The Shroud of A'Ranka (Brimstone Network Trilogy)

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  Bogey shrugged, still chewing on the last of his snack.

  “I guess that’s true,” he said.

  The crowd was gone, leaving only the memorial statue—the sword-bearing angel—behind.

  “Want to get going?” Bogey asked, wiggling his fingers in preparation to rift them a passage back to their current headquarters in England.

  “In a minute,” Bram said as he headed down the hill. “I’d like a closer look at the monument.”

  Bram didn’t even have to turn around to see that Bogey was probably rolling his eyes.

  He had to give the Mauthe Dhoog credit; even though it was obvious that Bogey wanted to leave, he still gave Bram the time that he wanted to spend at the monument.

  Up close the statue was even more impressive, and Bram found himself suddenly overwhelmed with emotion. It was all a huge jumble: the responsibility of what his father had heaped upon him, as well the ragged emotions that he still felt in regard to his loss—to the world’s loss.

  He knelt before the warrior angel and actually found himself praying for some sort of sign from a higher authority that he was doing a good job.

  The cackle of laughter wasn’t exactly what he expected.

  “Who the heck is that?” Bogey asked, squinting into the darkness.

  The sun had not yet fallen completely, draping the vast cemetery in an increasing shroud of twilight.

  Bram slowly climbed to his feet, his eyes locked upon the shapes in the distance emerging from holes that had opened in the ground.

  “Ghouls,” Bogey said with disgust.

  Bram was immediately on guard, and then felt his anger surge as he watched what the pale-skinned beasties were up to.

  Each of them was carrying a can of spray paint, and as they climbed from the earth they began to defile the cemetery headstones and monuments. The creatures were laughing hysterically as they made their way across the cemetery toward them—toward the Brimstone Network monument.

  He could hear them shaking their spray cans, the metal bead inside the cans bouncing around, mixing the pressurized contents. The ghouls seemed to be getting more excited, more rowdy as they got closer to the cemetery’s newest edition.

  “They’re not gonna do what I think they’re gonna do,” Bogey suddenly said, the sound of his voice stopping the ghouls in their tracks.

  Bram stepped from the shadow created by the warrior angel, Bogey at his side.

  The ghouls studied them with dark, shiny eyes. There were five of the creatures, and Bram watched their expressions of surprise change to amusement as they saw that there were only two of them.

  The ghouls began to laugh, one after the other starting to shake their spray paint cans again.

  “I almost feel sorry for them,” Bogey said with a shake of his head as he started to roll the sleeves of his Red Sox jacket.

  The ghouls charged them, the loose skin around their mouths peeling back to reveal pointy, sharp teeth.

  “On second thought, they deserve everything they get,” the Mauthe Dhoog said, tensing to fight beside Bram.

  Bram couldn’t have agreed more.

  He wasn’t as afraid as he used to be. Bram Stone wasn’t entirely human, and it was his other side—his Spectral side—that used to terrify him so much.

  To avoid a war with a supernatural race called the Specter, Bram’s father had married a member of the Specter royal family, which resulted in a treaty between the human race and the otherworldly Specter, as well as a child.

  Him. Abraham Stone. Only part human; the other half part of a race of fierce, ghostly warriors.

  It wasn’t easy to grow up this way, the Spectral part of him eager to embrace anger, eager to fight.

  His father had seen Bram’s inner turmoil. The Spectral side of his personality was becoming more and more intense the older he became. His father knew that the two sides of his dueling natures would need to come together as one if he was going to survive, so Bram was sent away to a secret monastery high in the Himalaya Mountains where he was to be trained by the priests of P’Yon Kep.

  He had not yet completed his training when he was called from his studies. His father and the Brimstone Network had been murdered and, despite his fears, he had a job to do.

  The priests of the monastery had given him all the knowledge he would require to join the two halves of his nature, and every day as he and his team took on more and more responsibilities as protectors of the world, he became a little less afraid.

  And a little closer to becoming one with his inhuman side.

  It was at a time like this when he could see how far he’d come.

  The ghouls lumbered at them, clawed hands ready to slash and rip, needle teeth eager to tear into soft flesh.

  Not too long ago Bram would have been terrified, not so much of fighting creatures such as these but of losing control of his Spectral nature.

  But not anymore.

  He willed his body immaterial, floating up from the ground and, with just a little bit of concentration, propelled himself toward their attackers.

  By the looks on their monstrous faces, he could tell that the ghouls were surprised, which was perfectly fine by him.

  He dropped down directly in front of them and allowed his body to become solid again. Not giving them a chance to gather their wits, Bram lashed out, the palm of his hand snapping out with incredible force, striking one of the ghouls in his piggish nose and driving his bald head backward.

  The ghoul stumbled back two steps, eyes fixed upon the darkening sky above him before falling to the ground.

  The remaining ghouls looked to their fallen member before turning their stares to Bram. They all began to roar at once, a horrible moaning sound accompanied by the unhinging of their jaws.

  But Bram was ready as they tossed their spray cans to the cemetery grass and lunged at him as one.

