of pedigree that opens all manner of doors to an eager student. Me? I was just a mutt from the streets who showed promise and passion. We had nothing in common but, well, we discovered a common fascination."
"A woman," Nicols offered.
"No," I started, thinking of the philosophical curiosity we had both shared. But that wasn't the truth. Not entirely. "Yes," I corrected. "A woman. Her name was-is-Marielle."
Summoned by my confession, the memory of that last morning in Paris flooded my brain. An act of re-creation brought about by the power of her name. The magick of names, and the power they hold. Over their owners, and over those who believe in them.
Marielle. Standing on the apartment balcony-the stolen hideaway we had tumbled into the night before-blowing soap bubbles toward the morning sun. The dawn of my last day in Paris, the last hour before my relationship with Paris had been severed. All ties cut, with one stroke. Her. My friendship with Antoine. My future with the Watchers. Everything.
I struggled to find my voice, lost as I was in the past. "Antoine invoked an old Law of the organization, and challenged my right to membership. Ritus concursus. Trial by combat; I had to prove my worth. He went old school, and demanded a duel with swords. No magick."
"Since you're here, I guess you won. What's the problem? He challenged you."
"Nobody won." I toyed with my silverware, seeing the table knife as a longer, deadlier weapon. "Well, they thought I was dead."
"Ah, I see."
That morning, beside the Seine, on the walkway beneath the Pont Alexandre, Antoine had delivered a decisive stroke, piercing me front to back. The pain had been intense, a febrile fire that had devoured my insides. Somehow I had managed to stay conscious; I had managed to continue fighting. Antoine had been caught off-guard, his sword still stuck in me.
"I took his hand," I told Nicols. "I cut it off before I fell into the Seine. They never found my body."
I could still remember the impact of the river, how it had hungrily filled my mouth and throat in an effort to drag me down to the bottom of its channel. But the Chorus hadn't been willing to die. They had filled my lungs with hard shadows, forcing the water out. The mixture of gore and water in my wound had been transmuted into tender flesh, sealing the hole. Making me whole. Again. I had been carried away from the bridges and cathedrals of Paris by the river, a tiny submersible filled with secrets and regrets.
"Antoine couldn't reattach what he couldn't find." I smiled. "My permanent reminder of what he had lost." I had lost both the sword and his hand in the river. Buried in the mud and muck.
The waitress approached with our food: eggs, bacon, toast, and home fries for Nicols; eggs and a strawberry waffle for me. She came back with more coffee, and we let the conversation hang for a minute while we ate. Like my existence for the last five years, frozen in place, waiting for resolution to matters interrupted.
There were a lot of other memories of my time there: the endless nights exploring Montmartre; the week I took him climbing in the Pyrenees and showed him how to jump off cliffs; the trip to Chartres with Marielle, where we three finally acknowledged the tension binding us together; or the night spent in the c
atacombs beneath Paris where Antoine and I faced the ancestral spirits. We had been friends. Until the end. Until our blades had touched. Our bond was dissolved by blood and water, washed away like so much history beneath the bridges of Paris.
I had taken his hand, an irreplaceable part of him. Just like Kat had taken something from me. I knew what he faced every day, what each dawn reminded him: he was not whole. I had created his imperfection. He wouldn't forget.
And maybe in our imperfections was where our innocence died, where we gave up wanting to know the truth of the world. Where we decided, instead, that we would be defined by fear and anger.
"So he wants his pound of flesh?" Nicols asked. "Just like you with Kat. But neither of you will call it what it is. It's just old-school vengeance."
The forkful of strawberry-covered waffle turned to cloying ash in my mouth as the Chorus swarmed up my throat and bled darkness on the back of my tongue. I spit the food out on the side dish where I had scraped the excess whipped cream. The damp mass sizzled through the fluffy mound like a hot rock melting through snow.
Like a magma dome growing in the cone of an ancient volcano, something was rising inside me. Something that fed the Chorus. It had lain in darkness a long time and now, with Kat near-with Antoine coming-it was growing.
