Aeon of Horus

by Paul Neuhaus

  Even with all the noise—the delicious, intoxicating noise—Henaghan did not forget her purpose. Within her was the moment (or was it moments?) when the protective mesh was first laid over the membrane separating the Physical and Astral Planes. She understood how it had been accomplished as though she’d been there herself. (In her current incarnation, she had been there herself.)

  She knew what needed doing.

  She also knew she’d attracted unwanted attention.

  In the Cauldron, the Asura, orbiting their ball of light, all turned toward her at once.

  In the Kiln, the Deva too all turned their gaze toward the center.

  She pushed away from the Astral Plane’s middlemost point and folded space. The membrane was the same distance away in any direction, but direction and distance were irrelevant to her. She watched the fabric ripple and rode the crest of the wave until she was standing beside the barrier between the world she occupied and her own. She no longer needed to squint to see it. It was in front of her and it was alive. She could also see the modification her forebears had made. The mesh. An intricate overlay of latticework. A net that had once pulsed with vitality. Now she could see it was breathing its last. It was a good thing she had come. The mesh would’ve frayed and torn sooner rather than later.

  Stretching out with her senses, Quinn shifted her reality to become one with the membrane and the fortifications that came later. She was, for a time, the same sort of magic that embodied the barrier. She and it vibrated at the same frequency and occupied the same metaphorical space. The membrane itself was healthy. It was what it was and what it would always be. She concentrated on the surface. Naturally, the mesh was on the side facing the physical plane. It was both of and apart from the membrane. By listening to its song, she fine-tuned her own resonance so that she was with and of the mesh. Every surgeon who’d ever cut into a living patient was a part of Quinn now and she knew their minds all at once. She too was a surgeon, delineating tissues and moving to cut away and replace the unhealthy ones.

  As soon as she vibrated at the same frequency as the mesh, the first of the attacks came.

  When she felt it, Henaghan knew its origin. In the moments since she’d left the center, the Asura had swum out, frantic to stop her. They wanted their future pathways free and resented her intrusion.

  Meanwhile, back at the center, the Deva waited and watched. Their gaze seemed not only calculated but… feminine.

  Quinn was buffeted by the Asura’s initial strike. The membrane gave but, thanks to the continued presence of the mesh, it held. Even so, the sudden slam disrupted her concentration. She could not maintain the frequency of her vibrations. If she could not resonate with the mesh, she would be unable to repair it. She realized then she faced a terrible conundrum. The mesh was first woven by a mix of Dharmin and Jihma Channelers. But they’d had protection, a buffer between themselves and the attacking Asura. Henaghan had no such buffer. She couldn’t do both jobs herself. As soon as she realized this, she knew that she was doomed to fail.

  Golden light came quickly on the heels of Quinn’s terrible realization.

  A blazing yellow comet streaked across the surface of the membrane. As it went, it pulsed with burning and illumination.

  Each pulse caused the Asura to shrink not only backwards but into themselves. All of them were suffused with terror.

  Quinn watched the comet streak, faster and faster, in a series of overlapping lines, a mirror of sorts to the mesh, but on the Astral side of the membrane. The light and the heat kept the Asura back. The Asura, pulsing with rage, could do little more than watch. In her curiosity, Henaghan forgot for a moment why she’d come. She was mesmerized by the protective dance the comet performed. A gentle voice reminded her. A woman’s voice from inside the comet’s core. “Weave,” it said.

  And Quinn wove.

  Quinn dropped her hands from the statues and fell to the floor. Simone knelt to help the younger woman. “God, are you alright?” she said.

  Quinn was well-past the point of exhaustion. She doubted if she could even stand or move. She barely recognized Gros through a haze of both confusion and smoke. “Aisling,” was all she managed to say.

  Simone didn’t understand the redhead, but she also didn’t care. It was time to go. She raised Quinn up and shouted to her two cohorts. “Come and get her! Please!”

