The Brimstone Network (Brimstone Network Trilogy)

  Everyone was quiet as they drank their tea, except for Bogey, who had curled into a tight ball on top of a workbench and had gone fast to sleep. Emily sat by herself, sipping her hot drink from a beaker, staring off into space. Bram was tempted to go and talk with her but decided that maybe she wanted to be left alone. Stitch had taken the still unconscious Tobias to a corner far back in the chamber.

  Bram finished his tea thinking back to the fight at the St. Laurent house, remembering the intensity of Desmond’s powers unleashed. He set the empty cup down and walked across the chamber to the handicapped boy sitting in a wheelchair beside the corpse of his father.

  “How’s the tea?” Bram asked as he approached, unsure of what to say.

  Desmond seemed startled by the question, looking at the glass beaker in his lap. “I don’t really like tea that much.” He shrugged. “Dad was the tea drinker.”

  Bram squatted down beside the boy’s chair. “You probably don’t want to hear this, but I know what it’s like.”

  Desmond looked at him, confused. “What what’s like?”

  “Losing your father,” Bram said, quickly looking at the still shape covered in the flowered couch cover on the ground before them.

  “My father isn’t lost, he’s right here,” Dez said.

  Bram was startled by the response, afraid that Desmond might be in shock over the loss.

  And then the flowered slipcover moved.

  Bram fell backward to the floor, startled by the sudden movement, and watched with a bizarre mixture of fear and fascination as Douglas St. Laurent wriggled out of his makeshift shroud to look around at his surroundings.

  “Did I ever get that milk for those cookies?” he asked as a look of confusion crossed his face. “Hey, Dez, where the heck are we?”

  “This is impossible,” Bram said as he shook his head. In this day and age, it seemed that the word “impossible” had pretty much stopped meaning anything.

  Douglas stood up, stepping out of his sheet. “Kind of damp, isn’t it?”

  “It’s all right, Dad, we’re safe. The bad guys can’t get us here,” Desmond told him.

  The boy’s father nodded slowly. “Didn’t I always tell you? Those bad guys are everywhere, just waiting to get their hands on you and your special talents.”

  Not sure yet what was going on, the others were cautiously making their way over to see.

  “Oh. My. God,” Emily cried. “Would somebody please explain to me what the heck is going on? I thought he was dead. Wasn’t he dead?”

  “He was dead at the time,” Stitch said. “But now I’m not so sure.”

  “Cool,” Bogey said. “Think he can make us some more of those cookies?”

  Douglas smiled at them, scratching his head. “Hey, guys,” he said, giving them a wave. “Must’ve dozed off.”

  Bram slowly climbed to his feet, unable to stop staring at the man who was dead only moments ago. “Dez,” he asked. “What’s going on here?”

  “Nothing.” The boy shrugged, refusing to make eye contact. He swished the tea that he hadn’t drunk in the glass container. “Guess he wasn’t hurt that bad.”

  “Not that bad?” Emily stated. “He’s got a hole in his chest. I can see through him.”

  Desmond studied his fingernails. “We’ll just get him another shirt so you don’t have to look at it.”

  Douglas St. Laurent had started to walk about, hands casually shoved into his front pockets, whistling cheerfully as if coming back to life was no big deal.

  “I know what you’re doing, Dez,” Bram said, recalling something he’d read in the boy’s file.

  Desmond looked up suddenly, a spark of anger in his eyes. “You don’t know anything.”

  “Your father was very sick,” Bram spoke in his calmest voice. “He had something wrong with his heart, didn’t he?”

  Desmond stared at him for a moment, then slowly nodded. “The doctors said they couldn’t fix him,” He shook his head, remembering. “They said he didn’t have much time left.”

  “What did you do, Dez?” Bram asked.

  “When the time came … when he … I did what I could.” There were tears in the boy’s eyes. “I did what any of you would have done. I used my talent … I used my talent to bring him back … so I wouldn’t be alone. I didn’t want to be alone.”

