“Yes,” he replied.
Malcolm smiled. “The real question is whether you can pass through.” Then he stepped forward and passed through the stone.
Astonished, Warren trailed his fingers across the stone surface. It’s got to be a trick. He can’t just have walked through solid stone.
“Where did he go?” Kelli asked.
“I don’t know.” Warren pressed both hands against the stone, searching for a trigger or a release of some kind that would reveal an opening. There can’t be an opening. I didn’t see one. I would have seen an opening. I was standing right here.
“You can pass through, Warren,” Malcolm encouraged from the other side of the stone. “You just have to align yourself.”
Align myself? Warren pressed against the stone and sought to understand what kind of alignment Malcolm might have been referring to. He stared at the stone and tried to see through it the way he’d tried to see through the darkness when he’d gone to the Cabalist meeting.
At first, all he saw was the solid stone. Then, just as he was about to deem the task impossible, he saw configurations that took shape within the stone. The rock wall was made up of several two-dimensional planes that didn’t quite touch. In fact, some of them were loose enough that Warren found he could shove them aside. Most of them didn’t move easily, though. They moved slowly, and it took a great deal of effort to shift them.
Even as he unlocked the secret of the wall, he also felt the alignment within himself. Pieces of himself seemed to shift as well. Almost unconsciously, drawn by the excitement of this new knowledge, he stepped forward through the wall.
Twenty-Six
M oving through the rock was like walking against a strong river current.
Warren thought about what would happen if he didn’t make it through the rock, wondering if the shifting patterns could slip beyond his control and rip him apart. The way suddenly seemed much harder. Panic thrummed inside his head.
“Don’t think about failure,” a man’s voice commanded. “You have to assert yourself over what you think of as the natural laws. Only part of how you’ve perceived the world is true. Many things that you’ve considered impossible are going to be possible for you. You’ve just got to master what lies within you.”
Concentrating again on the whirling two-dimensional shapes, Warren pushed through. A moment later, he stood inside another cave. This one was more elaborate, more finished. Arcane drawings that glowed with power adorned the walls. Glass cases and shelves held all kinds of objects. A lab stretched out behind Malcolm and another man as they stood and smiled at Warren.
The other man was almost seven feet tall. His body was elongated like an insect’s. His head looked massive, broad forehead and long-jawed. Tightly cropped reddish hair covered his head. Tattoos and scars covered every square inch of skin that Warren could see. Two curving horns a foot in length jutted up from his temples and flared into three points. He looked like he was in his late twenties.
The man’s appearance immediately put Warren to mind of Cernunnos, the Horned One from Celtic legend. Cernunnos was supposed to represent horned male animals and fertility. The god had been featured in a few of the books Warren’s mother had read in her studies of the arcane.
“Ah, you’ve arrived,” the man said.
“I told you he was strong,” Malcolm said, looking pleased.
The horned man drew a symbol in the air. Warren saw a ghostly afterimage for just a moment, then it vanished. But he felt a wolf’s warm, fetid breath over him. Since he’d never had a wolf breathe on him, though, he wondered how he knew what the sensation was like. But he was convinced that was what it had been.
“I never doubted you.” The horned man gazed at Warren in open speculation. “But being able doesn’t mean that he will choose to embrace his ability.”
“The demons have marked him,” Malcolm said. “Look at him.”
Warren grew self-conscious of his burns and pulled his cloak more tightly about him. “Who are you?”
“I am Hedgar Tulane,” the man answered. “Welcome to my home.”
“Warren!”
Hearing Kelli through the stone wall, Warren reached back for her, negotiating the spinning two-dimensional shapes much easier this time. “Take my hand.” When he felt her fingers in his, he pulled her through the wall. A moment later Kelli stood inside the cave with him.
Malcolm and Tulane stared at him.
“She’s with me,” Warren said defensively. “Where I go, she goes.”
“Of course,” Tulane said. “I’m just surprised that you could pull her through the wall like that. It’s one thing to negotiate passage yourself, but I’ve never seen anyone who could bring another through.” He paused, examining Warren more closely. “Working with you, helping you discover your true potential, is going to be exciting.”
Warren bristled at that. “I didn’t come here to be someone’s science project.”
“Oh no,” Tulane agreed. “You won’t be anyone’s science project. This isn’t about science. At least, not about science in the truest sense of the word, which has been rather limited in our experience. This is definitely about the arcane forces in our world.”
“There are several groups like this scattered throughout London and England,” Tulane said as he headed the procession through the caves. “Throughout the world, in fact. Ever since the human race first came in passing contact with the demon world through visions and voices, there have been those among us who have studied them. We’ve never accepted that the power the demons wield are out of our reach.”
Warren stared into the various rooms they passed. He’d seen dozens of Cabalists during the last few minutes. Several of them were undergoing tattooing or taking part in experimentation.
“Why do you wear tattoos?” Warren asked.
“Me? Or Cabalists in general?”
“The Cabalists.”
“Tattooing allows us to focus our powers,” Tulane answered. “Writing of any sort—symbols as well as words—has always provided control over arcane energy. Magic
