The Shroud of A'Ranka (Brimstone Network Trilogy) (16 page)

“Rise,” Vladek commanded.

The sorcerer lay trembling upon the ground, the realization of what had occurred slowly beginning to sink in. He raised a hand to his face, staring at it with eyes bulging in wonder.

“Is it possible?” he whispered. Then, slowly, as if not trusting his own senses, he climbed to his new, shaking legs. “It is!” he screamed, looking down at himself. “I am whole again!”

Gideon began to laugh crazily, dancing around on his new legs.

“Enough, sorcerer,” the vampire snarled. “Now that you are restored, we have other, more important matters to attend to.”

Vladek pointed across the chamber to where he had once stood.

“We have a goddess to awaken.”

BRAM REMOVED THE SMALL, CIRCULAR CASE
from inside his pants pocket and flipped open the lid.

A dainty golden arrow floated up, spinning around in the air until finally deciding on a particular direction to point them in.

“We’re still going the right way,” he said to his companions, returning the special compass to his pocket. He had found it in one of the Network’s many supply closets and thought it would come in handy, not pointing them in the direction of north, south, east, or west but instead zeroing in on the supernatural energies radiating from the goddess’s prison.

He turned to see Dez struggling across the soft, shifting ground of the jungle. There were thousands of years of
decaying vegetation beneath their feet, a surface not conducive to crutches.

Douglas tried to help him, though barely able to keep his own balance.

“I’ve got it, Dad,” the boy barked. “Take care of yourself. When I need your help, I’ll ask for it.”

“Everything all right?” Bram asked.

Dez scowled, his face dampened with the sweat of exertion.

“Just awesome,” he snarled. Bugs swarmed around his reddened face and he attempted to swat them away.

“Are you sure that thing works?” he asked. “Seems like we’ve been walking in the same direction for hours.”

“Hour and a half,” his father chimed in, looking at his watch.

Dez looked at his father with disgust. “You’re very helpful,” he said sarcastically.

“Thanks.” Douglas smiled. “You know how much I like to help.”

Dez rolled his eyes before turning back to Bram.

“Anything inside your bag of tricks that might be able to give us a clue as to how close we are?”

Bram turned back to the thickening jungle growth.
“Afraid not,” he said, taking the machete from the sheath attached to his belt. “But if we believe the compass, we have to get through here to get to where we’re going.”

“Great,” Dez said. “Soon as I figure out how to keep from falling down I’ll be sure to give you a hand.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Bram said, hacking at the thick growth of vines. “I’ve got it.”

Douglas left his son’s side. “Here, let me help.” He began to chop at the vines also.

The heat was doing a job on Douglas’s face, his makeup melting in the high humidity, exposing the wounds that would never heal. The tiny flies that buzzed around them all seemed particularly interested in the animated dead man.

Bram and Douglas worked at the dense vegetation. But no matter how much they chopped away, there was an even thicker curtain of vines behind it. In a matter of minutes they were exhausted, stepping back for some water and a bit of a rest.

“We should have brought a flamethrower,” Dez said, leaning back against the trunk of a tree and closing his eyes.

“Good one, son,” his father said, taking a few whacks more at the thick jungle growth.

Bram sipped from his canteen, his eyes scanning their surroundings. A flash of color, moving behind a shade of green, caught his attention. It might have been only some jungle life stirred by these intruders, but then he recalled the Archivist’s words about the spirit guardians.

He turned to warn Dez to be on guard and froze as he saw the first of the jaguar beasts emerge. It seemed to flow out of the jungle to stare at Dez, who remained completely unaware. More of the orange-furred beasts appeared, two on either side of Dez while the one moved closer.

“Dez, stay calm,” Bram said in his softest, least threatening voice. “No sudden moves.”

“Why?” Dez asked as he opened his eyes and gazed directly into those of the jungle cat creature. “Oh, my God,” he gulped.

“Just keep cool,” Bram reassured him. “You’re doing fine.”

Douglas turned from the curtain of roots, wiping away the bugs that clung to his face. “Seems like the more I cut, the more there is to cut,” he began, before noticing that they were no longer alone.

