Dark Kingdoms

by Richard Lee Byers

  Claws snagged the right side of Bellamy's face, ripping gashes in his flesh as his momentum carried him free. Blood gushed. He sensed that Dunn had more or less torn his ear off, but there was no real pain, not yet, not with the adrenaline flooding his system, only pure sensation. He was just glad the talons had missed his eye.

  He whirled, pointing the Browning. At the same instant, Dunn bounded over the tomb and struck a backhand blow at his quarry's shooting arm. The impact snapped bone and flung Bellamy's hand to the side. The pistol flew from his grasp.

  Dunn snarled and lunged, jagged, yellow fangs bared and huge hands clawing. Spinning to the side, Bellamy narrowly blocked the monster's first slashing blow, and just as Dunn's striding foot was about to contact the ground, he hooked it with his own and jerked it.

  Thrown off balance, the werewolf stumbled. Bellamy rammed the: silver knife into the creature's solar plexus.

  Dunn went down, but even as he did, his hands shot out, sunk their nails into Bellamy's flesh, and wrenched him down on top of his adversary. Locked in a clinch, the human couldn't pull the knife: out; of Dunn's body for another thrust. So he jerked it back and forth, trying to enlarge the wound. Meanwhile the werewolf bit him, clawed at him, tearing and flaying the flesh from his bones.

  Until, to Bellamy's amazement, Dunn's attacks began to slow and weaken, to diminish into a spastic scrabbling. The human wondered if he'd gotten lucky yet again. If by some miracle he was actually going to win.

  Then Dunn gripped him by the shoulders. Even though the werewolf's musky stink, Bellamy smelled ozone, and his hair stood on end. An instant later, something crackled, and every muscle in his body convulsed.

  He thought he could feel, even smell, his flesh burning, although it could have been his imagination. At any rate, he understood what was happening: Dunn was frying him like an electric eel. Another paranormal danger he hadn't had any way to anticipate, Had Ke still been capable ol vocalization, he might have screamed at the unfairness of it.

  His awareness began to collapse, not into protective embrace of madness, not this time, but into the deeper oblivion of death. He thought of Astarte, wished that he'd made love to her, and then the world went black.

  THE ONYX TOWER, DARK KINGDOMS: VOLUME II

  ONE

  The world was white and cold. To Frank Bellamy, the fog seemed even thicker than it had a little while ago, when—

  When what? He realized he couldn't remember. Perhaps he was sick, or injured. Perhaps he'd been drugged.

  If so, he'd better find himself some help. Unable to spot any useful landmarks, he picked a direction at random and started walking. He noticed that he didn't move like a sick man. His stride was quick and easy, easier than he had any right to expect, considering—

  His memory locked up on him again. Grimacing, he marched on, until a tall figure in a hooded cloak loomed out of the mist.

  He recoiled and grabbed for his gun. Both the Browning and its shoulder holster were gone, but now he saw that he didn't really need it. The figure was only a pollution-stained statue of the Virgin Mary, its features blurred by weather and time.

  The discovery was less reassuring than it should have been. If he wasn't mistaken, he'd recently had a terrifying experience involving just such a statue, but once again, he couldn't recall the details.

  Shaking his head, he lifted his hand to rub his forehead. His fingers encountered a sheet of something cool and slimy, almost gelatinous, clinging to his face.

  Maybe the fog wasn't quite as thick as he'd thought. Maybe the layer of foreign matter was obscuring his vision, and in any case, it felt disgusting. He dug his fingers into it to tear it off his skin, then hesitated.

  Because some instinct warned him than when the veil was gone, it would be gone forever. Which would mean he'd completed his transformation. The transition he didn't want to make.

  He didn't understand what that thought meant. But since he could see well enough to navigate, maybe it would be better to let a doctor remove the goo. He hurried on, catching glimpses of more crumbling statuary, most of it overtly religious in nature, and row after row of dilapidated tombs. Apparently he was wandering through a cemetery, an old one no one was keeping up, judging from the look of the weeds and brush.

