Dark Kingdoms

by Richard Lee Byers

  Bellamy shifted his weight, poising himself for a dash through the right-hand wall.

  "Don't tty," said the gator. "I guarantee you, I can run vow down and rip your legs off. Or better yet, do try. I could use the exercise." Though he suspected it was anatomically impossible, Bellamy could have sworn that Antoine's toothy grin stretched a little wider.

  "Okay," the fugitive said. "You got me. My real name is Frank Bellamy. I'm an FBI agent."

  "Were," said Antoine. "You were an FBI agent. It's over now. You don't learn that, you're in for a hard time."

  Antoine's remark triggered a swell of misery, which Bellamy struggled to quell. That was how he'd kept his sanity, by refusing to think about all the precious things his death had cost him. "I can't let it be over yet," he said. "I have unfinished business."

  The alligator bobbed his head and flexed his front legs. Bellamy realized that the combination of movements was supposed to be a shrug. "Join the club. People who die happy don't wind up in the Underworld."

  "But my business is important," Bellamy said. "I died chasing a serial killer called the Atheist." If Antoine had heard about the case, he didn't show it. "I found out that there's: really more than one murderer. There's a whole conspiracy, and at least some of the members are ghosts and werewolves." The gator cocked his wedge-shaped head. Bellamy wondered if he'd managed to pique his interest, "And I think the crimes they've committed so far are only the start of something bigger. God knows how many people they might kill if I don't find a way to stop them."

  "Death doesn't look like such a big deal from this side of the Shroud," Antoine said. "Still, maybe you should tell one of your trainers."

  "I tried. She didn't care."

  The gator shrugged again. "Well, so much for that, then, and when you get right down to; it, why should we care? Nobody's paying us to watch over the Quick. We have our own problems."

  "I've picked up on that," said Bellamy, though he hadn't grasped the details. The priests were intent On painting the Queen as wise and powerful, not on delineating her weaknesses. "But don't you see, if there are ghosts involved in the Atheist killings, maybe everybody's problems are connected."

  "Got any proof of that?" Antoine asked.

  "No," Bellamy admitted, "but I feel it." In its way, the intuition was as compelling as his dreams of the dark metropolis on the island, the dreams which, as Daimler had warned him, had predicted his death.

  The reptile shook his head. "That Won't cut it. Some abambo are psychic, but the Queen's already got more hot-shit soothsayers and root doctors than you could shake a stick at. Nobody's going to care: about your hunches."

  "Maybe not," Bellamy said. "But when I died, the girl I love was in terrible danger. I don't know what happened to her. If she's Still alive, she may need my help. And I'm just One lousy prisoner. What does it really matter if I escape? So I'm begging you, just pretend you never saw me. I swear to God—to the Orishas, if you want— I'll never tell anyone you helped me,"

  "Suppose I did let you go," said Antoine. "Do you think you could survive on the streets of the Necropolis all by your lonesome? Let's give you a little quiz. What am I?"

  "You're a ghost like me," said Bellamy, "except that a flesh sculptor has given you a makeover."

  Antoine brayed, a harsh, derisive screech. After a moment Bellamy realized the creature was imitating a buzzer on a TV game show. "Wrong, warmblood. I am a wraith, but not like you. I'm the ghost of a real live bayou alley-gator."

  Bellamy peered at Antoine uncertainly. Since the night of Waxman's death, he'd begun to grow accustomed to unnatural creatures and deadly miracles, but for some reason, talking animals, like characters out of a cartoon or a Dr. Seuss book, were just too much to swallow. "You're pulling my leg. Aren't you?"

  "Not yet," Antoine said. "That's why it's still attached. Now, why do you suppose you haven't seen a critter like me before?"

  Bellamy shook his head. "I don't know."

  Antoine made the buzzer noise. "Different places—different belief systems, according to some of the eggheads—serve up different kinds of dead people. In the African Shadowlands, you get as many animal abambo as human. On Stygia's turf, you don't get any. By treaty, on the cold siderof the Shroud, New Orleans is part of Africa, what the pinhead Hierarchs call the Dark Kingdom of Ivory, and it should operate by African rules. But the rest of North America is Stygian, and their reality bleeds into outs, so this burg only gets a few four-legged wraiths. See?"

