Dark Kingdoms

by Richard Lee Byers

  Montrose shouted, "Attack!" He and the rest of the company surged through the wall. He lifted his AK-47 to fire at the trio on the pyramid, then, from the corner of his eye, glimpsed a wolfman with the eight faceted eyes and serrated mandibles of a spider pouncing at him. He whirled and shot it instead.

  The darksteel bullets punched holes in the monster's breast. It staggered, but didn't go down. Its fist, a misshapen thing with barbed spurs of bone projecting from the knuckles, streaked at him. Montrose sidestepped and shot the werewolf again. It reeled forward and fell on its face.

  Montrose somehow sensed another threat, directly overhead. Looking up, he met the amber eyes of a werewolf that was somehow clinging to the ceiling high above. The Black Spiral Dancer snarled, released its hold, and dropped, rolling over in midair to land on the Scot feet-first.

  Montrose barely managed to scramble out of the way. By the time he disposed of that werewolf, another was attacking him, and another after that. All told, he had to fight for another minute before gaining a respite to survey the battle as a whole.

  To his profound relief, it seemed to be going very well. There actually weren't that many Spectres and werewolves present, and his force had caught them by surprise. Relatively few of his men were Proctors, but many—Spooks, Chanteurs, Haunters, and the like—possessed powers which allowed them to strike across the Shroud, often with devastating effect. Nearby, a wolfman spun madly around, clawing at his own face, while severed arms flew through the air, battering other monsters.

  Astarte and Marilyn had elected to hang back in the relative safety of the doorway. Crouching, gripping her pistol with both hands, her pretty face grim and intent, the girl in black was firing at the werewolves. Clutching the wall for support, spots of blood mottling the bandages obscuring her face, the novice mage whispered incantations, but as far as Montrose could see, to no effect.

  It was unfortunate that her sorcery was misfiring again, but with luck, they wouldn't need it. If she stayed in the rear, she might even survive.

  Some of the possessed mortals preparing the children for sacrifice abruptly collapsed. Montrose allowed himself to slip back into the Underworld, just in time to see the scaly, double-faced doomshades emerging from the bodies of their hosts. Hissing and shrieking war cries in some cacophonous Spectre tongue, they charged the wraiths who were currently wreaking havoc on their werewolf allies.

  Moving as if they'd spent countless hours drilling together, the motley assortment of Africans, Legionnaires, and irregulars who lacked the ability to reach across the Shroud raced forward to protect their comrades. Firing wildly, tiny among the other spirits and the huge werewolves lurching about the chamber, Valentine and Belinda gunned down an Aztec who was rushing Louise.

  A few of the possessed mortals were still hauling children up the pyramid, and at its apex the priests continued to chant and rip the youngsters apart. Their actions were as calm and measured as before, as if it were their foes rather than their allies rapidly perishing on the floor below.

  Well, thought Montrose, he'd have to see what he could do to shake their composure. "Charge the pyramid!" he shouted. "Break up the ceremony!"

  The Aztec in the jaguar regalia lifted another small, wet, crimson heart in his bloody hands. Magick silently roared and crackled through the air.

  Everyone sensed it, Quick humans, werewolves, and spirits alike. Some of the surviving doomshades roared in triumph, and in that instant, several things changed at once.

  The pyramid seemed to grow taller and steeper even as the walls and ceiling of the warehouse melted away. The swirling clouds of the Tempest, with monstrosities and scenes of hideous torment forming and dissolving inside them, covered most of the sky. But in the east, Montrose could see the rim of the sun, slipping above the horizon. To his eyes, the orb was black, a source of absolute darkness rather than light, and his intuition suggested that as soon as it was fully risen, the change the doomshades had wrought in the structure of reality would be irrevocable.

  The air above the altar rippled and shone, and space fractured around it. The rift became a silvery oval with plumes of gray vapor billowing straight upward from it in defiance of the frigid, howling wind. A figure appeared in the center of the smoke. Somehow it seemed immense, ten times larger than the dimensional distortion which framed it. For a moment, it was a man in a ragged gray cloak, carrying his severed head in his hand. Then the lightning-eyed voudoun god which had forsaken Geffard in his hour of need. Then a shape so convoluted and alien that Montrose couldn't decipher it before it transformed again. The priests abased themselves before it.

