CHAPTER SIXTEEN

 

WITH FRIENDS LIKE YOU . . .

 

            Let me tell you, help like this I didn't need. 

            The glare of the sun seared my eyes and blistered my skin.  And now the earth disappeared, replaced by a mile or two of fall.

            "I would have been better off up there," I groaned.

            [Doubtful.  Don't worry.  I've done this before.  The ocean's below us.]

            "Great."

            Hell, maybe we'd survive.  I had to hand it to Wolfie -- he was trying to shield me from the sun even in free-fall.

            [Kristine!]  He could "shout" when he wanted to; my skull rang with his call.  [Garth!  Duna!  We have escaped!  Retreat!  Return to the Castle!]

            I heard the roar of the sea.  Oh, boy.  I grabbed a couple handfuls of Man-Wolf fur.

            BWOOOOSH!

            Now a muscular arm squeezed my neck like a giant nutcracker.  Wolfie towed me with one arm and swam with the other.  I got to admit, he made good time.  I heard breakers on a beach, then he hauled me from the water.

            [Hold on, Hannibal.  Just a few more feet . . .]

            Finally he slogged ashore and propped me up against a tree -- in the shade.  Someone turned the oven from Broil to merely Defrost.

            De . . . Frost . . .

            The white-furred werewolf hunkered down before me, his pointy ears folded back.

            [Is there anything I can do, Hannibal?] he asked.

            There was only one thing that would put the rosy shine back in my cheeks.  I didn't want to say it, but I was about as useful as a pile of compost without:

            "Blood . . ."

            For a second, the Man-Wolf looked surprised.  Then he gritted his pearly whites.

            [Wait here.]

            A few minutes later, I heard a monkey-like screech in the jungle behind me.

#

            "Mr. King, please help me," says the little woman, skittish as a doe, pretty as a porcelain doll.  "This Mr. Frost -- he's up to no good!"<

            "No sweat, Babe," I say back, the big, bad, tough detective, my chest [and head] swelling wider by the moment.  "Ol' Uncle Hannibal will have your husband back before Howdy Doody time."

            A cinematic cut to a dark, deserted warehouse.  I shouldn't have brought the little doe-woman there.  But who else would see the private dick in action, otherwise?

            I find crates of medical supplies.  Mrs. Lawrence said this Deacon Frost had been ordering some sort of gene detector her husband's company built.  Sounds like a mad doc of some kind.  I'd run across the type before:  think they're the new Frankenstein or Doom.

            Fast-Forward:  The bad guy leaps out of the darkness.  He hisses like a alley cat, has the long white hair and beard of Santa, a green Inverness coat that'd look good on Mr. Hyde.  Battle royal:  this guy's older than Moses, he fights like Ali at his prime.  The tough detective hits crates and walls like a dodgeball; finally he bangs the floor with the back of his skull.

            I want to get up, take him apart for the pain that starts in my head and grows like kudzu through my body.  But there seems to be nothing left of me but eyes staring up out of the cement.  The Satan/Santa lifts Mrs. Lawrence like a little girl to sit on his knee.  He holds her head close to his mouth, and it looks like Santa is going to whisper a secret in her ear.  Then Satan Claus rips half her neck away with white shark teeth.

            No, that doesn't happen.  Hannibal King, hard-boiled dick, the great detective, could teach Bogart a thing or three, he always comes out on top, the women swoon in their gratitude.  The bad guy gets it, not the little doe-like woman who's begged for my help.  I don't take a nap while someone bites her head off.

            The darkness spins.  Burning eyes glare down at me.

            ". . . experimenting," says Deacon Frost in medias res.  "I never was one to stand on my laurels.  This quasi-living state has many advantages, but I've worked for a century on improving vampirism."

            I groan and try to rise, but I'm strapped to a table.  An IV filled with -- something -- drips into my arm.

            "The deterioration due to the sun's rays -- Ultraviolet II, to be specific -- that needs work," continues the white-haired vamp.  Glass beakers and Pyrex tubes rattle.  "Of course, I cannot experiment on myself, and risk my genius being destroyed, thus the necessity of bestowing the gift unto lesser specimens -- such as yourself."

            The drip, it's a pale, yellow, thick liquid like corn oil.  Drip, drip, drip, like Chinese water torture.  Each drop is like salt on my lips.  I get thirstier and thirstier.  But not for water.  I lick my lips and cut my tongue on fangs.  My vision blurs.  The shaggy white face draws close.

            "How are you doing?" he asks, as if genuinely concerned.  "How are you doing?"

#

            I blinked and started at the white form wavering over me.  I swung and hit something hard and bony.  A hand like living iron grabbed my wrist.

            [Hannibal!  Wake up!]

            The white thing was Jameson.

            "Oh.  Sorry," I groaned.

            The Man-Wolf rubbed his long jaw.

            [That punch would have shattered a normal man's face.  Even I could have done without it.]

            "I was delirious," I said.

            Jameson had returned with a tiger-striped creature like a long, skinny boar.  He handed its limp form to me.  Its neck was broken.

            I'll skip the next few minutes.  Suffice to say I could stand on my own two feet again -- in the shade.

            I heard the flap of leathery wings.  Colonel Jameson stepped to the edge of the trees, where the beach began, and I crept up as close as I dared.  The skeleton-men were returning to Tyrk's castle in the clouds.

            [The Realmites must have withdrawn.  Thank God.]

            "Maybe we ought to withdraw as well, before they come looking for us," I suggested, nodding toward the castle.

            The Man-Wolf's head drooped.

            [I doubt they'd even bother.]

            "What?"

            The white lycanthrope glanced at me sadly.

            [Tyrk doesn't need me, this time.  Before, his only hope to conquer the Realm was to get the Moongem.  Now his power exceeds mine.  Greatly.  He'd like revenge, I'm sure, but I am otherwise unimportant.  He may even prefer that I escape, so that I can watch the Realm crumble before my eyes.]

            Colonel Jameson turned back to the trees, droopy-eared.

            [Maybe Tyrk was right.  I am a failure, as god, man, hero -- everything.]

            I frowned.

            "Okay -- so now, you're David, and hhe's Goliath.  That's the way it's supposed to be.  Just means he's going to fall harder, this time."

            The Man-Wolf groaned as he slipped through the vines.

            [I wish I could share your optimism, Hannibal.]

            "I know from personal experience that the most powerful s.o.b. in the universe can be defeated by the little guy," I insisted.  "When Dr. Strange 'n' the rest of us confronted Dracula, he was well on his way to playing God."

            Colonel J gave me a quizzical, cock-eared look.

            [Dracula?]

            We started off through the woods as I explained:  yes, there was a Dracula, Lord of Vampires.  With the use of a magic tome called The Darkhold, Drac had increased his powers geometrically until he was wiping the floor with whole groups of superguys, and he made himself invulnerable to sunlight, crosses, stakes, and the like.

            "By the time we reached his castle in Transylvania, Drac was just this side of omnipotence," I finished.  "But Doc used the Montesi Formula, and Poof!  Even Drac snuffed it."

            Wolfie pressed some leafy branches out of our way.

            [Good words, King.  Unfortunately we don't have a Montesi Formula for Tyrk.]

            We slogged along for a few minutes.  I noticed some big cicada-looking bugs alighting on the Man-Wolf's whip-scarred back.

            "Looks like I'm not the only bloodsucker around here," I remarked.

            [What -- @!#?!$]>

            Wolfie slapped at the big bugs.  Blood trickled through his fur again.

            "You're a mess," I observed.

            Jameson snorted.  [Have you looked in a mirror, lately?]

            I just stared at him.  It took him a moment to catch on.

            [Vampire.  Mirror.  Yeah.]

            He let out a bark of a laugh, and hell, I did too.  Wolfie slapped a hairy paw over his eyes.

            [I should be on the brink of despair, but I'm laughing like an idiot.]

            "We comedy reliefs have that effect on people."

            Wolfie removed his hand from his eyes.  His look was more knowing.

            [It's time all the little people pooled their resources.  I've heard Lambert mention "old texts."  Maybe there is some information we can use against Tyrk.  Maybe records of the ancient technology.]

            "Now you're talking," I said.

 

 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

 

A GATHERING OF EAGLES

 

            Wolfie claimed to have a innate sense of direction.  I took his word for it.  I spent my time dodging pools of sunlight.

            We reached the edge of the trees before nightfall.  The Man-Wolf pointed out some distant flying figures.  A few Realmites were searching for us.

            Wolfie cupped his hands around his muzzle.  I stuck my fingers in my ears as he howled.

            The sun finally disappeared by the time the dragons came in for a landing.  I was able to hobble along with Colonel J to meet their riders.

            The first figure to disembark tossed aside what looked like an iron wolf's head and charged Man-Wolf, crashing right into him.  It was Mrs. J, in some sort of steel-gray Spandex armor.  She hugged Wolfie and gave him a smooch right on the muzzle.

            "John!  Dear God, what did they do to you?"

            She ran her hands through his fur, feeling the welts and scars.

            "These look like -- a whip . . ."

            Wolfie's clawed hands and hairy arms did not look very gentle, but he cradled Kristine like a big teddy bear.

            [It's all right, Kristine.  I've almost healed.]

            "It still happened, John.  It'll happen again and again, whether we're here or on earth, as long as Tyrk exists.  That's true, isn't it?"

            The Man-Wolf seemed taken aback at Kristine's observation.

            [Yes -- yes, I'm afraid that's true, my love..]

            Kristine smiled, a little smile accompanied by tears.  She glanced at the other dragon-jockeys, among whom were Duna and Gorjoon.

            "I've done a lot of thinking, John.  Seeing you like this makes me nearly reconsider --"

            She shook her head.

            "No, he'd always be out there . . . John, I think we should stay here."

            Wolfie pulled away and stared down his snout at her.

            [Stay here?  You mean, permanently?]

            Kristine looked wistful.

            "Believe me, it's taken me years to reach this point.  I realized how selfish I'd been.  The Realm might have been a paradise by now, if I hadn't dragged you back to Earth."

            [I don't know what to say, Kris.  Except that I've been thinking along the same lines, even after Tyrk wiped the floor with me.  I belong here.]

            The barbarian Gorjoon stepped up, leading his winged lizard by the reins.

            "Fi-nally!"

            Duna appeared as well, dressed in some Dragonriders of Pern tunic for a change.  She had eyes for me instead of her furry savior.  She smiled, a sort of amused grin.

            "I'm glad you escaped, Hannibal.  We were not truly prepared to storm the citadel."

            "I didn't mean to ignore you, Mr. King," Mrs. J added.  "I was just so worried about John . . ."

            I raised my hand.

            "No need to apologize, Mrs. J.  I've learned not to stand in the way of True Love -- it's a good way to get clobbered."

            The Man-Wolf, a shaggy arm around Kristine, turned to the half-dozen Dragoneers.

            [My friends, though you have just landed, I must ask you to remount.  We have much plotting to do at the Castle of the Wolf.]

#

            I flew behind Duna again.  I glanced back to make sure no goons were following, and I let out a gasp.

            "Hey!  The castle's gone!"

            Duna looked over her shoulder.

            "It is shielded, Hannibal King.  That is how he remained hidden from us.  But we will remember where he is."

            We flew on in silence.  I was in an enjoyable position, scooted right up to the warrior-woman's shapely torso, but I was too worried to notice.  Tyrk had beat the crap out of the Man-Wolf, and he was the most powerful weapon the Realmites had.

            We flew for hours, following the coastline.  Finally Duna looked back at me.

            "Hannibal -- what happened in there?  What happened to Stargod?"

            I hated to bring down morale, but she deserved the truth -- and the Man-Wolf's whip-scars were pretty obvious.  I filled her in on what had gone down since we left on our ill-fated recon flight.

            "Tyrk defeated Stargod in battle?" she asked eventually.

            "Well -- not to end on a downbeat, but . . . tthe Man-Wolf isn't Stargod.  Not any more."

            "So he keeps saying," murmured Duna.  "What frightens me is, I'm beginning to believe him."

#

            Our second arrival at the Wolf Castle was considerably more subdued.  There were few Realmites around to greet us, and they mainly took care of the dragons.

            Wolfie wasted no time but ordered all the important people to meet him in the "Hall of Records."  He and Krista vanished with a crowd of pages into the depths of the hold.

            I had recovered from my bad case of sunburn, and I followed Duna to the Hall.  Here I found plenty of books and scrolls and maps, and a large, shimmering oval standing in the corner.

            "Hey!" I blurted.  "That's -- that's a --"

            "A portal, Hannibal King," finished a voice.

            Duna and I turned to see the handless old man, Lambert.  He stepped out of a library-type aisle, followed by a kid with an armload of books.

            "I fear it would do you little good, 'detective'," continued the wizard.  "This Portal opens onto your earth's single moon -- a barren, airless rock."

            "Yeah, guess it'd still be an expensive cab-ride back to the island," I agreed.

            Lambert motioned to the page with his metal-encased stumps, and the kid spread out several old tomes on a long table.

            "Island?  You of earth are fond of cryptic remarks."

            "Sorry," I apologized.  "You get a little cynical over the years, meeting all the malcontents of the underworld -- and the undead."

            I scanned a wrinkly, cracked scroll.  Colonel J may have bestowed everyone in the Realm with the knowledge of English, but I still couldn't make out the chicken-scratch of their written language.

            "How much do you know of the Realm, Mr. King?" asked the wizard.

            I grimaced.

            "Next to nothing, I'm afraid.  Things have been so hectic, I haven't had time to soak in the local color.  Maybe you should fill me in on this whole Stargod/Other Realm/Tyrk bit."

            [Indeed, Lambert,] came Wolfie's mental voice.  [I think we could all do with a history lesson.]

            Man-Wolf arrived in a new set of duds, a black cuirass with a black cape.  Kristine wore a less somber dress of dark green.  Garth, Gorjoon, and others brought up the rear.

            Lambert smiled and indicated Duna.

            "Such a task should fall to Duna.  She is a master storyteller, so I'm told, when she tends the Hall of Children."

            I looked at my purple-haired friend in surprise.  She blushed.  I found it difficult to envision her as a babysitter.

