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

  They all stood looking about, knowing what had happened there only a short while before.

  “So this is it, huh?” Emily asked. “Gives me the willies.” She rubbed her arms with her hands. “There’s a bad smell here too. It tells me something really awful happened here.”

  “Don’t need a great sense of smell to know that,” Dez said. “All you have to do is read the newspaper, watch TV, or go on the Net to know what happened.”

  Even though it had been cleaned up, a pall of death still hung over the castle like a heavy wool blanket. Bram looked about, images of what he thought it must have been like filling his head.

  “There’re rumors that this place is haunted,” Emily said, walking to the reception desk in the center of the foyer and looking over and behind the furniture as if expecting somebody to be hiding there. “Nobody even wants to go near it.”

  “Which means nobody will interrupt us as we search,” Stitch suddenly said. “Isn’t that right, Bram?”

  His imagination working overtime, Bram saw the ghostly image of his father standing in the lobby staring at him.

  “Bram?” Stitch called.

  “Sorry,” he said. “The atmosphere is a little overwhelming.”

  “Tell me about it,” Bogey said. “You can cut the bad vibes with a knife.”

  “I’m betting there’s a pretty extensive records department here. I think that’s where we should start.” Bram looked to Stitch. “Any idea where that might be?”

  The large man shrugged. “I’m guessing one of the lower levels.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Bram said. He walked toward the door with the sign above it that said stairs. “Since there’s no power, it looks like we’re going to have to hoof it.”

  Dez started to push himself up from his chair. “Gonna give this a shot,” he said, swaying slightly as he retrieved his crutches from the back of his wheelchair.

  “Are you sure, son?” his father asked him.

  “I’ll be fine,” he reassured his father. “And if I get too tired, Bogey can carry me.”

  “Sure, and Drackleflints will fly out of my butt,” the Mauthe Dhoog grumbled, heading for the door.

  “Drackleflints?” Emily and Dez repeated at the exact same time.

  They descended the stairs, floor after floor, and after a while, Bram started to notice a strange sensation in his head.

  “Hey, Stitch,” he called. “Do you feel that?”

  Stitch stopped, turning upon the steps to look back at Bram. “I was wondering when you were going to notice.”

  “And?” Bram asked.

  “We’ve gone from one reality into another.”

  “Yeah,” Bogey agreed, holding on to the railing. “I thought something might’ve been up.”

  They finally reached the bottom, where a sign over a large metal door announced RECORDS.

  Stitch hauled open the heavy door and held it open so they all could enter.

  “Oh wow,” was all Bram could say.

  For as far as the eye could see there were shelves, and on those shelves there were boxes, and where there weren’t shelves, there were filing cabinets.

  “Can you guess why we’re in a pocket dimension?” Stitch asked.

  “More room?”

  “Precisely,” the big man answered. “If they’d tried to use a room beneath the castle for storage, it would have been filled in a few days. Pocket dimensions provide perfect storage places as long as nothing is already stored or living there.”

  “Oh, crap,” Bogey said. “We’re gonna be here for years.”

  “We better get started then,” Bram said, pushing the Mauthe Dhoog toward a section of shelves. “If we’re lucky, there will be some sort of order that we can figure out and we won’t have to search every single box and file cabinet.”

  Emily stared at him.

  “What?” Bram asked.

  “When have any of us ever been that lucky?” the girl asked.

  He hated to admit it, but she had a point.

  They all headed off to different parts of the vast storage room. It was tough to see exactly what they were doing, the only light provided by small emergency lights that cast everything in a soft red hue, like blood dispersing in water.

  Bram took his first box from the shelf and was carefully going through the first of the files. He was amazed at the amount of cases investigated by the Network in just this box alone. It was incredible, and a little bit daunting.

  He and his team had to now pick up that slack, and the idea that the world was now a much more dangerous place since the event made him seriously consider going back to the Himalayas in search of P’Yon Kep and asking for his room back.

  The records room was suddenly filled with light.

  Bram left his work, walking up the aisle to join the others who were looking at the ceiling, at long, fluorescent bulbs that burned in the panels above them.

  “Somebody must’ve paid the bill,” Dez said, leaning on his crutches, a crumpled file folder beneath his arm.

  They heard a door open somewhere in the distance and the sound of someone approaching.

  “Much better,” Stitch said as he emerged from one of the countless rows. “I found a small emergency generator in a back storage room and fired ’er up.”

  Gradually they all returned to the work they had started, the floors littered with folders and stray bits of paper, but Bram still couldn’t find what he was looking for.

  His eyes burning and the muscles in his back starting to cramp, Bram got up from the floor to stretch. Walking to the opposite end of the row, he saw Emily sitting off by herself in the distance, a large stack of file folders beside her as she dug into the open box for another handful.

  She had a look on her face that told him that something wasn’t right. He headed toward her. Although they hadn’t known each other very long, he liked to think of her as a friend. That, and the fact that she was a member of his team and he needed everyone on their game, made him want to help her if he could.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Emily closed the folder she’d been looking at and threw it on the floor. “Nothing,” she said, anger in her voice. “If we’re looking for some kind of pattern, then I think I found it.”

