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

  What a world.

  The window above the sink suddenly exploded inward, pieces of glass spraying Emily. She let out a shriek, feeling her hold upon the beast slip just a bit. Dusting the glass from her hair and clothes she looked toward the sink and at the small figure that rose up from the basin.

  Its face was wrinkled with dark bags beneath its eyes. The gnome had a dirty white beard, and fat swollen lips that looked like two slugs stacked on top of each other, and in its hand it held a tiny, but sharp-looking knife.

  Her parents started to scream, frozen in place in front of the overturned table. The gnome opened its mouth in a scream of rage, raising its knife as it began to crawl from the sink.

  She knew that there was very little she could do at the moment, but the beast inside—it was born for nonsense like this.

  But she didn’t want her parents to find out about her affliction this way. Emily had kept it from them, planning on revealing her secret at just the right time.

  This moment didn’t even come close to how she’d imagined she would tell them, but Emily couldn’t have stopped the change if she’d tried.

  At first there was the incredible itching, as if a million ants were alive beneath her flesh, crawling to get out. And from there it just intensified, feeling as though her flesh were about to erupt into flame.

  She tore at her skin, ripping it away to stop the agony.

  Ripping it away to expose the fur of the beast beneath.

  The torn flesh dropped from her clawed hands to the kitchen floor. The look upon the gnome’s face was hysterical. The tiny creature turned quickly away, realizing that it had bitten off more than it could chew, and tried to escape through the broken window.

  Emily pounced, grabbing the foot-tall attacker in one of her clawed hands and bringing it to her mouth. Her powerful jaws clamped down upon the squirming gnome and she shook it furiously, growling excitedly as she ended its life.

  The stink of fear was stronger in the kitchen, and she found herself looking toward the source.

  It came from both of them in waves. Her parents. They were staring at her—seeing her in the shape of the wolf for the very first time.

  And they were terrified.

  Emily tore her wild, animal eyes away from the sight of her parents, and looked through the broken window out into the yard. The gnomes were still there in the grass, still attacking her house.

  She let the rage of the beast enflame her, bounding up onto the kitchen counter and out through the window into the yard. Emily wanted to lose herself in the beast’s anger, wanted desperately to forget what she had seen in her parents’ eyes.

  A look more hurtful than a bullet to the heart.

  2.

  HIS DAD WAS HUMMING A BEATLES TUNE.

  Desmond St. Laurent leaned heavily upon his crutches, feeling stronger than he had in quite a long time, but still not strong enough to deal with what Bram had asked him to do.

  Dez watched his dad move about the small room, removing things from the boxes they had brought from their wrecked home in Maine and putting them away in some kind of order.

  Since the attack upon their home, he and his dad had been staying beneath the ruins of an old monastery, on the island of Lindesfarne, near Enland. Supposedly the location was only temporary until the new Brimstone Network was more established and Bram figured out the best place to set up shop.

  “How’s this?” his father asked, distracting him from his thoughts.

  Douglas St. Laurent was holding a framed picture against the wall.

  “Looks fine,” Dez answered, using his crutches to get across the room to his wheelchair. He suddenly had the urge to sit down.

  Bram’s request of him made him feel very tired.

  His father used a hammer to bang in the nail, and then hung the picture on the wall. Stepping back, the man admired his handiwork and stepped aside so Dez could see.

  “What do you think?” the man asked, smiling.

  The picture was of Dez and his dad. They were both dressed in heavy winter clothes and sitting on top of a pretty high snowbank.

  Dez couldn’t help but grin. He remembered that it had been taken by a neighbor after a particularly nasty nor’easter dropped over a foot of snow.

  It wasn’t too long after that his father had gone to the hospital with chest pains.

  Dez felt his smile start to fade.

  And after that, Douglas St. Laurent had died.

  “What’s next?” his father asked, rubbing his hands together eagerly. “Why don’t we stack your books up against the wall beside your bed? How’s that sound?”