  Bellamy supposed it did make a crazy kind of sense, if a person was willing to forget everything he'd ever been taught about science. Even so, it didn't explain everything. "But how can the ghost of an animal talk and think like a human?"

  Antoine snorted. "Watch your mouth, chump. I don't think like a two-legger, and I'll gut anyone who says otherwise. As for the talking, well, the hoodoo men say that live animals used to be able to do it. But then one of them let death loose in the world, and as punishment, the Old Gods took their speech away. Sounds like racist propaganda to me, but who knows, maybe it happened just that way.

  "Anyway, the point of this little: talk is to show you you don't know squat about being dead. You can't help your girlfriend. You couldn't even survive on your own. Here, you're protected, so you'd better calm down and get with the program."

  "Maybe you're right," Bellamy sighed. He let his shoulders; slump, doing his best to appear beaten and dejected, then spun and sprinted toward the wall.

  He heard Antoine scramble after him. The gator's jaws snapped shut on his leg. As he pitched forward, he felt a flash of pain, and heard something snap. His body became intangible when his flailing hands, struck the wall, and he fell with the top half of his body in the next room and the bottom half still in the parlor. But the transformation didn't free him from Antoine's grip.

  The reptile wrenched him back through the wall. His eyes blazing, he seemed wholly a beast and a savage predator now. Thrashing helplessly, his injured limb on fire, Bellamy was certain his captor would rip his legs off as promised.

  Instead Antoine released him and shuffled backward, creating a space between them. He glared at Bellamy for several moments, then rasped, "You shouldn't tempt me, boy. When I was breathing, all I cared about was eating. I miss it. But I'm not a damn Mia Watu. I won't send you to the Void just for the fun of filling my belly."

  Bellamy tried to shift his body into a more comfortable position. Another lance of pain stabbed through his leg, and he grunted.

  "There's emotion flowing all through the house," Antoine said. "That's why we stay here. Open yourself up to it, and it will heal you."

  Bellamy tried. He imagined the echo of suffering he'd felt before, and strained to sense it again. After a few seconds, a sort of pleasurable misery crawled along his nerves. He wondered if masochists like Marilyn felt something akin to this when they were being punished. His leg gradually straightened, and his bloodless lacerations closed, until only the rips at the bottom of his pant leg remained to show that he'd ever been injured.

  "Thanks for the tip," he said.

  "I didn't do it to help you," Antoine replied. "Do you think I wanted to drag you back to your keepers, tasting you every step of the way ?I don't need that kind of frustration. Now get up. You're going home."

  Bellamy cautiously rose and tested his leg. It was still a little sore, but it would support his weight without any problem. He started to trudge toward the pulsing sound of the drums. He heard the huge alligator fall into step behind him.

  "Why did they make me a slave?" the human asked. He no longer had any real hope of playing on his captor's sympathies, but on the other hand, he had nothing to lose by continuing to try. "I didn't do anything wrong, and I'm pretty sure you people don't enslave every Enfant or Lemure who comes along."

  "Some newcomers have ibambo friends and relatives to sponsor them," Antoine replied. "Others manage to stay free until it's obvious that, one way or other, they've learned their way around. You didn't fall into either
of those categories. Plus, it probably didn't help that you're white. A lot of the Queen's people were slaves back before the Civil War, when they were breathing. Some of them are still holding a grudge."

  Bellamy grimaced. "Don't you see that isn't fair?" As they proceeded down the hall, the clattering of the drums grew louder.

  "'Fair' is a human idea," Antoine said. "One of the ones that don't have jack to do with the way the universe really works. Look, I'm a pumped-up lizard. And you're right, when I was alive, I couldn't think, not the way I do now. I didn't feel guilt or ambition or regret. I was just barely conscious of the tact that I was an individual being, distinct from the rest of the world. Tell me, how can a dumb hunk of meat like that have any 'unfinished business?' It can't- So how come I got stuck in this cold, dark place, always hungry and never able to eat?"

  "I don't know," Bellamy said.

