"Why do you keep the scars?" she asked. "Do you not know how to repair your flesh?"
"I do," I said. "But they help me remember."
"Remember what? The pain?"
"My mortality."
She was quiet for a moment. "They think pscyhoanimism can be used to extend life," she said, idly rubbing the sword scar as if it were just an applique that could be removed. "They've done things I thought impossible. And the texts they have hint at many more possibilities: group minds, cosmic consciousnesses-"
"Body-jacking," I interrupted.
Her finger stopped. "Yes," she said. She said it quietly, as if verbal recognition of my words would be heard as an admission of guilt. "They can move between bodies. It wasn't something I taught them. It was Julian's-"
"Who?"
She ignored the question and, for the moment, I let it go. I had a sense-a taste-of which one was Julian. I had pinned his spirit in the hotel when he had tried his psychic assault. The white-haired one. I know your name.
Her hand drifted back up my chest and stopped over my heart. Her wrist turned as if she were trying to put her fingers in the dial of an old rotary telephone. "Here," she said. "This is where I touched you. I can feel it in your aura."
She moved her hand away, leaving five glowing rings on my skin like stars writ across the heavens. Coupled with the pale scars of the bullet wounds, the pattern looked like the constellation of Orion. The Hunter drawn at a downward angle as if the sky were tilting.
"Ex lux et vita," she whispered.
From light and life. The world unmade and made anew in a flash of light. A sudden pain pierced my throat like an arrow from Eros' bow gone terribly astray. For the last ten years, my persistent memory loop had been a false precognition, a bogus prediction wrapped around an imperfect imprint of the ceremony in the woods.
Archaic cultures would regularly gather at their sacred spots-their places of epiphany-and re-create their symbolic worlds. These magico-religious spots were where Now and Then collapsed into a singular point-in illo tempore. They would compress the world and make it anew. Ex lux et vita. Those at the center-at the axis of their world-got to make the future.
Even as I had tried to consciously forget Katarina in the subsequent decade since my aborted magickal initiation, I couldn't escape the cyclical nature of the world. Unconsciously, I wanted to return to the beginning. I wanted to restart my world.
This was the divine secret whispered to me in the woods. This was the First Lie I told myself. There was no Qliphoth monster, no serpent, no dark demiurge in the woods. Just my own frightened spirit staring up at the sky and seeing only darkness. I hadn't been able to see the pinpricks of Heaven. There had been no reflection, no way for me to remember that I, too, was a star.
The fire is going out, I whispered to myself in the woods, and there is only one way to preserve it. Take more fuel. Gather more sparks. Light begats light.
Thus the seed was planted, buried deep by my own hand. By my own ignorance.
Kat's hand moved to my lips, and then to my cheeks where she felt my tears. "I'm sorry," she whispered, pressing her lips to the five circles over my heart.
I wrapped my hands in her dark hair as if I was burying them; as if by hiding the evidence, I could make the blood vanish. Our hands, they betray what we have done.
We murder; we create. The dark is but a shadow of the light. A reaction is simply a response to action. Our cycles are but mirrors, degenerate reflections of the primal effort that split the Limitless Universe.
Ex mortis et tenebris. From death and darkness.
"So am I," I replied.
XVI
We heard the lock first, a clangorous beat that rang up and down the length of the container. More discordant percussion followed-metal shifting and clattering against metal. A broad beam of stark light swept into the chamber as the portal opened.
Four men entered, dark silhouettes against the wash of light. The door closed, and three of them stood in a line along the back wall. The other man held two objects: a folding chair and a storm lantern. The thin flame of the lantern made short shadow puppets along the base of the wall and, while its weak light reached the man's face, it left the three guards cloaked in shadow.
The guards were armed, the subtle glint of metal visible in the gloom, and I wasn't inclined to test their eagerness to shoot me. Based on the chair and lantern, the visit seemed casually interrogative and, since I had a few questions for my captors, I thought I'd see where the conversation went.
Kat and I were sitting side by side in the center of the container, about ten feet away from the door. The clacking and clanging had given us sufficient time to make ourselves presentable. We were sitting like eager students when the foursome arrived, little learners ready for the start of the lesson.
"I realize the accommodations are somewhat less than comfortable." The man sat in the chair, crossed his legs, and idly plucked at something on the leg of his trousers. Nice clothes, neat beard, rings on his fingers. A European gentleman, my first guess. German, or Swiss.
"Well, once I got the ball gag out, it did seem a trifle chilly," I said.
"Ah," he said, resting his hand flat on his leg. "A sense of humor. Good. We can talk, then."
"Can I pick the topic or do you have something specific in mind?"
"Something specific, Mr. Markham."
I glanced at Kat, registered the cold fury in her face. Judging by the way the man wasn't looking at her, I had a feeling he knew the cause of her expression. "Who is this clown, anyway?" I asked her, trying to keep him from running the conversation.
"Bernard du Guyon," she spat.
"She's not very happy with you," I offered.
Bernard raised an eyebrow. "Ms. Nouranois' displeasure has made itself evident to me but-" he raised his shoulders "-there is very little I can do about it right now."
Her body tensed, and we all felt the violence of her desire. Bernard tried to appear oblivious, but his shoulders tightened unconsciously. Interesting. Putting Kat in here with me hadn't been his idea.
"We should probably get off that topic of conversation," I said. "I wouldn't want things to get any more awkward."
Bernard was happy to follow that lead. "Do you know why Initiate Rassmussen was making his exodus?"
"Is that what you're calling it? A rather destructive method of initiation, don't you think? All that collateral damage."
"I believe you are somewhat to blame for that, Mr. Markham."
"What? If I hadn't intercepted him in the deer, he would have ridden it all the way to Seattle? Even if I hadn't been there, he would have realized he needed a human host when he reached the ferry terminal. The animal was burning up. It wouldn't have survived." I shook my head. "He was going to end up in a human host. There was no other way for him to cross the water."
Bernard didn't contradict me, nor did he offer any defense of Doug's actions.
"Look, I've seen other techniques like this. Different cultural contexts. You aren't the first to experiment with the separation of soul and body. You needn't act like I've stolen your magic underpants."
"These underpants, if you will, are old, Mr. Markham. Egyptian."
"Hermetic?" I said, a note of surprise actually sneaking into my voice. "I thought the works of Hermes Trismegistus were more philosophical in nature. More talking about souls and matter than actually separating the two."