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

by R. L. King

  “They—possess people?” That explains a lot. “How? Can they possess anybody? Do you know they’ve possessed you?” Jason considered it a mark of just how far he’d come in the past few days that he accepted this information without questioning it.

  Verity shook her head, holding up her hands to ward off his questions. “Jason, stop. I don’t know all this stuff. I’ve only been around them for a few days, and some of what I know, I only know from listening to them talk. You should really talk to Lamar, or to Marilee. They can tell you more. And they’re—some of the more ‘together’ of the group.”

  Jason was barely hearing her. “Could—being possessed by these—Evil things—have been what caused your episodes? Caused you to—”

  “—to go crazy? No. That much I do know. Forgotten can’t be possessed. I think it has to do with the powers somehow, or with how their brains are mixed up.”

  “But wait. That means you’re—?” Jason’s head was reeling again.

  “Yeah, I guess I am, sorta. Though I don’t think I have any powers.”

  “What about that ‘mind push’ thing you were talking about?”

  Her eyes widened, and she stared at him. “Oh my God…Jason…I didn’t even think of that. I didn’t tell anybody about it, ’cause I didn’t think they’d believe me. By that time I wasn’t even sure myself that I’d really done it. I thought I was just remembering things wrong, like I used to do a lot. And I wasn’t even sure I could do it again. But—I did it tonight. To get that guy off you. I saw him about to attack you, and I sort of went on instinct. And it worked.”

  “Good thing, too,” Jason said. “So—how are you not—having problems anymore? Did these guys stop it somehow?”

  “Not stop it,” She said. “I guess it’s more like—suppress it. It’s one of the things Susanna can do. It doesn’t always work, though. She said it’s only ever worked on three or four people she’s tried it on, and if I get too far away from her, it’ll probably stop working. Her main power is keeping us hidden so we don’t get found, and sometimes knowing when bad stuff is coming. I guess it’s kind of rare to have more than one power, too—she’s the only one I know who does.”

  “The DMW—are they part of this—Evil?” That would make a lot of sense too. He remembered something else Charles had said: how they’d been a small-potatoes gang until a few years ago, then gotten a new leader and took several steps up the food chain in short order.

  Verity nodded. “Yeah. Some of ‘em are. They’re kind of—the foot soldiers. That’s another thing I think is true, but like I said, you really should talk to Lamar or Marilee. I think they have…like…levels. Some of them are more powerful than others. The more powerful ones use the DMW—maybe other gangs, too—to do their dirty work.”

  “Mmm,” Jason said, thinking that over. He looked up and saw a shadowy figure heading across the camp toward them. As it got closer, it resolved into a familiar form: Hector, the alcoholic ex-military man Stone and he had seen at the library. He stumped up and stood in front of them.

  “Hey,” Jason said. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

  Hector nodded. The tang of marijuana mingled with his usual odor. “Your friend’s awake. He wants to talk to you,” he said in his gruff, abrupt tone, then turned and stalked off the way he’d come.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Jason leaped to his feet. To Verity, he said, “I’ll be back soon, okay? I want to talk to you some more. I still have more questions, and you probably do too.”

  She nodded and rolled her eyes. “Not like I’m going anywhere.”

  Jason grinned and hurried back to the tent, poking his head through the flap. The woman in the colorful sweater was gone now; Lamar waved him in. “I’ll leave you two alone,” he said, getting up slowly.

  Jason helped him up and waited until he’d left, then dropped down next to Stone. The mage was still pale and looked exhausted, but his eyes were open. “Hey,” Jason said. “You okay? You gave me quite a scare out there.”

  Stone smiled faintly. “I gave myself quite a scare,” he said. His voice had nearly no volume behind it; Jason had to lean in to hear him. “The man who’s been patching me up tells me that I missed the big reunion.”

  Jason nodded. “Yeah, you did. She’s here, Al. I’ve been talking to her. And I’ve got plenty to tell you.”

