Free Heartland-The Second Book of the Codex of Souls by Mark Teppo

your agent of vengeance.
    That is all you will ever be, an echo of Philippe, twisting through the Chorus.
    The images cycled through my head as I rubbed my face: Philippe, sitting in the chair; the flickering streamers of light caught in the fireplace; the suppurating blackness of his leg; the pale skin of the crown of his head; his pupils, dilating as the spike of the Chorus split his heart. These were my memories, and while my rank was no longer recognized by the society, these images were a True Record. I was the sole Witness to the Hierarch's death, and even though the rites of combat said I took the spoils, no one would believe me. Which meant that the body politic was headless, and like Antoine had said, who knew how stable that body was going to be.
    The Coronation. Via the network of bound memory, I knew what happened after the death of the Hierarch. There was a resurrection, a ceremonial recognition where the new leader was Crowned. Recognized by both the rank and by some external agency. Some sort of institutional memory, a historical legacy that was passed on to each new Hierarch. The Spirit of the Land. The Secrets of the Ages. The Truth to the Inner Mystery. The combination to the safe in the back room where all the deadly occult paraphernalia was held. Or some such thing.
    There were other secrets too, hidden by the noise of the Chorus. The Qliphoth had hidden in that confusion and darkness; after I had scoured them out, it was as if I had driven the rats out of the basement, but the room was still there. Dark, inviting, and who knew how far back it went. All I did know was that Philippe was in there, and he had locked the door shut from the inside. I didn't have the strength to force my way in, nor did I have a key.
    That damn key. Did Antoine know what it was for?
     
    I showered, discovered there was nothing edible in the refrigerator, and used that as a convenient excuse to walk away from the safe house. Pants, shoes, shirt, wallet, tarot deck, crawling paranoia about being in the heart of the enemy's empire: everything I needed. I left the passport—no point in carrying the false identity anymore; not when they knew I was here—and my jacket. The burn pattern on the front would draw too much attention. I could pick up another at a shop somewhere. I went up the stairs, out the front door, and found myself in a narrow alley.
    Residential neighborhood. The surrounding buildings were gray concrete, the sort of invisible architecture thrown up during the bleaker part of the Cold War. Windows, placed in precise rows, were afterthoughts, squares cut out of the foreboding walls. The accreted history of the lower classes, packed tightly together in little boxes. The Chorus didn't sense any danger, nor any watchers behind the curtains of the numerous dull windows along the alley. I turned left and started walking.
    Eventually, I'd spot a landmark. This was Paris, after all. You're never far from a picturesque monument or historical landmark.
    In this case, the Père Lachaise Cemetery. One of the world's largest cemeteries, Père Lachaise was a nineteenth-century solution to the problem of overflowing churchyards, and had become a status symbol in the subsequent centuries. You weren't somebody until you were buried at Père Lachaise.
    I followed the old stone wall, tracing the rectangular shape of the city of the dead until I found the collection of shops clustered around one of the cemetery's entrances. I needed a few things. Coffee, coat, cell phone: Maslow mapped to the twenty-first century. Start at the bottom, work up.
    After procuring the items on my list, I settled at a sidewalk table, outside the Brasserie du Père Lachaise. The wind was light, from the north, and the sun was out, so it wasn't too cold. Winter was dying; spring was coming.
    The Chorus reminded me of the field beyond Philippe's farmhouse. In the spring, it exploded with wild flowers.
    In the spring  . . .
    The cell phone I picked up at the