Vengeance. Wipe away the hurt by hurting those who wounded you.
I wiped my mouth. "I'm a fallen-" I was going to say "Watcher," but I got caught by the previous word. Fallen.
It was Milton who made Lucifer human in Paradise Lost, who gave a name to that which consumed the fallen angel. I had read the book in high school, loved it for some reason, and had come back to it several times since. Milton said that Lucifer was consumed by revenge. He wanted to pull down the gates of Heaven because they were closed to him. Not privy to the complete scope of the Father's plan, Lucifer had dared to ask. All those children who dared to question the plan, to peek behind the curtain, to look inside the box, or to eat from the tree: all of them fell from grace.
"Fallen-?" Nicols prodded me to finish the thought.
"Revenge," I said. "It is like Pride, or the sin of Ignorance. It is a failing of the flesh."
He shrugged. "The Catholic Church has been saying that for centuries. I can't believe this is a new concept for you."
"No, that's not it. The Church can't claim to have invented these sins. One of the antecedents of Catholicism was an Egyptian writer named Hermes Trismegistus. His discussion of the soul and the flesh wasn't marred by all the histrionics of organized religion. He argued that demonic influences held sway over the flesh by means of the baser appetites, and that the soul was held back from its reasoned ascension by these influences."
When the Chorus had rescued me in Paris, they had revealed a venomous intent of their own. I hadn't consciously realized how or why they would act in such a way. I had been. . distracted, and as quickly as their secret had risen, it had vanished again. Hiding inside me until such time as it could poison me again. This was the source of my desire for revenge, what railed at me now to continue my search for Katarina.
Qliphotic. That old familiar darkness, so comfortable with the idea of vengeance.
Nicols still didn't see my point, and I realized I wasn't articulating it very well because the more I tried to concentrate on the source of my dis-ease, the more it squirmed away from me. Like a shadow trying to avoid a flashlight beam. "The Prince of Swords," I said. "On one level it's a reference to our duel. But on another, a purely symbolic level, it represents Mind without Purpose. The Prince acts, but may not understand why. Revenge, John. We are driven by it, but what is the root of it?"
"Ah, maybe the hand you took?"
I sighed. "Not Antoine. Me." He couldn't see inside my head, couldn't see the way my memory was fraying. "You're right, John. Part of me wants to run and hide from Antoine. But it's an endless cycle. I'll always be running. But another part of me wants to stay, is arguing quite strenuously to stay and fight. Face Antoine because he stands between me and Kat."
"You can't let go of her, can you?"
I shook my head. "And why can't I? Is it just revenge that I want?"
"We all have our demons," he shrugged. "If that's what you're trying to tell me. I get it. I'm not going to absolve you of any action you might take, but I understand it."
"No, I'm not sure this action-this need-is mine." The Chorus tugged at my spine, unease drifting through their rank like dank smoke. "There's something else." I shook my head, trying to shake something that clung. "Uh, maybe. Yes."
"Yes what?"
"Another perspective. I need a second opinion."
"Now?"
"Why not? I don't like the idea of running, but I suddenly don't trust my own motives for staying. I need another opinion. From someone who can more objectively see through me. I need someone who can read the Weave. I need a fortune teller."
XI
Cities, when you can see the ley energies, are generally structured the same: grids oriented to the north-south meridians; flow patterns that move east to east; hot spots surrounding the popular nightclubs; and one or two hubs of concentrated power, bubbling over like artesian wells. Each metropolis, however, has its own character-its own idiosyncrasies and quirks-and the trick to navigating the urban flow was knowing how to acquire a decent map. It's just a matter of commodities trading. As in any modern civilization, the most natural rhythm of all is the ebb and flow of capitalism.
Cab drivers instinctively navigate the flow patterns of the ley whether they are adepts or not; bus drivers sense the knots and whirlpools of radiant energy, their network shifting and adapting to the changing influences. The seemingly random spray of graffiti is actually the hidden key to understanding how the city is carved up, and the midnight taggers are always hungry, eager to share in return for a secret or two. Fortune tellers-the real ones, at any rate-know the local illuminati. They know the covens, the packs, the temples, and the societies; they know which shape and affect the local flow, and which are full of noise and flash.