  With the realization came a flash of memory. Not long ago, he'd crouched behind one particular mausoleum and stuffed a spiral notebook into a crack in its facade. He'd hoped the notebook would prove to contain evidence pertinent to his current investigation, whatever that case was. He paused, wondering if he should retrace his steps and retrieve it, and a feminine voice softly called his name.

  He pivoted. A slender young woman in a black leather jacket and ragged jeans stood before him. Her short hair was spiky, with magenta highlights, and steel rings gleamed in her right eyebrow, left nostril, and lower lip.

  Bellamy was delighted to see her. He dimly remembered that when they'd parted, she'd been in danger. Evidently she'd escaped. "Astarte!" he cried.

  Astarte gave him a smile, turned, and stepped behind a mausoleum. He hurried after her. When he rounded the corner of the tomb, he froze in surprise. Astarte— with whom, he abruptly recalled, he'd been falling in love—was in the arms of another man. Except not quite, because the interloper looked exactly like himself.

  But only for a second. Then the other Bellamy's shoulders broadened, and his hair turned curly and a little shaggy. His gray suit coat melted into a russet suede jacket. Now he was Bill Dunn, the mole inside the FBI's Special Affairs Department, the traitor who'd turned out to be a man-eating monster in human disguise. Oblivious to his metamorphosis, Astarte kept on kissing him.

  Bellamy tried to shout a warning, only to find he couldn't make a sound. He attempted to dash forward, but he couldn't move. Meanwhile, Dunn changed again, growing taller until his clothing split apart, and Astarte dangled in his huge, clawed hands like a doll. Black fur sprouted on his skin, his face extended into a lupine muzzle, and his ears grew large and pointed as a bat's. He opened his jaws, snapped them shut on Astarte's neck, and decapitated her with a single wrenching motion. Blood sprayed, its smell filling the air. Fler head thumped to the ground and rolled, coming to rest against the base of a statue of Jesus cradling a lamb in His arms.

  Released from his paralysis, Bellamy screamed and scrambled forward, intent on attacking the werewolf, if that was what Dunn truly was, with his bare hands. A part of him realized he was committing suicide, but he was too full of anguish to care.

  He stepped in a depression in the ground and tripped. As he pitched forward, he felt a subtle sensation he'd never felt before. For an instant, he thought the soil had turned as insubstantial as air. Then he realized that it was his foot and ankle which had, in some sense, lost their solidity. Now they were inside the ground, occupying the same space as a volume of dirt.

  Frightened that he wouldn't be able to pull himself free, he thrashed. His foot; popped back above the surface, immediately becoming more tangible again. He remembered the atrocity he'd just witnessed, and felt a fresh burst of rage. He turned, ready to hurl himself at Dunn again, then faltered.

  Astarte's body had vanished. Even the smell of her blood had disappeared. The black-furred monster was gone as well. In their place stood a man who was Bellamy's twin, watching him with a crooked smile, "Relax," Said the double. "Astarte and Dunn were never here. It was an illusion. Shock therapy. Do you remember now?"

  "It's coming back," said Bellamy warily. "How did you know I was having trouble with my memory? What's going on? Who are you, and why are you impersonating me?"

  "We'll do better if you answer my questions first," said the double. "Tell me exactly what you recall."

  Bellamy scowled. Since he'd embarked on his investigation, he'd grown heartily sick of mysterious people who withheld information, almost as sick as he was of developing partial amnesia. But maybe talking would help to clear up his confusion, or perhaps his twin would fill in the remaining holes in his memory.

&nb
sp; "I'm with the FBI's Violent Criminals Apprehension Program," Bellamy said, speaking rapidly to get the recitation over with. "I was trying to catch the Atheist, the serial killer who's been murdering ministers, rabbis, priests, and nuns in towns along the Mississippi. A self-proclaimed psychic named Waxman, who worked for one of the victims, claimed he could he give me some information about the crimes, proof they were connected to the occult, and asked me to meet him.

  "Unfortunately, somebody—Dunn in his beast-man form, I know now—crashed the meeting to silence Waxman. The poor guy was so scared he dropped dead of a heart attack. I shot Dunn, a lucky shot that slowed him down enough to keep him from catching me when I ran away.

