Balance of Power: An Alastair Stone Urban Fantasy Novel (Alastair Stone Chronicles Book 25)

by R. L. King

  “Not like you haven’t saved me from a few of those. Talk you tomorrow, okay?”

  “Yes. I’ll call you. Oh—did Gina get anywhere with locating the catalog from McGrath’s auction?”

  “Not yet. Give her some time. If that even exists, it’s gonna take serious digging. A lot of that stuff isn’t even online.”

  “Fair enough. Sorry to be so impatient. You two go back to your…canoodling. I’m going to wake Eddie up and hope he doesn’t get too cross with me.”

  Stone didn’t call Eddie until he arrived at the London house. “Didn’t wake you, did I?”

  “No. I can sleep tomorrow. ’Bout time you got back to me.”

  “Sorry, but I have an excuse. The trackers worked, and I was following the thief.”

  “No kiddin’?” Eddie sounded impressed, and a little surprised. “Well, blimey, the things actually worked?”

  “They did—though you were wrong about how long they’d be active. Either need to add more glitter or punch up the potency of the material you use. I wouldn’t safely give it more than a couple hours as it stands.”

  “Good to know. I’ll jot that down. Did you catch ’im, then? Who was ’e?”

  “I…didn’t catch him. He was at a bar, and he got away from me.”

  “Got away from you?”

  “It happens. I couldn’t exactly hit him with a concussion spell in the middle of a space full of mundanes, could I? I probably could have got closer, but I stopped to snap a couple of photos before I moved forward. He spotted me and took off.”

  “Well, damn. That’s unfortunate, innit? Can I see the photos? Not much chance I’ll be able to identify some random magical bloke from the States, but stranger things and all, y’know?”

  “You’re welcome to try. Is Ward around too?”

  “Nah, the big baby went ’ome a bit ago. Said ’e was tired. No endurance, that bloke. Sad, really.” Eddie’s voice was laced with fond amusement. “Where are you now?”

  “The London house. Want to come over, or should I come to the library?”

  “Come over ’ere. I’ve got something to show you that you’re gonna find very interestin’. I want you sittin’ down in case you faint or summat.”

  “And of course you can’t just tell me on the phone?”

  There was a long, meaningful silence.

  “Of course you can’t. All right, I’ll be right over.”

  Eddie opened the door at Stone’s knock, his eyes wide. “Bloody ’ell, Stone.”

  “What?”

  He looked at his watch. “I know it’s three in the mornin’, but how the ’ell did you get here this fast?”

  Damn. At this point, Stone couldn’t even offer an excuse for getting so curious about Eddie’s news that he once again used the ley line to travel between the London place and the library. As far as he knew, the library didn’t have a portal—at least Eddie had never mentioned one—which meant he’d have needed to drive over or take a cab. The two locations weren’t that far apart, but there was no way any mundane vehicle could have made the trip in such a short time.

  He sighed. “Eddie…”

  Eddie shook his head, and for the first time Stone had seen in many years, he actually looked angry. “Get in ’ere, mate. That’s it. We’re ’avin’ a talk.”

  “Eddie, I can’t—”

  “You can and you will. Come on in and sit yer arse down. I’ll get some tea.”

  Stone followed him in, mentally kicking himself. This wasn’t the first time he’d forgotten about allowing sufficient time for normal travel methods. He wasn’t sure why, exactly. Usually, his brain was a lot sharper than this, and he didn’t make these kinds of careless mistakes. What was going on with him?

  He took the seat on the brocade couch. Eddie returned with tea, poured two cups, and plopped into the chair across from him. His expression, serious and focused, was fixed on Stone. There was no sign of his usual cheeky good humor.

  “Out wi’ it,” he said.

  Stone looked at his hands in his lap and sighed. “I…can’t.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t? We’re mates, aren’t we? We’ve been through all sorts o’ crazy stuff over the years. Are you ’oldin’ out on me? ’Ow are you gettin’ around so fast? You’ve been givin’ Ward and me excuses about it for the past few months, but I’m not buyin’ ’em. ’E’s not either, but you know Ward—’e don’t speak up like I do. Got better manners, maybe. But somethin’s up, and I want to know what it is.”

