That can’t be right. Bram stopped short, rummaging through his memories. There has to have been a time since then.
He recalled that his father had sent an astral projection on his birthday, a ghostly message sent across the world apologizing for not coming in person, and wishing him a happy day. But that was the last time he had seen or heard from his father.
Bram entered the main hall, normally used for large gatherings of all who called the P’Yon Kep monastery home. The monks had lit a huge blaze in the stone fireplace at the far end of the hall, chasing away the cold that normally chilled the air in here.
A lone figure stood before that roaring fire, his back to Bram. He was tall, wearing heavy woolen pants and a long waistcoat: warm clothing to protect against the harsh Tibetan elements. He wore his dark hair long, pulled back in a ponytail that dangled below his broad shoulders.
“Excuse me,” Bram said, mentally preparing himself for the worst. “You wanted to see me?”
The tall man flinched at the sound of Bram’s voice invading the tranquility of the hall.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle … ,” Bram began, but the words caught in his throat when the mysterious figure turned.
“Abraham Stone, I presume,” the man said, his voice low and rumbling, with the hint of an English accent.
“Y-yes, sir,” Bram stammered, completely taken back by the man’s appearance.
His skin was an unhealthy gray, the color of something seldom touched by the sun, or dead, which made the stark blackness of his receding hair, pulled back tight upon his head, stand out even more. And his eyes … one was blue, the other brown.
The stranger crossed the room in three powerful strides and extended his hand in greeting. “A pleasure, young sir.”
Tentatively reaching to take the offered hand, Bram noticed that the man’s sleeve had ridden up to reveal a thick scar encircling his wrist.
The man’s hand was huge, and engulfed Bram’s in a powerful grip.
“You can call me Mr. Stitch,” he said with a crooked smile and a wink from his brown eye as they shook hands.
Stitch released him and Bram took his hand back, giving it a shake to get the blood flowing in his fingers again. “The Abbot said that my father sent you. Is there anything wrong?”
The smile quickly disappeared from Mr. Stitch’s face. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Abraham, but I’m afraid the answer to your question is yes. Something is very wrong.”
“What?” Bram asked, his heart starting to race. “Is my father all right? Is he sick? Does he need me to come home?”
Stitch sighed, reaching out with his two powerful hands and clamping them down upon the boy’s shoulders.
“I’m gonna need ye to be strong, lad,” he growled.
“Tell me,” Bram demanded, looking up into the ugly man’s multicolored eyes.
“Your father is dead.”
Bram brushed Stitch’s hands from his shoulders. “You’re lying,” he cried.
“I wish it were,” Stitch said with a sad shake of his head. “But I was only to be animated at your father’s passing.”
It felt as though the world was collapsing in on him. Bram started to shake, his eyes welling up with scalding tears. He knew the kind of life his father led, and as much as he didn’t want to believe it, he knew that it was more than possible for this to have happened.
“How did he die?” he asked, trying to keep his voice from cracking.
“I don’t know the specifics, but I do know that it was an attack on the entire Brimstone Network. All around the planet, every Brimstone installation was attacked, every agent was killed.”
Bram couldn’t believe his ears. It was bad enough that his father was gone, but to learn that the agency he commanded, that kept the world safe, had been targeted as well …
It was almost too much for him to take.
But he was a Stone, and would not allow himself to crumble.
“Who did this?” he asked, his thoughts racing with questions.
Stitch shrugged his powerful shoulders. “Any number of ghoulie, ghostie, or long-legged beastie would have liked to see them finished,” he said. “The Network had enemies to spare, but this bit of business took some real devilry to pull off.”
Bram breathed deeply, trying to calm his fraying emotions.
“You’re going to find out who’s responsible, right?” he asked Stitch. “And when you do, you’ll put an end to them.”
Stitch slowly shook his head. “I personally will not,” he said, his stare intense. “But you and I together, we will rebuild the Network.”
It took a moment for the words to sink in.
“We?” Bram questioned. “What do you mean we?”
“Don’t be daft, son,” the man said. “It’s the entire reason I’m here. The world can’t survive without a Brimstone Network, and I’ve been created to protect and guide you through the difficult process of pulling a new Network together.”
“Created?”
“Yes, created,” Stitch said as he removed his long coat, tossing it on the floor. “From parts of the finest Brimstone agents fallen in service,” he explained, unbuttoning and then removing his shirt, exposing his pale, scarred flesh.
Bram gasped at the sight.
“Your father had me made,” the pale-skinned man continued. “He’d hoped that I would never be necessary.”
Bram continued to stare at Stitch’s scarred body.
“I know,” he said, reaching down to pick up his discarded shirt. “I won’t be winning any beauty contests in the foreseeable future.”
“My father had you built to … to protect me?”
“And to counsel you,” Stitch said buttoning his shirt, covering his scars. “The experiences of over fifty Brimstone agents are inside this jigsaw puzzle of a body … experiences that your father hoped would help you with the dangerous task that lies ahead.”
Stitch retrieved his waistcoat, slipping that on as well.
“Your father had always planned on you being the future of the Network,” he said. “Poor bugger just didn’t know how quick the future would arrive.”
