Dark Kingdoms

by Richard Lee Byers

  Astarte didn't know what it was, or how she was even perceiving it. She had a muddled impression of a momentary blaze of light and a noise like trumpets blaring, but knew that in actuality, neither had occurred. But it was obvious that something real had happened. Because when Dunn ended his leap, he landed beside Bellamy's mangled body, back down by the entrance to the Evidence Room. He hadn't been slammed through the intervening distance, either. Somehow, he was simply there.

  Marilyn stared down the corridor, and then at her own hands, with an expression of utter astonishment on her sweaty, bespectacled face. "What's happened?" Astarte demanded.

  Marilyn said hesitantly, "Something—the stress of the moment—finally woke up my power."

  His pale eyes glowing, Dunn snarled. To Astarte, it SOunded like a challenge, as if the werewolf had decided that Marilyn was an adversary as opposed to mere prey. The monster charged.

  Extending her arms again, Marilyn jabbered words and phrases in what, to Astarte's untrained ear, sounded like a miscellany of foreign languages. Now, fast as Dunn's legs were moving, he didn't appear to be covering any more ground. It was as if he were running on a treadmill.

  Astarte abruptly recalled that she was a combatant tod. And damn it, one properly placed shot could incapacitate Dunn. That was how Bellamy had escaped him on the night of Waxman's death. She rammed the fresh clip into her gun.

  Sighting down the corridor, she found it surprisingly difficult to shoot. At certain moments the hallway looked a mile long, and Dunn was only a tiny speck at the end of it. At others, she felt as if she were moving in slow motion, and needed a minute to pull the trigger or shift her aim an iota. Evidently Marilyn was playing tricks with both space and time to keep Dunn from reaching them, and unfortunately, the fallout was affecting her as well.

  What was even worse was that, despite the Arcanist's best efforts, Dunn was gradually driving forward. By the time Astarte exhausted the clip, she could see, during those instants when the corridor looked relatively normal, that the werewolf had covered half the distance. "Can't you just nuke him?" she asked.

  "No," Marilyn croaked. "I don't know how. I don't know how I'm doing this. I have the talent, but not the training to use it effectively. So run while I delay him. You've got a chance now."

  "Fuck that," Astarte Said. She dropped her empty gun, slipped her hand under Marilyn's hideous jacket, and pulled the Arcanist's pistol from her shoulder holster.

  She resumed firing. Missed three times in a row. Wondered fleetingly why the noise didn't draw the cops. Maybe Dunn or one of his buddies had magically soundproofed the area so he could make his kill undisturbed.

  Every stride seemed to bring the werewolf a little nearer, his jerky, flickering progress resembling motion in a silent film. Marilyn said, "I can't—"

  The distortions of space and time ceased abruptly; everything looked normal again. Dunn pounced, and his jaws snapped shut on Marilyn's shoulder. Tossing his head, hurling spatters of blood around the hallway, he jerked the Arcanist up and down like a terrier shaking a rat. Now shooting at point-blank range, Astarte fired bullet after bullet at his head.

  Some hit him, but once again, it wasn't enough. Dropping Marilyn's shredded body, Dunn leered at his remaining quarry with pink, bloodstained fangs.

  Kneeling in the howling wind, Bellamy retched at the spite and lunacy, the fantasies of destruction, torture, and masochism, boiling in his head. Chopping up his ex-wife with an ax. Returning to FBI headquarters and blowing away Hanson, Byrd, and every other condescending bastard who'd doubted his sanity. Tying Astarte to a bed and ripping the surgical steel rings and pins out of her piercings, one at a time. Burning his own genitals with a cigarette lighter.

  Dear God, if this was who he was...

  But no. It wasn't. His shadowself was force-feeding him these feelings and images, to distract him while it wrested control of his body. He had to focus past them and fight the parasite off. Already bereft of his voice, he lurched up and down, pounding the pavement with his fists in a mute gesture of defiance.

  His vision swam, and the night grew darker. The Shadow was claiming his eyes for its own exclusive use. Trying to spur himself to fight even harder, Bellamy imagined Astarte dangling helpless in Dunn's talons. The thought of it filled him with desperate fury, though an undercurrent of gloating pleasure oozed beneath his outrage. He hammered his hands to pulp.