  The storm shrieked, and a tornado of whirling murk enveloped the pyramid. A Grim Rider and an equally reckless mercenary, still acting on Montrose's order to charge, plunged into the vortex and disintegrated. Three Spectres who were retreating toward the monument perished just as quickly. Clearly the cyclone was a Maelstrom wind of such terrible force that no naked spirit could endure it.

  Fink shook his fist at the funnel of darkness. Lighting blazed on its surface, though no doubt the effect had been intended to blast the figures atop the pyramid instead. Using her Spook powers, Louise hurled a stray hospital gurney at the same targets, but the cart fell from her psychokinetic grip as soon as it entered the vortex. Evidently, Arcanos magick couldn't reach through it. Bellamy fired his Ruger into it, with the same lack of effect.

  Montrose had no idea how much the remaining possessed men and the few- surviving werewolves could see of all this. But they obviously perceived some aspect of it, because they began to fall back to the pyramid. Armored in mortal flesh, they passed through the murky tornado easily.

  Gould a Proctor do the same, if he projected himself to the warm side of the Shroud? Montrose supposed he was. about to find out. He drew himself up straight, brandished his AK-47, and shouted, 'All of you who can, jump to the Skinlands and follow j|p!"

  He projected himself into the mortal world, and the warehouse popped back into view. But an inky stain at the base of the east wall betrayed the presence of the malignant dawn, the pyramid still looked impossibly tall, and the cyclone was visible as a vague, swirling smudge. He could see the God of the Smoking Mirror as clearly as before, as if the deity existed in both worlds simultaneously.

  Most of his Proctors had stayed in the Skinlands since the beginning of the battle, and thus hadn't heard his previous order. "Charge the pyramid!" he shouted. "And if you value your existences, don't lose your grip on the mortal world once you're inside that cloudy area."

  "Understood," said Bellamy. Titus winked into view, and then the others. The wraiths dashed forward, and Marilyn, leaning on Astarte, hobbled along behind.

  As he ran, Montrose faintly heard the cyclone wail. For a moment he was certain they were all going to perish. If bullets and crossbow bolts couldn't penetrate the barrier, why would his materialized body fare any better? Granted, the surviving werewolves and possessed men had passed through, but they must know the trick of it. He didn't.

  He scowled away the craven thought and kept charging.

  The. wind tore into him as savagely as any storm he'd ever encountered. Oblivion seethed inside him like a cancer, eating him away. Beside him, other ghosts blinked out of existence.

  Then the pain of imminent dissolution subsided to a faint stinging. A werewolf plunged down the side of the pyramid at him, and he shot it. The monster's rushing advance became a helpless,plummet, and it landed in a bloody heap at his feet.

  Other wraiths emerged from the vortex. Together, they started to battle their way up the pyramid, with the enemy resisting savagely every inch of the way.

  At close quarters, no longer harried by phantoms striking with impunity from the cold side of the Shroud, the surviving werewolves and possessed men abruptly became a match for MontrOse's party, the ferocity ofthe wolfmen offsetting the wraiths' superior weapons. Titus pivoted back and forth, hurling sizzling bolts of power, striving to tilt the balance in the attackers' favor.


  Montrose shot a possessed woman. She fell, creating a momentary hole in the enemy ranks, affording him the chance to charge higher, if he dared. Certain that everything depended on reaching the top of the pyramid and somehow disposing of the entity that waited there, he sprinted up the steps, leaving his comrades behind.

  A werewolf with yellowish fur and mismatched crimson eyes sprang at him. He fired a burst into, its chest, blood.Splashed, and it went down, writhing. Hoping that one of his allies would finish it off before it healed, he clambered on.

  He dispatched another Black Spiral Dancer, and then the AK-47 was empty. As he reached into his mantle for another clip, two possessed mortals, a fat old man and a youthful black one, sprang at him.

  Sidestepping, he avoided the young one altogether, kicked him in the knee, and sent him tumbling. But the old man pawed at him, trying to grapple, and somehow knocked the assault rifle from his hand. The gun bounced clattering down the rough stone steps.

