Heartland-The Second Book of the Codex of Souls (3 page)

Henri hesitated for a second, caught by an old respect, but that was shoved aside by a stronger need. One that was quite plain in the smile that creased his mouth. "Of course," he said. "You are not beholden to our rules, and as such—your blood, notwithstanding—neither am I beholden to take orders from you." His lightning stormed. "Now, stand aside."

"I am staying," she said.
"Right here."
And I felt the emphasis of her words more than I heard them. I felt the strong lock she had on the flow of energy beneath.
Grounded
.

Jerome and Charles took half-steps back, violet light blooming in their eyes as currents of energy coursed through their bodies. A guttural noise started in Henri's chest, and in the frozen second that followed, I made a decision and reached toward the yawning pit of energy beneath Marielle. I felt it through her, as if she were suddenly not there, and I was teetering on the precipice of an endless drop, the vacuum of that infinite hole pulling at me. Like a black hole, sucking all light and energy into its maw.

Henri released his lightning and it arced across the space separating us, seeking the ground. The Chorus flexed, straining to build some sort of reflective shield, but I held them back.
Right here,
she had said. Marielle hadn't been talking to the Watchers. She had been telling me where to find help.

The splash of lightning struck me squarely in the chest, and the front of my jacket smoked and flaked into ash. The electric touch of Henri's power raced through my nervous system, and as quickly as it bit, it was gone, racing down my arm and out through my fingers. Leaving me and going into Marielle. My palm burned and her flesh got hot, but the lightning passed through us, drawn down through Marielle's conduit to the ley energies.

Henri hesitated, confused by the lack of result from his lightning spell, and I leaped forward, driving the palm of my burned hand into his nose. Some of the residual energy on my skin was transformed by the impact, and I felt the cartilage splinter. Blood flowed.

The Chorus formed themselves into a six-inch psychic spike extending from my knuckles as I pivoted and hammered Charles in the sternum with my charged fist. His eyes went wide, and he lost his magick as his lungs seized up.

Jerome was frozen, transfixed by a vision behind me. I wanted to look, far more curious than I should have been, and as I started to turn my head, the Chorus seized my spine. All I could do was keep looking forward. Or up.

Up, along the curved ceiling of the terminal. I spotted several of the tiny metal spiders of the fire suppression system. Sprinkler heads. The kind that trigger in the presence of smoke. Or having their tips knocked off. As the Chorus released their hold on my neck, I squeezed them and flicked a drop of force toward the ceiling. A knot of Willful energy with a specific task to accomplish.

Keeping my gaze toward the floor, away from the fading edge of Marielle's glamour, I reached back and grabbed for her hand. She met me, and came easily when I pulled, no longer bound to the nexus of force.

The Chorus spark reached its target overhead and ignited, a blip of energy unnoticed by everyone but me. Lights and sirens and water followed. The sound and fury and deluge of the Apocalypse, judging by the near-instant panic that flooded the terminal. Everyone was a little on edge in the airport these days.

"Your suitcase." Marielle tugged on my hand.

"Leave it," I shouted. "There's nothing important in there."
It's just baggage.
All I needed was in my pockets already.

We fell into the silver stream of souls, the suddenly torrential rush of lights for the exits. Marielle's hand was hot in my grip, and the Chorus buzzed at the touch. It felt like I had bees under my skin, racing up and down my arm. Behind us, I could sense Henri's outrage. His voice was lost in the noise and chaos of the terminal, but I could feel him pulling energy again. A broken nose wasn't going to stop him.

Marielle stopped suddenly, and her hand was nearly torn from my grip by the tide around us. Beyond the glass doors of the terminal, the flood of bodies became a swirling and disorganized mass, like river water that, having rushed thousands of miles through canyons and beds cut in the earth, suddenly spills into a delta at the sea. All the channeled energy suddenly finds itself no longer squeezed through a narrow passage and it spins out into a confusion of disparate currents. In these currents, uniformed officers were struggling to direct the flow, but they were like rocks in a river—obstacles more than channel markers.

