Heartland

staring at her; feeling my gaze, she gave me another look.

Her pulse jumped and the Chorus sparked in syncopation, and recovering, noted another spike elsewhere.

She wasn't the only one waiting.

On my left, further back in the terminal, the Chorus targeted a magus trying to be invisible. He was wearing sunglasses and a black coat with a gray sweatshirt underneath. Hardly inconspicuous in this day and age, but he was using magick to bend light. Most of the people in the terminal wouldn't register him as being there, but to those of us with extra-sensory perceptions, he wasn't that clever.

Before I could examine him more closely, the Chorus tagged another cluster of lights-a more active threat. Three magi, coming from my left, walking through the terminal, checking all the gates. The Chorus touched the trio before I could prevent them, and having licked their lights, the spirits knew who the three men were.

What I know, I pass to you. What you know, passes to me. Father. Son. Holy Spirit. Let these secrets be revealed.

Jerome Theirault, third-degree Traveler. Tall and lanky, he looked awkward in his winter coat as if he were nothing but sticks and birds' nests underneath. Charles Lentier, sixth-degree Traveler. Florid, trending toward round; face shaped like a pug dog's. He knew he would never make another grade, and his bitterness and resignation was imprinted deeply on his face. And Henri Vaschax. First-degree Viator. One of a pair. He limped.

I knew why Henri limped. The Chorus twisted around the memory of that night in Bechenaux.

Henri wouldn't have forgotten either.

I maneuvered through the flow of bodies in the terminal, heading for Marielle. 'They're on the prowl,' I said as I reached her. 'They shouldn't be here.' So much for the cordial opening. Hi. How've you been? I've missed-

'No,' she said. Her gaze was magnetic and I couldn't look away for a second. 'Neither should you.' Nothing accusatory in her tone, but I could read it all in her eyes.

'I'll explain later. We need to go.'

I touched her arm and the Chorus whined at the contact. She was a gravity well. Gravitas. It was as if she were standing on a nexus of ley energies, and they were grounding her. It would take more power than I had at my ready call to move her. 'No,' she said. 'Not after all this time. Don't brush me off.'

I glanced back at the trio of Watchers, and the Chorus could taste the etheric disturbance forming around Henri's head. Viator, I thought. One who has returned from Traveling; a walker between worlds. Seven steps removed from Protector. Enough of a magus to flatten me, given the chance.

Since I had left Paris, I'd been scatter-shot in my education, learning what I could, when I could. I hadn't been keeping up with the ritualized procession of the degrees within the society. If pressed, I could probably pass the Traveler trial without much preparation. But Viator? Not a chance. Which put Henri way outside my comfort zone. I didn't want to have to face him. Not here. Not now.

'Your father isn't on this flight,' I said to Marielle, rushing past the truth and into the lie. 'He's on a later flight. He gave up his seat to me.' And before she could ask, I pushed on, compounding the falsehood with some more truth. 'He came to see me. In Seattle. Asked me to come back to Paris. But there are some-' My tongue caught on the word. '-circumstances that forced him to stay behind.'

'Why?' she asked. Her eyebrows pulled together as she looked past my shoulder, at the three magi approaching.

Not here. Not now.

And then I knew how to unroot her. 'They've exposed themselves,' I said. 'That's why he sent me first. To draw them out. Now we know who they are.'

'But-' she started.

'Markham,' Henri Whispered. That line-of-sight magick trick whereby magi spoke directly to one another.

Too late.

'Henri Vaschax,' I said, turning to greet the three men. The fabric of Marielle's coat brushed my hand; my suitcase rocked on its wheels, but remained upright. 'It's been a while.' The Chorus twisted in my throat, some of their old humor lacing my words. 'How's the knee?'

Nunc, the Chorus breathed, echoing a ritual moment two months ago. A whisper of a dry wind, twisting through old bones. Waking old ghosts, beginning the cycle anew.

This is how it begins.

II

I had been part of the family once, one of the many brothers sworn to serve the Hierarch. La Societe Lumineuse had its roots in the early days of Templar history, though its design and intent didn't really crystallize until after de Molay and the others were burned at the stake in 1314. Then, fleeing the greedy hand of Philip the Fair and every other king and bishop who thought they could follow the French king's lead, the organization became invisible. Over the next seven hundred years, they became much better at manipulating events and people from the shadows. The Watchers, as they've become known in occult circles, are True Seeing Witnesses to history. Their charter-somewhat self-appointed-was to keep the mystery mysterious, to protect the rest of humanity from its darker secrets. They need us to be in the shadows.

Critics of the organization-and there were a few, discreet and careful to whom they spoke of such things-saw them as yet another group of elitists who wanted to keep all the toys to themselves. Their mission of obscuring the occult mysteries was simply another means of control, an act that ran counter to much of the mystical philosophy they protected. How could mankind learn its true place in the universe if all the keys were hidden?

I hadn't had such quibbles. I wanted access to the secrets; they were granted to initiates. I signed up. Simple as that.

The Old Man, the Hierarch of the order, was based in Paris, and if you wanted to learn, that's where you went. After the disaster in Tibet, I realized I needed a better education. I needed something organized. Flailing about in the dark was getting people killed, some of them at my hand, and that was becoming problematic. I needed to be smarter.

They took me in, like they did all wayward children of the arts, and I stayed almost a year and a half, longer than I had stayed anywhere else in the last decade; and, within their embrace, I probably could have learned enough to bury the old hate forever. I might have found a cure for the blackness in my heart; but that wasn't the way things turned out.

Someone had a different design in mind.

When we became initiates, we were taught the metaphor of the Weave. It's an inexact explanation for the way etheric energy works, but it suffices for newly opened minds. Even now, I still default to thinking of the morphological Akashic energy patterns that way. The world was a Weave, and each of us was a single thread woven through the complex canvas. The higher-ranked Watchers do more than Watch. They also twist and wind the threads, manipulating people to create new patterns in the Weave. The Old Man was the one who Saw more of the Weave than anyone else; his windings went deeper and further than the rest of us could imagine.

And some of us were a little overeager to begin twisting threads.

My stay in Paris started to unravel after a little collegiate-style hazing gone wrong. Someone died, someone got their feelings hurt, and Henri took a couple of bullets, one that had left a lasting impression on his left kneecap. I had been in a bit of a rush, and had only meant to slow him down. Not that, after all this time, he'd be interested in an apology. I had a suspicion his memory of that night in Bechenaux was permanently twisted around the bullet in his kneecap.

Silver will do that, silver and energized Will.

It had been his brother, Girard, who I had really wanted to put a bullet in, but he hadn't been available. It was probably a bit unfair that I had taken it out on Henri, but he had been an accomplice to the whole affair. Still, judging by the tension in his jaw and the way etheric lightning was arcing off his skull, he was looking forward to