“Stay still, Douglas,” Bram warned, and the man froze, machete still in hand.

Another of the jaguars padded on all fours out from
somewhere behind him, its movements completely silent. It studied Bram with unblinking emerald eyes, its black nose twitching as it captured the boy’s scent.

“A sacrifice must be given,” the animal growled, rising to stand upon its back legs. The others did as well, taking on an even stranger appearance.

“We are looking for the temple of A’Ranka,” Bram said. “What would you require to guide us to this place?”

The jaguar leader’s face contorted in what could have been a smile. “A sacrifice of flesh,” the leader growled, licking its whiskered face with a thick, pink tongue.

“Oh, crap,” Dez said as the jaguar beside him walked closer with a rumbling growl.

“No,” Bram stated firmly.

The jaguar seemed taken back, tilting its head as it studied him.

“You would deny us?” it asked. “You would deny the guardians of the jungle their offering?”

“I would deny you our flesh,” Bram answered.

The leader brought a pawlike hand up to its face and stroked at its furry chin, considering Bram’s words. “There is no choice,” the creature finally said with a shake of its head.

The jaguars moved closer, and Bram tensed, ready for a fight.

“We take what we want, and you will go on your way.”

Bram waited for one of the spirit animals to make the first move. But he never expected what happened next.

The wall of vines that they’d worked so hard to chop through suddenly parted like a curtain and two more of the jaguar spirits surged from the passage to attack Douglas from behind. They sank their fangs into his dead flesh; one biting into his collar, the other his wrist, and they yanked the screaming man viciously backward through the opening.

“Dad!” Dez shrieked, pushing off the tree and falling onto his face.

Bram lashed out with his machete, causing the two cat spirits around him to leap back and away.

The leader attempted to block his path, but he willed himself immaterial and passed through the attacking beast with ease, only to watch as the vines closed, blocking the passage with an impenetrable wall of growth.

“Bring him back,” Bram said with a growing fury. He felt the Specter in him surge, the warrior spirit inflamed for combat.

“We have our sacrifice,” the jaguar leader said, backing away with the others. “You have safe passage.”

“You heard me,” Bram said, starting toward the creatures.

The jaguars moved like the wind, flowing back into the jungle.

“We are done,” the jaguar leader’s voice drifted in the air, any sign that the spirit creatures had ever been there now gone.

“Dad!” Dez screamed again. The boy fumbled to get his crutches beneath him but the ground was too soft, and he fell forward again.

“I’ll get him,” Bram said, running toward the wall of vegetation, but Dez’s cry stopped him cold.

He turned to see Dez floating up into the air, crackling bolts of blue energy leaking from his body.

“They took my dad, Bram,” the boy said, his eyes completely white. “I’ve got to save him.”

The air around them began to crackle, and Bram knew that it was only a matter of seconds before Dez unleashed the full potential of his psychokinetic powers. On instinct he ghosted his body as Dez tossed his head and arms back. An explosion of searing white light erupted from
his body and the jungle was filled with a roar like a squadron of jets.

Bram felt the intensity of Dez’s power, even through his immaterial form, as he found himself pushed through the air, buffeted by winds of psychic force.

Taking a chance and opening his eyes, he could hardly believe what he saw. The jungle around them was gone. All that remained were the splintered remnants of the once dense rain forest.

Bram drifted above the wreckage, catching sight of an ancient pyramidlike structure only a few miles away. He had no doubt that was their final destination, but first, he had to find Douglas St. Laurent.

“Do you see him?” Dez asked from behind Bram, and he turned to see the boy slowly coming toward him, his body held aloft by thick legs of crackling blue energy. And as the legs touched the jungle wreckage, even the splintered remains were obliterated.

All Bram could see was devastation. He was about to tell Dez that he didn’t think anything could have survived when he caught sight of movement amongst the wreckage.

Dez’s whitened gaze followed Bram’s, and a smile formed on his sweaty features. “There he is.”

Bram floated above the area, and gasped as a bubble of crackling blue energy rose up from the splintered remains of the jungle. Inside the bubble were Dez’s father, and four of the jungle spirits. Douglas appeared unconscious, the four jaguar spirits in a state of panic.

