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 whirling 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.