Specter Rising (Brimstone Network Trilogy) (14 page)

“Did you have a nice nap?” Bram asked them.

“There was no sleeping,” Stanis answered, insulted that Bram could even suggest such a thing.

“We were just resting our eyes,” Yosh added.

Bram didn’t bother to argue.

“How is she?” Lita asked as she slithered from beneath the blanket like a snake shedding its skin.

Bram looked back toward where he had just emerged.

“She’s fighting to stay alive,” he answered his sister. “I’m not sure how much time Boffa’s medicine has given her, but I think we need to move quickly if we’re to find a cure for the poison.”

“Where is Boffa?” Lita asked as she folded her blanket.

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

They walked around their encampment, searching the woods surrounding them for any sign of the turtle.

“You don’t think he would have left us, do you?” Bram asked.

“I don’t know,” Lita answered. “Who knows how a Terrapene thinks.”

The soldiers had left their place at the fire and were
heading toward the entrance to the hovel.

“I say good riddance,” Yosh said. “We’ll be better off when they’re finally all dead.”

Bram felt his anger spike.

“Excuse me, but that creature you’re wishing dead saved your life yesterday,” he said, moving to confront the old soldier.

“And that’s where we differ, half-blood,” the solider responded. “If the boot had been on the other foot, I would have let the Shriekhounds take him. I owe the shelled one nothing.”

Stanis grunted his agreement, both of them starting down the hole to attend to their queen’s needs.

Bram was going to pursue them, to confront them with their ignorance, but he felt his sister’s hand reach out to take hold of his arm.

“Their beliefs are built upon the foundation of old ways,” she said in explanation.

“You’re making excuses for them?” he asked.

“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “It’s just the simple fact of what they are. They’re the old ways that will soon come to pass unless our mother survives.”

He was about to tell her that if the queen did not survive,
then it would be up to her to bring about the ascension of the Spectral race, but he never got the chance.

Something was coming at them through the woods—something moving with incredible speed, plowing through the trees and underbrush as if they weren’t even there.

They were about to yell to the others that they were under attack, when they realized that it was Boffa who had returned to them.

“We didn’t know where you were,” Bram said as the Terrapene came to a stop. The creature appeared out of breath, its thick, longish neck stretching out to gaze back from where it had come.

“The forest spoke to Boffa of a great gathering,” the turtle said, capturing Bram’s attention.

“So I go in search of what it spoke of, traveling from woods to wide Spectral plains that separate kingdom and wild places.

“What did you find?”

The Terrapene looked back, its dark eyes deadly serious.

“Great army,” Boffa spoke.

“Great army preparing for war.”

10.
B
OGEY AWOKE
. H
IS HEAD POUNDED AS
though someone were playing the top of his skull like a drum, and he was ridiculously hungry.

“Anybody else starved?” he asked, opening his eyes.

He’d been tossed in the corner of a large tent like a sack of dirty laundry, his hands tied behind his back. His friends lay around him, which he took as a good sign—what was the point in holding dead people captive?

With a grunt, and some straining of muscles, he managed to sit up, and noticed another group of prisoners huddled in the far corner. They looked to be in the same situation as he, hands bound behind their backs.

“Hey,” he said to them. He wiggled his hands and twisted his wrists in an attempt to loosen his bonds, but whatever was used to restrain him seemed to become even
tighter, as if somehow sensing what he was trying to do.

“It is useless, little beast,” one of the group, an older man with really bushy eyebrows and no hair on his head, spoke up.

“Who’re you callin’ a little beast?” Bogey asked indignantly.

“Whatever you are,” the old man continued. “You will not escape your bonds.”

“You keep telling yourself that, Gramps,” Bogey said. “We’re full’a surprises.” He slid awkwardly across the ground toward his still-unconscious friends. “Hey,” he called out. “Guys. Time to get up.”

Emily was the first to respond. She was still in her wolf shape, but the way she was strung up, she looked as helpless as Bogey.

“Where are we?” she asked groggily.

“I can tell you where we’re not,” Bogey answered quickly. “We’re not back at headquarters where I can get myself something to eat.”

