Division Zero: Lex De Mortuis Read Free Page B

length. The cloud surged left but was too slow. Around the room, shadows of objects stretched over the floor as the intense light source moved. The lash plunged through the center of the wraith, devoured by darkness. The tip dimmed, flickered, and then intensified.
    The holo-terminal on the desk exploded; ceiling lamps gave out. Flashing red and blue light filled the room.
    Dorian lurched up, free of its influence. The wraith melded through the wall, with Dorian diving after it. Kirsten scowled at the now-mundane closet before she went for the door, toward the sound of a fight in the adjacent bedroom.
    Police hand-to-hand combat techniques went only so far when employed against an amorphous mass of hatred. Each time Dorian tried to pin the wraith, it flowed and stretched through his grasp. Kirsten came through the door just as it twisted about, raking wispy claws through Dorian’s back. He groaned as dark claws pulled white ethereal vapor out of him.
    Her first attack feigned high on purpose, to spare Dorian the pain of poor aim. It came close enough to make the specter draw itself away from him. Kirsten leapt through Dorian, spinning into a real strike, snapping the astral whip down on top of the cloud. The thread of white light divided the mass, two smaller clouds hung in space for several seconds. As she drew her arm back for another swing, the creature recoiled, and flowed as a blur of black vapor towards the door.
    A flying tackle from Dorian slowed it into a rolling struggle. Clawing at the floor, the wraith tried in vain to reach the hallway as he hauled it back into the room. The mass shifted. One clawed hand shot out of it, spearing up through Dorian’s chest and grabbing his neck from behind.
    “Dorian, no!” she wailed.
    Color drained from his apparition as he diminished; his body shrank and faded, becoming indistinct. The wraith thickened and grew darker. Desperation surged through her arm as she coiled the lash around and spun it over her head.
    Blue-white radiance flickered on the walls as she struck out, screaming.
    “Dorian!”
    The luminous tendril snapped through the mass, dividing it in half once more.
    Dorian grimaced as if he felt the hit. He moaned; the sound came from somewhere far away. With a gasp, he fell limp to the floor on his chest. The wraith slid out from under him and gathered itself into an orb no larger than a skull. The sight of Dorian so weak brought tears of rage, and Kirsten aimed too high. It leapt under the whip, pouncing on her chest, raking and shredding. To a mortal, its claws felt like a rain of icicles.
    Her lungs stopped reacting, her heart pounded in her head. She went over backwards; the weight of ten men crushed her into the floor. Ice gnawed at her breasts, face, and gut. For an instant, it paused to glance over its shoulder, raising one clawed hand at something she could not see.
    Dorian must be okay.
    With the brief distraction, Kirsten infused her body with astral energy, making it solid to ghosts. Threads of frigid ice became sharp blades; warm blood tricked over her ribs. She growled and wrapped her hands around the closest thing it had to a throat, and called the lash.
    It had nowhere to go.
    Black slime exploded over the entire room. The wraith had vanished, replaced by a drained-looking Hispanic man in his later thirties. She ignored the pain in her side and tackled the disoriented spirit to the ground. With one arm across his neck and a knee in his back, she held him down.
    “Don’t give me an excuse, pendejo.”
    In seconds, a familiar eerie feeling came over her from behind. She wrenched the spirit’s body around to face the Harbinger hanging in the room, one of the shadows circling the house since she first wanted them to appear. A billowing mass of blackness with piercing, silver eyes, it reached toward the Blood Saint, ignoring her. Six more drifted in through the floor and walls, coming together into a curtain of night that engulfed her. She knew why