The Shroud of A'Ranka (Brimstone Network Trilogy) Read Online Free PDF

is that?” Dez asked, wheeling his chair closer. He reached out a hand and let it pass through Africa as the globe slowly turned.
    Stitch carefully studied the representation of Earth, noticing multiple gold spots marked on various locations around the world. But there was one spot, seemingly in Eastern Europe somewhere, that was not gold. It was red, and it flashed to the beat of the screaming alarm.
    “What do you think it means?” Douglas asked, now standing beside him.
    Stitch reached a large hand up to stroke his square chin.
    “I can’t imagine it’s anything good,” he said, watchingthe pulsing red spot as the mysterious alarm continued to scream its warning.
    “Nothing good at all.”
    Prentiss Rollins should have been dead. But the first to fall to the thirst of Vladek twitched suddenly from where he lay upon the floor, causing Mason to jump.
    Lewis looked to the skeletal vampire, who was also watching his first victim.
    “The first of my blood-servants,” the vampire said with a thick accent.
    Prentiss climbed unsteadily to his feet, looking around the chamber as if awakened from a dreamless slumber.
    It was as if the resurrected man suddenly became aware that he wasn’t alone.
    Lewis’s eyes were fixed to the gaping, and now bloodless, wound in the man’s neck. It looked as though he had grown a second mouth, the bite was so large.
    “This … this isn’t right,” Mason said, his voice trembling. “He’s dead … he’s supposed to be dead.”
    Prentiss growled and bared his new fangs.
    “Your friend is undead now,” Vladek said as his willowyform climbed from the stone box. “Neither dead, nor truly alive. It is what all your kind will be if I allow it.”
    “Allow it?” Lewis said, looking to the ancient vampire. “I don’t understand.”
    “There is a choice,” the vampire said, coming to stand beside him.
    A sickly smell of decay wafted from the body of the creature.
    “A choice in whether my bite causes death, or bestows eternal life,” Vladek continued.
    Prentiss slowly started toward them, thick ropes of saliva dripping from his hungry mouth.
    “Eternal life as that?” Mason asked, stumbling back away from the advancing beast. “I’d rather be dead.”
    As if insulted, the vampiric Prentiss charged at them, mouth open far larger than humanly possible.
    “Halt!” Vladek yelled, his voice suddenly filled with strength.
    Prentiss cowered before his master’s command.
    “You will leave these two be,” the ancient vampire said, wearily sitting his bony form down upon the edge of the stone box.
    “We will need human agents to function in a humanworld,” Vladek explained. “They are much more valuable to me in their present state than as food.”
    Prentiss listened to his new master’s words, but there was no mistaking the burning hunger in the monster’s eyes.
    Suddenly he sprang with a guttural growl, his hands wrapped around Mason’s throat, forcing him to the ground. Prentiss bared his fangs again, his hungry mouth descending as Lewis looked on in horror, wondering if he would be next.
    Vladek disappeared from where he rested at the edge of the stone box, only to reappear standing above Prentiss.
    “I said no,” the vampire lord stated, reaching down to grab the back of his blood-servant’s neck and yanking him off the man.
    Vladek held the struggling Prentiss aloft, his feet not even touching the floor as he thrashed in the vampire’s grasp.
    “To disobey me is to forfeit the gift I have bestowed upon you,” the vampire growled. And with another example of lightning speed, the vampire lashed out, his long, pointed fingers piercing Prentiss’s chest and pulling out his heart.
    Prentiss shrieked as his body began to decay, and in amatter of seconds he, as well as the blackened withered heart that Vladek had been holding in his hand, were nothing more than dust.
    Keeping his eyes on the vampire lord, Lewis helped the trembling Mason to his feet.
    Vladek swayed,