  Desmond nodded, and his father immediately went to work removing stacks of books from one of the many boxes.

  Nobody would ever really suspect that he wasn’t alive anymore, Dez thought, watching as the man worked. And that had been his plan all along.

  Dez had been born with a crippling muscle disease that often made it difficult for him to get around, but he also had been born with an extremely powerful brain. He and his dad had suspected that Dez had the ability to use sections of his brain that most people never use. He could do all kinds of things with just a thought: start fires, mind control, lift things up.

  Make it seem that his father was still alive.

  Nobody had been able to tell, and it was only after the monsters had attacked his house and his father had received an injury that should have killed him but didn’t that his new friends in the Brimstone Network began to suspect that something was up.

  Which led to his current predicament.

  His father had already emptied out three of the boxes and was starting on his fourth. There wasn’t much by way of furniture in the room—an old chest of drawers, two mattresses on the floor, a lamp resting on an old steamer chest. It wasn’t the Hilton, but it would do.

  Bram had made him promise to explain to his father what he had done; to let him know that it was Dez’s mental powers keeping him alive.

  But how do you do something like that? Dez thought, sitting in his wheelchair.

  Hey, Dad, I forgot to mention, you’ve been dead for over a year, but I’ve been keeping you alive. Please pass the salt.

  His anger flared, and the lamp sitting on the steamer chest was picked up by an invisible force and thrown across the room to smash against the stone wall.

  Squatting by a stack of books, Dad looked from the shattered lamp to Dez. “Everything okay there, sport?”

  Dez nodded. “Yeah, sorry, I’m just getting a little frustrated at being cooped up in this place.” He looked around the room.

  “That’s all right,” Dad said, coming over to him. He hunkered down beside Dez’s wheelchair. “Everybody’s entitled to let off a little steam now and then. We’ll just tell anybody who asks that the lamp fell off the chest.” He put a loving arm around his son and gave him hug.

  Dez knew that his father was only there because of his own selfishness. He couldn’t stand the thought of being alone. He could tell himself all day and night that it was what his father would want, but deep down he knew that it had very little to do with his dad’s wishes.

  His father was looking at him and smiling. Dez studied the man’s face, the makeup he’d used to cover the deep wounds and gashes he’d received in their recent battles becoming more and more obvious. Dez’s brain power was awesome, but there was no way even he could make a dead body heal. Some things were beyond even him.

  “Dad,” Dez began, the urge to tell his father the whole truth suddenly strong.

  “Yes?” his dad said. “What’s up?”

  The words were about to come, dancing on the tip of Dez’s tongue, when the alarm started to sound.

  “What’s that?” Douglas asked, standing up beside his son’s chair.

  “I’m not sure,” Dez replied. “I’ve never heard that one before.”

  “We should probably check it out,” his father said, getting behind the wheelchair and pushing him from the room.

  “Y
eah, we probably should,” Dez said in reply, angry that the truth had not been revealed.

  As well as relieved.

  Legs that had once belonged to two separate Brimstone Network agents—long since deceased—propelled Mr. Stitch down the short corridor toward the heavy wooden door at its end.

  The alarm appeared to be coming from inside, and he had no idea what the ruckus was all about.

  None of the multiple parts that made up his surgically sewn together body recalled what was stored behind the door at the end of the corridor, or what the alarm could possibly be the harbinger of, but its incessant tolling demanded that he find out.

  The large man created from the body parts of fallen Brimstone Network agents stopped in front of the door. From the deep pockets of his coat he withdrew a ring of keys and started to search for the one that would fit the weathered wood door.

  One after another, Stitch tried to fit the keys into the lock with little success, and the alarm continued to toll, and seemed to being growing louder. He sighed in exasperation.

  “Hey, Stitch, what’s going on?” a voice he recognized as belonging to Douglas St. Laurent asked.

  He looked away from the lock to see the father pushing his son in a wheelchair down the hall toward him.

