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

by R. L. King

  Stone and the others stayed where they were for several more seconds to make sure they were gone, and then Stone pointed toward the short stairway. “I think that’s where the action is,” he whispered. Jason and Verity both nodded.

  Moving slowly, they crept along the wall. Jason’s head was on a swivel again, trying to see everywhere at once. The light in here was dim, and it would be easy for someone (or multiple someones) to be hiding in the shadows waiting to ambush them. He brought up the rear of their little procession while Stone took point; if Verity noticed that she was being protected from both sides, she didn’t say anything.

  The stairway was skeletal and made of metal. Stone pointed upward. “Backstage area, most likely,” he whispered, and began ascending. It was impossible to be completely quiet on these stairs, but they did the best they could.

  When they emerged at the top, they found themselves in a sparsely-lit, wide-open area. Stone had been right: this was the backstage area. Like the workshop, it was strewn with debris, broken objects, ripped clothing, and similar objects that had survived whatever ransacking the place had experienced at some point in its history.

  They couldn’t see out very far, since there were no lights on in the auditorium. Again they stopped and listened. They didn’t hear anything for several seconds, but then something came from far on the other side of the building: a faint sound that could have been a heavily muffled yell or scream.

  Jason stiffened. “Did you hear that?” he said.

  “Shh,” Stone murmured. “Yes.”

  Verity poked Stone’s arm. “Take off my block,” she said. “Just in case.”

  He turned back to her, put his hands on either side of her head, and stared into her eyes for a few seconds. “There,” he said. “Remind me to put it back up when this is over.”

  Jason was impatient. “Come on. Somebody’s hurt over there. Let’s go see what’s going on.” As scared as he was, the thought of action energized him. All this sneaking around in the dark made him more nervous than if he just had something to punch.

  “Easy.” Stone held up a hand. “Don’t lose your head now.” Jason could see he was looking grim, too.

  Verity, meanwhile had spotted something off to the side, in the shadowy backstage area off to their right. “Is that—a body?” She pointed into the dimness, grabbing Jason’s arm with her other hand.

  “What? Oh—probably just a pile of debris,” Stone said, though he did head that way a bit to investigate the bundle. He stopped before he reached it. “Or…” he added in an emotionless tone, “It’s a body.”

  “Holy crap.” Jason came up next to him. He tried to shield Verity from the sight, but she was having none of it. She moved in alongside of him and stared down.

  The body was that of a man of indeterminate age, with the wild beard and ragged clothes that clearly marked him as someone who’d seen hard times. From the look of things he hadn’t been dead that long. “Forgotten?” Verity whispered.

  “No way to know,” Stone said. He looked up, his gaze sweeping the area around him. “I don’t like this at all. Come on—let’s keep going. We can’t do anything to help him now.”

  “Why would they just…dump a body in the hallway like that?” Jason asked whispered.

  “Perhaps they didn’t,” Stone said. “There’s always the possibility he died of natural causes, or a drug overdose.” Jason gave him a ‘you can’t possibly believe that’ look, and he shrugged. “I didn’t say it was likely—I said it was possible. Now hush. I think we’re getting closer.”

  They continued picking their way through the backstage area, mindful of the debris on the floor and looking even more carefully than before to make sure they didn’t stumble on any more dead bodies. All three kept glancing out into the stage area and the auditorium beyond, even though they couldn’t see anything and no one could see them if Stone’s magic was holding. Jason couldn’t shake the feeling that somebody up there was going to pin them in a spotlight any minute now, revealing that the whole place was crawling with DMW and other Evil, just waiting for the chance to pick them off.

  That didn’t happen, though. They made it across without incident and found another metal stairway, a mirror of the one they’d just come up, leading back down on the other side.

  “Part of this place has to be underground,” Jason whispered, pointing at the stairs. “This thing goes down too far to just be ground level.”

  “Partial basement,” Stone agreed. “Too dangerous to build real basements around here, with the earthquake potential.”

  As silently as they could, the three of them crept down the staircase. The light was brighter here, but still high up. Ahead at the bottom was a closed metal door; off to their right, down a short hallway, was a second, less substantial one.

  “Which way?” Jason asked.

  Stone was about to answer when another sound cut through the silence: a low moan like the one they’d heard before. Directly in front of them this time, it was a little louder than the previous one, but clearly still muffled.

  Jason pointed wordlessly toward the door. “I wish we had a way to know if there’s anybody in there,” he whispered.

  Stone put up a finger and glided forward, motioning for them to come along. Once more he put his head against the door and listened. There were more moans now; even those who weren’t directly listening could hear them. And then, suddenly, a scream of agony. Still muffled. Whatever was going on in that room, it was heavily soundproofed. “Clearly they don’t want whatever they’re up to in there getting out,” Stone said grimly.

  “What do we do?” Jason asked. “We can’t just bust in. We have no idea how many of them are there. It might be a trap.”

  “Wait,” Stone said, again flattening back against the wall. “Let’s see if anyone comes out.”

  Jason was sick of waiting, but he didn’t see any other option. Reluctantly he followed the mage to the wall, and Verity came along with him.

  After about five minutes, though, nobody had come out. The sounds continued, however: moans, screams, the sound of someone sobbing, all damped by whatever soundproofing they had in the space behind the door.

  Jason fidgeted, becoming more and more driven to do something with each passing minute. Finally, he let his breath out in a rush. “I can’t do this, Al,” he said in a harsh whisper. “Something’s going on in there—it sounds like they’re killing people. I can’t just sit here and wait.”