  At last something—the thought of Astarte in danger, the physical pain, or the combination of the two—blunted the force of the psychic attack. Barracks Street wavered back into focus, and he felt firmly in control of his limbs and voice once more. Giggling, satisfied because at least it had hurt him, and might even have delayed him long enough to cost the woman he loved her life, his shadowself scuttled back into its hiding place in the depths of his soul.

  Unwilling to take any more time to quiet the pain in his hands, Bellamy climbed to his feet, then staggered as the wind nearly knocked him down again. Though as forceful as before, it no longer gusted exclusively from the north but changed direction from one moment to the next. The shifts made it even harder to maintain his balance. Squinting against the barrage of invisible grit, he ran up the street.

  A Nihil in the pavement ahead of him yawned, and a Spectre resembling a huge white octopus began to squirm through what, for it, was a narrow opening. The doomshade's body was composed entirely of human heads, fused together and gibbering cacophonous pleas for deliverance.

  Desperate to get past the creature before it finished heaving itself from the Tempest into the Shadowlands, Bellamy put on a burst of speed. As he circled the Spectre, it lashed a tentacle at him, the heads comprising it opening their mouths to bite. He ducked, the attack whizzed over his head, and then he was out of range. The Spectre's myriad voices screamed curses after him.

  Whimpering, wet with her companion's gore, Astarte stepped backward and squeezed the trigger. The automatic clicked, out of ammunition.

  A few strides farther on, a female ghost in a golden mask and a long crimson gown struggled toward the refuge of a derelict three-story house. Other wraiths peered out the windows, beckoning and crying encouragement, until a particularly powerful blast of wind caught her. She twirled like a top and then her body frayed into streamers of ectoplasm, which disintegrated in the gale.

  Horrified, Bellamy stared at the empty space she'd occupied. Evidently the abrasive properties of the storm itself, what he'd ignorantly taken for the sting of airborne sand, could flay an ibambo to pieces and send him to the Void. Dashing on, he tried not to imagine the same thing happening to him.

  Intent on making headway despite the wind and the horde of Spectres slithering into the Shadowlands, he had little attention to spare for events on the warm side of the Shroud. But eventually he noticed the disturbances breaking out in the houses he passed. Shouting. Sobbing. Dogs barking and dishes smashing. Farther afield, car horns blared. Though the living couldn't experience the storm directly, they were reacting to its presence nonetheless.

  Every time Bellamy reached an intersection, he peered up and down the cross street. To get to the station house quickly, he was going to have to hitch a ride. But it was late, there was little traffic, and the few occupied vehicles he did see were traveling too fast for him to board, or to cross over into the Skinlands and attempt to flag them down.

  His face and hands smarted as if they'd been dipped in acid. Worse, he felt a numbing trickle of Oblivion flowing inside him, eroding the bonds that held him together.

  For all he knew, Astarte had been wary enough to avoid Dunn's trap, and in any case, Bellamy couldn't help her if the wind tore him to pieces. Maybe the only sane course was to take shelter from the storm.

  No. Some instinct told him that Astarte did need him, and right now. Ignoring the urgings of his fear, he staggered on, and finally, a few yards beyond Dauphine Street, spied an old white rust-dappled Thunderbird with rocketship tail fins just pulling away from the curb.

  He flung himself
at it, willing his body to become completely insubstantial. With a shriek, the gale shifted direction. The blast of wind caught him in midair, nudging him to one side, and for a second he was certain it would spoil his leap. Then he plunged though the side of the car onto the stained, ripped upholstery of the back seat, which to his hypersensitive nose reeked of cats. He nearly tumbled on through it before he managed to solidify himself. As it was, he wound up with an arm and a leg stuck inside it. The interpenetration hurt for a second, until his body adjusted.

  To his surprise, he could still feel the wind, but at least the T-bird's body blunted its force. He no longer had the impression that his substance might unravel at any moment. Sitting up, he looked at his unwitting chauffeur.

  She was a tall, brown-haired woman in her thirties, not fat, but big-boned and solidly built. She had a pretty face, with clear skin and apple cheeks, and something about her gave Bellamy the impression that she probably had a pleasant smile, though she was glowering now. She snapped on the radio, then punched the buttons, unable to find anything she wanted to hear. Animal-rights leaflets, bundled together with rubber bands, sat on the seat beside her.