  “Oh?” Stone tried to struggle up to a more elevated position, but failed and sank back, panting. “P’raps I’ll wait a bit before I try that.”

  “Does it hurt?” Jason indicated Stone’s side, covered now by his wool overcoat.

  “Surprisingly, not at all. I’m not sure why. I distinctly remember seeing that knife sticking out of my side and quite a lot of blood before I blacked out. But all I feel is—ghastly. So tired I can barely move. But no pain.” He glanced up at Jason. “I suppose that’s one of the things you want to tell me about?”

  “You sure you’re up to this? It can wait, if you need to—”

  Stone glared at him. “Jason, if you have answers to any of our little puzzles, I want to hear them. Don’t be cruel—I don’t have the strength to zap you right now.”

  Jason grinned—same old Al. “Okay. I’ll tell you what V’s told me so far, but I think we’re gonna have to talk to the others to get the rest.” Trying not to forget anything or leave anything out, he told Stone the story of what had happened to Verity, and what she’d revealed about the Forgotten.

  Stone’s bright blue gaze, dimmed a little by exhaustion but still laser-sharp, focused in on Jason’s face, barely blinking the entire time he spoke. The mage didn’t ask any questions while Jason was telling the story, but he tensed when he got to the part about the Evil and the possessions. “So you’re saying,” he said when Jason finished, “that these so-called ‘Evil’—this—force, or spirit—can possess people at will?”

  “I’m not sure,” Jason said, shifting position. The tent floor was uncomfortable, and even though he was getting acclimated to the smell of the camp, it was still pretty bad. “Verity said we need to talk to Lamar—I guess that’s the guy who was in here—or Marilee. She said they know more.”

  Stone nodded, but didn’t appear to be listening closely. His eyes were closed again. “Al? You okay?” Jason asked him, nudging his shoulder.

  The mage opened his eyes. “Just…thinking,” he said. “There’s something here I’m convinced I’m missing, but it’s eluding me. Brain’s a bit foggy right now. But this—this is fascinating. Somehow all of this seems to be connected to something that happened a few years back—but what?”

  “I was hoping you’d know,” Jason admitted. “You’re the resident expert on weird shit and magical phenomena around here. Back then, I was neck deep in Criminal Law classes and running obstacle courses and getting yelled at by guys with short haircuts and big ears.”

  Stone nodded vaguely. “Can you go find Lamar, or this Marilee person? I don’t know how much longer I’ll be awake, but this is important. I have questions for them.”

  “Yeah, give me a sec. You want anything to eat?”

  “No. Just—find them.”

  Jason got up and hurried out of the tent, looking around. People seemed to be settling in for bed now, laying out sleeping bags and bedrolls around the two fires. He found Lamar digging into a plate of beans under a tree. “My friend wants to talk to you if that’s okay,” he said. “Or, if you’re busy—Marilee. I don’t know who that is, though.”

  “Verity’s been telling you about us,” the old man said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Yeah. And Al—Dr. Stone—she said you knew he was a mage.”

  Lamar nodded. “We saw the spells he was casting when the DMW showed up. Those were no Forgotten abilities.”

  “He’s a mage,” Jason confirmed. “And he wants to ask you about some things—things Verity didn’t know about. Are you willing?”

  Again, Lamar nodded. He had a slow, methodical way about him that made him seem like a real doctor, rather than m
erely a homeless man with supernatural healing powers. “I’m willing. You should ask Marilee to come as well. She’s over there by the fire, near her cart. I’ll meet you there.”

  Jason looked over to where he had pointed and was surprised to see the old woman from the library sitting next to an overflowing shopping cart. He realized he’d never known her name. Moving over to her, he saw that she was knitting something in her lap while the small black kitten batted at the ends of her needles. “Hi,” he said, smiling. Cocking his head at the kitten, he added, “I see you and your friend are still doing fine.”

  The old woman, Marilee, looked up at him and returned his smile. “Well, hello,” she said. “Didn’t get a chance to talk to you before. It’s good to see you, even in times like this.”

