The monks were startled by the sudden transformation.
“What’s the matter?” he asked them. “Isn’t this what you wanted me to do?” He hated the sound of his voice when he became like this. There was cruelty in it.
A rage.
It drove him to attack, his staff lashing out at the four monks. And even though they tried to fight back, it was useless, for he could not be touched if he didn’t want to be.
But he could touch them.
He played with them a bit—a part of his nature that he didn’t care for. There were many things the human Bram did not care for in this other part of himself.
One by one he brought them to their knees, which should have been enough. But when he was like this, he always wanted more.
Again he could feel the smile tugging at his mouth with the thought of drawing more blood.
And with that disturbing idea, Bram recoiled. What he had done was more than enough, and he pulled back. It was a struggle, his more violent nature eager for more, but by using relaxation techniques the monks had taught him, he was finally able to restrain his far darker nature.
Bram was holding the staff tightly in his hands, tensed for attack. Slowly, breathing in and out, he felt the intensity leave him, the anger and rage suppressed.
For now.
He let the staff drop from his hands and it clattered to the ground as his trainers carefully picked themselves up from the floor. He bowed to them, and they returned the gesture.
Then he sensed that they were no longer alone, turning to find the ancient Abbot, Master Po standing behind him, his leathery face emotionless.
“Master,” Bram said, and bowed.
Master Po returned the bow, his hands emerging from within the long sleeves of his vibrant red robe. “I am curious,” he said, his voice no louder than a whisper. “Who is it that bows before me. Is it the boy … or the angry spirit?
Bram tensed.
“The human, or the Specter?”
Adrenaline pumping, Elijah sprang into action. He crossed the room in three mighty strides, reaching for the panic button on the wall beneath a clear plastic shell. He drew back his hand, preparing to shatter the fragile plastic covering and sound the alert, when the ground beneath his feet suddenly shifted. The floor cracked, the very structure of the communications center moaning in protest as it shook.
“Is it an earthquake?” one of the agents asked.
If only, the commander of the Brimstone Network thought, a knot of fear forming in the pit of his stomach. He lunged across the shifting floor, shattered the plastic cover, and sounded the alarm just as multiple ghostly apparitions began to flow through the walls, skeletal forms clothed in tattered, ancient burial robes.
It was as he feared, the Network’s supernatural defenses had been breached.
The loathsome apparitions were called larvae. Their ear-piercing wails blended with the horrified screams of their victims, and the pealing of the alarms.
Elijah watched in horror as one of the angry wraiths dropped from the air to feed on one of his agents. Sucking every ounce of life from the poor soul, the larvae dropped the withered corpse to the floor, where it exploded in a cloud of dust.
Then turned its attention to him.
The larvae flew at him—clawed, skeletal fingers reaching out to take hold, but Elijah would not be a willing victim. From the vast pool of knowledge stored within his brain, he plucked a spell specifically for the dissemination of evil spirits. Extending his hand, he uttered the spell, crimson bands of crackling energy flowing from the ends of his fingers to engulf the angry spirit, crushing it out of existence.
The other agents had started to delve into their own spell-knowledge, using the ancient arcana learned in the earliest days of their training to protect themselves and destroy the attacking spirits.
And just when it seemed that the majority of them had managed to survive the brunt of the initial attack, Elijah Stone came to the frightening realization that the larvae were only the beginning.
A distraction.
Another severe tremor rocked the chamber as huge chunks of floor were shoved aside, and the Hollow Men emerged. Hundreds of the grotesque, bronze-armored trolls crawled up from gaping holes that had been burrowed beneath the Network’s headquarters. Wielding swords and battle-axes, they attacked with bloodthirsty fervor.
Other things followed the Hollow Men, lowly beasts long believed banished from this plane of existence. Whoever was responsible for this heinous attack clearly wanted no survivors.
“Defend yourselves!” Elijah yelled over the din of battle, unleashing the full power of his magickal knowledge, scattering swarming trolls with blasts of elemental fury.
Alarm bells continued to toll, but no one came to their aid, and Elijah had to assume that the entire facility was under siege. But he couldn’t worry about that now. The trolls and other nightmare monsters continued to flood the room from the yawning fissures in the floor.
Those who survived fought on, although their numbers were dwindling rapidly under the relentless onslaught, and Elijah could feel the first signs of fatigue. Conjuring a sword of eldritch energy, he turned his attention to a gang of Jokao, large, fur-covered beasts with a hunger for human flesh. They were attacking an agent, who was trying to protect a coworker who had been gravely injured. Elijah could see that the strength of her magickal defenses was waning, and charged into the fray to assist her.
The Jokao leader, his chest adorned with a necklace of human skulls, roared his disapproval, commanding his soldiers in their primitive tongue to dispatch this latest, human nuisance.
The commander of the Brimstone Network was more than happy to show the towering beast men how much of a nuisance he could really be. His blade of magick passed through their flesh, fur, and bone with ease, their cries of surprise as their lives were taken providing him with the strength to continue.
