The Brimstone Network (Brimstone Network Trilogy) (16 page)

“I … I have to go.” Her words again sounded really stupid and inappropriate, but at the minute, so true. She had to go, or something very, very bad was going to happen.

“We all want you to stay,” the gargling man said. “Me … my
babies.” He motioned toward the insects skittering across the gym floor. “Your friends.”

And with those last words the kids in her class started to move as well. Walking stiffly toward her in unison, and she was reminded of one of those zombie movies that she’d watched with her dad last Halloween.

Emily spun around and ran for the doors. Arms out before her, she grabbed for the handles, pulling on them so hard that she thought her arms would pop from their sockets.

But the doors didn’t open all the way, and she let out a pathetic cry when she saw why. While she had been distracted, somebody had put a chain through the door handles and had padlocked them shut.

Emily turned with her back pressed against the locked gym doors. The bugs were closer, as were the pale-skinned man and the kids from her class.

“My babies will make you want to stay,” the man gurgled. She could see him better now, and saw that his skin was so white and thin that she could actually see through it—see his veins and arteries. This wasn’t a man at all, but something else.

“They can make you do whatever I want,” the monster gurgled.

She could see that the bugs were crawling on her friends, crawling on their shoulders, through their hair, without causing any reaction. Her eyes found Ben Turner in the crowd, his hair typically mussed, hanging down in front of his eyes. His mouth was moving as if he were struggling to speak, but multiple fat-bodied insects crawled out over his lips, to plop to the floor instead.

“And I want you to come with me,” she heard the man that wasn’t a man say over the ear-piercing screams that now filled the gymnasium.

Screams that she suddenly realized belonged to her.

T
he rift opened onto the back of the convenience store, hidden away in the shadows where nobody was likely to notice.

“What do you mean you need a map?” Bram asked Bogey as they all stepped from the tear in the fabric of reality.

“It helps me figure out where I’m going,” the young Mauthe Dhoog explained. “I’ll just zip in here and get one.”

Bram couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.

“You can’t find Emily Larch’s home in Covington, West Virginia, but you know a convenience store where you can buy a map?”

Bogey’s smile was huge, showing off large, yellow teeth. “I know where all the QuickMarts are,” he said. “This is one of my favorites … they have the blue Slushies here.”

“Blue Slushies?” Mr. Stitch questioned. “Why am I suddenly under the impression that this isn’t the first time that you’ve rifted over from Guttswallow?”

Bram looked at how the young boggart was dressed.

Just before they’d departed he’d run back to his own hut to gather his things, returning dressed in a hooded sweatshirt, faded blue jeans, and a pair of very white tennis shoes with the laces untied.

The Mauthe Dhoog looked down, checking himself out.

“Wonder what gave it away?” Bogey said with a chuckle. “I was rifting back and forth before I could even talk, but the cool thing now is that I get to do it without getting in trouble.”

The boggart threw the hood up over his large head, pulling it down slightly in the front to hide his inhuman features.

“You wait here. I’ll be right back,” Bogey said as he left them in the shadows behind the store.

Bram didn’t know how to react, turning to look at Stitch.

“Why am I suddenly regretting accepting Herlethingus’s offer?”

“He’s still young, so we’ll need to cut him a bit of slack, but his talents will most definitely come in handy.”

“But he had to get a map,” Bram complained just as an alarm started to sound from the convenience store.

That can’t be good.

Bram looked quickly at Stitch before both of them moved from behind the store to peer around the corner.

Bogey came running out of the QuickMart, folded map tucked beneath his arm, his hands filled with two large drinks.

“What happened?” Bram asked.

“Not really sure,” Bogey said as he ran past. “My hood fell off when I was paying for my stuff and the guy behind the counter went kinda nuts.”

Bram started toward the store entrance. “Maybe if I explain …”

Stitch pulled him back toward the shadows.

“We should leave it,” he said.

“Yeah, leave it,” Bogey said. He had already conjured a new rift to take them away.

“And besides,” the little creature said, holding up the two drinks proudly. “We’ve got Slushies.”