  Bram wasn’t sure what to say or how to react. He looked toward the others, seeing that they were as stunned as he was.

  “So, anybody want to explain what’s going on?” Douglas suddenly asked.

  Bram looked to Desmond. “Does he have any idea?”

  The boy shook his head. “I don’t let him remember the bad stuff,” he said, and then laughed sadly, wiping tears from his eyes. “I don’t like to remember the bad stuff.”

  Bram found himself drawn to Dez. Standing beside his wheelchair, he put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

  “He wasn’t the best father before he got sick,” Desmond said with a loud sniffle. “Working all the time and stuff … but now he is. I’ve made him the best father he can be.”

  Bram suddenly thought of his own father, and how little he had seen of him, and he had to wonder, if he’d had Dez’s abilities, would he have done the same thing? Would he have created the perfect father out of the remains of the old?

  Bram was creeped out by the whole idea, but tried to handle it the way he imagined a Brimstone leader would have.

  “You realize that you should tell him what you’ve done, don’t you?”

  Dez’s body shuddered as he cried some more.

  “Yes,” he said, looking up at Bram with swollen red eyes. “But not now, please don’t make me do it now.”

  “Not now,” Bram agreed. “But definitely later, all right?”

  He watched as relief appeared in Desmond’s eyes. “Definitely later.”

  “Hello? Is anybody going to answer me?” Douglas asked, oblivious that he shouldn’t even be walking around.

  A low, ghostly moan suddenly filled the chamber and they all looked toward the form of Tobias, tied up in the room’s far corner. The traitor to the Brimstone Network was coming around.

  “We’ve brought one of the bad guys here, back to our secret location for questioning,” Bram answered. “And it looks like it’s time to go to work.”

  “Oh,” Douglas said, accepting the information with a nod. “That seems kind of exciting.”

  Bram looked to Desmond, who was wiping at his eyes, pulling himself together. As they had discussed earlier, he was to be a major part of Tobias’s questioning.

  “Are you up for this?” Bram asked.

  The boy looked up, a sudden hardness to his features.

  “Just try and keep me away from him.”

  Tobias was dreaming, dreaming of the time when he had become less human, when he had become a monster.

  “Tell me everything,” the spider with Crowley’s voice said to him. “And I will make your sister well again.”

  Hanging by a thread of silk, the spider swayed before his eyes like a pendulum, hypnotizing him.

  It would have been so much easier to say that he had been seduced by the sorcerer’s evil power, that Crowley had somehow made him betray those who had taken him in after his parents’ untimely deaths.

  All the anger, sadness, and fear that he’d had inside him after his mother’s and father’s demise was still with him—then and now—and it had changed him, shaped him into the person … the thing he was today.

  He was no better than the beasties he had fought against in his time with the Brimstone Network, no better than the manifestation of evil that had dangled before his eyes by a thread, convincing him that the only way to save his sister’s life was by betraying the Network, and the world.

  Tobias was transported back to that night, when the Network was attacked, when people he had known for many years died so that his sister could live.

  Suddenly he didn’t want to dream anymore, and tried to wake himself up.

&nb
sp; But something held him there.

  Tobias struggled against the dream world. No matter how hard he fought, he couldn’t escape the nightmare of what he had done.

  How does it feel? an unknown voice suddenly asked. How does it feel to suffer like those poor people you killed?

  Tobias pulled his attention from the nightmarish scene unfolding before him and focused on the voice. It was then that he realized that someone was doing this to him, forcing him to see what he had become.

  And he didn’t like it one little bit.

  He came awake filled with rage.

  They were all standing around him, and they appeared surprised.

  It was the cripple in the wheelchair who had been trying to keep him asleep, using some sort of psychic power to make him relive his worst nightmare.

  Tobias was furious, and he used his anger to fuel his magick, easily breaking the bonds they’d placed around his hands and ankles.