  "I was just as terrified as Waxman had been, so much so that afterwards, I couldn't remember what had happened. As near as I can make out, Dunn joined SAD to make sure the Bureau never acquired any accurate data on the paranormal, so he wanted to make sure that no one would take my testimony seriously if I ever did regain my memory. To accomplish that, he pressured one of VICAP's staff psychiatrists to testify that I'd had a nervous breakdown."

  "In a sense, you had," the double said.

  Bellamy snorted. "Tell me about it. But just about anyone else in my situation would have had the same reaction. It turns out that creatures like Dunn are inherently terrifying to normal human beings. Anyway, my boss took me off the Atheist investigation. He assigned me to a desk job till further notice. But somehow, I just couldn't believe I was mentally ill, not in the way the doctor claimed I was, and I suspected I'd been side-lined as part of somebody's hidden agenda. Eventually I resumed investigating on my own.

  "The trail led me here to New Orleans. Through a fluke, I hooked up with Astarte, who tagged along with me because she's been fascinated by the occult her whole life. Together, we talked to a lot of people." Bellamy wouldn't reveal the identity of Marilyn Sebastian, the transsexual chancellor of the local chapter of the Arcanum, a secret society devoted to psychic research, or of the hideously deformed vampires Mr. Daimler and Miss Paris. He'd promised to protect their anonymity. "And we learned that the supernatural is real." Even now, after all he'd experienced, when he was apparently speaking to yet another paranormal being, he felt sheepish making such a preposterous statement. "More than that, we discovered that there isn't just one Atheist. There's a conspiracy, and at least some of the killers have magical abilities.

  "Finally, looking for evidence, Astarte and I broke into an old house owned by an odd group of people from Lafayette, who supposedly have ties to the conspiracy." He felt a twinge of anxiety. For some reason, he was reluctant to say any more, but the words kept tumbling out. "Inside;, we discovered proof that they were cannibals. Monsters.

  "Then Dunn came in and found us. It turns out that he's one of the group from Lafayette, and he'd come to New Orleans from Natchez to hunt me down. When he changed shape, Astarte panicked and ran. I stood my ground and fought, to give her a chance to get away." Bellamy's uneasiness flared into outright horror. "But now, somehow, I'm here, and Dunn isn't! He Could be hunting her right now! He really may be tearing her apart! I've got to—"

  "You have to remember the rest," said the double. "It's the only way."

  "Later," Bellamy said, peering about. The house was adjacent to the cemetery, but hindered by the fog, he couldn't tell in which direction it lay. "We can fill in the blanks when she's safe."

  "What's the substance clinging to your face?' the double asked. "How could your foot plunge right into the ground?"

  Bellamy was so distraught and confused, his mind so overloaded, that he'd forgotten those oddities. Now a chill oozed up his spine. "I don't know," he said.

  "YeSj you do," said the double, "even if you don't want to acknowledge it. Finish your StOry."

  As if the impersonator's words had unlocked a door, the rest of Bellamy's memories began to trickle into his awareness. "I shot Dunn," he said, "but it didn't do a lot of good. I grabbed a big silver knife that was lying around, hoping that if worst came to worst, and he got close enough for me to use it, it would hurt him worse than the lead bullets had. The confrontation moved out here, we did wind up fighting hand- to-hand, and by dumb luck more than anything else, I managed to stab him in the solar plexus." For a second, he felt an echo of the elation he'd experienced.

  "It seemed like he was hurt pretty bad," Bellamy continued. "Like I might actually have a chance of finishing him off. Then he grabbed me and shocked me, like an electric/eel, and it—" Suddenly he couldn't go on. He felt stunned, as if someone had clubbed him.

  "And the jolt killed you," the double said. "Death by electrocution."

  Bellamy violently shook his head. "No. No, obviously it didn't. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here."

  The impersonator frowned. "Don't lie to yourself. You don't have time. You know that there are such things as ghosts. Dunn told you that Chester, the spirit inside the computer in the house, was one. You remember the moment of your own death, the darkness swallowing you, and now you can stick your body through solid matter. You're a detective. Put the facts together and draw a conclusion."

