Alastair Stone Chronicles Box Set: Alastair Stone Chronicles, Books 1 through 4

by R. L. King

  Frustrated, he bent over more, wondering if he should risk a light spell to see if he could spot the damage. He also wondered if he should try to change the tire on his own or if he’d need to trudge back up to his office and call Campus Services to come and do it for him. Either way, this was definitely going to make getting home on time to have dinner with Megan problematic.

  He was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he didn’t hear the silent figures approaching him until they were upon him. One grabbed the back of his collar and pulled him upright, while another—dark, shadowy, and masked—drove a meaty fist into his stomach and doubled him back over.

  He dropped to his knees, all the air forced out of him by the punch. He tried to form the pattern for a spell, but his attackers didn’t let up long enough to allow it. The one that had hold of his collar let go, instead grabbing his arm and yanking him back up to a standing position, locking it behind his back in an iron grip. The other thug gave him a couple more shots to the gut followed by a cross to the jaw. The first attacker released his arm and he staggered back, slammed into the Jaguar, and fell to the ground. Lights danced in front of his vision; he could feel himself starting to black out. Again he tried to form a spell, but again his head lit up with pain and the pattern skittered away, eluding him. With no other ideas presenting themselves, he drew his legs up into him and tried to protect his head with his arms. He hoped that whatever they wanted, it wasn’t to kill him, since he couldn’t see any way he could stop them.

  The two were silent and efficient in their work. Stone heard nothing but their breathing as they snapped three hard kicks into his ribs, then one to his head that he was able to deflect most of by shifting position at the last minute. He heard a moan, and realized it was coming from him. A far-off voice yelled something that sounded like “Hey!” Hands fumbled in his coat, and then the sound of running feet.

  He tried to force himself out of his fetal position, to fling a spell at the retreating attackers, but the pain was coming from everywhere at once, and only got worse when he moved. I wonder where the voice came from...was his last thought before he passed out.

  He opened his eyes to find two blurred, worried-looking faces hovering over him. “Oh, God,” one of them breathed. Female. “He’s awake. Stay still, sir. We don’t know how bad you’re hurt. Paul’s gone off to call an ambulance.”

  He was still on his side, still tightly pulled up in the fetal ball. He tasted hot blood and felt small rocks from the parking lot cutting into his cheek. A crumpled candy wrapper lay a few inches from his face. He tried to say something, but it came out as an inarticulate groan.

  “Please don’t move,” another voice urged. Male this time. Young. They both sounded like students, and both sounded scared. “Help’s coming soon.”

  Ignoring them both, Stone gritted his teeth and tried to straighten his legs. Big mistake. His entire midsection burst with pain, as if someone had lit him on fire. A weak little scream forced itself out between his teeth as he rolled himself onto his back, eyes clamped shut.

  “Here, hold on—” The female student’s voice shook. She fumbled for a moment and then there was something soft under his head. “Better?”

  He nodded, not trusting his voice. Lying still now, he tried to take inventory past the layers of cotton wool that were packing his brain. His stomach hurt, and he was vaguely nauseated. The back of his head throbbed, a dull, digging ache that hurt like the world’s worst migraine. His jaw stung, and he still tasted blood. And worst of all, his lower ribs felt like each one was traced with its own personal line of white-hot fire. Might be cracked, but he was afraid to move any more to check.

  The female student put a warm hand on his forehead, shoving his damp hair back. “What’s your name, sir?”

  He had to give that some thought. “S...Stone.”

  “Do you teach here? We couldn’t find your ID...”

  Stone opened his eyes. The female student was crouched next to him, while the male was upright, keeping watch—either for the ambulance, or to make sure that the thugs weren’t coming back. “I—” He nodded. “Y-yes.” He waved vaguely and immediately regretted it.

  “Please, you shouldn’t talk anymore. Just lie still.”

