If the only vice of the soul was ignorance, then the only virtue was faith. Like good and evil, black and white, light and dark: this was the dichotomy of our existence. How close one was to the other. How dependent.
And how much a vacuum was left when one was bereft of ignorance and of faith.
The elevator opened onto a marble-floored foyer. Three panel-back chairs were lined up against the wall on the left like tired sentries. Flanking the middle chair were two narrow stands crowned with peace lilies in fat Grecian-style amphoras. A large pair of white doors was the only other exit.
The psychic vacuum of the mirror was palpable. A heavy static laced the air, a taste of burnt wire at the back of my throat. The suction was a wave pattern that had an amplitude of a few seconds, a rhythm that throbbed at the base of my skull. The Chorus groaned like an old building settling.
Nicols tapped the conquistador helmet three times with the handle of the shotgun, shoving the metal cap even lower on his head. "You ready?" A vein throbbed in his neck, an unconscious physical echo mirroring the drag of the psychic currents.
I grunted noncommittally in reply as I shoved the two remaining bottles of holy water in the front pockets of my pants. Julian had a predilection for fire. The holy water in and of itself wouldn't have any more effect on him than using a garden hose to put out a house fire, but its sanctified state made it more malleable-more readily changeable.
I couldn't fault Nicols for the desire to weigh himself down with the hardware, but it all failed the primal rule of magickal combat: any physical object brought to battle could be used against you. Guns were too easily turned against their wielder. Water, on the other hand, was just a liquid state of hydrogen and oxygen. Useless without the application of Will. Julian could take the water away from me, but he couldn't abscond with my Will.
The penthouse doors were unlocked. We crossed the threshold, the gravity well of the mirror pulling us into the room beyond.
The central living space of the penthouse was a long L-shape, and beyond an Architectural Digest-style spread of furniture and accessories, stood the theurgic mirror. The tall windows behind it looked out over the Willamette River and the lit arc of the Hawthorne Bridge, gleaming like a handful of fresh-water pearls. The furniture was Italian Industrial Futurist-straight lines and right angles, chrome edging, dead animal hide dyed in grays and burgundies-and the art on the walls was more of the Impressionist Pacific Northwest school that adorned the mall level of the building. Diamond-shaped wall sconces bled weak illumination as if the light was afraid of the smoky darkness of the mirrored sphere.
Two hallways split off at the midsection of the room like the transept of a church. The leg of the L was the dining room, from which issued the steady sound of chanting, a repetitious litany of that guttural language Bernard used to commune with his artifact.
Julian stepped around the corner of the dining room wall. He was wearing a gray and yellow robe, covered with lines and whorls of black script. Floating over his head was a cascade of bright stars. Silver cobwebs stretched from the stars to his head, a crown of filigreed strands.
"Markham." A brief flash of surprise on his face, quickly subsumed into bored disappointment.
"Expecting someone else?"
"I assume you met him on the path." He shook his head. "Not that it matters. This Aeon is almost finished."
I walked through the contortions of the furniture, intent on the far wall and the statue. Julian made no attempt to stop me, his expression slightly bemused and distracted. He didn't seem terribly concerned about our presence. If the crown of light was what I thought it was, I could certainly understand his lack of apprehension. It was probably akin to the conduits Doug had worn in the Arena. Julian was connected to the mirror's storehouse of souls, as was Bernard, who was seated in a meditative pose on the dining room table. The Anointed, in pure energy states, were channeling energy to the magus and the academic.
An involuntary chill ran up my spine. All those souls, keening and whispering in their heads. I remembered the constant buzz of the Chorus when I had first made it a part of me, how that incessant sound had nearly driven me insane. In their case, the noise was magnified a hundred times. Soul-speak. The chatter of the bodiless.
"You've brought your friend." Julian snickered at the sight of the shotgun in Nicols' hands. "He's got better weapons this time. Not that silly pop gun."
"The man's adaptable." Walking toward the mirrored sphere was uncomfortably easy, my feet nearly tripping over themselves in delight. The psychic pull of its hunger became more and more difficult to resist. Like the insistent voice of the Chorus, the stroke of its wave was a seductive lure. Feel the collapsed weight of a thousand souls. Right here. Close enough to touch.
I dragged myself to a stop just short of an arm's length from the statue. The Chorus, split between hunger and dread, were a whirlwind of chaos in my skull. Touch/fear it. I declined both options, and stayed a safe distance.
The facets of the sphere seemed to twist at right angles, a tesseract movement that made the globe appear to be on the verge of implosion. It exerted such a psychic pull that ambient energy was being drawn into the facets of the mirror. I wondered what its gravity would do to magick. If spells would be misdirected due to its influence.
I looked over at Julian standing near the dining room. I was probably going to find out. Sooner or later. In which case, I didn't want to be the one closest to the mirror.
Nicols drifted toward the center of the room, putting the large leather sofa between himself and Julian. It would have been a good defensive position were it not for the gas fireplace behind him. "Julian likes fire," I Whispered to the detective, spiriting my words directly into his ear. Nicols had the presence of mind not to twitch or look; he just kept moving, circling one of the armchairs and gliding toward the right-hand hallway that led to the rest of the penthouse.
Bernard ignored all of us. His litany was an endless loop, each phrase precisely enunciated with no sign of strain or exhaustion. How long had he been chanting? His eyes were fixed on the mirrored sphere and his hands were cupped in his lap. Like Julian, a crown of stars floated above his head. A magick circle surrounded him, drawn with white powder. Salt, maybe. Held in place by the activation of the incantation. I wondered what the circle did; certainly not protection because Julian wasn't inside it. A focus, maybe.
"Nice little party." With some difficulty, I moved away from the artifact. "Are we the only ones coming?"
"Far from it," Julian said. He tapped the side of his head. "There's room for many more yet."
"What happens next?"
"The world ends."
"I was hoping for something a little less dramatic," I said. "What would happen if I tried to break your toy?"
"Most likely, it would break you." Julian glanced at Nicols, noting the detective's position near the hallway. The magus' left hand twitched, flexing about an invisible shape, and the lights in his crown twinkled. Reaching for fire.
Nicols noticed the motion as well, and the barrel of his shotgun dipped to cover the twitching hand. "What's it supposed to do?" he asked, keeping Julian's attention.
I drifted closer to the dining room, a hand resting on the edge of my pocket. My fingers touched plastic.
"You know nothing of alchemy, do you?" Julian asked Nicols. "It's the final step of the Great Work. Solve et coagula. First you dissolve, then you recombine."
"Is that what you call what you did to the people in Ravensdale?" Nicols spat. "Dissolving?"