Dark Kingdoms

by Richard Lee Byers

  He tried to shove the double away from him, but his hands plunged through the apparition's body without resistance. He flung himself backward. Sneering, agile as a great dancer or a champion gymnast, the impersonator effortlessly moved with him, maintaining his touch on his head. Even when Bellamy tripped and fell, it didn't break the contact. The double dove on top of him.

  Bellamy thrashed uselessly this way and that. At the same time, he tried to think. If he could neither touch his assailant nor move away from him, then how could he possibly save himself?

  The slime on his face! According to the double, it was the reason he could see the apparition as a separate being, and, assuming his attacker had told the truth in any regard, perhaps it was what was making the attempted possession possible. He snatched at the layer of viscous stuff and shredded it away.

  The double, the hideous feeling in his head, and the parade of painful memories all vanished at once. Bellamy began to gasp in a grateful breath, and then a host of fresh sensations bombarded him.

  He could feel every slight bump in the ground digging into his back. The sounds of the city—car engines, televisions, snoring, groaning pipes, a baby weeping—jabbed into his ears. He could see the tombs and monuments far more clearly than he ever had when he was alive. Strangely, they seemed even more stained and ruinous than they had before, and the vaults emitted a sickening reek of decay.

  Evidently, with the removal of the caul, his senses had become inhumanly keen. He wasn't used to such intense perceptions, and in large measure, that accounted for his distress. But there was even more to it than that. It was as if something was distorting his sensations in an effort to make the world seem as ugly, corrupted, and unpleasant as possible.

  It was one more mystery to ponder when he got a chance. Right now, he still had to find Astarte. Praying that he wouldn't arrive too late, and that he'd think of something he could do to help her, he scrambled to his feet.

  When he moved, his garments brushed against his skin, rasping it like sandpaper. He could even feel individual threads in the weave. The unexpected burst of sensation staggered him. As he fought to maintain his balance, he glimpsed a shadow gliding through the fog.

  What now? he thought despairingly. He turned, and a lanky, prim-looking black man with graying hair and wire-rimmed glasses emerged from between two tombs. Bellamy recognized Chester instantly, even though, hitherto, he'd only seen a simulation of the other ghost's face on a computer monitor. Dunn's confederate held a snub-nosed revolver in his right hand. Round black crystals bulged from the top of the grip.

  "Hold it," Chester said. "Put your hands up."

  Bellamy wished desperately that he had a weapon of his own. How was it that his clothing and wristwatch had made the transition into the Underworld with him, but not the Browning or the silver knife? Just more miserable luck, he supposed, the same kind that had dogged him throughout the case.

  He had no doubt the revolver could hurt him. Chester presumably knew the ins and outs of being a ghost, and had brought it for a reason. Nevertheless, playing for time, he asked, "Am I supposed to be afraid of getting shot? I'm already dead."

  Chester sneered. "You don't know anything. There's a death beyond death, a true annihilation, and darksteel bullets"—he waved the revolver—"are just the thing to send you there. Now put your hands up."

  Bellamy obeyed. "Okay," he said mildly, "I guess you got me. But you know, I'm surprised to see you out here, getting your hands dirty. You strike me as a technical man, not a field agent. The FBI is crawling with intellectual types who look just like you.

  Chester grimaced. "Dunn is so impressed with your abilities that I thought somebody needed to come check on you. And nobody else was available, at least, nobody who can operate on our side of the Shroud. Dunn should have captured you, not killed you. He should have known there was a chance your spirit would enter the Underworld. But that's Black Spiral Dancers for you. Bloodthirsty and psychotic, every one of them, even the few who can pass for human. Now, walk toward me. I'm taking you back to the house for questioning."

  By now, Bellamy had sized Chester up. The guy really was an amateur when it came to this kind of confrontation. His penchant for unnecessary chitchat, and the way he waved the gun around, proved it. The FBI agent might even have tried to jump him, except that his newly amplified sensations made his body feel strange and awkward. Until he learned to compensate, he didn't trust his own reflexes.

  As it was, he figured his best option was to make a break for it, particularly since the snub-nosed revolver shouldn't be particularly accurate at long range. He took a trudging step toward Chester, trying his best to look cowed and submissive, then whirled and ran.