  "Neither does anybody else," the reptile said. "Because there isn't any reason. Bad things just happen, and there usually isn't anything you can do about it. Existence is a whole lot easier if you accept that, and just float with the current. Forget about your mortal problems and try to fit in. Convince somebody to teach you an Arcanos, so you can make yourself useful. In a few years someone might give; you your freedom. Or they might swap you to the Stygians in exchange for—"

  The drumming stopped, not with the usual flourish, but raggedly, as if the musicians had been interrupted. Then the screaming and the gunfire began.

  TEN

  "We're going to go through that gray door up there," Antoine said, "so I can peek through the wall of the room on the other side. We're going to hurry, but we're going to be quiet. Got it?"

  Bellamy nodded. "I know the drill."

  "You try to run or give me any other kind of hassle and I will rip your legs off, warmblood. I guarantee it."

  "I understand," Bellamy said. He stalked forward, and the gator shambled after him.

  Beyond the gray door was a small room with Spartan furnishings: a single bed, a straight-backed chair, and a dresser with a porcelain bowl and pitcher sitting on top. A faded pink ribbon tied around one of the bedposts provided the only touch of color. Bellamy suspected that the room had belonged to a servant. For a moment another thrill of vicarious suffering froze him shivering in his tracks. He could almost see a thin black girl lying on the bed with her face buried in the pillow, sobbing with loneliness; could almost catch the moist mucus smell of her weeping.

  Antoine didn't react to the echo of misery, perhaps because, familiar with every room in the sprawling house, he'd been expecting it. Fie twisted his head to the side, evidently so he could peek beyond the wall without thrusting the entire length of his snout through it, a maneuver that would scarcely have been conducive to stealth. Fie stuck one eye into the wainscot, then pulled it out instantly. "Shit!" he growled.

  Bellamy hurried to the wall and pushed his own face through. He found himself peeping into the hallway that led to the brainwashing room. Several yards away, two hideous creatures crouched over the motionless bodies of three hobbled slaves, ripping at them. One of the monsters looked somewhat manlike, but with a blank, bald, featureless head like an egg, and sores and boils constantly opening, swelling, and bursting all over its gaunt, naked body. Unlike the dry wounds of the average wraith, these wept blood and greenish pus. The other creature resembled a robotic spider cobbled together from a thousand rusty pieces of scrap metal, but with the prominent, serrated forelimbs of a praying mantis.

  Waves of blackness washed through the Thralls, and then they melted away. The two monsters scuttled around a corner, toward the sounds of further fighting.

  Bellamy pulled his face back through the wall. Antoine gazed up at him. The FBI agent felt that he could virtually read the gator's mind. Antoine was thinking that he couldn't keep track of his prisoner and defend the Haunt at the same time.

  The reptile grunted and crawled through the wall.

  Bellamy shook his head, almost dazed by his good fortune. The sneak attack, if that was what was going on, had given him a second chance to escape. Pivoting, he took a step toward the gray door, and another shriek of anguish reverberated through the derelict mansion. Thinking of the poor people he'd seen in the corridor, being clawed and hacked until their bodies crumbled into what wraiths called the Final Death, he faltered. He realized that a part of him didn't want to run away. It wanted to stay and fight the demons.

  He scowled. That sentiment was a brainless, inappropriate impulse, birthed by the same protective instincts that had prompted him to become a cop. But unlike ordinary, law-abiding citizens, the Queen's people didn't deserve protection. By kidnapping and imprisoning him, by trying to indoctrinate him as if he were a recruit in some demented cult, they'd proved they were criminals themselves.

  Except that that wasn't quite fair. They hadn't broken any laws. Vile as their actions seemed to him, they were only following the customs of their own grim world, and most of them hadn't been gratuitously cruel in their treatment of him. Besides, the invaders were slaughtering his fellow captives, too, and they truly were innocent victims. How could he abandon them to die?

  Because Astarte was in danger! And compared to her safety, the welfare of the slaves simply didn't matter.

