Dark Kingdoms

by Richard Lee Byers

  At first she couldn't establish a connection. Then the seething sound of one of the Nihils at her back changed timbre. Desperately she reached again, and at last the power rose inside her. Suddenly it was as if she had twenty extra hands, their fingertips lightly resting on various objects scattered about the room.

  She turned and saw the Spectre rushing her, his sword upraised. She scrambled backward, leading him on. When he was directly opposite the metal rack, she seized it with her invisible fists, and, grunting, jerked it into the air and lashed it at his heads.

  He threw up his arms for protection. Strewing snacks across the dingy linoleum, the rack slammed into him, penetrating his form without resistance, and knocked him staggering sideways. The makeshift weapon slipped out of her psychic grip.

  She didn't bother to fumble for it. Instead she picked up a round table, sending a napkin dispenser, ashtray, and salt and pepper shakers clattering to the floor, and bashed the Spectre with it. The blow hammered him to his knees.

  She managed to club him twice more, and then the table simply hurtled through his body without changing his position an iota. He'd shifted himself completely out of phase with the material world, although he and his weapon—a length of wood or bone, she now observed, the edges lined with sharp black stones—would still be dangerously real to her. Both mouths snarling, baring his now-broken fangs, he started to lurch upright.

  She'd wanted to batter him unconscious from a distance before he managed to neutralize her Spook magic. Now she could only hope that the punishment he'd taken had slowed him down sufficiently to give her the edge in hand-to-hand combat, her injuries and exhaustion notwithstanding. Knife leveled, she lunged at him, striving to get inside his reach before he hoisted his sword into position for a swing.

  She didn't make it. The weapon streaked at her neck. Instinctively she shoved at it with her mind.

  It was a risky move. She had no right to expect that she could make psychic contact with an object that small, moving that fast. But with a crack, the sword rebounded, some of the black rocks shattering, as if it had collided with a shield.

  Scrambling on, the Sister buried her dagger in the Spectre's breast. The two- headed wraith reeled backward, the sword tumbling from his hands. As his knees began to buckle, waves of dark light ran through his flesh, washing his substance away. When he vanished, the knife fell out of his chest.

  The Sister sank to the floor, gasping, trembling with the fear she hadn't permitted herself to experience during the battle, her arm and jaw throbbing as her body labored to repair itself. She wondered exactly what she'd done to attract the Spectre's attention. Whatever it was, she hoped she wouldn't do it again.

  TEN

  The shooting range, a large, low-ceilinged room in the basement of the Federal Building, popped with gunfire and smelled of burnt cordite. Bellamy loitered by the exit, waiting for Walter Byrd to finish practicing. He'd known he could catch his fellow agent here. Byrd, a fortyish man whose doughy physique belied his mental and physical toughness, showed up at the range every Monday afternoon at five, no matter how busy he was. He'd been fanatical about honing his marksmanship ever since his first shoot-out three years ago. On that occasion, he'd fired three shots at close range, missing each time, and then the perpetrator had shot him in the neck. The surgeon had told him it was a miracle he'd survived.

  Scowling ferociously, Byrd emptied his Browning, then pushed the button mounted on the rail. The paper target with its black human silhouette floated across the room to him like an obedient ghost. He inspected the holes he'd put in it, then, evidently satisfied, pulled off his goggles and ear protectors, reloaded his pistol, and returned it to its shoulder holster. He stooped to collect his brass, then headed for the door. When he saw Bellamy, his mouth tightened.

  So much for my winning personality, Bellamy thought. "Hi, Walt."

  "Hi," Byrd replied, trying to slip past.

  Bellamy turned and fell into step beside him. As they pushed through the door and out into the corridor, he asked, "So what's happening with the Atheist?"

  "Nothing much," said Byrd, rubbing the scar beneath his chin.

  "Oh, come on. There've been three more murders. You must have something new to chew on."

  Byrd glanced up and down the hallway, obviously making sure no one else was in earshot. "You're going to get both our butts in a sling if you keep doing this. You know I'm not supposed to talk about the case to anybody outside the task force, especially you. Hanson's orders."

