The Shroud of A'Ranka (Brimstone Network Trilogy)

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  Bram couldn’t move, frozen in the entryway as his teammates begged to know what it was that he was seeing.

  The figure came around the desk to stare at him, and Bram could not help but be overwhelmed with emotion.

  “I’m the Archivist,” the man said. “How can I be of service?”

  Bram was speechless, staring at the neatly dressed man standing before him, looking exactly as he had the last time Bram saw him.

  The Archivist looked exactly like his father.

  How dare you bring this … thing into my home,” Mr. Tiberius Stanton said, his fat face flushed red with anger.

  Lewis shook his head as he strolled farther into the room, Mason and Vladek behind him. “You don’t want to say things like that,” he warned. “It’s not healthy.”

  It seemed as though they had interrupted one of Stan-ton’s little gatherings. The room was filled with old men and women wearing hooded silk robes, a gold, five-pointed star embroidered on the chest.

  Quite stylish, Lewis thought.

  Stanton’s little group had hired him and his team to acquire some items of power hidden away in a secret Brimstone Network storage place, but instead, they had found something much more dangerous. Lewis was sure that his employer was going to be greatly disappointed, but what could he do?

  Lewis had a new employer now.

  Vladek came forward, snarling at the overweight old man in his fancy silken robes.

  “You all stink of sorcery,” the vampire lord snarled, his nostrils curling up as he sniffed at the air in the old, English mansion.

  “We are all powerful wielders of magick,” the old man said, puffing out his chest as he turned to his gathering of friends. “And we would advise you … and your rabble to leave at once before we are forced to—”

  Vladek’s movements were a blur. He pounced upon Stanton, draining nearly every drop of the sorcerer’s blood in mere seconds.

  The vampire held the man by the front of his scarlet robes, letting the withered body drop to the beautiful hardwood floor.

  “This one insulted me,” he said to the gathering of sorcerers now standing closer together. He nudged the corpse of Stanton with his armored toe. “And for that I have denied him a second life. This one’s corpse will not rise again, but instead will rot like fruit fallen uneaten from a tree.”

  One of the other sorcerers came forward, a skeletal figure with a long, hooked nose. If Lewis’s memory hadn’t failed him, this one’s name was Masterton, and every time that Lewis had dealt with him he was reminded of a buzzard, or some other ugly type of bird.

  “Are we going to allow him to get away with this?” the sorcerer said to the others. “Are we going to just stand here and let this monstrosity order us around?”

  Lewis had walked over to the portable bar in the corner of the room. He handed Mason a glass and filled it with ice before picking up a glass of his own.

  “I would if I were you, but that’s just me,” Lewis said, pouring some brandy from a crystal decanter.

  Another of the sorcerers—a woman with flaming red hair beneath her hood—pushed Masterton to the background and stepped forward.

  “You’ve obviously come here for a reason,” she said. “Tell us what you want.”

  Vladek smiled at the woman, showing her his razor-sharp teeth. “Finally, someone with manners,” he said.

  “What do you want from us?” she demanded.

  “I need your help to find someone,” Vladek stated. “Someone I can sense out there just beyond the pale but I know is not to be found on this earthly plain.”

  Lewis could see the worry in the sorcerers’ eyes as they looked at one another.

  “The sorcerer who will help me complete my mission,” Vladek stated. “His name is Gideon. And I want you to find him for me.”

  7.

  “IS SOMETHING WRONG, SIR?” THE GHOSTLY IMAGE of Elijah Stone asked Bram as he moved around the desk to stand before him.

  “Father?” Bram stammered, reaching out a hand to take told of the man’s sleeve. His hand passed through.

  “In appearance, yes,” the man said. “But little more than that, I’m afraid.”

  “But why do you …?” Bram began.

  “Why do I look like the director … your father? Quite simple, really. It was easier for the Network operatives to recount their stories to a figure of authority that they truly respected. I’m the Archivist—a magickal construct—and my job is to record the work of the Brimstone Network.”

  Bram could barely keep the sudden wave of emotion under control.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but every new director allows a piece of his soul essence to be taken, and shaped into the newest Archivist.”

  “So when a file says ‘sent to archives,’ it means that the information was given to you?” Emily asked, stepping into the room.

  “Exactly,” the Archivist said. “I’m far more dependable than one of those computers, and I save a fortune on paper.”

  Emily looked at him, a surprised smile on her face. “This is incredible.”

  “Yeah,” Bram said, with much less enthusiasm. “Incredible.”

  “The powers that created me were also sensitive to the fact that a magickal attack had been launched against this facility. My vast resources were immediately locked away, only to be accessed by the next director of the Brimstone Network.”

  The image of his father studied Bram. “That is you,” the Archivist said. “If you would allow me to sample a tiny fraction of your soul energy, I will happily shape my form to resemble you….”

  “No,” Bram said firmly. “This shape will do fine.”

  The Archivist processed the information and smiled, bowing his head slightly. “Very good, sir.”

  Bram studied his teammates, who had finally joined him in the room.

  “And this is your Network?” the ghostly image of his father asked.

  Bram nodded.

  “Excellent,” the Archivist said. “How may I be of service to you?”

