He sprawled on the ground, and the Spear cut across the rock with a high-pitched whine. A line of fire burned on my upper arm, right below the shoulder, and as I fell the short distance back to the grotto when the Chorus' elevator disk vanished, I noticed the thin slice through my jacket and shirt.
I put a finger in the hole and touched the cut. The Chorus sizzled in my fingertip as I felt blood.
Antoine struggled to sit up, and Marielle knelt beside him, keeping a wary eye on his right arm. "No," he muttered again, his eyes half-open. "We need to leave it here." He dragged the Spear across the ground again, the stone shrieking at the touch of the cold weapon.
I was about to point out the basic problem when the Chorus flooded my spine and skull, erupting into full defensive mode. "Magi." I looked up as if I could see something beyond the noisy haze of ward light. "We've got company coming."
She pushed her hair back. "Can you deal with them?" she asked. "They don't have access to the grid; you should be strong enough." The commanding tone was back in her voice. That tenor of a woman who expected her words to be obeyed.
I hesitated. I am not your agent. "What are you going to do about the Spear?" I asked. Her teeth were starting to chatter. She had used up too much of her reserves getting here, and this chamber was leaching her core temperature too fast. Mine too, for that matter, but I was better equipped to keep the suction at bay. Without the leys to bolster her resources, she was fading quickly.
"There isn't time to argue," she said, biting off the end of her words. She grabbed Antoine's shoulders and sat him up. There isn't time. She was berating both of us. "Go, wolf. Show no mercy."
I was going to object, but the Chorus blossomed into a stalk of energy, lifting me away from the ground.
She Whispered one last command to me. In case I hadn't gotten the hint clearly enough. "Kill them all."
The Chorus sang in reply, and I shot up faster toward the chapel.
I had some vain hope that the Chorus had warned me early enough I could get back to the Chatelet as it was a nicely defensible position, but I wasn't going to get that lucky. I got as far as the large chamber known as the Ossuary before I met the Watchers.
There were five of them, clustered near the far end of the Ossuary, and for a moment, we froze, staring at one another. Familiar faces-some of them going back a few days, the rest going back a few years: Charles and Jerome, the two Watchers who had accompanied Henri at the airport; Charles looked pleased to have an opportunity to finish our tete-a-tete from the train car; Henri, of course; and the somewhat expected presence of his twin brother, Girard.
Prior to getting shot in the leg and gaining the limp, Henri and his brother had been nearly identical. Physically, they were mirror images of each other, and like most identical twins, the divergence lay in temperament and character. Henri was the more empathic of the two. I should have shot Girard as he had been the one who had done more of the bloody work back in Bechenaux. He had been the one who had really deserved a couple of steel-jacketed rounds, but as I had given him over to the enraged villagers as one of the architects of the werewolf plot against them, there hadn't been time or opportunity to put a bullet in him.
The last man wore a pair of wraparound sunglasses, and now that I got a good look at him, I knew him.
"Hello, Rene." Rene Bataillard had been in Bechenaux too. I hadn't shot him, but I had put a shotgun round through the engine block of his car. He had loved that car, so it had almost been worse that putting a bullet in him. I hadn't recognized him earlier because he had been wearing less flashy clothing. As much a clothes horse as a whore for his car, the best disguise he could wear was simply generic clothing-nondescript grays and black. Not only had I spotted him on Batofar, where he had been the man I had mistaken for a centurion, but he had been at the airport too. He'd been Watching, like a true brother. At least, until he'd tried to warn Henri on the bridge. "You their hunting dog?" I asked.
Trying to charm your way out of trouble again, aren't you? Lafoutain noted dryly as the Chorus rippled through my skin, rising to the willful challenges evident in their auras. There was another tension in the air too as if each inhalation drew in a denser atmosphere.
The leys, coming back.
Rene ignored my jibe. "They're back there," he said, pointing with his chin. "In the next chapel."
Girard cracked his knuckles, an ugly smile splitting his face. "Henri said you were back," he said. "I'm glad he didn't kill you. I wanted that pleasure for myself."
There was some new scar tissue around his right eye, and the iris canted inward. I caught myself wondering if he had gotten that from the mob at Bechenaux. I had gone to ground for some time after Bechenaux, staying away from the old haunts, so I wouldn't accidentally run into the Vaschax brothers. Of the five who stood against me that night, Bento had been the only one willing to let it all go. I had said my piece on the bluff, calling Antoine to task for winding all of our threads, and that had been enough for me. But for Henri and Girard-and to a lesser extent, Rene-the matter hadn't been satisfactorily resolved.
Nor for Antoine, really. But, then, I had been specifically targeting him. The rest got caught in the middle of our pissing match.
"You sure you boys want to do this?" I asked. The Chorus danced on my fingertips, energy angels ready to strike. "Here. Now. You think you have enough strength?"
Jerome and Charles had come prepared. They side-stepped around the brothers, pulling guns from beneath their coats.
The Ossuary wasn't laid out like a regular chapel space. Not so much as an afterthought, but more from the long period over which most of the buildings on the mount were raised, the Ossuary became a hodge-podge of pillars and vaults. Nothing really matched, and other than the space along the inside wall, there weren't very good sightlines. Which made it easier for me to raise the Chorus' peacock shield and get behind a pillar without taking a bullet.
The report of their firearms was close thunder in the room, and the bullets whined as they ricocheted off the walls.
Karma, I thought, the circle always closes. Last time, I had been the one with the gun.
The Chorus had already put together an overlay of the Ossuary, marking each of the Watchers for me. The Vaschax brothers, for all their bluster, knew I was a distraction, and under the cover of the Travelers' guns, were making a move toward the Chapelle Notre-Dame-sous-Terre. Rene wasn't hanging back like I expected him to; he was creeping along the eastern wall, trying to surprise me from the other side. I couldn't really afford to play cat and mouse among the bays and niches of the Ossuary. There were too many of them. I needed to take the fight to them, and quickly. Jerome and Charles had the only guns-so far-and they were semi-automatic hand cannons from the sound, but the others would be able to do some magick. Nothing big and dramatic. Just the quick and dirty sort of spells that had been my bailiwick for years.
I went to my right, toward Rene, and nearly took a barrage of gunfire in the face. The rounds left floating star marks in my etheric shield, exploding nimbuses wreathing the hot metal. I ducked behind another pillar, spitting out dust and rock chips as more bullets chewed the column near my head. In illo tempore. I squeezed time for a brief instant, and the Chorus traced the trajectory of three bullets as they splintered through the stone. I retreated to the west wall as the Chorus scooped up the tumbling shells and brought them to my outstretched hand.
Hot and misshapen, they sizzled in my palm when I spit on them, and the Chorus outlined each bullet with violet light. Steam rose between my fingers as I squeezed them tight, marking them with saliva and flesh. Videte nostros hostes, I whispered to the Chorus, and noting the phantasmal positions of the souls in the room on my psychic overlay, I darted to my right.