  For a minute Bram thought she was serious.

  “Yeah, the pattern is that there is no freakin’ pattern.” Emily removed another file from the box. “The stupid things aren’t even in alphabetical order. It’s like they just tossed all this crap in a box and shoved it on a shelf.” She removed a piece of paper and shook it at him. “And half the information has been blacked out.”

  Bram squatted down beside her as she threw the last file onto the stack and went for another. He reached out and grabbed hold of her wrist.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She looked from the box into his eyes, their gazes locking, and for a second he saw the wolf looking back at him.

  “I’m just freakin’ great,” she snarled, yanking her arm back. “Sitting on the floor of a haunted castle looking through folders filled with crap. Yeah, things couldn’t be any better than this.”

  Bram stood up, watching her furiously searching her latest folder.

  “If you need to talk …”

  “Sure thing,” she said, her words dripping with more sarcasm than usual. She didn’t even bother to look up. “You’d be the first person I’d go running to.”

  Bram turned to return to his own work when he heard her. It sounded as if she was crying. He froze, not sure what to do. If he was being attacked by a goblin with an ax, he would’ve known exactly how to act.

  But now? He didn’t have a clue.

  “They know,” she said in a soft, sad voice trembling with emotion.

  Bram turned back to her.

  Emily’s face was stained with tears, her eyes no longer filled with the fury of the wolf but with sadness.

  “My parents know, Bram,” she said again. “They know about the wolf.”

/>   And she began to cry all the harder.

  * * *

  Lewis Tyker was paralyzed.

  Every fiber of his body told him to run, to get as far away from the patch of ground where he’d watched the vampire lord Vladek flow beneath, but something would not allow him to.

  Staring at Mason sitting there beside him, the skinny man’s wide eyes fixed upon the ground, he knew that it could very well be fear—fear generated by the vampire’s threats—but it could also be something else.

  The vampire had done something to him … to them. It was like hypnotism; Lewis knew that vampires could get into your brain and make you do things you normally wouldn’t.

  It did make sense; why else would he still be here? Serving a bloodthirsty monster.

  Unless it was something ever more complicated than that.

  The monster … Vladek seemed like a man … a creature of his word. And being a good businessman, Lewis had to wonder how he might be able to use that to his own benefit.

  How to turn bad into something not so bad … a dead cow into Sunday dinner.

  He thought of the vampire’s age, and how long someone like him had walked the planet. Vladek could be the perfect source of finding the kinds of things his clientele wanted.

  Lewis smiled, already seeing a ray of sunshine cutting through a really dark cloud. The thought of the sun made him look up through the canopy of tree leaves, and he saw that it had begun to set.

  Was it possible? Had he been sitting there all day watching where the vampire slept, never really noticing the passage of time?

  Wisps of thick mist began to flow out from beneath the ground cover.

  “He’s awake,” Mason said in a breathless whisper. “The master is awake.” The thin man immediately jumped back, away from the patch of ground, nervously wringing his hands together.

  Lewis rose as well, suddenly realizing his pants were soaked from the dampness of the ground. He hadn’t even noticed.

  The mist started to solidify, slowly taking the shape of the vampire. And soon he was standing before them in all his armored glory.

  Vladek looked healthier, younger, his long, white hair shining in the dwindling light of dusk, the skin of his face like polished marble. The rest beneath the earth had done him well.

  “So nice to still see you here,” the vampire said with a savage smile. “It shows me that your kind is actually capable of learning. You would not have liked what I would have done if I had been forced to hunt you down.”

  Mason dropped to his knees, his head bowed. “I … I don’t want to die,” he repeated over and over again.

  “And you will not, as long as you continue to serve me,” Vladek answered, but his response was directed at Lewis, not Mason.

  Lewis acknowledged the vampire’s statement with a slight nod. “How can we serve you now, O lord?” he asked.

  Mason raised his eyes. “Yes, how may we serve you?”

  The vampire gazed off into the distance, his focus not on anything before him but on his past.

  “Before my imprisonment I was part of a mission most holy,” the vampire said. “A mission to make my kind masters of this world.” Vladek paused, closing his eyes. “My kind no longer exist upon this planet, but I can still sense them out there somewhere, beyond the veil, waiting for my return … waiting for me to finish what I began so long ago.”

  His eyes snapped open, and Lewis could see a frightening intensity burning there.

  “On my mission I was accompanied by a powerful mage, a magick user who was a crucial component of my inevitable success, and like my vampire brethren, I can sense his presence as well, not on this world, but someplace beyond it.”

  Vladek stared at Lewis, his eyes burning into his, and Lewis felt as though his brain might melt.

  “And how can we help you, Lord Vladek?” Lewis asked.

  The vampire brought a clawed hand up to his face, slowly stroking his chin as the pieces of his plan fell into place. “You will find me another magick user,” Vladek stated. “One with the skills to help me locate the one called Gideon.”

  And Lewis smiled, bowing ever so slightly to his new lord and master.

  Magick users. He knew just where to find a few.

  6.

  BRAM DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY OR DO.

