The Shroud of A'Ranka (Brimstone Network Trilogy) (6 page)

“What do you think it is?” Dez asked, letting the religious artifacts drift slowly back to the floor. “I’m not even going to tell you what I’m thinking.”

Bram looked at him, confused. “What do you think it is?” he asked.

“All these crosses,” the boy said. “The stone crypt … it just screams of vam—”

“It went this way,” they heard Emily call from the front of the chamber.

They all went to see, watching as she assumed her wolf form, ripping away her human shell to expose the beast beneath.

“Bogey, take her clothes,” Bram said, stepping over the girl’s discarded clothing as he followed the wolf.

“Sure,” the Mauthe Dhoog grumbled, picking up Emily’s things from the ground where she’d dropped them. “And
maybe you’d like me to wash them while I’m at it.”

Bram stepped from the cave entrance onto the ledge of the mountain. Emily crouched at the edge of the ledge, her large, animal head tilted back as she sniffed the nighttime air.

“Do you still have it?” Bram asked her.

The wolf turned, a flash of red in her eyes.

“I do,” she growled. “It’s down there … down the mountain to the forest below.”

The others came from the cave to stand behind him.

“We’re going to follow her down,” Bram said to the team.

“You’re certainly not including me in this equation,” Dez said.

Bram turned to see the hurt and perhaps a bit of embarrassment in the boy’s eyes.

“Of course not,” Bram said. “Bogey will rift you and your father down to the bottom, where you can meet us.”

Bogey moved toward the edge to get a look at where he was going. “Sure we don’t want to give it a try?” the Mauthe Dhoog said. “I bet that chair is more durable than we think.”

“I wonder if your skull is more durable than you think,”
Dez snapped, a kind of electrical energy snaking from his eyes as he flexed his powerful brain muscle.

“Save it for the enemy,” Bram said in his most authoritative voice.

The energy stopped leaking from Dez’s eyes, and Bogey refused to look anywhere but his feet.

Emily snorted, shaking her furry head.

“Do you think we might get started before the scent begins to fade?” she growled.

Bram and Stitch moved to follow the wolf as it started its descent down the mountain.

“See you at the bottom,” Bram said, turning to follow Stitch as Bogey began to rift a passage to the forest floor below.

The stink of ancient evil stung the inside of her snout as she bounded down the mountain, her friends not far behind her.

She had to be careful not to move too quickly, not wanting to leave them in her dust.

There were other scents mixed with the evil; human smells heavy with fear. Emily had no idea what she was tracking, but what she did know was that it didn’t travel alone.

At the base of the mountain, before the forest grew dense with vegetation, she stopped to wait for her friends.

“What took you so long?” a familiar voice asked, and she turned to see Bogey sitting on a moss-covered rock with Dez in his wheelchair and his father standing beside him.

“Would have been down sooner, but I stopped for a meal,” the wolf growled, running a pink, slavering tongue along her lips. “Mountain goat is pretty stringy.”

Bogey jumped down off the rock. “You didn’t eat a mountain goat … did you?”

Emily rolled her eyes just as Bram and Stitch jumped down from an outcropping of rock to join them.

“Through the woods,” she said, pointing a clawed finger. “Smells like a village or town. What we’re looking for headed there.”

They all moved through the woods, Emily leading them to the easiest forest paths. It wasn’t long before they came to a road and, in the distance at the road’s end, what seemed to be a quaint town.

“Are you sure it went there?” Bram asked breathlessly, coming to stand beside her, his face dappled with musky-smelling sweat from his exertion.

Emily nodded. “Afraid so.”

She took off down the road, galloping on all fours toward the tiny settlement. It was as if the ancient-smelling funk was calling to her, taunting her to come closer so that it could show her how powerful it was.

She stopped before an ornate fountain, a founding father sitting astride a powerful steed as he prepared to go into battle. The fountain’s water had been turned off for the coming of winter, and a foul-smelling sludge had built up in the bottom of the now waterless basin.

But there was something else that she could smell in the night air, something beside the sludge and the taunting evil.

