Specter Rising (Brimstone Network Trilogy) Read online

  This was his mother, of that he had no doubt, and if it meant that he needed to continue to do battle with these two to be in her presence, then he figured he might as well get to it, and get things over with.

  “Ready for round two?” Bram asked, trying to block out the pain. “Now that I know what I’m dealing with . . . shouldn’t be any problem to take you two out.”

  He really didn’t care for the tough-guy stuff, but felt that maybe a little bit of confidence might provide him with an edge.

  It couldn’t hurt.

  The Specter warriors roared, their bodies lifting off from the ground as they became more ghostlike, soaring through the air toward him, spears lowered to pierce his flesh. The Specter used a specially treated metal for all their weapons, metal that could inflict damage even when a Specter warrior was ghosted.

  “Cease these actions!” a female voice of authority suddenly proclaimed, the order echoing throughout the cavernous chamber.

  The warriors reacted at once, regaining their weight and mass and dropping to the floor of the cavern before him.

  They turned their backs to him, their heads lowered in subservience.

  “What is the meaning of this?” the girl asked as she strode out of the darkness. She was dressed in a white, loose-fitting blouse that tied in the front, and pants that looked as though they had been made from the skin of some odd, spotted animal. There were also heavy-looking boots upon her feet that she stomped as she placed her hands upon her curvy hips.

  “Explain yourselves,” she demanded of the warriors.

  Her skin was the same sickly pale as the woman he believed to be his mother, as well as the two armored warriors.

  A physical characteristic of being Specter? Bram wondered.

  Her lips were full, and she wore her hair pulled severely back and braided in a ponytail. There was an air about this girl, who couldn’t have been much older than himself, that suggested she wasn’t somebody you wanted to mess with.

  “The half-breed attempted to approach the blessed mother,” one of the guards explained, lifting his helmeted head temporarily before gazing back down at the floor.

  “We attempted to warn him off,” said the other, “but he ignored our wishes, flaunting his Spectral talents and challenging our authority.”

  “What?” Bram found himself blurting out. “I did no such thing.”

  The girl’s dark eyes widened, and he realized that perhaps he had just stepped out of bounds.

  “I apologize,” he said, doing as the warriors did in her presence, and bowing his head. “I should never have spoken out of turn . . . but when I hear these accusations, I can’t help but—”

  “Silence!” she commanded, and he found himself closing his mouth pretty darn quick.

  The girl then turned her attention from them, going to the woman lying upon her bed of furs. She knelt down beside her, placing a hand gently upon her delicate brow. Taking her hand away, Bram noticed a look of sadness spread across her attractive features.

  “She’s very sick, isn’t she,” he said, walking around the warriors.

  “She is,” the girl answered. “She is in fact dying.” The girl took the woman’s hand and held it. “Our queen is dying.”

  Bram moved closer and sensed the warriors again moving to prevent him.

  “Don’t touch him,” the girl commanded.

  The warriors stopped, scowling at her reprimand of them.

  He was drawn to her again, coming to kneel on the opposite side of the unconscious queen.

  “Her name is Ligeia,” Bram said, staring intently at her slumbering form. “And she is queen of the Specter.”

  Behind him he heard the warriors’ gasp, but they did not move, obeying the girl’s previous command.

  “That’s right,” the girl answered. “And she is your mother.”

  It was if he’d been struck across the face; hearing the words come from the mouth of another.

  “Yes, she is,” he said, unable to take his eyes from her sleeping face. “I pretty much knew it the moment I saw her.”

  He managed to tear his gaze from her, turning his attention to the young woman beside him.

  “How did I get here?” he asked, his eyes darting about the vast chamber. “And where exactly is ‘here’?”

  The girl bent down to kiss the queen’s hand and slid it gently beneath the thick covering of fur.

  “We knew that your life was in danger,” the girl explained. “There was little time to warn you of your impending fate. We acted as quickly as we could, snatching you with Specter magick from the jaws of death as one of Barnabas’s lackeys made his move.”

