by Tom Dowd
"I think they may have been here," Kyle said to Seeks-the-Moon, who'd quietly followed him in. The spirit nodded.
They continued to search, but turned up nothing of further interest except some dishes in the dishwasher. Kyle counted them and paired them with utensils and drinking glasses also sitting there. One partial set was smaller, as if someone had deliberately been given a smaller portion of what looked like prepackaged lasagna. The drinking glass was even a tumbler, not full-sized. The food was hard, but hadn't yet begun to turn bad, probably not more than a day or two old.
Kyle nodded. "They've been here."
Seeks-the-Moon called out to him. 'Then you should look at this." He was back in the living room.
Kyle walked out mere and found Moon pushing a small tack into the wall. A tattered and torn sheet of paper dangled from it.
"What's that?" Kyle asked.
"It was on the floor. I think it was hanging here and someone ripped it down."
Kyle looked at the paper, but it was only a fragment obviously torn from a larger sheet. "Is the rest of it around?"
Seeks-the-Moon shook his head. "I haven't found it."
Kyle nodded, also looking this way and that. "If the whole sheet was torn down by looters, why isn't it here?"
"You think they would have torn it down and left it on the floor?"
"Why do anything else? Why take it if it had no value?"
"Depending on what it said, they may have perceived it as having value to someone else."
Kyle stared at him. "That's hard to believe."
"You don't believe your people are capable of such things?"
Kyle looked away. "It doesn't make any sense."
The spirit shrugged. "The people your wife and daughter are with may have taken it down themselves."
"What do you mean?"
"They wouldn't want anyone to know where they were going," Seeks-the-Moon said, "but they also would not want to alarm your wife by refusing to let her post a note to you."
"So after Beth and Natalie left, someone or something pulled the note down."
The spirit nodded.
Kyle turned and looked at where the fragment of paper hung. "I think I prefer your other suggestion," he said.
* * * *
After quickly checking some of the other apartments in the building, and finding nothing, Kyle and Seeks-the-Moon went back to the car. It was exactly as they'd left it, but Kyle stood there looking across the street at the barricaded house. "I want to see if they know anything," he said.
"They don't seem very sociable," Seeks-the-Moon said.
"Maybe." Kyle unslung the submachine gun from under the long coat and passed it to the spirit. "They're probably just scared."
"Fear does not promote rational thought."
"I know," Kyle said, "but I have to ask."
Seeks-the-Moon walked with Kyle to the edge of the curb, then Kyle continued alone toward the house, his arms held out, palms open.
"Hoi!" he called out as he reached the far curb. There was no response, so he continued forward a few more steps. "Is anyone home?"
Kyle saw a piece of wood pull away from one of the windows, and then he dimly made out a face—he thought it was a woman's—and the muzzle of a shotgun. Both were looking at him.
"What do you want?" the woman shouted. She sounded young, barely more than a teenager.
"I'm looking for my sister-in-law, Ellen Shaw. She lived across the street in that apartment." He pointed back at the building. "I think my wife and daughter are with her, and I'm trying to find them."
The shadowed face pulled away, but the shotgun remained. The woman returned in a few moments. "They're gone," she said. "There were about a dozen of them, but they're gone."
"How long ago?"
"Day before yesterday."
"Do you know where they went?" he asked.
"They said they were going to some relief camp."
"Relief camp? Do you know where?"
"No, they didn't say."
Kyle cursed under his breath. "Did you see which way they went?"
"Down that way. But I didn't really watch."
"Was there a little girl with them?"
He could see the woman nod. “Two of them. One was carrying a cat."
Kyle nodded. "Thanks," he said, and started to turn away, but the woman called out to him.
"Has he come yet?" she yelled.
Kyle turned back. "I'm sorry?" he replied.
"Has he come yet?"
"Who?"
"Jesus."
