Tom Dowd - Burning Bright

Kyle sighed and glanced at Hanna.

She smiled weakly. "Please, don't spare any details on my account."

Kyle drew in a breath. "All right, you win. She used a surgical scalpel to drain some of her own blood and the child's into a tub of water. Just before the baby got too weak, she drowned him in it and then burned the body."

The four men looked at each other and nodded. Hanna had gone pale and seemed to be struggling to hang on to her composure.

"Happy now?" Kyle asked.

"Look," Walsh said, "you seem to be forgetting that-"

Kyle cut him off angrily. "No, you've forgotten that every second we stand here playing games might be the one by which we miss them."

The two junior officers looked like they wanted to continue the argument, but Commander Malley silenced them with a glare. "You're right, Mr. Teller," he said. "Sergeants Walsh and Woodhouse are the magicians on the team. Sometimes we all get a little territorial. Why don't you give us the tactical situation as you see it?"

Kyle nodded. "No offense taken," he said, though no one had offered an apology. "A force of unknown number, consisting of powerful spirits, has kidnapped the son of my client. From everything that I've seen and heard, these spirits resemble insects and they breed using human hosts. I've specifically seen one in the form of a cockroach."

Walsh blanched slightly, as did Malley, who said, "We've had the occasional unexplained contact with insect-like spirits before, but nothing we could categorize or build any information from. They seemed to be anomalies rather than something we needed to be concerned about."

"Aberrations," Kyle said, "Well, I'm afraid we might be dealing with entire nests or hives, or however they group themselves, including queen spirits and Coyote knows what else. There might even be more man one type of insect spirit present"

"So we're facing significant opposition?" asked Malley.

"You'd better believe it. And most normal tactics won't work against them because they're spirits. How experienced are your people in fighting spirits?"

Malley frowned. "Trained against them, but not experienced."

"The one I fought was pretty powerful, but if your people keep their heads, I think they'll manage."

"But we don't even know where they are," said Chief Lekas.

"I know where they are," said Kyle. "I just haven't found it yet."

"Ritual?" asked Walsh.

Kyle nodded, pointing north and west. "That way, not too far. Can your people take me up in a helicopter? I can find it faster that way than trying to reconnoiter on the ground."

"Makes sense," said Malley. "I'll head my team in that direction, and once you find the location, we can go straight there instead of blindly driving around."

"Excuse me, sir," said Woodhouse. "I've got a suggestion."

Malley raised an eyebrow. "Of course. Sergeant. Speak up."

"Mr. Teller could recon astrally. It would be a lot faster than the helicopter."

Kyle shook his head. "Thought of that, but I don't know Chicago well enough to recognize where I am by positions of roads and buildings." He turned to explain to Hanna. "You can't read signs from astral space, only sense emotions associated with the information on them. If they're anything, road signs are unemotional."

Hanna nodded, giving him a wan smile. She seemed lost, out of her element with tactical and mystical matters she barely understood. But he could see that she was taking it all in, absorbing it, and most likely learning from it.

"One of us will go with you," said Walsh.

Kyle paused to think. "That would work."

"If you stay in view, I shouldn't have any trouble following you," the sergeant said. "We can leave our bodies in the truck and then start north along Western."

Malley nodded. "Sounds good to me, if you agree, Mr. Teller."

"Yes. It'll speed things up."

The commander gestured to two observation chairs near the truck's telecommunications suite. As Kyle and Walsh settled into them, Malley jacked into the tactical system and began issuing orders.

"If you need me while I'm out, slap me as hard as you can," Kyle told Hanna. "I…" she said, obviously surprised. "If you say so."

"If you hit me hard enough, it'll jerk my spirit back into I my body. Otherwise, there's no way to get in touch with me."

"I should warn you, I'm pretty strong," Hanna said.

Kyle smiled. "Great." He looked at Walsh, but the mage had already lapsed into unconsciousness, his astral form probably floating free. "Gotta go," said Kyle, and he leaned back, relaxing his body, shifting his focus, and finally slipped free of his body as the tone and texture of the command van shifted.

Walsh was waiting there, standing next to his body, surrounded by a nimbus of blue and gold energy. Otherwise, except for Woodhouse and the mundane auras of the others present, the command van interior was cold and sterile, and reeked faintly of hard emotions like anger and fear.

"Lead on, Mr. Teller," Walsh said. "Though you might want to dampen yourself somewhat."

Kyle nodded, realizing that his foci were radiating considerable magical energy, energy that would serve as a flare to anyone or anything looking for them. With a quick thought, he subsumed the radiating power into his own aura, masking the overflow. It was uncomfortable, but bearable. Walsh nodded approval.

Kyle turned toward what he knew to be the direction in which Mitch Truman's body had been just over an hour ago.

He slipped through the walls of the command van, Walsh drifting after him, and then shot off, as quickly as he could, toward the lake.

Walsh followed on his tail along the dim, life-accented, careening track of North Avenue and then finally out over the bright lake itself. "I thought you said the site was to the northwest," the sergeant said, drawing abreast of Kyle's floating astral form.

"It is. I'm concerned about pursuit or surveillance."

The two hung there for several heartbeats, but saw no sign of any other astral presences.

Kyle signaled, and they dropped down to the surface of the lake and skirted its edge, skimming over the various sun-bathers, bike-riders, strutters, dog-walkers, and other denizens of Chicago out to enjoy the afternoon sun. As the coastline changed at where Kyle believed Fullerton to be, he soared inland, Walsh close behind.

The effects of the earlier ritual pulled at Kyle, guiding him ever farther north and west. He pushed on, passing across the breadth of Chicago's northside in a few blinks of an eye. Then, sensing he was near, he slowed and dropped closer to the ground. Walsh drew up alongside him.

"Any idea where we are?" Kyle asked him. "I sure as drek don't."

Walsh nodded. "Near Harlem and Irving Park."

"I'm going to go low and coast. I don't want to suddenly be on top of this place."

Kyle drifted down to just above the level of the cars passing on the major road beneath them. He tried to judge the distance carefully to keep from being brushed aside or sent spinning by the physical mass of the people in those cars. At the approach to a major intersection, he could sense a surge of emotion as the light changed and a slight gridlock developed. When Kyle finally came down to the ground, he chose to land in a trash barrel so no one would bump into him. Walsh dropped down a short distance behind him, pressed half into a storefront. They both hoped the auras of the mundanes passing by would conceal them from anything that happened to look their way.

"We there?" asked Walsh.

"Yes," said Kyle, pointing north along the intersecting street. "It's right up there, third one in." There was little that could be seen, just a dim storefront. Nothing magical. Nothing extraordinary.

"Looks normal," said Walsh. 'They could be gone already."

"Let's hope not."