The Brimstone Network (Brimstone Network Trilogy) (11 page)

Stone’s office was on the top level of the converted castle, and if there was going to be any sign of the leader’s plans, it would probably be there. Tobias stepped through the doorway, remembering the last time he’d done so, bringing the old man tea.

After his parent’s passing, Elijah Stone had taken him under his wing, watching out for him, making sure that all
his needs were addressed. Tobias knew that most found Stone’s actions compassionate, but he had seen them as the actions of someone burdened with guilt.

The flying eye zipped past his face, the beating of insect wings humming in his ear. It darted around the room. The office had been torn apart, the desk smashed, furniture ripped apart by hands eager for destruction.

He’d tried to get Elijah to leave that night, but he refused, as Tobias was sure he would. He was a man dedicated to a cause—no matter the cost, no matter who was hurt.

He turned to see the beasties looking at him, standing in the doorway in a large clump, as if sensing the turbulence in his soul. “Don’t just stand there,” he barked. “Search the room.”

The monsters scrambled, darting around the office, sniffing at the ground, examining the wrecked pieces of furniture.

The troll, Cracklebones, simply stood, staring. “And what are we searching for?” he asked, his voice sounding as though his throat were filled with gravel.

“I don’t know exactly,” Tobias said, moving toward the remains of the desk. “But I’ll know when I see it.”

The point of his boot caught on the rubble of a desk drawer, and Tobias almost tripped, kicking something that slid noisily across the floor. It glinted in the semidarkness, drawing his attention. He squatted, picking up the silver picture frame, and remembered that Stone had been putting something away in a drawer when he’d come into the room that night.

He ran a thumb over the cracked glass of the picture frame. It was the photo of a child, a smiling little boy no older than four.

People had said that Stone had suffered a loss as well, and that that was why he had been so devoted to Tobias and Claire. He’d once had a child of his own.

He’d had a son.

Tobias had heard the story of the marriage to prevent a war with the Specter, of how the marriage had produced a child … a boy. Rumor had it that the child had been close to death for years, something about the biology of a Specter and a human being incompatible.

The boy …
Abraham
, Tobias remembered, was a few years younger than himself. If still alive, he would have been twelve or thirteen.

Tobias had always found it sort of strange that Abraham
was never mentioned. It was almost an unspoken rule in the Network not to ask about the child’s condition.

“What is that?” asked a small, high-pitched voice. Crowley’s eye buzzed in the air above his shoulder.

“It’s a picture of Stone’s son.”

Elijah had quickly put the framed picture away as Tobias had entered the room.
Why would he hide the picture?
Tobias wondered.
Is it a sign of weakness to care about your own sick kid? Is that why no one ever talked about Abraham? But if that was true, why would he have taken such an interest in our lives?

It didn’t make sense.

“The child was weak … sickly,” said the eye. “It died as it should have.”

“No,” Tobias said with a shake of his head. “As far as I know, Abraham was still alive, being cared for by doctors, somewhere … or at least that’s what we were meant to believe.”

The eye flew around his head. “Are you insinuating something, boy?”

A wild theory was taking root inside Tobias’s brain. “It’s probably nothing, but I’d like to follow it through.”

“You want to find the son?” Crowley’s voice squeaked.

“I want to see if he is as sick as they said he was,” Tobias answered.

The eye circled around again. “And if he is, we’ll do him a favor and put him out of his misery, the poor child’s suffered enough,” the eyeball said, wings flapping as it darted from side to side.

And then the orb started to laugh.

It was one of the most disturbing sounds Tobias had ever heard.

T
obias stepped from a deep passage of shadow cast by an ancient oak in front of the iron gates that circled the mansion, Stonehouse. It had been at least five years since he’d last paid a visit to Elijah Stone’s home, but from the looks of it, little had changed.

He remembered how afraid he’d been of the twin, limestone griffons that guarded the main entrance, their fierce eagle heads and muscular lions’ bodies, wings folded tightly upon their backs, ready to unfurl and take flight in search of prey. The years of exposure to the harsh New England elements had only served to make them all the more fearsome with ferocious faces covered in patches of black and green mold.

Beasties spilled out from the darkness behind Tobias, some jumping back with a hiss as their eyes fell upon the statues.

The flying eye hovered to the right of him. “And what do we expect to find here?” Crowley’s tinny voice asked from the surface of the orb.

“Perhaps something, likely nothing,” Tobias answered, staring through the gates at the large, Gothic house. “I just want to be sure.”

He and his sister had been brought here after the attack upon their home to live with the leader of the Brimstone Network in the days preceding their parents’ memorial service. Tobias closed his eyes, remembering how he had lain in a bed in one of the many guest rooms, listening to the sounds of the house, and how one night, unable to sleep, he had left his room to explore and had come upon Elijah entering his study.

Even now, the memory haunted him.

“What if his kid wasn’t sick? What if he was being raised in secret to carry on after his father’s death?” Tobias asked, opening his eyes and looking at the disembodied eye floating near his shoulder.

The bloodshot orb looked at him, the black of its iris constricting as it considered the possibility. “Yesssssssss,”
Crowley hissed. “Yes, I can see Stone being that clever … that devious.”

“But then again, it might be just what he said.” Tobias shrugged.

The eye silently considered this as well, then flew to hover before the gathering of monsters at their back. “Search the house,” Crowley’s eye demanded. “Bring me anything that even smells suspicious.”

The monsters charged toward the gate as though a starting gun had been fired. An ogre, its body adorned in armor carved from solid rock, was first to lay its hands upon the gates.

And the first of the beasties to meet a horrible fate.

Talons slashed through the air, severing the ogre’s head with one powerful swipe, an attack so fast that Tobias had to wonder if the rock ogre was even aware that it had been killed.

The griffon statues had come to life, eyes blazing a fiery red in their limestone sockets. The mythological beasts flew down from their perches, attacking the monsters that huddled, stunned, before the gate.

They didn’t stand a chance.

For all the ferocity of the creatures of darkness, they
were nothing compared to the savagery of the stone griffons. One by one the beastie minions fell before the hooked beaks and razor-sharp claws. They tried to fight back, but stone flesh made the griffons impervious to harm.

Tobias stood, fixated by the scene unfolding before him. Some of the monsters were trying to get away, only to be pounced by the griffons dropping down from the air. He watched as Cracklebones planted his feet and raised his ax, ready to defend himself, or die in the attempt.

“What are you waiting for?” an annoyed voice buzzed in his ear as the flying eye circled excitedly around his head. “You’re a magick user, do something.”

“Right,” Tobias said, searching his mind for the magick that could counteract Elijah Stone’s security spell.

Cracklebones ducked beneath the griffons’ claws as they circled above his head. The clanging sound of his heavy ax striking their stone flesh shattered the air. The beasts were playing with the troll, wearing him down; it wouldn’t be long before they ended their game and killed the troll, as they had a good number of the others.

Thinking of a spell, he whispered the words beneath his breath. Tobias extended his arms, aiming the magicks that coursed through his body at the tiring Cracklebones.
The magick danced from his fingertips to envelop the troll in a cocoon of crackling green energy. Like flexing a muscle, Tobias pulled the troll up into the air, just as the griffons pounced. They collided with a sound like a thunderclap as Tobias deposited the troll on the opposite side of the metal gates.

The griffons backed away from one another, eyes darting about, searching for their escaped prey.

“Hey,” Tobias yelled, capturing their attention.

The stone beasts spun around, ear-piercing cries shrieking from their open beaks as they started toward him.

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.

B
ram 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.

A
s 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?