  The artificial man was the magick user of the bunch. Tobias could see that he was getting ready to cast a spell, and acted accordingly. The magick fueled by the power of his fury exploded from his hands, the force of the blast striking the man full on, burning his body to bone.

  I’ve taken another life, Tobias thought as one more fragment of his already dwindling humanity fell away.

  The boggart was the next to attack him, and again, Tobias let the magick flow, destroying the corner of the room where the creature had been standing. This time, all that remained was ash.

  The anger inside him was like an inferno, burning hotter with the passing seconds. Those remaining were nothing against him. One by one they fell to his rage. The girl screamed as he boiled her blood in her veins. The cripple didn’t even get a chance to cry out as Tobias turned him to crystal, and another spell of sheer force smashed him into a million glittering pieces.

  All that remained was the son of Stone. Tobias gathered his wrath, conjuring a roiling ball of magickal fury and letting it fly toward the last of his captors. Abraham simply stood, staring at him, their eyes locked as the ball of magick struck and his foe was obliterated in a searing white flash of light.

  Tobias expected to feel some sort of pleasure as the son of the man he hated so much was destroyed. But he felt nothing. It was as if all the poison in his heart had finally been released, purged by this last, violent act.

  Tobias dropped to his knees, breathing heavily. The threat to Crowley’s plans had been eliminated, and with that done, so was the fulfillment of the bargain he had made.

  It was over.

  In more ways than one.

  The magick user gathered his strength and concentrated on a deep patch of shadow in the corner of the room. He would open a passage back to Crowley’s lair and demand that his sister be cured.

  And then he would leave this all behind him, all that he had done, all that he had become. These were his thoughts as he threw himself into the darkness.

  He would leave the world and try to forget.

  Forget the horrors that he had helped to forge.

  14.

  “WHAT DID YOU MAKE HIM SEE?” BRAM asked Desmond. The boy’s father stood protectively by his side. Stitch had given him a new shirt so the rest of them didn’t have to look at the gaping chest wound.

  “I made him see what he wanted to see,” Desmond said, looking up. “All of us dying at his hands.”

  “Nice,” Emily said sarcastically. “Hope we gave him a fight.”

  Desmond shrugged. “Little bit, but he pretty much took us down one after another.”

  “Good job, Dez,” Bram told him.

  “I wanted to kill him,” Desmond said. “And I could’ve, too. Could’ve made his brain pop like a balloon.”

  Douglas beamed proudly. “That’s my boy.” He gave Desmond’s shoulder a proud squeeze.

  “I’m glad you didn’t,” Bram said, walking over to the shadowy area in the chamber where Tobias had disappeared. “Now hopefully we’ll be able to follow him back to Crowley, and put a stop to him once and for all.”

  Bram felt his stomach grow tight with the thought of confronting the ancient sorcerer. Stitch had given him a brief—yet detailed—background on the ancient magick user, and his tumultuous history with the Brimstone Network. If the Network had a wanted list of their most dangerous enemies, this guy would most certainly be on top. There was actually little surprise that somebody like Crowley had been involved with the attack upon the Network; it was Tobias that was the surprise.

  His father had been very trusting, and Bram doubted that he would have suspected betrayal from within.

  “Following the guy sounds heroic and everything, but how we are going to do that?” Emily asked, stepping in front of him to kick at the darkness in the corner. “The guy dove into the shadows and disappeared. It’s not like he left a trail of breadcrumbs.”

  “No breadcrumbs,” Bram said, looking over to where Stitch and Bogey were standing. “But he did leave something behind, something that we can use to follow him.”

  “Earn your keep, lad,” Stitch said, swatting the boggart on the back, making him stumble as he approached.

  Bogey studied the shadows with large, black eyes.

  “What’s he going to do?” Emily asked.

  “Magick leaves a trail … like, a residue. We may not be able to see it or feel it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.” He narrowed his gaze at Bogey. “And I’m guessing people who can manipulate magick to travel, can probably follow that trail. Right, Bogey?” Bram asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” the little creature said. He reached into the shadow, fanning the darkness toward the two slits in his face that acted as a nose. “There it is.”

