Dark Kingdoms

by Richard Lee Byers

  As Gayoso had predicted, the little man was no marksman, particularly in his current state of agitation. Most of the shots flew wild. But at least one didn't, and suddenly the monster dissolved into streamers of shadow.

  Infuriated anew, Gayoso felt himself changing as a new facet of his Spectre nature asserted itself. The bones of his skull swelled and shifted into some brutish configuration. Tumors swelled and weeping sores opened on his face and neck. Ignoring the pain still burning in his abdomen, he managed to stoop and recover his own pistol.

  Valentine tried to shoot him and scurry to the child at the same time, a maneuver which impaired his marksmanship still further. None of the shots struck home. Gayoso readied his gun.

  The sacrifice dropped her hands from her blistered face. Evidently she'd rubbed away the worst of the slime. Valentine snapped off another shot, and grazed Gayoso's arm. Exhilarated with the lust for retribution, the Anacreon barely felt it. Grinning, savoring the moment, he drew a bead on the bridge of the dwarfs nose.

  Valentine grabbed the child by the forearm and dragged her through the wall.

  Fast as his wounds would permit, Gayoso scrambled after them. They couldn't outdistance him, not with such short legs!

  And yet, when he glided into the abandoned suite of cubicles beyond the wall, the two wraiths were nowhere in sight.

  Senses straining, he stalked from one partitioned work space to the next. With no result. After a minute, he was suddenly certain that Valentine and the girl had slipped from the area when his back was turned, then tiptoed down the stairs to the street. He ran down the steps himself, sprang out onto the stoop, pivoted this way and that, and saw no one.

  Well, then, he'd just have to track them down. If he listened to its voice, Oblivion would show him the way. He stepped onto the sidewalk, then felt the dirty wind, hot one moment and the cold the next, wailing down the empty street:.

  A Maelstrom was beginning. He turned toward the west. A wall of darkness, blacker than the night, was rising above the rooftops.

  The final storm, the disturbance his allies had worked so hard to create, had final ly come. Gayoso was still so intent on hunting down Valentine and the sacrifice that, for another moment, even the arrival of his hour of triumph scarcely seemed to matter. But then sanity—or what conesponded to it in the mind of a Doppelganger— reasserted itself.

  He had to return to the Citadel at once, to orchestrate his coup d'etat. He could catch the dwarf and the child later, when he was the absolute master of the province, and give them an infinity of pain. His anger subsiding, his features reverting to their former shape, he hurried back inside to don his customary attire.

  Peeking through a window across the street from Gayoso's lair, Valentine was amazed to see the Spaniard melt back through the door. Fie would never have expected his pursuer to give up so easily. He took Belinda's hand and they skulked in the opposite direction, through the abandoned luncheonette with its counter and stools, out the rear wall of the building, and into a narrow alley choked with litter decades old.

  It was only then that he dared to speak, even in a whisper. "Are you all right? Are your eyes okay?"

  "Yeah," Belinda said, tendrils of new skin creeping across her raw white burns, "now. I blinked when that thing spat at me, and that kept out the worst of the gunk." She suddenly scowled. "God damn you!"

  "What?"

  "You didn't kill him! You had a gun, too, and I'd already hurt him. You could've gotten him. But instead we ran away!"

  Valentine grimaced. "You're welcome."

  Her brown eyes narrowed. "What?"

  "Skip it," sighed the dwarf. "Look, you and I were both hurt ourselves, you so bad that you were a sitting duck. Gayoso knows how to shoot, I don't, and I don't think I had but one or two bullets left. Besides which, did you see how his face changed?"

  The hippie hesitated. "No," she said sullenly. "Everything was blurry."

  "Well, he turned pretty damn ugly. As soon as I saw that room and you on the altar, I knew his Shadow had taken him over, but I didn't know he'd turned into a full-fledged Spectre, if you get what I mean. But he has! The way he looked right then, I'm not sure a thousand bullets would have stopped him."

