He emerged in a corridor as the final wisps of unleashed mystic energy washed through it, illuminating it in shifting astral colors of green and blue. There were four beings present. Two of them human and two of them spirits.
The two humans were probably from Knight Errant, but from astral space Kyle could not read the markings or colors of their uniforms. Their clothing was a simple, non-living dull gray. One, however, was a mage, and his aura sparkled with the residual energy of the powerful spell he'd just tossed at one of the spirits. The mage stumbled backward, pained by the force of that spell, while his companion, by his size and form apparently an ork, opened fire on the larger of the two spirits with his assault rifle.
The dark spirit, twice man-sized, barely noticed as the rounds of gunfire passed through its shadowy body and tore up the wall behind it
Kyle stared, unable to suppress a gasp. The thing before him was huge, with six sharp legs and a long, flattened body of a shiny leathery brown. A terrible scent, horribly pungent and one that could only be described as an odor, reached Kyle in astral space. The spirit lashed out with one of those legs, a smaller front one, and caught the mage across the upper part of his right arm. Blood jutted from the wound, spraying the other guard and the spirit.
The second spirit, Kyle's elemental, sputtered near the floor, dim and weakened from an obvious clash with this many-legged thing. Oblivious to Kyle's arrival, the dark spirit moved in on the collapsing mage.
Kyle acted quickly, thinking to attack the spirit while it was distracted. His choices were simple-attack it directly with the raw energy of his own form or through a spell. Both were dangerous.
He enacted the spell, pulling the energies of astral space together with blinding speed. The spirit looked up at him, though its form seemed to have no true eyes. Kyle had no doubt it could sense him quite clearly. It began to hiss.
The energy flowed, violet, white, and blue, into him as the final pieces of the spell came together in his mind, and the spirit leaped, spreading its short, apparently vestigial wings, as he released the spell.
The spell caught the spirit square on, a bolt of astral power that impacted against the creature's head and splashed backward along nearly the whole length of its dark, shiny body. It squealed, the sound of its cry alien and painful in astral space, then seemed to shake its form as though to trying throw off the remaining energies of the spell tearing at it As it thrashed, its legs flashed about, ripping tears in the walls and threatening to dismember the others in the hall. Its long feelers slapped against Kyle.
He reeled. The pain from casting the powerful spell in astral space, raw and unanchored to the physical world, was tremendous. He was also nearly suffocated by a putrid, nearly overpowering odor. He fought off the red mist that filled his mind as the spirit steadied itself. Tendrils of astral smoke rose from its hideous form as it leaped at him again. Kyle barely had time to react. As an FBI man he'd learned quick and dirty hand-to-hand combat from a UCAS Marine Corps specialist, and that training came back to him now. He turned his body aside violently as the spirit shot forward. The lead claws missed, and then Kyle was inside them, close to the spirit's head. Grappling at the thing for leverage with his left hand, he focused as much raw energy as possible into his right as he brought it up under what he thought was the spirit's head.
The energy of his astral body clashed with that of the spirit's in a flash of gold and black power. Kyle felt resistance, the spirit's form seeming armored even in astral space. He forced his hand upward. Pain raked across his back as one of the second set of legs struck him.
The spirit reared, uttering another of its awful shrieks, and Kyle saw his injured water elemental stab upward into the creature's underside. The thing bucked and spun, slamming against the wall and dragging Kyle off his feet. It squealed hideously again, and Kyle struck down with his own feet against its distended belly, pushing with all his might while grabbing what he could of the spirit's head with his right hand.
The spirit curled up all its legs when the head finally gave way. The head, such as it was, tore free of the body. The force of the separation, induced by Kyle's own will, threw him to the side, past the striking legs and on to the floor.
The spirit writhed, its body tossing about uncontrolled, the stench even stronger now, until its movement began to lessen and its form dissolve, streaming and floating off through astral space. In agony, Kyle looked at the head-thing in his hand as it too dispersed, its coherency lost with its life. Suddenly, he realized what he was looking at, and what he'd just fought.
His mind fought against the truth. The legs, the head, the short wings, the long, twitching antennae, the strange shape of the body. Here in the bowels of the hospital, Kyle had just done combat with a vicious, magically powerful spirit. And that spirit had the form of an enormous, hideous, stinking brown cockroach.
13
Kyle lay there in astral space, his back wracked with pain from the slashing by the cockroach spirit's legs. The pain was severe, but the injuries didn't feel life-threatening. His body, back in the Truman condoplex, had manifested the physical effects of the spirit's astral attack, but Kyle had the pain all to himself. The spirit itself was gone, destroyed. He turned his head to look at the two Knight Errant troopers.
The ork had applied a trauma patch to the mage's shoulder in an attempt to stop the heavy bleeding. Kyle could see the man's aura flickering; he was unconscious and unable to help heal his own body. Kyle didn't know if he himself had enough energy merely to try and stabilize him. If he'd been physically present and this injured, he wouldn't give it a second thought. Being present only in astral space was another matter, for he risked injury to himself if he tried to heal another.
But Kyle didn't have to heal the man, only stop him from dying. He willed himself to float toward the injured mage to examine him more closely.
There. A power focus in the form of a bracelet on the magician's left hand. Without that link from the astral world to the physical one-the circuit of power from astral space, through the focus, into the mage-Kyle wouldn't have been able to help him. But the active focus made all the difference.
Kyle reached out and placed one hand on the man's heart, the other on his left hand at the focus. He would have to slow the man's metabolism, slow his respiration and heart beat, slow his body down to where critical seconds became critical minutes. Kyle picked a rhythm in astral space, the slow beat of ambient energy, and slowed his to match it.
The ork realized something was happening, and stepped back, pulling his sidearm clear as a dull halo of green energy began to surround the injured man. The ork's eyes searched the area, but he could see no target, nothing against which to protect his friend. Then, as the energy flowed around the mage, the ork's radio crackled to life.
Kyle couldn't make out the words that came over it; they were an electronic signal, cold, lifeless, and meaningless to his perceptions in astral space. But the ork's reply was clear.
"Roger, roger!" he shouted into his throat mike. "Officer down, ground floor near the loading dock. I need a trauma alert and another mage. Something's happening down here!"
Kyle felt the injured man respond, his body sliding into synchrony with the rhythm Kyle was providing it. The blood flow slowed, nearly stopping. If Knight Errant could get a medic or another magician with healing spells here in time, he would survive.
"Roger that!" said me ork trooper. "One bug down here. Repeat one bug down!" The radio crackled in reply, and the ork returned his attention to his companion. Kyle backed away. There was little chance the ork would notice him. The emotions and lingering energy from the fight with the spirit were dampening any of Kyle's own aura that might have leaked into the physical world, but he still didn't relish the sensation of being pushed aside by the trooper's Significantly greater mass.