Lightbreaker

three more men round the far corner of the hallway in front of me.

Surrounded. No way out but through my room. Past Kat.

Who wasn't there.

The lights were off and, even when the Chorus amplified the ambient light leaking around the curtains, it didn't make any difference. I was alone in the hotel room.

I could smell her. Lilacs. She had been here. Recently. The Chorus exploded in my heart, daggering into the nerve clusters of my spine, blowing themselves into the chambers of my brain. My bones felt like they were cracking as the Chorus convulsed within me, reacting to her proximity. My vision went blank, Qliphotic darkness eating through my brain. I was erupting, detonating the psychic payload I had been carrying these last ten years.

Katarina. Her hand in my chest, squeezing my heart, breaking my light. Katarina, a tiny part of me wept, this is all I have. This is all I am.

Who am I if it is all untrue?

At my back, the magus hurled a javelin of soul fire. The Chorus-raging and exploding through me-caught the missile, chewed it up, and spat it back at him. What had been a single thrust of soul-charged energy was returned as a hailstorm of black needles. My Qliphotic Chorus drove him across the hallway, and I pinned his soul to the wall in a thousand places.

His panic was a wet spray in my head, screaming on multiple layers of perception. 'Shoot him! Shoot the son of a bitch already!' Luminescent tears bled from his eyes.

I didn't even feel the first Taser, didn't even react to the discharge of the weapon's voltage. The second pair of darts managed to break the Chorus' concentration. The third pierced the armor of darkness wrapped around my chest and lit my lungs on fire. The fourth turned the world white-fiat lux-and I shattered, fragmenting into minute shards of glittering glass, like a disintegrating prism.

This is all I am.

All I ever was, falling.

XIII

THE THIRD WORK

'I am the flame that burns in every heart of man, and in the core of every star. I am Life, and the giver of Life, yet therefore is the knowledge of me the knowledge of death.'

— Aleister Crowley, Liber AL vel Legis

Somewhere between death and dream, somewhere deep in the twilight of the nightside tree, I rediscovered myself. Eye within Ain. With that knowledge came a vision of how to find my way back. Separating light from dark-quod esset bonum-I dreamed how to fall and-it is done-did so, end over end. A skein of lights hung beneath the gray fingers of a layer of clouds arrested my descent. This net held me, floating. Like a leaf in the flow.

As I remembered how to breathe-as the mundane necessities of the meat came back to me-the sea of lights flexed and dipped in concert with the pulsation of my imagination. Was I breathing in time with them, or were they synching to me? Which came first: breathe or desire? With this synchronization came a dimensionality to the sea: valleys began to grow, peaks started to rise, and the lights began to enfold me.

Below me, coursing like arterial flow, was a torrential deluge of spirit lights. Feeding this massive tributary were small streams and rivulets of glowing light, tiny magma tracks that cut jagged paths through weighty darkness.

Distinct from the yellow-white glow of the streams were the peaks, detailed with red and pink and purple lights like stalagmites wrapped with strands of luminescent flowers.

To one side was a rotating light, a red eye that swept across the jeweled landscape. In a plain between two hillocks, the spotlight revealed a flat darkness, a negative space that held no lights.

I turned, and freeing myself from the tangle of lights, moved through the flow until I reached the black stain. The world became more real around me as I glided across the lights. Distantly, I realized this landscape was the spirit map of Seattle. The dark spot was the kinked bean-shape of Lake Union.

As I hovered over the transparent surface, the lambent cyclopean gaze-the light of the Space Needle-glided over the motionless water. Beneath the water, I could see the dim outline of bones-the tangled skeletons of giants.

A pair of bodies, locked in a perpetual embrace, turning slowly in the water. In their right hands were enormous cups, and their left arms were woven through the rib cage of the other, fingers wrapped around the spine of their bony lover. Their skulls were nestled together as if they whispered secrets.

The Needle's eye looked away as my outstretched hand brushed the surface of the water. I felt a cold kiss- phantom memory, ice in my chest-and my fingers were pulled into the lake. As I split the surface of the water, the spirit grid of Seattle vanished. Snuffed out as if they were candles drowned by a wave.

I sank toward the bone lovers. Their cups were identical-flat bases, hexagonal stems, rounded bowls with fluted edges caked with black rust. One held the corpse of a tiny lobster while the other held the coiled husk of a serpent. A lotus flower-petals sumptuously full-was caught in the chest cavity of each body and, as they turned, the flowers remained fixed in place. They were the axis points upon which the corpses spun. A universe founded by two positions in space.

Tiny rubies suddenly dappled the black dome behind me. The jewels blossomed, elongating into stalactites of fire. Hardened and cooled by the elemental touch of water, the fire became long swords, stained with blood.

Nine swords. Not behind the lovers, but above. The swords descended into the water until they touched the rotating bones of the skeletons. Their points cut shallow grooves as the bodies continued to turn.

Beneath the twisted lovers-the layers of the dream extending deeper and deeper into the wet twilight of the psyche-a churning froth bubbled. I fell further into the water, my way lit by the bleeding blades.

I came upon a flat five-spoked wheel. Along its edge were unfinished porcelain faces frozen with stoic expressions. A shrouded corpse wearing a death-mask of hammered steel was lashed to the surface of the slowly rotating wheel. It held a soft and vibrant globe of glowing seas and limned continents.

A rainbow-colored fish floated beside the wheel. A naked cherub, sitting awkwardly astride the fish due to its enormously engorged phallus, was goading the fish toward the corpse. He beat the fish on the head with the rounded knob of his heavy cock. The fish, stunned with every blow, swam erratically, veering to the left every time it was bludgeoned. The cherub, unaware of how his abuse was keeping him from his goal, only beat the fish harder.

As I floated closer, the fish faltered. Its fins fluttered more slowly; a thin ribbon of white ooze drifted from its gasping mouth. It looked in my direction, seeing me in my dream-state, and expired. The cherub furiously beat the fish harder, but this wasn't the way to bring back the dead.

In death, though, the fish drifted closer to the wheel. The cherub leaped from its back, straining to reach the rim of the wheel. Dancing along the thin width of one of the spokes, he minced toward the body strapped to the wheel. He clambered up the shrouded body, and threw himself upon the tiny earth, wrapping his short arms around the luminescent planet. Rearing back like a wild insect, he thrust his fat stinger into the curved side of the planet. Having pierced the earth, he started pumping away at the hole he had made. A priapic demiurge seeding his creation.

The wheel stopped its rotation, and the hands of the corpse came free of the globe. They spread outward until they rested against the curve of the wheel. The palms rotated up. As the cherub raped the glowing planet, a