The Shroud of A'Ranka (Brimstone Network Trilogy) (12 page)

The large woman in the orange sweat suit had purchased headphones for the in-flight movie but was watching him instead. He wondered if she could hear Gideon’s voice.

Lewis pulled the duffel bag out from under the seat and unzipped it.

“We’re close,” Gideon croaked. “We’re very, very close.”

He was about to ask the sorcerer what he should do, when a thick drifting mist started to seep up from the floor—from the storage cabin beneath the plane.

The large woman craned her neck, trying to see into the bag. Lewis tilted it just enough for her to see Gideon’s head inside.

Her screams mixed with those of the other passengers as
the mist began to solidify, taking on a manlike shape. The vampire roared, springing upon his victims with incredible speed and ferocity. One by one the passengers fell to his bite, drained of their blood before they could even think of unclipping their seat belts.

The large woman in the orange sweat suit screamed the loudest as Vladek perched upon her, drinking her blood. Lewis didn’t enjoy the awful noise and reached across the aisle to pull the dangling earplugs from her ears. He placed them in his own ears, plugging into the film that was playing on the small monitor over the aisle ahead of him.

Drowning out the sound of slaughter.

The head of Gideon could feel the dwindling presence of his goddess close by, and grew excited. This was it, what had been denied to him and his blood-drinking partner for so very long.

The screams of the dying passengers were like a symphony to the ancient magick user, a symphony written especially for their quickly approaching triumph.

But there was still a step that needed to be completed before their meeting with destiny. Vladek’s people must
be made to know that the time was approaching so that they could prepare for the domination of the world.

The withered head closed its eyes, using magickal senses to locate the vampire species. He had no idea of their fate since his imprisonment; the last he knew, the blood clans were hidden around the world, but try as he might, he could not find them.

“Blast,” Gideon hissed, and he extended his search to worlds beyond this one, piercing the layers that separated this world from so, so many others.

“Yes,” he said, suddenly finding them in a deep, dark pocket of shadow.

The Brimstone Order must’ve thought themselves so brilliant
, he mused as he reached out to touch this cold, barren world that had become the home of the vampire species.
Hiding you away as they had done with Vladek, and with me
.

Hiding us away so we could no longer do any harm
.

And with that thought, the ancient sorcerer’s head nestled comfortably within the duffel bag began to laugh.

Bram waited in the Archivist’s chamber for the others to arrive.

The Archivist had not been surprised by their
find, explaining that in the earlier days of the Brimstone organization certain pieces of information deemed too dangerous for Earth were often sealed away. Vladek and all the information associated with him were considered just such information. It was intended that he never be disturbed.

And the plan might have worked, if it hadn’t been for the supernatural event that caused so many of the ancient barriers to come down.

The team finally started to arrive, taking seats in the chairs they’d brought earlier from the cafeteria. Stitch accompanied Emily in her wolfen shape. Bogey was next, the Mauthe Dhoog eating what appeared to be a gigantic cold-cut sandwich despite the early morning hours. Douglas and Dez were last, the boy’s father wheeling the sleepy-eyed psychokinetic into the room.

“Why couldn’t this have waited until the sun came up?” Dez asked.

Bram felt a flutter of nerves in his belly. While he’d been waiting for his team, he’d been formulating his battle plan.

And he was now about to share it with them.

“Sorry about the early hour,” he said, trying to stand
taller. “But what I’ve learned over the last few hours can’t wait. I think I know how we can stop Vladek.”

Bram watched Emily tense in her seat. The werewolf looked totally out of place in the orange-backed chair.

“Does this have anything to do with me?” she growled.

“It does,” Bram answered. “It’s going to take all of us to stop Vladek and Gideon.”

Dez yawned loudly, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Do we even know what they’re up to?”

“No good,” Bogey chimed in before taking another bite of his enormous sandwich. “If a vampire is involved, it has to be no good.”

“I don’t know for sure, but I have my suspicions,” Bram said. “And if I’m right, we’re going to have to move quickly or we’ll be too late.”

An ominous silence filled the room.

