The Shroud of A'Ranka (Brimstone Network Trilogy) Read online

  Douglas turned from the curtain of roots, wiping away the bugs that clung to his face. “Seems like the more I cut, the more there is to cut,” he began, before noticing that they were no longer alone.

  “Stay still, Douglas,” Bram warned, and the man froze, machete still in hand.

  Another of the jaguars padded on all fours out from somewhere behind him, its movements completely silent. It studied Bram with unblinking emerald eyes, its black nose twitching as it captured the boy’s scent.

  “A sacrifice must be given,” the animal growled, rising to stand upon its back legs. The others did as well, taking on an even stranger appearance.

  “We are looking for the temple of A’Ranka,” Bram said. “What would you require to guide us to this place?”

  The jaguar leader’s face contorted in what could have been a smile. “A sacrifice of flesh,” the leader growled, licking its whiskered face with a thick, pink tongue.

  “Oh, crap,” Dez said as the jaguar beside him walked closer with a rumbling growl.

  “No,” Bram stated firmly.

  The jaguar seemed taken back, tilting its head as it studied him.

  “You would deny us?” it asked. “You would deny the guardians of the jungle their offering?”

  “I would deny you our flesh,” Bram answered.

  The leader brought a pawlike hand up to its face and stroked at its furry chin, considering Bram’s words. “There is no choice,” the creature finally said with a shake of its head.

  The jaguars moved closer, and Bram tensed, ready for a fight.

  “We take what we want, and you will go on your way.”

  Bram waited for one of the spirit animals to make the first move. But he never expected what happened next.

  The wall of vines that they’d worked so hard to chop through suddenly parted like a curtain and two more of the jaguar spirits surged from the passage to attack Douglas from behind. They sank their fangs into his dead flesh; one biting into his collar, the other his wrist, and they yanked the screaming man viciously backward through the opening.

  “Dad!” Dez shrieked, pushing off the tree and falling onto his face.

  Bram lashed out with his machete, causing the two cat spirits around him to leap back and away.

  The leader attempted to block his path, but he willed himself immaterial and passed through the attacking beast with ease, only to watch as the vines closed, blocking the passage with an impenetrable wall of growth.

  “Bring him back,” Bram said with a growing fury. He felt the Specter in him surge, the warrior spirit inflamed for combat.

  “We have our sacrifice,” the jaguar leader said, backing away with the others. “You have safe passage.”

  “You heard me,” Bram said, starting toward the creatures.

  The jaguars moved like the wind, flowing back into the jungle.

  “We are done,” the jaguar leader’s voice drifted in the air, any sign that the spirit creatures had ever been there now gone.

  “Dad!” Dez screamed again. The boy fumbled to get his crutches beneath him but the ground was too soft, and he fell forward again.

  “I’ll get him,” Bram said, running toward the wall of vegetation, but Dez’s cry stopped him cold.

  He turned to see Dez floating up into the air, crackling bolts of blue energy leaking from his body.

  “They took my dad, Bram,” the boy said, his eyes completely white. “I’ve got to save him.”

  The air around them began to crackle, and Bram knew that it was only a matter of seconds before Dez unleashed the full potential of his psychokinetic powers. On instinct he ghosted his body as Dez tossed his head and arms back. An explosion of searing white light erupted from his body and the jungle was filled with a roar like a squadron of jets.

  Bram felt the intensity of Dez’s power, even through his immaterial form, as he found himself pushed through the air, buffeted by winds of psychic force.

  Taking a chance and opening his eyes, he could hardly believe what he saw. The jungle around them was gone. All that remained were the splintered remnants of the once dense rain forest.

  Bram drifted above the wreckage, catching sight of an ancient pyramidlike structure only a few miles away. He had no doubt that was their final destination, but first, he had to find Douglas St. Laurent.

  “Do you see him?” Dez asked from behind Bram, and he turned to see the boy slowly coming toward him, his body held aloft by thick legs of crackling blue energy. And as the legs touched the jungle wreckage, even the splintered remains were obliterated.

