Mark Teppo - Heartland

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 right 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.