  He felt his pulse rate increase and a rush of excitement pass through him as his Spectral nature kicked in and he welcomed the ghouls’ assault. It was all about control when dealing with the alien nature that was just as much a part of him as his humanity, and he reveled in its skills as he met the monsters’ attack head-on.

  At first they attempted to assault him with their physical presence, supernatural strength, and jagged claws used for digging through the earth in search of the dead to feed upon. But these monstrous traits could not be used against him if he could not be touched.

  Bram made himself a ghost. They clawed at him; tried to sink their needle-sharp teeth into his flesh, but their attacks fell upon nothing but air.

  He saw them growing more furious, more bestial as they tried to take him down, but they would have had more luck if they were attacking the wind.

  Wishing to bring the current conflict to an end as quickly as possible, Bram made himself suddenly solid. The ghouls practically howled with glee as they put their grimy hands upon him.

  And it was the last thing that they did.

  One after another they fell, the training from the priests of P’Yon Kep filling Bram’s head as if he were reading from a training manual. Spinning around with a roundhouse kick, the heel of Bram’s foot caught the side of one of the beasties’ faces, knocking a spray of needle teeth from his mouth and rendering him unconscious.

  Bouncing on the soles of his feet, Bram was ready for the next attack, but he quickly realized that there were no more. He counted three unconscious ghouls upon the ground and realized that two were missing.

  He heard a commotion over to his left and spun around ready to face the next assault.

  Two of the ghouls, having produced knives from somewhere on their body, were stalking toward Bogey. The Mauthe Dhoog had backed up against an old mausoleum door.

  Bram could hear the dead-eaters begin to laugh when they realized that their prey could go no farther to escape them.

  “Bogey!” Bram called out, not wanting his friend to be afraid. He started toward the ghouls when Bogey suddenly stopped him in his tracks.


  “I’ve got it, Bram,” his friend called out.

  The ghouls looked toward Bram, and then back to the Mauthe Dhoog.

  “We’ve got you, little boggart,” one of the ghouls barked, switching his knife blade from one hand to the next.

  “You keep on telling yourself that, ugly,” Bogey said, just as he raised his stubby arms, his fingers wiggling like worms on a rain-covered pavement, and a strange song escaped his lips.

  A song of rifting.

  The conjured rift first appeared as a black dot hanging in the middle of the air, and within seconds it had grown to the size of a house window.

  The ghouls were momentarily distracted by the opening floating in space, but soon returned their attentions to the Mauthe Dhoog, who was now smiling.

  “It was nice seeing ya,” Bogey called out to his would-be attackers. “Don’t forget to come back when ya can’t stay so long.”

  The ghouls looked at each other, thinking that their prey had lost its wits, and they started to laugh.

  “We are going nowhere, little boggart morsel,” one of them said.

  “It is you who are—” started the other, but his words were interrupted by the thick tentacle that had reached out from the other side of the rifted opening and wrapped around his throat.

  “GHAAK!”

  The slime-covered tentacle yanked the ghoul away, back through the hole in time and space, followed by another that sought out the remaining dead-eater.

  The last of the ghouls didn’t even have time to scream as he was enwrapped in the muscular embrace of the terror from Bogey’s rift and drawn back through the pulsing black opening hanging in the air.

  “That’s that,” the Mauthe Dhoog said, wiping his hands on the front of his jacket. And then he proceeded to manipulate the magicks at his disposal and to close the rift before whatever it was on the other side became greedy and came looking for more.

  The passage closed with a sharp, popping sound, and Bram turned to see the three ghouls that he had laid out fleeing for their lives.

  “Should we chase them?” Bogey asked, a mischievous twinkle in his dark eyes.

  Bram continued to watch the ghouls as they furiously dug down into the cemetery grass, disappearing beneath the earth.

  “No,” he said. “I think we’ve scared them enough. Plus, it helps to get the message out there.”

  “Don’t vandalize cemeteries?” Bogey asked.

  “No, that the Brimstone Network might not be as dead as they would like to think.”

  Emily Larch lay upon her bed, listening to her iPod on shuffle and staring through the skylight in her ceiling up at the nighttime sky.

  A new song began and she picked up the Nano, sliding her finger across the face of the player to get to the next selection.

  She didn’t like that song either.

  Having over a thousand songs available, which she’d loaded into the tiny MP3 player herself, Emily would have thought that the chances of getting songs that she didn’t like would have been slim to none, but that was just her luck.

  Or maybe she was just in a cranky mood.

  She scrolled through a few more songs before she found something that she could tolerate, and then lay back upon her pillow.

  The song played, but she really didn’t hear it, totally distracted by her thoughts about the Brimstone Network.

  They had made her a member of the new Network, seeing as how the old members were all dead. Bram had said that her name was on a special list that had been compiled by his father, that her unique ability—what a freakin’ joke—made her a perfect candidate for a newly formed Brimstone group.

  Unique ability.

  Emily felt her anger spark, and something savage stirred within her.

  Her flesh began to tingle, the fingernails on her hands feeling as though they were starting to grow.

  It took lots of deep breaths, and calming thoughts about beautiful fields of flowers, and waterfalls, before the sensations started to pass.