  "Nolliver's, really."

  "And he's your doctor. All the more reason to go along with the program."

  Bellamy snorted. "Give me a break. Since when do you have any faith in shrinks? Come on, Walt, put yourself in my shoes. Imagine that you were looking tor the Atheist and then got yanked off the case. Wouldn't it drive you crazy if you couldn't at least find out what was going on?"

  Byrd sighed. "Probably. Here it is, then, short and sweet, and you didn't hear it from me. We've got three new victims and three new crime scenes, but it hasn't helped. We still don't have any real leads."

  "Damn it, that shouldn't be. When a serial killer murders as frequently as the Atheist, it usually means he's coming unwrapped. He gets sloppy, takes more chances, and makes mistakes."

  "You must put some stock in shrinks. Otherwise you wouldn't be quoting me that psychological profile crap."

  "I used to put a lot of stock in them," Bellamy said. "Then I started therapy with Dr. Breath Mint."

  They rounded a comer. Byrd quickened his pace, possibly hurrying toward the vending machines that had just come into view. "Hasn't he sorted out your Oedipus complex yet?"

  "He doesn't seem to be sorting out anything, just going through the motions. It's like he just wants to support the idea that I need counseling."

  Byrd inspected the sandwich machine. Most of the compartments were empty. "Do you believe this? Nothing but egg salad again. Of course, if I had any brains, I'd be on my way home for supper. Look, what are you saying, that Nolliver wants people to believe you had a breakdown when you really didn't? Why the heck would he care?" He fished in his pocket and pulled out a handful of change.

  Bellamy shrugged. "I know it sounds paranoid—"

  "Bingo."

  "—but on the other hand, I've thought a lot about it, and whatever happened to me that night, I sure don't feel mentally disturbed now."

  Byrd grinned. "The real whackos never do." He fed coins into the slot, then pressed a button. The yellow and white sandwich in its glistening cellophane wrapper slid forward, dropped, and thumped down in the bottom of the machine.

  "There's something else bugging me," Bellamy said. "Dunn, the rep from SAD, decided that what happened to me had nothing to do with the paranormal. He also pointed out that since my memory has a hole in it, my story is vague. But precisely because it is, how could he rule the paranormal out? Look at what I did give him. A psychic who talks about evil spirits and then drops dead. Shadowy figures that appear and vanish mysteriously. An experienced field agent who inexplicably loses his mind. My god, what kind of stuff does SAD investigate, if Dunn isn't willing to look into all that?"

  Byrd extracted his sandwich from the bin in the bottom of the machine. "So Nolliver and Dunn are in it together, working for the Atheist, who just happens to be Count Dracula. Is that about the size of it? I wonder how much he's paying them. If it's good money, maybe we should join the conspiracy ourselves."

  Bellamy fought to quash a surge of irritation. "You know damn well that isn't what I think. But something weird is going on. Waxman worked for Weiss; he was worried that if he talked to me, he'd die, too. And right on cue, he did."

  "Of a heart attack, after he'd drunk enough booze to float a boat."

  "It's still too much of a coincidence."

  Byrd turned to look Bellamy in the eye. "Listen to me. I don't want to believe you've lost it. We've been through a lot together. I keep thinking I ought to be able to kid you out of this foolishness,
but it doesn't look like I can, so I'm going to talk to you straight. Nobody's out to get you. There's no such thing as the paranormal. Forget about it and the Atheist, too. Otherwise, you're going to trash your career. And you and I are not going to discuss this bullshit anymore. The next time we run into each other, we're going to talk about cars, or pussy, or football. The important things in life. Capice?"

  Bellamy grimaced. "Okay. I know you're right."

  "You bet I am. Now I should get back to work. Nothing goes better with stale egg salad than a nice juicy autopsy report. You get out of here. Go out and have a life. You can tell me what it's like."

  Bellamy stood and watched Byrd walk away. Have a life, he thought. He supposed he'd had one, once, until his work had squeezed it out of existence. First he'd gradually stopped spending tine with any friends who weren't involved in law enforcement, and then Janice had divorced him, complaining that she never saw him anymore, and even when she did, his mind was still a million miles away.

