Lightbreaker tcos-1 Read online

  They were heading for the men's room. One of the two suits was babbling, strings of words that were making the state employee nervous and the cop curious. They clattered off the stairs and disappeared down the hall toward the dead man in the restroom. I glided down the stairs, leaving them to their grisly discovery.

  The astral traveler was still on the boat. He had ravaged one body already. I had to find him before he attacked another soul, before he wreaked havoc on someone else.

  II

  The cold air was a hard kiss on my face as I emerged into the open bay. Eight rows of cars waited under the exposed vault of the ferry, and I felt like I was inside a gargantuan whale. Steel spans colored green and orange by rust and weather framed the ferry's open throat. The wind wailed through this gullet, its outrage channeled by the curve of steel over the flat teeth of the cars ordered in precise rows along the bottom. The stink of brine mingled with the pervasive odor of oil and wet machinery, the decaying halitosis of this metal whale.

  He was down here, searching for another host. Some ferry passengers stayed with their cars, comfortable and oblivious in their metal and plastic cocoons-their favorite morning talk radio on the dial, their personalized Starbucks beverage in the drink holder, the climate inside their isolated biospheres mimicking the weather at their dream vacation destination. They would be drowsy, distracted, half-awake: easy targets for an aggressive spirit.

  DOT maximized the use of space down here, packing the cars tightly together. While the bumpers of many cars touched, rubber kisses between strangers, others kept a discrete eight inches or so apart, just enough room to sidle between. I wove a random pattern through these gaps as I checked passengers.

  Through the silver filigree of the overlay supplied by the Chorus, I searched for conflicts on the spirit level. Hot spots glowed like fallen meteors within rectangular shapes, while thin ribbons of mist streamed between cars. The wide ribbon of a man-laid ley throbbed beneath my feet.

  There. A strange flicker of light. One row over and two cars forward. A white Acura.

  In the driver's seat, sitting still as a stone, was a middle-aged businesswoman. Her head vibrated nearly imperceptibly, a rhythmic tic like a worn second hand on an old watch, and her hands were clenched about the steering wheel. A wide wedding band with a myriad of tiny diamonds was the only jewelry on her fingers. A thin thread of blood dripped over the curve of her lower lip, the result of an involuntary collision between tooth and skin. Silver light sparked in her eyes.

  He didn't have control yet. He was a foreign element in her body; he could be extracted without damaging her, without rupturing the integrity of her shell. Physical damage would heal itself-in time-but a tearing of the sheath would be. . Yes, she could be spared that choice.

  I lashed the Chorus into my knuckles, and drove my hardened fist through the window. Glass exploded into the car, ice crystals raining into the woman's hair. She flinched, but not enough to avoid my hand. I wrapped my fingers around the side of her head.

  She screamed, a harsh cry of a soprano imitating a tenor, as the Chorus sparked through the physical contact. The invading spirit felt me coming, and dove deeper into her flesh.

  She released her death grip on the steering wheel, and started to beat the covered leather in a frenzied rhythm. She could feel the biting hunger of the Chorus, and knowing what they wanted, she instinctively fought to give up the invader. He just burrowed deeper into her psyche.

  I let go. She was aware enough now to fight her own battle. By right of ownership, she had the advantage. One soul, one body-the spiritual anchors gravitated to the relationship they knew.

  The bawling note of the boat's horn reverberated through the hold. We were in Elliott Bay, the jagged skyline of Seattle visible in front of the ferry. Through the rain, the buildings were limned with the faint orange and pink glow of dawn. We weren't more than five minutes from the pier. I had a little time yet-five, maybe ten minutes-but, judging from the flickering of red, orange, and blue lights coming from the edge of the pier, the situation was about to get very complicated as we arrived.

  The dead body in the bathroom stall. The detective had called his friends. Police and fire waited for the ferry's arrival. I had to be done wrestling with the spirit when the boat docked.

  In the Acura, the woman's hands went to the steering wheel again, knuckles bone white on the leather. Her head snapped back, smacking the headrest hard enough to rock the entire seat, and then forward as she vomited a stream of silver light.