  Stone ignored his tea. He got up and paced the room, gazing at the various bits of dusty décor without truly seeing them. “You’re right,” he said at last. “Something did happen. But I can’t tell you much about it.”

  “Why not?” Eddie’s tone was as resolute as ever.

  “Because I’m not allowed to.”

  “What’s that mean? Who’s not allowin’ you to?”

  “I can’t tell you that, either.” He turned to face his friend. “I’ve made promises, Eddie. I can’t break them.” He waved around the space. “Any more than you can reveal to me who’s got you searching for things in the Library, and what they’re looking for. I wouldn’t ask you to do that—and I’m begging you, as my old friend, to respect that I don’t want you asking me too many questions about this.”

  Eddie’s eyes narrowed. “Who else knows about this, whatever it is? Does Verity?”

  “No.”

  “Ian?”

  He almost said no again. But did he know for sure? “Not…that I’m aware of. If he does, it’s not because I told him.”

  “’As it got anythin’ to do with ’ow it seems like it’s got ’ard to kill you lately?”

  Stone thought about that. “I…can’t say. Not because I’ve promised, but because I don’t know. If I had to guess, I’d say no, they’re not related.” He was beginning to regret that he’d come here at all tonight. If he could have curbed his curiosity and waited until tomorrow, enough time would have passed so his friend wouldn’t be suspicious.

  “But you know ’ow it ’appened.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you know when it ’appened.”

  “Yes.”

  “So…when?”

  Stone shook his head, suddenly annoyed. “Eddie, I feel like I’m under a bloody interrogation here. You want to tie me to a chair and shine a bright light in my face?”

  Eddie looked away. “Fine, then. You don’t want to tell me, don’t tell me. I get it. Secrets are secrets, right?” Now, instead of resolve, his tone held disappointment and perhaps even a bit of hurt.

  Something clenched inside Stone. Eddie was one of his oldest and most trusted friends. He would trust the man with his life—and had, on several occasions. “Look,” he said. “I can’t tell you everything. I’m sorry—if you’re cross with me about it, you’ll just have to be cross, because I can’t. But…I can tell you some of it. If you give me your word you won’t reveal anything about it to anyone else.”

  “Even Ward?”

  Stone paused. Eddie and Ward were like brothers. Asking one of them to keep a secret from the other was cruel—and pointless, since Ward’s discretion was every bit as impenetrable as Eddie’s. “All right—no. You can tell Ward. But no one else. Give me your word, Eddie.”

  “You got it,” he said immediately. “I’m surprised you even ’ad to ask. Come on, Stone—you know me.”

  And he did. He also knew it wasn’t fair to dangle something like this in front of his insatiably curious friend and then snatch it away. It had, after all, been his carelessness that had let the cat—or the dragon—out of the bag.

  “All right. But then you’ve got to tell me what you called me over here about in the first place.”

  “I’m dyin’ to do that, mate. It’s gonna seriously blow your mind, and I don’t say that lightly.”

  “Okay.” He ran both hands through his hair, considering his words carefully. “I’ve…learned a new travel technique.”

  “What?”


  Under normal circumstances, Eddie’s gape of astonishment would have been comical. As it was, Stone had an instant of regret at his decision. Would his friend be able to keep this to himself?

  “What…kind o’ travel technique?”

  “I…can’t tell you the details. But it’s much more versatile than portal travel.”

  Eddie’s eyes got even wider. When he spoke, his voice now held a kind of reverence—the sort of tone another man might use after a profound religious truth had been revealed to him. “You’re sayin’…you don’t need portals to travel?”

  Stone inclined his head.

  “So…you can go anywhere you want? Point A to Point B, bam like that?”

  “Not…exactly. I can’t go anywhere I like. Not by a long way. But I can go a lot more places than I could before.”

  “Just…like that?” He glanced around the room. “Like…you can pop from one side of this room to the other, or ’ome to the States, easy as that?”

  “No. I could go home from here, yes. But some brief preparation is required. It’s not instant.”