“Does anybody have any mayo?” Bogey suddenly asked. He had opened up his sandwich and was eyeing the multi-layered meats, cheeses, and vegetables like a surgeon preparing to operate. “I told the guy at the FastMart lots of mayo, but it looks like he skipped the lots part.”

“Why would any of us have mayo?” Dez asked, clearly annoyed. “It’s the middle of the freakin’ night.”

“A simple no would have been fine,” Bogey said, pouting.

Stitch loudly cleared his throat. “If we could resume the briefing?”

Bogey shrugged, continuing to poke around inside his sandwich while Dez rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“Dez,” Bram said, trying to focus his team. “You asked what Vladek and Gideon were up to. I believe it has something to do with an ancient death goddess called A’Ranka.” He looked at the Archivist to make sure his pronunciation was right, and the ghostly figured nodded his approval.

“Figures it’s a death goddess,” Bogey said, closing his sandwich. “Couldn’t be a flower goddess, or a goddess of line dancing, it has to be a death goddess.”

“As I was saying,” Bram said, ignoring Bogey’s outburst. “It looks like Gideon was unusually interested in this goddess, who was also known as the goddess of dust. According to the legends, she didn’t feel like her followers loved her enough, so she planned to cause some world-altering event to wipe them out to make way for followers who would love her above all else.”

“And how was she going to do that?” Dez asked. His father, still standing behind his chair, patted him proudly on the shoulder.

“A’Ranka was going to blot out the sun,” Bram said, feeling himself growing very cold. “She was going to raise the dust of the dead and use it to cover the sun.”

“That’s cold,” Bogey said, a piece of soggy bread hanging from the corner of his mouth.

“Exactly,” Bram said. “Without the sun it would be cold indeed, and the world would be plunged into total darkness.”

Emily shifted her animal bulk in the chair. “I don’t get it. What kind of world would that be for her new followers?”

Bram remained quiet, letting them put the pieces of the puzzle together.

“Oh, crap,” Bogey said, dropping what remained of his sandwich.

“Vampires,” Emily said, a throaty growl rumbling from her chest.

Bram nodded. “Of course, A’Ranka was stopped. The god of the sun—Borphagal—defeated her in battle, and then imprisoned her in one of her own temples.”

“But it doesn’t end there, does it,” Dez said.

Bram shook his head.

“You think that Vladek and Gideon are up to something that involves this A’Ranka.”

Bram agreed with a nod and continued.

“They were stopped once, but now I think they’re about to try it again. I think they’re going to try to awaken the death goddess and convince her to try her plan again.”

“So how do you think we can stop them?” Stitch asked.

“Well, for starters, Vladek’s heart was magickally removed, which makes him practically invincible. Bogey and I found some documents in the stone case where he was imprisoned that indicate it was given to the vampire royal family and taken to Nocturnia.” Bram looked at his team. “We have to find that heart.”

“You guys do not want to be going to Nocturnia,” Bogey cried out, throwing his hands into the air. “All you’re gonna find there is trouble … trouble and vampires. You can count me out on this one.”

Bram was quick to step in.

“You don’t have a choice,” he stated, his words coming out harsher than he wanted.

Bogey flinched.

“We’re going to need two teams. One team will go to Nocturnia and find the heart with the purpose of destroying it, while the other will head to South America to prevent the death goddess from being awakened.

“I’ve thought long and hard about this, and if anybody has another way, I’d be more than happy to listen.”

No one said a word.

“Then it looks like we’re doing it my way,” Bram said. “Stitch, Emily, and Bogey will head to Nocturnia, while Douglas, Dez, and myself will go to the jungle to find A’Ranka’s temple.”

Bram paused.

“And if we’re not too late for any of it, hopefully we’ll all survive to have a world to come back to.”

In the royal chambers, on the twilight world of Nocturnia, King Yorga stirred.

Having just finished a meal of blood substitute—provided millennia ago by their conquerors, the Brimstone Order, as a replacement for the life-stuff that coursed through the veins of the living—the king had fallen into a lethargic slumber.

But something called to him, something that roused feelings long dormant and believed dead by the vampire king.