            [Yes, Duna,] coaxed Wolfie.  [It would please us all to hear you speak of the beginnings of the Other Realm.]

            "Very well, my Lord," said the Amazon.  Nervously?  Again, hard to believe.

            She glanced at me as the Jamesons and the Realmites seated themselves at a long, U-shaped table.  I smiled without the fangs.  She stepped out in the middle of the chamber as I found my own chair, then she started:

            "We of the Other Realm have always known that our beginning was not the Beginning; that is not for mortals to know.  Ours was not the first world, or the largest, or the most beautiful -- though we often act as if it were.

            "Before the Other Realm came the First Realm -- the Universe -- the cosmos from which you, my Lord, and you, my Lady --"

            She flashed me a quick grin.

            "-- And you, my General, have come.  In those First Times Stargod was only a minor being, an ant among colossi; many and capricious were the Gods and Powers of the Cosmos, and great was their wrath when angered.  And long was the suffering of the peoples of the Universe.

            "Then one day the being who would be Stargod hit upon a plan.  He stole a fetish of power from one deity, and siphoned a tiny pinch of magic from another, and discovered the hiding-place of another's soul-stone.

            "And as a man might collect a cobble here, and a stone there, and eventually build a keep, so did Stargod add to his strength.  As the nith bug flies and bites and departs without awakening its victim, so were the Powers and Gods tapped without their knowledge.

            "Finally, the skittering nith bug revealed himself to be, in truth, a mighty hurragh.  He left the Cosmos to seek the Other Realm, for he knew, did he found his kingdom in the known Universe, the jealous Powers would destroy his people and his cities to spite him.

            "In the Other Realm, Stargod built Portals, and from the Cosmos he plucked peoples and beasts that pleased him, to populate his world.  And he slept for an eon, while they grew and multiplied; and when he awoke he found that the animals had spread through the jungles and that the people had built cities.  And Stargod wished to appear in a form appropriate to his nature, and to the nature of the Realmites.

            "He saw the White Wolves of the Ice Country, and he saw how the pack leaders were hard but just, protective but not oppressive, so he entered the form of a White Wolf, but made it also like a man.  And he walked among the people and ruled well.

            "He thought to know the material world, in all its joys and harshness; so, to bid good-bye to temptation he created a receptacle for his magicks, and into it he poured his essence.  Though he always wore his Moonstone, he rarely drew upon its power."

            [So that's it,] said Wolfie, rubbing his narrow chin.  [Stargod was more like an army than a single creature.  Most of his soldiers -- his powers --he kept in reserve.  His lupine body was like a single patrol, capable of mustering re-inforcements, if need be . . .]

            His iridescent eyes sought Duna again.  The Amazon tilted forward anxiously, almost on tip-toe, like a kid waiting to recite.

            [Please continue, Duna.]

#

            Slowly the story of the Other Realm took form.  The Realmites were always people of action, even when the trappings of civilization appeared.  They did not suffer the dichotomy of technology vs. nature.  They reached a high plateau of science, but it did not rule their lives or their world.  Even when they had spaceships and the like, they kept it all "unobtrusive".

            Part of this was due to the original Stargod's influence.  He did, indeed, walk among the people, and he encouraged the development of the mystical side of life, as well as the physical.  It sounded like he'd studied our history and tried to avoid its mistakes.

            But then he announced he was dying.  Was he, or did he decide the Realm could continue without him?  I recalled Tyrk's claim that he "split up" -- maybe his energies dispersed, or mustered out, to use Colonel J's analogy.  At any rate, he prophesied that he would be reborn in a thousand years, then he passed through a Portal to the earth's moon.

            "I have a question," I said, as Duna finished.  "Where did Tyrk come from?"

            Duna directed her gaze at me.

            "The False One was once a philosopher-king in Aralek across the sea," she replied.

            "Philosopher?" I repeated.  That was hard to believe.

            "What in your parlance would be called a scientist," interjected the wizard Lambert.

            Duna nodded.

            "He excelled in gatherings -- bringing mystical powers into himself.  He made his personal energies ever greater, and he built his armies and wealth, as well.  He looked into the Forbidden Zones, and even beyond Death's Veil, to increase his might and impose his will upon others."

            "Impose, indeed," said Lambert again.  "You have no doubt noticed, Hannibal King, that the soldiers under Tyrk's command become like him:  pale, dark-haired drones, with featureless demon-eyes."

            "I noticed," I said.

            Duna continued.  I could listen to her strong but melodious voice as long as she wanted to speak.

            "Tyrk garnered power, and held the fire-guns and other weapons for himself.  He spread across the land and across the sea to the Kingdom of the Wolf.  He suppressed and killed and tortured, until he ruled the whole of the Realm -- but, though he held the land, and yoked the inhabitants, he could not crush our spirits.  We awaited Stargod's return, and return he did."

            [Gatherings . . . an expert at gatherings . . .] mused the Man-Wolf.

            "The containing of forces within a talisman, to be unleashed by simple willpower," explained Lambert.

            Colonel J nodded his wolfish head.

            [Like the Moonstone itself.  And I've heard of other such "talismans" at Avengers HQ.]

            "You sound like you went through the whole training course there," I commented.

            A grin stretched up Jameson's jaws.

            [There have been unfortunate incidents at the mansion in which neo-Avengers or employees did not recognize friends or enemies,] he explained.  [Everyone who works there is required to study records, to be able to recognize a variety of potentially dangerous objects -- vibranium bombs, Cosmic Cubes, Brood eggs -- and Soul-Gems.  The Moonstone must have been like a Soul-Gem.  And there have been attempts to create artificial Gems.]

            Colonel J drummed his claws on the tabletop.

            [Could it be that simple?  Hannibal -- did you notice Tyrk's headdress?  The black stone on his forehead?]

            "Yeah, there was a glassy jewel there -- Are you suggesting that was another Moonstone?"

            [A crude imitation, powerful enough to beat us both, yet far from the omnipotence of the true Stone.]

            The Man-Wolf rubbed his hairy chin again.

            [His own Moonstone.  And mine destroyed.  The reverse of our first meeting, but it will not avail him.]

            He banged his shaggy fist on the table.

            [Garth!  Gorjoon!  Send emissaries to all the kingdoms of the Western Lands!  I wish to address their representatives.  Together we will crush Tyrk!]

            Gorjoon's beard bristled around his big banana smile.

            "At last we'll see some action!"

#

            Over the next few days dragons sailed in from all over.  The Wolf Castle looked like La Guardia.  Realmites appeared by the score.  There were elfin fellows and eight-foot basketball players; there were black and Asian and Native American-looking folks; there were people with purple hair, like Duna, and guys with blue or green skin, and dwarves hairy as gorillas, and a few characters with white eyes like Tyrk and his stooges.

            Strangest of all:  there were furry humanoids with the heads of lions and leopards and wolves.  Colonel J didn't look so out of place, now.

            The hallways and chambers of the Wolf Castle, once nearly empty, were now filled with these ambassadors and their guards.

            "Impressive," I said to Duna as we worked our way to the high speaker's platform.  "I didn't know there were this many kingdoms in the Other Realm."

            "'Kingdom' is a hopeful description, Hannibal," said the warrior-woman.  "Many are little more than villages surrounding a keep.  Yet even the smallest keep has its great fighters."

            I nodded as we passed a surly-looking black panther-man, Duna in an unusually conservative cuirass and me in a voluminous set of coveralls, with a hood and gloves that made me look like the Gray Mouser.  It kept the sun out.

            We climbed to our appointed positions near Colonel and Mrs. Jameson.  The murmuring crowd quieted as Colonel J raised his shaggy arm.

            [People of the Realm,] he began.  [Some of you will recall the times I denied being Stargod, and doubted my ability to defeat Arisen Tyrk.  Well, the past is the past, good Realmites.  I acknowledge that I, Colonel John Jameson of the First Realm, am, for all intents and purposes, Stargod.]

            The crowd cheered for a time, but when the noise settled, a voice floated up.  It was the panther man.

            "We of Balthazaar have heard that you were ignobly defeated by Tyrk, 'Stargod'!"

            Around the cat-man, other Realmites grumbled angrily.  The panther bristled.  There might have been a riot, but Colonel J raised his hand again.

            [What Igrizziz says is true, good people.  The Moonstone that housed my power is no more.]

            Everyone gasped when the Man-Wolf sprang straight up with a gazelle's ease and landed on a thick, stone balustrade thirty feet above.

            [But this, too, is different!  Where I doubted before, now I am sure!  Tyrk will know defeat, but it will require the cooperation of all the Realm!

            [The power of the Stargod is no more, but that is good, for you are all warriors born, not babes who need a cosmic nanny overlooking you.  I have compared the Stargod power to that of a great army under my command -- you and all who love freedom will be that army now!

            [Less than Stargod, but far more than the mindless Man-Wolf -- I shall henceforth be known as Starwolf.  Are you with me, People of the Other Realm?]

            Anything less than an ear-shattering response would have been disappointing, and Wolfie was not disappointed.  He sprang back down to the floor of the speaker's platform, his short cape billowing, as cheers filled the air -- altered slightly to "Hail Starwolf!" -- then there was a round of Questions and Answers, which the Man-Wolf -- sorry, Starwolf -- handled well.

            Eventually we of the castle withdrew.

            "Nice speech, S.W.," I said.

            Colonel J growled quietly.

            [Speeches don't win wars.  I believe we can rely on the lesser kingdoms' support, but were Tyrk to strike now . . .]

            "Then we'd kick some white-eyes' butts," finished Gorjoon, hopping along in Wolfie's wake like a court jester.

            "And you'll nuke Tyrk this time," I added.  "Just get that gem."

            [I hope it's that easy,] said Starwolf.

 

 

 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

 

OEDIPUS WRECKS

 

            LYCANTHROPY, Shape-shifting [See also:  Folklore; Myths and Legends; Animals in Folklore]

 

            Baring-Gould, Sabine.  Book of Werewolves

            Hamel, Frank.  Human Animals

            Harold, Harold H.  The Werewolf and the Vampire

            Kane, Solomon.  God's Silver Sword

            Morbius, Michael.  Lycanthropy:  Natural or Supernatural?

            Moreau, Pierre.  On the Mutability of Living Tissue

            < Morgan, William.  Human-Wolves Among the Navaho

            Nelson, Greer.  Children of Bast

            O'Donnell, Elliott.  Werwolves

            Otten, Charlotte.  A Lycanthropy Reader

            Russell, Jack.  Legends of the Russoff Family

            Sinclair, Rahne.  Diary of a Teenage Werewolf

            Strange, Stephen.  Notes on the Darkhold

            Summers, Montague.  The Werewolf

            Van Helsing, Abraham.  The Land Beyond the Forest

 

            I creep through the libraries like a cat-burglar, gathering materials and holding them under my arm so that no one will see the titles.  What would people think if they caught me reading about it?  They'd think I was obsessed.

            Aren't I?

            My eyes spin with psychological treatises and musty old legends.  Finally I come to Yale University Publications in Anthropology #11, "Human-Wolves Among the Navaho."  The author compares the Phenomenon to dreams of flying or running.  I almost close the pamphlet, then I read:

 

“There are various sources for these travelling dreams, since they can symbolize a considerable number of repressed wishes; the wish for freedom from compulsion, one which the idea of a wolf very well represents, and especially for independence from the father.”

 

            I close my eyes, not quite believing the words.  Eventually I must continue:

 

“It is perhaps not a matter of chance that hatred of the father was a striking characteristic of the actual cases of Lycanthropy, i.e. where people really imagined that they wandered about at night in the guise of wolves.”

 

#

 

            Is that why I was chosen?  If someone else on the mission had picked up the Gem, would he not have been affected?  The white moon-beast, overturning cars, ripping the sides off apartment buildings.

            Oedipus Wrecks.

            Maybe there was another factor.

            I wanted to join the Boy Scouts.  Blazing trails, making campfires, wood-carving, swimming -- and that manual of theirs had all the important information in the world in it.  Camp Skowhegan by the lake -- a kid's paradise!

            A whiff of cordite-strong cigar smoke.  A hand squeezing my little shoulder.

            "Hell, Son, you'll be the best damned Scout ever!"

            I wanted to join the Boy Scouts?

            The Little League.  I had a genuine Louisville Slugger.  A broad crack like a tree snapped by a hurricane, and the ball flew up, up, and away.

            Run, scrape through the dirt like a jet bellying in, but there's a whop in a glove before I reach the plate.

            "Out!"

            A black mesa of hair, a bristling Hitler mustache.  And a mouth.

            "Whadda mean, out?  He beat the ball a mile!"

            "The hell he did!" the wire-faced ump yells back.

            "Ya blind or sumthin'?"

            "Get outta my face, Jameson!"

            I wanted to join Little League?

            High school football team:

            Smack on the back.  "Make yer old man proud, Son!  Massacre 'em!"

            Air Force!  Flying high over the world, the most advanced technology known to Man at my fingertips --

            ". . . My Purple Heart, boy!  Maybe if you're lucky, you can earn one, too!"

            I --

            I --

            There is no I.  Maybe the Gem sought an empty vessel and filled it.  I am a cipher.  I am JJJ's son.  James-Son.  There is nothing inside me.  Nothing.

            "That is how it must be."

            I whirl.  Where am I?  A foggy place.  I sniff automatically.  I don't smell anything.  But I see a figure.

            "You are a Protector.  A Sentinel.  A Guardian.  A Shield," says the figure.  He holds up a wide buckler; I recognize it and the costume now, but I catch no scent and I see no face within the wing-eared cowl.

            "You cannot be anything else; that would invite weakness.  Flaws.  Corruption.  You can be the Champion, but nothing else."

            I could almost believe that.  I could let go of the man-who-never-was and be the wolf-who-is, not miss the earlier non-existence.

            Something else moves in the fog.  A woman.  Red-brown hair, her body svelte, her eyes large and expressive, an elfin smile.  I have to smile back.  Is a smile weakness?  Flawed?  Corrupt?

            [How can I presume to know what is best for people, if I am above, beyond, separate from them?] I ask.

