Dark Kingdoms

by Richard Lee Byers

  "If your people have the lion's share of the wealth," said Bellamy, "then it makes sense for you to run things."

  "I'm inclined to agree," said Geffard, blowing out a plume of cool, fragrant smoke. "For that reason and others. It's preposterous for a woman even to attempt to govern a large, tumultuous state like New Orleans. Particularly when I still talk to my gods, and it's whispered that Marie has lost touch with hers. And now a new menace, some unfamiliar breed of Baka—what the Stygians call Spectres and the Africans, Sinkinda—is threatening the Queen's people, whereas my magic protects my friends. If I were King, I could muster even more power and defend everyone, but as it stands..." He shrugged.

  "As it stands, it doesn't break your heart to see the Baka tearing the hell out of your enemies."

  Geffard smiled. "People say that when a Creole passes from life into death, he leaves his conscience behind. And I certainly have my pragmatic side, I can tolerate the thought of a little carnage, if it opens my path to the throne.

  "But it's one thing to turn someone else's mayhem to your own political purposes, and something else to initiate violence yourself. Rumor often speaks falsely, my friend, just because I want the crown, it doesn't automatically follow that I intend to commit murder to get it. Perhaps I'm hoping Marie will see reason and abdicate for the good of the realm. And even if I did intend something sinister, an assassination or an armed coup, I hope I wouldn't be reckless enough to confide my plans to a stranger."

  "Come on," Bellamy said, injecting a note of annoyance into his voice. "It's good to be careful, I guess, but according to your reputation, you can read people like a book. If that's true, you ought to be able to tell I'm being straight with you. I want to get rich and powerful working for the next boss of New Orleans. I'm willing to do whatever it takes to help put you on top. And I can help. Not only do I know how to handle myself, I recently found out I have the power to jump across the Shroud."

  "Really," said Geffard. "That is a rare and valuable talent. Show me."

  Bellamy concentrated and felt the Arcanos power rise within him. He began to shift himself into the mortal world, then realized that if he did, the riverboat would vanish beneath his shoes, dropping him into the Mississippi thirty feet below. He let the magic dissipate. "I'll be glad to demonstrate on dry land," he said.

  Geffard laughed. "Believe it or not, I've seen far more experienced Proctors than you make that same kind of mistake. It's good that you're not a fool. I don't hire idiots."

  "Will you hire me?" Bellamy asked.

  "I don't know yet," the Creole said. "Look at me, and stand still."

  Bellamy did as he'd been told. Geffard peered intently into his face. After a moment the FBI agent realized the other wraith was subjecting him to some sort of psychic probe.

  Titus had warned him that such an examination could render his disguise worthless. He felt a jolt of anxiety, a wild urge to lash out at Geffard, kill him or take him hostage. Instead he stood still, and kept his expression impassive.

  At last Geffard said, "Interesting."

  "What is?" Bellamy asked.

  "Your deathmarks," the loa said. He tossed the stub of his cigar over the railing. "Generally speaking, they seem consistent with your account of yourself. They tell me you've fought and killed in your time, and that you died at the hands of another. I see anger, loneliness, determination, and ambition. Yet there's something odd about the configuration. It isn't quite what I'd expect to find in the face of an outlaw. Too much morality, I think."

  Bellamy knew his ectoplasmic body couldn't break out in a sweat. At that moment, his forehead and armpits felt clammy anyway. He shrugged. "I was a criminal," he said, "but I always kept my word. I was always loyal to my bosses. If you give me a chance, I'll be just as loyal to you."

  "All right," said Geffard. "but my organization is like any other. No one starts at the top. You'll have to prove your usefulness, and earn my trust. There are plenty of routine chores that need doing to keep our community running smoothly. Do them well, and I'll consider involving you in more sensitive matters. Ultimately, you just might wind up as one of my right-hand men."

  Bellamy's muscles tightened in frustration. God only knew how long it would take him to convince Geffard to involve him in the Atheist conspiracy. Meanwhile the murders would continue, the Queen might fall into the Void, Dunn would hunt Astarte—

  He pushed the unpleasant possibilities out of his mind. Geffard was offering him a chance to find the answers he needed, and he had no real option but to take it. He held out his hand. "It's a deal."