  "Well, since you chickened out, I guess we'll never know, will—"

  Her sneer abruptly melted into a look of remorse. "My god, listen to me. You came back to help me, and all I can do is bitch at you. It's just that I know for sure now. Starshine really was tortured and murdered. There was nothing left for me but revenge, and we didn't even get that!"

  "I know," Valentine said, awkwardly patting her shoulder. "I feel the same way. But we will get the perverted son of a bitch."

  "How?"

  "Well, it seems like all we have to do is get to Shellabarger and Mrs. Duquesne and tell them what we know. That's what Gayoso said himself. So I'm still trying to figure out why he didn't keep chasing us." A hot, gritty wind scraped his cheek, as if to get his attention. He turned and saw the curtain of blackness rising above the rooftops to the west. "Oh, shit."

  "What is it?" Belinda asked. "Another Maelstrom?"

  "I think it's more than that. I don't know exactly when you woke up, how much you heard, but I think this is the storm that's going to rev up the Spectres' big magick ritual and give them the power to take over the province. Gayoso stopped chasing us because he figures we don't matter anymore."

  With a sharp snap, a jagged Nihil crack opened in the pavement at their feet. Off to the north, in the Quick section of Natchez, guns banged, and someone screamed. The Maelstrom was making its presence felt on both sides of the Shroud.

  "If the bad guys are making their move," Belinda said, "then we have to warn the Governors right away."

  Valentine shook his head. "How are we going to get to them when we don't know who to trust? Apparently a bunch of the Emerald Legion and Pauper Legion soldiers are going to throw in with the Spectres, too."

  "Then what do you want to do? Just run away again?"

  Valentine opened his mouth to tell her yes, then realized that wasn't what he wanted. It was only what he'd expected himself to want. "Uh, no. We have to do something. I just don't know—" He frowned as a thought hit him. "Maybe I do."

  'What?'

  "When Gayoso was filling mc in. stalling until that thing popped out of its hole"— he shuddered at the memory of countless tiny hands scratching him, gripping him all over and holding him fast, and sticky, burning jelly gurgling down on his head— "he mentioned something about 'busybodies' from New Orleans, who came to stop the Spectres. Since they're new in town, they haven't had a chance to fall under the phony Pardoners' spell. And they must be tough, or Queen Marie wouldn't have sent them. If we hook up with them, maybe we can push our way into the Citadel."

  To the east, isirens howled.

  "Where are these people?" Belinda asked.

  "That's the problem, I don't know! Except.. .Gayoso said they 'steamed' into town. Don't you think that sounds like they came by boat?"

  "Maybe, but it doesn't mean they're there now."

  "It-—the river front—is still a place to start looking."

  She nodded grimly. Her expression of adult resolution looked peculiar on the face of a little girl. "Okay. Let's do it."

  They trotted back toward Under-the-Hill. As the wind howled with increasing force, and Nihils.yawned, Valentine realized that, considering that he and Belinda were moving toward the looming wall of darkness, they were probably heading into the worst of the Maelstrom, too. Once again, he: looked inside himself, expecting to discover the urge to turn back, but it wasn't there. He wondered if he was miraculously turning brave, or, more likely, had just gone crazy.

  The wind wailed, chilling Montrose to the bone. He stared at the air in front of him, willing the kink in space to open. Louise stood watch, her curved Chinese sword with the red tassel dangling from the pommel in one hand and Montrose's Bren Ten in the other, She'd lost both her own guns along the way.

  The s
oft, salmon-colored soil heaved, thrusting up a mound of earth. In the blink of an eye, the dirt became a creature somewhat like a panther, but with abnormally long forelegs, and a bare skull for a head. Louise didn't give it the chance to orient itself. She?sprang at it instantly, bellowing a kiai and swinging her saber at its neck. The knob of bone flew from its shoulders, and its body crumbled into clods of clay..

  From the darkness cloaking this desolate tableland came oozing, sucking sounds. The ground was giving birth to additional horrors. "Any luck?" asked Louise.

  "No," Montrose replied, his head beginning to throb. "I'm afraid it isn't an especially cooperative rift."

