The warlord slowly shook his head. “I’m afraid not, for she will be dead as those who served her . . . and those who share her blood.”
The priest managed to stand taller, facing down the warrior who threatened his queen.
“When Queen Ligeia sentenced you to die for your strong beliefs in the old ways, I questioned the severity of the sentence,” the former warrior said. “But now I can see that she was very wise, foreseeing something that I had not the ability to fathom.”
Barnabas smiled.
“When she sent me out into the wilderness, astride my mount, hands bound behind my back with shackles that canceled out my natural ability to escape them, I believed I was going to die,” Barnabas said, remembering his sentencing.
The warlord’s eyes glazed over as he continued to remember.
“There was even a time then when I started to believe that Ligeia was right . . . that maybe it was time for the old ways to be abandoned . . . that my kind needed to be excised, like a malignant growth upon a vital organ cut out by a surgeon’s hand. With the growth gone, the body would live and prosper.”
Barnabas stopped, his focus returning to the here and now.
“I actually started to believe that I was some sort of poisonous growth upon the Specter race . . . can you believe it?”
Colridge remained silently defiant as Barnabas continued.
“This was the thought that crossed my mind as I was thrown from my dying steed, to lie upon the bleached ground of the northern Specter wastelands waiting to die. My final thoughts being that I had been wrong . . . that the old ways were in fact wrong.”
Barnabas’s eyes seemed to glaze over as he traveled back through time, remembering the experience.
“And then, as if something were responding to my doubts, there came to be a blinding light in the gray night sky and something the likes of which I had never seen descended upon me.”
Barnabas turned toward the entrance from where he and his troops had forced their way into the holy place.
A lone figure dressed in long, gray robes, its features hidden by a hood, drifted silently into the room. Colridge took note of how the other Specter soldiers reacted to the strange figure, stepping back and away from it, and averting their eyes as it passed.
“I thought it was some sort of godlike being come to take me into the afterlife,” Barnabas said, watching as the hooded figure came to stand nearby.
“Little did I know it was my destiny come to call.”
Colridge stared at the robed figure, trying desperately to capture a glance of the stranger’s face from within the darkness of the hood.
“Is this how your madness was achieved?” the priest asked. “We had heard tales of some sort of devastating weapon, but I never would have imagined that . . .”
“Madness?” Barnabas questioned, turning his gaze from his hooded servant back to the former warrior now turned priest. “It’s far from that,” he said, pulling a short sword from a scabbard by his side. “In fact, I’ve come to realize that I’m one of the few left in this kingdom who is indeed sane.”
Barnabas stared at the bladed weapon he’d drawn.
“Fight me,” the warlord demanded. He gestured for one of his soldiers to bring forth a weapon. A sword was laid at Colridge’s feet.
“At least die knowing that you saw the error of your ways in your final moments,” Barnabas said.
The priest looked down upon the weapon and thought about how easy it would be to pick it up . . . to grab hold of the old ways again . . . but he fought the urge and managed to tear his gaze away from the weapon beneath him.
“I will do no such thing,” the old man said, feeling the strength of his faith surge through him, making him all the stronger.
Barnabas moved again like the serpent, the blade of the short sword darting forward to plunge deeply into the former warrior’s stomach.
The flock huddled at the back of the church gasped with the violence of the act.
Colridge’s mouth opened in a silent scream as the metal blade pierced his body and he dropped to his knees upon the floor, his lifeblood beginning to drain from his body to pool beneath him.
“Look at how pathetic you are,” Barnabas snarled, withdrawing the blade and wiping it clean upon the shoulder of Colridge’s robes. “You have the power within to have survived this strike . . . the power to make yourself like smoke so the blade would have passed harmlessly through you, but instead you have chosen to die.”
Colridge looked down upon the crimson red that poured from his wound, placing his hands against the fatal injury.
“I told you . . . that the old ways are . . . dead,” Colridge said, struggling with the words as he attempted to raise his hands above his head in a gesture associated with the ascension.
“No, Colridge,” the warlord said with a sad shake of his head. “It is not the old ways that are dead . . . it is you.”
And the priest of the ascension watched as the warlord Barnabas drew back his sword and swung with all his might, delivering a blow that Colridge was certain would separate his head from his body.
A blow meant to deny him the glory of ascension.
The creature called Trinity spoke from within the darkness of its robes.
“Will you kill them as well?” it asked, making reference to the others who cowered in fear beneath the roof of the holy place.
Barnabas stared down upon Coleridge’s severed head, contemplating the strange expression of peace on his face.
This just confused the warlord all the more. Have I somehow helped the old, foolish warrior achieve what he sought? Barnabas wondered.
“No,” Barnabas answered the creature, lashing out with his booted foot to kick the head of the former warrior away from his sight.
He turned his attention to Colridge’s flock, striding toward the men, women, and children who had freely given up the old ways of the Specter, believing that a new and peaceful existence was due them.
Barnabas spat upon the floor of the holy place as he looked at the sheep, cowering in the shadows.
