Heartland

For an instant, the room vanished, sucked into that void, and I hung over the Abyss, staring down at the lack of black fire where Choronzon dwelled. Hands held me back, even though my feet were slipping over the edge. Hands around my waist pulled at me, pulling me away from Choronzon's magnetic attraction. More hands followed as the slumbering Master of the Abyss started to wake. Someone grabbed my right hand, and their touch seared the three wounds on my palm. I pulled my gaze away from the fiery halo of the monster below and looked over my shoulder.

They were all there. Philippe, Cristobel, Lafoutain, and the rest. Pulling me back. John Nicols had my hand. Not like this, he said. His hand was burned black from where he had touched the theurgic mirror, black and so cold that his flesh burned against mine. I twisted around, grabbing his wrist with my other hand, and the Chorus cracked like a whip, pulling me free of the gravity well of the Abyss.

I fell off the bed, banging my shoulder hard against the wood floor. Sunlight danced on the polished wood, dazzling me. A line of bloody circles led back to the door, and as I managed to focus, more crimson bubbles floated down and popped. There were tarot cards scattered across the floor, spread out in a widening arc from me as if I had been holding them in my hands when I fell. I glanced down at my torso and found a number of them stuck to me like a half-hearted attempt at a loincloth.

On the bed, Marielle was still fucking me, though it was a younger man, an echo of a previous time. Laughing and shouting with delight, her legs wrapped around my waist, she was oblivious to the black shape riding my shoulders, its clawed feet digging into my back. It leered at her, panting with excitement, its one eye staring.

She doesn't see it. None of us could.

On the balcony, wearing a cloak of morning light, Antoine stood, watching. His silver hand was shaped like a bowl with a broken stem-a fragment of a cup-and he dipped a thin wand into the liquid it held. Missing a finger on his left hand, his motion was somewhat clumsy as he raised the wand to his lips and blew another stream of crimson bubbles. They floated into the room, and several popped against my chest, leaving red rings on the cards and my flesh.

'My Qliphotic shadow,' I said as I walked out of the apartment, as I left sanctuary and stood, exposed, on the balcony with him. A distant noise, like the roaring, gnawing sound of a conflagration, vibrated through me, making my bones and teeth ache.

He nodded. It was your wound that never healed. The pain which you refused to let go.

'I know. I needed an anchor. I needed some way to understand.'

Samael looked at me as if he could see me, his single eye squinting against the light; he knew we were talking about him. One of his long-fingered hands snaked under the chin of the man on the bed, squeezing his throat, and I swallowed heavily. I tried to remember that moment from five years ago; part of me wanted to think that was the way it had happened. As I had neared climax, I had started to choke, and because I hadn't been able to see him either-not then-my brain was already willing to believe it had been Marielle's hands on my throat. She had choked me as I came-

'No,' I said, and Samael hissed as I moved his hand away. 'That's not true.'

In my revelation at the top of the tower in Portland, I had seen my initiation again, the night in the woods when I had first seen the Tree of the Sephiroth, when I had fallen through Daath and into the nightside. But I had seen that lost child from a different angle, from an external viewpoint where it was obvious that the hand choking him had been his own. It had been my fear that had suffocated me, that had led me to invite the Qliphoth in.

That's what we're all afraid of, Antoine said. We're all wondering what part of our experiences are real and what are nothing more than panic or dread. He stared, unblinking, at the image of Marielle and me in bed. Or lust. Or jealousy.

I peeled a card off the left side of my chest and showed it to him. The Magician. Antoine smiled and copied the pose: left arm up, holding the soap bubble wand; right arm down, the bloody water in his silver bowl sloshing over the rim. As above, he said, so be it below.

On the hill behind him, the white shape of Sacre-C?ur flashed against the burning horizon. Black streaks, like the ashy remnants of burned clouds, smeared the sky. The crackling roar of the fire was louder now, as if it was chewing through timber and masonry a few blocks away.

'So what do we do?' I asked.

He shrugged. The best we can, my friend.

'And if that isn't enough?'

Don't fall into that trap, he said. He raised his wand and pointed it at the black shadow. That's what he wants you to think. That's what he told me when I started to listen to him.

With a bloody, ripping noise, Antoine vanished and it was Philippe standing beside me on the balcony. His cancer had advanced and it covered his left side entirely. His blackened hand had all of its fingers, and his signet ring glowed with white fire; the bubble wand was now a short stick with a long blade attached. The Ace of Cups was clutched in his right hand.

'I will not be your angel of vengeance,' I told him.

It's too late, he said. The final act is already in motion. What is done is done.

'Why are you still here? Why are you and Cristobel and Lafoutain still in my head?'

It's isn't time for us to go. Not yet.

I looked back at my old self and Marielle-nearly invisible in the thick sea of the comforter-cuddling, their lust spent. The one-eyed shadow was gone. There was no longer anything for him to feed upon. 'And when it is time,' I asked, 'then you'll go?'

Perhaps.

'Or I might be stuck with you for the rest of my life.'

Would that be so bad? David and Hubert are good companions. They have served me well over the years.

'They knew they were going to die, didn't they? It takes an Architect to consecrate the Coronation, doesn't it? Either they take the Crown, or they recognize the one who does. That's why they're all being killed. So there's no competition.'

There is always competition. That is the secret at the heart of Free Will. The Will to want something.

'If all the Architects are dead, then who gets the Crown?'

Whoever wants it the most.

'That's anarchy.'

No, it is the old way. The first way. The oldest ritual. As old as our ability to dream and want. It almost exists outside our belief in it. We are simple animals; we cover the earth with our desire lines just as we invent stories to validate our mental and emotional needs. We make it all happen, and we take solace when the cycle starts over in the way we think it should.

'Fratricide.'

No, that is the version written by the West. That is the way we invented because some thought it would be easier.

'Easier,' I sighed. Brother against brother. Jealousy and rage allowed control of the flesh. That first sin, re- created time and time again through the ceremony of ritual combat. A justification codified by our elders as a rationale for our bloodthirsty instincts. As a shield for the lurking anarchy that lay deep in our hearts. 'Is this what you meant when you told me to burn it all down? That I should come to Paris and bear witness to this annihilation of the rank.'

No, I meant what I said, quite literally. He pushed the tip of the Spear through the Grail card, and red drops welled up from the wound.

'That's a metaphor,' I pointed out.

What I say and what I mean are never the same, he laughed.

'I hate you, Old Man.'

Et te amo, mi fili. He pressed the bloody card to my forehead where it stuck.