  Eddie sagged back in his seat. “Bloody….’ell,” he breathed. His gaze came up. “And you can’t tell me where you learned this?”

  “No. That was part of the promises I made.” Stone realized, even as he said the words, that they weren’t correct. He hadn’t ever promised Kolinsky he wouldn’t reveal the existence of the dragons, or the ley-line travel method, or anything else they’d told him that night when he’d learned the truth.

  But he might as well have.

  “When did you learn it?”

  “Last year.”

  Eddie was silent, staring into his lap.

  “Eddie?”

  “I’m thinkin’,” he muttered.

  “About what?”

  “Tryin’ to work out ’ow this might work.” His gaze came up. “Stone, this is the ’oly grail of portal science. You know that, right?”

  “Believe me, I’m aware.”

  “And…somebody’s worked out ’ow to do it and just…kept it to themselves? Or mostly, anyway? No offense, mate, but what’s so special about you that you get to learn this, but the rest of us poor sods ’ave to make due with reg’lar portals?”

  “That’s…part of the promise, too.” Stone felt himself metaphorically picking his way along the edge of a high precipice.

  “Is there somethin’ special about you? If it weren’t for this promise, could you teach me ’ow to do it?”

  “Eddie…”

  “Could you?” Now, there was a strange kind of desperation in his friend’s voice.

  Stone understood it all too well. Eddie and Ward were two of the only people he knew whose scientific curiosity exceeded his own. If a wondrous secret like this was out there to know, they wouldn’t rest until they’d figured it out. How could he tell them that, no matter how much effort and study they put in, no matter how brightly their intellects burned, they weren’t going to get anywhere with this one? It would be like a mundane genius trying to learn magic—they couldn’t do it, because they didn’t possess the necessary genetic prerequisite.

  How could he tell them that, in order to learn this technique, they had to be directly descended from one or more dragons?

  He couldn’t, of course. And therein lay the problem.

  “No,” he said heavily. “I couldn’t teach you. There is something about me, but I can’t tell you what it is. That’s part of the promise too.”

  Eddie studied him. “Somethin’ special. And it’s got nothin’ to do with the ’ard-to-kill thing?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “So you’ve got two special things now. Wow, Stone, you ’it the lottery, didn’t you?”

  Was that a hint of bitterness in Eddie’s tone? “What are you talking about?”

  Eddie shrugged. “Should be pretty obvious, shouldn’t it? You’re leavin’ us behind, aren’t you?”

  “That’s not fair. I didn’t choose any of this.”

  As quickly as it had appeared, the bitterness dropped away. “Yeah, I know. Not your fault you got this ’ard-to-kill thing, and now you can apparently pop ’round the world whenever you fancy, and you’re rich as Midas now’t Desmond’s dropped ’alf ’is fortune on top of the one you already ’ad.” He gave a shaky grin as Stone drew breath to protest. “Nah, nah, seriously, mate. You’re still the same ol’ Stone. Got yer secrets, but don’t we all? Right? And I can still drink you under the table, so there’s always gonna be that.”

  Stone chuckled, some of his tension ebbing away. “Same old Eddie, too, thank the gods for small favors. So—are you satisfied?”

  “No. Not even close. But at least I got somewhere to start.”

  “Start?”

  “Well, sure. You don’t expect me to just let you get away with knowin’ summat like that without me and Ward tryin’ to suss it out ourselves, do ya?”

  Stone narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “Can’t blame us for tryin’ to work it out on our own, if you can’t teach us, can you?” He raised his hands. “Don’t worry—not gonna tell anybody else, or even bring anybody else into it. Just pokin’ ’round the library, is all. ’Oo knows what kind o’ info might be lurkin’ in the deep stacks?”

  “Be careful, Eddie. I’m telling you—I can’t say there isn’t a way for you to work it out, but I give you my word that my way won’t work for you. Please take care. Don’t try anything dangerous just to prove you can.”

  “Don’t worry.” Eddie shuddered. “I know portal stuff can be nasty. Don’t want to end up like Daphne Weldon and ’er mates.”