  Ristich and Abrigo wasted no time mounting the altar steps and taking Henaghan off of Simone’s hands. As they moved away from the plinths, Matt handed his duffel bag to Gros. “Here.”

  The Asura woman opened the bag and made to drop Set and Horus inside.

  Something stopped her.

  In the flickering light, Simone realized what she’d always wanted—what she’d always needed—was right in front of her. She looked from Horus to Set and back again. Both statues had their eyes trained on her. Both statues gave their tacit consent for her to do what she’d already decided to do. She dropped the duffel and placed her hands on the black icons.

  Like Quinn before her, everything that was Simone dropped away and reconstituted between the Kiln and the Cauldron. At the Astral Plane’s center. Everything that ever was (and many things that never were) cascaded over her like a wall of water. Like a tsunami.

  The part of her that was still her knew at once she’d made a terrible mistake.

  Amidst the soul-shattering noise, Simone had a vision. A girl with red hair writhing in her sleep. Through the girl’s blood ran two conjoined forces. A tincture, a lure meant to draw out the power to Channel, and a twisting mass of Vidyaadhara. Together, the chemical accelerant and the creatures of pure magic shot toward an object at the core of the girl’s being. That object was a double helix of DNA. Part of that double helix held a particular gene. A recessive gene found in an infinitesimal fraction of human women. The gene that allowed the use of magic.

  Simone was not human, so she had no such gene. She was a female Asura. No female Asura had ever had the power to Channel. The males in her culture exploited that defect. With their abilities they, through a program of maya-fueled eugenics, assured no Asura woman would ever develop magical power.

  Not without a price being paid.

  Gros was a product of that systematic repression and her body was hard-coded.

  Wishing would never change that.

  When Simone reappeared in the cathedral, she screamed. It was the scream of a wounded animal, and it cut through all other sounds in a way that made the hair stand up on the back of everyone’s neck.

  Every head turned toward the altar. Simone stood in one place, looking around with frantic eyes. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” she said.

  “Simone…” Ristich said, concerned and afraid.

  Gros’ flesh twisted around itself in a sickening corkscrew. In one moment, she was recognizably human, the next she was a pillar of folds with limbs sticking out at odd angles. Many of her internal organs were now on the outside and veins on the surface grew huge and pulsated.

  But she did not die.

  “Simone!” Ristich screamed. He pulled away from Quinn and Abrigo and Abrigo nearly tipped with the unexpected fullness of Henaghan’s weight. “Simone! What’s happening?!”

  At the top of the profane tower of twisted flesh, two eyes peeked out through folds of flesh. One of them was swollen well beyond the size of a normal eye. It blinked. Below the eyes, a gaping maw filled with now-crooked teeth, struggled to form words. The lips smacked and the eyes turned mean. One of Simone’s forelimbs rose and fire shot from its fingertips. Ristich was knocked backward into a clump of remaining pews. His momentum shattered the ones in the first row. The row behind stopped him. His black clothes smoldered.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” was all Matt Abrigo could manage before he dropped Quinn into a pew of her own and stood in front of her. “Simone!” he said. “Stop this.” He probably realized he was asking for something that now couldn’t happen. The forces that had changed Simone—her own desire as well as the universe’s inh
erent capriciousness—could not now be reharnessed. The handsome young man raised his crossbow. “Simone, please.”

  For a moment, Simone’s ruined face registered nothing but dumb incoherence. Then the maw closed and the eyes narrowed. Again the forelimb came up and, this time, it’s attack was more specific. Like porcupine quills, an array of ice darts shot out. Most of them entered Abrigo’s face and chest. A couple of them got around his figure and one went into Quinn’s shoulder. The girl winced but didn’t have the strength for much else. Matt fell on top of her and knocked the wind out of her battered body.

  Henaghan was very nearly unconscious, but she heard a noise to her left. It was Arnold Ristich, standing and beating the little flames out of his clothing. His left arm hung uselessly along the side of his body. His right hand still clutched a pistol. “Simone!” he shouted, shattering the silence.