  TWENTY-TWO

  The one-story stucco house stood behind a trio of oaks bearded with Spanish moss. Plastic toys, a Big Wheel and robotic action figures from a TV cartoon series, lay in the monkey grass in the front yard, gleaming in the moonlight. The place wasn't far from Bucktown, New Orleans's commercial fishing community, and a piscine odor, so faint that only a wraith could smell it, tinged the cool night air.

  Bellamy noticed that the home didn't appear as dilapidated as most Skinlands buildings. Perhaps the Shroud—or the Surface, as Les Invisibles called it—was particularly thin here. If so, that would make it easier to accomplish the task at hand.

  "Come on," said Louis, skulking up the driveway, his ratty black raincoat flapping. A Masquer who'd sculpted his body into the form of a withered corpse, complete with artificial maggots writhing sluggishly inside the gaps in his tattered flesh, he was Bellamy's boss on the current errand, and Would presumably report to Geffard concerning his performance.

  The FBI agent followed the other ibambo through the substance of the front door. Inside, a pulse of pure happiness sang along his nerves. When the exhilaration faded, he blinked in surprise. It was a rare building that accumulated such an atmosphere of joy that a ghost could actually feed off it.

  Louis's shriveled features were essentially incapable of expression, but Bellamy sensed that the other spirit was sneering at him. "Enjoy that, did you?" the Masquer asked.

  Bellamy realized he was smiling foolishly, and wiped the expression off his face. "It was a fix," he said, shrugging. "We all need a jolt of emotion now and then."

  "Be patient," said Louis. "In a few minutes you can drink your fill of the good stuff." Turning, he placed his skeletal hands against the wall and murmured something under his breath. Bellamy had heard that his companion had mastered other Arcanoi beside flesh sculpting,; and now he sensed some sorcerous power streaming through the substance o! the house. Exterior doors groaned in their frames. Windows turned grayish and translucent.

  "That's got it," said Louis. Fie strode toward the back of the darkened house. As Bellamy followed, he caught a glimpse of a copy of the Times-Picayune, the sections scattered on the floor beside a recliner in the living room. His ibambo eyes could make out the headlines, even in the gloom. Evidently a team of Baton Rouge fire fighters had gOne berserk, chopping up people they should have been rescuing, and kindling new conflagrations.

  Bellamy repressed a grimace. First the Atheist murders had served to shake people's faith in religion. Then priests and ministers, the Atheist's potential victims, had gone on killing sprees themselves, undermining everyone's trust still further. Now cops and firemen were going crazy. If it kept up, it wouldn't be long before the average mortal would feel that he couldn't depend on anything.

  Bellamy still didn't understand the point of it all, but he was convinced the Atheist conspiracy, of which Geffard and his rOyal ambitions appeared to be only one small part, was behind every bit of it, and that if their plan advanced unchecked, it would unleash the ghastly catastrophe Milo Waxman had foreseen. He had to stop it, no matter what the cost. Which meant he couldn't shrink from the chore: Geffard had set for him, no matter how unsavory it was.

  Louis halted in front of a door. The soft, slow respiration of a sleeper sounded on the other side. "We can start here," he said.

  The two ghosts slipped through the panel into a little boy's bedroom, with a baseball bat
leaning in the far corner, a row of Super Nintendo cartridges on a shelf, and a stray white sock peeking out from under the bed. The child himself lay tangled in the covers, with only one foot and the top of his head protruding.

  Bellamy's eyes narrowed. He and Louis had come because one of Les Chevaux— Les Invisibles' mortal worshippers—had a grudge against the man who lived here, and had petitioned his ghostly patrons to punish the offending party. Evidently, in New Orleans, there was nothing illicit about such harassment of the living. It was common practice, a fact which served to lower Bellamy's opinion of the society of the abambo yet another notch. But, unpleasant as the prospect seemed, he'd supposed he could throw a scare into some poor Quick guy for the sake of his mission. He hadn't bargained on tormenting children.

  Turning to Louis, he said, "We're in the wrong place. I imagine we want the master bedroom."

  "No, this is good," said the skeletal ghost. "The whole family has to suffer. It's all part of Villiers's punishment." He laid his hand on the blankets covering the boy.

