Specter Rising (Brimstone Network Trilogy) by Thomas E. Sniegoski Page B

pinwheeling inthe air as it attempted to find solid ground.
    “I think he’s waiting for something to happen,” Dez spoke up.
    Stitch looked over. “What do you mean?”
    Dez pointed with one of his crutches. “I caught him looking over there a couple of times.”
    They all looked.
    It was an hourglass-shaped device, although this one was filled with something that looked an awful lot like blood dripping from one compartment down into another.
    “Cool,” Bogey said, walking over for a closer look.
    “Look but don’t touch,” Emily warned the Mauthe Dhoog.
    Stitch shook the demon like a rattle. “Is that it?” he asked. “Are you waiting for something or somebody . . . an appointment perhaps?”
    “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the Fthaggua croaked. “I’m just a businessman attempting to keep the spawn of my seed in viscera and . . .”
    Bogey clumsily stumbled against the table, knocking the blood-filled hourglass from its perch to the floor where it shattered.
    Emily rolled her eyes and looked as though she was aboutto chew the Mauthe Dhoog out when he began to speak.
    “Incoming,” Bogey said, steadying himself on the small piece of furniture as if dizzy.
    Dez’s heart skipped a beat.
    “What do you mean incoming?” Emily asked.
    Then Johanna’s invisible dogs started to growl, and he got a sense that things were about to get interesting.
    “Felt as if I just got dropped fifty floors in a heartbeat; somebody is opening up a dimensional passage. I’m very sensitive when it comes to this stuff. We’re about to have company.”
    Stitch shoved the demon back in his chair.
    “Make him forget us,” the big man ordered Dez as they all started for cover.
    Dez locked eyes with the Fthaggua. It was just about to speak—probably to beg him not to do what he was about to—when Dez forced himself into the demon’s brain.
    He immediately felt sick to his stomach. Being inside a demon’s brain was like being inside a filthy toilet. Rummaging around in the most recent sections of its memory, Dez went about removing the images. The creature moaned as he did this, but time constraints did not allow him to be gentle.
    And besides, this thing had sent one of its own to assassinate his friend.
    The air in the chamber’s center suddenly began to crackle.
    “Dez, c’mon!” Bogey yelled from behind a large clay pot.
    He finished up the best he could and started to look for a hiding place of his own, but his legs were stiff, and even with the crutches, he was having a hard time getting around.
    There was sudden movement beside him, and he felt himself swept off his feet.
    “I’ve got you, lad,” Stitch said as he tucked Dez beneath his arm and headed to safety behind a statue.
    Together they waited and watched as a passage to, and from, another world began to open.
    Emily didn’t recognize the race of creature that emerged from the dimensional passage, but that was no big surprise.
    As much as she tried to study, keeping up with the wide variety of supernatural creatures that hated the earth and especially all the humans that lived on it, was far more than she was able to manage.
    This one was extremely pale, its white flesh almost blue, and most of its body covered in a black, metal armor. What really made her curious was the chain that it was holding as it emerged. Standing outside the crackling tear in space, the pale-skinned creature gave the chain a pull, drawing whatever was on the other end of the hole in space into the room with him.
    The beasts bounded from the rip with a roar.
    Emily immediately felt the wolf inside her stir, and had to take a few deep breaths to keep the transformation from beginning.
    These were two of the most fearsome—and ugly—beasties that she’d ever laid eyes on.
    Their bodies were large and muscular, with skin the color of a really thick callous. Their extra-wide mouths were overly crowded with razor-sharp teeth, and thick streams of drool leaked from