  “Barnabas,” Bram repeated the name. “The creature . . . before he exploded, he said that somebody named Barnabas was sending me his regards.”

  The girl nodded in agreement. “Barnabas wishes you dead as he wishes the queen, and all those of her ruling house.”

  “But I’m not part of any ruling house or . . .”

  “But you are,” the girl corrected. “You are of her blood, and with you dead there would be nothing to prevent him from taking over the great city of Tyrnanis and all the known realities that exist beyond it.”

  A thousand questions flooded his head.

  “You seem to know a lot more about what’s going on than me,” he said. “Who are you?”

  The girl smiled at his question.

  “I’m Lita,” she said. “Daughter to the queen.” She paused momentarily before looking him straight in the eyes.

  “I imagine I would be considered your sister.”

  6. EMILY AND STITCH BROUGHT THE BURNED BODY from the floor of Bram’s office to the Kreeps.

  Emma and Emmett were twins, and to call them simply Emo was like calling the Goodyear blimp just a balloon. They each wore their hair long and scraggly, bangs hanging in front of their faces. Emma had multiple piercings over her left eyebrow, and Emmett had them over his right.

  They only wore black and shades of gray, and every item of clothing seemed to be at least two sizes too big. And, of course, there were the combat boots.

  They were quite the pair, and fit in quite nicely with the Network.

  Emily, back in her human guise, stood beside Stitch and watched as the twins worked their magick . . . literally.

  Emma Kreep, wearing heavy rubber gloves, reached down with a scalpel, scraped a piece of blackened flesh from the arm of the corpse, and let it fall into a plastic test tube.

  “Got it,” she said to her brother.

  “My turn,” Emmett said excitedly. Using his own scalpel, he flaked some flesh from what was likely the face.

  The Kreeps had a unique talent. The twins could take a piece of something—be it animate or inanimate—and through magickal spells of their own devising, could recreate three-dimensional images of what the object had once looked like. The twins had become quite the celebrities in the art community when they were able to reproduce the true appearances of ancient works of art and sculpture damaged by the passage of time.

  But the odd pair soon tired of that, and joined the Network, where their talents were used in creating images of the beasties responsible for attacks against the human populace from evidence left behind at the scenes of the crimes.

  “I think this one is gonna be awesome,” Emma said, tapping the contents of her tube into an ornate clay pot she had placed over a Bunsen burner on the table.

  “Don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like this before,” Emmett responded. He had taken more skin samples from the body and was adding them to the mixture inside the pot.

  “And we never will, if you don’t pick up the pace,” Emma scolded.

  “That is so unfair,” her brother complained with a shake of his shaggy head.

  “What can I say. I’m just more adept at this than you.”

  “More adept, my . . .”

  Stitch cleared his throat, and the twins looked in his general direction.

  “Can we do this with a ta
d less chatter?” the big man suggested.

  “Right you are, Mr. Stitch,” Emma agreed. “Did you hear the man, Emmett? Less chatter, more results.”

  “Why I never suffocated you while you were sleeping, I’ll never know,” the boy said, placing his empty test tube on the cluttered counter behind him. “I’m ready.”

  Emma held out her hand toward her brother. Emily had never seen so many rings on one hand. She couldn’t figure out how the girl could even bend her fingers. Emmett didn’t wear rings, but it appeared he did have a thing for black nail polish.

  “Okay,” Emma said with a sigh as brother and sister joined hands. She stretched her neck from left to right and closed her eyes. “Me first.”

  “Of course,” Emmett muttered.

  The girl began to speak, but not in a language that Emily had ever heard before—she remembered someone telling her that they used a form of twin-speak, the secret language often shared by twin children.

  Emmett added his own voice to the strange incantation as Emma picked up a thick, twisted root from a cutting board and tossed it into the clay pot.