“What’s up with the ropes?” Emily asked, trying to break them with her animal strength. No dice.

“Haven’t a clue,” Bogey replied. “Seems like they might be alive or something.”

There was movement farther back in the tent.

“It’s the alive part that concerns me,” Stitch said, managing to maneuver his body to a sitting position. “They seem to be sapping away strength as well.”

“That’s probably why I’m so hungry,” Bogey said. “Without a full belly, I’m nothing.”

“Is everybody all right?” Stitch asked.

“I suppose,” Desmond chimed in. “Did you get the number of that bus that hit us by the way?”

“Hey, Dez,” Bogey said with mock cheerfulness. “Welcome to our little discussion group. How’re your psychic powers holding up?”

“They’re not,” the boy answered. “There’s like constant white noise in my head . . . I can barely think straight without wanting to throw up.”

“It’s your bonds,” Stitch explained. “They take away your strength.”

“Just before I blacked out I saw an armored guy and somebody else . . . they were cloaked and hovering above the ground,” Emily said.

“You saw the one called Trinity,” the old man said, joining their conversation.

“Trinity?” Stitch questioned.

“Nothing is known about the mysterious and powerful being,” the old-timer went on. “All that we of the Specter know is that the warlord Barnabas had been banished to the wastelands for crimes against the royal house, but he returned with the hooded one and everything began to crumble before their conjoined forces.”

Bogey turned to face the old man. “And who exactly are you guys?”

“We are those who believe in a better way . . . a Spectral world without violence and war . . . a world where the faithful have ascended as written in the ancient texts.”

“How’s that workin’ for ya?” Bogey asked sarcastically.

“It is not working, little beast,” the old man answered sadly. “With this mysterious being at his side . . . this Trinity . . . Barnabas has the power to crush our beliefs to dust, and to shape those who oppose him into hideous monsters of war. That, I’m afraid is our fate . . . and yours as well.”

Bogey sighed. “That explains those two beasties we danced with back at the Fthaggua’s place.”

Dez began to flop uselessly around on the floor. “Where is he?” he panicked. “Where’s my father?”

“I’m afraid he didn’t make, it Desmond,” Stitch said sadly.

“What do you mean he didn’t make it?”

“The monstrous body that he inhabited was closest to the magickal blast that felled us,” Stitch explained. “I saw it destroyed . . . turned to ash.”

The tent suddenly got very quiet.

“Sorry, Dez,” Bogey said, compelled to say something. If he were able, he would’ve gone to his friend and put a comforting arm around him. It must’ve been tough for him to lose his father once, never mind three times.

It was Emily’s turn to panic. “Johanna?” she asked. “Does anybody see her?” Emily struggled to look about the tent.

“The younger of your group? She’s gone,” the old man said, averting his gaze. “Think of her no more.”

“What do you mean think of her no more? Where did she go?” Emily roared.

“Before you awakened, the guards came for her,” the old man spoke with a sad shake of his bald head. “Trinity was with them. She won’t be coming back.”

And suddenly, Bogey wasn’t quite so hungry anymore.

T
he Terrapene flipped over the stump of a long dead tree and helped himself to the squirming life he’d found beneath it.

“A war against whom?” Bram asked him.

Boffa sat on a large rock, reaching down to scoop up handfuls of worms the thickness of rope and bringing them up to his beaked mouth. He chewed the worms before answering, thick juices oozing from the corners of his mouth, running down his speckled neck.

“Places beyond,” the turtle said, and then swallowed loudly.

“Beyond the barriers, you mean,” Bram clarified as a sickening feeling formed in the pit of his stomach.

Boffa picked up a large, shelled insect, carefully examining it before dropping it into his hungry maw.

“Yes, beyond barriers. Yes.”

Bram heard the disgusting crunch of the beetle in the Terrapene’s mouth and glanced at Lita, who appeared to be as grossed out as he was.

“The barrier’s weak there,” Boffa added, bending over to search for more food.

Lita looked worried.

“What is it?” Bram asked her.