“No, I want you to change them,” he said, looking back to his hooded associate. “I want you to transform them into something that I can use . . . something that will make the greatest Specter warrior pale in its bloodlust.”
“So be it,” Trinity said, its glowing hands emerging from within the sleeves of its robes.
Tendrils of crackling white light streamed from Trinity’s outstretched hands, tendrils of light that struck each of the ascension believers.
One after the other they began to scream as their bodies were painfully transformed.
Becoming like something from the darkest of nightmares.
“My sister?”
Bram actually felt himself begin to get a little light-headed.
First his mother, and now this?
“How . . . ?” he began.
“We share the same mother,” Lita explained. She had retrieved some stinky kind of moss and was applying it to the wounds on his shoulder and stomach. “But not the same father.”
“So you’re my half sister,” Bram said.
Lita smiled, tilting her head slightly to one side. “Is that what they call it on your world?” she asked. “The Specter say that we would be of partial blood, you and I.”
“Partial blood,” Bram repeated.
“When Elijah Stone proposed a treaty between our races to avert war, my mother—who was then princess—was already wed to my father,” Lita explained.
“Did something happen to your father?” Bram asked.
Lita finished taking care of his wounds, allowing him to button up his shirt. Though the moss stank pretty badly, the injuries were already starting to hurt less. “He had to step down as the husband to the princess in order for the treaty to be finalized.”
“Step down?”
“It was the saddest day in my father’s life,” the girl said wistfully, “and some say that is what led to his death.”
/> “I don’t know what to say,” Bram said, the realization sinking in that the treaty between humanity and the Specter, as devised by his father, had broken up a family.
Lita looked at him, a spark of suppressed anger evident in her dark eyes.
“What is there to say?” she said. “It was all politics . . . a way to keep our worlds from destroying each other.”
She again looked to her mother.
“The sadness of one man was but the smallest of worries . . . there were lives at stake.”
“I feel like I should be apologizing . . . for him,” Bram said.
“I doubt your father was even aware,” Lita said, folding her hands neatly in her lap. “Though I must admit, I hated him . . . and you, for that matter.”
Bram started to speak again, and she raised a delicate hand, silencing him.
“But I came to understand the importance of what the union of our two kinds would signify . . . that it would bring about the Specter ascension.”
“Ascension?” Bram questioned.
“It is written in one our most ancient texts that a Specter queen would meet a man of stone . . .”
“Elijah Stone,” Bram whispered, filling in the detail as he came to understand.
“Yes, and he would help to initiate our world’s ascent to its next phase of glory,” Lita finished.
“And did he?” Bram asked, wanting to know if the prophecy of the ancients had actually come true.
“We are still on the path,” Lita said. “There are some amongst my people who believe this to be blasphemy . . . that to abandon the old, bloodthirsty warriors’ ways will lead to our demise.”
The pieces began to fall into place for Bram.
“Is that why the queen is here instead of in her kingdom?” Bram asked. “Are you hiding from those who want to keep the old ways alive?”
A strange, shrieking sound echoed through the vast chamber.
“Quickly, douse the lantern!” Lita hissed to one of the Specter soldiers.
“What is it?” Bram asked, his senses alert.
The girl put a finger to her lips as the area was plunged into darkness as the lantern was extinguished.
Bram did as he was told, standing perfectly still as the horrible sound again drifted through the chamber, only this time, closer.
He blinked his eyes, attempting to adjust to the lack of light, the only illumination now coming from the strange fungus that grew upon the curved walls and ceiling of the vast chamber.
Something moved in the distance and he strained his vision to make out what it was.
The inhuman thing padded into the room on long, spindly limbs. It crawled upon all fours, its face close to the ground as it moved.
Bram could hear it snuffling as it carefully moved along. And then as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he could see its features. Its flesh was the color of a dead fish, its mouth wide and jagged like that of a jack-o’-lantern, its nose a moist open hole in its face; but the most disturbing thing of all was that it did not have any eyes.
Suddenly the creature stopped, rising up on its back legs, its head moving from side to side. The hole that was its nose opened and closed as it sampled the air, searching for a scent.
There was something clutched in one of its spidery hands, and it brought it up to its face, shoving it beneath the breathing hole and sniffing loudly.
It was a piece of fine cloth—silk, perhaps—and Bram knew that it likely belonged to the queen.
The beast sniffed the silk again, and then the air of the chamber.
It growled, dropping down to all fours again, coming farther into the chamber.
Bram looked to Lita beside him, his gaze questioning.
The princess stared ahead at the monster, studying its every movement.
It came to a sudden stop, its entire body starting to quiver as it again stood erect, the hole in its face beginning to twitch.
Bram caught sight of movement nearby and saw that Lita was withdrawing a deadly looking knife from a sheath by her side. He reached out to grab hold of her arm, but his hand passed through it, her flesh no longer material.
Lita darted across the chamber floor.
The beastie had yet to notice her approach, but it did appear to be in the midst of a new act. The creature threw back its head, opening its jagged, jack-o’-lantern mouth wide.
