Lightbreaker

thirst for revenge? Those aren't enough. He won't even notice me.' I glanced over my shoulder, looking back the way we had come. 'Besides, I've got-' Antoine. Who, most assuredly, wasn't dead. He had resisted the blast for a second which meant he had been able to deflect energy. Deflection meant focused Will. I had burned him-badly-and it would take him time to recover, but he wasn't done. Not now. It wasn't a question of if he would come after me, it was a question of when.

'Is that all you care about?'

'I'm a veneficus, John. The poisonous free agent no one claims, and who won't be counted in any assembly. The only person watching my back is me. Like you said, no one has time for 'altruistic occultism.' We all want to find the secrets of the Universe for ourselves. For power. Not for a thousand-year reign of peace.'

All I had was a chance for a head start. I could run and hide somewhere. Try to figure out what I was going to do about this hole in my heart. Vengeance wasn't enough to fill it.

Now that the blush of the Hollow Men's soul energy had worn off, I could see how I needed something that wasn't tainted by the past. I needed a new directive and, as long as I was running from the past, I wouldn't have any chance to find my own way. I would be continually pushed. Never finding my own pace, my own way. I wouldn't submit to Antione, but that only meant our antagonism continued. And would do so until I found a way to break free.

The path out of the dark wood had to be earned; it couldn't be stumbled upon by accident. I had to find my own way.

He chewed on the inside of his lip, staring at me. Seeing me. Watching me. 'How many in the warehouse?' he asked finally.

I flinched. 'Nine.' He knew.

He nodded and took out his pistol. 'Okay.' He raised the gun and pointed it at my head. 'Landis Markham, you are under arrest for the premeditated murder of those men. Put your hands on your head, turn around, and get down on your knees.'

'John-'

He half-squeezed the trigger, rocking back the hammer. 'Do it. Now.'

I complied, and my hands were wrenched down to the small of my back where they were cuffed tightly. With a hard shove from his foot, he sent me sprawling on the shale, my cheek grinding against the broken rock. Nicols walked out of my field of vision and I heard a car door open and shut before he returned.

I rolled onto one shoulder to better see what he was doing. His gun held in one hand, he fumbled through a folder of loose pages, scattering paper across the shoulder of the road. Finding the page he sought, he bent down and shoved the paper in my face. 'Nine or nine hundred,' he said, shaking the page, 'It matters. Every one of them matters.'

The page was a photocopy of a tarot card-the Tower. A single bolt of jagged lightning split the crown of a tower, spilling the two inhabitants out. In the margin and beneath the picture was the unorganized palimpsest of Nicols' notes. Two words in block letters across the top: 'MY FUTURE.' Beneath, an underlined sentence. 'Nothing is ever lost; it is simply transformed.'

Nicols had gone back to Piotr and had his own reading. The last card had been the Tower. Destructive change. This was the future Piotr had shown him.

'I'm sorry, John-' I started.

'Are you?' he interrupted. He didn't so much as drop the page as throw it at me. 'Hasn't this all been about you, about your obsessive quest for this woman? When haven't you been focused on your own fucking redemption?'

I didn't have an answer for him.

He stepped back, raising the pistol and resting the barrel against his head. 'Every one of them matters, Markham. So you don't care about nine or even nine hundred. One more shouldn't faze you a bit.'

I shook my head. 'Don't do this.'

'Stop me,' he said. 'Show me altruistic occultism. Show me that I'm wrong. Isn't this how you cross the Abyss, Markham? By being selfless?' The hammer on his pistol was still cocked. It wouldn't take more than a tiny squeeze for him to pull the trigger, and I knew he would do it. He hadn't been able to shoot Antoine. Not then. But now, when all of the last few hours had had a chance to sink in, when he had realized he had Seen too much. Lost too much. He was on the edge of the Abyss, and the Monster there-Choronzon-was coming to tear him apart. He wasn't ready to leap the gap, no more so than I had been a decade ago.

Was I any more ready now? Or was I inured to the pain? Had I become such a hollowed-out shell that I wasn't yet aware of how much I had truly lost? If it were me that Choronzon sought, was I any more prepared?

How long are you willing to run?

I closed my eyes, falling inward to find the boiling storm of the Chorus. They unfolded, arranging themselves into an icy fractal pattern. They came at my bidding, subdued by what I had seen at Ravensdale, but they still came at my command.

'Open 'em, you piece of shit.' Nicols' voice quivered. 'Look at me or I will-swear to God-put one in your belly before I shoot myself. Look at me, you son of a bitch.'

I did, and the frigid snowflake expression of the Chorus froze him in place. Another burst of their magick, guided by my Will-convertant in fraxina-and the handcuffs dissolved into white ash. I stood, shaking the metallic dust from my wrists, and took his gun from his stiff fingers.

How long?

I pointed the gun across the road, over the trees, and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked, and the roar of the shot echoed for a long time. I stood there, and listened to it until I couldn't hear it anymore. And, after a little while, the wind came back and the trees started whispering again.

How long would you run?

I sighed, and-libertas-released my hold on Nicols. He jerked wildly for a second, and then caught up in time.

'One isn't the same as many,' I said, offering him the gun. 'It's a far cry from making a true difference.'

'It's a start,' he conceded. He clicked the safety on with his thumb as he took the gun. He holstered his weapon and offered me a crooked smile, a wan expression filled with both trepidation and relief.

'I don't know what to do,' I said, answering the question in his eyes. 'I can't save everyone. I'm doing a shit poor job of saving myself.' Fill the void.

'You and everyone else.' His grin straightened out. 'Just don't run away on me, Markham. That's all I'm asking.'

XXIV

I knelt at the side of the road, and gathered the scattered pages. Numbered in the upper right corner, each page was a photocopy of a single tarot card-Crowley's deck-with extensive notes. Nicols' re-creation of his precognitive visit to Piotr's. I put them in order as I retrieved them, the wind making me chase a few. I saw the Prince of Swords and the Three as well, their blades slicing through a ruby heart; he had drawn cups too, the Nine and the Princess; a single wand (the Two, inverted); the Ace, Four, and Five of Disks; and, in addition to the Tower, he had received the Hanged Man, the only other Major Arcana card in his reading. 'What were you trying to figure out?'

He shrugged. 'I asked how to find you. Though, the more I read up on this stuff, the more it seemed like I had asked the wrong question.'

I nodded. 'The reading gave you a glimpse of a broader worldview, something higher level than your simple query.'

'Yeah. It's like checking the weather report to see if you're going to need an umbrella today and having the meteorologist tell you the entire coast is preparing for landfall of a Force 5 hurricane. There's a sense of scale that creeps in, makes you feel pretty insignificant. My petty needs are pretty fucking irrelevant when compared to the