“If I remember my history correctly, this is where the Specter army, under the command of Warlord Barnabas, first breached the barrier that separated the Specter world from your own.”

She stopped as the realization of what was happening dawned on them both at the same time.

“He’s trying it again,” she said aloud, horror growing in her voice. “With the queen no longer in power, and you believed dead, he’s going to break the treaty. Barnabas is going to attack the earth.”

Bram felt his own panic on the rise, but immediately squelched it. “He’ll try,” he said with confidence, remembering the powerful friends he had left at home. “But the Brimstone Network will stop him.”

Something Boffa had found hiding deep beneath the dirt let out a high-pitched squeal before it was crushed by his powerful jaws.

“Do not forget weapon of great power,” the Terrapene reminded him.

Bram hadn’t, already the commander in him beginning to formulate a plan. “It seems to me that this secret weapon is our major problem,” he said. “Whatever it is has given Barnabas the confidence he needs to try something like this.”

“It is a terrible weapon,” Lita agreed. “Those faithful to the queen fell before they even had a chance to fight.” His sister hugged herself as she remembered what had come before. “I can still remember their screams as we escaped through the castle’s secret passages . . . screams that transformed into the sounds of something terrible.”

There was movement nearby and Bram watched as the soldiers emerged from the queen’s hovel.

“They say his weapon can turn the loyal into monsters,” Yosh said. “How are we to stand against something like that?”

Their time was obviously short, and Bram could think of no other way to deal with the problem. His father had always believed that you make do with what you have in a situation, and that was exactly what Bram was going to do.

“There’s really no other way to do this,” he said, running his hand through his hair and taking a deep breath. “We have to take away what gives Barnabas the upper hand.

“We have to sneak down to that camp and destroy his secret weapon.”

J
ohanna was dreaming.

It was more of a nightmare, really. She was re-experiencing the time that her mother’s boyfriend—a
real jerk by the name of Stanley—had slapped her around for mouthing off.

It was also the first day that the dogs had come to her.

Stanley never hit her again. In fact, Stanley stopped coming around all together, and Mom was forced to find another boyfriend, and another after that. They just never seemed to stay.

As long as Johanna and the pack were around.

She awoke as soon as the nightmare was over; like the lights coming on in the theater when the movie ended.

At first she noticed that her hands were tied behind her back.

And then she realized that her dogs were gone.

It was looking up at the freak standing over her dressed in the hooded robes that reminded her of where she was, how she got there, and how even more bizarre her life had become in less than a day.

“Hello,” the hooded figure said. It was a little girl’s voice Johanna heard, and not what she had at all expected from within the thick darkness of the hood.

“Hi,” Johanna answered. “Where are my dogs?”

A little girl’s laugh drifted out from within the shadows of the hood.

“I made them go to sleep so that
they couldn’t hurt anybody,” the girl-child answered. “I didn’t want to get bit.”

Packman looked around the room. It wasn’t a room really, but a kind of tent. She could hear people outside—loud voices barking orders. She guessed that these were more of the soldiers that she and her friends had come up against.

Her friends.

“Where are they?” she suddenly asked. “My friends, I mean?”

The figure just stared.

“You didn’t kill them . . . did you?” she questioned, not sure she really wanted to know the answer.

“They’re in another tent,” the little girl replied. “I’m gonna talk to them when I’m done talking to you.”

Johanna wiggled her wrists, trying to loosen her bonds, but felt them grow painfully tighter.

“Well, if you’re thinking of torturing me or something for information, you shouldn’t even waste your time,” Johanna said. “I don’t know squat about anything.”

The cloaked figure shuffled closer. “But you’re one of them . . . aren’t you? One of the Brimstone Network?”

“Officially?” Johanna asked. “Not really. I think I’m still on probation or something.”

“I . . . I remember them . . . ,” the little girl whispered.
“The Brimstone people. My mommy and daddy . . .”

The little girl paused, and Johanna imagined that the kid was remembering.

“What about your mommy and daddy?” Johanna asked, hoping that if she kept the kid talking, maybe something would eventually come to her, and she could escape.