            "The Principles are eternal," calls the muscular form.  "The Laws are outside the individual.  Tie yourself to individuals, you cannot see the universals.

            "Weaknesses must be removed, temptations erased, emotions checked!  You must become your Realm, guard the inhabitants from their enemies and from themselves.  It is more important than your petty needs, your ego . . . your life."

            The familiar/unfamiliar form steps nearer.  Still I do not see his face.  I grit my teeth.  There is something wrong with all this . . .

            [A Realm is not empty land, or pages of doctrine.  It is men and women and children.  It is farmers and poets and kids fishing in creeks and old people reminiscing on porches.  It is for them to draw up their own rules to live by.  And they have the right to create new ones -- or repeal any that are too strict.]

            I tilt my head, studying the powerful form with one eye.

            [I thought you would know that.  Or haven't you heard the phrase, "of the people, by the people, for the people?"]

            CRACK

            "Blasphemy!"

            His backhanded blow came so fast, even I could not dodge.  My shoulders hit the grey earth; my snout throbs with pain.

            "You will not make light of sacred words in my presence."

            I rub my nose with a furry hand.  I smell something now:  my own blood.  A growl begins deep in my throat.

            "You waver from the path.  You do not see clearly," says the figure.  He turns his winged head and I follow his gaze to the young woman.  She ignores us.  Her face is covered by her hands; I think she is sobbing.

            "I, too, have known your puzzlement, your ambivalence, but by cutting out the cancer I became whole.  You must excise -- amputate -- release the anchors that weigh you down.  Cut them away, like this."

            He swings his arm high, the disk gripped by its knife-sharp edge.

            [What are you --]

            I roll forward automatically, faster than I can think the words of shock, and spring with all the power of my steely legs.  The disk whirls like a mad buzzsaw at the woman.  I catch it, smack, leaving me with a sting like a teacher's yardstick across the palm.

            I yank my legs back under me and skid to a stop.

            [Are you insane?] I demand.

            In a flash I remember, years ago, being nosier than I should have been about the hero I thought to emulate.  A letter, return address simply "Bernie", sent to him c/o Avengers Mansion -- and a blocky "Return to Sender" in a hand I immediately recognized.

            I frown.  No, it is the nastiest, toothiest smile I can twist my lips into.

            [Yes . . . If you could so easily crush the precious life you had for what you are now -- you are mad.]

            The costumed figure starts toward me with an angry, bunch-muscled grace.

            "And you are unworthy," he announces.  "Wavering.   Questioning.  Arguing.  You are no Hero, no Guardian, no Shield."

            [Unworthy, huh?] I ask.  I still hold the indestructible Frisbee.  I raise it high.  [Then I certainly don't deserve to carry this.]

            I hurl it, and it whizzes, edge up, into his chest.

            Sshunk -- and through.  What?

            I pad up to the figure and plunge clawed fingers into the rent that runs from chin to crotch.  I part the halves of the costume like curtains.

            [There is nothing inside!  Nothing . . .]

#

            "John?"

            He thrashed wildly.

            No, he didn't:  in a microsecond he realized that he had awakened from a dream, and he knew Kristine was there, and that a flailing arm could strike her.  He stilled the automatic urge to thrash before he did more than tense his muscles.

            [Kris?]

            They lay in the wide, plush bed in the largest living-quarters of the Wolf Castle.  He had stretched out like a plank again, embarrassed and uncomfortable with his own wife, but now he rolled toward her and she entered his strong arms and pressed her body against his.

            [Oh, Kris . . . I was an empty husk.  A dry insect shell with nothing inside.]

            Kristine's warm, feminine odor, always a background radiation in this world, now washed over him like a tsunami.  He stared down into her eyes.  Her face was flushed and visible due to her inner heat.

            "Empty husk?  What do you mean?"

            John shook his lupine head, trying to organize his thoughts.

            [Everything I've ever done, I did because of J. Jonah Jameson.  Everything I am was poured into my mold from his crucible.  I'm not sure there ever really was a John Jameson.]

            Kristine frowned.  Her anger was a palpable, sharp fragrance.

            "Is that so?  Tell me, John -- you've read plenty of Jonah's editorials.  How many of his views on life and politics and world affairs do you subscribe to?"

            The Man-Wolf snorted.

            [Are you kidding?  None.]

            His wife smiled at her little victory.

            "Well, that's certainly an odd attitude for JJJ's clone to take.  He's his own greatest fan, after all."

            The werewolf bunched up his eyebrows and folded his ears, considering.  A pale hand slid over the fur of his chest, over the curve of his shoulder.

            "John, your father can bury you if you give him a chance.  I should know.  Those times you were missing, he practically led me around on a leash."

            She twisted her finger into a curl of hair on his upper arm.  Once upon a time she could do that only on his head.

            "He shoveled it over you deep enough, but something still sprouted to the surface, enough for me to see and fall in love with . . . Remember the first poem you ever sent me?"

            A purring noise emerged from John's muzzle.

            ["Kristine, Kristine, you reign supreme/When I'm awake or when I dream". . . Hardly "Sonnets from the Portuguese."]

            "It wasn't 'Spider-Man:  Threat or Menace,' either," Kristine pointed out.  "It was the love-cry of John Jameson."

            He studied her again, rosy glow in the purple night, her hair spilling over her satin shoulders.  A warm whirlwind of her smell and his, intermingled, billowed up from beneath the sheets and sizzled in his nostrils.

            [Away from Love, ever curs'd to fly/I raced the Sun, I tagged the silver Moon/My heart lost in a Realm beyond the Sky/Yes, Oblivion would have been a boon.]

            Kristine let out the tiniest gasp.  John smiled.

            [I saw my love, yet truly knew her not/I grew deaf to the music of her voice/But she through every adversity fought,/Never regretting the difficult choice.

            [And now with soft words, Beauty calms the Beast/Her gentle touch has beaten tooth and claw/His doubts and rambles have forever ceas'd/Man and Wolf held by Passion, warm and raw.]

            Kristine laughed.  "Did you just make that up?"

            He blinked.

            [Why -- I suppose I did.  I just thought of a line, then words that rhymed.]

            He stared off at a Doric-looking column in a corner of the chamber.

            [It needs a final couplet to be a sonnet . . .]

            Kristine's slender arms slid serpent-quick up to his neck; she clasped her hands behind his head.

            "You'll never convince me JJJ had anything to do with that."

            A silent, insistent gravity pulled them closer.  He set his hand softly on her cheek.  He noticed as if for the first time the short, white hair that gloved it, the knife-point thumbnail.

            [Oh, damn.  I was going to kiss you.]

            Kristine's chuckle was a broad vibration on his chest.

            "What's wrong with that?"

            He sighed, a swell on the sea.

            [You want a dog-kiss from this toothy snout?  A sea gull's peck would be more romantic.  Or maybe a big Saint Bernard slurp would be more to your liking.]

            The Man-Wolf stared off at the balcony/windows as if in shame.

            [There must be something wrong with me.  Thinking I could ignore this . . .]

            Her hand, so perfect and lovely, holding her scent in the salty cup of her palm, touched his muzzle.  She guided it slowly back until he faced her.

            "There must be something wrong with me, too," she whispered.  "Because I think you're gorgeous."

            John's head spun.  He felt a deep thunk, as if a hammer had smacked his pelvic bones.  What did she just say?  What should he say in return?  What --

            [Ulp -- You -- smell – nice . . .]

#

            Glossy skin hissed over velvet fur.  Full, round lips pressed against a throat offered as if to an Alpha.  A tongue reached under honey-gold tresses, over the entire curve of a round, pink ear.

            Careful, careful, as he explored her torso, those clawed fingers straining back as if to meet above the knuckles.

            He turned his head, exhaling to the side through half-open jaws, hoping his sharp breaths would not be too audible; he would not pant and slobber like a dog!

            . . . But he was hot, he had to release it before he fainted, melted, burst into flame.

            Each new breath contained her scents, her pheromones, altering, changing with her rising excitement.  Wild, wild!  She had never smelled like this to his other self, all her perfumes on Earth were never like this!

            Her hands crept through fields of ivory fur, tobogganed down his ribs, over his solid thighs.  He was going to howl, alert every creature in the Realm that had ears!  He clamped his jaws shut --

            -- But he howled within.

#

            Crimson light became golden beyond the balcony.  He nuzzled her throat again.  She stroked his snowy mane.

            [What if. . .] he thought/said.

            "What?" she asked.

            [We've been so careful . . .]

            She turned her head, kissed his cheek at the base of his lynxlike sideburns.

            "I'd say he -- or she -- would either look like John Jameson, or like the Man-Wolf.  I would be proud of either."

            He swallowed.

            [So would I.]

#

            The pages bowed and the soldiers saluted as usual, but there was an amused cast to their collective face as John and Kristine walked the corridors.

            [What's with them, today?] asked John.

            Kristine's arm hooked his.  Her small hand sought his great paw.

            "I'm afraid, John, that -- well -- you don't actually talk now.  You sort of -- project."

            The Man-Wolf stopped abruptly, his lupine face aghast.

            [You don't mean --]

            Kristine smiled primly, though she shivered as if to burst out laughing.

            "Probably worse than squeaky bedsprings."

            He winced.  [Oooooh . . . And I was trying so hard not to howl.  I never even thought to hold in -- thoughts!]

            He clapped his free hand over his eyes.

            [They all -- Oh, my -- I'm such an idiot!]

            His wife blinked tears of amusement out of her eyes.

            "Nobody's perfect, John."

 

 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

 

THE FLAW

 

To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good, or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law.

                                                                                                  -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

 

            Tyrk stood on his high balcony, gazing upon the skyscape over the Scarlet Sea.  Atoosh wavered near, his warrior's bloodlust a dull coal-fire in the pit of his stomach.

            "What news, Atoosh?"

            The white-eyed warrior stepped nearer, smacking his fist against his breast.

            "The Wolf Castle has the word of agreement from Katharta, Horrjbil, Balthazaar, and the Twelve Duchies.  All the warlords of the Scarlet Sea side with the wolfling, saving only Skartia and the Veiled City."

            Atoosh paused.  Something swirled in his chest, a desire to speak on some other matter.  Tyrk did not know every thought of his drones, even though they were all buds off his soul; but Atoosh's wish he certainly felt.

            "What else, Atoosh?"

            The warrior balled his fingers into fists.

            "Master -- why do you wait?  Why do you let the wolfling gather his forces, now that he knows of our location?  He and his simpering followers could be crushed, like an empty silif-pod --"

            The fiery-haired warrior opened his hand only to make a fist again, slowly, as if squeezing.

            "Let him gather his forces," said the armored man-god.  He formed a church and steeple with his own gauntleted hands.  He tapped his forefingers against each other, symmetrically.  "Let all my enemies show themselves.  Strike now, and some of the wrong-thinking, the more conservative and cowardly, will worm their way back into their rotten hovels.  Let us defeat their whole force, and all those who waver in neutrality will be forged to Tyrk forever."

            He shifted his blank eyes over to Atoosh.  The orange fireball in the warrior's stomach grew blue spikes of worry.

            "You do not doubt, Atoosh, that the forces of the True God can crush any resistance Jameson can muster?"

            "Of course not, Master," said Atoosh quickly.  His pointed fear smoothed to a pebbly lump as he thought of a way to cover up his faux pas.  "It is only that -- I am a warrior born; to fight and die for you, Master, is my only wish."

            Tyrk felt the momentary urge to let Atoosh die for him right now . . . but there was no crowd of Realmites handy to impress.  Besides, Atoosh was a good fighter.

            He smiled.  There was one playing piece loose on the game board who was even more of an outsider than the wolf-headed astronaut.  One that had actually proved -- annoying.  The saga of Arisen Tyrk would not be changed by the alien's absence.

            "If you wish battle, Atoosh, you may have it."

            He looked out again at the world that was rightfully his.

            "Bring me the heart of Hannibal King."

#

            Atoosh left with a wide smile beneath his bristling mustache.  Tyrk idly followed his progress down to the dragon decks with the clairsenses of the black Gem.

            The Gem.

            The Gem, that glinting obsidian oval on his brow, possessed a flaw.

            The flaw made it perfect.

            Oh, how long he labored, in the Years of Confusion, on the Gem!  Yet he had no choice.

            The being called Stargod, the great leader, the pillar of wisdom and strength -- he had abandoned them, orphaned them, dropped the Realm like a well-gnawed vissid's bone.  The people walked through the streets like Ambulons, or gathered on the hilltops and skylands with their wolf-headed symbols and wailed at the stars.  Armies met in the southern plains and fought with no shaggy referee to make them talk peace.  The Beast People in the north struck at true men, claiming to be superior due to their resemblance to the departed one; or they were slain and driven from their forest-lands by true men who saw in their animalistic forms the traitorous god.

            A firm hand was needed, a new leader to replace the old, before the Realm collapsed in chaos.  So it was he stole the forbidden scrolls, bribed the less scrupulous scientist/wizards, and created his own Gem.

            And how quickly the people turned to him for guidance, after he quelled the war in the desert!  And how the true men had cheered when he drove into the Wild Lands the few Beast Folk he did not crush outright!  So came the Golden Age of the Other Realm.

            And he was no austere deity, hidden high on an unscalable mountain!  He walked among his people, and heard their problems and praises, and he built the prisons that held those on the side of anarchy, like the rebellious warlords and the misguided wolf-worshipers.

            And when necessary, he played the executioner.

            . . . Eventually he realized his artificial Power Gem leaked.  Not long after he absorbed Lord Rassonil of the Bright Kingdom into the cloudy crystal, he remembered the plot against himself -- or, rather, he knew what Rassonil had remembered.

            He had worried, even removing the Gem for a time, scanning it with every device in his laboratory.

            There was nothing detectably wrong with the Gem, and certainly the will and mind of Tyrk could not be affected by the emanations of a weak mortal like Rassonil, so he donned it again.

            In truth, the crystal's leakage proved beneficial.  After all, Tyrk now knew the names of Rassonil's co-conspirators, and the desert lord had developed many useful ways of persuading prisoners to reveal information . . .