My vision failed, a black curtain cutting everything off, and I couldn't breathe. The Chorus swarmed against the suffocation spell Henri had just hit me with. I had been less experienced the last time someone had tried this on me, and I hadn't known how to fight it. I had panicked, which was part of what made the spell effective. The lizard part of your brain kicks in, primordial survival instincts that spring to the surface. You can't see. You can't breathe. All that runs through your head is:
fly, fly, fly!

The Chorus tore through the first layer of the spell, and like active sonar on a submarine, they pinged my surroundings and constructed an etheric overview: hot spots marking the three Watchers, starburst flare at my side, the ghostly streamers of the flood of people moving around us. Marielle supported me; slowly dragging me away from the door.

Henri tightened his Will, and my Chorus sight flickered. I flailed—physically and mentally—at the hood about my head, and failed to make any sort of contact. Henri, it seemed, had gotten better at this spell, too. I couldn't find a seam to force the Chorus into. If I could locate a crack in his magick, I could force my Will through. He was too far away to hit him effectively with the Chorus—not without more energy, and my reserves were already low.

The Chorus had another idea and they moved on their own, rushing through me like a rain of pebbles. They burst through my shell, extending on either side like a pair of butterfly wings. They bent themselves against the current, and I realized they weren't wings. They were nets, and as each spirit light moved past, the Chorus scooped off a little energy. Each pulse fed back to my central nervous system, keeping me alert. Keeping me from passing out.

Instead of pulling energy from the leys, I was pulling energy from the river of souls moving past me. Each scintilla of energy was clean and pure too; there wasn't any sort of spiritual ephemera attached to it: no memories, no histories, no emotional detritus. I wasn't stealing from their life force. I was harvesting the natural bleed of power.

What I know, I pass to you. Father. Son. Holy Spirit.

Henri's light flared, a split-second warning of a power spike, and as this energy was channeled by his Will into his spell, there was a tiny hiccup as the hood relaxed around me. Almost as if I could feel the difference between inhaling and exhaling. Time was getting sticky, and as I dove for that narrow gap, I had to keep my focus tight so as not to forget what I was trying to do. This entire exchange was happening on an ethereal level, outside the perceivable decay of the cesium atom, but it still felt like running the hundred-yard dash through three feet of mud.

I squeezed the Chorus into a knot, twisted it once, and when he squeezed again, the knot squirted through the hood, throwing a microdot of my perception on the other side. I could fight back now. I could touch him.
Sequere lucem.
Leaping through the conduit of power looped around my head, the Chorus arced back along the strand of energy for the steaming spark of his soul. I couldn't break his shell—too many layers of psychic armor—but I could break his concentration. I could deflect his Will.
On the nose. Like hitting a dog with a stick.

The hood dissolved, and the air I sucked in was heavy with water. Staggering, finding and leaning on Marielle's arm, I tried to reconnect with my feet. The sprinkler system was doing a good job of reducing visibility as it reacted to the non-existent fire. The crowds were lessening, even though the doors were blocked with a confusion of bodies. The Watchers were still behind us, though Henri was trailing behind the other two. His nose was bleeding again, and steam rose from his head and shoulders.

"This way," Marielle shouted in my ear. She pulled me at an angle to the major flow. Moving like an elongated eel, we knifed through the press of bodies. Back into the terminal, parallel to the outer wall. It would take us too long to force our way through the crowd. We had to find a different way out. Marielle was more familiar with the terminal layout, and I let her lead.

"They're going to lock this place down," I Whispered to her. Making ourselves heard over the din would be too time consuming. Magi-speak was quicker, and more private as well. No point in revealing what our plan was to anyone close enough to hear us shouting. "If they haven't already. We need transportation."

"The train," she Whispered back.

"It won't be running," I countered. "They'll have shut it down."

She glanced at me, a tight smile on her shining face. "I hope so. That'll make it easy."

She was right. Getting the train moving was the easy part.

The RER-B train was in its bay beneath the central terminal, and though we had to force our way downstairs through a throng of confused people—the panic caused by the fire alarm was only now spreading to the other terminals—we managed to reach the landing beside the smooth bullet shape of the train.