  Concentrating, Bellamy projected himself across the Shroud. The upholstery remained just as torn but didn't look nearly as filthy on the mortal side of the barrier. "I need your help," he said.

  She slammed on the brakes, and, as the Thunderbird lurched to a halt, twisted around to gawk at him. "Get out of the car!" she said.

  "I can't. This is an emergency. I need—"

  She jumped out of the T-hird, tore open the hack door, grabbed him, and started to drag him out. When he tried to push her away, pain exploded up his forearms. He'd forgotten injuring his hands.

  In that instant of paralysis, she hauled him halfway through the door. He bashed at her with his forearm, breaking her hold, then, forcing his sore, stiff fingers to obey him, yanked his shortsword out of its scabbard. Seeing the weapon, she turned to run. He leaped out, grabbed her by the shoulder, and pressed the sword against her neck. She froze.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I truly don't want to hurt you, but I have to get to the police station north of here on Elysian Fields, right now, and you're going to drive me."

  "You're kidnapping me so I can drive you to the police?" she asked incredulously.

  "Believe it or not," Bellamy said wryly.

  "Why don't you just take the car?"

  He wished he could. It would spare her the stress of the journey and him the hassle of keeping her under control. But he was afraid he wouldn't be able to hold himself in the mortal world long enough to drive the entire distance. "I've got my reasons. Now, we're both going to get back in, very slowly. If you give me any trouble, I'll cut you."

  They climbed in, and she put the old Ford in gear. Bellamy moved the shortsword a couple inches away from the woman's throat. "Drive fast," he said.

  "Don't worry," she said, accelerating. "I want to get this over with. What happened to you anyway?"

  Prompted by the question to take stock of himself, Bellamy noticed that, flayed by the storm, his hands were covered with tiny scratches, and that on this side of the Shroud, the cuts bled. For some reason, the sight of the blood captivated him, just as the hot Skinlands flame had. He had to wrench his gaze away. "Let's just say it's been a rough night."

  "How did you get into the car without me seeing you?"

  "I'm a ghost. I'm invisible to the living most of the time."

  She hesitated, then said, "Okay." Obviously humoring him.

  "When I was alive, I wouldn't have believed it either. But you will in a minute, because I'm going to disappear. I'm warning you because I don't want you to freak out and lose control of the car. Or to think I'm gone. I'll still be right behind you, ready to hurt you if you deviate from the program."

  "I understand," the animal-rights activist said. Her jaw dropping, she goggled dramatically at the rearview mirror. "Oh my God, oh my God, you did disappear!"

  The atrocious overacting made Bellamy laugh. After hours of apprehension punctuated with interludes of outright terror, the release of tension came as a blissful relief. "Sorry," he said, "but I haven't done it yet. Now I'm doing it." Relaxing his will, he allowed the persistent tug of death to whisk him back into the Underworld.

  Despite his warning, she jerked the steering wheel. The T-bird almost crashed into a parked Isuzu pickup before she got it under control again. "Oh, shit, oh shit," she chattered, her face white as paper. Her aura flamed bright orange, and waves of dread poured off her. Feeling like a ghoul, Bellamy nevertheless drank in the emotion, using the power to heal his lacerated skin and broken hands. Then he reloaded his gun.

  "I can't believe this," the driver said abruptly. "You think you're having a bad day. First, my landlord wants to evict me for having too many cats. There's nothing in the lease that says I can't have cats. They aren't hurting anything. Next, my editor orders me to stop writing so much about cruelty to animals, or the paper will drop me. It's the pet column, what did they expect? Then I find out that the shelter wants to start gassing strays after just a week, and nobody else on the committee even has a problem with it. And last but not least, a ghost, a fucking ghost—"

  As she rambled on, her fiery orange halo faded. Bellamy guessed that her monologue was helping her control her fear. Now that he'd healed and refreshed himself, he was all for it, particularly if it kept her from having an accident. He peered through the windshield, looking for the station house, but the streaming, roaring darkness kept him from seeing very far ahead.

