Kyle jabbed up with his fist and caught the man's forearm, slamming it away. Expecting another blow, Kyle spun aside, his arms moving in what he knew would be a futile attempt to protect his head. But the blow didn't come. Instead, his attacker stopped suddenly, a look of surprise crossing his face as a bolt of flame chewed its way out his chest to explode across the front of his body. Blood and fire poured from his mouth as he pitched forward to land at Kyle's feet. Beyond him, in the door, the last energy from Seeks-the-Moon's spell faded away, dissipating off the spirit's hand.
"Thanks," Kyle said.
The spirit shrugged. "Are you hurt?"
"No, just banged up. Nothing we can't deal with."
“That one is alive," the spirit said, pointing at the man Kyle had speared. "I don't feel so bad about killing these other two."
"I knew you'd come back," said a frail woman's voice.
Both Kyle and Seeks-the-Moon turned toward the sound. On one of the cots, where Kyle had seen her earlier, was the old woman. She was staring at him. Her voice had barely enough breath to create words.
Kyle walked over toward her. "I thought you were going to leave me like this," she said.
"I'm sorry, I don't know what you…"
The old woman looked away at the bodies scattered around the large room. "Or did you come back for them?" she asked, her attention drifting.
Kyle glanced at Seeks-the-Moon, who seemed equally perplexed, and then turned back. The woman had grown very still, except for her mouth, which was moving slightly. Kyle leaned down closer, and she said as she died, "No, you came to take all of us."
Kyle stood up slowly and looked back at Seeks-the-Moon, but neither said anything. There was a moan from the man Kyle had speared. He moved, and Kyle grabbed him, lifting him up and flipping him onto one of the cots. Kyle shifted his senses into astral space and studied the man.
His aura was wrong, twisted, laced with dark streaks, and with his astral senses Kyle could almost smell a stench coming from him. The man, clutching his leg in pain, hissed up at Kyle.
"The bus was going to the main hive," Kyle said. "Where is it?”
The man spat, a glob of blood and greenish fluid that Kyle turned slightly to avoid.
Kyle smacked the side of the man's shattered knee with an open palm, and the man choked back a howl of pain.
"Here's the chip truth-I know what you are, and I know that the spirit that used to inhabit that body is dead. That means I don't have the slightest pang of guilt about doing whatever I need to do to you to make you talk."
The man only sneered. Kyle could see, though, that sweat had broken out across his face. He couldn't tell if it was from pain or fear.
"It's a simple spell really," Kyle said as a small swirl of black and red energy appeared floating above his now outstretched hand. "As the energy covers you, it'll feel like thousands of tiny red-hot needles jabbing into your body. Nothing immediately serious… But now imagine if that energy covered your own body and I could make it hurt more and more until all you had was the pain. No body, no mind, just the pain."
The man shrank back as Kyle spoke and the swirl of energy began to drift toward him.
"Then," Kyle went on, "it'll use any opening it can to get inside your body…"
"Cermak and Racine," the man hissed suddenly, holding out his hand to ward off the slowly approaching spell. "The power plant!"
Kyle nodded and stood, confident from the man's expression and attitude that he spoke the truth. "Good." Kyle unslung his Ares combat rifle and aimed it at the man. "I'd have hated to create a spell like that on the fly."
He fired a burst of three bullets, deciding the creature's death was worth the waste.
30
They approached the vicinity of Cermak and Racine carefully. Kyle didn't know the area, except by mentally following the path of both streets from where he knew them to where they had to intersect The neighborhood, southwest of the devastated Noose and northwest of the rebuilt downtown Core, was fairly rundown. In the years following the destruction of the IBM Building, it had gone from being an ethnic enclave to the only sanctuary for many displaced by the disaster.
Kyle and Seeks-the-Moon walked cautiously down Cermak from Ashland looking for signs of the insect hive. It was hard to miss. About three-quarters of a kilometer east of Ashland the two could clearly make out the tall exhaust stack of the power plant where the insect-spirit-inhabited man had told them it would be. It was mostly dark, except for some slowly blinking lights on the tower and around the plant building itself.
They stayed on the opposite side of the street, trying to act casual and avoid detection. As they got closer, and could see the site better, they began to make out some additional smaller buildings and power distribution towers to the right of the main plant building, which stood about six or seven stories high just behind the towering hundred-and-fifty-meter smokestack. There was activity around the building; a few cars sat scattered in the wide-open grassed and rail-tracked area that fronted the building. A dozen meters or so from the only large warehouse doors that Kyle could see, a row of three Chicago Transit Authority buses were lined up, their motors running but lights out. As he and Seeks-the-Moon watched, the large doors were closing, hiding a set of bus taillights inside. There seemed to be guards, but they were milling around the line of buses almost nonchalantly-Kyle guessed that they were relying on spirits in astral space that he could not see.
"Anything?" Kyle asked Seeks-the-Moon, who's own astral senses were always active.
"This is the hive."
"You're sure?"
"There is no question. The air reeks of it."
"Can you see any spirit guards?"
"No."
"No?"
The spirit scowled. "That's what I said. The men and women standing around the bus all seem to be like those we killed at the warehouse, but I see no true form spirits." Seeks-the-Moon told him. “They are here, though."
"In the building?"
"In the main building, and in the smaller ones. Maybe underneath them too. It feels as if there are many hives and nests here. But they're all quiet."
"Any idea why?"
"Perhaps the time is near and the queens are distracted."
"So no one's telling them to do anything."
The spirit nodded. "I'm only guessing."
"Let's turn at the next street and look for Knight Errant," Kyle said. "They can't be too far."
The two turned north at the rubble of what looked like it had once been the site of a restaurant or cafe that had later become home to a group of particularly incompetent bomb-makers. They also passed a row of rundown and apparently abandoned houses. There was, in fact, almost no sign of life.
"Do you think they were smart enough to take the people who lived in the area first?" Seeks-the-Moon said.
"I don't know if they were smart enough," Kyle replied. "but they are certainly savage enough."
Seeks-the-Moon started to speak, then stopped and gestured up the street with his head. "There," he said quietly. "A large truck and a moment ago a group of people near it."
"Knight Errant."
"Most likely."
Instead of turning east again as they'd intended, Kyle and Seeks-the-Moon continued along the street toward the shapes the spirit had seen. As they got within half a block they could see someone walking toward them. It was the ork trooper, Douglas. He nodded as they stopped a few feet from each other.