Mark Teppo - Lightbreaker

"And I'm seeing all of this because of what happened on the boat."

"What do you think happened on the boat?"

He looked at me, squinting as the Chorus lit up the narrow choker about my throat, as I let him See the coiled energy in me. He needed an anchor, some place he could ground himself so he could start to understand his altered sight, and I showed him mine-the strands of hair twisted and woven into a tight braid permanently bound to my skin. "Who's Doug?" he asked. "And why do I know him?"

"Because you two were sharing the same space for a little while. Doug was the guy who assaulted your body and tried to push out your spirit."

"My spirit?"

"Your soul."

He laughed, a guttural cough that trailed off as he put his cigarette in his mouth. "My soul," he said as he exhaled, smoke dribbling from his mouth. "Are you shitting me?"

"I have better things to do, Detective." Formal now. Cold. The door to my secrets closed. Make him reach for it, make him try to pry it open again. Make him realize he wants to know what secrets I have to offer.

He chewed on the end of his cigarette awhile, struggling to decide what he could believe, what he thought possible, and what would help him to understand the streams of light he was Seeing. I let him work to his own conclusion, to his own understanding. I never forgot my first night-how my sight had been ablaze with light and color, everything had been richer and fuller than it had any right to be. How the woods had been so alive . And yet, beneath all that glitter, how dark the belly of the world.

"This is what happens when a soul is attacked." Give him a glimpse now. A little flash of what he wanted. "You become more aware of your surroundings; you become sensitive to the energies of the world."

"Everyone can see like this?"

"Sure. But not everyone wants to. Nor do they need to."

"If I try hard enough, it'll go away? Sort of like selective blindness?"

" 'It' won't go anywhere. You'll just stop Seeing the lines. Just because you don't understand or believe in something doesn't negate its existence. Your brain records a great deal of sensory data which you -the part you think of as 'yourself'-don't bother processing. You've decided-consciously or unconsciously-that you don't need to See. Therefore, you don't."

"If it doesn't go away?"

I shrugged. Choices: some we make for ourselves, some are made for us; what defines us is how we react. Opportunities or obstacles. Ten years ago, I could have tried to blind myself; I could have ignored the cold hole in my chest, and maybe it would have gone away. Maybe. More likely, I would have just stopped feeling it, but that didn't mean it wasn't still there. That it wouldn't have killed me.

"What if I fight it?"

"What is there to fight? You going to dig out your eyes with a spoon?"

He snorted smoke out of his nose. "This is such bullshit."

"Sure it is, which is why you came crying to me."

His eyes narrowed and, for an instant, I saw the bull that had terrorized the offensive line and, later, was used to a similar effect on criminals. "I should throw your ass back into that holding room."

"For what? Because I haven't said, 'Oh boo hoo, Mr. Police Man. I'm so sorry you got something in your eye. Let me get some holy water and just wash that nasty gunk right out.' " I tapped the pockets of my coat. "Gee, I must have lost my supply when those cops were dog-piling on me this morning. One of the other officers must have picked it up and neglected to log it in with my personal effects."

His face reddened as he thought about wrapping those big hands of his around my neck. He considered tossing me off the heaving ferry. I knew the tension that pulled at the corners of his eyes. A similar insanity moved in the darkness beneath the Chorus, a pernicious tendency toward violence.

The darkness had been quiet for a long time, but it had bubbled up this morning with Murphy and the gun. I had been frustrated at being denied the chance to find Kat, and I had listened to them . The Chorus had influenced me. It had happened before when I had stumbled upon Kat's trail, but it had been stronger this morning. As if her proximity gave them more strength over me.

As if a secret part of me agreed with their whispers and insinuations; as if, in the end, I was no different from any of them that I had taken. Blood stains everything. Maybe we can hide the visible marks-scour our hands clean-but a secret taint remains.

"Look," I said, swallowing the shiver rising in my throat. "I am sorry this happened to you. Really. It wasn't my choice. But I can't turn back time, and I can't make you blind again. You either deal or you don't. But, either way, it's not my problem, okay?"

He needed just a push, really, to put him on the right path. I wasn't interested in coddling him during this awkward time of lost innocence; nor was his temperament suited to being sheltered from the hard truths. I figured Detective Nicols for a man of action. All he really wanted was knowledge, useful information that would help him make informed decisions. He wanted to trust his senses, wanted to comprehend what they were telling him. He didn't have to understand why the world worked as it did; he just wanted to understand the rules.

He fumed a little longer, suffering the bite of my words until he, too, realized my intent. His jaw worked, muscles flexing in his cheeks, as he swallowed the bitter words half-formed in his mouth. "All right," he said. "I'll deal with it. It would help if I had a name for IT."

"There are a lot of names. Call it 'magick.' That's easy enough."

"Magic?"

"With a 'k'. "

"The 'too cool for school' spelling?"

"Because it isn't card tricks and rabbits in hats. It's not about pulling coins from the ears of eight-year-olds or stringing fifty scarves out of your sleeve. There are a hundred schools of the 'Arts' that are known, and another hundred that are lost, hidden, or otherwise obscured. But they're all part of the same Universe, part of the same system. We are the agents who effect Change. It is our Wills that alter the elements. Magick is a generic term that covers the whole spectrum whether you believe in the Power of God as defined by the Catholic Church, the strength of Allah as envisioned by the Muslims, the Kabbalistic God or the Hermetic God, the God in the Machine or the God in the Wood. Whether your holy text is the Koran, the Torah, the Bible, the Necronomicon,Liber Null, or The Book of the Law . It doesn't matter. They're all the same."

"They're all right?"

"They're all wrong. 'Nothing is true, everything is possible.' "

"What the hell does that mean?"

I laughed. "It's an old saying that we magi like to toss at one another in that chin-stroking way of saying, 'Ah, yes, I understand the secrets.' It's nearly as ubiquitous as 'As above, so below.' "

He angrily jabbed his cigarette in my direction. "Now you are just fucking with me."

"No, I'm trying to tell you that what you believe is equally as important as anything I might tell you. 'Magick' is just a word. Like 'belief,' or 'science.' It only has the meaning you give it. If I can demonstrate and re-create a phenomenon through reasoned and quantifiable steps, you would say that I have 'scientifically' verified the existence of this phenomenon. If you required faith to understand the phenomenon, it would be an act of magick. The terms are subjective to the viewer."

I pointed toward the water, at the silver track only he and I could see running in front of the ferry. "If you told someone about the lines-someone who couldn't See them like you do now-for them to believe you, they would have to accept the validity of your statement on faith. But we See them. It is sensory data that we independently observe and agree upon. Why isn't this 'science'? It's data we measure, it is a phenomenon, evidence based on verifiable data. Why do you think of it as 'magick'? And does that lessen its 'truth' in any way?"