  “Listen—” he whispered. When the girl leaned in, he continued, “Call—call Megan. Megan—Whitney. English... department. Tell her...I’ll—be late.” Then the cotton wool finally closed in, and he didn’t get to find out whether she’d gotten the message correct.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  When Stone dragged himself back up to consciousness, the students were gone. He was lying on a narrow bed with rails that was surrounded by a fabric curtain and lit with harsh fluorescents. Beyond it were the sounds of hurried footsteps and busy people calling to each other. There was a chair next to the bed, and sitting in the chair was— “Megan.”

  She looked up, startled, from the magazine she was paging through. Relief washed over her face. “Alastair. My God, what happened? Someone called me—” She reached out and gently clutched one of his hands. “They said someone beat you up in the parking lot at your office.”

  He nodded. Risking the pain, he pulled himself up slightly so he could get a look at himself. His shirt was gone, the lower part of his ribs wrapped in heavy white tape. An IV tube snaked from his arm up to a plastic bag of clear liquid. Reaching up with his other hand, he felt the back of his head: no bandage there.

  “You’ve got a nasty lump back there,” she said. “I should let the doctor give you the details, but it sounds like you got lucky. Two cracked ribs on your right side, but nothing badly broken, and they don’t think you have any internal injuries. Possible mild concussion. They said they want to keep you overnight for observation.”

  “Sorry...” he murmured, trying for a smile. “Guess I’ll have to—give you a rain check on dinner, won’t I?” He looked around. “What time is it?” He tried to make his voice sound stronger, but it came out as a weak croak.

  “About ten. I got the call from some girl—a student. I guess she must have found my number somewhere. She said she and her friends came upon you getting beaten up by two thugs next to your car. Can you tell me what happened?”

  He looked around. Wherever he was, it didn’t look like a hospital room. “Where is this?” His voice sounded a little stronger now, but putting any volume behind it hurt.

  “Emergency room,” she told him. “The doctor should be in soon to talk to you. Once he figured out you weren’t in any danger, he went off to deal with other patients.” She squeezed his hand. “Do you have any idea why someone would beat you up?”

  He shrugged, which also hurt. He could already tell this was going to be inconvenient. “No idea. Robbery, possibly? Did they take my wallet? I vaguely remember someone feeling around in my coat before I passed out.”

  “I think they must have—they didn’t find it on you when they took your clothes.” She sighed. “Did you get a look at them?”

  He thought about that, trying to picture them. “No. Never saw one of them, and the other one was wearing a mask. All I saw was that he was big—heavier than I am, but not as tall. Not much help, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m sure the police will want to talk to you when you’re feeling better, but for now try to get some rest, okay? How do you feel?”

  “Ghastly. Why haven’t they given me any of the good drugs? I thought that was the whole point of hospitals.”

  “I think they wanted to make sure they weren’t masking any pain that they needed to pay attention to.” She squeezed his hand again.

  He nodded. “I really appreciate your coming, Megan, but you should go home now. I’ll be all right. There’s no point in you sitting here watching me lie around in bed, and I don’t fancy worrying about you being out late when there are dangerous sorts running loose.” He gave her a pained smile. “Don’t worry about me. Really, I’ll be fine. I’m tougher than I look.”

  “That wouldn’t be difficult,” she said, chuckling
, leaning down brush a kiss on his lips. Then she grew serious again. “I hope they catch the guys who did this soon. I’d hate to think they’re running around campus and this might happen again.”

  As Megan had predicted, they kept Stone overnight at the hospital for observation to make sure that his minor concussion wasn’t anything more serious. The fact that he didn’t protest would have told anyone who knew him that he wasn’t feeling well at all, because he normally hated anything to do with doctors or hospitals.

  A young policeman showed up in the morning to take his statement about what had happened. The campus police had recovered his wallet not far from where the Jaguar was parked; it was missing the cash and his credit cards, but fortunately they’d left his driver’s license. He told the cop what he knew, which wasn’t much.