The feeling was hope, but that had been destroyed almost instantly upon being banished along with his people to this dark, cold place by their most hated enemies.

King Yorga gradually lifted his chin from his chest, his dark eyes opening ever so slowly. His queen sat beside him on her throne, also held in the grip of sleep. At first he believed it to be she who had awakened him and was about to return to the embrace of slumber, but then he saw it.

Something moved in the air before him, a cloud of smoke that struggled to define itself.

The king sat upright, inching closer to the edge of his throne.

The smoke had taken on the guise of a face, a face that became more and more specific as he left his seat and came closer.

The vampire king stopped as if he’d come up against an invisible barrier, dropping to his knees before the hovering visage of a sorcerer that had so long ago promised him a world.

“Gideon,” King Yorga said, as smoky eyes opened in the face floating in the air of the royal palace.

“It is time, King Yorga,” the face whispered in a voice sounding as though it were coming from so very far away. “Time for you to claim what should have belonged to you millennia ago.”

“How is this to be?” the old king questioned, feeling his body tremble with unexpected anticipation. “We are imprisoned upon this world by powerful sorcery.”

“The world of man has been changed of late,” Gideon whispered. “Magicks believed infallible have been weakened … barriers brought down. Summon your magick users and priests of blood, for your time is now.”

King Yorga rose to his feet.

“And my son?” he asked. “What of Vladek?”

Gideon smiled as his image gradually started to fade, the smoke dissipating.

“Your son still has much to do if all is to go as planned.”

The image of the sorcerer was gone, as if a dream.

And a strength surged through the vampire king’s ancient form, the likes of which he had not experienced since last feeding upon live prey.

A strength brought on by hope.

Vladek stood in the cockpit of the skycraft, Gideon’s head tucked beneath his arm as he gazed out the curved window at the blackness of night.

A special kind of energy coursed through him now,
something even more energizing than the blood he had consumed from the craft’s passengers. The vampire could sense that they were getting closer.

He removed the sorcerer’s head from beneath his arm, pointing it toward the window.

The pilots were under Vladek’s mental control, continuing to fly the great craft, unfazed by the withered head that had been placed between them.

It had taken a great deal of self-control not to feed on them as well. It was actually the human, Lewis, who had managed to prevent him from taking the pilots’ lives.

Vladek chanced a look from the pilots’ cabin, through the open door to where Lewis sat amongst the dead passengers. The man’s eyes were wide with fear as he nibbled on some sort of snack he had found.

The vampire wondered how long it would be until his patience waned and he found himself nibbling upon the throat of his human servant. This one had already lasted far longer than most.

“Here,” Gideon suddenly croaked.

Vladek squinted through the night, seeing only clouds and darkness. “I see nothing.”

“She is so very weak,” Gideon said. “But I feel her here
like the gentle caress of a spider’s limb upon my brain. We need to descend.”

“Do as he says,” Vladek ordered the mesmerized pilots.

Without any hesitation, the two began to manipulate the controls, pointing the aircraft down.

“What are you doing?” asked a frantic voice.

Lewis had left his seat.

“We are descending,” Vladek announced, gazing out the windows as the clouds rushed by, the plane eventually emerging to reveal an emerald jungle below illuminated in the light of a quarter moon.

“We’re going to crash,” Lewis said over the whine of the skycraft’s engines.

“She’s below us,” Gideon spoke. “Down there in the jungle, the goddess A’Ranka calls to her devoted follower.”

The human frantically grabbed hold of Vladek’s shoulder. “We’re going to crash,” he screamed.

Vladek looked through the window again at the sight of the jungle as it loomed closer and closer.

“If that is what needs to happen in order to find her,” the vampire stated, placing Gideon’s head beneath his arm again, “then so be it.”

Screaming, Lewis scurried away, trying to find a safe place where he might survive a crash.

Survive it or not, Vladek did not care.

All that mattered was that they had arrived, the jungle swallowing them up like some great, hungry beast.

EMILY CLUTCHED THE PEN TIGHTLY IN HER
clawed hand, wanting desperately to get her thoughts down onto the paper, but it was as if she’d lost the ability to write.