The Brimstone Network (Brimstone Network Trilogy)

  The words of a defensive spell rolled from his mouth in an ancient tongue that had passed from existence before humanity dropped down from the trees. He could feel the magick building up inside him, his eyes locked upon the great stone beasts that stalked him. Slowly he raised an arm, and as if sensing their imminent destruction, the griffons spread their wings and sprang at him.

  Just as he released the magick.

  It always surprised him how powerful he’d become, how easy it was to wield the magicks. He’d seen it in the eyes of his Brimstone teachers as well as his classmates, the pain they had felt as they tapped into the reservoir of magickal power that existed beyond the pale. But for Tobias, magick was as simple—and as painless—as a sneeze: at first the build up inside him, and then the inevitable release.

  Like now.

  The magick struck the griffons with such force that they shattered like glass, the energy that gave them life released in a blinding flash of white.

  “Impressive,” Crowley’s tiny voice said.

  “Thank you,” Tobias replied, blowing on the stinging tips of his fingers.

  The beasties that had survived the griffon onslaught cautiously emerged from their hiding places as Cracklebones carefully pushed open the double gates from the other side.

  “Master,” the troll said, bowing as Tobias passed through the gateway.

  Tobias couldn’t help but smile.

  Bram poked the wet plastic bag with a pencil.

  “It isn’t going to bite you,” Stitch said. He’d gone back out to the living area and had returned with a needle and fishing line.

  “It’s just sort of … gross,” Bram said.

  “It’s just a little stomach juice and blood substitute,” the artificial man said as he threaded the needle.

  Stomach juice and blood substitute; Bram was pretty sure he’d be up to his chin in worse soon enough. So without further thought, he set the pencil down and tore open the plastic bag to get at the files.

  “So you didn’t know you had these in your stomach?” Bram asked, carefully pulling the files out of the bag so as not to get anything on them.

  “Things just sort of pop into my head,” Stitch explained. “The memories just kind of rise to the surface. I remembered the files when I saw the cabinets.” He pushed the needle through the flesh on one side of the laceration, pulled the fishing line tight, and pushed the needle through the other side, sewing the flesh together.

  Bram returned his attention to the files. “There’s only two here.” He looked back at Stitch. “He wanted me to form a new Network with two members?”

  “Don’t forget you and me,” Stitch reminded him. The man was sewing like a pro.

  “Maybe you should have checked to make sure that my father didn’t hide anything else in your stomach … like a decent plan, maybe?”

  Stitch looked up. “That was uncalled for, lad,” he chastised.

  “Your father was under an incredible amount of stress, and now we see that it was for good reason.”

  “But how can I do what needs to be done with only two—”

  “Four,” Stitch interrupted.

  “Fine. With only four members?”

  Stitch smiled as he admired his sewing job, and then looked up into Bram’s eyes. “Read the files, and you’ll find that these candidates are special.” His dark eyebrows danced up and down. “Special, as you are special.”

  Bram pushed his chair in closer to the desk top and picked up the first of the folders. But he didn’t get very far—his reading was interrupted by a furious pounding on the cottage walls.

  As Tobias stepped into Stonehouse, it was like walking into a frozen pocket of time. The memories of that frightening time in his life when nothing seemed to make sense, and all he knew was that he’d never see his mother and father again, came flooding back as he stood in the foyer.

  He didn’t want to be here any longer than he had to be, suddenly missing his sister more than ever before.

  He climbed the winding staircase, heading toward the mysterious study that had kept the Brimstone leader occupied during all hours of the night. This was where he was going to find answers to his suspicions, if he was going to find anything at all.

  The door was unlocked, allowing him and the surviving beasts easy access. Flinging the door open, he strode into the room, not knowing what he would find.

  But never expecting this.

  He could hear the monsters whispering at his back, also shocked by what they’d found.