It was death.

Bram and the others came into the tiny square.

She was about to tell them what else her animal senses had picked up when the door to what appeared to be a tavern across from them was thrown open, and a figure emerged.

Actually it was many figures, one after another coming out onto the street. There was something odd about the way that they moved, and she was about to caution Bram when he spoke.

“Is everything all right?” he asked the first of the figures to leave the tavern.

The man shambled closer, his face suddenly cast in the light shining down from the half-moon in the sky above.

The man was unusually pale, his eyes glinting an animal red.

And then he opened his mouth and Emily knew for certain that something very bad had happened to the people of this tiny village.

Something that had changed them all forever.

SOMETHING ISN’T RIGHT
.

Bram watched the people spill out of the tavern into the village center. Something in the way they moved made his instincts jump to attention.

And then the first of them attacked.

The deathly paleness, the glint of red in his eyes, and the teeth, the incredibly long incisors, told him everything he needed to know.

“Bram, watch out,” Emily cried in her guttural wolf voice. “I think they’re—”

The attacker moved with incredible swiftness, springing at Bram with fangs bared.

Bram willed his body intangible and the threat passed through him as if he were made of smoke. He spun around
to watch as his opponent touched down upon the ground in a crouch with a feral snarl.

Vampire
.

But how?

Vampires had been banished to another dimension by one of the earliest Brimstone Network teams over a millennia ago. In fact, in a show of mercy, the Network had found an uninhabited dimension of darkness in which the vampires could thrive, and had even helped them develop a blood substitute to sustain themselves. If Bram remembered his father’s lessons correctly, the vampire had been totally eliminated from this world for a thousand years.

Until now.

The blood-drinker sprang at him again, only to be snatched from the air and driven to the ground by an angry-looking Mr. Stitch.

“Vampires?” the patchwork man said incredulously. “That’s all the world bloody well needs to be dealing with now,” he grumbled.

Stitch held the monster to the ground by the throat as it thrashed and snapped at him with razor-sharp teeth. He managed to fish a dagger from the inside pocket of
his coat, which caused the vampire in his grasp to struggle all the more.

“Knew I had one,” he said casually, and plunged the blade down into the vampire’s chest, piercing its heart with the sharp metal, causing its body to explode into ash. Stitch waved his hand in front of his face. “At least they still die the same,” he said in between coughs.

“Heads up!” Bram heard Bogey screech, and turned to see that other vampires were now cautiously coming toward them.

“Seems like the whole village was turned,” Bram said.

More blood-drinkers slunk from other buildings to join those from the tavern. It was a very bad sign. If Bram understood his vampire biology correctly, only a very specific member of the vampire race could pass on its curse with a bite—a member with royal lineage.

Bram had to wonder who exactly had been inside that stone box, and how he had ended up here. But that was a puzzle for another time. For now, these vampires couldn’t be allowed to leave the village.

“Dez?” Bram called out.

“I’m here,” the boy answered. “A little freaked out, but I’m here.”

“I need you to put one of your mental barriers around the village. Do you think you can do that?”

“Around the whole thing?” Dez asked. “That’s gonna give me one powerful headache, but I think I can manage.”

“Good,” Bram said. “We have to contain them quickly.”

Stitch came to stand beside Bram, brushing the ashen remains of the dispatched vampire from his coat. “They seem to be relatively young,” he said. He pointed to the group. “The newer ticks always stay together, hunting in packs.”

“Ticks?” Bram questioned.

Stitch shrugged. “Network slang for vampire.”

The blood-drinkers were closer now, and Bram could see that it wouldn’t be long until they swarmed.

“Bogey, keep an eye on Dez and his dad,” Bram ordered. “If any of the … ticks gets too close, rift a passage to someplace real inhospitable. All right?”

“Got it,” the Mauthe Dhoog said, stepping closer to the psychokinetic boy and his father. “I’ve already got a couple’a nice places in mind.”

Stitch reached into his pocket and removed another dagger, handing it to Bram. “Here.”