  All Bram could see was devastation. He was about to tell Dez that he didn’t think anything could have survived when he caught sight of movement amongst the wreckage.

  Dez’s whitened gaze followed Bram’s, and a smile formed on his sweaty features. “There he is.”

  Bram floated above the area, and gasped as a bubble of crackling blue energy rose up from the splintered remains of the jungle. Inside the bubble were Dez’s father, and four of the jungle spirits. Douglas appeared unconscious, the four jaguar spirits in a state of panic.

  “Guess I’m gonna have to teach them a lesson,” Dez said, a snarl appearing on his sweating face.

  “Dez,” Bram called out, drifting toward the boy. “Maybe you should just let them go,” he suggested. “I think you’ve scared them enough.”

  The boy stared at the bubble with blank, milky-white eyes.

  “Ya think?” he asked.

  “Let them go, Dez,” Bram ordered.

  “Sure, I will,” he said, and the air began to hum.

  Bram watched as Douglas was removed from the bubble of energy and gently lowered to the broken trees below. Inside the bubble, the jaguar spirits still nervously paced.

  And then suddenly the bubble was filled with fire.

  Bram covered his ears, the jaguars’ shrieks of agony almost deafening, but as quickly as they started, they stopped, leaving the energy bubble filled with piles of ash.

  “There,” Dez said with finality, and the bubble evaporated with a crackle, filling the air with the drifting remains of the cat creatures.

  “Now they’re free.”

  Gideon did not wish to be seen naked in front of his goddess.

  The reborn sorcerer went to the skeletal corpses lying in the corner, reaching down to remove one of their blue robes.

  “What are you doing?” Vladek called impatiently.

  “One cannot appear indecent in front of one’s goddess,” the sorcerer explained, wrapping the dusty robes about his new, perfect body.

  “Did you know them?” the vampire asked, pointing to the desiccated remains.

  “They were of the same order as I,” Gideon said, attaching the robe at his shoulder. “But not half as smart. They, along with our beautiful goddess, tried to fight Borphagal and suffered a most horrible end.” He presented himself clothed in his new attire to the vampire. “I, on the other hand, knew that these attempts would be futile and escaped to plan my beloved deity’s return in another time.”

  “And that time is now,” the vampire stated as they walked across the dusty temple floor to the circular pit.

  Just before the open mouth Gideon stopped, feeling powerful magicks attempting to repel him. “Those marks keep her trapped within,” he explained, pointing out the strange symbols decorating the rocks that made up the circle’s border.

  Suddenly the vampire pounced upon the rocks, sinking his clawed hands between the stones and tearing them away, destroying the border around the circle with a savage snarl.

  “Crude, but effective,” Gideon said with a sniff.

  “Wake her up,” the vampire demanded, pointing down into the darkness of the pit. “We have waited far too long as it is. Raise her from the pit so that we can begin this world anew.”

  Gideon smiled, imagining the new world to come. It would be a most glorious place under his goddess, a world of darkness and shadow, of predator and prey.

  His tongue flicked a
round in his mouth finding his new, and quite sharp, teeth. And suddenly there was a pain in his stomach, a gnawing agony the likes of which he’d never experienced before.

  Gideon bent forward with a groan. “The pain.”

  Vladek smiled. “It is hunger that tortures you. You will need to feed on the blood of the living soon if you are to continue to survive.”

  Gideon looked around the chamber. “But there is nothing,” he said, feeling the agony in his empty belly intensify.

  “Then I suggest you move quickly,” the vampire said with a toothy snarl. “Or you will most assuredly starve to death.”

  Muttering in a language forgotten before recorded history, the last of the Yad’Zeen sorcerers began an incantation of awakening. He extended his hands above the yawning pit. Swirling tendrils of magick dropped from his fingertips and slithered like eels through the ocean of darkness toward the sleeping goddess far below.

  Gideon stepped back, tired from his work, but Vladek remained at the edge of the pit, staring down into the blackness.