  The amorphous cloud of silver light was lit in the center by the quivering spark of a soul. The diaphanous cloud drifted through the windshield of the car, and the Chorus tightened around my neck as they touched the trailing edge. The woman's soul. He had forced her out of her own body.

  The ferry horn blew again. As the subsonic echo rattled the loose metal of the cars around me, the traveler forced a bloody smile onto the woman's lips. I reached for her head again, and he lurched against the side of the car. His hand found the interior handle and he shoved the door open

  The metal frame rammed into my legs. A smear of pain wiped across my thighs, and I fell against the car behind me. He shoved the door open again, trying to catch my kneecaps with the edge of the frame. I pivoted away, rolling along the panel of the car beneath me, and the tip of the Acura's door cut into the rear passenger door of the other car. I dimly heard a voice shouting at me incoherently from within the damaged car.

  He tried to pull the door free, and finding it stuck, tried to get out of the car instead. He got one foot down and slipped, unaccustomed to the heel of the woman's shoes. As he struggled to walk-forget running-I scrambled onto the hood of the Acura and leaped over the open door. My fingers caught at the fabric of her jacket, and the Chorus lunged through the wool like bloodhounds through thin underbrush.

  There was only one soul inside the woman's flesh this time, and the Chorus' hunger nipped at the alien spirit. Kaleidoscopic splinters spewed into my head-a riotous burst of the soul's memories. Buried within the chaotic ghosts was an imprint of his identity. Douglas, son of Frederick and Amber, family name of Rassmussen.

  "Hello, Doug." I got a hand on an elbow and pulled her to me, so that I could touch her head again. The full flood of the Chorus roared into her body. Doug screamed, his spirit malforming her vocal cords.

  "Let her go." It took a second to find the source of the voice. Two cars back, standing in the aisle, legs apart. The detective, his gun held steady on me.

  "This isn't your affair," I hissed through the haze of spirit noise. The woman, kneeling on the ground before me, shook uncontrollably as the Chorus thrashed after Doug's soul. "There's nothing to See, nothing at all. It'll be over in a minute. No one is going to be hurt."

  Like stones grinding together, the sound of the engines changed as the propellers reversed their spin. The floor swayed abruptly, and the woman and I leaned with it.

  "That's right," the cop said, unmoved by the ferry's shift. "No one is going to be hurt if you let her go." His eyes were chips of mica in his face.

  I still had to extract Doug. Once his grip was broken on her flesh, she could return to her body. The cloudy mass of her soul still hovered over the roof of her car. If I pulled Doug out quickly-if I could separate him before he thought to shut her organs down-the body would manage for a little while without a spirit in charge. She would naturally slide back into place. She might even survive the shock of separation and reintegration. But, Doug had to come out first.

  The Chorus hissed and spat as they dug down for the anchors laid out by his spirit. Sensing my intent, as if he realized what the Chorus would do to him if they managed to pull him out, Doug opted to flee. In a silver flash, he poured out through the woman's eyes. As Doug ran, the body dropped to the floor like a marionette with severed strings. It twitched on the metal plates of the deck, still alive. As the Chorus retreated from the vacuum, I felt the warm brush of her spirit as it sucked back into place.

  The wh
irling cloud of Doug's spirit left a contrail of sparkling dust as he ran. I hesitated, caught off-guard by Doug's direction. He was running straight for the cop.

  The bull stiffened as Doug rammed himself through the man's eyes. The pistol didn't twitch. A moment of control was all Doug wanted, just enough influence to pull the trigger. The cop's arms were frozen; he could only watch himself as he fired the gun.

  In illo tempore. The words were a violet sigil swimming in my vision-thought made real and superimposed over my retinas-as the Chorus bent the world around me. According to my Will. The physical objects in the hold became vibratory patterns-everything became more distant and more magnified. The spit of fire blossoming from the barrel of the pistol was overlaid with a tracery of violet lines. The bullet trailed neon curlicues as it spun through the air. Even though the magick field collapsed instantly, the bubble of distorted time lasted long enough for me to move. I twisted away from the path of the bullet.