Kyle paused and looked deep into the shadows through the window. The shotgun was there, and so was the faint outline of a woman's head, but he could see nothing else. He allowed his perceptions to slip into astral space for just a moment, and he could see her aura, flickering madly about her, a torrent of emotions.
"No," Kyle said evenly. "I don't think he has."
"Don't despair," she said. "He'll come soon. Then you'll find your wife and child."
Kyle nodded again, stepping back. "Thank you. I'll keep an eye out for him."
The wood slid back into place as Kyle turned back toward Seeks-the-Moon, shaking his head. Seeks-the-Moon merely shrugged. "We all seek something," he said, and together they walked slowly back to the car.
29
Returning north, Kyle drove the rapidly disintegrating Jack-rabbit along Cicero Avenue. About halfway, just north of Division, they passed through the site of what must have been a gang battle. At least a dozen lay dead in the street, such that Kyle couldn't help but roll slowly over one with the car. A pack of dogs, themselves fighting over the bodies, scattered as he passed. Neither he nor Seeks-the-Moon said a word.
When they finally made it back to the Knight Errant safehouse, Vathoss introduced them to three "new" team members—Knight Errant security guards caught inside when the Containment Zone was established. Kyle questioned them, but neither had been at the Truman Tower or knew where any of its occupants might have gone.
Anne Ravenheart was gone too. According to Vathoss, she and some of the other troopers were out investigating a surveillance post near a gathering point that had reported some activity. Kyle tried to get more information, but the sergeant wasn't talking. No one was, and Kyle sensed a growing unease among the troopers. Time was passing and nothing was happening.
As twilight came, one of the troopers that had gone out with Captain Ravenheart returned with the message that she wanted Kyle to join her at the surveillance post—the people at the garnering point seemed to be preparing to move to another location.
The trooper, a rookie named Canelli, was driving an "appropriated" Honda Viking heavy motorcycle, which could carry one additional person. Seeks-the-Moon reluctantly suggested he follow the cycle in astral space, despite his continuing concern about attracting the attention of the bugs.
Kyle had a better idea. Seeks-the-Moon would climb on behind Canelli, while Kyle, held aloft by a levitation spell, held on for dear life. The three of them set off like that, Kyle hoping he understood the properties of the spell as good as he thought he did.
The cycle made its way west, and then south, heading so far in that direction that Kyle thought they were going to the Cicero area where his sister-in-law's apartment was located. But Canelli turned the bike east before they got that far, coming to a stop near Chicago and Kedzie. After hiding the bike behind an overturned garbage dumpster and under the watchful eye of a nearby half-hidden Knight Errant trooper, Canelli led them through the back entrance of what looked like an old warehouse or storage building. Kyle dropped his levitation spell, not wanting to attract astral attention.
Inside, they found Ravenheart, Lim, and two other troopers clustered around a small closed-circuit video monitor. The image showed another building similar to this one, with a crisscross of train tracks and uncoupled railroad cars in the background. From what he'd seen on approach Kyle suspected the area was almost directly across the street. He could
see movement on the screen, some figures clustered around one of the doors, given away by the telltale glow of cigarettes. Beyond them, Kyle could just barely make out the front end of what seemed to be a Chicago Transit Authority bus.
"What's going on?" he asked, squatting down next to Ravenheart.
"About an hour ago two men arrived in a car and I popped up and risked a peek at them astrally," she said. "Let's just say they were looking a little fuzzy around the edges."
Kyle nodded. He knew that the use of electronic surveillance was common when watching potentially magically active targets since a human observer could be detected by his aura, which was how he'd spotted the woman in the house across from Ellen's. It was safer to pop up, astrally active, for a quick, hopefully detailed look, than risk detection
They went inside, and soon after there was a lot of activity," she continued. "It looked to me like they were starting to pack up. About a half-hour later two buses arrived. The first one loaded up pretty quick and headed out. We weren't in position to follow it, so we let it go. When this one leaves, we're going to tail it."