  “Think you can shut that off pretty soon?” Desmond asked, sticking his pinkie finger into one of his ear holes. “My brain is gonna start bleeding.”

  “I’m trying,” Stitch growled, continuing to not have any success.

  “Are you sure the key is on that ring?” Douglas asked, coming to stand beside him at the door.

  “These are the only keys I could find,” Stitch answered. “I’m guessing that there’s a bloody good chance that what we’re looking for is on this ring.”

  Douglas didn’t say anything more, crossing his arms across his chest and leaning against the door.

  Dez wheeled over. “Are those the keys from the supply closet?”

  “No,” Stitch barked. “They’re the keys from the drawer beside the cabinet in the workroom.”

  The alarm was most definitely louder, and Stitch felt as though his ears were about to fall from the sides of his head. None of the keys were working.

  “I didn’t know there was another set in the supply closet,” he grumbled.

  “That one and another set,” Dez suddenly said.

  Stitch stopped his work and stared at the heavyset boy.

  “Another set?”

  Dez nodded. “Yeah, I saw another ring in the kitchen pantry the other day when I was looking for some bread.”

  Stitch jammed the next key into the lock. The long piece of metal went into the hole and, for a moment, he thought it was going to turn. Excitedly he gave it a twist, but it refused to move. And then his fingers fumbled, and the entire ring clattered to the floor.

  “Ouch!” Dez said, his face twisted in a wince.

  “Now that just stinks,” Douglas added with a shake of his head.

  Stitch couldn’t stand it anymore. He hauled back his fist and punched at the obstruction, delivering a blow to the area above the uncooperative lock. The wood shattered with the strike, but his fist did not go through. He punched the door again and again, feeling his tension wash away.

  “Remind me never to get you mad,” Dez said.

  “Remind me never to lock any doors,” Douglas added.

  Stitch smirked, pushing on the door as it swung into the room behind it.

  The alarm shrieked even louder as they all entered the room. It was dark, the only light coming from the red and green lights on banks of machinery located against the walls, and from the ghostly representation of the planet Earth that floated in the air above a circular platform, the strange lights located within the platform responsible for the holographic image.

  “What the heck is that?” Dez asked, wheeling his chair closer. He reached out a hand and let it pass through Africa as the globe slowly turned.

  Stitch carefully studied the representation of Earth, noticing multiple gold spots marked on various locations around the world. But there was one spot, seemingly in Eastern Europe somewhere, that was not gold. It was red, and it flashed to the beat of the screaming alarm.

  “What do you think it means?” Douglas asked, now standing beside him.

  Stitch reached a large hand up to stroke his square chin.

  “I can’t imagine it’s anything good,” he said, watching the pulsing red spot as the mysterious alarm continued to scream its warning.

  “Nothing good at all.”

  Prentiss Rollins should have been dead. But the first to fall to the thirst of Vladek twitched suddenly from where he lay upon the floor, causing Mason to jump.

  Lewis looked to the skeletal vampire, who was also watching his first victim.

  “The first of my blood-servants,” the vampire said with a thick accent.

  Prentiss climbed unsteadily to his feet, looking around the chamber as if awakened from a dreamless slumber.

  It was as if the resurrected man suddenly became aware that he wasn’t alone.

  Lewis’s eyes were fixed to the gaping, and now bloodless, wound in the man’s neck. It looked as though he had grown a second mouth, the bite was so large.

  “This … this isn’t right,” Mason said, his voice trembling. “He’s dead … he’s supposed to be dead.”

  Prentiss growled and bared his new fangs.

  “Your friend is undead now,” Vladek said as his willowy form climbed from the stone box. “Neither dead, nor truly alive. It is what all your kind will be if I allow it.”

  “Allow it?” Lewis said, looking to the ancient vampire. “I don’t understand.”

  “There is a choice,” the vampire said, coming to stand beside him.

  A sickly smell of decay wafted from the body of the creature.

