Lightbreaker

He said that we were all stars.'

'Did he now?'

Crackling ice ran up my spine, and white-light explosions blew off against the nerve clusters in each vertebrae. The Chorus, burning an image with frigid clarity in my brain: a downward-pointing, five-pointed star. A sigil. One without a protective circle. The Chorus strained against their psychic restraints, sensing my confusion. My fingertips were cold, as they assaulted my nervous system.

The Star, reversed. Refused. A black hole in the heavens, a break through which the Qliphoth slipped into Eden and spat his poisons into the shadows at the base of the Tree. My roots, deep down in Malkuth, drank from a lake of venom-killing my legs, deadening my trunk, leaching toxins into my brain.

My hand couldn't hold the teacup, my fingers numb. The tea spilled, and the infused water looked like it was darkened by blood. Blood in the water. I tried to breathe, and felt like I was in the Seine again.

I had seen it, and now it couldn't trust me not to dig it out. That shadow of my past erupting through the agency of the Chorus. Blood, black in the water. Black, in the sky.

Then, suggested as an afterimage of the stars exploding along my spine, I saw through the illusion. Through the possibility of illusion. This past that had shaped me, this history I had been bound to-Kat's hand in my chest, the icy stars on my skin, my soul leaking out, the voice in the woods telling me how to live-who had built it? Was it my memory-was I its Creator-or was I just a fool following a path of least resistance? Trismegistus sought to teach his sons how to free themselves from the tyranny of the demonically touched flesh. Reason, in one hand; Insight, in the other.

Had I forsaken both?

I staggered from the table, fleeing the accusatory shape of the cards. My hand fumbled with the handle, and I forced the door open. I fell to my knees on the pavement outside. Cold air on my face, but my throat and lungs were already numb.

Overhead, the sky was black, blank of stars. The world wiped clean. Lost again within that dome of darkness.

I heard the wind, blowing through the rigging of the boats at the dock, and it sounded like the rasp of the leaves against branches. Voices in trees, whispering. It is done. It is done.

Close enough to touch.

Our hands, betraying us.

XII

This looks suspiciously like vagrancy.' A voice forced itself into my head. 'Or public drunkenness.'

I came back to the world of the flesh, struggling to find myself. On my back, face turned toward a star- dappled sky, arms crooked like the wings of a dead albatross. Prickly heat filled my legs, making my ankles and feet ache.

Pender, on my right, wrapped in his long coat. His hands were in his pockets, and his jaw moved precisely around a piece of gum. He looked fresh-pressed and steamed. When he saw that I recognized him, he nudged me with a foot. 'Lying about like this,' he said. 'It's more than a little sloppy. How much have you had to drink tonight, Markham?'

My mouth didn't work; all I could manage was a series of blinks and twitches. He bent down, examining the awkward movement of my face. 'Having a seizure?' he asked. 'Some ancient LSD payload finally detonating, or has some old curse foisted on you by a weekend witch finally taken root?'

I twisted my head to the side, and spat out a glob of black pitch. Pender wrinkled his nose at the bubble- flecked material from my lungs. 'Hate,' I croaked. 'I'm full up.'

'For whom? Your little renegade spirit Doug?' He shook his head. 'You aren't interested in him. You want someone else. Doug's just a means to an end, isn't he?'

I swallowed more of the blackness, sending it back into the pit of my unruly stomach. 'He's my link.'

'I could be your link,' he said. 'Maybe you're asking the wrong questions of the wrong people. Maybe you're trying too hard to find something that isn't lost.'

'Maybe you don't know what you're talking about.' Pender stepped back as I levered myself to a sitting position.

He pulled a Polaroid out of his pocket and tossed it in my lap. 'Maybe I do.' It was a picture of Kat.

Her face had become thinner over the last decade and her hair was shorter, though still streaked with red highlights. It wasn't a face that would launch a thousand ships, but it had filled my dreams-filled my head and consumed everything. Seeing a fresh image of her face, I realized how easy it had been for Paris of Troy to descend into obsessive madness, to fixate on abducting Helen from Sparta as the solution to his brain fever. Yes, yes, this is the best solution. The simple path is the correct path. Covering the picture with a cold hand, I tried to put Kat out of my mind; I tried so very hard to quit the past.

'Settle it,' he said. 'This is a one-time offer.'

An involuntary whimper escaped my lips. My insides streaked with black lightning, a volcano erupting in that pit from where the Chorus grew. Yes. Take back what is yours. Close enough.

Pender watched me for a few seconds, a smirk pulling at his lips, before he walked away. His car was parked on the far side of the empty lot, and as he opened the door, the interior light flicked on. Before the door shut, I caught a flash of movement in the receding shadows of the back seat. The Chorus still raged within me, still thrust themselves against my Will, but I squeezed them into a knot. Squeezed hard, and focused. As the vehicle left the lot, I strained to part the shadows in the back seat.

He wasn't alone. There was someone else in the car.

'Who was that?' Nicols stood in the doorway of the trailer. 'Pender?'

I slumped, barely able to shake my head.

'He just left you here?' He walked toward me.

Shivering, I offered him the Polaroid. I still couldn't speak.

I didn't have to. He looked at the picture for a long time. 'This her?' he asked finally. He flipped the picture over. 'There's something on the back. 'Scarlet Woman plus Hidden Light equals Beast.' And there are some numbers underneath: 393 + 273 = 605.' He paused, doing the math. 'That's not right, 393 and 273 add up to 666.'

'Six-six-six is the number of the beast,' I groaned, the Chorus finally letting go of my voice. 'Six-oh-five is the number of my hotel room at the Monaco.' The difference was 61. Another message: 61 was Ain-the Abyss, the cold darkness where the Qliphoth thrived.

'The picture was taken in my hotel room.'

Nicols flipped the Polaroid over again to re-examine the portrait. 'She's there?'

'She's waiting for me.'

Settle it, the Chorus oozed, dripping poison in my ear. I was caught between terror and desire, shivering with the promise of their commingling. Take it back. My lost soul, my lost heart. The Lovers, hands on hearts and heads, energy flowing back and forth in an endless loop, mixing themselves together. This is the way to heal yourself. Make you whole again.

One path, one direction. Through darkness into light. This was the way promised me.

Were the Qliphoth capable of keeping promises? Was the flesh capable of not betraying itself? Was the Word still true if it came from a false Godhead?

God created the Demiurge who, in turn, created the World. God was the Word, and He gave it to the Creator to speak it. And, having made the World, the Demiurge forgot who gave him the power to Create.

Was my world a lie? The history I remembered-so fractured with dark light-was it a fabrication? Made solely to provide framework for the insistent noise of the Chorus? As I had gotten closer to Kat, they had become more frenzied, more inflamed by. . what? A desire for revenge?

But was it deserved? Was it true? There were cracks in their rationale, joints that didn't quite fit. As if the