Lightbreaker

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 catacombs 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,