Heartland

cried out. My vision flared white, and in the stark emptiness that the ossuary became, I saw a negative man seated on a black throne. Black flames licked from his naked skull, and his chest was a ferocious storm of black smoke. You cannot be rid of us, Philippe said. That is not the way.

'I. . am. . not your pawn,' I gasped through the pain.

We are all pawns, he reminded me. There is always a grander game than the one we control.

I don't want control,' I said. 'I just want to be free.'

You always have been, he said, leaning forward. You are free to make your own choice. That is why I cannot tell you what you must do. His eyes glittered with black tears. Do you understand, my son?

When I reached for him, the vision vanished, and I was left groping for nothing in the dark. In my head, I could still see him sitting on that chair-the colors all normal now-the memory of those last few moments in the library before I spiked him. The expression in his eyes.

Philippe knew what he had been doing; he knew the pain his death would bring to those he considered his children, but he also knew the alternative was much worse. He chose his own fate, willingly, because that was the right path. The hard path, but the right one.

You are free to make your own choice.

In that conundrum lay the obstinate madness of his actions, of his long manipulation of his fellow Watchers. He couldn't tell us what his plan was, because to know of it would be a temptation. What if we could change it? What if we thought we could make a better choice?

But we couldn't. He was Hierarch. His understanding of the Weave was deeper and wider than any vision we would have. He Knew, and had twisted the threads so as to bring about the end he had already Witnessed. Did it mean we were on predetermined paths that we couldn't change? Probably. But to walk those paths meant we had to chose them ourselves. I was in the thick of a war for the succession of the Hierarch that had its roots nearly a decade back, and in the midst of all the coming conflict, I didn't know who I could trust. I didn't know who wanted what, and from that ignorance, Philippe knew I would have to make my own decisions.

He knew I would be loath to participate in this game of vengeance-if that is, indeed, what it truly was-but if I didn't know the rules of the game or what my designated role was, then I couldn't act counter to it. I couldn't try to extricate myself from this pattern.

Besides, there was a carrot. Make it personal, Philippe had said to me one night, back when I had been a young student, craving any bit of knowledge he deigned to give me. Always make any conflict personal. That way they hand you their thread and ask you to twist it.

I couldn't trust any of the Watchers. But there was one person whom I could trust.

Marielle.

It couldn't get much more personal.

I started crawling. I had a long way to go.

X

Eventually, my cell phone chirped, and the tiny signal meter climbed to two bars. I was close to the surface. Another icon appeared in the menu. Voice mail. I dropped the phone back in my pocket. It could wait a few minutes; I was almost there.

The dry smell of the dead had gotten more pervasive in the last half-hour, and the texture of the walls had started to even out. Several of the rooms I had passed through had niches in the walls, and the floors were polished by the tread of many years. This area was more recently used.

My internal compass had been thoroughly fucked by the soulquake, and even though the ley energy had gotten progressively stronger as I had made my way through the tunnels, I hadn't been able to sync myself to the natural grid. There was too much noise, both in my head and from my surroundings, which led me to think I was moving through sections of the Parisian underground that had been heavily used to inter bodies. The only thing that leaves more psychic history than the bones of a church are the bones of people.

I thought I was under Pere Lachaise, and the heavy iron gate barring my further progress confirmed that suspicion. I was on the wrong side, though, as the location of the lock proved. The keyhole had been filled in and the mechanism had been welded together. Parisian officials didn't want to fill in the tunnels, but they certainly didn't want anyone to think going further into the old tunnels was an option. Nothing short of an acetylene torch or some C-4 was going to open this gate. Or magick-the occult key of blunt force. When subtlety wasn't an issue.

The bars were cold and hard and I was more tired than I realized; it took me a while to bend the Chorus to the task.

On the other side of the gate, the tunnels were clearly marked and I soon found a metal door. With a handle, even. It led me into the cramped basement of a maintenance shed, and at a desk near the ground-floor door, I sat down and checked my voice mail.

Marielle, returning my call. She was clinical and precise in her message. She didn't explicitly tell me to crawl off and die, but the sentiment was clear in her tone. She ended it with a long sigh, silence, and then, in a quieter voice: 'Call me back.'

I did, and she answered it on the second ring. 'I got your message,' I said.

She was quiet for a moment. 'I probably wouldn't have said what I said if you had answered.'

'Well, it was good that I didn't. It needed to be said.'

'It didn't. I–I know you, Michael. I know you well enough. You didn't do any of it to hurt me. It's just. . '

'I have a crappy way of showing affection,' I provided for her.

She laughed, and it sounded like something came loose in her chest when she did. 'Yes,' she said, 'Yes, you do. You're like a cat who kills birds and leaves them in my shoes because you want to give me a gift.'

'I am sorry.'

'I know.' She exhaled noisily.

'I kept the message,' I said. 'So I can play it back later, when I'm tempted to do something nice for you.'

'You think that'll be enough to stop you?'

'I hope so.'

'Me too. Though, there isn't much else that you could-'

'I could burn your house down.'

'I've moved since the last time you were here, and no, I'm not taking you to the new place.' There was some levity in her voice now, the pain of our history fading away into the endless well of memory. The imprint of my actions and the consequences would always be there, but we were moving past the recent incident. They wouldn't be forgotten-like all sins, they never are-but the other reasons we were bound to each other were reasserting themselves.

I glanced around the shed. 'How about you come to my place?' I said. 'It's a little small and smells funny, but it's cozy.'

'Where?'

'Pere Lachaise.'

She didn't answer right away, and I thought I had lost her.

'Were you there?' she asked finally.

Father Cristobel spun in the Chorus, a tiny knot of light sparking within their serpentine fog. She knew what had happened at the Chapel of Glass. She hadn't known I was there, but news of the chapel's destruction would have certainly been heard by the Watchers by now. My being at the cemetery-in relative proximity to the church- couldn't be a coincidence.

'I was,' I said. 'I'm so-'

'No.' She cut me off. 'You can't have been responsible.'

'No, I wasn't. Well-'

'You're not at fault, Michael. You can't take that weight, nor will I accept it from you.'