12.
EMILY DIDN’T WANT TO LET IT OUT, BUT SHE
didn’t see where she had much choice.

Her classmates shambled closer, crawling with bugs. There were bugs on the floor as well, and then there was the creepy guy that wasn’t a guy at all. He was closer, too, and she couldn’t decide which was more horrible, him or the bugs.

“My babies will make it all better,” he said with a hint of excitement. “Let their delicate legs touch you, and everything will be just fine. Then you and I will go on a little trip. Yes, we will.” He nodded his bulb-shaped head. A bug fell out of his ear and bounced off his sunken chest to the floor.

Emily was pressed against the doors to the gymnasium, eyes tightly closed, trying to keep herself calm. Her skin
had begun to itch wildly, as if hundreds of tiny bugs were crawling all over her, bugs tinier than the ones skittering toward her.

She had been through this before; it was one of the first symptoms of the problem she’d developed since she’d turned thirteen. A problem she tried desperately to hide from herself, and everyone around her.

It had started with bizarre dreams, where she found herself running through the nearby woods, late at night, beneath a full moon. She was chasing a rabbit, darting between the trees at an incredible speed. And no matter how fast the rabbit ran, she was right there behind it. Eventually, she caught that bunny. She had bitten into its flesh, and its warm blood had filled her mouth.

She remembered the relief she had felt that night when she had awakened to find that it was only a dream.

And then the sheer terror when she realized that her hands and face were covered with dried blood.

Rabbit blood.

It was a terror very similar to what she was experiencing at that very moment.

Emily felt the first of the large bugs crawl onto her shoe, and opened her eyes. They were all around her.

The creepy guy with the white skin was smiling as he held out his cupped hands, overflowing with more fat, disgusting insects. “They like you,” he gurgled. “They like you even more than your friends.”

Emily knew she had only two choices. She could pass out, allowing the bugs to do to her whatever it was that they had already done to her classmates …

Or she could let
it
out.

The creep tossed his handful of bugs onto the front of her new blouse, and immediately she screamed, not because of the bugs, but because of what she was about to become. Frantically she tore at her clothes, and the skin beneath.

The creep was laughing, until it caught sight of the shiny black fur bristling beneath Emily’s torn skin. She reached up and ripped the skin from her face like a mask to reveal the beast she had become. It had been a long time since it was last free. Since the wolf was free.

The creep was afraid; she could smell it wafting off his stinky pale flesh. Standing in a pile of clothing and skin, she tensed, powerful muscles rippling beneath sleek, black fur, feeling as though nothing could stop her.

“My, you are full of tricks,” the creep said, stepping
away from her fierceness. “But it does not matter. With fur or without, I will be bringing you to my master Crowley.”

Crowley.
She would remember that name.

“Take her,” the creep ordered, and her classmates moved at her in a wave.

The wolf sprang at the crowd of students, wanting to be wild, to attack and destroy its enemies. But Emily knew that her attackers were innocent, somehow under the control of the white-skinned monster and his bugs. She didn’t want to hurt them any more than was necessary, but it was so hard to stay in control.

She grabbed the kids by the fronts of their shirts and blouses, tossing them away with a ferocious snarl. Although the inner beast was not entirely satisfied, Emily found the sight of some of the girls who often made her life miserable, flying through the air and bouncing off the gym walls, totally amusing.

Who’s cooler now?
she thought with a certain amount of glee.
I’m not the one being controlled by cockroaches.

Then Ben Turner came at her. He was the whole reason she had come to this stupid dance. The wolf wanted nothing more than to tear him in half, but Emily forced the thought from her mind. Instead, she grabbed Ben by the
front of his Fall Out Boy T-shirt, and slammed him down hard upon the floor. There was an explosion of bugs from his body, like dust from a dirty old rug. He remained still, so she turned her anger on the one that truly deserved it.

The creep had retreated to the shadows. He seemed to be looking around, searching for someone to come to his aid, but most of her classmates were unconscious, and those who weren’t were in no condition to attack her again. Emily laughed, and was disturbed by the sound that came out of her.