"How many guards or people do you think might be possessed, or whatever it is they are," Kyle asked, squinting at the monitor.
She shrugged. "Can't tell. We've seen six different people with wrong auras. So there are at least that many."
"Any idea how many more are inside?"
"No. Maybe forty or so, but that's a real out of my butt guess," she said with a shrug. "Any luck with your wife?"
"No. They've been to the apartment, but according to a neighbor they went off to some 'relief camp'. The neighbor didn't know where."
"Sorry," Ravenheart said, touching his arm for a moment.
Kyle looked toward the monitor. "Is this the closest gathering spot you know to the Cicero area?" he asked.
Her eyes widened slightly. “That we know of. Cicero—I assume you mean the township—is only a couple of kilometers to the southeast."
"So this might be where they ended up," Kyle said slowly.
"Possible."
There is one very powerful out there," Seeks-the-Moon said suddenly.
Kyle and Ravenheart both turned toward him. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"There is a very powerful spirit out there," he said, looking away as he seemed to stare through the wall. "I can smell him."
"Can he sense you?" Kyle asked.
Seeks-the-Moon shrugged. "I don't know, but I hope I do not smell as bad as it does."
Ravenheart turned to Kyle. "Makes sense that they'd send a powerful one to guard the buses if they were transferring the people."
Kyle nodded. "I know you've got to follow them, but first I've got to find out if Beth and Natalie are in there."
Ravenheart looked away. "I can't let you do that. I can't let you jeopardize our chances of finding the main nest." She turned back and stared at him. "If they were here, they may have already left in the other bus."
"I have to find out, Anne," Kyle said, matching her stare.
She frowned. "There's only one way I'll let you do it. Take yourself a couple of blocks from here and astrally project. Check out the bus that way. If anything chases you, get me frag out of there and lose it. If they only see one idiot human, they might not panic."
"Gee, thanks," he said.
"Better get a move on it. That bus'll be loaded soon."
Kyle stood up and shook out the cramps in his legs. He turned toward Seeks-the-Moon. "Watch my body?"
The spirit simply nodded and followed him out the back door.
* * * *
Enveloped in the warm flow of astral space, Kyle watched the bus from two blocks to the south. He could tell that it was almost full—the glow emanating from the auras of the people packed into it almost flowed out into the street.
Waiting until he no longer saw anyone outside the building, he shot forward, gliding a few millimeters off the ground, and slipped through the sheet-metal and plastic walls of the building. As he passed through, he immediately willed himself upward, hoping to get lost in the rafters of the building, assuming mere were any.
There were, barely, a meter or two of clearance filled with pipes and support beams. Below him, seemingly unaware of his presence, were a dozen or so men and women, the auras of two-thirds of them rife with dark streaks and bursts of confusion. They all stood around a figure lying on one of the many cots in the room. He could hear the conversation, and gathered from it that her family—the four other normal-seeming auras—feared that she was too weak to travel. Some otthers were attempting to explain to the family that the bus was waiting. The family wasn't listening.
He recognized none of them by their auras or what he could make out of their physical forms, and willed himself upward, hoping to pass through the roof. His astral body couldn't, though. There were planks of wood across the roof, and he couldn't pass astrally through that once-living material. Staying as close to the ceiling as possible, Kyle began to drift forward toward the far wall, hoping to slip out there. As he went he noticed that three of the insect-possessed humans had moved off and were having a hushed argument. He also noticed that the old woman seemed to be watching him. Her head, at least, turned as he drifted forward, seemingly tracking his movement. He thought about pausing to get a better look at her, but decided against it, and instead accelerated his motion.
He reached the wall, and easily slipped his head through the inorganic metal there. Talking quietly among themselves near the door of the bus were three of what Kyle took to be guards. From the bus streamed some light, but Kyle saw no one inside it. Nor did he sense any sign of the powerful spirit that Seeks-the-Moon had detected.
