Just when thirteen-year-old Bram Stone has gotten the hang of running the new BRIMSTONE NETWORK, an unexpected shock is sent his way. Ligeia, QUEEN OF THE SPECTER—the mother he’s never known—suddenly appears in his life, leading Bram to explore his specter half as he never has before.
The reunion is overshadowed by a dark threat from Barnabas, an evil SPECTER WARLORD. In this final showdown between the Brimstone Network and Barnabas, Bram and his team must join forces with the unlikeliest of allies to wage a war against their foe and his secret weapon: the mysterious being known as Trinity.
Check out the first two books in this TERRIFYING trilogy, The Brimstone Network and The Shroud of A’Ranka.
ALADDIN PAPERBACKS
Simon & Schuster, New York / Cover designed
by Karin Paprocki / Cover illustration
copyright © 2009 by Zachariah Howard /
Ages 9–13 / SimonSaysKids.com / 0109
Paths finally cross. . . .
Eventually Bram was close enough to make out a shape, a human shape, lying in a makeshift bed, covered with thick furs. Closer still, he was able to make out that it was a woman, the exposed flesh of her face so pale, it was as if her skin was glowing.
Bram wasn’t sure how he knew this, but he sensed that the woman was not well, that she was quite ill, and that her life was currently hanging in the balance.
And without explanation he knew something else as well, something that he could not act upon due to the fact that two armored warriors had surged out of the darkness at him, the points of their spears looking to strike him down.
The warriors were attempting to keep him from her, from the sickly woman who was very close to death.
The woman, whom he suddenly realized without any question, was his mother.
The Brimstone Network Book 1:
The Brimstone Network
The Brimstone Network Book 2:
The Shroud of A’Ranka
The Brimstone Network Book 3:
Specter Rising
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ALADDIN PAPERBACKS
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Text copyright © 2009 by Tom Sniegoski
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
ALADDIN PAPERBACKS and related logo are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Designed by Mike Rosamilia and Karin Paprocki
First Aladdin Paperbacks edition January 2009
Library of Congress Control Number 2008929318
ISBN-13: 978-1-43915-339-0 (eBook)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-5106-3
ISBN-10: 1-4169-5106-7
For Bear, a very good dog
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Much love always to LeeAnne and Mulder for putting up with my garbage.
Big, Big thanks put in a box tied up with a pretty bow to Liesa Abrams for being the coolest editor and beastie around.
Thanks again to Zach Howard for knocking another one out of the park, Christopher Golden, Dave Kraus, Eric Powell, John & Jana, Harry & Hugo, James Mignogna, Don Kramer, Greg Skopis, Mom & Dad Sniegoski, Mom & Dad Fogg, David Carroll, Ken Curtis, Lisa Clancy, Pete Donaldson, Kim & Abby, Jon & Flo, Pat & Bob, Sheila Walker, Mike Mignola, Christine Mignola, Katie Mignola, and Timothy Cole and the Specter hordes down at Cole’s comics.
It’s been a blast. Catch ya in the funny papers.
Tom
PROLOGUE IT’S TRUE WHAT THEY SAY. THE thought ran through Tobias Blaylock’s fevered mind as he prepared himself to die. Life really does flash before your eyes.
He held his sister tightly in his arms, and remembered everything.
He saw his parents, high-ranking operatives in the Brimstone Network, but he also saw the horrific fate that that prestigious position had brought to them. Rogue Witches had ended their existences in a cataclysm of fiery magick, their lives snuffed out before his young eyes.
The pain had not ended there.
During that very attack, his little sister, Claire, had been infected with a paranormal virus that caused her tiny body to produce such dangerous levels of magickal power that she became a threat to the world. The Brimstone Network tried and failed to cure her, instead freezing her in magickal stasis to stop the flow of destructive magick from her body.
Tobias lost everything he loved, and a bitter seed of resentment began to grow within his soul—resentment that led him down a path most unwise.
Twisted by grief, Tobias made a deal with a powerful evil. To save his sister, he gave up information that allowed the black sorcerer, Crowley, to savagely murder the Brimstone Network.
But the organization did not die. It continued to live in the form of a boy, the son of the Network’s leader. It was he who resuscitated the Network, gathering agents with fantastic abilities to continue its ancient mission of protecting the earth from the forces of the supernatural.
This young incarnation of the Network saw the evil in Crowley’s plans, risking life and limb to prevent him from using the devastating power that flowed from Claire’s body to bring down the magickally erected barriers separating the earth from the hostile realms beyond.
And the Brimstone Network had almost succeeded.
Almost.
