I believe it was Ra. .
Marielle stirred, and her leg moved against mine beneath the covers. A tiny smile creased her lips as she turned toward me. The comforter was bunched over her, and one of my feet stuck out on my side of the bed. The bed was like a European double, smaller than it should have been, and it was easy to spill over the edge. You also slept close. I moved my hand incrementally and my fingers brushed across her bare hip.
Close enough to touch.
She was as naked as I.
Orange and yellow was starting to bloom on the curtains, sunflowers of morning light. Dawn was less than an hour away; the light through the curtains over the French doors was no longer the monochromatic shadows of Nuit's palette. A long finger of darkness slowly retreated across the wall opposite the bed.
Marielle sighed, and her leg moved further across mine, rocking my hips toward her. My hand slid off her hip, my fingertips trailing across the slope of her stomach. Like running my hand across a warm stove, tingles of heat rose up to my knuckles, which didn't hurt.
Fumbling with the comforter, I extracted my right hand from the covers. My knuckles weren't bruised, and on my palm, there was a deep line that went all the way to the base of my thumb, a trinity of burn marks, and some striations that looked like the fading print of a typographer's stamp. Half a word. . This was the room where Marielle and I had spent New Year's morning, but my hand bore incongruities, the marks of a different time. Last night-
No. That night. Not last night. The apartment in Montmartre had been five years ago. Last night I had been at the coast, in a stony chapel beneath Mont-Saint-Michel. Where I had killed men for their souls. Where the leys had come back in a tsunami-like rush of noise and energy.
Marielle's leg moved again, in a motion that wasn't unconscious. She was awake, watching me, rubbing the edge of her thigh against my leg. "Where are you?" she asked. Her voice had an oddly hollow ring, as if it was an echo.
"Right here," I said, closing my hand and sliding it back under the covers.
She flowed into my embrace, her mouth seeking mine. Breast and belly and hip followed, and we floated away beneath a sea of white damask as the morning bloomed outside. In our room outside of time, we found each other again.
Is it real? I started to ask, but the words were lost in the sudden quickening of my pulse as her hand found my cock. She raised her head so I could kiss the hollow of her throat, so I could chase the line of her clavicle with my teeth. Her legs parted as she shifted her hips, my hand sliding under her. I pulled her closer, and she squeezed my shaft as I rubbed against the smoothness of her upper thigh.
Her arm around me, she held me close, astride the combination of her fist and my cock. My foot, caught in the sheet tucked around the base of the bed, thrashed and kicked free. Finding purchase on the edge of the bed, I pushed, extending my leg. She laughed as we burrowed further into the pillows.
I eased off, snatching her wrist and pulling her hand off me. Catching her arm between our bodies so she couldn't grab me again, I ground my hips against her, feeling her respond in kind. My cock slid between her legs, and she elevated her hips, inviting me to try again. I felt a tiny tremor run through her left leg as the joint at her hip popped, muscles both remembering and imagining another time and place. This time was easier, not so clandestine as the alcove on the boat, in not such an impromptu position. She rotated her pelvis, inviting me to find my way.
She bit my earlobe, exhaling heavily into my ear as I entered her. Does it matter? she moaned, fingers digging into my shoulders. What is real. What is not. It was like the childhood game of plucking petals off a flower. She loves me. She loves me not. She loves-riding a figure eight of motion, back and forth. From shadow to light and back again. From reality to unreality. From what could have been to what was. Back and forth, building speed. Building intensity with each shuddering passage through this central nexus of our cycle. She loves me; is it real? She loves me not; this is how the world is made.
Tell me, she whispered, and I can't answer for my mouth is pressed against her throat, bruising her with my teeth. Her legs wrapped around mine, holding me tight. Tell me-
A light exploded outside the room, the sun erupting into a super nova. Streaks flashed across the wall over the bed, and I reared up, throwing back the comforter. The curtain was flapping on its rod as the balcony door banged open. The sky was burning, a kaleidoscopic confusion of red and orange and black. A confusion of blood-tinged soap bubbles streamed into the room, obscuring the figure standing on the balcony. Outlined in fire.
Beneath me, Marielle shrieked, throwing her head back against the pillows. Her hands clawed at my chest, and her hips bucked savagely. A horrible void swam beneath her, and I was being bent at the middle, caught in the vortex. I tried to pull back, tried to stop from climaxing, but the greedy suction was too much. The pressure on my spine was too much.
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.