#

            The people came to anticipate the executions with glee, and Tyrk was never above a performance.  How many the Gem had absorbed!  Knarr the Butcher, Dargatz the Mad, Guneen the King-Slayer, Orgoff, Priest of the Unnameable, to name a very few.  He had filled the Gem to its capacity, until even its greedy maw could swallow no more.

            And something of each absorbed soul had leaked from the flawed Gem.

            Tyrk smiled in satisfaction.  From the dead fiends he learned and grew.  He combined the prisons with the laboratories, and he removed from the populace the weapons and technology that could be misused, and he cured the diseased brains of the wrong-thinking citizens who still wanted the wolf-god.

            Yes, sometimes he had to be harsh.  Sometimes a citizen -- or a village -- or a country -- would stand unrepentant of its crimes of hand or heart, and so had to be punished.

            But there was order in the Realm.

            He would not forsake them, like the Wolf had done long ago, and his false incarnation had in recent years.  No.

            "Fear not, good people," whispered Arisen Tyrk to the land below.  "Tyrk is here to stay."

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY>

 

LOOSE CANNON

 

            "Hi, there.  Remember me?"

            Wolfie glanced up from a table of maps and scrolls.

            [Oh -- good evening, Hannibal.  I'm sorry if I've been ignoring you.  I've been preoccupied.]

            "So I've heard."

            Like last night, when I felt psychic shock waves rolling down from on high. The earth moved for someone.

            Starwolf winced.  He knew what I was thinking.  He glanced around in embarrassment, but he had expressed a desire to meditate alone, and everyone except the vampire detectives took the hint.

            [I'll never live that down,] the shaggy one groaned.

            I snickered.

            "I think the Realmites are just happy you -- er -- have a healthy relationship with yourr wife."

            Wolfie nodded.

            [I know it shouldn't bother me.  I've always been a little -- shall we say -- uptight?  But I'm changing, I think.]

            He indicated a heavy, hourglass-shaped chair with his white-furred hand.

            [Please have a seat, Hannibal.  You are, after all, my general in the Godwar.]

            "We're sticking to that story, huh?" I asked as I sat down.

            Wolfie thought/spoke as he spread out a wrinkled yellow scroll.

            [We have located old records concerning the Moongem and similar items of power.  They were written in the time of Darkness, when science fell to superstition, but I think they hold bits of truth.]

            I glanced over the scribbles and diagrams.  I had learned to recognize words like "Stargod" and "Other Realm," but everything else was Klingon to me.

            One drawing resembled a horoscope or compass dial, superimposed over a picture of starry space.  Little ovals on the drawing, of various colors, put me in mind of the jewel on Tyrk's helmet.

            "Looks like there were a bunch of gems," I remarked.

            [Yes.  They were not native to the Realm, or to Earth,] agreed Wolfie.  [From what I learned at Avengers' Mansion, and what I've read here, they were created by an alien race billions of years ago.  The Moongem was such an object, though much of its power was siphoned from other sources.  Each crystal has known a variety of masters over the eons -- though I could hardly claim to have been the Moongem's master.]

            He dragged over another parchment.

            [Other civilizations have created gems in imitation of the originals.  Some worked better than others.  Tyrk created the one he wears, apparently.]

            "A cheap imitation, eh?" I said.  "How good could it be?"

            Starwolf rubbed his long jaw.

            [It may only be glass to the Moongem's diamond, but it serves Tyrk well enough.]

            I smacked my right fist into my left palm.

            "Glass cuts deep, but it breaks a lot easier than diamond."

            Wolfie grinned.  With a golden flash I could barely follow, he whipped out his hundred-pound broadsword and lay it flat across his wrist.

            [True.  And here is my little glass cutter.  I've run tests on it in the castle labs, as well as I can.  It rates at least a 9.5 on the Mohs Hardness Scale.  Swung with sufficient force, it can shatter anything this side of adamantium.]

            "Yes, I remember it," I muttered.  "So what's the plan?"

            A strip of film in reverse:  Thup and the sword was back in place.

            [We will gather a mighty army and advance on Tyrk's stronghold.  Presumably he will rise with his own forces.  It will appear to be a conventional battle, but we have only one true goal:  the black gem.]

            I nodded.

            "Surround him with misdirection.  Sweet and simple."

            Wolfie rolled up the scroll.

            [I hope I'm not sending too many Realmites to their deaths.]

            I set my hand on his shoulder.  Like touching a furry boulder.

            "Take it from me, Colonel.  The folks here are scrappers, and they've been nursing a thousand-year grudge.  Even if you had a button to push that'd erase Tyrk, I wouldn't punch it just yet.  Let everybody who wants to fight have a part in the battle.  Then you can break White-Eye's little toy."

#

            Wolfie and I stepped out of the scroll room.

            ". . . Then I single-handedly defended Avengers' Mansion against a horde of mindless zombies."

            [Yeah.  Right.]

            Out in the corridor I could hear and smell a multitude of people -- none of whom were present.  Starwolf's nostrils vibrated rabbit-fast, and he thought as I did:

            [Quiet, here, for now.]

            "Enjoy it while you can," I suggested.  "High-profile guys like you don't get much privacy."

            A sly grin crept up Jameson's jaws.

            [Being an astronaut was a glory-job in the old days.  And I appointed myself one-man PR campaign for NASA.  I wanted to see kids look up at the stars with the same awe and yearning I did.  I wanted them to want to know what was up there.]

            We passed out onto a balcony/walk.  Night again; the moons were so bright, they might have been dwarf stars.

            Colonel J set his furry hands on the stone rail.

            [Never in my wildest dreams did I expect anything like this.]

            "Yeah.  Well, the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, it's queerer than we can suppose.  Einstein said that."

            Starwolf cocked an eyebrow, an albino woolly bear arching on his skull.

            [I believe J. S. Haldane said that.]

            I shrugged.

            "Whoever.  He was right.  This place is a harsh little Eden, even after Tyrk's mucking with it."

            [Indeed.]

            Wolfie let out a humming noise.

            [If I read the schematics in the Scroll Room correctly, it may be possible to build a Portal that will send one anywhere.  We may attempt to do so after the Godwar, but . . .]

            He eyed me seriously.

            [Hannibal -- what have you, really, to go back to?]

            For a moment I didn't say anything.

            "You're suggesting I stay here, too?"

            The Man-Wolf's fluffy tail twitched slightly.

            [Why not?  You will always have a place in the Realm.]

            I shook my head.

            "Doing what?  Looking for dragon thieves?  I'm a shamus, colonel.  There's not much call for that, here.  Anyone in the Other Realm could track down the average thief, themselves -- and dish out their own justice, for that matter."

            I smiled my toothiest.  It wasn't too impressive compared to Colonel J's, but it got the point across.

            "Besides, I will not allow even the vaguest chance of this taking root here.  Once upon a time someone I thought I loved convinced me to save her life by -- well, I’ve regretted it ever since."

            Ziggurat-terraces stretched out below our level.  The Man-Wolf eyed a moving figure a couple of floors down.

            [Understandable.  But we will be sad when you leave.  Some of us more than others.]

            I looked, too.  A shapely, semi-clad woman.  A pickaxe for a hand.  I clucked my tongue.

            "Colonel -- I'll let you get back to your plans."

            He nodded.  I sprang over the stone banister and landed softly on the next level.

            What I hadn't told Wolfie was that the thirst was growing stronger -- worse than it had been on Earth.  And I knew I had limits.  For all my oaths and posturings, I’d fed on human blood in my time.

            Another hop-skip-'n'-jump and I landed right behind Duna.  An intake of breath and a flash of silver, and the cold blade-hand pressed against my windpipe.

            "Hannibal!  You startled me."

            I swallowed.  "I startled you?"

            She lowered her arm and smiled.  She was about convinced I was indestructible, and it amused her to see me sweat.

            "You should not leap out of nowhere, unannounced, Hannibal.  We Realmites tend to react."

            "I'll bear that in mind," I said.

            I glanced up and down the terrace/walkway.  All I saw were vines and flowers, and the flickering yellow of candle-lit windows.

            "Out for a stroll?" I asked.

            The purple-haired Amazon studied the marble path at her feet.

            "I was thinking, Hannibal."

            She started off again, and I fell in beside her.

            "There's a lot of that going around," I muttered.

            Duna kicked a pebble along the walk.

            "I fear I would have no place in your world, Hannibal."

            "Brilliant minds think alike," I said.  I was full of other people's words tonight.  "I don't really fit in the Other Realm."

            She looked over me with those violet eyes shimmering and her pink-red skin aglow.

            "Yet all that does not seem important to me.  Here or there."

            I swallowed.

            "I feel a lot like that.  But --"

            Duna stopped.  I sighed.

            "What, Hannibal?  I cannot believe that you would be anything but an asset to the Realm.  Yet, if you feel you must leave -- I could adjust to Earth, I know."

            "I'm sure, though it might bore you silly . . ."

            A little buzzing thing whizzed up and landed on her forehead, a hideous bug like a winged leech.  I plucked it off before Duna could so much as blink, and I crushed it between thumb and forefinger.

            The leech-fly had feasted already tonight.  The blossom of lukewarm blood on my fingers spewed a coppery fragrance everywhere.  I wanted to --

            I plunged my fingers, leech and all, into my mouth.  Duna gasped.

            "Hannibal?"

            "I can't stay here, Duna," I growled, staring at my saliva-covered hand.  "Not when I feel the yearning grow more powerful every night."

            She touched my wrist with her hand.

            "Then take me to Earth with you."

            I shook my head.

            "Duna -- you don't know me well enough to makee a decision like that.  Earth's in another frickin' dimension.  You can't hop on a bus and ride home if things don't work out."

            Duna smiled demurely.

            "Hannibal, I am renowned for my quick decisions.  I cannot recall ever making one I regretted.  If you go back, so will I."

            We stared at each other again, and I found myself leaning slightly toward her.  She tilted her head up to meet my eyes.  Her lips were full and red without makeup.  Her throat pulsed with her life-juices.  Her hand was warm against mine.  I could see her core of heat, as if I had on X-Ray Specs, the orange furnace of her heart, the pipelines of her arteries . . .

            "No!"

            I drew back.  She stared.

            “Hannibal?"

            I thought of Dracula's gaunt leer, Deacon Frost's cold, clinical stare, Michael Morbius' albino bat-puss.  I felt my face soften and flow.  I could only imagine what Duna saw: some needle-fanged zombie/bat/skull.  Whatever it was, she recoiled.

            "You see?  That lies beneath the surface.  That is always present.  The demon hunger.  The thirst.  When my feelings for you grow, it grows, too.  I will not let it near anyone."

            I blinked once, and my eyes burned.  Can vampires cry?

            "Oh, damn," I muttered.  "I gotta be alone for a minute."

            I hopped over yet another balcony.

            "Hannibal!"

            No daisy she, I heard the scrape of boot and pick-axe on marble as she followed.  I wished to be somewhere else.  So --

            I felt wind slip over skin, wide sails of skin, and the bug squeaks and bird chirps and branch creakings of a nearby forest roared in my ears.

            Sonofa -- I'm a bat!

            I fluttered and twisted and turned.  I felt that I was moving my hands in frantic, complex actions, like a stage magician.  I heard the forest sounds and sailed down at them.  Another flying leech whizzed toward me (or I toward it); I snapped it up before I could think about it.

            All right -- enough of this.

            The ground drew near.  I grew heavier.  I landed at the edge of the trees.

            And I swore never to fly.

            Maybe every aspect of the curse gained strength in the Other Realm.  Or I was that desperate to get away from Duna.

            "Duna!  Sh --"

            I punched a convenient tree trunk.  Big eggplant-looking fruits flared like lightbulbs.  Wasn't anything normal here?

            Me screwing up, maybe.  Here I was, trying to let Duna go easy -- I drop us both off the Empire State.

            Maybe Lambert, with all those old scrolls and books, could help do something about my undead status -- but Doc Strange had never cured me completely, and he was the best there was.  Here, they never even heard of vampires.

            I kicked a fallen branch and wandered into the woods.  Hours 'til dawn -- I could sulk for a while before I hadd to get back to the castle.

#

            Some of the critters here were typical of Earth.  I spotted an ordinary deer, and I heard plenty of owls, crickets, and frogs.  On the other hand, I saw something like a two-foot-long Brontosaurus, and a slug with legs, and those damned flying leeches.

            I got bored with the nature walk pretty quick.  I wandered out of the woods again and steeled myself for the long walk back to the castle.  I still refused to use my "gifts" unless I had to.

            But it was a hoot, feeling the wind whip over my wings. . .

            Something stirred the tree tops.  I spun to see a dragon-horse flapping overhead.

            "You oppose the rule of Arisen Tyrk, Outlander," yelled a voice.  "So you must die!"

            "Yeah, right," I muttered.

            A heavyset form in some sort of knobby armor dropped from the dragon and landed with surprising grace fifteen feet away.  This white-eyed goon had a fringe of fiery red hair and beard framing his face, like the rays they always draw around the sun.

            "Know, King, that Atoosh the Mighty is your slayer!"

            "I'll believe it when I see it," I snarled, crouching.

            I thought I should alert the castle, but --

            I listened hard.  No voices, exhalations, or flapping wings beyond those of Sunflower and his steed.

            One goon.  I don't need to bother anybody over one goon.

            Sunflower charged with a yell.  He held up something dagger-fashion, but without a blade.

            Fzzzzt -- I stood corrected.  Some sort of wacky force-knife.

            Okay, I could play with Sweetums for a while.  I waited 'til he nearly ran into me, then I caught his wrist, twisting so that my shoulder rammed his chest, and flipped him easily over me.  He hit, a sound like a dead horse dropped off a house.  Sunflower plowed a purple furrow through the juicy grasses of the Other Realm.

            "You were saying?"

            Tyrk's henchman rolled up with amazing speed and plucked a knob off his armor.  He spun and threw it at me.  It was a cinch to dodge.  The knob disappeared into the tangle of vines at the edge of the forest.

            Kwoomph -- A concussion shoved me like a giant hand.  The knob was more than an ornament, and he had others.

            As long as I was pushed in Sunflower's direction, I made a charge of it.