  “A choice in whether my bite causes death, or bestows eternal life,” Vladek continued.

  Prentiss slowly started toward them, thick ropes of saliva dripping from his hungry mouth.

  “Eternal life as that?” Mason asked, stumbling back away from the advancing beast. “I’d rather be dead.”

  As if insulted, the vampiric Prentiss charged at them, mouth open far larger than humanly possible.

  “Halt!” Vladek yelled, his voice suddenly filled with strength.

  Prentiss cowered before his master’s command.

  “You will leave these two be,” the ancient vampire said, wearily sitting his bony form down upon the edge of the stone box.

  “We will need human agents to function in a human world,” Vladek explained. “They are much more valuable to me in their present state than as food.”

  Prentiss listened to his new master’s words, but there was no mistaking the burning hunger in the monster’s eyes.

  Suddenly he sprang with a guttural growl, his hands wrapped around Mason’s throat, forcing him to the ground. Prentiss bared his fangs again, his hungry mouth descending as Lewis looked on in horror, wondering if he would be next.

  Vladek disappeared from where he rested at the edge of the stone box, only to reappear standing above Prentiss.

  “I said no,” the vampire lord stated, reaching down to grab the back of his blood-servant’s neck and yanking him off the man.

  Vladek held the struggling Prentiss aloft, his feet not even touching the floor as he thrashed in the vampire’s grasp.

  “To disobey me is to forfeit the gift I have bestowed upon you,” the vampire growled. And with another example of lightning speed, the vampire lashed out, his long, pointed fingers piercing Prentiss’s chest and pulling out his heart.

  Prentiss shrieked as his body began to decay, and in a matter of seconds he, as well as the blackened withered heart that Vladek had been holding in his hand, were nothing more than dust.

  Keeping his eyes on the vampire lord, Lewis helped the trembling Mason to his feet.

  Vladek swayed, the hand that he had just used to destroy their partner now resting fitfully upon hi
s brow.

  “I need to leave this place,” he said. Vladek took his hand away to look at them with piercing yellow eyes. “And you will help me.”

  The vampire pointed to the multiple religious objects littering the floor around them.

  “Remove them,” he commanded.

  Not wanting to incur the monster’s wrath, Lewis and Mason did as they were told, clearing the path of everything that might have been offensive to the ancient vampire lord. Then, one on either side, they helped the weakened creature from the room and down the stone passage that led from the cave.

  It was still nighttime when they reached the mouth, coming out onto the ledge.

  Despite the fact that Vladek was mostly skin and bones, he was surprisingly heavy, and Lewis began to wonder how they would manage to take him down the treacherous mountain.

  “I need to feed,” the vampire said, leaning heavily upon them.

  Lewis was about to suggest that he feed upon Mason when the vampire closed his eyes and sniffed the night air.

  “There is a village nearby?” Vladek asked.

  Mason nodded, and Lewis recalled that there was indeed a small village at the base of the mountain where they had spent the night before beginning their climb.

  “Yes, a small one,” Lewis answered.

  “Excellent,” the vampire lord said, opening his yellow, animal eyes. Thick streams of saliva had begun to run from the corners of his hungry mouth. “That will do nicely.”

  3.

  BRAM STEPPED FROM THE DIMENSIONAL RIFT INTO the main chamber of the Lindesfarne location with Bogey right behind him.

  The Mauthe Dhoog was sucking on a straw stuck inside a big plastic cup with MEGA-GULP written in bright green letters on the side.

  “Why are you mad?” Bogey asked.

  “I’m not mad,” Bram answered, stopping as the little creature closed the rift behind them.

  “No, I think you’re mad,” the Mauthe Dhoog continued, pausing for a moment before continuing to drink his refreshment.

  “I’m not mad, I’m annoyed,” Bram added.

  “Okay, why are you annoyed?”

  “I’m annoyed because no matter where we go or when, you have to stop at a convenience store for a Slushie.”