The Crimson Brand Read Free

special about that wreck anyway?” Joseph asked.
    “Even I don’t know that,” his father said, then laughed.  “And I don’t care.  All I care about is no one getting into it.”
    “No worries then,” Joseph said and sighed again, casting another longing look at his camper. 
    “Alright, go get some rest,” the man in the black suit said, and Joseph turned to face him again, content, if not happy. 
    “Thanks.  How about next time you’re going to be this late we just wait until morning?”
    His father backed a few steps away from the fence, then stopped and frowned.  “Joe, you know I love ya, but don’t tell me how to run my business.”  Then he was off without another word, setting the same unhurried pace away from the fence and back up the hill.
    Joseph watched him for a moment, then went his own way, back into the maze he’d built around the burned-out trailer and out of sight.
    Ronan sat still for a few minutes, watching the stranger in black climb the low hill and drop down the other side.  As stealthily as he could manage, he followed the man.
     
    *   *   *
     
    Once on the other side of the hill, the man produced a flashlight and followed the gently bobbing beam over the barren terrain.  Ronan followed, staying only close enough not to lose the man’s scent, and perhaps a mile later stepped onto a narrow and rutted dirt road.  The man’s scent veered off to the right, and Ronan followed.  A few minutes later another camper came into view, much larger and cleaner than The Garbage Man’s.  As he approached it, the man’s light illuminated a large black truck, a small shed, and a bulky propane tank.
    Ronan waited until the man was inside, then investigated.
    A generator hummed inside a small shed, feeding power to the strange man’s mobile home.  The alerting scent was no stronger now; the thing that made it had been here but was gone now.  Slowly, keeping outside the large circle of light cast from the camper’s windows, Ronan circled the spot.  He didn’t know what he was looking for, but was sure he’d know when he found it.
    And he did, in a second, smaller shed on the other side of the camper.  The shed was empty except for the gas fire pit in the center; a scratched marble basin filled with crushed lava rocks.  There were no flames, and the lava rocks exuded only a low, residual heat.  It had been cooling for some time.  Scattered among the rocks were the brittle remains of a clutch of mottled gray eggs, small sharp shards of shell that looked like stone.  There was no sign of the creatures that had hatched from them, but Ronan thought they must be close.  A dozen or more he guessed. 

    Amid the hatched eggs lay a whole one, its stone shell unblemished and intact. 
    It was worse than he had thought.
    Someone on the other side knew The Phoenix Girls were back, and was taking a personal interest.
    Ronan crouched just inside the partially open shed door for a moment, then slunk inside and leapt up onto the marble surface and put his ear to the egg.  Something moved inside.
    Runt of the litter , he thought, but still alive .  
    Ronan picked the egg up between his teeth and leapt back to the ground, stepping carefully outside.  When he was sure he was still alone in the night, he bolted into the darkness again and sprinted toward town.
    This is not good , he thought again.
    The girls would have to work harder if they were going to be ready for what was coming, and Ronan had to convince them of that without telling them more than they strictly needed to know.  They weren’t ready for the whole story yet, especially Penny and Katie.  Their friendship was too new, too fragile.  It might not survive.
    Sometimes the truth didn’t set you free.  Sometimes it destroyed you.
     

 
     
     
Chapter 2
 
Birthday Girl
     
     
     
    Penny Sinclair awoke the morning of her fourteenth birthday with tears on her cheeks and the feeling that she’d fallen back in time, all