            "I was thinking of warning Starwolf," I called, adding insult to injury, "but you ain't worth the effort!"

            Sunflower growled.  His teeth were blocky, like white dominoes.  I slammed him down with my outstretched arms.

            Fzzzz.  Here came that force-dagger again.  I caught his wrist and held it away.  I grabbed the side of his face with my other hand and bent his head back far enough to reveal a grimy neck.

            "Let's see if you white-eyes have red blood," I hissed in my vampire nastiest.

            Sunflower's free hand slammed against my forehead.  His palm was hard and rough as sandstone, but he couldn't keep back my fangs.  I was losing to the thirst; God help me, I goaded it on.

            Sunflower forgot pushing me off and scrambled for something.   He held up another knob-grenade.

#

            I was aware of floating.  No pain, no feeling of propulsion; I just floated.

            I hit hard enough to jangle my skeleton and expel all the air from my lungs, but I still felt no pain.

            I'll shrug it off . . . in a minute, I thought.

            Boots crushed purple grass with the sound of stringbeans being snapped.  I didn't have a minute.  Sunflower stood over me, half his face burned, his orange halo of hair singed and blackened.  He grinned, a Jack-o'-Lantern smile of missing teeth.  None of this seemed to faze him.

            "Now, Outlander," he gasped, with sprays of blood and chunks of enamel, "I will follow my master's command -- to the letter."

            Fzzzz -- up came the glowing energy knife again.

            Ziiitch -- and down it came, sizzling into my rib cage.  Now that hurt.

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

 

THE WAR IN THE AIR

 

            "Starwolf!"

            Duna's voice held an anguished tone John had never heard before.  He patted the dragon-horse's scaly neck.

            [You're on your own, Red,] he thought/said.

            The Man-Wolf swung a furry leg over the scarlet reptile's spine and released the pommel.  He dropped, arms and legs spread, and for a surprising number of seconds the wind riffled over him.  He did not rejoice in the exhilaration of his fall, or in the ease with which he landed upright, leg muscles flexing to absorb the impact.

            [Hannibal!]

            The warrior woman knelt over the earthly detective.  The crushed grass, which smelled to John's nose like grape juice and mothballs, showed that Duna had dragged Hannibal into the shade of a tree.

            [What happened?] demanded Starwolf.

            A sniff and a glance around -- ozone and charred wood, the heavy, sour odor of a large humanoid, and King's own cold vampire smell.

            "My lord," whispered Duna.  Her scent rippled before the lycanthrope like heat-waves over a fire.  Not fear, exactly -- more like shock.

            The Man-Wolf dropped to one knee at Hannibal King's side and let out a strangled growl.  The detective's chest had been sawn raggedly open along the sternum and pried apart like a huge oyster.  John could see lungs and liver; he could smell the acrid viscera and blood, oddly washed out -- a vampire's blood was anemic, to say the least.

            Duna touched John's muscular arm with her one real hand.

            "Lord Starwolf -- his heart --"

            [Eh?]

            The Man-Wolf peered closer into the gaping wound that was Hannibal's breast.  He sniffed instinctively.  He perked his ears.  King's heart had beat before, Undead though he was.  Now there was no steady throb.

            [My God, it's gone . . .]

            He nearly jumped when Hannibal seized his huge wristband.

            "The doctors said . . . it'd hafta come out . . ." hissed the detective.

            The Man-Wolf regained his composure.

            [Hannibal -- you're still alive?]

            The detective waved and groped with the unpracticed movements of an infant.

            "I dunno," he gasped.  The pink-white membranes of his lungs shuddered with each word.  "Heart's important to a vamp, alive or not."

            [Wooden stakes . . .] said Starwolf.

            Hannibal King swallowed.

            "Not impaled -- not destroyed -- just gone.  I can still feel it.  Moving west.  To Tyrk."

            The Man-Wolf gritted his teeth.  They groaned like Arctic pack-ice.

            [Tyrk.]

            "One of his goons . . ." continued Hannibal.  "Can't believe I couldn't handle . . . just one goon."

            John grabbed the detective's hand in his own hairy fist.

            [We will return it to you, Hannibal.  So swears Starwolf!]

            He glanced over the other searchers gathered in the clearing.

            [Steel yourselves, Realmites.  The Godwar begins!]

#

            Kristine padded along the corridor in her soft green boots, trying to make sense of what the castle servants were babbling about.  She couldn’t be hearing right.  Maybe it was some primitive metaphor, like thinking a photograph steals your soul.

            Garth and Gorjoon stood sentry outside a door ahead.  The blond warrior’s face was angry and grim.  That worried her.

            The barbarian’s face was as serious as Garth’s.  That worried her more.

            Garth stepped forward, not quite blocking Kristine’s way but certainly suggesting a detour.

            “Your Majesty, it may not be advisable to visit General King at present,” he said.

            “What Blondie means, Highness, is – you don’t want to see this.”

            Kris frowned.

            “I’m sure I don’t.  But I must.  I dragged Hannibal King into your – our war without giving him a clue as to what might happen.  It’s my fault he lies there – that way.  Don’t you understand?  I must see him!”

            The warriors shrugged.

            “As you command, Majesty,” said Garth.

#

            Duna sat beside a four-poster bed out of a Dickens novel.  She lifted a rag from an earthenware bowl in her one good hand and squeezed out water.  She kept squeezing after the last drop fell, as if it were a fruit reluctant to give its juice.

            “Duna!” cried Kristine.  “They say – but it’s not possible!”

            The warrior woman snapped out the rag and applied it to the brow of the figure in the bed.

            “I fear it is, Your Majesty.”

            Kris peered around the bed curtains.  There lay Hannibal King, his face a pale splotch visible even in the candle-lit infirmary, his right hand an albino spider on the bolster.  He wore only a sallow undergarment, another Dickensian touch:  a stocking cap and he’d be Scrooge awaiting the Christmas ghosts.  Kristine could see the depression at his left breast, the nightshirt quivering over emptiness as he breathed.

            “He – he does breathe,” she half asked, half stated.

            “Yes,” Duna replied dully.  “Starwolf says it may just be out of habit.”

            Kris found another chair, one small and mobile by the Viking-esque standards of Realmite furnishings, and dropped in.

            “Dear God,” said the earthwoman.  She set a hand over her eyes.  “This is a nightmare.  How can such things be?”

            “Tyrk has spent centuries perfecting such nightmares, as some men paint portraits or compose songs,” said Duna.

            She mopped Hannibal’s brow.  She held up the ragged cloth and sighed.

            “I like the sun, the sky, the land.  Travel on horse- or dragon-back, sleeping beneath the moons, drinking and brawling.  Death I do not fear, if it comes clean and sharp and obvious in battle.”

            She cradled the rag in her hand and her hand in her lap.

            “I do not know if I can share a life like Hannibal’s.  I don’t even know if he should be feverish, or cold, or awake!”

            She hurled the rag into a distant corner.

            “M’awake, at least . . .” came a husky whisper.

            Kristine rose anxiously.

            “Hannibal?”

            “In the flesh, what’s left of it.”

            The earthwoman edged up by Duna, who kept her chair, attention on the patient.

            “Hannibal, what happened?  How could it happen?”

            Dark eyes opened in the pale face.  A slit of a mouth opened between invisible lips.

            “Jim . . . Henson . . .”

            “What?” asked Kris.  “Is he delirious?”

            King grunted, shifted a leg, and sank down as if that movement exhausted him.

            “Jim Henson did a series . . . fairy tales.  One was about an ogre . . . no one could kill him, ‘cause he’d taken his heart out and hid it in a dark forest . . . Who’d-a thunk it could work?”

            He chuckled and coughed apocalyptically.  Duna steadied him until his wracking seizures passed.

            “A vampire without a heart to stake,” he continued.  “What would ol’ Blade think of that?”

            Kristine caught up the detective’s hand.

            “Oh, Hannibal, this is all my fault.  I shouldn’t have forced you into this.”

            King gripped her fingers hard once, then he relaxed.  He gave a hair-thin smile.

            “No need to apologize, Mrs. J.  I got cocky.  As for coming to the Realm . . . Hell, you were right.  Tyrk’s a menace to the whole Earth.”

            Kristine shook her head.

            “I only cared about myself.  Not you, not the Realm, not the Earth.  Maybe – maybe not even John.  Only my idea of my life with John.”

            Hannibal’s eyes slid shut.

            “Werewolves and dragons and skull-heads, oh my.”

            He started humming something.

            “Oh, what a long, strange trip it’s been . . .”

            Then he faded, to quiescence, if not sleep.  Kris lay his hand and forearm at his side.  She straightened, her eyes on the wall, or on the skies beyond.

            “Duna,” she said.  “Call Mala to tend Mr. King.  I will be requiring your services.”

            The warrior rose.

            “Majesty?  What is your wish?”

            Kris marched angrily toward the door.

            “The most irritating Professor Turk has taken something that does not belong to him.  We’re going to get it back.”

#

            The dragon-horses fluttered their batlike wings.  A hundred or more stamped and snorted in the courtyard and on the plain beyond the castle walls.  In the skies over the floating mountain, more winged steeds wheeled and soared:  dragon-horses, and huge birds that resembled the prehistoric Archaeopterix, and things like gryphons and mantichores, and a few creatures without riders, who were actual "people", intelligent beings who looked like beasts, in the manner of the panther-men.

            [Or myself,] thought Colonel Jameson.

            "John," called Kristine.

            He had recognized her footsteps on the basalt flaggings before she spoke, a noise as distinct as her scent or voice.  He turned to see the silken form of the ancient armor.  Kristine carried the wolf-helmet in the crook of her arm.  Her long blond hair hung in braids, the easier to fit within the helmet.

            [How is he?]

            The Earthwoman came breast to breast with her husband, looking up twelve inches into his eyes.

            "He's resting for now," she answered.  "He is semi-conscious and confused, but I think he'll be all right."

            [Lambert may not know anything about vampires,] said John, [but this sort of separation is written of in their legends.  If Hannibal's heart can be restored, he can be healed.]

            “If.”

            Starwolf closed his white-furred fingers over Kris’ gauntleted hand.

            [Well, if I had any doubts about taking the Realm to war, they are now gone,] he sighed.

            He stared into his wife's eyes.  She returned his gaze powerfully.  He thought of the eye-challenges of real wolves and smiled.

            [Kris . . . I suppose nothing I say will deter you from accompanying us?]

            "You suppose right."

            She patted the blaster on her hip.

            "I'm no warrior born, but I don't have to be with this beauty.  It's fully charged now.  Gorjoon said that's about two hundred shots."

            She ran her hands over her battlesuit, gray and shiny and hatch-marked, like fiberglass or fish scales.

            "And this -- I think it would stop anything short of a cannon shell."

            She was so sleek in the magic armor, silvery, like a she-wolf.

John shook his head, wet dog fashion.

            [You know, Kris, if anything happened to you, I --]

            She patted his heavy armband, smiling.

            "You'd probably be as devastated as I'd be, if anything happened to you.”

            He nodded.

            "John, I was in the most danger when I was being hauled around like a rag doll by Tyrk and his creatures."

            She stepped back, snatched up the ray-gun, and held it near her temple, muzzle skyward.

            "I'll be in the heart of our army, this time.  I'll be clad in more than Arabian Nights silks.  And if Arisen Tyrk ever gets close to me again, he'll discover that I've had an attitude adjustment."

            Starwolf grinned.  Kristine was a she-wolf.

            [Mrs. Jameson -- are you sure you never worked for SHIELD?]

#

            The Jamesons stepped out onto a balcony-level high upon the side of the mountain/castle.  The squat Gorjoon and the tall Garth awaited them, each holding the reins of two flying steeds.  Garth handed the reins of a red dragon to Starwolf, and his hirsute companion passed the lead of a green beast to Kristine.

            The Jamesons mounted, nodded toward each other, then the dragon-horses sprang over the balustrade.

            An ocean roar of voices washed up from the courtyard and the grounds beyond.  John felt a quiver within his breast, as if he were about to cry, yet also warmth, as he felt when looking upon Kris in the bedroom's darkness.  And beneath it all a solidity, as though he were a statue of iron enclosed in fur.

            [People of the Realm,] he shouted, and he knew his telepathic voice cut through the cheering, [we rise that Tyrk might fall.  We rise spiritually as well as physically, to throw off a thousand-year tyranny.  To the skies, Realmites!  Per Ardua Ad Astra!]

            Multicolored wings beat the air, and mushrooms of gray-brown dust sprouted between the riders below as their dragon-steeds left the ground.  John glanced left and right as Kris and the Inner Guard rose around him.  He yanked out his huge golden sword, held it high.  It caught the brilliant light of the white sun and flared like an arc lamp.

            [To the stronghold of Tyrk!]

#

            The wind whipped over John's snout and head and ears, a slipstream that carried to him the spices of the forests and fields, as well as the scents of the humans, near-humans, and flying mounts.

            He felt ropy muscles slide and release beneath scaly skin as his red beast carried him through the cloud of riders.  Soon the Man-Wolf took the point of the aerial army.  Kris soared on his right; Duna, Gorjoon and Garth arrayed themselves around him.

            [You know the plan,] he called psychically to the Inner Guard.  [Each of you take a squadron.  We will meet at Tyrk's castle!]

            The warriors nodded and banked away.  Two dozen fliers curved off with each, in delta formations.

            My own air force, thought John, leaning forward to pat his steed.  They're not F111s, but they'll get the job done.

            They followed the shoreline of the Great Ocean.  Starwolf recalled the first time he had found his human mind awake in this form, ridden a beast such as this and flown on such a foray.  Then, however, his mind spun in continual confusion, and Lambert or Garth dictated his every action.

            Now he led.  He knew where they were going and what they would do when they got there.

            A glance to starboard.  Kris, sleek in her battlesuit, smiled over the ten meters that separated them.  Another difference:  she was with him.

#

            Nearly forgot the old hurry up and wait, thought John as the kilometers passed by.  Want it to be over.

            He perked his ears.  Despite the headwind, he caught sounds from behind.  Voices.  The Realmites were singing of battle, emancipation, the life of the free, known so little to them -- and of Starwolf.