  Quinn wished he hadn’t done that. Whatever was inside Simone’s flesh at this point wasn’t Simone. It had a broken child’s mind, and all it cared about was mastering its new toys.

  Again the eyes turned toward a new sound. Again a forelimb came up and darts of ice shot through the air. They hit Ristich all at once and his body vibrated with the impacts. Unlike Abrigo, Ristich didn’t fall. He stood there with hollow eyes, looking at what his former lover had become.

  Henaghan pushed at Matt’s body. As soon as she laid hands on him, she knew he was dead. Eventually, she freed her left arm. She didn’t have the strength to call out to Ristich. All she could do was hope that he’d watch and understand. She raised her left hand and shot a horizontal cyclone of flame at the monster that had once been Simone Gros.

  The column of twisted flesh on the altar shook with pain and outrage. It’s eyes turned toward Quinn and a scream escaped its twisted lips.

  Quinn knew she couldn’t sustain the attack for very long. The effort was killing her. She had no voice but willed Ristich to awaken from his stupor and do what needed doing. She had to wait longer than was healthy. It felt like the tendons in her arm were unspooling. She could feel the spark inside her core flicker. A new sensation. One she’d never felt before. Like the muscle controlling her magic had spasmed.

  Ristich finally raised his gun arm. With one perfect shot, he put a bullet through Simone’s oversized right eye. Whatever had become of Gros’ original physiology, her brain was still behind that eye. With a piteous sigh she shrunk down upon herself, her folds becoming more pronounced. Blood leaked from the shattered eye socket.

  Quinn stopped her assault just before using her last drop of stamina.

  His work done, Arnold Ristich dropped first to his knees and then onto his back. Henaghan looked over at him but then lost consciousness.

  Her body would put up with no more.

  Quinn awakened thanks to a coughing fit. If not for that, she might’ve died of smoke inhalation. Low-hanging fumes had filled her lungs and her lungs rebelled. At first, she had no idea where she was. She only fixed on her location when she realized she was weighted down. Matt Abrigo’s perforated body was still on top of her. She gave it a shove and little needles shot through her entire frame. Residual fatigue from reweaving the mesh. And from the strange spasm she’d experience when she attacked Simone. She had to take it in stages. Three pushes, each one a little more forceful than the last. Finally, she was able to roll out from under the murdered man. She wanted to lay on the ground and recover from the effort, but there was still too much smoke. Climbing to her feet proved more difficult than moving Matt’s body. First, a seated position, then her knees, then (with the help of the few intact pews nearby), a stand. Proud of herself, she took a moment to survey the ruined tabernacle. Most of the fire was out, but the smoke still lingered. Candelabra and other finery lay scattered on the floor. Tapestries had burned away almost to the ceiling. Bodies were strewn everywhere—some of them wearing black robes, some of them wearing black tactical clothing.

  Henaghan didn’t look at the altar right away. First, she went to Ristich. He was as she expected him to be. Like Abrigo, his chest was dotted with entry wounds. Nothing protruded from any of the holes since the ice darts had long since melted away. The girl looked up to his face and she was surprised to see the complexity there. Quinn saw two feelings frozen onto the dead man’s face—terror and regret. Terror that Simone Gros had become something Ristich no longer recognized (a monster), and regret at having to end her life. There was no question a mercy killing had been necessary, but that didn’t change the fact this broken man on the floor had just killed his lover and his friend. As she looked at him, Quinn realized tears were streaming down her cheeks. She wiped them away and dabbed at her runny nose. Enough. Ristich was dead, and there was nothing more she could do for him. The girl turned her attention to the altar. She’d decided she wasn’t going to look at the misshapen thing pooling behind the plinths. That creature was no longer Simone. Simone had died the moment she laid hands on Set and Horus. She’d been annihilated by both longing and eons of misogyny and genetic programming. What was left over was the remains of her flesh, but the soul had died earlier.