Bram found himself backing toward the exit. It was too much, and he felt as though he might just drown beneath an ocean of sorrow.
“I can’t do this,” he whispered.
Stitch’s pallid face screwed up in confusion. “What do you mean, you can’t?” he growled. “There isn’t any choice. Darkness is on the rise, son, and your father was depending on you to hold it back.”
Bram shook his head, turning away from the scarred man and leaving the great hall. He didn’t want to hear anymore.
“You are the Brimstone Network now, Abraham Stone.”
Mr. Stitch’s final words followed him down the ancient corridor.
And Bram began to run.
4.
THROUGH P’YON KEP’S WINDING CORRIDORS BRAM ran, the words of a man made from the body parts of others echoing inside his head.
You are the Brimstone Network.
It felt as though a storm raged inside his head. To learn that his father had been killed was bad enough, but to expect that Bram would now pick up where he left off?
That was just crazy. He was only thirteen years old!
Bram reached his room and slammed the door behind him.
He paced, trying to calm the storm inside his head.
It had always been just Bram and his father. He had never known his mother. And suddenly the memory of that afternoon when he’d learned who and what he was flew into his mind.
He was only six or seven, and he was playing with the family cat, a fluffy Persian named Purty. He had been overly affectionate with the temperamental animal, and it had shown its displeasure by scratching his face. Bram’s anger had flared, and he found himself floating above the playroom, chasing the terrified cat.
He hated to think what would have happened to poor old Purty if his father hadn’t come into the room to check on
the ruckus.
Seeing him there, hovering above the room in a fit of rage, must have been quite a sight, but his father was always in control. He had remained perfectly calm, coaxing Bram down to the floor, and quieting his anger.
Bram remembered the confusion and fear, the tears when he’d realized how close he had come to hurting his beloved pet. Then his father had sat him on his knee and explained why Bram was different.
He had never spoken of her before, brushing off Bram’s questions by telling him she simply could not be a part of their lives. But now, Elijah told his son the truth. Bram’s mother was a Specter. A race of supernatural warriors, one of the first that humanity had contact with as the barriers between worlds came down. The Specter were aggressive beings. They had the ability to make themselves immaterial—ghostlike—and, in this form, were extremely dangerous.
And they perceived humanity to be a threat.
Conflict seemed inevitable. But Bram’s father had learned of an obscure Specter custom, one in which a high-ranking official of both worlds could marry, unifying the two kingdoms to avoid a war.
And so, the commander of the Brimstone Network, Elijah Stone, wed the leader of the most powerful of the Specter tribes, Ligeia—Bram’s mother.
Bram had never even seen his mother, but her warrior’s legacy was with him every day.
Desperate to get out.
That was why he had been sent here, to the monastery of P’Yon Kep, among other places, hidden away in the icy folds of the Himalayan cliffs, to be taught how to control his more dangerous half—to accept and unify—much as the human race and the Specter had been forced to do when his father wed Ligeia.
He had always felt the pangs of loneliness as his father moved him from school to school. But usually, just when things were becoming too much, and he was certain that he would die of isolation, his father would be there to refill his heart.
But that was over. Now he was truly alone.
He sat down on the mat that served as his bed, grabbing the blanket where it had been rolled into a ball, and draping it over his shoulders. Suddenly his room—and the world—seemed much colder.
Finally he was able to cry, the tears streaming down his face in hot rivulets. It had been a long time since he’d cried like this, he thought as he lay upon his mat, letting the sadness flow out of him.
Hours later, lying upon the mat, exhausted by the emotional onslaught, Bram found himself dreaming of the past.
He’d only been a little kid, awakened in the middle of the night to the sound of something scratching, somewhere inside his darkened room.
Bram twitched in his sleep, his face contorting as he remembered his fear, the fear of the unknown lurking in the darkness, the fear of being alone.
What if Nanny Pearl and his father left him alone, and never came back?
He actually remembered thinking that as he lay in his bed, his covers up to his face, the tears starting to fall from his eyes.
How scary it was to be alone.
And just when he believed that his troubling thoughts had come true, his father had entered the room. Standing silhouetted in the doorway, the light from the hallway cutting through the darkness, silencing the scary, scratching sounds that he almost instantly began to doubt had ever been there.
In his sleep Bram smiled at the memory of his father.
He’d come over to his bed, pulling Bram into his arms and hugging him tightly. And Bram had told him about being afraid in the dark; about being left alone forever. His father had insisted that Bram would never be alone. Then, feeling better, his small arms still wrapped tightly around his father’s neck, Bram told him of the sounds that had awakened him, and how he wondered if it had all been part of his imagination.
His father had checked his room for him. And it was a good thing he had, because under the bed, hiding in a deep patch of shadow, was a hungry dust imp, a nasty little pest with razor-sharp teeth and claws that liked nothing more than to feed on the nighttime fears of small children.
Standing in the doorway, haloed in the light from outside the room, his father once again told him that all would be well, and Bram had believed him, drifting off to an untroubled sleep before the door to the room had even closed.
Bram stirred, pulling himself from the folds of sleep. A shadowy figure stood at the end of his mat, and for a moment, Bram thought he was looking at the ghostly phantasm of his now deceased father. He sat up with a gasp.