            John could not keep from smiling.  His vision blurred.

            Wolves don't cry -- but I am more than wolf, he thought.  This -- this is what it feels like to be a father, I think.  I want the best for them.  All of them.  I will do my best for them.

            He scanned the skies ahead.  Fleecy, blue-white clouds over the sea.  Mountains floating like icebergs.  Over one, still leagues distant, a vague shimmer.

            [Our objective is in view, Realmites,] he called.  [Watch -- listen --]

            Over the sea, like a flock of gulls, Garth's squadron drew near.  Far inland, the glitter of sunlight on dragon hide marked Duna's approach.

            A swirl of dark blots appeared over Tyrk's asteroid, like a whirlwind full of leaves.

            [They rise,] thought/said John.  [Forward, People of the Realm!]

            He sucked in the rushing air as he urged his scarlet beast on.  More perfumes of the growth below, but now tinged with decay, and the flat, cloying stink of plastics, and the harshness of electric circuitry.

            [Watch yourself, Kris.]

#

            John snatched a golden shaft from his quiver, drew hard on the string of his bow, and released.  Before the arrow reached its mark, he slipped a second arrow into place, bunched the muscles of his right arm, and let fly.  Then he sighted down his snout for a third.  The white-eyes fell to the shafts more easily than the skull-heads.  Perhaps they were more "alive" and thus able to be killed, or maybe skeletons were just harder to hit.

            ZAAAK -- The laser-like weapons wielded by Tyrk's warriors were a decided nuisance.  A skull-head approached riding a mummified horse with cicada wings.  A tug on the red dragon's reins and Starwolf slid ten meters starboard.

            He folded the bow and attached it magnetically to the saddle.  He snatched out his sword as he soared beneath the horse-thing.  He slashed from chest to crotch, dividing the Undying One's leather girth.  The undead horse and rider spun separately down to earth.

            [One -- out of how many?]

            He scanned the sky for Kristine.  She had her blaster out, firing already.

            John gritted his teeth.  He glanced toward Kris every other second, but he could not lead or fight so distracted.

            Kris can take care of herself.  I --

            ZAAAK!

            That took the whiskers off his nose.  His new attacker aimed again; John's golden blade whipped up.  The sword shuddered in his hand as he parried the beam.  He left the ozone-smell behind in an instant.

            The white-furred man-beast urged his steed higher, higher, like a hawk over a field of rabbits.  Most of the enemy engaged Realmites, but a few ascended in Starwolf's wake.

            A beam shot by between the red dragon's wing and neck.  They would blast the beast out from under him if he did not take the offensive, fast.

            [Dive, Red,] he ordered.

            The dragon wrinkled its wings, and the rarified air whooshed over John's narrow wolf-face.  The reptile understood his mental commands.  That would same time.

            He saw arms lift weapons, one at twelve o'clock, one at two, one at eleven.

            [Twist, Red!]

            He gave no more instruction than that, but he did envision a curlicue of a path he wished the beast would follow.  He held tight to the ornate saddle as the dragon side-slipped and barrel-rolled and rocketed between beams of green and orange fire.

            [Just like I thought . . . Just like in the Pern books.]

            McCaffrey was Kris' favorite writer.  She would like it here.  He sneaked a peek at her distant form and gasped as an energy-beam hit her.  She twisted, smoke spilling from her back and helmet, and fired at her attacker.  That ancient armor was a wonder!

            [Gorjoon!  Beware your flank!] he called even as he urged his dragon skyward again.

            The reptile drew in air with a deep oboe note and obeyed.  A jerk, as if they had hit an air-pocket; the dragon had bobbed just enough to avoid another blast.

            I thought my ability to sense the coming shots was so hot -- the dragons do it naturally.

            He slipped his blade into its scabbard and detached his bow from the saddle.  Thwang -- another shaft notched -- Thwang.

            Hawkeye's got nothing on Mrs. Jameson's little boy!

            They fought their way nearer the shielded stronghold.  Garth's people circled and dove over the shore.  Duna's squadron fired arrows and magic bolts barely a kilometer from the unseen castle.

            Is this the best Tyrk can do?

            A monkey-faced gargoyle dove out of the sun's glare.  It braked violently, swung its legs forward, and rammed with its feet.

            -- Or would have, if John didn't bend back like Reed Richards under a steamroller.  The winged ape shot over as he and Red whooshed under; a split-second's pass, but time enough for John's claws to rip the creature's thigh.

            Maybe Tyrk is all bluff, Colonel Jameson's train of thought continued.

            THROOOOM

            [What?  Sounds like a Saturn 5!]

            He glanced toward the western horizon.  A yellow jet of flame spurted from the side of a forest-topped asteroid.  The flying mountain shifted slowly on its axis.

            [Like maneuvering thrusters --]

            KROOOOM

            Another, louder rocket noise.  No flames were visible, but piles of white smoke billowed up from the far side of the asteroid.  Like a missile, seen nose-on.

            Now jets of fire blasted out of other flying mountains.  Of course!  Bereft of gravity, it was a simple matter to use them as vessels.  They were slowly converging on the embattled Realmites.

            [Uh-oh.]

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

 

THE GUNSHIP

 

            [Garth!  Duna!  Don't engage every flier!  Get to the citadel!]

            Starwolf scanned the horizon.  At least five flying mountains scudded toward the Realmites, huge masses of exhaust building up like thunderheads behind them.

            He touched the dragon's flanks with his heels and reined it to starboard.  He heard a screech like a Grumman Tomcat hitting the sound barrier.

            [What the --?]

            A yellow beam, several meters wide, split the azure sky.  John heard the multiple popping of water droplets blasted to steam, and the explosion of birds and insects unfortunate enough to be aloft, and the sizzle of ionization.

            The beam ceased, and Starwolf blinked at the purple afterimage.  One of the flying mountains was the source.

            [Airborne battleships -- like the SHIELD Helicarrier.  Not good.]

            He scanned the three-dimensional array of fighting around him.

            [Gorjoon!  Balnac!  If those flying mountains are serving as vessels, they must have crews!  We must take them out!]

            He banked left, lower.  Another beam screeched across the sky.  John spared a thought for Kris -- she sailed along well out of the beam's path -- and then he studied the asteroid.  The energy burst came from the underside.  It could fire straight ahead, and earthward, should the Realmites take refuge in the jungle, but the flat top of the mountain overlapped it.

            [Up!] he called.  [Strike from above!]

            He envisioned what he wished his dragon mount to do, and the reptile obligingly flapped its wings faster, harder.

            ZEEOORRRRNNNN -- Green light sizzled from north to south.  It shot out of a second mountain.

            [Up!] he ordered again.  [Up and beware!]

            His dragon side-slipped abruptly.

            ZEEEORRRNN --

            Water vapor popped.  Heat seared by.  He felt it through his armor and fur.

#

            The tense, crooked, ray-dodging flight seemed to take days.  John flexed every muscle whenever the dragon tilted a wing or flapped.  It snorted angrily as the Man-Wolf's powerful legs squeezed.

            He scanned the sky, nostrils flared and ears perked.  Eyes were more important up here than nose.  Not to mention that Spider-Mannish prescience:

            [DOWN!]

            The dragon snapped its wings shut and dropped like a blockbuster.

            DAKKOOM!

            They curved skyward again.  Smoke and rocks flew off an unmoving asteroid ahead.

            [Kris?] he asked of the sky.

            [. . . i'm okay,] came a whisper in his mind.

            He imagined spreading his mind-speech, a fan instead of a jet.

            [Try to reach the mountain-vessels!  They can't fire without hitting each other once you're aboard!]

            The dragon carried him level with the first asteroid's wooded surface.

            [Land by the forest, Red,] ordered Starwolf.  [I have a little infiltrating to do.]

            He attached his bow to the saddle.  He suspected any fighting would be up close and personal.  He flipped himself off the dragon as he had early that morning and landed, crouched like a hunting beast.

            He sniffed.  The motion of the asteroid brought a headwind over the edge of the plateau.  He smelled a riot of damp green jungle plants and musky unknown animals.  Birds twittered and wheeled above; animals hissed through vines and leaves.

            He loped along the edge of the forest, feeling the vibration of its huge thrusters through his feet.  Advanced as Tyrk's technology was, it seemed to be hands-on.  If he found the energy cannon, there would be a crew.

            He padded over leaf-strewn earth, scrambled across blocky boulders.  Was there an accessible entrance?

            The Man-Wolf listened, sniffed, watched.  Tiny scents passed over him like strands of silk:  copper and iron, plant leaves like tobacco, a greasiness that was alive, a stringent alcohol sting.  Throbs and flutters and thumps and rustles filled his ears.

            He paused on a hillside, spreading his arms wide.  He tried to envision the sounds pulsing along phone wires, the smells whistling through pipes.  They curved, masses of them, toward a common point.  When you drew the lines of force around a magnetic pole, they converged like this.

            Right there!

            A silvery slit in the hillside, long grass combed over it like hair hiding a bald spot.  Without his lupine senses, he would not have spotted it.  He fell forward and wedged his claws into the slit.  He smelled metal, an alloy unknown to him.  He wrinkled his lips as he pried open a gap wide enough for his fingers.  He thrust both hands in, bunched the muscles of his shoulders and arms, pulled --

            Rrrruunnnk --

            Air billowed over him, riffling fur, filling his nostrils with the bone-scent of the Undying Ones and the Tyrk-scent of the White-Eyes.  Ambient light from the white sun revealed a stairway leading into the earth.

            ZEEEOORRRRN --

            No time for stalking.  He dashed down the stairs, bent forward, racing gravity's pull.

            [john . . .]

            [Kris!  What?]

            [just checking . . .]

            He reached a hallway that branched and re-branched at curious angles.  He noted the smell contrails of the crew as he loped along.  He remembered time-lapse photos of highways in National Geographic, streaks of light from on-ramps joining a great red and yellow stream in the center.  That was how the scent trails might look in visual terms.

            He padded toward the bow of the asteroid vessel and down stairs whenever possible.  He reached a divergence and followed the thickest line of scents.  Ahead he saw open doorways, from which echoed gruff words.  No choice; he loped on.

            *What?  The wolfling!* buzzed a skull-head.

            John's brain rang with other telepathic voices.  Boots clanged on metal.  The fur on the back of his neck bristled as he awaited the inevitable --

            ZAAAK

            A blow between the shoulder blades made him misstep but didn't knock him down.  His armor was more for show than function, but it did ablate the fire-beams.

            Another ZAAAK resulted in searing pain on his left thigh.

            Let's not have a repeat of Tyrk's castle.

            A rippling cloud of scents filled the corridor ahead; for an instant he envisioned a huge caterpillar stretched along the hall.  The invisible caterpillar twisted right at an intersection of passageways.

            The bridge would get a lot of traffic.

            He hooked a vertical conduit at the corner and hurled himself down the starboard wing.  His tongue lapped out at the cool air.  Drops of spit sprayed against the wall.

            Hero, savior, god, they call me, he thought.  For a conquering hero, I sure run a lot.

            He reached a semicircular area from which corridors radiated like spokes.  A huge door, rounded at the corners like those of a submarine, was set into the straight wall of the "D"-shaped chamber.

            He counted a dozen White-Eyes, some grouped like cocktail party guests, some striding importantly toward one hall-entrance or other.  A "Curly" stepped through the watertight door.

            Blank orbs turned upon Starwolf as he skidded to a stop. 

            Well, I sort of stand out in a crowd.

            "The Realmites are here!" yelled a black-haired White-Eye who certainly deserved Hannibal's title of "Moe".  "Secure the control room!"

            The White-Eye at the door withdrew and slammed it shut.  A wheel-lock revolved with a slick rumble.

            [Just what I wanted to know,] said Starwolf with a grin.

            These soldiers carried no blasters, but they did bear swords in scabbards.  A multiple schlink and they charged.

            Conscious thought left John as he gripped his sword in both hands.  His blade flashed out, parried blows, slashed through armor and flesh.  He released the grip and swung his right fist around one hundred and eighty degrees, smacking aside an assassin with a force-knife.  He caught the sword with his left hand and blocked a strike with his right wristband.  A nick on one of the emerald decorations.  Too bad.

            This wasn't like the movies, where everyone lined up to fight the hero.  The White-Eyes were everywhere, unsportingly striking at his back.  He knocked more blades aside, took a step, slapped the warriors before him into those beside him, took another step, sank down, and sprang with all the power of his steel-muscled legs.

            Up!  Over the lot of them!

            -- Almost.  A "Larry" had the misfortune to be standing where he wished to land.  His booted feet smashed the hair-fringed head to the floor.

            Starwolf hopped off "Larry", staggered drunkenly, and jumped for the watertight door.  He snapped his golden sword back into its scabbard.  Time had slowed to a crawl, but the wheel spun in his hands, a blur even to him.

            *He is alone!  Kill him!*

            ZAAAK

            Fire-pain branded his upper arm.  The skull-heads had caught up.  John pushed the door, meeting a momentary opposite force.  A tiny slit appeared between door and jamb.  He rammed his fingers in.

            [Jaws of Life time.]

            ZAAAK

            He gritted his teeth against the fire-burst, then he shoved the door inward.

            Thuds and grunts; Starwolf entered and slammed the heavy door shut behind him.  Several White-Eyes lay sprawled on the floor.  A flash of the 1930s King Kong came to John:  when all the natives of Skull Island couldn't keep the gate closed against the colossal ape.

            "Stop the False One, fools!"

            John sheathed his sword and spun the wheel lock, already noting lengths of pipe on the wall.  He yanked loose a two-meter section of steel; bluish sparks shot out of either end.  He thrust the pipe through the spokes of the wheel and into the floor with a sharp crack.

            [That'll hold 'em --]

            Something flared yellow in the corner of his eye.  An armored skeleton, carrying a mace with a glowing, sizzling head large as a basketball.  He couldn’t dodge --

            FRAAZZH

            He crashed into a bulkhead twenty feet away, agony throbbing along his spine like a dozen slipped disks.  His eyes blurred, cleared into dual images, and finally drew the two oncoming skeletons into one.

            *You still live after such a blow?* echoed the Undying One's reedy voice.