Bram expected a sound to be emitted, but there was nothing, almost as if the monster were only yawning.
Lita exploded from the darkness before the blind beast, her sudden return to solid flesh making the long-legged creature recoil with a hiss.
It turned to flee, but she was faster, leaping upon its back, her knife blade doing extensive damage before the horrible thing could even begin to react.
Bram went to help, but it didn’t appear that she needed any.
“What is that thing?” he asked as she wiped her knife clean on the piece of silk the monster had been holding in its hand.
“We call it a Shriekhound,” she explained. “Barnabas has taken to using them to track his enemies.”
“It’s a good thing you took care of it when you did,” Bram said.
“No. I was too late,” Lita said, turning around to face the soldiers that stood at her mother’s side. “Quickly—we don’t have much time. We have to get her ready to leave.”
“But I thought . . . ,” Bram began.
“You thought wrong,” she answered tersely. “The Shriekhound emits a cry that only other Shriekhounds can hear. I was too late in stopping it from crying out. We have to leave at once before this place is swarming with the foul beasts.”
The Specter soldiers moved with great speed but at the same time were incredibly gentle with the unconscious queen as they prepared her for transport.
They had made a kind of stretcher to carry her, and were ready to move at once.
“Is there anything I can do?” Bram asked the two armored warriors.
They stood waiting for Lita, who was still gathering up the last of their belongings.
“No,” said one of the stoic soldiers.
“She is our responsibility,” said the other.
“They’ll take care of her, Abraham,” Lita said, hefting a large pack upon her shoulder.
“Let me,” he said, relieving her of some of the burden. She allowed him to carry one of the packs while she carried another.
They started toward one of the larger exits at a very quick pace.
“You didn’t answer me before,” Bram said, adjusting the pack of supplies on his shoulder for better comfort. “Are you being hunted by someone who doesn’t want to give up the old ways?”
“Yes, by Barnabas,” she said. “He is one of the Specter army’s greatest soldiers. It was he who wanted to lead an invasion to your earth when the barrier between our two worlds was breached.”
“He also tried to have me killed,” Bram added.
“You were to die as our mother was supposed to,” Lita said. “But we are made of sterner stuff.”
The soldiers carrying the queen upon the stretcher moved ahead of them, heading down the twisting passage toward a faint, distant light.
Bram again gazed at the woman, whom he did not know but who had been responsible for giving him life, as she passed, feeling a strange protectiveness emerge.
“What did he do to her?” Bram asked.
Lita looked at him as they walked.
“Barnabas—what did he do to make her like that?”
“Poison,” Lita answered. “A poison not found upon the Specter world. Likely Barnabas had it brought over from one of the foul worlds that he is in contact with, and that has helped him achieve his madness. Try as our loyal physicians did, it does not appear to have an antidote here.”
They walked in silence, both of them staring at the two Specter warriors and the burden that they carried up ahead.
“Without a cure, I’m afraid she is going to die.”
The words came before Bram could give
them much thought. They came from his heart, charged with raw, powerful emotion.
“No,” he said with complete conviction. “She isn’t going to die.”
I won’t let her.
7. ONE OF HIS KIDNEYS HAD HAD DEALINGS WITH THE Fthaggua before.
It was a distant memory, and not all that clear, but Mr. Stitch, made from the body parts of the finest Brimstone agents who had died in battle, knew that he didn’t care for the demon race in the least, and doubted that this journey to their homeworld was going to change his opinion much.
Bogey’s rift crackled and sparked as the passage from the Brimstone Network’s headquarters to Fthaggua opened.
The demons had done a good job of protecting their defenses. Powerful magickal barriers had been erected to keep spells very much like Bogey’s rift from their world, but the Brimstone Network had better magick users.
The spells of Fthaggua sorcerers collapsed as if a rock had been hurled through a plate-glass window, allowing Stitch to step directly into what he believed to be the Fthaggua leader’s throne room.
His kidney twitched with the memory of this place. Its original owner had died here on a mission, and Stitch was more than happy to oblige it a little bit of payback if the need arose.
It seemed that he was interrupting lunch as he stepped from the quickly collapsing passage, a body bag slung over one of his broad shoulders.
“What is the meaning of this?” the Fthaggua leader bellowed, looking up from a bowl of what appeared to be giant maggots in some sort of a heavy cream sauce.
Delicious.
“Greetings, Fthaggua leader,” Stitch said, bowing ever so slightly, hoping that the translation spell placed upon him earlier would work. By the look on the demon’s horrific face, he could see that it was. “I bid you welcome from the Brimstone Network.”
He watched the eyes of the demon grow wider with the mention of the Network, and for good reason. It was a Fthaggua that had entered his home and made an attempt on his friend’s life.
Stitch was surprised the creature hadn’t tried to bolt from the room.
“You are not welcome here,” the leader scowled, dipping its hand into the bowl of squirming life and bringing a handful to his waiting mouth.