  Horus remained on his column whereas Set had fallen somewhere nearby. The bird statue seemed to be feigning innocence, like a child caught in the moment after a minor crime. Who? Me? It seemed to say. Whatever. It’s work was done—both for today and for the long-term future. That is, if Quinn had anything to say about it. She made the painful walk to the base of the altar. She passed Pietro Laskov’s sleeping form as she went and it occurred to her she’d never found out why the little man refused to Channel. Whatever. Didn’t matter. The girl climbed the altar steps, her hips protesting the whole way. On the ground was Matt Abrigo’s discarded black duffel. She picked it up and dropped Horus into it. She then turned to scan the ground to find Set. She didn’t have to look as hard as she expected. Standing behind her was Uriah Yellen, the statue of the jackal tucked under his left arm. “I should kill you,” he said, his breath labored. He was in as bad a shape as Henaghan.

  “Maybe you should,” the girl said, mirroring his pose by tucking her own statue under the same arm.

  “I don’t have a weapon,” Yellen conceded.

  “I don’t need a weapon,” Quinn replied.

  The Israeli nodded, satisfied by her answer. After a brief moment of teetering back and forth, Uriah reached to his belt and yanked off a cylinder the size of a can of Redbull. The act of yanking it away pulled a pin on its top. He dropped the object and a gateway appeared which swallowed him even as it formed. Where was he going? Quinn didn’t care.

  She took a deep breath and summoned a portal of her own.

  8

  Eddies and Currents

  When Quinn emerged from the Transamerica pyramid, she was alone—not to mention barefoot and cold. The weather had turned ugly during her time in the Resolute temple. Rain came down in sheets and the temperature had plummeted. Though she was exhausted, the rain and the grayness of the early evening reinvigorated Henaghan. For the moment, the horrors of the Temple and her sudden and mysterious spasm were forgotten. Spreading her right arm (and clutching the duffel with her left), she rose into the air, up and up until she was above the pyramid looking down on San Francisco. Once she was aloft, she decided the city beneath her looked too clean and too modern to be Gotham.

  If anything, what Quinn saw when she looked down was possibility.

  The girl turned her body and drifted toward the Hotel Tiamat.

  All she could think about was Molly.

  When Quinn entered her room at the hotel, she was soaked to the bone and her hair was plastered to her head. Molly and Ferley were playing Gin at the table by the window. When they saw Quinn’s bedraggled figure, they both gasped. Blank ran into the bathroom to grab towels. She dropped one over Henaghan’s shoulders and rubbed the smaller woman’s head with another. Quinn shrugged off her girlfriend’s attention and dropped the duffel containing the statue of Horus onto the bed. The bundle bounced once before coming to rest.

&n
bsp; Molly stopped her drying and looked hard at Quinn. “You’re okay?”

  “I’m okay,” Henaghan said with a nod. Funny thing was, though, she was starting to suspect something was really wrong. Not life-threatening wrong. More like, something-has-slipped-out-of-its-socket wrong. She’d deal with it later, whatever it was.

  Ferley spoke and their eyes turned to him. “What happened? Where’s Nate?”

  Quinn sighed and sat down on the bed. Molly joined her. She put her hand on the older woman’s thigh. “Nate… was a rat. As soon as we got inside I got ambushed. The whole thing was a set-up.” She didn’t mention she’d been the one to end Nate’s life.

  “Shit,” Ferley said, ingesting the news. He seemed surprised by his friend’s actions, but he quickly showed Henaghan the shape of his world. “I get it. I do. If our positions had been reversed, and the statue of Set had been at Tilted H.Q., I’d’ve done the same thing.”

  Henaghan nodded. “Good to know. Why don’t you run along home now?”

  Ferley looked out the window. “What? In the rain?”

  Both Molly and Quinn glared at him.

  “Right. Sure. In the rain.” He dropped his cards and took his leave.

  Quinn said to his back, “You remember you can teleport, right?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Ferley said, brightening. He shut their door behind him.

  The redhead stretched out on the bed. Molly did too and the bundled statue was between them. “Do you wanna get on home?” Blank asked.