  The Scot punched the old man in the jaw. Bone snapped, and he went down. Montrose drew his rapier, resumed the ascent, and then, startled, blinked.

  He was suddenly at the top. Like many of the towers of Stygia, the pyramid wasn't as high as it looked. The trio of priests hurtled down at him. He wondered fleetingly if one of them was Mother Prudence, now cloaked in the body of a hapless mortal.

  The Spectre in the lead was a chubby, middle-aged woman with a cloak of eagle feathers, and bone skewers transfixing her pendulous breasts. She lifted an ornately carved club to brain him, and he killed her with a stop thrust to the heart.

  By that time, the second priest—a lanky, amiable-looking young man who, for some reason, still wore a small silver cross in addition to his Aztec regalia—was pouncing at him, hands outstretched to shove him out into space. Montrose dropped low, pressing his body to the steps in a passata sotto backward lunge. The doomshade flew over him and tumbled down the face of the monument.

  The high priest was a tall, thin man in his thirties. Beneath his jaguar-hide cowl were a widow's peak of chestnut hair, a long nose, and eyes inky black with the energies of Oblivion. He clenched his fist, and pain ripped through Montrose's chest as if he were having a heart attack. The Cavalier lurched back a step, desperately holding his sword out to keep the doomshade at bay.

  Grinning, the priest cocked his arm to strike his sacrificial knife against the rapier. The obsidian blade seemed to hiss and crackle through the air, and Montrose had no doubt that it would break his sword on contact. He struggled to block out the agony in his breast. To be ready.

  The gleaming black dagger flashed into motion. Montrose dipped his point, avoiding the beat, and then, heedless of the precarious footing, hurled himself forward in a fleche.

  The all-out running attack caught the priest by surprise, and Montrose's point punched into his throat. Blood spurted, and, dropping the dagger, he fell. The pain in the Stygian's chest vanished. He snatched up the knife, then turned to confront Tezcatlipoca.

  For the moment, the God of the Smoking Mirror was a headless man in a ratty gray mantle again. Up close, he seemed to be about the size of one of his werewolf minions, yet somehow, simultaneously, so colossal that by comparison Montrose felt as minuscule as an ant.

  And judging from the amused expression of the face of the severed head, the deity had been watching the battle with the unconcern of a man viewing a struggle between colonies of ants. "Congratulations," he said. His mocking voice seemed to issue from his dead gray lips, but also from everywhere at once. "You reached me. But do you truly believe you can slay a Malfean?"

  For a moment, Montrose faltered, but then his fear fell away from him. "Why not?" he replied. "I slew a Deathlord. En garde!"

  With her mage perception, Marilyn could see the murky vortex almost as clearly as if she were on the other side of the Shroud. She wanted to cringe from it, but drove herself forward anyway. And when she hobbled into it, clutching her malacca stick with one hand and clinging to Astarte with the other, she felt nothing at all.

  By the time they reached the foot of the pyramid, the battle was in full swing. Astarte released her, hesitated an instant to make sure she could stand up by herself, then started firing her pistol at the enemy. Marilyn drew a deep breath, let it out slowly, and invoked her power.

  The magick stirred inside her, but vaguely, weakly, not the bright surge of energy she'd felt when she held back Dunn, healed Queen Marie, and shielded her allies from the bombs. Praying she could achieve something useful with it anyway, she stared at one of the possessed mortals—a brawny, big-bellied possessed man who was currently aiming a rifle at a black-uniformed Grim Rider in a silver mask—and willed him to burst into flame.

  One sweaty brown curl of her target's hair began to burn, but he didn't even notice the tiny fire. The rifle barked, and the Grim Rider fell. Death snatched him back into its kingdom, and his form vanished in ripples of shadow.

  Partway up the pyramid, fire flared from Titus's hands, and a werewolf toppled. And though Marilyn wanted her comrade to destroy the servants of Oblivion, she felt a pang of bitter envy.

  Perhaps part of her problem was range. If she got closer to the possessed men and the Black Spiral Dancers, maybe her sorcery could do some damage. Worried that Astarte would try to hold her back, she glanced around, only to discover that, reckless as ever, her friend was already climbing the pyramid herself. Wheezing and trembling, Marilyn hobbled onto the steps. Her body ached, but the drugs in her system made the pain seem remote and unimportant.