            John dragged himself upright.

            [If you call this living.]

            Bangs from the door.  It would not hold long, and the skull-head raised his sun-bright mace again.  Starwolf turned and found metal steps leading up.  He climbed.

            He glanced over the control room as he reached the next level.  A vast auditorium, ringed by three tier-levels.  It was D-shaped as well, the mirror-image of the anteroom.  The wall with the door was straight, the tiers bowed out and lined with windows.

            White-Eyes lined the second level, most manning controls of some sort.  They rose and charged straight at him, pulling out swords and daggers.  He was more mindful of the energy-mace behind.

            He passed screens and toggle-switches and levers.  One White-Eye, still seated, slapped an ashtray-sized button even as he watched.

            ZEEEOOORRRN

            The whole room shuddered.  That weapon had to be stopped!

            He yanked out his sword again and slashed down as if wielding a sledgehammer.  His blade slid through the neck-brace of a White-Eye's armor as easily as the clavicle and scapula beneath.  The White-Eye collapsed, and John yanked his blade free.

            A sword hit his scaled armor; he barely noticed the impact.  Another blade found his unprotected arm.  He felt a thunk, as he imagined a tree would feel an axe-blow, followed by a paper-cut sting.

            He reached out, seized the offender's shoulder in his great, furry hand, and tossed him headlong to the floor below.

            Starwolf noted in passing a line of blood on his arm; skin broken, but no muscles impaired.

            [No more than a single blow would be to a tree,] he thought as he decapitated another warrior.  [Enough, though, will stop me, as a lowly hatchet might fell an oak.]

            He caught a sword-arm in mid-swing and tossed another White-Eye off the tier.  The back of his neck tingled and he heard a crackling.  The mace was near.  He spun, hilt of his sword gripped in both fists.  The glowing sphere of the mace dropped like a meteor at him.

            KRANG!

            The mace possessed momentum beyond that imbued by the skull-head's strength.  The golden blade blocked the crackling sphere, but John's hands felt as if they'd been twisted off.  His arms shuddered with the strain and his legs buckled.  He smelled dry bone and mummified flesh, the scents cooked by the mace's charge.  His whiskers crackled.

            [Weapon's too powerful -- how about the wielder?]

            He balanced on his tightly-folded left leg.  He slid his right leg out to the side and brought his foot around and forward, striking the Undying One's ankles.  The skeletal warrior flipped in place.

            Even as John drew his leg back, he studied the mace's spinning flight.  He jumped sideways, sheathing his sword, and seized the energy-weapon's handle.  He dodged a ZAAAK from the floor below.  The wide window exploded out beside him.  He smelled raw earth and ant-scents and the perfumes of the jungle below.

            I've the wolf's strength, senses, and endurance, with all the mobility of a human, he thought even as he swung the mace around.  The Man-Wolf's body is almost too good.

            The crackling sphere hit a White-Eye in the elbow.  The warrior nearly folded around the weapon, and he was carried with it into another soldier.  The second struck a third, and all three flew off the tier.  John thought of Popeye cartoons, the sailor slapping whole rows of bad guys aside.

            -- And Tyrk's minions were as relentless as any cartoon villains.  Starwolf caught sound behind him in a half-turned ear as another row of White-Eyes stepped up.  He swung the mace in a great circle, mowing down the warriors before him, removing a skeleton's skull behind.

            One White-Eye remained seated, unperturbed, at the banks of machinery.  He pressed the death-ray's button.

            ZEEEOOORRRNCH

            [That has to stop!]

            He swung the mace high and brought it down upon instrument panels immediately to his left.  Shards of plastic and metal flew out.  Conduits spewed pink vapor and purple sparks.  He wondered how this technology worked.

            An arm whipped around his neck.  A shoulder rammed his side.  He toppled.

            Ungh -- strong I may be, but there's such a thing as leverage!

            He hit the catwalk, and blank-eyed faces crowded over him.  He punched, and one vanished, at least.

            Hand seized his wrists.  He braced one heel on the metal walk and kicked up with the other foot.  He hit a White-Eye in the crotch and sent him into another.

            [Tired of this.]

            He drew both knees up, jerked his shoulders forward, kicked his feet down.  Despite the groping hands, he stood again.

            Rip and a sting as a sword slashed his shoulder.  He growled.  Ordinary blades hurt more than the damned ray-guns.  He had to get rid of this moiling crowd.

            He raised his foot high, set his boot in the center of the foremost goon's chest, and shoved mightily.  The soldier, and a bowling-pin mass crowding behind him, stumbled back.  John hopped into the clear space.

            [Soldiers of Tyrk!] he cried.  [There is something I must say!]

            The army of Undying Ones and White-Eyes actually paused for a second.  John raised the crackling mace.

            [Starwolf smash!]

            He brought the basketball-sized sphere down.  The walkway shivered apart beneath him.  His hand shot out almost by itself and caught the edge of the instrument panel.

            A thunderous shockwave rattled along the walkway in either direction.  Welds and rivets sheared away.  Warriors and skeletons wheeled their arms and dropped like lines of dominoes.

            Starwolf yanked himself up with one arm and balanced atop the banks of instruments.

            [Crude.  Oh, well.]

            He gripped the mace in both furry hands and smashed more panels.

            Gusts coiled in from the shattered window, carrying the sharp scents of mushrooms and moss and bird-droppings.  Something huge sailed pass, sending ripples of air over him, and he caught dragon-scent.

            He busted another panel of controls.  A few more and he could rejoin the real fight.  He glanced over his shoulder.  Another asteroid loomed, only a kilometer away.  This mountain-vessel would ram it head-on on its present course.

            Good.  I'll make sure they can't steer.

            He slammed the mace down again.

            "Ho, Wolf!"

            He felt an unfamiliar crinkling sensation in his -- his tail?

            "Come forth and face Atoosh the Mighty!"

            A yank, like pulling a muscle.

            [What?]

            A dropping-on-your-coccyx pain, and his feet left the control panels.  He crashed to his chest and found himself upside-down.

            He released the mace and clawed at the banks of machinery.  No use; a powerful arm hauled him over the wicked window shards into the open air.

            "There are disadvantages to having a tail, beast!" observed the coarse voice.

            Up became down; he spied the green and purple forests like a ceiling "above".  Below were the sky, the flying mountains -- and a wide face, half-blackened by fire.  He kicked out with scarcely a thought.  The burnt face jerked aside.

            "You wish me to release you, dog?  Certainly!"

            The ache in his tail ceased, but now the giddiness of free-fall enveloped him.

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

 

THE DISHEARTENED MAN

 

            I knew what happened around me in the Wolf Castle:  I lay on a cot attended by a young serving wench.  Duna had been here, and Kristine; then they had flown off with an aerial army.

            Thing was:  I also knew what was happening around the ol' ticker, though not quite as coherently.

            First I/it knew darkness.  Then there were voices.  I saw the high throne room of Tyrk's citadel (and don't ask me how a disembodied cardiovascular organ heard or saw anything; I'm still trying to figure out where my clothes go when I become a bat).  And here, too, was Tyrk.

            "You astonish me, Atoosh," the tyrant said, as if under water.  "You have exceeded even my expectations.  Now, do go put on a new face."

            I shuddered as unkind fingers seized unprotected nerve and muscle.

            "The heart of a vampire, still pulsing with life -- so to speak," said the white-eyed tyrant.  "It may prove a useful, eh, substitute."

            Substitute?  For what? I thought in a feverish haze.

            I didn't get to find out.  A telepathic skull-head buzzed.

            *Lord Tyrk!  The forces of the wolfling rise!*

            Plop.  Tyrk dropped my heart into some sort of receptacle.

            "Ah!  Jameson undoubtedly intends to avenge his detective friend," mused the armored emperor.  "Short-sighted fool!  His emotional reaction will bring about his downfall -- earlier than scheduled.  Obar!  Kerrit!  Toth!  It is time to spring the trap!"

            Tyrk gave his underlings curt orders.  The dragon-riders were sailing into an ambush.

            Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I rolled from side to side in my bunk, fighting the tentacles of nightmare.

            "Trap . . . Gotta tell 'em!"

            I had to get up.  I didn't know which way was up.  I thrashed helplessly.

            "lord hannibal --"

            What was that?  I went limp and opened my eyes.

            I stared up at timbers and gray rock.  Candles flickered all around.  Someone gasped.  I turned my head -- that alone took effort -- and saw a girl in a coarse brown dress.  She held a damp rag, and I was conscious of wetness on my forehead.

            "Who -- where?"

            The girl dipped her head.

            "Mala, Lord Hannibal.  I was told to tend you in your -- er -- illness."

            Her eyes stole over my chest.  No doubt she had seen the gaping hole.

            "Oh.  Yes.  I remember, sort of."

            I sat up slowly.

            "My Lord!" gasped Mala.  "You must rest!  Starwolf will find your cure."

            I swung my legs over the side of the bunk.

            "Wolfie and his army are flying into a trap," I explained huskily.  "I have to get word to them."

            I rose unsteadily.  Realizing that I meant it, Mala became a help instead of a hindrance.  I leaned against her and we both stumbled to the door.

            "Gotta get to 'em," I muttered.

            I glanced down the hall.  Bright light angled in from narrow windows.

            "Damn!  It's daytime!"

            I shaded my eyes.  Even the indirect light of the Other Realm's powerful sun hurt.

            "Mala -- someone's got to hop on a dragon and fly after Starwolf."

            "My Lord," said the girl with a tinge of fear, "all air-worthy beasts have flown!"

            "Crap," I muttered.  I leaned against a thick wall and stared up at a red wolf-emblem.  "Okay, is Lambert here?  Maybe he can send 'em a magic telegram."

            The girl stood on tip-toe in her anxiousness.

            "The wizard descended to the lowest chambers of the castle, my Lord."

            "Good.  Maybe you can run down to him?  Tell him --"

            KATHOOM!  The walls shook.  Dust sifted down from the ceiling.  Mala squealed.

            "Now what?" I gasped.

            ZAAAK.  I knew that electric crackle well.  I groaned.

            ZAAAK again, and outcries.  The serving girl jumped against me and held me in a bear-hug.

            "Mala -- listen!" I commanded.>

            "Yes, Lord Hannibal?"  She quit yelling, at least.

            I stroked her long, brown, slightly tangled hair.

            "Can you tell me how many people remain in the castle?"

            "Only a few guards, my Lord.  And the servants, and the ambassadors."

            "Oh, boy."

            I led her down to my dungeonlike room.  It was as secure a chamber as the castle possessed.  "Gray Mouser"-type clothes lay folded on a bench.  I slipped them on.

            "You better stay here," I suggested as I pulled the hood over my head.

            Her eyes stopped darting from corner to corner and focused on me.

            "What do you intend, Lord Hannibal?"

            I yanked on leather gloves.

            "I'm going to get rid of those White-Eyes.  Once ya let 'em in, they're worse than cockroaches."

            The serving wench made a noise suspiciously like a Bronx cheer.

            "My Lord, you cannot go out in the sunlight!"

            My hood had a little drawstring.  I pulled it tight.  I looked like a giant prune.

            "Look, Mala, as long as I wear this outfit --"

            "And your heart --"

            I shrugged.  "Yeah, but what can ya do?"

            I pulled open the heavy door.  The effort made everything spin.  Small hands steadied me.

            "Lord Hannibal, you can scarcely walk!"

            ZAAAK.  Glass shattered.  More yells.

            "Mala, I have to do something!"

            She bit her lip.

            "All right, my Lord.  But I come with you."

            What can I say?  I can't keep the girls away with a stick.

#

            I peeked around a corner.  A shaded walkway opened out on one of those balcony-levels.  Several skull-heads atop strange flying creatures lined the balcony.  ZAAAK -- ZAAAK as rays shot across the walkway.  The undead beings traipsed in sweet as you please.

            *The castle is ours!* buzzed a voice in my head.  *From the pretender's own stronghold we shall rule the Realm!*

            ZAAAK and a bas-relief of Wolfie exploded.

            "Lord Hannibal, what can we do?" whispered Mala.

            "I'm working on it," I hissed.

            Up the stairs from the entry hall charged a guard, a Bluto clone with a crossbow.  He ducked behind a thick white column as the skull-heads turned toward him.

            They zapped the column, sending white dust and sharp chunks everywhere.  They laughed as they fired, a psychic vibration as disagreeable as sticking your finger in a light socket.

            "Not very sporting of them," I muttered.  "If only we had a ray-gun . . ."

            I glanced back the way we'd come.  Plenty of shelves, benches, and ornamental doo-dads.  Not a sword in sight, though even Starwolf's blade would not have been much use.

            Starwolf?  There were red-on-yellow wolf emblems, and busts of his head, and a small statue on a pedestal.

            I trotted over, wheezing.  I felt eternally out of breath.  I snatched up the statuette and hefted it experimentally.  It was a foot and a half tall, of solid bronze.

            I staggered back to the corner.  "Mala," I whispered, "Run."

            Before she could protest, I hopped out into view.

            "Hey!  Boneyard Breath!  Your mother's a set of loaded dice!"

            ZAAAK -- Barely ducked back in time.

            *Rattak!  Destroy the infidel!*

            I didn't follow Mala, but waited with the statue upraised.

            Thunk-thunk-thunk, like a cane tapping the floor.  The bare bones within the Undying One's boots, I imagined.

            A skull-topped soldier jogged around the corner, right into me.  I'd say he was surprised, though it was hard to tell with those empty eye-sockets.  I brained him -- so to speak -- and he busted like Humpty-Dumpty.

            A clatter of bones on the floor.  I located the ray-gun among the calcareous fragments.  I snatched it up as a sleet-storm-noise of bony feet approached.  A last glance at the statuette before I cast it aside.  Wolfie's muzzle was smashed flat.  Maybe Kristine could fix it.

            I fired the instant I saw a mailed arm.  The skull-head's momentum carried him into the beam, and he, too, went to pieces.

            ZAAAK -- ZAAAK -- Chunks of my corner flew everywhere.  I trotted down the hall.  Mala waved at me from the far end, a T-intersection.  Looked like we might do a lot of running.  I felt a stitch in my side.