  “What now?” the vampire asked impatiently.

  “We wait,” Gideon answered. “We wait until the magick gently rouses her from her slumber.”

  The vampire snarled. “There is no time.”

  He dropped to his knees at the edge of the pit and leaned out over the lake of shadow.

  “What are you doing?” Gideon asked, on the verge of panic.

  “I am helping the magick,” the vampire said, and began to yell down into the pit. “Goddess A’Ranka, I, Vladek, prince of the bloodspawn, call to you now. A representative of your chosen people beseeches you to awaken.”

  The vampire was headstrong, and to say that A’Ranka was temperamental was an understatement. If she awoke at the vampire’s urgings, there would be just as much of a chance that she would destroy them both as there would of her allowing them to live.

  Gideon hoped that she would awaken in a good mood.

  Vladek stood with a look of satisfaction on his face. “Now she will know how urgent this is,” he said. “The vampire species has been quelled too long. We have a world to conquer.”

  Gideon watched as the vampire began to pace before the opening.

  “What is taking so long?” he asked. “Surely she heard my request.”

  “Have patience,” Gideon said, regretting his words as they left his mouth.

  The vampire bared his fangs like a rabid wolf. “Patience, magick user?” he yelled. “My patience was gone after the first thousand years I spent inside that stone box.” He looked into the mouth of the pit again. “A’Ranka!” he screamed at the top of his lungs.

  Gideon was certain that the vampire was going to say more, but he never got the chance.

  Something surged up from the darkness below.

  Something large and powerful.

  It moved with lightning speed, sending the remaining rocks that encircled the opening of the pit flying off in multiple directions and driving Gideon and the vampire back. The temple was filled with thick clouds of billowing dust, and as Gideon picked himself up from the ground, he saw something moving—writhing—within it.

  “Is it she?” Vladek asked, charging into the cloud. “Has the goddess risen?”

  Gideon wanted to tell the vampire to be careful, but the pain in his belly was too great, and he knew that his words would likely fall upon deaf ears. Vladek was going to do what Vladek wanted to do.

  The vampire moved his hands through the thick, swirling dust, searching.

  But what he was searching for found him instead. A thick, muscular tail surged from the mist, wrapping around Vladek’s waist and yanking him up from the ground.

  Using a spell of dispersal, Gideon cleared away the floating dust, gasping at the sight before him. She was everything he had remembered and more. She was larger than life, her upper body more beautiful than all the Yad’Zeen princesses combined, with a lower body of the most deadly and powerful of serpents.

  It was her muscular tail that held Vladek’s flailing body.

  “Who are these insects that have so rudely awakened me?” she demanded.

  Gideon could sense that she was weak, her many millennia of imprisonment draining her of most of her godly might, but she was still strong enough to deal with the likes of them. She still had the power to make them regret having ever been born.

  “Great goddess,” Gideon said, dropping to his knees before her. “We are but humble servants to your beauty and power.”

  Vladek tried to fight her, sinking his claws into the scaled flesh that held him tight, but she would have none of it, giving him the most vicious of shakes.

  “Power,” she stated, and Gideon could see her begin to remember.

  “It was my exertion of power that put me here,” A’Ranka said, looking around the vast, underground chamber. “A prisoner in my own temple.”

  Gideon kept his head bowed. “But we have come to return that power to you,” the sorcerer proclaimed. “A power that you will wield like the most deadly of weaponry, your heart’s desire finally within your grasp.”

  “My heart’s desire?” she asked. “Explain yourself, insect.”

  “I am but the first of your new worshippers,” Gideon said, placing a hand upon his chest. “The first of many who will call you their one and only.”

  A’Ranka reared back upon her serpentine form. She raised Vladek’s broken body higher.

  “And this one?” she asked. “Is this insolent wretch another who will worship me?”

  Gideon nodded. “He is their prince,” the sorcerer explained. “And he helped to free you from your slumber.”