  Emmett dipped his fingers into a bowl that contained what could have been cooking spices, but Emily doubted that it contained anything so simple. He tossed a pinch of the contents into the clay container.

  A thick cloud of smoke billowed up from the pot, and the twins immediately became silent. They opened their eyes, fixing their gazes on the smoke as it floated above the table.

  “Show us,” Emma said, a disturbing smile spreading across her black-lipstick–covered lips.

  “Show us what you looked like,” Emmett added, then blew at the smoke through puckered lips. “Show us how awesome you were.”

  The smoke swirled in the air, never dissipating—never breaking up.

  It was like looking at something alive.

  It became thicker, and more defined, and Emily watched in fascination as a three-dimensional image of Bram’s attacker began to form.

  “Oh, yeah,” Emmett said with a laugh, clapping his hands together. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

  Emma simply smiled, gazing up at the smoky substance as if somehow sculpting it with her mind.

  Emily had to admit it was pretty amazing. The smoke had become almost like liquid flesh as it took the shape of the creature that lay dead in Bram’s office.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” Emmett said with a smile. The figure of a demon hung in the air, slowly turning to show off all of its grisly details.

  “Aren’t you a charmer,” Emma added. “But I think you could use some color.”

  The floating image was the shade of cigarette smoke, but with her words, that too began to change. Color flooded through the three-dimensional interpretation, giving it an almost lifelike quality.

  “That’s better,” the Emo girl said.

  Stitch moved closer, studying the demon as it turned in the air before him.

  Emily studied the beastie as well. She noticed its stomach, and through the skin she could see some kind of a fire burning there. “Any idea what it is?” she asked.

  “Besides frickin’ awesome,” Emmett added.

  “Yeah, besides frickin’ awesome,” Emily responded deadpan.

  “I know its kind,” Stitch said, his different-colored eyes glued to the demonic form slowly turning before him. “They’re called Fthagguans—living demonic weaponry.”

  “Smokin’,” Emmett whispered.

  “Do you mind cutting back the excitement?” Emma asked her brother. “Good guys here . . . hello?”

  “Demonic weaponry?” Emily asked. “So you’re saying they blow themselves up?”

  Stitch nodded. “It has something to do with the acid it produces in its stomach.”

  “Charming,” Emily said, nose curled in disgust.

  “The farthest thing from it,” Stitch replied. “I’ve heard tell that between the various demonic species, the Fthagguans are used as a means of assassination.”

  “Someone sent it to kill Bram,” she said, her voice a whisper.

  “Yes.” Stitch slowly nodded, his eyes fixed to the image of the exploding demon hanging in the air before them. “Now we have to find out who sent it.”

  “Right,” Emily agreed. “Any idea how to do that?”

  Stitch nodded again, a cruel smile forming on his scarred features. “I think we need to ask the Fthagguans,” he said. “The Brimstone Network needs to flip over a few rocks to see what comes scurrying out from beneath.”

  The High Priest of the ascension attempted to calm his flock as the enemies of the faithful pounded upon the doors of their place of worship.

  There was a time, not long ago, that Colridge would have waited for his enemy with sword in hand, eager for the promise of battle; but that was no longer his way. Colridge was now a priest of the ascension faith, and would not return to the Specter ways of old.

  The doors to the holy place exploded inward in a cloud of dust and shattered wood. They had used battering rams made from pillars that had once been part of a monument, a monument erected outside the place of worship to mark the moment that the Specter people realized a change was upon them—that they could rise above savagery and attain a new level of civilization.

  But alas, there were some amongst them who saw the ascension as weakness, and would do everything in their power to see that it never occurred.

  The Specter warriors, adorned in their heavy black armor of war, flooded into the holy place. Behind the visors of their heavy metal helmets Colridge could see their cruel eyes burning maliciously. He saw their lust for violence, their desire to spill the blood of those who believed that the Specter could be better than what they were.