  It was getting harder to keep the beast under control, especially since telling Bram and the other weirdos that made up the new Network that she would join their group.

  But they had said there might be a chance they could cure her. That was a chance—no matter how slight—she was willing to take the risk for.

  Emily was a lycanthrope—a werewolf, for those who weren’t up on their supernatural, shape-shifting afflictions. She had no idea why she had been cursed to change into a large, humanoid wolf whenever she got upset. Not familiar with anyone afflicted with the same condition from her family tree, Emily just figured it was a first prize from a spin of the wheel of crap.

  She would do anything to cure herself of this curse, even if it meant hanging out, and sometimes fighting with a group with probably just as many issues as she had, maybe more.

  Of course her parents were clueless, unaware of her bestial condition, as well as her frequent comings and goings from the house at all hours of the day and night. It was amazing what a little magick could do to disguise the fact that you weren’t home, tucked beneath the covers fast asleep, when you should be.

  Another song had started, and she didn’t really care for that one either. Emily sat up and removed her earbuds, disgusted with the fact that the iPod had decided to play only the stuff that she’d rather not hear right then. Turning off the plastic white device and bunching the earbud wires into a little ball, she bounced off her bed and opened her dresser drawer.

  What sounded like breaking glass, followed by her parents’ voices raised in panic, found its way up the stairs and into her room.

  Emily dropped the iPod into the drawer and pushed it shut, heading toward her door.

  “What’re you guys doing down there?” she hollered, stepping just outside her room and into the hallway.

  It sounded like her parents were having a wrestling match, and with an eye-roll of disgust, she strode down the hallway to the stairs to see what was going on.

  “Hey, do you guys want to knock it off, or what?” she said, annoyed, rounding the corner from the staircase and heading toward the kitchen to where the noise seemed to be coming from. “What if I was sleeping or something?”

  Emily froze in the kitchen entryway.

  Her mother was hurriedly pulling down all the shades and closing all the blinds while her dad had tipped the heavy, wooden kitchen table on its side and was placing it up against the sliding doors that led outside onto the deck.

  “What the heck are you doing?” Emily said, the question coming out as a shrill-sounding shriek.

  “Everything is going to be fine,” her mother said, not even looking at her. She rushed to join her father in placing the kitchen table up against the glass of the sliding door.

  “What is going on?” Emily screamed, stomping one of her feet.

  Her father quickly looked away from what he was doing. His eyes were wild, and even though she didn’t want to, she could smell the strong stink of fear wafting from his pores.

  The odor made the beast inside her restless.

  “Go up to your room and lock the door,” her father ordered.

  “I won’t,” Emily said defiantly, walking farther into the kitchen. She knew that they were likely just wanting to protect her, but they were acting like total nut bags. And besides, if there was anybody in the house who didn’t need protecting, it was her.

  The wolf inside purred in agreement.

  The smell hit her as if it were placed on a cloth and shoved on her face.

  Blood.

  She found it at once on the tile floor near the sliding deck doors; a glistening puddle of maroon.

  “Whose blood is that?” she demanded.

  “We don’t have time for this, Emily,” her father said, trying to wedge the table beneath the metal door frame.

  “It’s from one of them,” her mother said so fast that the words all blended together. “We killed one of them when the first tried to get in.”

  Emily’s se
nsitive hearing picked up the sound of voices, high-pitched chattering from somewhere in their backyard.

  “Them?” she asked. “One of them … one of who?”

  The voices from outside were coming closer, so close that even her parents could hear them now.

  The beast … the wolf inside her, could sense it like the blood on the kitchen floor. Danger. There was danger in the air.

  “There isn’t time, Emily,” her mother said. She stepped back from the table, eyes huge with fear.

  There were footsteps on the other side of the door, something scampering across the deck.

  Emily ran toward the sink, reaching for the shade of the window above it. Taking hold of the shade, she yanked it aside to see out into the yard. Something moved in the tall grass, and she squinted, allowing her eyes to become more like the wolf’s so that she could see in the darkness.

  Tiny figures, no bigger than a foot tall, were marching through the grass of her backyard from the woods beyond. They were wearing crude outfits of burlap and leather; tall, pointed, red hats decorated their round, squat heads.

  Gnomes, Emily thought, staring at the small creatures moving on her house. They looked like the garden statues that people have in their yards for decoration.

  Only these looked as though they wanted to kill you.

  Carrying tiny knives, swords, and spears, they advanced toward the house.

  “What do they want?” Emily asked her parents.

  Her mother shook her head, staring at the table stacked in front of the sliding door. The pounding of tiny fists could be heard from outside.

  “We didn’t know that it would bother them,” her mother said, shaking her head from side to side. “We just wanted a nice compost pile for the garden, that’s all.”

  “You dumped garbage on them?” Emily asked. “Is that what this is about?”

  Her mother looked toward her with tears in her eyes.

  “How were we supposed to know that they lived there?”

  Over the last few weeks the world had altered dramatically, the everyday rules changing from one moment to the next. One minute it was perfectly fine to dump garbage in your own backyard, and the next you were somehow upsetting a nest of nasty gnomes.