  Tobias flipped the switch on the wall. The room was bizarrely normal; not a trace of anything out of the ordinary, nothing that even hinted of the paranormal or supernatural.

  Cautiously, in case it was just a spell of disguise, he walked farther into the room. But there was nothing; it was as he saw it.

  “What in the name of the unholy is this?” the flying eyeball asked.

  It was a simple room, the walls covered in flowered paper—lilacs.

  The beasties looked about, snarls of distaste upon their ugly faces. First the griffons, and now this.

  There was a single chair with a small table and lamp beside it in the room’s corner, a hard-backed book waiting on the table. Tobias reached for it.

  Great Poetry of the Twentieth Century.

  He set it down quickly. Is this what he was doing in here all those nights? Tobias wondered. Reading books of poetry?

  “It’s like he used this room to escape,” he said aloud.

  “Escape?” Cracklebones asked. “What was he escaping?”

  Tobias shrugged. “The weirdness of his world, I guess.”

  He slowly turned in a circle, soaking it all in. He would never have associated anything this ordinary with Elijah Stone.

  The shriek of excitement came from somewhere behind him.

  A grackleflint had been poking around a large, decorative vase and had peeled away a section of wallpaper to eat.

  Grackleflints ate any and all things.

  Mouth overflowing with shredded wallpaper, it excitedly pointed to markings on the wall beneath the purple lilacs, intricate sigils inscribed on the white plaster walls.

  Tobias’s eyes widened.

  “Tear it off!” Crowley cried, flying around the room to rally the beasts. “Tear the wallpaper!”

  The beasties attacked with excited fervor, using claws, tentacles, and even mouths to strip away the wall covering and expose the sigil-covered wall beneath.

  “Step away!” Tobias ordered, tossing a spell of decay at the wall to rot away any stray paper.

  “Oh you were a tricky one,” Crowley’s eye buzzed.

  Tobias silently agreed as he moved closer, trying to decipher the magickal symbols.

  The beasties were excited, charging the wall, pounding their evil fists against the plaster. But Tobias ignored them, reaching out to run his hand across the vertical column of arcane shapes, smudging them and distorting their power.

  Again, the creatures of darkness began to scream, fleeing across the room as a door appeared in the wall before them.

  “Is this what you were hiding?” Tobias asked aloud. He could feel it emanating from the door, a magickal spell so powerful that it thrummed with supernatural energy.

  Tobias was drawn to it like a moth to flame; reaching down he grabbed hold of the knob, twisting it to the right, and threw open the door to see what Elijah Stone had been so desperate to conceal.

  Darkness.

  The room was filled with darkness.

  9.

  THE BANGING CEASED AS QUICKLY AS IT HAD BEGUN.

  “What was that?” Bram asked, tensed in the office chair, voice at a whisper.

  Stitch left the room, taking a right away from the office and the living area beyond.

  “It came from somewhere back here,” he said, his voice soft and barely audible. Bram left his seat to follow, bringing the files with him, and marveled at the speed and stealth with which the big man moved.

  He followed Stitch i
nto a bedroom at the end of the corridor. A small bed was pushed into a corner, a chest of drawers against the opposite wall; other than that, the room was empty. And judging by the amount of dust that coated everything, it hadn’t been used in a very long time.

  Then where did his father sleep when he was here? The image of Elijah, slumped in the office chair, file folders spread out all around him, appeared in Bram’s head, and he sensed that image was likely right.

  The two stood still in the middle of the room, listening to the silence, waiting for the noise to begin again.

  When it did, it was softer, a faint rustling coming from the closet. Bram had to wonder if their caution was the victim of a field mouse, or some other animal trapped in the English cottage.

  Stitch’s multicolored eyes locked with Bram’s and they tensed as the sound came again, closer now, right behind the closet door.

  Stitch lunged and, in one swift movement, threw open the door. He reached inside the darkness, withdrawing a young man held in his powerful grip. “Who are you?” Stitch bellowed, menace in his tone.