In seconds the five Jakao were dead, their powerful forms reduced to hairy pieces of bloody meat upon the violence-strewn floor. Elijah paused to collect himself, the stink of magick, blood, and violence hanging heavy in the air.
The Brimstone commander looked around at his surroundings, seeing it all unfold in slow motion. Even more of their numbers had fallen, the last of the communications operators fighting hopelessly against innumerable odds.
But that was what the Brimstone Network was supposed to do, what it had always done, since the very first of them struck out against the things that lurked in the darkness.
They fought.
The floor beneath his feet began to shake again, exploding upward in an eruption of rock and dirt that threw him backward to the floor. His magickal blade was knocked from his grasp, and dissolved in a hissing flash.
An enormous creature with the head of a bull jumped up from the new hole in the floor, bounding toward him, murder in its dark, watery eyes.
Elijah was exhausted. No longer having the strength to summon another magickal sword, he barely rolled out of the way as the Minotaur smashed its fist down onto the floor where just moments before he had lain.
The Brimstone commander looked around for something to use in his defense as the Minotaur spun, a blast of moisture-filled air exploding from its dilated nostrils as it charged him.
The bull-headed beast almost upon him, Elijah spied a chunk of the floor. With a burst of energy fueled by desperation, he grabbed the piece of concrete and let it fly into the monster’s face.
The Minotaur stumbled back, snorting wildly as it brushed concrete dust from its large, hate-filled eyes. It roared, lunging at him with incredible speed. Elijah jumped away, but this time wasn’t fast enough.
The Minotaur’s four-fingered hand grabbed hold of the front of his uniform jacket, pulling the commander toward him. Elijah began a spell of defense, but the monster shook him so violently that it was difficult to focus, the words of the intricate incantation jumbled inside his head.
Then the beast wrapped his other hand around the
man’s head and began to squeeze.
Elijah struggled in the monster’s grasp, but it was for nothing. He was exhausted, the sounds of battle around him growing softer as the pressure on his skull increased.
But he couldn’t give up; it wasn’t the Network way.
Digging deep into his memories, he found a simple spell, one of the first ever taught to him, and strained to utter the special words. His skull about to crack, Elijah Stone finished the incantation, feeling his right hand ignite with unnatural fire. Barely conscious, he reached out, fumbling fingers finally finding the Minotaur’s snout.
The reaction was exactly what he’d hoped for. The air stank with the aroma of burning leather as the hurting beast hurled him away.
Colors like the explosion of fireworks danced before his eyes as he tried to pick himself up from where he had landed. All around him were the bodies of his fallen agents, and the leering smiles of the creatures that had attacked them.
They were waiting for him to fall—to give up—but that wasn’t going to happen.
Focusing all his strength, he climbed to his feet as the Minotaur again came at him. Elijah smiled seeing the damage he had done to the beast’s face; it would wear the mark of their battle for the remainder of its miserable life.
It tossed its horned head back in a bellow of fury, raising its fists, ready to bring them down and crush him.
Elijah hoped that he had enough strength left to get out of the way. Muscles trembling, he tensed.
The temperature in the room suddenly became shockingly cold, and he watched in awe as frost, and then an even thicker coating of ice, formed upon the shaggy body of the bull-headed monster, freezing it solid in mid-strike. But the momentum of its movement carried it forward, and the monster fell to the ground shattering like glass.
Elijah looked across the room and wasn’t the least bit surprised to see Tobias Blaylock, both hands crackling with a cold, magickal fire.
“Don’t you wish you had gone home when you had the chance?” the young agent asked, his clothes torn and spattered with gore.
And the commander of the Brimstone Network smiled, feeling for a moment that they might have just the slimmest chance of survival.
But those feelings of hope were quickly dashed. A monstrous, toadlike beast exploded up from beneath the rubble of the shattered floor behind the young Brimstone agent, its cavernous maw open wide. Tobias barely had time to react, spinning toward the threat even as it darted forward and, with one bite, consumed him.
Elijah screamed, unleashing a flurry of magickal blasts that seemed to slide off the monster’s slimy, black flesh. It retreated, allowing the Hollow Men and the other nightmare invaders to converge on him; the final survivor of the vicious attack.
He was tired, injured, but knew exactly what he had to do. He had long prepared for this, a secret contingency plan for when defeat seemed inevitable.
Elijah Stone accepted his fate, gathering his strength as the monsters swarmed.
All he had to do was take his last breath.
3.
A MAGE’S CORPSE HAD ENORMOUS VALUE.
Just about any part of his body—head, skin, internal organs, even his hair and fingernails—could be used as special ingredients in the most powerful of magickal rituals.
Elijah Stone’s body would have been considered priceless, which was why he made certain there would be nothing left when his life finally came to an end.
It’s been a good life, he thought.
The monsters were on him like ants swarming over a discarded piece of bread. The moment he felt their cold touch, smelled their foul bodies, he triggered the magickal self-destruct command that he had placed inside his mind when he’d first taken command of the Network so many years—that felt merely like days—ago.
Elijah Stone’s body burned like the sun, a blinding flash of intense, supernatural energy that turned himself, as well as his attackers, to dust.