Finally seeing the error in his decision to aid Crowley, Tobias had helped destroy the evil sorcerer, but in the process, the special containment shell that held his sister was breached, allowing the destructive force that emanated from her body to flow out into the world.
There was only one thing more he could do to right the grievous error he had made, so he ordered them away. He held his sister tightly and they prepared to meet their end together, confident that the world would be safe after they were gone.
But just as the supernatural power that flowed through the little girl’s body reached a critical level, just before their flesh and bones would dissolve in an explosion so intense that it would change the world, Tobias sensed that they were no longer alone.
Something had joined them.
Something dark and filled with evil.
THREE MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT
1. THE HALLWAYS OF THE BRIMSTONE NETWORK WERE filled with life again.
Bram left his office—just the thought of having his own office made him smile—proceeding down the corridor toward the elevators that would bring him to the Network’s recently reinstated command center.
“Good morning, sir,” two new female recruits to the agency said as he passed them.
Sir? Did they just call me sir?
“Good morning,” he said in response.
He could hear them whispering to each other as they passed, one of them breaking out in a high-pitched laugh. Bram wondered what they were saying, looking down at himself,
at the fit of his two-piece uniform, making sure that his fly wasn’t down, or that he hadn’t dribbled toothpaste on the front of himself or anything.
Everything looked fine.
Paranoid much? he thought, rounding a corner and nearly running into another of the Network’s new officers. He was an older one, somebody Mr. Stitch referred to as having originally been put out to pasture.
“Retired” was another way of putting it.
They had contacted these older agents of the Network—those who had already given of themselves—and had asked them to come back, to help the Network live again.
It made Bram feel good that every single one of them had returned without question.
“Sir,” the older gentleman said with a salute.
Bram returned the gesture, watching as the agent’s eyes started to bug from his head.
“Watch out!” he cried.
Bram quickly spun around, almost colliding with a ladder and the workman who was putting a new coat of paint on the corridor walls.
Instinctively, Bram allowed his body to ghost, passing through the ladder without any difficulty, his body reconstituting as the potentially embarrassing misstep was avoided.
“Very good, sir,” the older man said with a smile, before heading off on his way.
Bram looked up to see the painter staring down at him, his brush frozen in its latest stroke of powder blue.
“How . . . ?” the man asked, clearly not sure what he had just seen.
“It’s all done with mirrors,” Bram said with a wink as he turned and continued down the corridor toward the elevator.
The man was still staring dumbfounded as Bram leaned against the wall. He almost wanted to take the time to explain to the poor guy that he was half Specter, and that the otherdimensional race had the ability to make their bodies immaterial; but there were other places he needed to be, so Bram just waved as the doors slid closed on the painter’s shocked expression.
Bram started to laugh, and he realized how good it felt.
When was the last time that he had actually laughed at something . . . had really been amused? The moments were few and far between, and he took a second to appreciate this one as the elevator descended.
Since revealing to the world that the Network was still in existence, things had been looking up. Almost immediately they had been swamped with requests from people on how they could join. Between the new recruits and the returning retirees, the Network was just about ready to really start doing some good around the world.
The elevator stopped and the doors slid apart, revealing the newly refurbished Brimstone Network command center—a sight that always took his breath away.
The place was bustling, agents talking on headsets with other agents in the field, multiple flat-screen monitors hanging above the computers and high-tech communications equipment.
It still amazed him how many people and businesses had wanted to help them get back on their feet. Donations of money, equipment, and training had poured in at the onset. Even the federal government had lent them a helping hand, allowing them access to many of their weather and communication satellites.
Agent Trask was the first to notice him. “Commander present,” he announced in a loud voice as he snapped to attention.
And every agent in the room did the same.
“At ease,” Bram said, immediately feeling uncomfortable.
He’d voiced his discomfort with this kind of attention to Stitch and was quickly set right. According to Stitch, in order for an organization such as the Network to exist, there had to be one commanding figure they all looked up to and respected.
And that person, as weird as it made him feel, was Bram.
The agents went back to their jobs. Bram overhead conversations between command center agents to their agents in the field regarding things such as Red Hat infestations in the Black Forest of Germany, and haunted subway trains making the rush-hour commute crazy in New York.
Just another day in the Brimstone Network.
They weren’t as strong as the Network had once been before the black mage Crowley’s attack, but they were working on it, and from what he could see, they seemed to be doing a fine job.
“Sir?” a voice beside him asked.
Bram turned toward a recruit, a pretty girl with golden blond hair. He had to admit, she looked really cute in the Brimstone Network uniform. He quickly pushed the thought from his mind, remembering who he was to these people.
“Yes, Agent . . .”
Bram wracked his brain for her name.
“Buchanan,” she said, just as he was about to give the same answer.