  “Same here,” he said. “Hey, would you mind coming with me to the tent? Lamar’s there, and my friend you met back at the library. He wants to talk to you.”

  “I thought he might,” she said, nodding. She offered the kitten to Jason, carefully stowed her knitting in one of the bags hanging off the side of her cart, then used the cart to pull herself to a standing position. “Your friend is very lucky.”

  “Yeah. It’s a good thing you guys were here, for sure.” He followed her as she shuffled toward the tent.

  Lamar was already inside, seated next to Stone, who appeared to be asleep. He opened his eyes as Jason and Marilee came in, though. The two of them lowered themselves to seated positions; it took a few moments because space was tight and they didn’t want to jostle Stone too much. As soon as Jason had sat down, the kitten leaped out of his arms and settled herself in the crook of Stone’s arm.

  “She certainly does like you,” Marilee said with approval. “Kitties always know. That’s why I like them.”

  When they were all arranged, Stone looked at Lamar. “Thank you for coming,” he said, still speaking very softly and more slowly than his usual tones. “And thank you for—whatever you did for me. I doubt I’d be here talking to you now if it hadn’t been for your efforts.”

  Lamar nodded solemnly, but didn’t speak. Marilee fussed around the mage a bit, pulling up his overcoat cover and mopping his forehead.

  “Jason’s told me a bit about you—things he’s learned from his sister. He’s told me about your—abilities—and how you use them to help you keep yourselves safe from—the Evil, you call it?”

  Again, Lamar nodded. “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me a bit more about it? About your abilities, and about this Evil? Do you know anything about its nature? Do you know where your abilities came from, or why you have them?”

  “Dr. Stone,” Lamar said, leaning forward to look into the mage’s eyes. “You’re a mage. I know this—and I know also how curious your kind are. How they want to know everything, and study everything. That’s your nature. I understand this. But what we have, what we do—we haven’t studied it. It simply—is.”

  Stone sighed. “It can’t simply be. Jason told me it started appearing five years or so ago. But no one knows why? Is it a cause, or an effect? Did it affect people who were already—mentally unstable—or did it cause them to become so?”

  “Nobody knows,” Marilee said. “Maybe both. Take your sister, for example. She said she was fine until she just started—seeing things. Thinking things were seeking her, trying to kill her. But others—” she shrugged. “Hector—you met him—he had problems with drugs and alcohol before any of this happened, and something about the war…did something to him.”

  “So this—whatever it is—took hold of people, drove them mad—or madder—and caused them to develop these odd abilities? Do all of you have these abilities?”

  Lamar shook his head. “No. And there are degrees of them as well. Some of them are useless. Some are common—like the ability to shield one or more people or a location, or the ability to sense when the Evil is nearby—while others are much less so, like my particular gift. No one knows what determines a person’s ability.”

  “Verity said you can’t control them,” Jason pointed out. “That they—just sort of happen when you need them.”

  “Yes,” Marilee said. “It’s instinctual. It’s more a sense of—we see someone we want to help, or we pick up on something in our heads without realizing it. And it just—flows out of us.”

  “And—one of you healed my wound?” Stone asked. He lifted up his overcoat to inspect the bloody aftermath of his knife wound.

  “I did,” Lamar said.

  “You healed it—completely? It doesn’t hurt…I don’t feel feverish—which means that you likely haven’t left any of whatever was on that knife inside of me. That’s—amazing. I can do a bit of healing magic, but nothing like this.” He shivered a bit and let the overcoat drop back down. “So—about this ‘Evil.’ What is it, exactly?”

  Lamar shook his head. “Nobody knows that. Not exactly. We try to avoid it when we can—it’s dangerous and unpredictable. But it seems to be some kind of—” he struggled for the right words “—disembodied life force that seeks out humans to possess.”

  “Why, though? What does it get from this possession? Does it just want a physical body?” Stone turned a little toward Lamar and paled a bit more. He seemed frustrated with the limitations of his own physical body right now—Jason could tell his mind was trying to go a mile a minute, but his body was failing him.