  He guessed the truly sad thing was that, deep down, he hadn't cared. His career had been too rewarding, and if he'd had to sacrifice friendships and even his marriage to keep it revving, that had been a price he was willing to pay. He'd never dreamed a day might come when he himself would feel forsaken, betrayed and abandoned by his colleagues.

  He didn't want to stick around the building, yet he couldn't quite bring himself to leave. Perhaps it was because he had nowhere else to go. He took a slow, groaning elevator upstairs, then trudged on, moving warily past Hanson's corner office. He slipped into his own work space and quietly closed the door.

  The air was stuffy. Evidently the air conditioning was getting ready to die again. Bellamy spent a moment gazing out the dirty window, hoping it would cheer him up a little. Generally speaking, the view was a depressing vista of huge, soot-stained towers, their bases scarred with graffiti and their upper stories crawling with indecipherable hieroglyphics and leering gargoyles. But at the end of North Boulevard he could just make out one end of the Old State Capitol, a quaint Gothic Revival castle with a gorgeous colored-glass skylight, and beyond that, a slice of the Mississippi, the water sparkling in the sunlight.

  Sighing, he turned away and removed the top manila folder from the tall stack before him. Like the others in the heap, it was the file on an old, cold case that VICAP had never managed to close. Procedure mandated that someone periodically review such records, on the theory that he might suddenly deduce the solution like Sherlock Holmes. As far as Bellamy knew, no one had ever enjoyed this happy experience, nor did his superiors seriously expect that anybody ever would. That was why they allowed the reviews to pile up until someone needed some busywork, like an agent they no longer trusted to do anything important.

  This particular record detailed VICAP's efforts to apprehend a serial killer of streetwalkers who'd terrorized Little Rock from 1986 to 1990. Bellamy made an honest effort to focus on the investigators' notes and the photos of the corpses and crime scenes. But hevcouldn't keep his mind off the Atheist, who was killing people now.

  At last he decided, to hell with it. Hanson had ordered him to; cut back to a forty-hour work week. That meant he was On his own time anyway. He set the file aside, switched on his computer, and logged on to the Internet.

  He hadn't told Nolliver that he'd started reading the wildcat bulletin boards devoted to Wicca, crystal power, flying saucers, and a host of other crackpot subjects. The psychiatrist wouldn't have approved. He would have warned Bellamy that he was regressing into delusional thinking again.

  But I'm not, the agent thought. I don't believe in all this crap. But I've got to start looking for answers somewhere.

  After a moment's thought, he decided to begin with Grailnet, a board that attracted a more eclectic and peculiar mix of eccentrics than most of the others. Sliding and clicking the computer's mouse, he selected the proper address from his directory. Grailnetis opening screen, a cloaked, hooded figure beckoning mysteriously, appeared on his monitor.

  Bellamy entered the first real-time conversation area—or Circle of Discourse, as Grailnet's menu called it. The screen displayed a benighted clearing, where shadowy figures with luminous eyes squatted around a: pale green campfire. Lines of Gothic type, messages from other users, crawled in and out of existence beneath the illustration. "Alhazred" was raving about his pet theory that the fiction of H. P. Loveeraft was based on truth, while two other regulars ridiculed his every statement.

  Bellamy thought that if the average user caught as much flak as Alhazred did, he'd flee the board forever. But the Loveeraft buff seemed to thrive on the abuse. Indeed, the FBI agent wondered if he ever went oif-line.

  In any case, Bellamy didn't want to talk to him. He'd already endured several of Alhazred's harangues about "slumbering Cthulhu," "the Lake of Hali," and all the rest of it, and if any of it had anything to do with what happened in East St, Louis, it would take a smarter man than he to make the connection. He moved on to the next Circle. The clearing became even darker, the figures subtly more misshapen. A couple seemed to have blood on their mouths and hands. At certain moments a demonic face took shape in the midst of the flames. As near as Bellamy could make out, Grailnet's progression of increasingly sinister visuals was intended to suggest that as a user explored the system, he was descending deeper and deeper into hell.