  The doctor finally sprung him around noon on Friday. Megan took time off from her classes to pick him up and take him back to his townhouse. She found him in his hospital room, standing in the bathroom clad only in jeans and examining the blossoming collection of bruises on his chest, abdomen, and chin in the mirror. “They already took off the rib wrap?” she asked.

  “Apparently they don’t do that anymore. Something about pneumonia.”

  “You look a lot better than last night, even with the bruises.”

  “That’s because they’ve got me dosed up on so many painkillers that you could hit me with a baseball bat and I wouldn’t notice.” He grinned, a little glassy-eyed. “And I’ve got a prescription for more.”

  “Oh, nice. Well, let’s get you home and you can spend some quality time resting. No argument. And no baseball bats.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. She helped him get dressed, and he followed her slowly out to her car. “Where’s the Jaguar, by the way?”

  “At your place. They fixed the tire and dropped it off over there this morning. Oh—you might be interested to know that you didn’t run over anything. Somebody let the air out of it.”

  He frowned. “Which means they were lying in wait for me. Odd...” He filed that thought away for the moment as the nurse came in with his discharge papers.

  Megan took him home and hovered over him until he was safely in bed. Mrs. Olivera, who was there cleaning the place, promised to check in on him periodically. “I’m not a bloody invalid,” he protested, glaring at both of them. “Both of you—I appreciate your concern. I really do. But I’d appreciate it even more now if you’d both just clear out and leave me to recuperate in peace.”

  Megan kissed his forehead. “I’m going now, but if you’re a good little boy and listen to Mrs. Olivera, I might bring you some ice cream tonight.”

  “Off you go,” he ordered, making a ‘shooing’ motion.

  Once he was alone, the first thing Stone did was call Ethan. The boy wasn’t home, but he left a message on his machine asking about his mother and informing him that it would be at least Monday before he could get back to any further magic lessons Ethan might want to restart. Then he lay back on the pillows in frustration.

  Alastair Stone was a terrible patient. He hated inactivity more than almost anything else, and the thought of being stuck in bed for even the next day or two annoyed him. Another thing that annoyed him was how easily he’d been jumped. No two ways about it: he simply hadn’t been paying attention.

  And worse, he hadn’t been prepared. If he’d been in any kind of magical fighting trim, he could have summoned up a shield and a stun spell, and had the two attackers laid out on the pavement before they’d done more than hit him once. Instead, he’d let himself be a victim. Indirectly, in Stone’s somewhat skewed way of looking at the world, this made his injuries his own damned fault. Which meant that they didn’t deserve coddling when there were things to be done.

  Frowning, he sat up, testing his ribs. They didn’t hurt much right now, due to the pain pills, and neither did the rest of him. The doctor had told him that moving around wouldn’t do him any harm as long as he didn’t overdo it, though it would be better if he’d just rest for at least the first day.

  The hell with that.

  He got out of bed, pulled on jeans and his favorite Pink Floyd T-shirt, and headed slowly downstairs. In all likelihood he wouldn’t ever be attacked again, but if he was, he was bloody well going to be ready for it.

  Managing to avoid Mrs. Olivera as he worked his way down toward his basement workroom, he closed and locked the door behind him. Yes, it was a little dangerous if something went wrong and he passed out again, but he always kept this room locked. Wouldn’t do to have one’s housekeeper—or one’s girlfriend—finding one’s magical sanctum. Far too many messy questions to answer.

  Moving slowly, he gathered the items he’d need, glad that he’d stocked up a few weeks ago. Practicing magic while in the grip of powerful painkillers was one thing, but he thought if he tried to leave the house and drive, Mrs. Olivera would wrestle him to the floor and sit on him until he saw sense. The thought amused him as he dumped the items on the table in the middle of the room and set about his work.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It was eleven-thirty on Friday night. Ethan looked at his watch again to verify it. Was this late enough, or should he wait until midnight?