  But for better or worse, it was still the best opportunity they'd come upon. In their trek across the Tempest, they'd repeatedly run into storms and hordes of Spectres, perils which had cut the Byways and compelled the wraiths to change course. Had Montrose been given to grandiosity, he might almost have suspected that the Void itself was striving to keep him from reaching his destination.

  But now, at last, he sensed not merely the Shadowlands but Natchez itself beckoning on the other side of this particular fault, if only he could rip the wretched thing open!

  "Take as much time as you need/' said Louise with the barest hint of irony in her tone. "I'll handle the dirt creatures."

  Two more of the horrors—one somewhat resembling a disemboweled gorilla, with coils of dangling entrails dragging between i ts legs, the other a mantis the size of a wolfhound—loped out of the gloom. The Sister of Athena shot them, then wheeled to confront another beast that was skulking up behind her.

  As if he'd finally managed to take hold of something tiny and slippery, Montrose felt his Arcanos lock onto the rift. Teeth clenched, straining, he pried the edges of it apart. A luminous blue hole appeared in the air.

  He sensed the portal wasn't stable, but there was no more time to work with it. Clay monstrosities were slinking in from every side. "Time to go," he said. "Hold on to me." She stuffed the pistol in her belt, then grabbed his hand. They scrambled through the doorway.

  Dazzling colors flashed before his eyes, and the searing taste of bile flooded his mouth. Something bashed him, hard but painlessly, again and again, tumbling him and Louise about like a marble in a pinball machine. Pits and fissures: gaped in the whorled, twisting nothingness around him. In a matter of moments, the turbulence would flip the travelers through one of the gaps.

  Gripping Louise's hand with all his strength, he peered desperately about with his Harbinger senses, looking for the one rift that would take them where they wished to go. After what seemed an eternity, he spotted it. It looked like an L-shaped crevasse perhaps fifty feet below him, although in this chaotic nowhere, neither distance nor concepts such as up and down had a great deal of meaning. He willed himself and his companion toward it.

  Another smash hurled them sideways, toward a ragged scarlet gap like a bloody wound, which seemed to reach to swallow them. Then his Arcanos carried them swooping away and into the L-shaped gap.

  A prickling danced across his skin. He felt a pang of excruciating sorrow, which nevertheless: made him guffaw. The next instant, he and Louise were standing on a narrow asphalt street with a large Nihil hissing and glittering in the crumbling brick wall behind them.

  The night was as dark and the wind as harsh as those they'd left behind on the plateau. Had Montrose not recognized this site, he might have supposed that that his sense of direction had failed him, and he'd simply transported himself and his companion to another section of the Tempest. But he did recognize it. He was on the outskirts of Under-the-Hill, which only seemed like a part of the infinite storm because a Maelstrom was blowing.

  Jubilant that they'd reached America at last, he turned to take Louise in his arms. She was staring, her dismay manifest despite her scarred golden mask. His elation withering, he pivoted to see what had so unsettled her.

  The street overlooked a stretch of the Mississippi. A curtain of roiling darkness hung above the river, blotting Out the stars. Even moiv disquietingly, except for a narrow strip by the shore, the surface of the water was an inky, glittering black for as far as he could see in either direction. It looked as if the watercourse had turned into one stupendous Nihil.

  Despite the shriek of the wind, he now caught the sounds of havoc ringing through the night, Gunfire. Shrieks, Crashes. Car alarms. Sirens. The Quick citizens of Natchez;,couldn't perceive the disruption in the natural order of things, but it was driving them mad anyway. He suspected the same thing was happening all along the lower Mississippi, in every community where the Aztec Spectres had sown the seeds of terror and despair.

  For a moment, he felt sick. He and Louise had fought so hard to make their way here, and now... In a spasm of self-disgust, he thrust defeatism out of his mind and gave the Heretic nun his best confident-general grin. "From the looks of the river, our enemies have already begun the final stage of their offensive. If it were; anyone but our valiant, ingenious selves popping out on this road to save the day, I'd be inclined to suspect we'd arrived too late."

  Beneath the golden visor, Louise's generous lips curved into a wry smile. "Yes;, how fortunate that you and I can work miracles. How shall we set about performing this one?"