“How many of these do you have?” Bram asked, taking the knife.

“You never know when you’re gonna lose one.”

He tried to give another to Emily, but the werewolf refused. “I’ve got these,” she said, flexing her claws.

“Any suggestions on the best way to take them down?” Bram questioned.

Stitch shrugged. “Just get to the heart and destroy it; death pretty much follows from there.”

And the vampires swarmed en masse, mouths open hungrily.

Ready to drink the life from their veins.

Vladek screamed.

The vampire lord dropped heavily to his armored knees, his entire body wracked with the pain of sudden death. He could feel the extermination of the newborn vampires as if it were happening to him.

And through his mind’s eye he could see those who were responsible.

He held his hand out to his human slaves, and they rushed to his side. “Help me to my feet,” he commanded.

Through the agony of his children’s death, Vladek gazed upon the faces of those who killed them with such
savagery. He saw them all, but one face in particular demanded his full attention.

A boy who performed the function of a man.

And as Vladek studied his features, he saw something all too familiar. This boy … this leader bore a striking resemblance to the commander of the forces who took him captive so very long ago; the same sharp bone structure of the face, a similar burning intensity of the eyes.

Is it possible?
the vampire wondered.
Can it be that the Order of Brimstone still exists and that this boy is a descendant of the one who kept me from accomplishing my most holy mission?

Vladek closed his eyes, committing the boy’s face and all those who followed his command to memory. He would reserve special deaths for them once his plans had been set in motion.

“Remove me from this place,” the vampire lord croaked, allowing the humans to assist him toward the back entrance of the tavern.

Staying close to the shadows, Vladek and his slaves moved through the darkness of the village, eventually reaching the edge of the forest that surrounded the tiny hamlet.

The vampire turned his gaze toward the sky, sensing the near approach of dawn. He shrugged off the attentions of his servants and stood alone on trembling legs. “We can go no farther. The accursed sun will soon be in the sky, and I must rest now. You will watch over me,” he commanded, his hypnotic gaze digging into the eyes of his servants, bending them to his will. “And allow no one to disturb my healing peace.”

Then Vladek’s body became like oily smoke, drifting down amongst the leaves, and into the womb of the earth, where he would sleep until the burning sun relinquished to the darkness of night.

Sleep, heal, and remember
.

The thought that these had once been people, people the Brimstone Network had sworn to protect, filled Bram with a kind of anger that he had never known.

He had pursued the vampire into the small market store, ghosting his body in such a way that he was able to float and propel himself through the air to chase the fleeing vampire down.

The sun was rising, and the remaining vampire’s
movements became sluggish as they grew weaker with the coming of dawn.

The vampire that he chased, a teenage boy no older than fourteen, attempted to open a door that would allow him to escape to the darkness of a cellar beneath the store.

Bram took him before he could get the door open, and the vampire exploded in a cloud of ash as the dagger found its target. Standing in the gentle flurry of ash, Bram felt his anger seethe, arousing his Specter nature, urging him to embrace the rage, but he managed—just barely—to control it. He left the store, striding out into the first light of dawn to find the others waiting for him by the fountain. “Did we get them all?” he asked, his voice clipped and stern.

Stitch nodded, looking toward Emily, who had returned to her human guise.

“I searched all the buildings,” she said. “I’m pretty sure we got them all.”

“And the source of this evil?” Bram asked, suddenly creeped out by the eerie silence that now filled the lifeless village.

Emily shook her head. “Lost with all the other scents, it’s just one big bloodsucker stink.”

Bram glanced over to Dez. The boy was slumped in his
chair. His father knelt beside him, wiping sweat from the boy’s brow.

“Think I can drop the barrier now?” Dez asked.

“Go ahead,” Bram said. “Good job.” Then he walked away, looking around at the buildings and the streets that until the night before had been filled with life but now were as dead as its citizens.

“Want me to rift us home, Bram?” Bogey asked, carefully coming up behind him.

Bram turned, staring at the gray-skinned creature. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “We’ve got make sure this doesn’t happen again to some other defenseless town.”