  Bellamy's eyesstung as if he were about to weep, though they didn't produce any tears. "I can't..." He trailed off, not knowing what he'd meant to say.

  The double smirked. "You should have made love to Astarte last night when you had the chance. It's too late now. Too late for all kinds of things."

  Bellamy felt as if he were drowning in grief. That anguish might shut down his conscious mind just as terror once had. He struggled to stop thinking about his plight. To focus instead on Astarte's situation. He owed it to her, and besides, it might be the only thing that could keep him sane.

  "Where is Astarte?" he asked. "Did she get away?:"

  The impersonator shook his head. "You didn't buy her enough time. You didn't hurt Dunn bad enough. He's hot on her trail, hunting her through the streets. She's pounded on a few doors, but nobody answered. They wouldn't, not at this hour, in this neighborhood. The noise only helps to draw Dunn to her. He's got the senses of a wild animal, as you already discovered."

  "Help me find the silver knife," Bellamy said. A gruesome image rose before his inner eye, the bloody weapon clutched in the hand of his own charred and shredded corpse. He tried to push the picture out of his mind. "Then take me to Dunn."

  The double shook his head. "It hasn't sunk in yet, has it?" He waved his hand at some tendrils of ivy coiling their way along the side of a tomb. "Pull some of that loose."

  "I haven't got time for games," Bellamy said.

  "You don't know which direction your girlfriend ran, either," the double replied. "You do what I tell you, or you're on your own."

  Bellamy glared at him, considered trying to beat some cooperation out of him, then turned, gripped a strand of ivy, and pulled. To his surprise, he couldn't shift it an iota. He struggled with all his might, strained until his fingers and forearms ached, but it was as if his hands were incapable of exerting any force. Finally, without warning, they became intangible, passing through the substance of the plant without resistance. Thrown off balance, he stumbled backward.

  The double laughed. "Get it now? You can't affect the world of the living. You couldn't pick up the knife to stab Dunn. You couldn't even talk to him, or tap him on the shoulder."

  Bellamy panted. Anxiety crawled along his nerves. "There must be something I can do. Or that you can."

  "As a matter of fact," said the impersonator, "yes. Have you figured out who I am?"

  Bellamy shrugged. "Another ghost? A vampire who can change his face to look like whoever he pleases?" Daimler possessed that particular ability. "I don't care who you are. Just help me."

  "Actually," said the double, "I have your face because I really am you, more or less. I'm the part of you that's in sync with psychic and spiritual forces, and instinctively knows how to get along in the Underworld. I only seem to be a separate person because your Caul—that gunk on your face—is scrambling your brain and making you hallucina
te."

  "Then I should get rid of it?" Bellamy lifted his hands.

  "No," the double said, "not yet. Not until we reach an understanding."

  Now bewildered as well as frantic, Bellamy shook his head. If the double was really a part of him, why was the creature wasting time? Why didn't he seem as desperate to rescue Astarte as Bellamy was himself? "What understanding?"

  "You have to agree to let me drive," the other man said. "You have to let me be the dominant part of our personality."

  Bellamy hesitated. What the double was describing sounded rather like demonic possession. But if the apparition was already an intrinsic part of his own spirit, he supposed that was a false comparison. Heck, if he couldn't trust himself, who could he trust? "I guess that would be all right," he said at last.

  "Good," said the double. He stepped forward and pressed his fingertips against Bellamy's temples. Bellamy felt an instinctive twinge of repulsion, and had to make an effort not to flinch. "This should only take a moment. Don't move."

  Bellamy felt a cold, sliding sensation inside his head, painless, but such an intimate violation that it was as unbearable as the most excruciating agony. It was as if the double's fingers had lengthened, writhed through openings in his skull, and were slithering around in his brain like snakes.

  Their touch released a flood of memories, the ones he'd done his best to bury. The way he'd sobbed when his mother died. The shock and bitter disappointment when his wife had walked out on him. The overwhelming panic when he'd first seen Dunn in the form of a monster.

  Somehow he could feel the torrent of anguish eroding the structure of his mind, warping and cornipting his spirit. When the process was complete, he'd be a different person, someone for whom torment and betrayal were the only truths.