Something burned my side, and when I slapped at my coat, my hand hit the pack of tarot cards in one of the inner pockets. Like a detoxing alcoholic who finds a tiny bottle of vodka in the sofa cushions, I dug for the bag and fumbled with the strings. The cards spilled out, and I frantically grabbed at them, trying not to lose any.
Death. The Tower. Lots of swords. The Eight of Cups. The Moon. The High Priestess. Too many. Too many possibilities. I couldn't focus, and I felt like I was drowning. The beats were waves, battering me against an unyielding shore. Too. . many. . choices.
It was the Chorus, flush with a cacophony of voices. Too many willful souls so recently taken. I couldn't control them, not in my current state. Their histories and personalities were overwhelming me-still too vibrant-and I was vanishing. Struggling to block out the sensory tumult of the dance floor, I tried to relax. Don't force it, I thought. Don't try so hard. My hands knew what to do. They could master the deck, and I wouldn't drop any of the cards; and if I could hold the cards, I could hold my thread. I could find myself again.
Somewhere in the rush of noise in my head and the pounding waves of sounds, I found shelter. I imagined a tiny alcove, almost like a monk's cell, tucked away in the bowels of an unknown monastery. No light. No windows. Just a space large enough for a man to kneel and consider his own fate. His own choices, and the paths granted to him. A quiet place, where I could sift through the detritus and the dross of my being and ascertain what had been lost. Where I could remember who I was.
This tiny place was like the altar I had visited. Not in any profane church, not in any physical building. The one surrounded by wind and light, though when I realized the stone was there beside me, there was neither wind nor light. Just an empty void, a vacuum without life or spark.
The stone was bare, unmarked by Bernard's water. This place was untouched, unmarked by sacrifice. I hadn't come here yet. No one had. It didn't exist. Not yet. It was just an idea in my head.
There was something in my hands, and I thought it was the deck of cards, but it wasn't. The cards were gone, gone with the rest of the real. I was somewhere else, hidden away in this wilderness of the mind. The object in my hand was luminous, twitching and squirming in my grasp as if it were alive. My fingers were translucent from its light.
There was a wound in my side, a long rip weeping slow tears. Dried on my naked skin, in a track running down to my waist and thigh, was a line of rose petals.
If I opened my hands, would the light go out? There was no answer to my question, not even from my own spirit, and so I kept my hands pressed together tightly. I was afraid to find out what happened next.
I do not Know the course of the future. I cannot See what comes next.
In the darkness before the world began, I hugged my warm hands to my bare chest and wept.
Drink, my lord. Drink from this vessel.
Marielle put the cup to my lips, and I coughed as the acidic vapors burned my nose. I recoiled and my head banged against the bulkhead. My lips refused to cooperate.
"Michael," she said. "Drink it. It smells worse than it is."
The fumes seared my nose and eyes badly enough that I gasped in pain, and Marielle forced the cup between my teeth and tipped it up. The fluid moved like half-frozen sludge and tasted like motor oil mixed with battery acid and putrid fruit. I choked on the first sip, nearly spit it out, but managed to keep my lips pressed together. It went down like you'd expect that combination to, burning all the way, and the explosion it caused in my stomach forced all the air out of my lungs. My vision went white, and I felt electricity spark from my fingers and toes.
The second sip went down more easily. By the third, I could feel my arms again, and after that, I held the cup myself. Drinking the potion greedily as if it were nectar squeezed from a half-dozen exotic fruit.
At least, that's what I told myself. It still tasted like rotten apples coated in axle grease and bile, but I knew it wasn't going to kill me. On the contrary, it was cleaning me out. Of a lot of things. The magickal purge. One potion washes away all manner of sin and poisons.
"God, that's toxic," I managed when my throat worked well enough for words.
"Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger," she said.
"Fuck Nietzsche. He never had to drink that stuff."
She patted me on the chest and then left her hand there. "And look. Your mood has improved too."
I nodded at the battered cup. "Where did you get that? From the engine room? They didn't have something cleaner?"
"The cocktail would have melted anything else," she said.
I ran my tongue over my teeth. "I think it stripped off a layer of enamel." My stomach still boiled, but the prickling fire in my joints was gone, and the noise in my head had fallen to a dull roar. The normal sort of roar. The music, while still a pervasive pressure, wasn't as bowel-rattling as it had been a few minutes earlier.
She was right: I was stronger.
A man in black leather and a mask that blocked all his peripheral vision bumped into Marielle and she pressed more firmly against me. Her fingers started tapping on my chest. "You need to move around," she said, her mouth close to my ear. Her breath was hot on my neck, and I felt a welcome flush of blood move through my skin. "Get your blood circulating. Make sure all the toxins are burned out."
"What do you suggest?"
She nodded toward the crush of bodies on the dance floor, and her hair brushed the side of my face.
"Strictly for medical reasons?" I asked.
"Of course." She nipped my earlobe.
I looked toward the bar. Beneath the metal fish on the wall, a pair of young women dressed as goth Lolitas were busy texting on their mobile phones. Probably to each other. There was no sign of the centurion. Nor was there any sensation from the reinvigorated Chorus that Antoine was still in the crowd somewhere. If he ever had been.
"Come on." She dragged me into the mass of dancers, and I gave up looking for something that wasn't there. Her hand was hot and real, and the rest faded away. It was all a dream, and what I held was what mattered. It might be enough, I told myself.
The last time we had danced in public had been the New Year's party/millennium celebration at a place simply known by a Greek symbol. I had no idea if Omega was still there, though I doubted it; the party that night had had a vibrant fatalism about it, as if either we or the place itself wouldn't survive past dawn.
There had been Watchers there-Bento, the last one from our little coterie who was still speaking with me, and a number of others-and the mood, while celebratory, had been slightly tense. Ever since the game of Hunt the Werewolf had gone badly in Bechenaux, Antoine and I had been circling each other, waiting for an opportunity. In the months and years since that night, I had come to realize that it wasn't that Marielle had been blind to our antagonism, she had simply expected us to behave better. The question never satisfactorily answered was who had been the most naive that night: Antoine and I, or her.
In that moment, during those few hours before New Year's Day, I hadn't cared. The world shrank to her and me; everything else was hidden behind a barrier of rhythm and light. She and I moved against one another, breathing in time. Her hands against my chest. My mouth on hers. My hands in her hair. Our breath, moving back and forth. Her voice, Whispering in my head in a way that made the Chorus jealous.