  “How dare you enter this holy sanctuary,” Colridge bellowed as he stood before his cowering flock.

  He could feel the anger and rage bubbling at the core of his being—that small part of him that refused to go away, that part itching to pick up a weapon and battle those who challenged him.

  Colridge rubbed his hand on the side of his robe, forcing away the memory of his sword Blood-drinker. That weapon from his past did not exist anymore, having been melted down and cast as the symbol of his new faith—the symbol of the ascension—that he now wore around his neck.

  The bothersome itch continued, and he reached up, grabbing hold of the heavy piece of jewelry that had once killed in the hundreds but now was a symbol of his evolution to peace. The adornment was man-shaped, its primitive arms raised to the heavens as it accepted change.

  “You will leave this place!” His voice rose in defiance as he held the symbol out toward them, hoping that it would drive them away.

  But the warriors only laughed, some actually spitting at him through the visors of their helmets.

  The sudden sound of hooves clicking on the stone floor of the sanctuary distracted the warriors standing at attention on either side of the shattered doorway. And Colridge froze as a tall figure, clad in the black armor of a warlord, rode into the room atop his muscular, reptilian steed. The foreboding figure pulled back on the reins of his mount, stopping the powerful beast before him.

  The priest held his ground, still gripping the symbol of his faith, trying to ignore the tiny voice in the back of his mind that whispered the old ways were better, that this belief in the ascension would only mean death for the Specter.

  “I know you,” the warlord whispered, his voice echoing from within the confines of his helmet.

  “And I know you for what you are,” the priest proclaimed defiantly. “You are the old ways . . . afraid to die, so you strike out at the future . . . refusing to accept the inevitable!”

  The figure astride the steed reached up and pulled the horned helmet from his head, glaring at the old priest with contempt. His jet-black hair was long and unkempt, his thick beard streaked with white.

  The priest held his ground, clutching the jewelry around his neck all the tighter. “I am no longer the man you knew, Barnabas,” Colridge said calm
ly. The memories of battles he had fought with this warrior by his side . . . the victories they had taken . . . as well as the lives . . . were suddenly fresh in his thoughts.

  “You are the old, and I am the new,” Colridge proclaimed. “Abandon your ways of violence . . . join me in the path to ascension.”

  Barnabas looked as though he had been struck. And then he began to laugh. It was a high-pitched cackling sound that set Colridge’s teeth on edge. In another time, he would have tried to kill the man for the insult.

  In another time.

  The warlord dismounted, handing his helmet to one of the soldiers who had come forward to assist him.

  “Look at you,” Barnabas said, distaste upon his face. “The last I knew, you were one of the realm’s finest fighters . . . even in your pronounced years . . . but now . . .”

  Colridge did not look away from the warlord’s gaze.

  “The words of our blessed Queen Ligeia have changed me,” he announced proudly. “She has talked of our race shedding our bloodthirsty ways and embracing the ways of peace. I have allowed those words to wash over me . . . to begin the change . . . preparing me for a better way of living for us all.”

  Barnabas struck with the swiftness of a serpent, his metal, gauntleted hand striking Colridge across the face and knocking him savagely to the floor.

  The priest heard his flock gasp as he lay upon the floor, recovering from the blow.

  “I can’t begin to explain how seeing you this way infuriates me,” Barnabas said. “The queen’s words are to be forgotten,” he announced to him . . . to all within the room.

  “She is still the queen,” Colridge said, unsteadily climbing to his feet. “And as long as that is true, then I will follow her words.”

  “You tempt me to strike you down with your defiance,” Barnabas snarled. “The queen has been driven from the royal palace, her body wracked with illness. It will only be a matter of time before we find her and the small band that spirited her away in the night.”

  Colridge wiped blood away from the corner of he mouth while staring defiantly at the warlord.

  “She will defy you and the old beliefs that have torn our kingdom asunder,” he snarled.