  He’d come to sit beside Emily, wanting to put a comforting arm around her, but decided against it.

  “It came as a pretty big shock to them, I’m sure,” Bram said in an attempt to make her feel better. “But I’m certain once your parents get used to the idea, and see how well you’ve adjusted …”

  “You didn’t see their eyes, Bram,” she said, so much sadness dripping from every word. “It was so much worse than that look … you know, the one where they’re disappointed in something you’ve done?”

  Bram agreed with a nod, although not having spent much time with his own father, he really wasn’t sure he did know what she meant.

  Emily continued, staring at her sneakers, eyes far away. “It was so much worse because I could also see that they were afraid of me … their own daughter. I scared them, and I keep wondering over and over again if it’s possible for them to love somebody like me.”

  He wasn’t sure why he did it, but he suddenly found himself putting his arms around her and giving her a brief hug. “I’m sure it’ll be all right,” he said, moving quickly away before she could even react. “They might just need a little time … y’know, to adjust to the idea.”

  He could feel her staring at him and refused to look in her direction.

  “I’m going to stay at Lindesfarne for a little while, if that’s okay,” she said. “Give things a chance to calm down a bit at home.”

  “That’s perfectly fine,” Bram said. “Stay as long as you like, you’re part of the team.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “And not just for giving me a place to stay,” she added quietly.

  Bram turned toward her, and briefly their eyes touched. Something passed between them, but before he could figure out exactly what it was, Emily looked away, dragging a box of files toward her.

  “Unngh!” she grunted, looking at a piece of paper from one of the heavy folders inside. “Here’s another one that’s incomplete.” She tossed it onto the growing stack that threatened to fall to one side. “Sent to archives,” she mumbled. “Every folder I look at—sent to archives.”

  Bram plucked the folder off the top of the stack and looked for himself. “I noticed that too.” He looked around the room.

  Douglas St. Laurent emerged from another aisle. “Most of the files I’ve been looking at say the same thing about the archives.”

  Bram stood up. “Hey, Stitch?” he called out, his voice echoing in the room.

  The large, pale-skinned man emerged from another aisle, folder in hand. “Yes?”

  “Sent to archives,” Bram said, holding up a file. “The message is in almost every file we’ve looked at.”

  Stitch nodded, coming toward them. “I noticed, yes. Obviously they didn’t trust the more sensitive information to these folders and sent it elsewhere.”

  “Any idea where that could be?” Bram asked.

  “I’m not really sure,” Stitch said. “A piece of me seems to recall a structure built beneath the salt flats of—”

  The sudden noise was nearly deafening, and Bram felt his body immediately react, preparing for battle.

  At the far end of the vast room they could see that a section of shelving had tumbled down, sending boxes and file cabinets flying, spilling documents everywhere. They headed for the sudden chaos and found Bogey emerging from beneath one of the shelving units.

  “The shelves seemed sturdier than that,” the Mauthe Dhoog said, not seeming at all concerned about the mess he’d made.

  “What happened?” Bram asked.

  “Thought I could see something behind this wall of shelves,” Bogey said, “and I was right.”

  The little creature pointed to the wall—and a door mar
ked with a gold plaque that read ARCHIVES.

  “Is this what you were looking for?”

  Bogey kicked some of the boxes aside to reach the door.

  “Kind of stupid to hide another whole room behind a wall of shelves,” Bogey said, grabbing hold of the doorknob.

  There was a brilliant flash and a squeal from Bogey as he was violently tossed across the room. The Mauthe Dhoog would have most assuredly been bounced off another section of shelves if not for Dez’s quick thinking. The boy used his telekinetic powers to catch the flying Bogey before any harm could be done.

  “Good catch, Dez,” Bram said, before turning his attention to Bogey. “Are you all right?”

  Bogey appeared stunned, shaking the hand that had made contact with the knob. “Yeah, I’m fine, except for the part where my insides feel as though they’ve been hit by a bazillion bolts of electricity.”

  “That’s a lot of electricity,” Emily said as she folded her arms, eyeing the archives’ door. “Something tells me we don’t want to touch that doorknob again.”

  Bram approached the door. “Bogey wondered why the door was hidden behind the shelves and file cabinets,” he thought aloud. “Stitch said that the information sent to archives was … sensitive.”

  He studied the door. It appeared to be just an ordinary door, but this was the Brimstone Network base of operations and nothing was ordinary here.

  “This building was attacked,” Bram stated, turning from the door to look at his team. “And if there was sensitive information stored down here, there must have been security measures in place to protect it.”

  He turned back to the door, gazing at the knob.

  “Maybe the room reacted to the attack and hid the archives door.”

  Bram reached for the gold-colored knob.

  “Don’t do it,” Bogey screamed.

  Bram ignored the Mauthe Dhoog’s words, gripping the knob while bracing himself for the worst. But the knob turned without any flash of powerful magick, and he pushed the door open.

  Never expecting to see what was waiting on the other side.

  The room was empty except for an old, wooden desk. A lone figure sat behind the desk, perusing an ancient text. The figure looked up, appearing annoyed by the sudden intrusion. He closed the book and it disappeared as if it had never been there.