  Once she was several tiers up, she stared at the same Spectre she'd targeted before. The flame in his hair having long since died without causing him any distress, he was fighting hand-to-hand against one of Marie's caped warriors, the barrel of his gun clashing against the African's long-bladed spear.

  Marilyn tried to make sure the Aztec's blows would fall short by warping the space around his gun. Surely that would work. Distorting distance was the first piece of true magick she'd ever performed, and a trick she'd managed brilliantly only hours before.

  Her power crawled feebly up her chakras, dying before even exiting her body. The possessed man slammed his rifle into his opponent's ribs. The African stumbled backward and fell to one knee.

  Marilyn nearly sobbed in frustration. But she mustn't give way to self-pity, not when countless lives and souls were at stake. At least, like Astarte, she could still fire a gun. She shifted her cane to her left hand, then fumbled her revolver out of her overcoat pocket.

  Above her, something rumbled. The rhythmic sound was a bestial snarl, but also recognizably a laugh.

  Marilyn lifted her eyes. Several tiers up loomed a gaunt, gray wolfman. The creature's smoldering orange eyes had diamond-shaped pupils, and a knot of pulsing, worm-like tumors disfigured its chest.

  The Arcanist pointed the wheelgun at it. The werewolf growled, a complex sound which might have been a word in the creature's own inhuman tongue. The Model 12 fell apart into its component pieces.

  Disarmed, certain that the Black Spiral Dancer was about to pounce on her, Marilyn groped inside herself to unleash her magick, once again to no effect. Meanwhile, the beast-man surprised her by shrinking into its human form, a stooped, freakish gnome with jagged yellow teeth, pointed ears, and black nails. The same monstrous eyes burned in his sockets, and the same tangle of swellings writhed beneath the dirty white skin on his chest.

  "Surely you don't need a gun anyway," said the gnome, sneering. "Not a mighty human mage like you. Not to crush a puny Dancer Theurge like Cankerheart."

  Marilyn commanded the werewolf s fiery eyes to burst. Nothing happened. Cankerheart twitched a finger. The malacca stick snapped into three pieces. Thrown off balance, the Arcanist fell heavily onto the steps.

  "Come on," Cankerheart said, his voice dripping mock encouragement, "just speak a word of power and blast me. Your allies need your magick, just as the Ferryman warned you. The great slut Gaia herself cries out to you, begging for deliverance. Titus can't turn
the tide all by himself." Invisible hands grasped Marilyn gently, then set her back tottering precariously on her feet.

  The mage looked from side to side. All her comrades were hard pressed, unable to come to her aid. She rattled off an incantation in Persian, a curse devise to shatter the recipient's bones.

  Cankerheart's shoulder heaved. His arm flopped, then hung at an odd angle, as if it had popped out of its socket. But even if the dislocation pained him, his gleeful smirk never wavered. "That's a little better. At least I felt it. But it isn't anywhere near good enough."

  An unseen hand slapped Marilyn on one cheek and then the other. In her weakened condition, the stinging blows were more than sufficient to deprive her of her balance. She fell back onto the rough black stone. The edge of a step cut into her ribs.

  "Take a deep breath," Cankerheart advised. "Compose that magnificent wizardly mind of yours. And then I recommend you take your very best shot."

  Marilyn realized that, insane, sadistic, and evidently harboring some sort of grudge against mages, Cankerheart hadn't been able to resist the temptation to taunt and humiliate her. But even he wasn't demented enough to draw the process out for long, not in the middle of a battle. If she couldn't invoke some truly potent magick in the next few seconds, her adversary was going to kill her.

  She frantically reviewed the times when her powers had done her bidding. More often than not, she'd been frightened, in pain, or both. When her magick first awoke, she'd been certain Dunn was about to butcher her and Astarte, too. When she'd reflexively blunted the force of the bombs, she'd been similarly afraid and suffering from her wounds as well.

  Could terror and pain spark her arcane talents? The notion made a twisted kind of sense. When she made love, it often took the sting of a whip and the cold, hard clasp of a set of shackles, the shivery thought that the top could do anything he pleased to her, to set her spirit soaring.