The doors were closed, and the interior lights were dimmed; no one was in the front blister of the cockpit. De Gaulle security was already reacting to the fire alarm and the psychic confusion of our spells as if the airport was being subjected to a terrorist attack.

Marielle whispered a tiny invocation as she ran her fingers across the access panel beside the doors. With a sigh of compressed air, they slid open. Once I was inside, she pinched the loop of her magick, and the doors closed again with a tiny pop.

She went forward to get the train moving, and I stayed in the back to watch for the others. Shortly thereafter, the lights brightened and the train jerked forward a few feet. This aborted leap became a shuddering crawl that shook the whole car, and as the train picked up speed, the vibrations lessened. Archways and marbled partitions flashed past, followed by longer stretches of open sky as we left the terminal.

A nearby display showed the system map for this line. De Gaulle, past Parc des Expositions, Le Blanc-Mesnil, Le Bourget and Gare du Nord, to the central hub of Châtelet/Les Halles—Paris' nexus of subway lines. From there we could get a connection to anywhere else in the city. The crowds would help us again. A confusion of lights would make us impossible to track.

Of course, we'd be coming in on an empty train. One that had been hijacked from the airport. Somehow, I didn't think we'd make it that far before other forces than the Watchers would be surrounding us. We had to get off earlier. Somewhere in the suburbs.

As I started forward, I heard the rattling sound of a door being opened. The Chorus reacted as a spell ignited, spinning open into a rigid fan behind me. The air in the car crackled, and the windows on either side of the car blew out in a cough of shattered glass. My shoulder glanced off one of the upright metal bars of the seats as I was knocked forward, falling on my side and sliding across the floor. There was a black ring of scorched paint where I had been standing a moment before, and beyond, framed in the narrow door between cars, Charles and Henri.

Charles didn't hesitate this time. As he charged up the aisle, his right hand snapped down, telescoping out the metal wand in his fist. Violet light limned the shaft and a tiny spark flickered at the tip. I scrambled into a crouch, and dodged his first swing. He caught me on the side of the head with his left fist, and as I shook that hit off, he delivered a short backhand to my right knee with the stick.

My leg collapsed, nerves deadened and muscles short-circuited by the magickal discharge of his wand. I bounced off the hard plastic of the nearby seat, and barely rolled out of the way of another jab with the stick. I tried to connect with my left foot, but Charles swept the blow aside and I felt my foot go numb from contact with the wand.

Bad, getting worse. He was just going to keep whacking me with the stick, each shot taking out another body part. With one leg out of commission and the other one as functional as a peg-leg, I was already too slow to avoid him long. Piecemeal attrition. He was going to take me down.

Charles knew it too. His next swing was slow and clumsy. He didn't have to try too hard. What was I going to do?

Vis.
I grabbed the end of the wand in my left hand, and as the jolt of magick deadened the arm, I pulled him forward. Storming at my command, the Chorus filled the muscles of my right hand as I reached for his wrist. His expression changed as my magick grip compressed the joint. I squeezed and twisted, breaking a few bones, and his grip faltered.

The spell flickered on his wand, and as it brushed my chest, all I felt was a light tingling on my skin. Clumsily, I swept at his legs with the dead weight of my own, and knocked him off balance. As he fell, Charles tried to catch himself with his bad hand—the instinctive reaction of the lizard brain—and he cried out as bone moved unnaturally in his wrist.

More importantly, he dropped the rod.

Falling onto my side, I reached for it, getting a finger on its handle. The Chorus bound the stick to me, and I poured my own magick into its shaft.
Ignis
.

Charles was bent over, cradling his wrist. Violet streamers were running along his shoulders and down his right arm. Armor magick. He didn't have time to rebuild the bones, but he could lock them into place so the injury wouldn't stop him. I cracked him on the cheekbone with the rod, and as he reared back, I drove the point into the base of his throat.

My spell was different, and he knew it as soon as the metal tip burned his flesh.

Gagging and flailing, he fell back against the edge of the bench seat behind him. I put as much pressure as I could manage against the rod, and he bent back along the bench, trying to get away from the smoldering tip of the metal wand.