  Bram tried to pull himself together. This wasn’t, after all, his father, simply a magickal spell fashioned in his likeness. But that didn’t seem to matter to a part of him.

  A part of him that still deeply missed his father.

  “There is a storage cave for the Brimstone Network in the Ural Mountains,” Bram said, forcing his emotions back to a place where they wouldn’t hinder his ability to lead his team.

  The Archivist stared off into space, the color of his eyes changing to a milky white, before returning to their dark brown.

  “Ah yes, I have it.”

  “Someone … something was imprisoned there,” Bram said. “Locked inside a great stone chest. A vampire.”

  The Archivist brought a hand to his chin. “A vampire, you say,” the records keeper said, turning away and heading farther into the room.

  The air around them shimmered and changed. The walls were suddenly covered in row upon row of shelves filled with countless leather-bound books. The Archivist went to a section behind his desk and plucked a thick volume from the shelf. He immediately started to thumb through it.

  “Ah yes, here it is. The vampire’s name is Vladek,” he said.

  “Vladek,” Bram repeated, letting the name of his enemy roll off his tongue. “What can you tell me about him?”

  “A prince of the Verdulak clan, and a fearsome warrior. Many vampires believed Vladek to be some sort of savior, that he was to somehow lead the vampire race to victory against humanity.”

  “But he ended up imprisoned in a stone chest in the Ural Mountains,” Bogey finished.

  The Archivist looked up from his book. “Yes, that’s right. Vladek proved to be more formidable than any of the other vampires the organization had faced … virtually indestructible, so they had no choice but to lock him away for what they thought would be eternity.”

  Virtually indestructible.

  The words piqued Bram’s imagination.

  “What made this one so to
ugh?” he asked.

  His father flipped through the pages of a new text before answering.

  “The vampire was captured by the forces of the Brimstone Order while in the company of a powerful sorcerer called Gideon,” the Archivist explained. “It was believed that the two had entered into an unholy alliance to destroy the human race, and that it was Gideon’s magick that had transformed Vladek into such a formidable foe.”

  Stitch cleared his throat.

  “Yes?” the Archivist asked.

  “Do you have any idea what the two were planning?” the patchwork man asked. “It’s not too often that we see a magick user and vampire playing nice together.”

  The Archivist considered the question. “I do not,” he said. “No matter how hard we tried to … persuade them, we could never get either of them to confess their plans.”

  “A shame,” Stitch said. “If we knew what they were up to then, it might give us an idea as to where Vladek is now.”

  The Archivist nodded as he replaced the leather-bound volume on the shelf. “An excellent thought, but I doubt questioning him now would be anymore fruitful than it was in the past.”

  Something in the Archivist’s tone grabbed Bram’s attention.

  “Questioning him?” Bram asked. “Who exactly do you mean?”

  “Gideon,” the magickal spell cast in the shape of his father said as he returned to his desk.

  “But Gideon’s dead … isn’t he?” Bram asked.

  The Archivist smiled as he sat down behind his dark wood desk, arranging a pen and a small stack of papers that had suddenly appeared there.

  “Dead? Now who said anything about him being dead?”

  And they call themselves sorcerers, Vladek mused with disgust as he made his way through the conjured passageway opened by the only magick user gathered at the mansion with any real magickal talent at all.

  The vampire had demanded that they use their formidable magickal skills to reach into his mind and, using his vampiric connection to Gideon, find the ancient sorcerer.

  He had thought it a simple task, one that any high level magick manipulator would have been able to accomplish. But one after another they had failed him, and one after another he had drained their life away. If they could not perform, they were better suited as food.

  It turned out to be the least likely of them who proved to be a true master of the magickal arts. A short, plump figure, reeking of fear; his scarlet robes stretched tight across an abundant stomach.

  Vladek had asked the fat man his name, and he had fearfully responded Philo Normans. Then, stepping over the drained corpses of his brethren in sorcery, Philo had approached the vampire while Vladek’s servants, Lewis and Mason, watched from the side.

  Vladek had warned this fat man who stank of fear and magick of the horrors that would be visited upon him if he even thought of betrayal.

  Philo had gulped loudly, and in a trembling voice he had muttered a complex incantation, reaching out to lay sausage-size fingers upon Vladek’s brow.

  The vampire could feel him inside his mind, fumbling around, looking for his mental connection to the ancient magician named Gideon. Finally, he found it and, leaving the vampire’s mind, he gazed out across the room.

  “The one you seek is not on this world,” the man said, his eyes seeming to search beyond the walls of the estate. “He is in another place … held against his will….”

  Vladek stepped closer. “Where?”

  The fat man began to tremble, his round face bright red and covered with sweat.

  “I see…,” he finally hissed. “I see a large room … hidden between this plane and another—”

  “Take me there,” the vampire demanded, grabbing hold of the front of Philo’s scarlet robes with a clawed hand. “And receive my mercy.”

  The fat man rubbed his chubby hands. “This’ll be the first time I’ve ever done this on my own,” he said with a nervous chuckle.

  “And it will be the last, if you fail me,” Vladek warned.