  The bubble popped, and Time lunged forward. The angry bark of the pistol became a growling roar, and the implosion of the bubble howled in my ears. The bullet punched through the leather of my coat, and I felt a razor crease of superheated air along my rib cage. My distortion field had been a weak effort, a desperate spell that had bought me time. Just enough. Skin heals.

  Doug's surprise attack on the cop was a short-term assault. He just wanted an instant of control, enough to pull the trigger; he didn't want to confront the detective's spirit. However, the bullish tendencies of the cop weren't as easily bullied.

  The detective's face was the color of old wax, and veins pulsed in his neck as he fought against Doug's invasion. Doug-seeing little alternative-dug deeper, trying to assert more control, trying to move the pistol. The gun went off again but the bullet went wild, wild enough that it wasn't clear who was the target.

  A growling cacophony of engine noises rattled the plates of the deck. Drivers started their engines in anticipation of the ferry's imminent landing as if arrival at the pier was the gate dropping at a horse track, as if the sound of the cop's gun was just the pop of a starter's pistol. Shadows in the hold capered with red and blue light from the police vehicles at the approaching dock.

  The cop let go of the pistol. In a moment of lucidity he realized the best course was to lose the weapon entirely. The gun clattered on the metal plating, and in that fraction of time when Doug was still wired into the man's lower brain, I lunged forward.

  My outstretched palm struck the cop squarely on the breastbone, and slammed him against a car. The Chorus' touch was electric, and Doug's writhing shape lit up beneath the detective's skin. Doug dropped all pretense of control and ran again. The cop gasped. The combination of my touch and the sudden expulsion of Doug from his flesh left him slumped against the car.

  The Chorus raked through Doug's contrail, and more hints of his life force rippled up my arm. Black motes swirled in my vision as the Chorus quivered with the possibility of feeding. They pulled at their restraints. I exerted my Will over them, and silver static glazed through the black light in my retinas. No, I need answers. I need to know where she is.

  I needed Doug in his real body. I wanted access to his full history, his complete memories. What he carried in his astral shape wasn't enough.

  I scrambled after him, over the hood of a nearby car as he churned across the open bay. The Chorus wrapped themselves around the trailing tentacles of his spirit form. I shaped a psychic harpoon, and drove it through the center of his soul cloud. The barbed spike, laced with the fury of the Chorus and my Will, anchored him. Silver strands extruded like kudzu vines from my hands as I began to weave a cage around him. The coppery taste of his panic filled my mouth.

  Doug fought with the desperation of a snared mountain lion-twisting and sliding under my attempts to restrain his spirit. He wasn't a neophyte. He knew magick, and had been touched by the Will of another before. Even more, he felt the hunger of the Chorus, felt the need and violence that filled their bite. My legs grew cold and numb as all my energies went to holding them back and building the prison around Doug's spirit.

  The car in front of me lurched suddenly. In the windshield, I caught a glimpse of my haloed reflection, a Kali headdress of shining energy riding above a plume of static-charged hair. Doug was a thrashing smear of light in my hands. The driver, a young blonde woman, tried to get around me as the lanes emptied from the ferry. Her car struck my leg, and my focus faltered.

  Doug melted in my hands, dissolving into a liquid rush that splashed onto the deck. His insubstantial shape squirted between my legs, and passed through the frame of the car. Much like he had done with the cop, he forced himself upon the innocent shell. The Chorus was close behind, tearing at his phantasmal shape. My connection to his spirit was solid enough that I felt the violence of his strike. He went into her brain and vaporized her fear centers.

  Her foot smashed the accelerator pedal and the car leaped forward. The impact with my legs was hard and fast, knocking me aside. The car thundered across the lowered metal plank and crunched onto the concrete of the pier.

  Doug stayed with her, clinging to the energized flight reflex he had activated in her mind. In a second, her car plowed past the line of police cars and was gone, nothing left but a spatter of rainwater on concrete to mark her passage.

  I had nothing. My hands were empty.