  Two people had arrived before him. Bellamy knew one of them, "Astarte," whose great ambition in life was to become the "handmaiden" of some supernatural entity. He gathered that a vampire would be ideal, but any sort of phantom or uncanny beast would do. The agent imagined her as an obese, slovenly woman with a dozen cats, a bookshelf crammed with Anne Rice books and Harlequin romances, and no off-line social life whatsoever. "Vulture," the user with whom she was presently conversing, was a stranger to him.

  I know they're out there, Astarte said. They're all around us. I just have to figure out how to find them.

  They don't want to be found, Vulture replied.

  They don't want to be found by the wrong people, Astarte said. They don't want to hunted or exploited. They do want to be adored as the gods they are.

  You don't know that, Vulture said. You don't know them. You think you do, from movies and stories and your own dreams, but they're more alien than you can possibly imagine.

  How do you know that? Astarte fired back. Have you ever seen one?

  For a while there was no response. Bellamy guessed that Vulture had abandoned the conversation. He reached for the mouse to move on himself. Then another message appeared.

  I've glimpsed things at a distance, Vulture said. I can't be any more specific than that. Please, just believe that I know what I'm talking about. You wouldn't be the first human admirer to knock on a supernatural creature's door. Most of them wind up regretting it, even in relatively peaceful times, and the dark ivorld hasn't been peaceful in a long while. And there are indications that it's going to get worse.

  Bellamy no longer got excited merely because someone on-line claimed to have firsthand information about the paranormal. Heck, cyberspace was swarming with people who claimed to be paranormal entities themselves. But vague as it was, Vulture's comment seemed to echo Waxman's fearful babbling. The agent quickly typed, What kind of indications? His keyboard clicked.

  Hello, Frank, Vulture said. I wondered if we were going to hear from you, or if you were just going to lurk in the background.

  Hi, Bellamy typed. What kind of indications?

  To his irritation, the next message to appear was from Astarte. If you really have seen supernatural creatures, tell me what kind, and where.

  I'm sorry, Vulture said. There are certain facts I can only share with kindred spirits. People who already possess a certain amount of information. Otherwise I'd wind up luring defenseless people into danger.

  That's a crock, Astarte said.

  Bellamy couldn't decide whether it was or not. Vulture was quite possibly striking a pose, pretending to knowledge he didn't possess. But his genu
ine reticence set him apart from other on-line charlatans the agent had encountered. They'd claimed they couldn't reveal their deepest, darkest occult secrets, but they'd given up any number of intriguing hints and lurid details. They'd understood they needed to say something specific in order to seem impressive.

  If Vulture didn't care about looking impressive, maybe he was a different breed of cat. Even if he was a crank, perhaps he had inside information about some dangerous cult or coven. Bellamy wondered how he could get him to spill it.

  Until now, the FBI man had avoided telling anyone on Grailnet who he was, or why he was interested in all their New Age mumbo jumbo. A lot of people were reluctant to talk to cops, and he didn't want somebody contacting the Bureau and reporting that one of its agents was spending hours on the boards, chatting about cattle mutilations and the Bermuda Triangle. But instinct told him it was time to take a risk. Frowning, he typed, I understand more than you realize, Vulture. Do you know who Milo Waxman was? I was with him when he died.

  I don't know, Astarte said. To Bellamy, the white characters on the black rectangle at the base of the screen seemed to convey a plaintive whine. Who was he?

  Once again, it took Vulture a moment to respond. I thought Waxman died of a heart attack.

  There's more to it than that, Bellamy typed.

  WHO WAS WAXMAN? Astarte demanded.

  Who are you, Frank? Vulture asked.

  Now it was Bellamy's turn to hesitate. An investigator, he answered after a moment. And you?

  A student, Vulture said. A watchdog sometimes. If you don't already know precisely what you're dealing with, walk away from it. Take a long vacation in another country.

  That's not an option, Bellamy typed.

  It's RUDE to cut somebody out of a conversation, Astarte sulked. You can both go to hell.