  "Transformed like that, the river is a power source, just like the vortex in Charon's vault. I suspect the doomshades are closeted together somewhere working high sorcery. We have to find the rite and stop it before it does whatever it's supposed to accomplish. That will require troops. Let's make for the Green Head. With luck, some of my irregulars and perhaps even Mike himself will be there. We'll collect them, then move on to the Citadel."

  She gestured with the Bren Ten. "Lead on, milord." He drew his rapier, and they headed up the street.

  FORTY

  Two men blundered into the path of the onrushing van. One turned toward the vehicle, goggled comically, then leaped back out of the headlights' glow. But the other—whose youth, short hair, white shirt, and thin dark tie reminded Quitman of a Mormon missionary—stood his ground, waving a claw hammer and shouting.

  The doctor peered frantically about. He couldn't quite make out the nature of the disturbance through which the convoy was passing, couldn't discern if the people running this way and that were trying to harm anyone or merely looting the stores. But one thing was obvious. There were too many of them in the street.

  Quitman pivoted toward the driver. "There's no way to go around that man!"

  The driver was a chubby black man of indeterminate age, with hands so hairy they almost seemed to have fur. "Not a problem," he said, accelerating.

  At the last moment, the young man with the hammer tried to jump out of the way. The van smashed him to the pavement and then rolled over him. One of the children in the back cried out at the jolts. An RN babbled, "Oh shit oh shit oh shit!"

  Quitman gaped at the driver. "You hit him!"

  "I've got my orders," his companion replied calmly. "Don't trust anybody, don't stop for anything. Deliver your cargo, no matter what. You want the kids to get to safety, don't you, Doctor?"

  "Yes," Quitman said.

  "Well, they will, but I can't help it if things get a little gritty along the way."

  Quitman struggled to put the collision out of his mind. God knew, terrible as it was, it was only one small disaster on a night when a person could see chaos and carnage everywhere he looked.

  He'd been working late, trying to finish his quarterly report for St. Mary's Board of Directors, wishing he were working his beautiful Tennessee walking horse Reba instead, when the call to evacuate came in. At first he'd thought there must be some mistake. Surely if Natchez had suddenly become unsafe, someone in the hospital would already have heard about it on television or the radio. But just a minute later, emergency bulletins began to flood the airwaves. Warnings of riots, arson, lynch mobs, mass murderers running amok, and heaven only knew what else. Not just in his own city—although they seemed to be getting worst of it—but up and down the
lower Mississippi.

  When Agent Dunn's fleet of vans and ambulances had arrived, and patients and staff had abandoned the hospital together, he'd seen firsthand what had the TV news anchors and radio announcers sounding so distraught. Buildings sheathed in crackling yellow flame. A cluster of people stomping a pair of police officers. A headless woman sprawled on the curb, a shotgun cradled against her body and the big toe of her bare right foot jammed through the trigger guard.

  Hands trembling, Quitman hit the redial button on his cell phone. Rosalyn didn't answer. He'd felt immensely impatient with her the past few weeks. The way she kept whining that they needed to get out of the state before some maniac slaughtered them in their bed, he couldn't help it. But what if her fears had been one hundred percent justified? What if somebody had broken into the house tonight and—

  No! he told himself fiercely. He wouldn't think that thought, wouldn't imagine that gruesome scene. His wife was fine. What he had to do was focus on was taking care of the children.

  The van had reached another quiet area. He cranked down the window, stuck his head out, and looked backward, the slipstream fluttering his tie. Other pairs of headlights still shone in the darkness behind his own vehicle. It looked as if the entire convoy had made it through the last disturbance intact.

  As he settled back in his seat, the driver took a hard right and sped up a narrow, unlit road. Judging from the ugly brick and cinder-block buildings streaking by on either side, they'd entered some sort of rundown industrial park. "Are you sure you're going the right way?" the physician asked.

  The driver smiled. "The whole place looks deserted, doesn't it? Well, it's supposed to. We won't attract the psychos if they don't know we're here."