  A uniformed officer rushed down the gangplank with his pistol raised. "Stay down!" he shouted at me, waving the gun toward the deck. "Get on your stomach and put your hands behind your head."

  I ignored him, staring past the line of police cars. Doug was gone. He could have told me. The Chorus was a furious wall of snakes in my head, a hydra movement of engorged desires. A cold darkness tightened in the pit of my stomach. Had I lost my connection to her?

  I felt the ragged edges of my soul tear, felt like it was all happening again.

  The officer was persistent. "Get your hands behind your head, motherfucker! Move 'em or I'll fire." He wasn't a fool: standing close enough to be sure he wouldn't miss me, far enough away that I couldn't grab his weapon. His jaw was firm. He was trying his best to be sinister.

  I touched the ache in my gut and gave him sinister. Elide. The Chorus wailed as I came off the deck and closed the distance between us. The barrel of his gun groaned and creased like wet paper under my grip. I didn't stop when I got to his fingers.

  III

  That stunt got me a free ride in a police cruiser, wrists cuffed savagely behind my back. The back seat stank of stale bodies, but the scent of fear pooling in the car came from the pair of officers in the front. Rumors were already spreading, fantasy informing gossip. These two weren't sure what had happened and, as a result, their imaginations were feeding all the wild stories.

  All it takes is a seed.

  We entered police headquarters in downtown Seattle through an unmarked entrance in the back, spiraling down fluorescently lit passages of white stone into the sub-levels beneath the street. I was hustled through equally unadorned hallways to a tiny room with two plastic chairs and a cheap metal table. A steel ring was welded to the top of the table.

  My jacket and the contents of my pockets had been taken from me at the ferry terminal and, after we entered the interrogation room, they took my belt and shoelaces. A young officer tried for the thin braid of hair about my throat, and the Chorus nipped at him. Trying to keep his cool, he pulled back and made a half-hearted dismissive gesture. Something to hide the tremor in his hands. No one offered to take a look at the bloody nick along my side. The fact that it had stopped bleeding was apparently good enough for them. After that, they locked one of the handcuffs to the metal ring and left me alone.

  A history of desperate chain-smokers was an old stink permeating every surface-nearly a tactile crust on the room. The paint on the wall opposite the door was less dull than the other walls. An observation window once, perhaps, sheet-rocked over some time ago. The floor was a cheap parquet, an ugly color stained even uglier. The
table and chairs were utilitarian: the table legs were welded to the pitted top, the chairs were the molded plastic sort found around the pool at two-star motels. The room didn't bother to obscure its purpose. Out of sight, out of mind. No one wanted to know what happened here.

  I tried to get comfortable. The handcuffs and the ring meant I had to lean forward as if I were considering a session of earnest supplication but hadn't quite committed myself to the act. Easier to lie on the table with my hands resting above my head, wrists next to the metal ring.

  I was tired. It had been nearly 3:00 a.m. when I had spotted Doug, and the resulting chase had been unexpected and draining. Prior to that, I had been out on the peninsula visiting an old friend.

  Father Lenbier was a retired Naval Chaplain with a house outside of Lofall-an hour from the ferry terminal at Winslow. He had been stationed in the Far East for thirty years before being tossed back across the ocean for his final tour at the Naval Yard at Bremerton. I had been to both China and Japan, and I had wanted to catch up.

  I had met the priest in Olso years ago-just two wanderers washed into a back-alley bar, looking to offset the permafrost of the dark winter. His faith provided an interesting counterpoint to the. . melancholy that had driven me north. A bottle of Laphroaig consecrated our friendship. It hadn't been my choice-he was the single malt fan-but, by the end of the night, I had learned a measure of respect.

  We had spent the evening telling polite lies about our secret histories, and trying to deconstruct the nature of faith via the magic of a bottle of Dalwhinnie 15. The antique market in the Pacific Northwest looked to the East for its history (unlike the New England market which was perversely fixated on Louis XIV's bedroom furniture), and Father Lenbier's stories about the Far East station were filled with useful details. Grist for the small talk which invariably crept up in my business. One must keep up appearances on one's public persona.