My local contact was a Georgian fortune teller named Piotr Grieavik. I had met him on my third night in Seattle, and my ability to provide proper remuneration was matched by Piotr's knowledge of the city.
Piotr's shop was a twenty-two-foot Airstream trailer. After nightfall, it would appear in the corner of a parking lot near one of the white energy rivers. Its silver shell would pick up an unnatural gleam under the sodium lights of the parking lot, while the curved front windows would be lit by a warm glow as if the inside of the trailer was coated with amber. In the back window, there would be a curled piece of neon. An intricately woven pair of rings, the red and blue neon light was Piotr's calling card. Lit, he was receiving visitors; dark, he was occupied with a client.
In the early hours of this Wednesday morning, we found Piotr's trailer down near the Fisherman's Terminal in Interbay. The trailer smelled of incense, a bouquet of jasmine and pine that lay heavily on the tongue and helped to mask the smell of the nearby fishing boats. Ornately carved dragons sat in the corners of the central room, their bellies filled with incense cones. Thin strands of smoke drifted lazily from their flared nostrils.
A plush half-moon of a booth took up most of the room. Comfortable seats arced out from the curved walls like a welcoming matronly embrace. Piotr sat on one side of the dark table, playing solitaire with a normal deck of cards.
He was bald and his remaining hair-eyebrows and forearms-was white, stark contrast to the burnished copper of his skin. His teeth were smooth and even, and when he smiled, the wealth of lines creasing his face and hairless head melted away. He talked of a history that went back eighty years-stories of life at sea on a succession of Merchant Marine assignments-but the buoyant lilt of his affected English left you with an impression of youthful naivete.
"Hello, wolf," he smiled as Nicols and I entered his warm salon. He was wearing dark pants and a crimson shirt beneath a fringed vest adorned with patches and decals of astrological symbo
ls. Fish splashed down the left side of his chest, and a bull wrapped itself across his right shoulder. His smile broadened as he spotted the bag of candy in my hand. We had stopped at a QFC on Queen Anne to buy sweets. "What do you have there?"
The basic rule when seeking information from an oracle, I had told Nicols when I had asked him to stop at the store: bring a gift.
I put the bag on the table near his half-finished card game. "Caramels," I said. "A couple of different flavors."
On the top of his discard pile, the card he had turned over as we had entered: the jack of spades.
He caught my glance, and tapped the card several times with a blunted forefinger. The top knuckle was missing, as was the knuckle on the middle finger next to it. Both of them, supposedly lost in a fishing accident, and I hadn't bothered to call him on his white lie. It was enough that we both knew, just as he didn't talk about some of my secrets. The cards have a way of revealing a man.
"The Prince of Swords," he said, giving it its tarot name.
I nodded, not surprised to see the jack. Energy patterns were coalescing. Coincidences were simply a manifestation of systemic orientation. "This is Detective John Nicols," I said, introducing my companion. "Seattle PD. We're working together."
"Ah," Piotr said. He turned his attention to the sack of caramels. "There are neophytes in the ranks of SPD now, are there?"
"Inadvertently. And he's not the first."
Piotr selected a candy and unwrapped it delicately. "No," he noted, glancing up at Nicols. "Not the first. ."
"Have you seen Lt. Pender recently?" Nichols asked.
"Not recently." Piotr smiled at Nicols as he popped the chewy candy in his mouth. "The lieutenant has a tendency to neglect my sweet tooth," he explained. "Unlike Markham, who always brings something."
Nicols nodded, a gracious inclination of his head. The sort of salute usually reserved for visiting royalty. He was good at reading situations and swallowing his own ego in order to make people comfortable. One of those traits of invisibility so useful to a homicide investigator. "It would appear the lieutenant believes his position exempts him from certain obligations," he said. "And you aren't influenced by his shiny badge now, are you?"