  Masses of gray fungus spread across the cloth, until it looked as if some parasitic growth was consuming the mortal. His shoulders shifted restlessly. "Now wake him," Louis said.

  Swallowing his distaste, reaching across the Shroud, Bellamy gingerly touched the child's cheek. The mortal twitched, but didn't wake.

  "Again," Louis said impatiently.

  Bellamy obeyed. The boy suddenly sat upright; for an instant, Bellamy's hand was inside the child's torso. Startled, he snatched his arm back.

  The boy—now that he could see him better, Bellamy judged him to be about eight or nine years old—peered about, blinking. When he noticed the patchwork of mold on his covers, he caught his breath. Louis touched his pale blue pajama shirt and tendrils of puffy, damp-looking fungus oozed along the cotton fabric.

  The boy screamed, his fear a palpable force vibrating through the air. Bellamy winced. Louis tittered.

  In another room, bedsprings squealed, and then rapid footsteps thumped down the hall. The door flew open, and the boy's parents rushed in. His mother flipped on the light.

  The adult mortals were graying, in their late forties, older than Bellamy had expected. Mrs. Villiers, a short-legged, chubby woman in a long, white nightgown, stopped short at the sight of the mold, then rushed to the boy and took him in her arms. Her husband, a sallow, round-shouldered guy wearing green silk boxer shorts, peered about as if he dimly suspected the presence of the ghostly intruders, then followed her to their son's bedside.

  "Hush," murmured Mrs. Villiers, "hush. Mommy and Daddy are here, and everything's all right." She looked at her husband. "What is this stuff?"

  "I don't know," he replied. He stripped the covers off the bed, dumped them on the floor, then reflexively wiped his hands on his shorts. "Some kind of fungus. Don't touch it any more than you have to. Put your hands over your head, Davy. I

  need to pull your shirt off."

  "Kill the light," said Louis. Bellamy flipped the switch down, plunging the room into gloom. Only the wan moonlight leaking through the curtains afforded any illumination. The mortals jumped. Mrs. Villiers squawked.

  Louis cackled. "Man, I love this job." He capered about the room, touching the striped beige wallpaper, leaving hand prints of reeking black decay.

  "What's happening?' Mrs. Villiers cried, clutching Davy tightly against her.

  "That's your cue," said Louis to Bellamy. "You're the one who can talk to them."

  Feeling sick to his stomach, the FBI agent approached the bed. "You've: offended the dead," he said, imagining the sepulchral whisper the mortals were hearing. "Now you have to pay."

  "Who are you?' said Villiers, peering wildly about, his voice quavering. "Where are you?'

  "I'm right beside you," Bellamy said. He touched his fingertip to Villiers?s right It was a light touch. Using his most rudimentary Proctor abilities, he couldn't have exerted much force even if he'd wanted to. But Villiers still screamed, flailed, and lurched backward to slam into the wall.

  Davy shrieked, too. "What happened?' his mother wailed.

  Villiers sucked in a deep, shuddering breath. "Nothing," he moaned. "Just.. .nothing. Somebody's playing a trick on us, that's all. But we've got to get out of the house. Get up, Davy." Evidently paralyzed with fear, the boy didn't move. Villiers lifted him in his arms, and then he and his wife crept warily toward the door, "We'll leave them alone until they reach the front door," Loui& said. "Give them hope that nothing else is going to happen. Then, when we start messing with them again, it will hit them all the harder."

  The ghosts followed the mortals to the front door. Mrs. Villiers unlocked it, then pulled on the brass knob. The door didn't move. Louis's magic had jammed it in its frame.

  "Laugh," Louis said. "That always shakes them up."

  Still feeling disgusted with himself, Bellamy forced a cruel laugh, like a villain in a corny old movie. No doubt it sounded genuinely diabolical on the other side of the Shroud. "There's no escape," he said. "Not until the dead have had their way with you."

  "What do you want?" Mrs. Villiers wailed.

  "Your fear," Bellamy replied. "Your blood. Your souls." He pushed a spindly porcelain vase off a marble-topped table. When it shattered, Davy shrieked and thrashed in his father's arms.