  She brought Vladek closer to inspect. “Fascinating,” she said, flinging his body to the ground at Gideon’s feet.

  “Borphagal spared my life, showed me mercy,” the goddess stated. “Why would I risk his wrath again?”

  Gideon smiled as he helped Vladek to stand.

  “Your new worshippers,” Vladek managed, as his crushed ribs began to heal. “Your new worshippers will make you stronger than him.”

  “Stronger?” A’Ranka asked.

  Vladek could stand on his own feet again and walked toward the goddess. “Our love and devotion will make you more powerful than ever before.”

  The goddess considered his words. “How do I know you speak the truth?” she asked. “I see no worshippers.”

  Gideon came to stand beside the vampire prince. “Soon, Goddess, they will be arriving soon. All I need do is weave the magick to open the portal and they will swarm this world, bringing their adoration of you.”

  A’Ranka considered all of this, a bejeweled finger placed upon her beautiful lips. “Prove that your words are true,” she demanded. “Prove that you will love me most of all.”

  Gideon smiled, watching as Vladek stepped closer. They had planned this, knowing that there was only one thing more than unbridled devotion that A’Ranka loved best, and that was gifts.

  “You want proof?” Vladek asked her. “Then I will give it.”

  The vampire prince fell to his knees beneath her. “I, Vladek, royal prince of the bloodspawn, swear my undying love to you, as well as the undying love and fidelity of all my people.”

  A’Ranka swayed upon her taunt, muscular body, seemingly taken by the words of the prince. “Go on,” the goddess of the dust said.

  “As a symbol of the bond that we will soon share I will give to you the most precious of gifts.

  “A gift,” the goddess hissed, her beautiful eyes growing large in anticipation.

  Vladek sank his claws into the thick, cross-shaped scar on his chest, pulling the flesh apart to reveal the black, empty cavity.

  “I will give you my heart.”

  The werewolf was about to jump from the hiding place.

  Stitch saw the powerful muscles bunch beneath Emily’s thick coat of raven-black fur, and reached out to clamp his hand firmly upon her shoulder.

  She spun around, fangs bared, and he saw that there was
very little of Emily left, but he tried anyway.

  “No,” he said in a firm, commanding voice. “We can’t fight all of them.”

  He didn’t think that any of what he’d said had managed to permeate the fog of savagery that threatened to consume the girl’s humanity, but suddenly he saw the wolf’s expression change, softening just a bit.

  “It’s right there,” Emily said, looking back to the stage.

  The king had returned the black, beating heart to the special box as the crowd continued to roar.

  “I know it’s frustrating, but we must be careful. Remember, we must be successful, if Bram and the others are to succeed as well.”

  That seemed to calm the beast a bit more, and Stitch returned his attention to the activity on the stage. The other two priests had taken their place beside the king, and appeared to be conjuring a spell.

  “Tell me that they’re not doing what I think they’re doing,” Stitch said, directing his question to Bogey.

  “If you think they’re doing an interpretive dance, you’re completely off base,” the small, gray skinned creature stated. “But if you’re thinking they’re in the process of conjuring a passage to someplace, you’re right on the money.”

  Stitch’s hand had remained on Emily’s shoulder, and he could feel the muscles like steel beneath the thick fur tense.

  “Conjuring a passage?” she asked. “Conjuring a passage to where? We can’t let them take the heart away.” Her voice was growing more excited—more bestial.

  The vampire priests raised their voices above the noise of the crowd and the spell of passage leaped from the ends of their long, bony fingers to puncture a hole in the air before them.

  “She who will become our goddess has been imprisoned as well,” the vampire king proclaimed. “So we will bring her the heart of Vladek…. Using magicks long forbidden to us by our captors, we will travel to her place of confinement and show her the depths of our devotion.”

  The passage opened with a sound like the cracking of a whip. The king of vampires turned to the pulsating rip in the fabric of reality and, without a moment’s hesitation, ducked within to begin his journey. One after the other, the royal family and their servants entered the passage, until only the priests remained.