He was concerned about reaching the bus without detection, but could think of no simple way of creating a diversion while in astral form. He watched them for a moment, and when they all seemed to glance down or look away, he shot over to the roof of the bus with the speed of thought.
Just as he brought himself to a stop flush against the metal roof, Kyle heard a door of the warehouse slam shut and a pair of voices begin an indiscernible conversation. More voices quickly joined in. Kyle took that as his chance to shift position to where his head dropped down through the roof of the bus.
There were dozens of people inside, men, women, and children. Propelling himself forward he looked quickly at each of their auras, hoping to recognize one. All were unfamiliar.
As he came to the last one at the front of the bus, a tall man with short dark hair and a crumpled long coat stepped into the bus, his aura bearing no resemblance to anything human. He immediately stopped, surprised, and then lunged up at Kyle's head, his face and aura instantly turning dark.
Unrestrained by the confines of the flesh, Kyle was far faster. Before the newcomer could move even two steps, let alone try to seize his astral head, Kyle was gone, moving at the speed of thought toward the railway yard. He shot between cars, keeping himself a meter or two off the ground to use them as cover. He turned quickly, once, twice, and then back toward the bus. From cover inside one of the freight cars he could see the bus pulling away quickly.
Staying out of its view, he crossed between more cars and then accelerated back to where his body was. He reached it, slipped back inside, and almost leaped to his feet in one motion. Seeks-the-Moon, seated in an old wooden chair in the back room they'd broken into, eyed him expectantly.
"They weren't there," Kyle said, picking up the Ares assault rifle he'd been carrying. "But I did see your spirit buddy."
The spirit raised an eyebrow.
"I think he was like the others, an insect spirit possessing a human body, but he was a powerful fragger," Kyle told him, "and I think he could mask his aura."
The spirit seemed surprised. "How well?"
"Don't know," Kyle said as they left the building, "but I think I caught him with his guard down. He could see me in astral space, even took a swipe at me, but he didn't pursue. I think he was stuck in the flesh." They began jogging t
oward where the Knight Errant troopers had been. Kyle could hear engines beginning to recede in the distance.
"How distasteful," Seeks-the-Moon said
Kyle didn't answer, but as the two reached the alley behind the building Ravenheart and the others had been using for surveillance of the gathering site, he could see that the guard and Canelli's motorcycle were missing.
"Drek!" Kyle cursed. “They better not have moved out already."
The two dashed into the building and up the short flight of stairs to the room where the trooper had been. It was empty.
Kyle slammed his fist into empty air. "God-frag-it!"
"The bus can't have gotten far," Seeks-the-Moon said. "I can still almost hear the motor."
"Yeah, but we're on foot. And to travel fast enough we'd either have to go astral or use magic, which that fraggin' man-bug-spirit thing will notice like a flare going off." Kyle was pacing the room as he spoke, then suddenly stopped at one of the partially broken windows. A man was sprinting toward the warehouse.
"Come on!" Kyle said, and dashed toward a different stairwell that seemed to lead down toward the front of the building. It did, and ended near a partially broken-open front door. Kyle shouldered his way through the door, then he and Moon dashed across the street toward the warehouse, Kyle quickly activating all his foci as they went.
"Wait!" said the spirit. "You don't know what might still be there!"
Kyle ignored him and rushed toward the rear door he'd seen the sprinter heading toward. Approaching, he could hear it locking shut and a man's voice on the other side beginning to shout. Kyle slowed, slung the rifle, and ran the formula for a powerful blast of raw physical power through his head. He released the spell, barely pausing in his dash, and watched with some satisfaction as the weak wooden door disintegrated in front of him.
"Keep at least one alive!" Kyle called out as he rushed in, the spell for a physical shield racing through his mind. It sprung into being, a transparent rectangle of shimmering blue energy, as the man, who'd ducked to one side of the door, threw a skillful martial arts kick at Kyle's head.