  "Stop!" Chester bleated. "Stop!" After another moment, the gun barked. The blast nearly deafened Bellamy, and he staggered. The bullet whined past his ear. Chester was a better shot than he'd expected.

  Doing his best to ignore the disconcerting barrage of his new perceptions, Bellamy sprinted on. With every stride, he was exquisitely aware of the flexing of his muscles and exact position of his legs. It was too much information. If he allowed himself to think about it, he'd forget how to walk.

  He heard Chester's footsteps pounding after him. For the moment, the revolver was silent. Perhaps the other ghost simply wanted to get closer before he took another shot. But Bellamy hoped that Chester had lost sight of him. Surely even the eyes of the dead could be blinded by fog.

  He zigzagged this way and that, trying to shake his pursuer off his trail, looking for a way out of the cemetery. As he did, he noticed that no matter how he exerted himself, he wasn't getting tired or winded. It was as if he no longer needed to breathe. Nor could he feel his heart hammering in his chest.

  At last the cemetery wall, itself a tomb housing multiple rows of vaults, swam out of the mist ahead. Bellamy scrambled toward it, intent on jumping, grabbing the top, and scrambling over. He was flexing his legs for the effort when Chester lunged around a mausoleum ten feet away. The revolver was pointed at Bellamy's torso.

  It was obvious that Bellamy couldn't afford to take the time to clamber over the barrier. If he did, Chester would nail him. Praying the maneuver would work, he hurled himself directly at the wall.

  Inwardly, he was flinching. Bracing for the impact. But he didn't feel anything. His body became insubstantial and plunged through without impediment. Some sort of ghostly reflex had kicked in.

  Behind the wall, the revolver banged, and the bullet cracked against the stone. Bellamy ran on down a narrow, unlit street. He heard Chester scramble through the wall and sprint after him.

  Bellamy wondered if he should try dodging back inside the cemetery. If he could count on his newfound ability to slip through solid objects to work every time—a dubious notion—and kept zigzagging back and forth through the wall, it would make it hard tor Chester to draw a bead on him. He was still contemplating the advisability of attempting the tactic when three figures emerged from the billowing mist ahead.

  Bellamy ran right into them, and realized the collision demonstrated that they too were spirits. Everyone staggered, struggling for balance. A pair of powerful hands grabbed Bellamy's forearms and set him back securely on his feet, then maintained their grip.

  Another hand, a black woman's hand, he saw now, brushed his forehead and came away with a wisp of the viscous material that had made up his caul. "An Enfant," she said, sounding pleased, "or near enough."

  Chester charged out of the fog, then skidded to a stop when he saw the strangers. "That one's mine!" he cried.

  "Is he?" said one of the strangers, a stocky white man armed with a crossbow. Like his black companions, he wore a short, zebra-striped cape secured with an ivory brooch. "Then you should have taken better care of him."

  "Just because he slipped away from me," said Chester, a subtle quaver in his voice, "that doesn't negate my claim."

  "Doesn't it?" said the black man gripping Bellamy's forearms.

  "He doesn't have any
claim on me!" said Bellamy, wondering what was actually at issue here. "He's an accessory to murder!"

  "Hush," said the black woman. She had the lithe, leggy body of a dancer, which her bottle-green leotard and silver concho belt showed off to good advantage. Her flamboyant, revealing clothing made an odd contrast to the pump shotgun in her hand. "Since I don't recognize him, and he doesn't have one of these"—she touched her brooch, which, Bellamy now observed, was carved with an elegant, fine-boned feminine profile that reminded him of Nefertiti—"I suspect we already know what he is. One of Les Invisibles." She gave Chester a cold smile. "Isn't that right, mon ami?"

  "No!" Chester yelped. "I'm one of you!"

  "Then as a loyal citizen, you shouldn't mind paying a small tax to the Queen," the black woman replied.

  "This isn't fair," Chester said. "You can't just steal—"

  The black woman jacked a shell into the chamber of her shotgun. The ratcheting sound hurt Bellamy's ears. The white man cocked his crossbow.

  Chester trembled, then turned and scurried back into the darkness.

  "Thank you," said Bellamy to his rescuers. "I still need your help. There's a girl, a live girl, in terrible danger."