  Now it was Stone’s turn to shudder. He hadn’t thought about his old girlfriend Daphne Weldon, the most brilliant portal scientist he’d ever known, and her three friends who had died years ago and unwittingly brought the extradimensional Evil into the world while trying to set up a temporary portal conduit. “Yes. That’s the brightest thing I’ve heard you say all day. Now—can you please tell me what this is that you claim will ‘blow my mind’?”

  Eddie jerked his head up. “Oh. Right. Come on—let’s go to the workroom.”

  Curious, Stone followed him through the fussy parlor and into the larger workroom area in the back. A series of books and papers were spread out across the long table, including blown-up versions of the photos of the four sides of the black pyramid-shaped object. A closed leather portfolio was at one end.

  A little tingle ran up his back. “You’ve figured out something about the pyramid?”

  Eddie grinned. “You know, if I were a right bastard, I’d make you wait for it. You know—maybe I should give Ward a ring and get ’im over here—the normal way, ’cause we normal blokes can’t ride the ethereal currents or whatever to get where we’re goin’—before I do the reveal. ’E’ll want to see your face too, I’m sure.”

  “Eddie…”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Eddie waved him off. “But I’m not a right bastard. I’m just a lovable teddy bear, I am. And besides, this is too good to keep to meself. Sit.”

  Stone sat.

  Eddie didn’t. He struck a ‘professor’ pose, picking up a pointer from the table. “See, you said somethin’ before you left, about me rackin’ my photographic mem’ry for summat I might’ve seen that twigged an idea. Which is, of course, what I was plannin’ to do. I figured there ’ad to be somethin’ in the library somewhere, and all it would take was for me to remember where I’d seen somethin’ like this before.”

  “And…did you?”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” He paced back and forth, clearly enjoying himself. “You’ve never been down in the stacks, Stone, but if you ever were, you’d probably wet yerself with joy. Thousands of volumes—magic stuff, mundane stuff, some stuff nobody’s ever been able to figure out quite what it is. Obviously I ’aven’t read it all—not even close—but it’s all surprisingly well indexed, in both a magical and a mundane way. So I’m usually pretty good at puttin’
my ’ands on what I need at any given time. In this case, though, that didn’t ’appen.”

  “You didn’t find anything in the library?”

  “Not yet. Not sayin’ it’s not there, mind you—but you’ve only given me a day. I might be a miracle worker, but even the bloke upstairs took seven days to make the Earth, right?”

  “Er…”

  “So. I got to thinkin’, brainstormin’ with Ward earlier tonight. I was certain I’d seen somethin’ like those figures on that thing before. Not exactly like it, but close. But I couldn’t put my finger on where. And then it came to me.” He smacked himself gently on the forehead. “Boom, like a bolt from the blue, it ’it me. Where I’d seen ’em before.”

  “Where?” Stone leaned forward, his heart beating faster with anticipation. Like Kolinsky, Eddie didn’t draw out reveals like this unless they were worth the effort.

  In answer, Eddie used magic to pull the closed leather portfolio to him. He opened it with a flourish, took out a small stack of photos, and flung them across the table in an artful fan. “Voilà.”

  Stone recognized them in an instant, and went still.

  “Bloody hell, Eddie,” he whispered, astonished. “You’re right. Why didn’t I see that before?”

  “Guess you’re just not as bright as me, mate.” Eddie grinned, obviously pleased. “Do try to cope. We can’t all be mad geniuses, after all.”

  But Stone was no longer paying attention. He stared at the photos on the table, dread and anticipation competing with each other for his focus. “Bloody hell…” he said again. “This problem just got more interesting, didn’t it?”

  The photos were familiar, because he’d seen them before. They were copies of the same ones Jason had taken in the formerly sealed room they’d found in the catacombs beneath Stone’s Surrey home.

  The room that had held his dragon ancestor Aldwyn in stasis for nearly two hundred years.

  13

  Stone was still in a state of near-shock when he returned home an hour later. He had the leather portfolio full of photos with him, since Eddie had assured him he had copies, but didn’t have any idea what he was going to do with them.