“Guess I’m gonna have to teach them a lesson,” Dez said, a snarl appearing on his sweating face.

“Dez,” Bram called out, drifting toward the boy. “Maybe you should just let them go,” he suggested. “I think you’ve scared them enough.”

The boy stared at the bubble with blank, milky-white eyes.

“Ya think?” he asked.

“Let them go, Dez,” Bram ordered.

“Sure, I will,” he said, and the air began to hum.

Bram watched as Douglas was removed from the bubble of energy and gently lowered to the broken trees below. Inside the bubble, the jaguar spirits still nervously paced.

And then suddenly the bubble was filled with fire.

Bram covered his ears, the jaguars’ shrieks of agony almost deafening, but as quickly as they started, they stopped, leaving the energy bubble filled with piles of ash.

“There,” Dez said with finality, and the bubble evaporated
with a crackle, filling the air with the drifting remains of the cat creatures.

“Now they’re free.”

Gideon did not wish to be seen naked in front of his goddess.

The reborn sorcerer went to the skeletal corpses lying in the corner, reaching down to remove one of their blue robes.

“What are you doing?” Vladek called impatiently.

“One cannot appear indecent in front of one’s goddess,” the sorcerer explained, wrapping the dusty robes about his new, perfect body.

“Did you know them?” the vampire asked, pointing to the desiccated remains.

“They were of the same order as I,” Gideon said, attaching the robe at his shoulder. “But not half as smart. They, along with our beautiful goddess, tried to fight Borphagal and suffered a most horrible end.” He presented himself clothed in his new attire to the vampire. “I, on the other hand, knew that these attempts would be futile and escaped to plan my beloved deity’s return in another time.”

“And that time is now,” the vampire stated as they
walked across the dusty temple floor to the circular pit.

Just before the open mouth Gideon stopped, feeling powerful magicks attempting to repel him. “Those marks keep her trapped within,” he explained, pointing out the strange symbols decorating the rocks that made up the circle’s border.

Suddenly the vampire pounced upon the rocks, sinking his clawed hands between the stones and tearing them away, destroying the border around the circle with a savage snarl.

“Crude, but effective,” Gideon said with a sniff.

“Wake her up,” the vampire demanded, pointing down into the darkness of the pit. “We have waited far too long as it is. Raise her from the pit so that we can begin this world anew.”

Gideon smiled, imagining the new world to come. It would be a most glorious place under his goddess, a world of darkness and shadow, of predator and prey.

His tongue flicked around in his mouth finding his new, and quite sharp, teeth. And suddenly there was a pain in his stomach, a gnawing agony the likes of which he’d never experienced before.

Gideon bent forward with a groan. “The pain.”

Vladek smiled. “It is hunger that tortures you. You will need to feed on the blood of the living soon if you are to continue to survive.”

Gideon looked around the chamber. “But there is nothing,” he said, feeling the agony in his empty belly intensify.

“Then I suggest you move quickly,” the vampire said with a toothy snarl. “Or you will most assuredly starve to death.”

Muttering in a language forgotten before recorded history, the last of the Yad’Zeen sorcerers began an incantation of awakening. He extended his hands above the yawning pit. Swirling tendrils of magick dropped from his fingertips and slithered like eels through the ocean of darkness toward the sleeping goddess far below.

Gideon stepped back, tired from his work, but Vladek remained at the edge of the pit, staring down into the blackness.

“What now?” the vampire asked impatiently.

“We wait,” Gideon answered. “We wait until the magick gently rouses her from her slumber.”

The vampire snarled. “There is no time.”

He dropped to his knees at the edge of the pit and leaned out over the lake of shadow.

“What are you doing?” Gideon asked, on the verge of panic.

“I am helping the magick,” the vampire said, and began to yell down into the pit. “Goddess A’Ranka, I, Vladek, prince of the bloodspawn, call to you now. A representative of your chosen people beseeches you to awaken.”

The vampire was headstrong, and to say that A’Ranka was temperamental was an understatement. If she awoke at the vampire’s urgings, there would be just as much of a chance that she would destroy them both as there would of her allowing them to live.

Gideon hoped that she would awaken in a good mood.