  The black woman sighed. "Put her out of your mind, cheri. She's no business of yours, not anymore. You're just a poor dead slave now, in bondage to the Queen of New Orleans."

  Bizarre as the declaration sounded, Bellamy could tell she wasn't joking. He stamped on the black man's foot. His captor's grip loosened, and he wrenched himself out of his grasp. But at the same instant, the woman clubbed him with the butt of her shotgun.

  It was just a glancing blow. Had Bellamy still been alive, he might have shrugged it off. But because of his amplified sense of touch, it hurt worse than any pain had ever hurt before. The blast of agony dropped him to his knees. The woman hit him again, and he passed out.

  TWO

  Sprawled on a couch built for humans, and thus too small for his towering body, Dunn rubbed the bloody gash in his chest. Lord, it hurt! And because the weapon that had cut him was silver and magical to boot, he couldn't heal the injury in seconds, or, at most, minutes, the way he could an ordinary wound.

  Reeking, shredded corpses lay heaped about the gloomy parlor. Black Spiral Dancers didn't devour their prey with any particular delicacy, nor were they much inclined to clean up after themselves. Generally speaking, Dunn was no more fastidious that the other members of the pack, at least not within the confines of one of their strongholds. But at the moment, he wished someone had removed the carrion elsewhere. The rotting flesh bred flies, which were swarming around him, attracted to his cut. Striking with the uncanny agility of his race, he slapped his hands together, crushing the insects between his palms, but no matter how many he killed, there were always more. The clapping sound echoed through the house.

  Dunn's cellular phone, which lay on the floor amid the tattered garments he'd shed when he transformed, whirred. Grunting at another jab of pain, he rose, trudged across the floor, and picked it up. Then he realized that unless another werewolf was on the other end of the line, he wouldn't be able to speak to the caller in his current shape. A Crinos throat wasn't made for human speech.

  But if he took on Homid form, he'd forfeit his regenerative powers. His wound might become crippling, or even life-threatening. The best he could do was to assume Glabro shape. His body grew shorter and his fur thinned, though he remained hairier and more muscular than any true human. His ears shrank and moved from the top to the sides of his head, while his muzzle retracted into his skull. Shedding its wolfish characteristics, his face became beetle-browed, the countenance of an ape or a caveman. Ordinarily such transformations were painless, but now the gash throbbed. He silently cursed Frank Bellamy, the cause of his discomfort.

  When the change was complete, he answered the phone with a guttural "Hello." The effort made his throat and head ache. The Glabro larynx—and brain—weren't ideally suited for human language either, though they could manage in a pinch.

  "Hello," said Chester's voice. Dunn found it odd to reflect that the wraith wasn't simply calling from another phone. In all probability he was actually inhabiting the hunk of plastic and circuitry in the Black Spiral Dancer's hand. It was the only way he had of penetrating the Shroud, the barrier that separated the living and the dead, and communicating. "Did you catch Astarte?"

  "No," Dunn growled. He disliked admitting failure, hated admitting weakness even more, but this time, he couldn't see any alternative. "My wound slowed me down too much. I had her scent, but I couldn't catch up with her. Finally I had to come back here. I was afraid I was going to pass out."

  "Wonderful," Chester said sourly. "You had them cold, Bill. You could have sneaked up on them and knocked them out before they even knew you were in the house. But no, not you, the mighty manhunter. You had to give them a sporting chance. You had to make it interesting."

  Dunn swiped his hand back, and forth, dispersing another cloud of flies, which re-formed as soon as he quit. "You want to hear me say it? All right, listen carefully, because I'm only going to do it once. I screwed up. And now that particular subject is closed. The important thing is that the girl can't do any real damage. I don't think she learned anything important here, and even if she did, now that she's seen me in Crinos form, odds are she won't remember it. I guess we flesh-and-blood types need to abandon this house, at least for a little while, but except for that petty inconvenience, we're in good shape."

  "You don't know that she'll forget," said Chester fretfully. "Apparently she's always had a passionate interest in the occult, and at this point, she's had more than one paranormal experience. She may be getting used to it."