            I reached the girl and put another corner between us and the Undying Legion.

            "Where is everybody?" I gasped.

            We shot through hanging curtains and found another hallway.  Mala skidded to a halt by a turret-type projection.  She jumped in and looked out a window.

            "They fight in the courtyard, my Lord!"

            I crowded up and scanned the flagstones.  Dragons and even more unlikely creatures fluttered to a landing, and Stooges and skull-heads dismounted.  Only three or four carried ray-guns, but even the least of Tyrk's soldiers had an ax or mace made of contained energy.

            "Let us see if the Undying Legion is truly undying!" yelled a human voice.

            "Strike!  For the Realm!  For Starwolf!" cried another.

            A half-dozen crossbow bolts whipped across the courtyard.  A white-eye fell with a thick shaft sprouting from his chest.  A skull snapped off a neck with the crack of a stepped-on twig.

            Now the ragged home-guard charged, thirty or so warriors with more mundane blades.  Only a couple were winged by ray-guns before they engaged the enemy.

            "I'm glad we weren't totally defenseless," I said.

            Mala looked up and screamed.

            A skull-head sailed at us atop some shaggy beast, so close I stared down his double-barreled ray-gun as if into binoculars.

            I slapped the girl back out of the turret just as the skeleton warrior fired.  The floor shuddered beneath me, and I found myself precipitating down to the courtyard with a ton or two of mortar, rock, and lumber.

            The landing didn't hurt as much as I expected.  The roof of the cupola dropped over me like an umbrella, shielding me from most of the rubble.  My head cleared after a moment.  I peered through a crack, like a turtle checking for danger.

            Legs of men and dragons.  Shadows rippling over flagstones.  With a groan, a Realmite flopped down into view.  He had a wicked wound across the face.  No blood; he had been cauterized as he'd been sliced, by one of those fire-swords.

            I groaned.  How could I live with myself if I just lay here and did nothing?

            Dammit, it's daytime.  And I'm missing something important!

            I cupped my hand over the empty ache in my chest.  I heard a thunderous flapping.  Something swung down from the wild blue yonder, like a guy rope hanging from a balloon, only thick and muscular.  It was the long, snakelike tail of some flying creature.  It snapped at a hippy-haired Realmite, who dodged out of the way.

            It swung on at me, and I had no place to go.  The cupola split right in two, revealing yours truly like the greasy innards of a clam.  I cinched the hood of my cloak tighter, wishing for sunglasses and Coppertone.  My eyes burned and my vision blurred, even though I faced away from the sun.

            A shadow floated over me.  That was better.

            *Look up, worm!  I want you to see Azif's blade fall!*

            Or not.  I rolled away, trying to dodge the blow, but I moved as slowly as a kid sent to the principal's office.  I grimaced, anticipating the blow.

            ZAAAK

            Something exploded.  The jawless skull of my would-be executioner clattered on the flagstones.  The body collapsed next to it.  What?

            "Lord Hannibal!"

            I shaded my eyes and glanced up.  Mala waved from the gaping hole where the turret once hung.  She held the ray-gun I'd taken -- and dropped.

            "Catch!"

            She tossed the gun.  I struggled up, cupped my hands, and caught it.

            "You're a sweetheart!" I yelled.

            I turned to the melee.  The Realmites were well mixed with Tyrk's goons.  I decided to take out the tyrant's air support.

            ZAAAK -- ZAAAK -- Damn, the sun was so bright!  I couldn't even aim.

            A shriveled green thing with broad wasp-wings soared at me.  Empty eye-sockets glared, naked horse teeth grinned.  The thing was an equine version of the Undying Ones.  I zapped it, and it veered aside with its skull-head rider.

            I bit my lip as I scanned the clouds.  It bothered me that Tyrk had the leisure time to create undead horses.

            Something else banked in around the corner of the castle.  This skull-head rode a lion, shaggy mane and all, but with wide bird wings sprouting out of its shoulders and an incongruous reptilian tail, like a python's.  That scaly appendage was what had brought me out of my shell, or cupola, rather.

            I fired, and the flyin' lion roared in pain.  It glared and angled my way.  I didn't know if its rider ordered it, or if it was just pissed.  I swung the ray-gun to follow it -- and I turned right into the lowering sun.

            "Aaaaugh!" I yelled.

            I fired wildly and ducked.  I heard a whoop I guessed was the python-tail.  I braced for more pain, but someone grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and yanked me half out of my boots.

            "Beware, man!" cried a deep voice.  "Distraction means death!"

            My rescuer tossed me aside.  I banged my knees and elbows on the flagstones.  The hood of my cloak slid off.  I felt like a microwave burrito.

            "Damn!  Damn!" I hissed.

            I snatched the hood back up.  With both hands, which meant I dropped the ray-gun again.

            A shadow fell over me.  I heard a snort.

            "It's true, then.  You cannot stand the sunlight."

            "Jeez, did they have to tell everybody?"

            I blinked, able to focus at last.  The speaker handed me the ray-gun butt-first.  The Stooges weren't likely to give that back.

            I took it, and now I was offered a hand in a hairy black glove.  I grabbed that, too, and I realized -- there was no glove.

            Another yank and I stood face to muzzle with a huge, coal-black feline the people of Wakanda could only dream about.  Not the flyin' lion, but the panther-man I'd seen in days past.  Iggriz?  Zigra?

            "Uh -- thanks," I gasped.

            "Thanks do not skin the Yttragg," snarled the panther.  He was Bagheera, for now.  "Can you fight, or will you shrivel like a slug?"

            Things happened a helluva lot faster than it takes to write.  As Baggy asked his question, a white-eye who looked like a possessed Alice Cooper saw that the cat's back was turned.

            "Watch it!" I yelled.

            I put everything into shoving Bagheera aside.  I glimpsed bared teeth, then he was gone, and Alice charged up with an axe made of blue ice.

            Except it wasn't ice, but energy held in a force-field.  I caught the handle below the double-edged head as Alice swung.  I fell with it, on purpose for once, pulling him with me.  I landed on my back, but my knee in Alice's stomach sent him end over end a couple of times before he kissed the flaggings.

            I rolled to my feet with the force-axe, the stitch in my side reaching down my leg and up my neck by now.  I dropped hard on my knee and grabbed my ray-gun for good measure.

            Baggy rose like a puff of smoke, glaring at me.  I had enough of the bared teeth from Wolfie, so I stayed unimpressed.  He was unarmed, not counting teeth and claws, so I held out the force-axe.

            "I'm fightin'."

            The panther-man grabbed the axe roughly.

            "Then follow, if you can," said Baggy.

            He padded off liquidly toward the main entrance of the castle.  I chugged along in his wake.  I'd heard of the phantom pain amputees felt, but I was suffering the world's first phantom heart attack.  I refused to let it slow me, though.  Bagheera here had rubbed me the wrong way, and I had to prove I wasn't a wimp.

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

 

A GREAT FALL

 

            "Woof!"

            An ache spread out from John Jameson's solar plexus despite his green armor.  He was glad to encounter the jutting boulder, however; there was nothing else to break his fall for kilometers.

            He clawed wildly for a more stable position.  He smelled something like rotten potatoes and dandelions; absurdly, a weed growing in a dirt-filled niche loomed immensely in his sight.  He aimed for the weed, a goal, a purpose, until he scrambled to the top of the pinnacle and crouched there like a lynx.

            The dandelion-weed was much smaller than it looked.

            Laughter boomed from above.

            "You are the mighty Stargod?" asked the warrior of the charred visage, clambering apelike down the face of the asteroid.  "Clinging to a rock like a little zerrif-kit?"

            John gritted his teeth.  A noise like an idling truck vibrated in his throat.

            [I may be no god, ugly, but I'm more than enough to handle you!]

            He could have waited for the warrior to descend.  He didn't want to.  He climbed now, clawed fingers finding holds or splitting their own fissures in the black rock.

            The stationary asteroid ahead loomed ever larger.  Another reason to hurry this confrontation.

            The burly warrior grabbed a thick root in one hand and leaned well away from the cliffside.  His smile lacked several teeth.

            "I hope you prove more of a challenge than your friend King, beast," he yelled.  "Ah!  You should have seen the look on his face as I ripped the throbbing heart from his chest!"

            Starwolf growled as he crept closer.

            [You're goading me into doing something reckless,] he observed.  [Well, Crusty -- you succeeded.]

            He sprang, crazily, from his precarious hold.  He sailed three meters up, four over.  The beard-fringed grin shrank to an uncertain pucker.

            Starwolf clamped his arms around Atoosh's waist; the warrior was fat as a hippo.  He bit Atoosh's side, but he sensed only layers of metal and padding between his jaws.

            "Reckless?  Aye!"

            A massive arm, like two linked beer kegs, caught his head.  John clawed at the arm, his skull feeling like a pecan in a nutcracker.  A rank smell of sweat and corpses -- and a background whiff of Tyrk -- filled his nose.  The warrior released the root, and they both skidded several meters, finally hitting a crescent-moon of a ledge.

            "But Atoosh is no strategist, beast!  He comes -- he strikes!  That is all!"

            The pressure on Starwolf's skull vanished.  Then, however, Atoosh’s thick fingers kneaded up a handful of his ruff.  Skin pulled back painfully from the edges of his eyes and mouth.  And now that pain above his rear again, as the huge warrior seized his tail.

            "Simpler to hurl you to your death -- but I would rather do this!"

            Atoosh swung him around in a wide arc.  The sky blurred for a second, then John’s snout cracked against a limestone wall.  Atoosh swung back again and gave him another bum's rush straight into the face of the cliff.

            "Whuff!"

            The warrior released the nape of his neck.  John's chin hit the ledge, but his rear still humped high.  The root of his tail ached as Atoosh dragged him by that appendage. John clawed haplessly at the shelf of rock.

            Then Atoosh swung him around like a pillow at a slumber party.  He did not even have time to feel dizzy before his snout and groin and knees cracked painfully against spiky quartz deposits.

            [#$&*!! -- Enough!]

            He glimpsed the round laughing face.  He kicked.  His claws plowed scarlet furrows into Atoosh's unburnt cheek.

            [And I used to complain about Kris' toenails!]

            The warrior dropped him, but John caught the lip of the ledge easily.  He chinned himself up and found the warrior’s telephone-pole-thick leg only centimeters away.

            [Think I'll take a lesson from Aunt Belle's Chihuahua.]

            He sank his fangs into Atoosh's ankle, smelling dragon leather, soil, crushed insects and the stink of Tyrk's castle.  He released and dodged a Christmas ham of a fist.

            Darkness expanded across the face of the mountain like the earth seen from shuttle orbit.  The asteroid-ship was moments away from impacting its unmanned twin.  He scrambled up the rocks like a squirrel.  He had to climb back in the window!

            "So -- you bite and flee like a cold-blooded viper!" boomed the hoary warrior.

            Tyrk’s henchman grabbed Starwolf’s ankle beartrap-hard.  The lycanthrope sank his claws deep into a fissure.  Atoosh did not merely tug -- he seized John's foot in both hands and hung with his full weight.  The fur on the back of John's head prickled, as if the second flying mountain already brushed it.

            [Not far from it -- this idiot will get us both crushed!]

            The ledge crumbled away beneath his fingers.  Vertigo for a second, and once more he hung upside-down.  Atoosh held John with his left hand only.  He pulled a long dagger from a scabbard with his right.

            "I believe I'll skin you alive, dog, and send you naked and mewling back to your followers!"

            John heard the thrusters pushing the air-mountain now, the sound rippling up from behind and echoing off the face of the second asteroid.  That, and the threatened knife, shifted his mind into overdrive.  What to do?

            Suspended as he was, the thick "V" of Atoosh's legs wavered before him.

            [I don't want to do this.]

            Wind rushed over him, currents forced through the narrowing fissure.  Starwolf slapped his hairy paws on Atoosh's thighs.  He pulled his face up to the warrior's crotch and bit.

            Atoosh let out a high-pitched yell.  A fishy/vinegary/sweaty taste filled John's mouth and nose.  The warrior dropped him.  For the moment, only his teeth in Atoosh's groin kept him from plummeting three kilometers.

            [This is not how I want to be remembered.]

            He released and felt the giddiness of free-fall.  He glimpsed a shelf of pumicelike rock and braced himself.  His arms and legs absorbed the impact.

            [No time to climb!  Maybe if I crawl under --]

            KRUMP! as the twin piledrivers of dragon-hide boots slammed him into the ledge.  John's breath spewed out as if from a punctured balloon.  Then the ledge crumbled and dropped, werewolf, warrior, and all, onto yet a lower outcropping.  Atoosh's weight slammed down into his back again.

            "And they call my manner of fighting crude!" yelled Atoosh, a tension surrounding his words like rubber bands around newspapers.  "You like to bite, cur?  Very well!"

            Atoosh seized John's wolfish muzzle and pulled up.  He sensed a massive presence near his left ear and smelled fetid breath, like the garbage-bin behind a Red Lobster.  Then came crushing pressure on the nape of his furry neck.  The warrior bit him.

            [I don't believe this guy!]

            He punched, awkwardly, over his own shoulder.  His blows were ineffectual.  He spied an eggplant-sized chunk of pumice from the crumbled ledge above.  He grabbed it and brought it up against Atoosh's face with enough force to shatter the rock.

            "Arrgh!  Treacherous beast!"

            The warrior stumbled back.  Darkness surrounded them, save for a strip of blue above and green below.

            [Too late!  Only one way to avoid the Clashing Rocks!]

            He slipped over the edge of the shelf like a diving seal.  The unpolluted air of the Other Realm spilled up around him as he dropped out of the crack between the asteroids.

            "I'll have your hide as my standard and your tail as my banner!" echoed Atoosh's voice.  "I'll --"

            A tooth-rattling DAK-KOOOOM cut the warrior off in mid-threat.  Clouds of gray dust and black rock spewed from the now-closed fissure.

            [So much for Pretty Boy,] thought John Jameson.  He shifted one arm and one leg and flipped over.  Now he dove muzzle-first toward the ground.  [But I'm going to be a wolf-skin rug in a minute . . .]