Mark Teppo - Lightbreaker

"He doesn't know you are here, does he?" I said.

Antoine didn't answer, and I knew him well enough to know that he wasn't deigning to not answer the question. He was ignoring me because he was thinking about something else entirely. The Weave had just shown him a new pattern-one he hadn't realized was there. That had been there all along.

He had suggested to Nicols and me the existence of a bigger picture, a larger scheme beyond my perception. I had ignored the hints-the presumptive tone had always been part of Antoine's character-but, seeing Antoine's mental peregrinations now, I realized the Weave's complexity may be more than he anticipated. There were threads still hidden, even from him.

"This isn't sanctioned by the Watchers." I tried to chase the same threads. Tried to figure out what he already knew, and what he thought was the truer pattern. "This is a rogue action. There is a revolt happening in the ranks, isn't there?"

It was the corruptive lure of power: that seductive siren that pulled us down into the flesh. I could read it plainly in Pender's face: he was in bed with Julian and Bernard. Siding with the Hollow Men had been his play for power. Just like Antoine, who sought to usurp this action for his own ends. A faction within the Watchers knew; they had sent Antoine, and hadn't realized their toy had his own ideas. Everyone wanted to use Bernard and Julian for their own design. Everyone had their own plan.

"Whoever remakes the world can challenge the Hierarch." I spelled it out carefully, watching their faces for more clues. "That's what this is all about. This is a power play for leadership of La Societe . Pender and the others thought they could hijack it from you, but you knew they were going to screw you, and you planned on taking it from them in turn. When the time was right. But, not for your brothers in Paris. For yourself. I was just the lucky distraction that everyone thought they could use on the others."

"Perhaps," Antoine said. I stared at his ruined face. Was that a smile on his burned lips? "Perhaps there is another pattern beneath all of our machinations. A deeper Weave than we anticipated."

"What do you mean?" Pender demanded. His hand twitched toward his coat, toward his gun. This conversation had suddenly gone off-script.

"Bernard is there," Antoine said, inclining his head toward the star. "We are here."

"So?"

"There are three of us."

Pender didn't get it. And I wasn't following either.

Antoine was definitely smiling now, a grim death's head. "I was supposed to be here. The lieutenant was supposed to be here. But, you, Markham, dead man lost to us all, how did you manage to get here?"

"Part of my soul I seek thee, and thee claim my other half," Devorah said, providing an answer to Antoine's question.

Answering so many questions. I Saw it too. Beneath the shimmering pattern of our threads, beneath the confusion of the cards and our efforts to interpret them. Under it all, I saw the design.

Tiny steps, seemingly unconnected in their inception-in the infinitesimal realm of their immediate effects. The false memory of Kat's hand on me, the confusion laid upon me in the woods and the poisonous cargo freely taken, the Chorus growing in my head. And then Paris: Marielle, a catalyst for the course prefigured for us; Antoine, an unwitting marionette, acting out his role at the bridge.

The actions of the past cascaded into the present: my arrival in Seattle, the discovery of Doug and Kat again; their connection to the Hollow Men, to Bernard, and to the diabolical plan concocted by Antoine's splinter group within the Watchers. All of it was woven into this knotted nexus. This point, this place. These players. A man, standing on the edge of the Abyss, who hadn't sought to be here. Not the detective.

Me.

The Watchers didn't believe in accidents, nor random chance. There were only machinations deeper than their own influence. Designs which they couldn't twist. And each of them could twist very deep.

And only one of them could twist deeper than the rest.

"I have to go back," I said. My hand strayed to Reija's hair about my throat, fingers tracing the braid of our thread. What you do is who you are . . "I'm going back."

"What-?" Pender pulled out his gun, violet light rising in his eyes. "You're not going anywhere."

I looked at him sadly for a moment-he didn't understand what lay in the Weave-and then turned my gaze to Antoine. "What say you, Brother?" This isn't done.

He nodded, and the metal cap on his hand sizzled into a new shape. Before Pender could realize what was happening-before I could react-Antoine stepped behind the other man and punched through his spine with his freshly formed hand. Silver fingers, wet with blood, erupted from the hollow of Pender's throat.

"It was never meant for me," Antoine said, holding the struggling man upright with the force of his Will. "I am a Watcher, mon ami . I had, indeed, forgotten that. I am to be your Witness."

Pender's eyes fluttered, rolling back in his head. Antoine shook his hand, making the lieutenant's arms wiggle. "Time is short," he said. "Take him while you can."

"What?"

"It is a long walk," Antoine said. "You haven't the strength."

"You have got to be kidding."

"Take it." Antoine's voice was hard, a commanding tone that brooked no more discussion. He flexed his metal fingers, and white fire vaporized Pender's spine. Pender's atlas bone exploded, blowing out the sides of his neck. The back of his coat caught fire.

The Chorus swarmed in my head, ready and willing to take the soul of the man as he died. I was exhausted; I could use the energy. Didn't it feel good? That euphoric rush of strength and clarity. The precision of Will brought about by taking another.

Knowledge of good bought dear by knowing ill . This was the price of our transgression in the Garden; this was the cost of tasting the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. This was the sacrifice made so that we could understand the difference between night and day, light and dark, dream from reality. We learned to kill when we ate from the Tree. We opened our souls and listened to the passions of the flesh. So that we could know the difference, so that we could chose a path and find our way back to God.

"No," I said, refusing Antoine, refusing the Chorus, refusing everyone but my own Will. I turned away from Antoine as Pender died, his soul leaving his burning body. "His death is your sin. Not mine."

I had enough of my own.

Devorah stayed with Antoine, the Seer supporting the Witness. She kept her back to the city, always turned away from the carnage that I had forced her to foresee, but in farewell, she turned her head toward the east enough for me to see the dark streaks of dried blood on her face. Her tears had stopped.

I left the tarot card on the river bank. This was one side-one path-and I was going to cross the river to take the other path.

I made the Chorus support me as I walked across the water to the dead city. The river was dark with ash, a turgid inkiness beneath my feet. There were no bodies and very little flotsam, just a continual pall of ash in the water. It got darker and thicker as I reached the western shore.

I stepped onto hard land again between the Freemont and Broadway bridges, just downriver from the Amtrak station. The clock tower at the depot was a crooked black finger in the empty field of steel rails. The cars in the parking lot beyond the station were coated inside and out with grime and soot. They looked like the cracked eggs of giant birds.

The storm of soul-death had blown through every structure, leaving every surface charred and black. The inhalation of Thoth's Key stripped all light, all color, from the world. Windows were empty mouths that revealed blackened throats; walls had been breached and broken like bodies burst in heat, organs exploded and crisped. Older buildings-the northeastern edge of Chinatown-leaned toward the shining tower as if made crooked by the vacuum. Their roofs were torn off, shingles and strips of tar paper littering the street in long patterns.