  Marilee pushed him gently back down. “It seems to want—emotions.”

  Stone looked startled. “Emotions?”

  “Strong ones,” Lamar clarified. “And particularly strong negative ones. It seems to feed best off despair, depression, anger, fear—”

  “—so that’s what it tries to cause,” Marilee finished. “It wants to cause trouble, to make people scared or unhappy because it seems to grow stronger when it’s near that.”

  “Wait a minute—” Jason said, leaning forward. “You’re saying it—gets off on this negative emotion?” He looked at Stone, eyes wide. “You mean like those things in the Overworld?”

  “I thought of that too,” Stone said. “But it’s not the same. Those seek to destroy it, not to feed on it. Lots of incorporeal things respond to emotion in one way or another. And remember, we’ve been using the Overworld for decades. Whatever these are, they’re apparently quite recent.”

  “Yeah, good point,” Jason admitted.

  Lamar looked perplexed by their words, but responded to the original question. “Yes, we think the Evil feed on emotion, and so far everything we’ve seen has supported it.”

  “Verity said she heard you talking about—levels—of this Evil. She said she wasn’t sure what you meant, and that we should ask you about it.”

  “That much we do know,” Lamar said. “Just as the power levels of our abilities vary, the power levels of the Evil vary as well. We think there are one or two very powerful ones that direct activities in this entire area, with lesser minions doing their bidding.”

  “Do you know where these big ones are? Are they possessing somebody too?” Jason asked.

  “Is it possible for these things to act independently of a host body?” Stone added. His voice was taking on more power now—clearly this whole business had piqued his not inconsiderable curiosity, and he was doing his best to fight his exhaustion to find out as much as he could.

  Lamar and Marilee were looking a little overwhelmed under their two-pronged onslaught of questions, but they did their best to keep up. “We don’t think they can operate without bodies,” Lamar said. “You understand this is all based on observation, and not just from our own group. The various Forgotten groups compare notes when they encounter each other, but as you well know, we all—have our limitations. So some of the stories might be nothing more than the guesses of a disturbed mind.”

  Stone nodded with a “go on” gesture.

  Lamar shrugged. “Like I said, we don’t think they can operate without a body. What we think is that the more powerful the Evil, the longer it can exist without one. We’re not s
ure if it’s even possible for the weakest ones to find another body once the one they’re in is destroyed. But the strong ones—they might be able to go for a while. Days, or maybe longer. But they can’t do anything when they don’t have one.”

  “Where do they go if they can’t find another body? Are they destroyed?”

  Marilee looked rueful. “We don’t know. We’re not even sure if it’s different depending on how powerful they are. Maybe the weak ones just go poof, and the strong ones go back to wherever they came from. Or maybe they all just die if they don’t.”

  “How do you get them out of a body? Do you have to kill the body?”

  “Yes,” Lamar said. “Knocking them unconscious isn’t enough to do it, at least as far as we’ve seen. Some of us are able to see them leaving a body when it’s killed. In fact, we think that the more powerful Evil sometimes uses the weak ones as pawns—they send them off to do something suicidal, like walk in front of a train, just to generate the strong emotions that the rest of them need to thrive.”

  “Or push someone in front of one…” Stone said softly. “That would explain some things I was investigating when I met Jason.”

  “What about what Verity can do?” Jason asked.

  All three of the others looked at him oddly. “What can Verity do?” Lamar asked.

  “Oh, that’s right, she didn’t tell you. But she said—she can make them leave.”

  “What?” Lamar’s eyes were wide.

  Jason nodded. “She said she’s done it twice now—once at the halfway house, and once tonight, when one of those gangers was attacking me. She said she can’t control it—it just…happens.”

  “She can make the Evil leave its host body without killing it?” The old man was staring at him now, and so was Marilee.

  “That’s what she said.” Jason looked back and forth between them. “I take it—that’s odd?”