Out of the Black - Lee Doty [177]
"I've still got a tire iron..." she threatened.
"I've still got a head for you to whack." His smile didn't waver.
"Be careful."
After a few seconds to calm his mind, he put a toe in the water of the Underworld. The flames exploded around him, nuclear hot, nuclear bright.
As Ping and Anne hobbled up, Alex screamed and jerked out of his sitting position, landing on his back. Both he and Kaspari shared the look of desperate struggle.
"That's not careful!" Rae shouted, dropping the tire iron and falling to her knees beside Alex. She lifted his head onto her lap and stroked his face, whispering encouragement and threats.
In a sea of fire and lightning, Alex saw Kaspari's struggle. At the base of a huge funnel of energy, channeled by the ground surrounding the underground garage, he fought in the doorway to somewhere else. He fought with a formless black squid with uncountable tentacles. The thing had him, its tendrils wrapped through his essence. He seemed to have given up the struggle to sever the thing's connection to him and was focusing his efforts on forcing the thing back through the door into darkness.
The thing's tentacles flailed at Kaspari, trying to find purchase on something to halt its backward slide. At times, the thing mounted enough resistance to halt Kaspari's advance, but it seemed to be able to hold onto little besides Kaspari and whatever was hidden in the black on the other side of the doorway.p>
Then the creature passed the dark threshold and everything changed. The creature lost its hold and it and Kaspari fell downward. Kaspari sent out anchoring tendrils of force, trying to remain on this side of the darkness, but it seemed hopeless. He was caught in the vortex of his Cast, buffeted by currents of power too hot and strong to be resisted for long.
Alex realized he had to act quickly. He anchored himself as best he could and then plunged into the vortex. As he approached Kaspari's position, moving slower now, reinforcing his hold on this world with every move forward, Alex noticed the real problem. The Outsider had not released its hold on Kaspari. His flagging strength seemed entirely focused on holding on, so he had none left to try to disengage the creature.
Close enough now, Alex began to work on the tendrils that seemed to wind though Kaspari's essence. He tried to cut, pry, dissolve, warp... nothing worked. About this time, Kaspari noticed him. The fountain of fire that was Kaspari's form here turned partially on him. Alex got the impression of tired acceptance as Issak swatted him aside, forcing him out of the downward current. Then Kaspari let go.
As Issak fell into the darkness, Alex streaked forward. He caught Kaspari, and was immediately pulled forward himself. There was a jarring as Alex's tethers stopped their fall for the moment. The shock was almost enough to make him let go of Issak- almost. As he solidified his grip on Issak, he got a clear impression from him. Something like 'What are you, stupid?' This was the point when the first of his tethers ruptured. Stupid indeed. He really didn't have much of a plan other than "hold on and hope for the best". Only one thing was clear to him. He wasn't letting go.
Below, the darkness began to take on texture. It shifted like ebony sand in slow wind. He could see a distributed intelligence at work in the ebb and flow of the black particles. As he focused, or perhaps came closer, the shifting darkness became clearer, more detailed. They were creatures, numberless as the sands of all seas. His first thought was the black shimmering carapace of roaches- wet, hairy spider legs- black desiccated jellyfish.
The Outsider was not a single organism, but a slow trickle of these linked creatures that had been leaking into the world. Below him, Kaspari fought against the chains that bound them to him. Desperate yet hopeless, he alternately clung to Alex, and tried to push him away. But Alex would not let go. Together they sank toward the sea of insect sewage.