“Just you and me now,” she managed to say, her voice a nasty-sounding growl. “Too bad for you.” Barely able to hold back the wolf’s savagery, she charged the white-skinned monster, fangs bared in a savage snarl.

The bugs swarmed her from around the room, abandoning the kids to protect their master.

“That’s it, my babies,” she heard him say. “Make her suffer for the troubles she’s caused.”

The bugs covered her like a squirming blanket. She ripped them from her body, crushing them in her hands and beneath the thick pads of her clawed feet, and even with her jaws as the insects tried to crawl inside her mouth.

Finally Emily let the wolf go, losing herself in its rage
as it attempted to destroy the swarm. She found herself dropping to the floor, rolling, crushing the mass of bugs upon her back.

She got so caught up in the destruction of the insects, Emily barely noticed the horrible screaming that began to fill the gymnasium. She ripped the last of the bugs from her furry arms and saw that the pale-skinned monster had dropped to his knees, his hands clutching the sides of his head as he let loose a high-pitched wail of pain.

Emily strode toward the creep, nearly slipping in the mass of crushed bugs on the floor. She stood before the white-skinned thing, listening to his screaming and crying. She waved a clawed hand in front of his face, and he didn’t even blink.

A stray bug skittered across her path, and instinctively she brought her foot down and crushed it.

Creepy guy screamed all the louder.

His babies
, she remembered what he’d called them.
Good
, she thought with a snarl.

And before she even realized what she was doing, Emily hauled back one of her powerful claws and slapped the creep, sending him rolling across the wooden floor.

Emily looked around, her animal eyes searching for
other threats. All she saw were her classmates, their moans making the gym sound as though it were filled with ghosts instead of bug-controlled zombies.

Using all of her will, she pushed the wolf back to its hiding place in her mind and, with clawed hands, she reached up, ripping the fur from her body to reveal fresh, pink, human skin beneath. Naked and suddenly cold, she skipped across the gym to retrieve her clothes, careful to not step in any disgusting puddles of bug juice. She brushed the fine dust of the remains of her old flesh from the clothes and quickly dressed, hoping that none of her classmates would remember what she had become.

She was just slipping a foot into one of her socks when a sound that very well could have been a runaway truck filled the room. Fearing another attack, she spun around to see that three people had suddenly appeared.

“Emily Larch?” a kid about her age with spiky blond hair asked. He was flanked by a big guy with bad skin, and another, shorter kid whose face was mostly hidden in the shadow of his hoodie. For a minute she could have sworn that his eyes had flashed a bright red.

“I’m Abraham Stone … we’ve come to ask you to join us.”

“Who’s asking me to do what?” she questioned, hopping on one foot as she pulled on her other sock.

“Abraham Stone … Bram Stone … my father was the leader of the Brimstone Network and …”

“He was killed … wasn’t he?” Emily asked as she stuck her feet in her shoes.

The boy nodded, a shadow of sadness seeming to pass over his face. “We were afraid that the same forces that killed him could have come after you.”

“Could have?” Emily asked, crossing her arms. “I think you’re a bit late.”

The tall guy with the complexion like bad meat walked to where the pale-skinned creature lay.

“You might not want to get too close to that,” she called to him.

Ignoring her, he squatted beside the monster, then looked up at his companions. “An insecticus,” he said. “These foul things haven’t walked this side of the barrier for centuries.”

“We were right,” Abraham said to her. “You are in danger, and we’d like you to come with us.”

“Sure,” she scoffed, turning around and walking toward the doors.

The big guy was walking amongst her classmates.

“Are they gonna be all right?” she stopped to ask.

“They’ll be fine, eventually,” he said, picking a dead bug out of Alison McNulty’s hair. “The insecticus use these lesser insects to control the minds of their enemies, making it easier to enslave and eventually feed upon them.”

And to think how grossed out she’d been
before
.

“He said that he was going to take me to his master,” she offered.

“Did he mention a name?” Abraham asked.

“Crowley,” she said. “He said that he was going to take me to his master, Crowley.”