“I was just about to say that,” he told her, and she smiled and rolled her eyes a bit, not believing him, he was sure.
She removed her earpiece and handed it to him.
“It’s Agent Larch,” she said.
“Agent Larch?” he repeated, digging through his memory for a face.
“Oh, Emily!” he said, feeling like a complete idiot.
“Yes?” he said into the tiny receiver in the earpiece.
He heard Emily’s voice as clear as a bell. “Your twelve o’clock interview is here, and you’re not.”
“What time is it now?” he asked, eyes scanning the room for a clock.
“Twelve twenty-five,” Emily answered. “Way to make a good impression, Commander,” she said before breaking the connection.
Bram had to move.
“Thanks,” he said, handing the earpiece back to Agent Buchanan. “I really was going to say Buchanan,” he added as she turned back to her post.
“Of course you were, sir,” she said.
He still didn’t think she believed him.
Bram quickly went to the elevator and, as he waited for the doors to open, he turned back to the command center, taking it all in.
Things are coming along just fine.
Bram knew his father would have been proud.
The magickal passage opened with a crackle into Desmond St. Laurent’s darkened room and Bogey carefully stepped out, his arms filled with treats.
“Hey, Dez . . . it’s me,” he called out. “Thought you might like some—”
The room exploded with activity.
It was as if gravity had suddenly been canceled. Books, clothes, scattered pieces of trash, a lamp, and even a clothes dresser lifted into the air and began to fly around the room.
Bogey had to duck to keep from being hit in the head with a pair of work boots that whizzed by just a little too close for comfort.
“I told you to leave me alone,” Dez’s voice said from somewhere in the darkness.
“Yeah, but I brought snacks!” Bogey tried to explain while ducking a hardback collection of The Lord of the Rings.
Desmond St. Laurent had been pretty down these last few days. It was sort of complicated, but he had these really powerful psychokinetic abilities, so powerful that he was able to keep his father around even after the man had died of a heart attack nearly a year ago.
Bram didn’t think it was right and had asked Dez to let his father die. It had taken the boy some time to accept, but he finally did, and Douglas St. Laurent was now buried.
After the funeral service, Dez had gone to his quarters at the Brimstone Network headquarters, and nobody had seen him since.
Bogey was worried about his friend, and thought that maybe something from Mickey’s One-Stop would cheer him up. It was Bogey’s favorite convenience store—their burritos were to die for.
“I just want to be left alone, all right?” Dez cried, as even more objects from the room lifted up from wherever they lay to join the mass already flying about the room. “Why can’t you people understand that?”
It was only a matter of time before he received a cracked skull, or maybe even lost an eye, so Bogey decided that it was best to take leave of his friend.
Dez wasn’t in the best of places right now.
Singing a song of rifting to open a passage so tha
t he could leave, Bogey shifted the items from Mickey’s, placing a large plastic Slushie cup upon the floor.
If there was one thing that could cheer his friend, this was it.
How could it not? the Mauthe Dhoog thought as he jumped into the crackling passage that would take him away from his friend’s room and the swirling maelstrom of doom it had become.
Blue Slushies are like magick.
Dez tuned his psychokinetic powers down just a bit, allowing the objects in orbit around the room to return to the ground from where they’d been snatched up, with a minimal amount of damage.
He was getting better with his abilities . . . stronger.
The boy shifted his awkward bulk on the bed, his nearly useless legs requiring him to reach down and move them into a more comfortable position.
He considered turning on the lights, but then thought better of it. Dez liked the darkness; it eliminated distractions, and he had quite a bit to think about.
“I hated to chase him away,” Dez said to the deep shadows. With his mind he reached out for the Slushie left by his friend, using his telekinesis to bring the cup to his waiting hand. “But I didn’t want him to suspect anything.”
There was a crackling discharge of bluish energy from near his bed as Dez took a sip from the icy drink.
“Are you ashamed of your dear old dad?” asked a familiar voice from within the humming blue energy.
“No,” Dez said before taking another long draw of Slushie. “Just worried about what they’ll think when they learn that you’re not exactly gone.”
2. “DO YOU HAVE ANY POWERS?”
Emily had been looking at the clock on the wall of the interview room again, wondering what could be keeping Bram, when the young girl sitting across from her broke the silence.
“Excuse me?” Emily asked.
“Powers?” the girl asked. She chewed on a plastic straw sticking out from the corner of her mouth. “Y’know,” she said, wiggling her fingers in the air. “Any unusual abilities?”
“I really don’t think that’s any of your business. . . .” Emily’s eyes scanned the application on the clipboard in front of her. “Johanna Hark-ness,” she finished, looking up with a small smile.