  He was sitting in his car a couple of blocks down from Darkwave. The club took up an entire block of Murphy Street in Sunnyvale, which was a small street mostly full of ethnic restaurants and smaller dance clubs. He’d driven past it and could already hear the pounding beat coming from inside. Several knots of people, dressed in everything from ripped jeans to leathers to sleek suits, miniskirts, and slinky gowns, lounged around outside, smoking and chatting.

  If it hadn’t been for the memory of Trina’s dazzling green eyes and the way she’d smiled at him when she’d given him the card with the information about the party, Ethan would have just driven on past and back home. This wasn’t his kind of place. Sure, he desperately wanted it to be, but all through high school he had steadfastly lacked whatever gene was necessary to understand the vagaries of the cool kids. Even when he tried to get the latest hot fashion item, listen to the latest hot band, or otherwise poke hopefully at the edges of that rarefied territory, it always seemed like he was a week late and everyone else had moved on. The cool kids didn’t exactly bother him about it—by high school he’d grown sufficiently and was attractive enough that he didn’t fit in with the habitually bullied, either—but sometimes he thought what they did was even worse. They pretty much ignored him.

  He was halfway convinced that when he arrived inside, Trina and whatever mage friends she’d promised to bring along wouldn’t be there. Sure, she’d showed up at the coffee shop, but this was different. Girls—women—like her weren’t into guys like him. That was just the way of the world.

  He’d never know if he didn’t try, though. The worst that could happen would be that he’d have to hang out there by himself for a while before heading home. He might even meet somebody else. He really did need a social life, even if it didn’t involve other mages. He’d been thinking about that a lot today as he sat on the couch watching a mindless game show after visiting his mother at the hospital. She was doing a little better, but the earliest she might be able to come home was next week. Aside from her, his only regular contact with other people was Stone, and he wasn’t exactly best-buddy material.

  He’d heard the phone ring today, and listened as Stone left the message saying he wouldn’t be available until Monday. He’d sounded oddly strained—sick, maybe. Ethan wasn’t sure he was glad about it because it meant he didn’t have to keep putting the mage off, or resentful because Stone was supposed to be teaching him magic. Never mind the fact that he himself was the one who’d been slowing things down.

  He sighed, getting out of the car. He checked himself in the side mirror: black IED T-shirt he’d picked up at Paramount Imports, the trendiest jeans he owned, hair artfully mussed. It was the best he could do. He hoped it was enough not to get him laughed out of the place.

  As he w
alked up, Ethan felt the eyes of the lurkers outside on him, scrutinizing, evaluating, judging. They didn’t say anything, though—at least nothing he could hear. The doorman didn’t look twice at him, just took his cover charge, checked his ID, said “Have fun,” and motioned him inside.

  Inside, the music was even louder. It pounded all around him, getting into his bones and making him feel alive. He didn’t know the band, but he didn’t care. Ducking off into an alcove, he consulted the card Trina had given him. In her offhand scrawl was a name: “Nightmare Room.” He glanced around, but didn’t see anything by that name, so he moved further into the club.

  The place was packed now, writhing bodies on the dance floor mingling effortlessly with the knots of people on the sidelines drinking, talking, and soaking up the music. The band on stage pumped out the decibels with enthusiasm, their lead singer running all over the stage and occasionally diving into the crowd. When this happened, a cheer went up and hands shuttled him back to the edge of the stage, ripping at his clothes and screaming their approval.

  Ethan headed to the bar. It took him a while to get the attention of the attractive female bartender, but finally she smiled at him. “Sorry, honey,” she said, pointing at his arm. “No wristband, no alcohol. Club policy.”

  “What?” He hadn’t even been thinking about alcohol, so her words confused him for a moment. “Oh—no. I don’t want a drink. I’m trying to find the Nightmare Room.”

  “The what?” A cheer had gone up again as the singer had tossed himself once more into the crowd.

  “The Nightmare Room!” he yelled.

  “Oh.” She pointed toward some stairs on the far side of the room. “It’s up there. Invitation only, though.”

  He grinned at her. “I’ve got an invitation.” I hope.