  Mrs. Villiers struggled to open the door again, still to no avail. Her husband scrambled into the living room, dropped Davy on the couch, and pounded his fists against the window. Hardened by the power of Louis's Arcanos, the glass wouldn't shatter. Villiers bashed it with an end table, but that didn't work either.

  For the next few minutes the mortals dashed around and around the house, trying desperately to escape. Occasionally one of them would pick up a phone to call for help, but Bellamy always broke the connection. He also snarled threats, poked his victims, and upset objects light enough for him to shift. Meanwhile the gleeful, capering Louis spread fungus and decay throughout the home. Sometimes he fondled the mortals obscenely. They couldn't actually feel his touch, but they cried out in loathing as patches of their nightclothes melted into cold, stinking slime.

  Soon they were staggering, their hearts pounding and their breath rasping in their throats, the smell of their sweat filling the air. For a time Bellamy wondered why, when they manifestly couldn't escape, they didn't simply stand their ground and defy their tormentors to do their worst. Granted, the ghostly harassment was unpleasant, but it hadn't done them any bodily harm, and repetition should have rendered even the most disturbing tricks less frightening than they'd been initially.

  Then he realized that his victims literally couldn't get over their panic. He was a supernatural creature now, and his visitation was inspiring the same irrational, irresistible terror that he himself had experienced the first time he saw Dunn in werewolf form. He wondered if his discernible presence would have the same effect in any circumstances, on any living person, even Astarte. The possibility made him feel hollow and sick with dismay.

  The mortals stumbled up to the front door again. Sobbing, Mrs. Villiers heaved on the knob with all her strength, then battered the panel with bloody hands.

  Desiccated arms uplifted, Louis twirled around. "They are so frightened!" he crowed. "And it tastes so good! Thank you, Legba! Thank you, Damballah! Thank you, Gbo and Tokpodu!" He turned to Bellamy. "Time for the coup de grace. Appear to them."

  Bellamy hesitated. As hard as the older mortals' hearts were thumping, he was afraid they might go into cardiac arrest if he gave them another shock. But he had no choice but to obey. How else could he learn what he so urgently needed to know?

  "We've toyed with you long enough," he said to the Quick family. "Now I'm going to destroy you." Concentrating, his arms upraised to look menacing, he made himself visible on the warm side of the Shroud.

  Mrs. Villiers made a tiny whining sound and sank to her knees, clawing at her own face with her pink, lacquered nails. Her husband's eyes rolled up and then he fainted, carrying Davy to the floor wit
h him. Pinned beneath his father's bulk, the boy stared wide-eyed and shuddering at the apparition before him.

  Bellamy realized that this ugly little scene didn't have much in the way of a punch line. It would be anticlimactic when his phantasmal image simply disappeared. Not that he cared. He just wanted to stop torturing the poor mortals. He turned to Louis. "I guess we're done, aren't we?"

  Louis chuckled. "Not quite. Pop all the way through the Surface and kill the boy."

  Bellamy gaped at him. "Are you serious? Geffard didn't say anything about any killing. He only said we were going to frighten Villiers."

  "If you yank the kid out of his father's arms and strangle him in front of his mother's eyes, that should do the trick, don't you think? Look, I've been working for the loa a long time. I know him, and when he wants somebody punished, he wants them punished hard. Besides, the bastards are only Mounts, just puppets for us to play with. And I shouldn't have to convince you anyway, because he put me in charge. Now, are you going to follow orders, or what?"

  Bellamy wondered fleetingly if he could pretend to throttle the boy and whisper to him to play dead. But no, it wouldn't work. With his sUpernaturally sharp ears, Louis would overhear him. And even if he didn't, Davy was far too terrified to cooperate with the object of his dread.

  The agent allowed all aspects of his presence to slip back to the dark side of the Shroud. "Or what, I guess^" he said.

  Louis shook his withered, hairless head. "Too had you're squeamish. Screwing up one of the first jobs Geffard gives you is a bad career move."

  "I'll bet you're right," said Bellamy. "So I think I'll try my luck in another town. If Geffard is this much of an SOB, I don't want to work for him anyway," As suddenly as he could, he made a grab for the pistol in his jacket.

  Unfortunately, he failed to catch Louis by surprise. The Masquer's bony arm stretched like taffy, lashed at him, and struck his wrist. His hand flew open, and the gun tumbled across the room.