  Philo closed his eyes and tilted his head back. Ancient incantations started to spill from his lips, and he extended his arms, allowing the magick to flow through him. Crackling bolts of greenish energy danced from the tips of his fingers, razor-sharp bolts of supernatural power that tore through the fabric of reality, peeling back the curtain of this world and allowing access to the place behind it.

  Vladek smiled as he peered into a vast storage room hidden away in a magickly created pocket universe. He could feel a gentle tug upon his senses, the sensation that Gideon was somewhere close by.

  He started through the passage, his human servants following at his heels like two loyal dogs.

  A chill of intense displeasure ran up and down his spine as he gazed around the shadowy room. It reminded him of the chamber in which he had been imprisoned, but so much larger. For as far as the eye could see there were crates, and ancient-looking objects stacked haphazardly upon the ground. Standing nearby were suits of armor, their silver luster dulled with the passage of time and a coating of dust. They were unusually large, as if forged for beings much bigger than the average human, and in their gauntleted hands, they clutched weapons of the same ilk.

  Weapons too big for human hands.

  Vladek suddenly sensed Gideon’s presence close to him, and had just taken his eyes from the metal battle suits, when they sprang to life.

  The one wielding the enormous battle-ax was first to strike, lunging and swinging the tarnished blade at Vladek with amazing speed.

  The vampire jumped back, but not before the weapon’s edge tore through the metal of his own armor, tasting the vampire flesh beneath. Vladek hissed, glancing at his damaged arm. It was already healing, but that didn’t mean that the injury did not pain him.

  The second suit of armor was on the move as well, chasing his two slaves, who had begun to flee at the first sign of trouble.

  Isn’t that like a human? No true loyalty to their superior.

  Vladek reached down to the floor and hefted a heavy wooden crate. Turning toward the animated armor in pursuit of his servants, he threw the box with all his might. It struck the back of the armor, the container shattering upon impact and driving the attacker to the floor.

  Turning back to his own attacker, the vampire had just enough time to jump away as the blade of the battle-ax passed dangerously close once again. He lunged forward, gabbing hold of the faceplate of the horned helmet and yanking it from the armor’s shoulders. It was empty.

  A means of securing the safety of the chamber’s contents, he guessed, avoiding the large, grasping hands of the suit. He scanned the room quickly. He needed a weapon, something to smash the armor into pieces, if he was going to survive this confrontation.

  And then he was struck from behind. A sword blade pierced his side, passing through the back of his own armor, into his flesh, and out through his chest. The vampire lord bellowed his rage and pain, dropping to his knees, the weight of the gigantic sword pulling him down.

  That was when he heard it. A faint whisper at first, a muffled hissing in the air.

  Vladek climbed to his feet. The suits of armor were already moving on him again. He reached behind himself and withdrew the sword from his back. He held the mighty blade out before him, the weight of the weapon unlike anything he had ever wielded before. And as he watched his attackers move slowly toward him, he focused on the sound of the voice.

  The voice of Gideon, begging for release.

  The armored guards clomped closer, the headless suit still carrying its battle-ax, while the other had removed a rust-encrusted dagger from a cobweb-covered scabbard hanging at his side.

  A stone urn flew through the air just missing one of the armored suits, and they spun toward this newest threat.

  Vladek was already moving, catching sight of his human slaves retreating from their attack upon the suits of armor, their brave actions giving him the opportunity that he had been hoping for.

  The vampire focused on
the sound of Gideon’s voice.

  “Speak up!” Vladek shrieked.

  Gideon’s voice was louder now, as were the metal footfalls of the suits who had abandoned his lackeys and were now bearing down on the real threat.

  “Where are you?” Vladek screamed.

  “I am here,” hissed the ancient voice from somewhere beneath the vampire.

  Vladek’s gaze fell on a small wooden box at his feet. The sound of the sorcerer’s voice was coming from there. He dropped to the ground, snatching up the box and ripping away its cover.

  He could feel the suits of armor stepping up behind him as he gazed at the withered remains of the great sorcerer. All the box contained was Gideon’s head.

  “Point me toward them,” Gideon ordered. “Point me toward the guards.”

  And having nothing to lose but everything to gain, Vladek did as he was told, rolling onto his back and pointing the open box at the metal attackers.

  Bolts of icy blue energy streamed from the box, blasts of magick that struck each sentry in the center of its chest, hurling them violently backward into crates and statuary.

  Vladek rose to his feet still holding the box in his hands. He gazed across the room to where the suits of armor lay in pieces.

  Lewis was the first to approach the pieces littering the floor. He kicked at the empty helmet, knocking it onto its side.

  “I’ve been saving up that spell for a very long time,” Gideon said as Vladek gazed into the box. “Just in case you came. It is good to see you again, Vladek.”

  “And you as well,” the vampire responded. He was about to ask where the rest of the sorcerer’s body might be, when a sound very much like that of a large piece of fabric being torn filled the room.

  From across a darkened chamber Vladek saw him, the young man who had slain the occupants of the village upon whom he had bestowed the gift of un-life.

  The descendant of those who had imprisoned him, and who would die painfully beneath his fangs before Vladek allowed his plans to be thwarted again.