  He turned to look at Bram. “Smells like dirty socks.”

  “And that’s a good thing?” Bram asked his friend.

  “Yep, easier to follow that way, though I would’ve preferred doughnuts.”

  “So you think you can follow it?” Bram asked. “Think you can open a doorway to Tobias?”

  The creature nodded. “Yeah, I think I can manage.”

  They were all looking at him then, waiting for him to give the word. It made him feel weird to be thought of as a leader, but this was what his father had been preparing him for. It was time he rose to the occasion.

  Bram locked eyes with Stitch. The artificial man smirked, as if he were reading his mind. Go ahead, Stitch’s eyes said, his powerful arms folded across his chest, waiting like the others.

  A memory popped into Bram’s mind unbidden. He was standing in front of his home, devastated that his father was sending him away to begin what would be his whirlwind education. Elijah had come to stand beside him, silent at first, but then saying the words Bram had forgotten, until now.

  “I know this is painful for you, son, but there will come a day when you’ll be called upon to lead. And you must be ready.”

  He’d then touched Bram beneath his chin, tilting his face up so that their eyes would meet. “You must be ready, Abraham.”

  And on that day, Bram had made his father a promise, a promise that he had every intention of keeping.

  “I’m ready,” he said suddenly. “I’m ready to take this fight to those responsible for the death of my father; ready to do battle with those who have crawled from the darkness to harm humanity. I’m ready to show them that the rumors of the death of the Brimstone Network have been greatly exaggerated.”

  He paused, looking at each one of his team before asking the inevitable question.

  “I’m ready, but are you?”

  The lair of the sorcerer was eerily quiet.

  Tobias stepped from his passage into one of the many caverns beneath the ancient cemetery and found it void of life.

  “Hello?” he called out, his voice echoing off the damp, stone walls.

  Immediately he was on edge; there wasn’t a goblin, or imp or even the smallest bloodcrawler to be found. Tobias left the chamber, searching the labyrinthine quarters for signs of monstrous lif
e. Room after room he searched, finding not a sign of Crowley, or the beasties that served his every word.

  Claire.

  He thought of his sister and immediately became concerned. Tobias bounded from the last room, barreling down the winding stone corridors to the place where his sister was kept in stasis, awaiting Crowley’s cure.

  Tobias came to a stumbling halt before the entrance to the special room constructed to house his ill family member, a brief sense of relief rushing through him as he saw that he was no longer alone.

  But that relief was short-lived.

  The room was filled with monsters of every conceivable size and shape, and most appeared to be clad for war. Crowley stood at the side of a conjured gateway, supervising as his minions moved the red, crystal case into the pulsing black opening.

  “What’s happening?” Tobias asked from the doorway.

  Crowley turned his piercing black gaze upon him.

  “Oh, dear,” the sorcerer growled, his four spidery limbs creeping out from beneath his robes to paw the air. “And I was just thinking how smoothly this was all going.”

  The creatures moving the crystal stopped their activity, staring at their master.

  “Continue,” the sorcerer told them, and the monsters obeyed.

  “What are you doing?” Tobias asked, coming farther into the chamber. “Where are you taking her?” he demanded as his path was blocked by a sudden obstruction of monsters.

  “I actually breathed a sigh of relief when I was told you were dead,” Crowley said, turning his eyes to Crackle-bones who stood armored beside him.

  The troll shrugged. “A thousand pardons,” he growled, nervously switching his ax from one hand to the next. “He was tougher than I thought.”

  “I was happy because I thought I was going to avoid this,” the sorcerer said, one of his spider legs waving in the air for emphasis.

  Tobias stirred the magick inside him. “I’ll ask you again, Sorcerer, where are you taking my sister?”

  “Your sister is to play a very important part in my plans, Tobias,” Crowley explained. “The full release of the magickal fury that she has been blessed with will bring about a new age to this pathetic world of humanity. A new age that has been too long in coming.”