Lightbreaker

'Hello, Brother,' I said, with a little added gravity of my own. I know what you are doing.

Antoine's smile was the result of generations of breeding and training, perfectly pitched to disarm and charm. His hair, like a lion's mane-full of strawberry and blonde highlights-was combed back from his forehead and flowed gracefully on the collar of his silk shirt. The end of his right arm was covered with a smooth knob of silver.

'You seem well,' he said, and the twinkle in his eyes wasn't entirely a trick of the light.

I nodded. 'My tragic case of consumption seems to have cleared up.' I filled my lungs. 'It's the country air.'

He gazed at the tall trees and the distant mountain, so close via a trick of the atmosphere. 'It certainly does have restorative powers.' He inhaled deeply as well. 'None of that stink of the city. It is very nice.'

'Too bad we're not vacationing.'

He shrugged. 'Yes, a pity.'

'How many, Antoine? How many in Ravensdale?'

'Nearly nine hundred,' he said. Nicols made a choking noise, as if the number was caught in his throat. I was cold, through and through, frozen by the magnitude of what had been done. Unprepared for the casual admission of such destruction.

'They're coming back,' he continued, a sardonic grin tugging at his lips. 'You, so flush with all that blood and life you have taken, are just too bright a lure for them to resist. You, Shiva's dark child, are summoning them with your presence.' He scuffed the dirt. 'Right here.'

They were coming out of the woods now, staggering slowly and awkwardly. Newborns learning to walk. Their ruined eyes and black mouths were holes deep enough to drown in. How many, Lightbreaker? whispered the wind issuing from those holes. Did you not enjoy it?

'This was your Watch,' I said, focusing on the bigger issue. 'You didn't know what was going on. You let this happen.'

'Did I?'

'You were too busy fucking around, leaving me notes and hiding in the shadows. You should have been taking the Hollow Men apart, not wasting your time with our little vendetta. You played right into their hand by being distracted.'

'Was I?'

'Son of a bitch.' Nicols drew his gun and pointed it at the Protector. 'He knew they were going to do this.' Antoine stared at me, ignoring the weapon. Watching my expression, Watching me untangle the threads.

Nicols' conclusion certainly seemed like the one Antoine was intimating, but I wanted to be sure. I wanted to See the threads, and make sure there wasn't some subtlety I was missing. Why would he condone such an experiment? Antoine wasn't being smug-he was as inscrutable as ever-and that made me consider the possibility there was some strand not yet revealed. 'Bernard's an academic; he's not part of the family. He worked for you.'

'Bernard du Guyon was a professor of Medieval Studies at the Sorbonne,' Antoine agreed. 'But there was a scandal, disputes about his methodology and awkward questions concerning a rare manuscript in the university's possession. He fled to Bonne, and became an alchemist.

'Well, he always had been an alchemist, really. Teaching gave him access to the university's collection of Renaissance and Medieval manuscripts, and the one in question was purported to be the second part of Ficino's Theologia Platonica de immortalitate animae. M. du Guyon believed the text was filled with technical marvels, mechanical ways of realizing Ficino's theories.'

'But that was his job, wasn't it?' I said. 'To find heretical works and magickal grimoires in the archives. He knew you would pay him well for such artifacts.'

Antoine shrugged. 'Possibly. But we already had a complete catalog of the Sorbonne's collection. We've had it for sixty years. Anything dangerous had already been purged. The claims of both Bernard and the university as to the identity of this pamphlet couldn't be true. No such text exists. Nor has it ever.'

'He thinks he's reconstructed The Book of Thoth. The real one. Where did he find the pieces? This second part of Ficino's Theologia. Was that part of it?'

Antoine shook his head. 'It doesn't exist.'

'A lot of things don't exist,' I said. 'That doesn't mean he hasn't read it.'

Antoine smiled at that, his eyes flickering toward Nicols and the gun. 'The mysteries of the occult. Seeing things that aren't there. Reading books that weren't ever written. All very confusing, don't you think, Detective?'

Nicols held the gun steady. 'You haven't answered his question,' he said. 'Where did Bernard find the pieces?'

'Ah, you are going to be tenacious about this.' Antoine sighed. 'Well then, perhaps he had access to a very private collection. One that had all the right pieces. Maybe a complete copy of the Kitab al- Zuhra, for example.'

'Someone tainted by a manuscript scandal isn't going to get access to any private collection,' I pointed out.

'One came up for sale recently.'

'Where?' I had three or four clients who would have leapt at a chance for Jabir's Kitab al- Zuhra. I should have heard about a copy going on the market.

'Vienna.'

'The Van Groteon library?'

Antoine nodded, a glimmer of amusement on his lips.

'The whole library?'

He continued to nod.

'Who bankrolled him?' I couldn't keep the amazement out of my voice.

'Who indeed?'

'Fuck this verbal tap dance,' Nicols said. The pistol shook in his hand. 'You bankrolled him. You let him perform this experiment. You let this happen.' His voice rose. 'What the fuck did he do to these people!'

'He seeks the Key to Immortality,' Antoine explained patiently.

'The what?' Nicols steadied his arm. His voice cracked on the word, his nerve dangerously close to breaking.

'The Way that allows access to God.' Antoine was unmoved. 'Given the opportunity, wouldn't you take it? Don't we all have questions we'd like to ask Him? About Sarah, for example?'

'Mother-' Nicols nearly fired his gun. The tendons in his neck were hard, and his face was wound into the spot between his eyes.

Antoine watched him, and nothing changed on the Protector's face. He just watched the other man struggle with his demons. Sarah. Don't we all have questions?

'Leave him out of this,' I said. 'He doesn't deserve to be kicked around.' Nicols gasped at the sound of my voice, and realizing what he had almost done, he turned away from Antoine. His arm dropped to his side, and he held on to the gun tightly.

With the barest glimmer of disappointment, Antoine surveyed the tightening circle of zombies, the once-living population of Ravensdale, as they lurched and staggered toward the small hill upon which we stood. The members of the task force had stayed back, avoiding the shuffling soul-dead. 'He's part of the Weave, Markham. Just like you and me.' He raised his shortened right arm, and waved it to encompass the surrounding zombies. 'Just like all of them. I can't cut him out of the pattern any more than you can.'

'Stop trying to twist him, then. Let him find his own way.'

'And you haven't twisted him? Is it not your interference in the Weave that set him on this path?'

'I've tried to guide him-'

'Like you've guided yourself?'

The flush in my cheeks spread to my neck and made my voice shake. 'He's an innocent.'

'No one is innocent,' Antoine countered. 'There is just ignorance and enlightenment.'

I nodded toward the approaching line of zombies. 'Is this enlightenment, then? You gave Bernard what he