“You … ill … n … er … e … lone.”
The words were garbled, as if coming from very far away.
Bram jumped forward, reaching for the ghostly image, desperate for it not to leave.
“Wait!” he cried as the ethereal shape began to fade, replaced by something larger and more solid.
“Father?” Bram asked, desperate for it to be so.
The dark shape suddenly surged forward with a ferocious roar, the smell of blood and rotten meat filling the air.
Bram leaped back, away from the snarling beast. He saw what it was now and could not believe his eyes.
There was a Yeti in his room.
The primitive thing’s fur was a dirty gray, its front stained with something dark, something that smelled like copper. It watched him with beady, yellow eyes, its powerful, apelike body tensed to attack.
The Yeti were powerful, and dangerous when threatened, but normally kept to their own kind. This one’s eyes were wild, darting around the room as if searching for a threat other than this boy pressed against the wall.
An eerie howling cry filled the air, momentarily distracting the bloodstained beast, giving Bram the opportunity he was hoping for.
He bolted across the room for the open door. If he could get out into the hall, he could yell for help. But this obviously was not part of the Yeti’s plan. The snow beast bellowed with a combination of surprise and rage.
How dare he try to escape, Bram imagined it saying in its nasty Yeti tongue. The door was only inches from his grasp when he felt a clammy, long-fingered hand wrap around the collar of his loose-fitting shirt, and he was yanked back savagely.
Bram found himself soaring, the flight coming to an abrupt end when his body hit the wall across from his sleeping area and fell atop the small desk where he did most of his studying. He rolled off the desk to the floor, gasping for air.
The Yeti loped across the room at him, its long, powerful arms flailing in the air. Bram remembered reading how the Yeti would kill its prey by beating it to death with those thickly boned limbs. He quickly shook off the lingering pain and scrambled to his feet.
The Yeti roared threateningly as it got between Bram and the door. It had no intention of allowing him to leave. Bram found himself staring at the frightening beast again, at the dried blood that matted its gray fur. He wondered what … or whom… it had eaten before finding Bram asleep in his room.
A thick stream of drool dripped from the corner of the monster’s extra-wide mouth, and it pulled back the thick, pale flesh of its lips in a snarl, to show him the rows of razor-sharp teeth sticking from slimy, pink gums.
Bram knew that it was time to get serious when he heard the Yeti’s stomach begin to grumble.
He had been sent to P’Yon Kep to learn how to defend himself and to use the unique talents he’d been born with. He tried to think of this as one of his tests, although if he failed this exam, he could very well wind up in the belly of the snow monster.
The Yeti lunged, and Bram called upon his secret talents, letting his spectral nature roam free. He braced himself for the inevitable collision with the snowman, but it never came. The Yeti dove with a shriek of ferocity, its arms open wide to embrace him in a grip of death, but Bram passed through the Yeti’s body, solidifying behind his attacker.
The beast collided with the desk, turning it into scrap.
Bram could have run, but something told him that the wooden door of his room wouldn’t have done much to trap the beast. He didn’t know if it was the spectral nature
influencing his normally more cautious side, but he decided it would be best to take the monster down.
The Yeti whirled with an angry snort, a look of confusion in its yellow eyes.
Bram looked to his sleeping mat, and the blanket crumpled there and an idea began to take form.
He moved as the Yeti moved. The monster bounded toward him and he dove for his mat, snatching up the blanket and throwing it over the Yeti’s head.
The snowman went wild, flailing around as it attempted to remove the obstruction from its face. There wasn’t any time to waste. Bram attacked, directing a side-kick to one of the monster’s knees. It let out a horrible wail of pain as it dropped to the floor.
For a fraction of a second, Bram felt a pang of sympathy for the animal, but then it reached up with its clawed hands, shredding the blanket still covering its head.
The snowman’s eyes burned with an inhuman fury as it lunged.
And instinctively Bram reacted. He dove to one side, snatching up the largest piece of wood that had once been part of his desk. The Yeti threw back its head in a horrible roar as Bram stepped into the attack, swinging the leg of his desk as hard as he could.
The wood shattered as it connected with the snow beast’s thick skull, and for a moment, he wondered if it had had any effect on the monster at all. The snow beast swayed upon its hairy, bowed, legs before dropping to the floor unconscious and unmoving.
Bram felt as though he might join the fearsome animal, his legs trembling from the adrenal surge, but the echoing howls of other Yeti within the monastery spurred him into action. He ran from his room and down the winding corridors, preparing himself for further battle if the need arose. Rounding a corner, he nearly collided with a group of four monks armed with spears.
The monks tensed as they came face-to-face, weapons dropping to attack.
“It’s me,” he said, raising his hands. “What’s happening?”
“The Yetis swarmed the monastery,” a monk named Yong explained, head cocked as he listened for further beastly howls. “We’ve driven most of them away, but a few stragglers still remain.”
Bram was about to tell them that there was one unconscious in his room when he heard the unearthly scream. It was like nothing he’d ever heard before, and he and the monks stared at one another in awe before running toward the sound.