  "—think I must be nuts," the woman continued bitterly. "I'm wasting my life on this, and nobody gives a damn. Nothing changes. Well, screw it. Screw all of them." She flipped up the turn-signal lever and stepped on the brake. Abruptly Bellamy spied the station house immediately ahead. The animal-rights activist pulled into the parking lot, then drove up to the public entrance.

  To avoid stepping out into the full force of the storm, Bellamy crossed the Shroud. The driver flinched at his reappearance. "Thanks for the ride," he said. He climbed out, sheathed his sword, and then, after a moment's hesitation, added, "Don't give up on your cause if you really care about it. It turns out that caring is just about the only thing that matters." He strode toward the doors.

  After a moment, the activist jumped out and hurried after him. Her heels clicked on the tarmac.

  "What are you doing?" he asked. "I can pretty much guarantee that it won't do any good to report me to the cops."

  "I know that," she said. "I'm not a complete idiot. I just want to see what happens next."

  "Unfortunately, from your vantage point, not much," Bellamy said, opening the door for her. Inside the reception area, an excited crowd was jabbering at the sergeant and cadets behind the desk and at one another. "I'm just going to blink out—"

  Gunshots banged faintly somewhere above his head. He expected the mortals to react, but nobody did. Evidently a person needed the sharp ears of a wraith to hear the muffled sound, at least with half a dozen people yammering in the foreground.

  In any event, his instincts had been correct. Astarte needed him right now. He gripped his companion's forearm. "Hey!" she said.

  "Listen to me," he said. "Somebody's being murdered on one of the upper floors. Get every cop in the building up there. Don't take no for an answer." Making sure no mortal would try to stop him, he slipped back into the Shadowlands, then dashed deeper into the building.

  It seemed to take forever to find a staircase. As he scrambled upward, he smelled gun smoke, Dunn's animal reek, and a foul, rotten stench. Heard breath rasping, hearts pounding, and Marilyn chanting an incantation in what might have been Greek or Latin. After a hiatus, the shooting recommenced.

  He rounded another comer, then faltered, taking in the vista before him.

  Despite their disguises and the fact that he'd come up behind them, Bellamy recognized Astarte and Marilyn instantly. The former was doing the shooting, and, her arms thrust out, the latter
was seemingly working magic. The length of hallway in front of her appeared to stretch and flicker from one moment to the next. Like Astarte's, the Arcanist's aura burned orange, red, and purple, but it was also shot through with brilliant sparkles, evidently a side effect of her display of mystic power.

  Just a few feet further on, dwarfing the humans, loomed a black-furred creature, perhaps a prehistoric version of a wolf, with pale, luminous eyes. Bellamy had never seen anything exactly like it before, but he was all but certain the thing was Dunn, wearing a shape that could operate comfortably in the relatively cramped confines of the corridor. Evidently Marilyn's magic was supposed to hold him back, but it wasn't doing the job. The grooves and punctures his claws had left in the linoleum revealed his arduous progress toward his prey. His ivory fangs bared, he struggled forward another step.

  Bellamy reached for his pistol, and then, for some reason, his eyes locked on what should have been the least significant element of the scene, a stinking, mangled cadaver lying at the far end of the hall, near the sign that read, Evidence Room. He stared at it, repelled yet captivated, and after a moment, despite the burns and bloating, the blisters studding the greenish skin, recognized himself.

  He shuddered, and then, his mission forgotten, started toward the corpse. To touch it. To cradle it in his arms. To caress it and gaze into its milky eyes as if his love and anguish could wash away its injuries and restore it to life.

  He scrambled past Marilyn and Dunn. For a moment the corridor looked a mile long. Then the occultist said, "I can't—" and the passage snapped back to normal.

  Bellamy heard the Black Spiral Dancer pounce. Heard the creature seize Marilyn and lash her about, rending her flesh and breaking bones, while Astarte plinked desperately away. Smelled the rich, coppery odor of the Arcanist's blood.

  The ibambo faltered. What has happening was terrible, and it was precisely what he'd come to prevent. He should do something about it. But it was his body, the vessel of his life, in easy reach now that Marilyn's spell had dissolved. Feeling as if he were dreaming—for after all, he couldn't really be committing such a selfish, treacherous act—he continued forward.