And with his release a powerful signal was transmitted.
A signal that traveled across the world in an instant, to a tidal island off the northeast coast of England called Lindesfarne, where stood the crumbling remains of an ancient monastery.
The signal wheedled its way through the ancient rubble, down into the earth, to a vast, hidden chamber. And with a flash, a powerful generator squatting in the darkness of the subterranean room was activated.
The dynamo roared to life, powerful turbines turning, generating the substantial power necessary to activate the strange machines against the walls of the chamber. Clear, glass bulbs strung along the room’s ceiling pulsed, illuminating the darkened space, now filled with the busy sounds of working machinery.
Thick cables trailed from the various machines to a coffin-shaped, metal-framed, glass tank, lying atop a concrete platform in the room’s center. The case was filled with a thick, milky fluid that slowly began to bubble. The machines around the tank continued to hum and chatter; lights flashed from blue, to yellow to red, and the liquid contained within the case grew more turbulent, flashes of an eerie light barely visible through the viscous solution.
Something suddenly moved inside the tank, bouncing off the thick glass with a muffled thud.
The machines strained, the thick cables began to smolder, and spark.
A very special power flowed along the connections to the glass tank, charging the fluids contained within.
Again there was movement, louder, more violent. Whatever was contained within was growing stronger, more active.
The white liquid roiled, special vents on the sides of the tank expelled hissing clouds of steam.
The pounding intensified within the tank, multiple strikes on the tempered glass, and the first cracks appeared, snaking across its surface. The boiling fluid sprayed in thin streams from the growing fissures. And then, what was inside the tank grew very quiet; a brief respite, before the front of the tank exploded in a shower of liquid and glass.
Two powerful fists, attached to long, muscular arms, pushed away the remains of the shattered-glass cover. The hands gripped the sides, pulling the body to a sitting position.
The man was pale, with shoulder-length hair as black as a moonless night. He sat in the tank, his yellow eyes scanning his surroundings before he climbed from the tank, careful not to step upon the pieces of glass that littered the ground.
He crossed the room, his thoughts becoming more active as the clouds gradually lifted from his brain. And even though he’d just awakened, he knew that he had a special purpose, a job to perform, for the safety of humanity was depending on him.
A huge wooden cabinet stood at the far back of the chamber, its contents sealed to all who did not possess the combination. He stood before the double doors and extended his finger, punching in the combination as the numbers filled his head. A steel bolt slid aside with a metallic thrum and the doors slowly opened to reveal the supplies he would need for his mission.
Clothes designed for the most frigid of temperatures hung waiting to be worn, thick boots and snowshoes on the floor beneath them. The man removed the heavy, hooded coat hanging upon the door, and froze at the sight of his reflection in the full-length mirror hanging there.
At first there was shock, followed by disgust.
He did not remember himself this way, but realized that he had no clear vision of how he was supposed to look.
His naked body was pale and covered with thick, pink scars: around his neck, wrists, arms, and shoulders, around his legs, knees, and feet. It was as if he’d been put together—assembled—from pieces, and suddenly he remembered, a bubble of memory rising to the surface.
Those who had made him called him Stitch, and he had indeed been made from pieces, body parts of those who had fallen in battle against the forces of darkness. From those who had died in service to the Brimstone Network, the ultimate agent had been constructed.
Without another moment’s hesitation the patchwork man pulled the heavy clothes from their hangers and started to
dress.
There wasn’t a moment to lose.
Bram walked quickly along the echoing corridors of P’Yon Kep, his thoughts racing.
Over the last week his training sessions had intensified, the monks of P’Yon Kep forcing him to face the side of his nature that he would rather forget. But they would not allow him to ignore his other, more feral side. Day after day they pushed him, forced him to set it free, forced him to see it not as some horrible thing living inside him, but as part of himself, part of his nature.
Part of what he would need to keep the world safe.
They were preparing him for the future; the entire reason why his father had sent him to this isolated place of learning. Bram often wondered with a certain amount of foreboding when he would know his purpose, when he would learn what he was being prepared for.
As he hurried down the cold, stone corridor of the monastery, he felt deep in his gut that today might very well be the day.
After his latest training exercise Master Po had come to the chamber, dismissing the others and wishing to speak to him in private. Bram had thought that he was about to be scolded for something he had done, or something he hadn’t done, but it was neither.
The Abbot had come to tell him that he had a visitor from the outside world, from his father.
His father had sent someone? But, why? Was his education here done?
That thought filled him with fear, for although he had learned much, he felt far from ready. There was still more to learn before he could fully accept the other half of his nature.
The entrance to the main hall loomed ahead of him and he found his pace slowing.
What if his father was sick? What if this person had been sent by the Network to bring him home to care for the sick man before he …
No! His father was strong, as healthy as a horse. If he’d been sick, Bram would have known it, would have noticed something the last time he had seen his father.
The question hit like a bolt of lightning.
When was the last time I saw my father?
He tried to remember. It seemed to be not long after he’d come to P’Yon Kep.