  He blinked. That last thought and the accompanying burst of emotion felt...exaggerated, hysterical, partially alien, as if something had inserted them in his mind. Since his capture, a fellow slave more knowledgeable than himself had explained that the Doppelganger he'd encountered in the cemetery had most likely been a manifestation of his shadowself, a mad, self-destructive aspect which festered inside every ibambo. Maybe the same entity was trying to influence him now. Perhaps it wanted him to run away because it thought that would be the wrong or the dishonorable thing to do.

  He felt something writhe in the depths of his psyche, a giveaway that his suspicions had been correct. Doing his best to ignore the loathsome sensation, he slipped through the wall.

  Except for himself, the corridor was empty. Cries, shots, thuds, and the twang of bowstrings echoed from several directions. It sounded as if the attackers and defenders were fighting throughout the house. It occurred to him that a battle between adversaries who could advance and retreat through walls could easily break up into a series of small, desperate duels and deadly games of hide-and-seek.

  He suspected that his best chance of surviving this madness would be to hook back up with Antoine, and that the alligator might well have trailed the junk spider and the faceless man on down the hall. Wishing he had a gun, he crept in that same direction.

  A foul smell tinged the air. The stink of the faceless man's sores, Bellamy suspected. He peeked around the corner. He didn't see anyone in the next section of hallway, either, but after a moment, Antoine's hissing roar reverberated from somewhere ahead.

  Bellamy sprinted forward. Skidding around another bend, he saw open double doors, and beyond the threshold, a table covered with a miscellany of ritual objects: gourds, rattles, tom-toms, masks, whisks, and bones. Struggling figures blundered back and forth around the table. A man in a striped cape wailed, fighting with the miraculous voice powers a few abambo possessed, until a creature like a skeleton cloaked in seething vapor rammed a black shortsword into his back. The jagged claws of the junk spider snapped another soldier's head off his shoulders, Scrambling forward, Bellamy snatched someone's fallen Vz.58 off the floor. As he darted through the door, he saw Antoine snapping at a vaguely humanoid figure armored in quills like a porcupine. A number of the long magenta spines had broken off and stuck in the reptile's: jaws. The bristly figure was trying to chop Antoine with a double-edged ax, while the mist-enshrouded skeleton was skulking up behind him.

  Bellamy lifted the assault rifle and fired at the bone-and-smoke monster. The black crystals embedded in the weapon sparkled. The bullets blasted the skeleton off its feet, but it leaped up again and charged him, sword upraised.

  Bellamy caught a whiff of its veil of vapor, a sharp ammonia
stench that stung his nose. As the creature lunged into Striking range, he began to dodge, but, then, at last, the gunfire took its toll. The monster's ribs and spine blew apart, and it clattered to the floor in fragments. These immediately began to fade away, but without black waves of Oblivion pulsing through them.

  The FBI agent turned back toward Antoine. The gator and the porcupine creature were entwined together, thrashing around on the floor. Behind them, at the far end of the room, the junk spider gripped in its mandibles; a scrawny old man with a painted face. The victim screamed as the metal monster dragged him backward into the wall.

  Bellamy started after the spider, then glimpsed a flash of light from the corner of his eye. He spun around. A demon with the body of a voluptuous woman and the head of a malformed baboon ran at him. A halo of golden flame surrounded each of her hands.

  Bellamy/fired at her. The Vz.58 chattered and then fell silent, out of ammunition. The baboon woman kept coming, her blazing hands poised to seize him.

  He sidestepped and tried to club her. Pivoting at the same instant, she grabbed the rifle, wrenching it out of his hands, and flinging it aside, and pounced on him.

  The impact knocked him down. He thrashed, battered her with knees and elbows, trying to get away, while she clutched at him. He realized she was trying to set him ablaze. Her crackling flames were searing hot, not cold like barrow-fire.

  Her fingers knotted in the fabric of his shirt. Pie felt the skin beneath it charring. A line of yellow flame oozed upward toward his shoulder.

  Then something ripped her off him. As he slapped frantically at his shirt, extinguishing the fire, he saw that Antoine had seized her in his jaws and was lashing her this way and that, breaking her body. Her boneS:.;Snapped, and finally his teeth cut her into two pieces. One fell to the floor. He tossed his head, casting, away the other.