  "Maybe," Dunn said, "but frankly, who gives a shit? I am going to track her down and kill her, and the rest of her Arcanum buddies too, just on general principles, but I'm not worried about them. It was Bellamy who had the skills and the cojones to pose a real threat, and at least I got rid of him."

  "That's what you think," Chester said. "Agent Bellamy has joined the ranks of the Restless."

  "Are you kidding me?" the werewolf said. He was starting to feel woozy, unsteady on his feet, so he shuffled back to the couch and collapsed on top of it. The springs squealed in protest. "I thought that the vast majority of souls don't become wraiths."

  "Is that your expert opinion?" asked Chester cattily. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that if a person dies a traumatic death, with urgent business unresolved in his life, there's a much better chance that he will enter the Underworld?"

  Dunn scowled. "I suppose," he growled. The longer he spoke, the more the words ground and scraped in his throat. "But I still thought the odds were on our side. Anyway, it's not a problem, right? You found Bellamy stumbling around in a daze with a what-do-you-eall-it, a caul, on his face. You captured or killed him without any trouble."

  Chester hesitated. "Well, no. When I got to him, his caul was gone, and he was completely awake."

  "How did that happen?" Dunn demanded. "Enfants don't usually pull off their own cauls, do they, not that quickly?"

  "I don't know how it happened," Chester said. "It just did. Anyway, he ran from me. I tried to shoot him, but I missed. He got out of the cemetery and blundered into one of the Queen's patrols. They could see he was newly dead, and they laid claim to him."

  "And you just let them do it?"

  "There were three of them and only one of me," Chester replied sullenly, "What was I supposed to do? I was lucky to get away without getting arrested myself."

  "Okay," sighed Dunn, "I see your point." He paused for a moment, pondering. "The way I see it, we're still all right. Maybe Bellamy's not quite gone, but he might as well be. He doesn't have any freedom of movement. He's a lowly white Lemure Thrall, and no matter how much he babbles about the Atheist, none of the Queen's people is going to care. They won't connect a bunch of Skinlands murders to their own problems." He smiled. "You know, Chester, when you get right down to it, we must be a couple of
nervous nellies, or we wouldn't worry about insignificant Ipdse ends like Bellamy and Astarte no. matter what. Nothing could derail the plan at this point. The organization's too strong, and we've come too far. A few more deaths, a little disaster here and there, and the river will burn black."

  James Graham, in life Earl and Marquess of Montrose, now an Anacreon of the Order of the Unlidded Eye and an advisor to the Smiling Lord, fidgeted with his heavy, richly begemmed and embroidered robes and mantle. He remembered how absurdly rococo and cumbersome these formal garments had seemed when he'd first been granted a place at his master's court. In the many years since, he'd grown accustomed tq them. He'd even come to enjoy them as tokens of the prestige and luxury he'd striven so hard to attain. It was strange to think that after today, he might never don them again.

  The sonorous note of a gong shivered through the antechamber. Lanky, brown- haired Karl Reinhardt, Montrose's former comrade, fellow inquisitor, and the wraith who'd arrested him and escorted him back to Stygia, said, "It's time, my lord Anacreon." His mask of riveted crimson metal concealed his entire face and thus, of course, his expression, Nor cottld Montrose glean any hint of his mood from the neutral tone of his voice.

  Montrose smiled wryly behind his Syn glossy black ceramic mask. "You could Wish me luck, Karl. For old time's sake. I don't think anyone will accuse you of treason just for that."

  "Good luck," murmured Reinhardt, so softly that even Montrose's hypersensitive wraith hearing could barely hear it. "I'm afraid you're going to need it." He directed his gaze at the huge iron doors before him. Crafted by some cunning Artificer, the panels swung silently open in response to his will.

  With its high, vaulted ceiling, the somber hall of state beyond the threshold had always reminded Montrose of a Gothic cathedral, and perhaps that was an appropriate comparison. Now that the Emperor was no more, the service of the seven Deathlords, his former ministers, was the closest thing to a religion the militantly godless society of the Hierarchy had. Soldiers of the Order of the Avenging Flame, the Smiling Lord's personal bodyguards, stood along the walls, while torches burned in sconces above their heads. Their hissing greenish flames were largely responsible for the chill in the air. Unlike earthly fire, barrow-flame radiated cold, not heat.