  Bram immediately recognized the man’s dress, the jacket and pants—the uniform he was wearing.

  The Network.

  And the man wasn’t really a man. He only looked a few years older than Bram.

  “Wait!” Bram yelled, tossing the files onto the dusty bed and moving to Stitch’s side. “Stitch, look at his clothes.”

  The young man’s eyes were wide in shock, darting around the room from the patchwork man to him.

  “He’s an agent, Stitch,” Bram said to his friend. “He’s one of us.”

  And with those words, the young man seemed to relax.

  “Yes,” he said, a smile forming on his face.

  “I’m one of you.”

  I’m one of you,” Tobias said again with emotion, wanting them to trust him and to lower their guard. “I’m Agent Tobias Blaylock.”

  The artificial man … Stitch, the boy had called him, released his hold, allowing the heels of Tobias’s boots to touch floor.

  “We thought you were all dead,” Abraham began, a smile on his face.

  Tobias thought quickly. “I barely escaped with my life,” he lied. “Conjured a spell of passage to get away and have been lost in the darkness for days.” He looked from Stitch to Abraham. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Bram Stone, and this is Stitch,” the boy started excitedly. “My father has entrusted us with the job of—”

  “Quiet, boy,” the artificial man barked, silencing Elijah’s son.

  Tobias didn’t like the look he saw in Stitch’s different-colored eyes.

  “You’re Commander Stone’s son?” he asked, turning his attention back to Bram. “But I thought you were sick … almost dead?”

  “That’s what he wanted people to believe,” Bram said as Stitch again silenced him with a fierce look.

  Tobias nodded, feigning understanding.

  “Perhaps we should hold our tongues until we have all our facts in place,” the big man suggested.

  Crowley’s eye suddenly darted out from the darkness of the closet, its dragonfly wings beating unmercifully, filling the air with an eerie humming sound.

  “What is that?” Bram asked.

  Stitch prepared to act, but Tobias couldn’t let him. The spell flowed from his lips, the magick again building up inside him. He lifted his arm, firing a blast of ethereal energy into Stitch’s chest, sending him hurtling backward through the air, pinning him against the wall with a roiling ball of magickal force.

  “That should take care of you,” Tobias said, turning his attention to the boy.

  There was fear in Bram’s eyes, and Tobias wondered if that was how he had looked when the rogue witches had attacked his home and he believed that he was about to die.

  “I can’t believe you were right,” the flying orb squeaked, fluttering over the bed, white tentacles snaking down from its circular mass to investigate what looked to be file folders lying on top of it.

  Tobias smiled proudly, gearing up for the next magickal assault that would rid the Brimstone Network of its final hope.

  “But you’re one of us,” Bram said, his voice quivering in disbelief.

  “I was never one of you,” Tobias said with the shake of his head. All the anger he felt toward the agency, and the man who had taken away his family, spewed from the tips of his fingers in a spell of death.

  The magickal blast struck the wall behind Bram, leaving him untouched.

  It had happened as the monks of P’Yon Kep had always told him it would; he didn’t even need to think about using his abilities—they had been there, present and waiting.

  To be used completely on instinct. As soon as Tobias’s fingertips had started to glow, Bram had felt his body shift from the material, to the ghostly.

  The crackling bolts of the magick had passed through him to strike the wall at his back with devastating effect. The spell seemed to be speeding up the aging process, causing the plaster, wood, and paint to rot, spreading across the surface of the wall, and even across the ceiling.

  Bram locked eyes with the traitorous agent standing across from him, reading surprise in his gaze.

  “You missed,” Bram said, springing into action.

  The flying eyeball spun around as it hovered above the bed, where it had been reading the files.

  “Kill him! What’s wrong with you?” it screeched in a small, annoying voice.

  Bram took great pleasure driving his fist into the renegade Brimstone agent’s face. Tobias flew backward, his head hitting off the dresser behind him. Bram darted toward the bed, snatching up the files he’d left there.

  There were noises coming from the darkness inside the closet, and something told him that he and Stitch had to get out of there right away.

  Then he felt the orb’s tentacles slither coldly across his flesh.

  “You’re going nowhere, child,” hissed the eyeball, attempting to thrust its tentacles into his mouth and nose.

  Bram swatted the fluttering eye aside with the file folders, watching as the orb bounced off the nearby wall, then dropped to the ground with a wet plop.

  Bram turned toward Stitch, who was still hanging from the wall, struggling to free himself from the magick that held him there.

  The death spell meant for Bram had continued to spread around the room, turning the plaster to dust. It was only a matter of seconds before the wall behind Stitch broke away in a shower of rubble, and the patchwork man dropped to the floor.

  “That worked out well,” Stitch said, brushing powdered plaster from his clothes, the magick that had held him having dissolved like the walls.

  “We’ve got to go!” Bram yelled to his friend.

  The house was groaning, the strength of the spell affecting the very structure of the house.

  Bram grabbed Stitch by the arm, yanking him forward.

  “Careful there, lad,” the large man grumbled as he allowed himself to be led. “You don’t want that coming off in your hand.”

  Bram and Stitch made for the doorway. It wouldn’t be long until the room—the entire cottage—was falling down around them. In the hallway, Bram chanced a look back into the bedroom. Tobias was coming to. He rubbed the back of his head, picking himself up from the ground as the eye hovered drunkenly in the air, its wings damaged by the swat Bram had given it.

  Bram held his breath as he saw the first of the monsters begin to emerge from the closet. They poked their heads out into the room, sniffing the air cautiously, not sure what to make of the room’s decay

  The distress of the house grew louder, and Bram pushed himself to move faster, following Stitch as he bounded down the hallway toward the living room, and the front door.

  Ceiling beams in a storm of plaster dust dropped down to block his path, but again his instincts were in full effect and he was able to pass through the obstructions with ease.

  Maybe I can get used to this.

  The cottage released a final sc
ream as Bram and Stitch barely made it out through the door before it fell in upon itself in billowing clouds of thick, choking dust and dirt.

  The two stopped, taking a moment to catch their breath.

  And as the clouds of dust began to settle, Bram thought he saw something move within the rubble.

  “We might want to think about running some more,” Bram suggested to his companion.

  A blast of magickal force tossed the wreckage of the home aside as if it were nothing, and they watched as Tobias Blaylock rose up from beneath the rubble, a small army of beasties surrounding him.

  “I think you’re right,” Stitch agreed, and they ran across the green field toward a patch of orange.

  Toward the pumpkin patch.

  Cracklebones lifted his hand to show Tobias the eye.

  It was now lopsided, oozing a thick, cloudy fluid from a tear in its once rounded surface. One of its dragonfly wings had been bent, and the other completely torn away.

  Tobias was barely able to hear the voice from the eye, and leaned closer to listen.

  “Bring … him … to me,” the tiny voice said, sounding as though it were coming through a damaged speaker.

  “What about the freak with him?” Tobias asked, already on the move navigating the rotting wood and debris of the collapsed structure.

  Cracklebones struggled to keep up, his hand still raised with the damaged eye resting upon it.

  “Return him to the grave.… It makes little difference to me,” Crowley’s eye answered. “But the boy … bring him to me … alive.… I have the desire to feed upon him.”

  Squinting through the haze that drifted over the field, Tobias could just about make out the shapes of the two of them running away.

  “Do not disappoint me again, Tobias,” the eye warned, lying deflated in the center of the troll’s hand. “I cannot imagine your despair if dear little Claire was not to be made well.”

  Tobias understood what was still at stake, hating the fact that his sister’s health was being used against him. Again, he promised himself that as soon as he had finished this task before him, he and Claire would disappear, just the two of them, living away from the horrors that had dominated their existences since birth.