  Stone took a deep breath and nodded. “All right. Let me try something.” He pointed over toward the underside of the backstage area—the space beneath where they had come down the metal staircase. “You two hide yourselves there, so they won’t see when the door opens. I’m going to try to open it magically if it’s unlocked, and see if we can flush them out. Be ready, though. Depending on how many of them there are, I might not be able to deal with all of them on my own.”

  Jason and Verity crossed the hallway and hid behind some debris under the stage, both focusing hard on the closed door. Stone, his concealment spell still active on himself, moved behind the stairway, where he had a good view of the door. “Ready?” he whispered.

  Jason nodded, clenching his fists, his entire body feeling like a spring ready to uncoil. He felt Verity standing tensely next to him. “Go.”

  Stone raised his hand. For a few seconds nothing moved, and then the heavy door flew open and slammed into the wall behind it.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Several things happened simultaneously at that point—the first was that the corridor was flooded with light from the room beyond. The screams and moans, which had been attenuated by the closed door, grew immediately louder and more urgent. And they were joined by more sounds—cursing and harsh yells of surprise. “What the fuck—?” Then came the sound of running feet and the hallway was suddenly full of leather-jacketed figures.

  Jason, glad to finally have something to do, launched himself out from cover and smashed into one of the figures, slammi
ng it into the wall and reveling in the satisfying melonlike thunk as the ganger’s head hit the concrete, and he dropped.

  They made surprisingly short work of the remaining gangers—there were actually only four, though the narrow hallway had initially made them look like more. Stone dispatched two with magic, and Verity took out the last one when he tried to ambush Jason, concentrating for all she was worth and pushing with her mind until the glowing ball of Evil was ejected violently upward from his body. The ganger dropped in a boneless heap, and the shimmering ball erupted into nothingness.

  The three of them stood puffing in the hallway. “What are we gonna do with the rest of them?” Jason demanded. “We can’t just leave them here. They might wake up. Verity, can you—” he put his hands to his head and mimed an explosion effect.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Not when they’re unconscious.”

  “Help us!” came a desperate scream from inside the room. “Oh, God, please, help us!”

  “Drag them inside,” Stone ordered. “At least we can keep an eye on them in there.” He grabbed one of the smaller gangers and began following his own order.

  And then he stopped, halfway in and halfway out the door, as increasingly panicked screams echoed around them. “Bloody… hell,” he breathed.

  “What?” Jason dropped his ganger and poked his head around the doorway, past where Stone was blocking it. He too stiffened and stopped moving. “Shit…”

  “What’s going on?” Verity didn’t have space to shove past the two of them, so she couldn’t see.

  “Please!” The screams from inside were near-hysterical now.

  Jason shoved Stone bodily inside and the two of them for a moment could do nothing but stare. Verity moved in next to them and gasped.

  They were looking at what could only be described as a torture chamber, or a charnel house. It was a large room, probably used previously as a communal dressing area for the theater. Now, though, the far wall was lined with large cages, each one containing a captive. Metal hooks hung from the ceiling, on which various severed and rotting human body parts had been skewered. Several pieces of wooden and metal apparatus, some looking like it had been brought in from the dungeon next door, occupied most of the open space, including one that looked like a rack and held a messily eviscerated male body with its entrails pulled out and draped over the edges. Inexplicably, several padded armchairs lined the near wall. At the far end of the room was a closed door, next to which were stacked three naked bodies, also obviously dead. The stench of decay in here was overpowering.

  Stone, Jason, and Verity took all this in in the space of a few seconds, and then they were moving again. “Verity, watch the door,” Stone ordered.

  “Get us out of here!” screamed a man. “Please, oh God, let us out!” Like the other captives—three men, two women, and a boy of about fourteen—he looked ragged, dirty, and terrified.

  “Where’s the key?” Jason called. All the cages were locked with chains and padlocks. He was struggling hard to keep his gorge in place—there wasn’t any time to waste losing his dinner. Inexplicably, his mind flashed back to the haunted house—how clean it had looked compared to this, how different the smell of popcorn and sawdust had been from this nightmarish stench of blood and rot and excrement.

  “On the wall by the door.” The man was sobbing with fear, but obviously trying to keep it together. “Quick, before more of them come!”

  “Anyone in that back room?” Stone demanded.

  “N-no,” said one of the women. “That’s—that’s where they store—bodies.”

  Jason was already moving, grabbing the key off the wall hook where it hung. He hurried over and began unlocking cages, starting with the young boy. “How did you get here?” he asked.

  “Snatched,” the man sobbed. “All of us. They—they grab homeless people. Runaways. People—people nobody will miss.”

  “And torture them?” Jason demanded.

  The woman nodded. She was white as a ghost. She pointed vaguely at the body parts on meathooks. “They…like it. Doing that to people. They—”

  “Any of you Forgotten?” Stone cut her off. He kept shooting glances toward the door, as if expecting more DMW to come in.

  Most of them looked perplexed, but one thin young man who looked ill nodded. “I am.”

  “Can you—do anything?”

  Jason was still unlocking cages; as he did each one, the occupant came tumbling out, staggering with fear. “Nothing—useful,” the young man said. “I’m sorry…”

  “It’s all right,” Stone said, looking grim. “Come on—we need to get out of here.”

  Verity, meanwhile, was rifling through the unconscious DMW gangers’ clothes. “Hey!” she called. “I found a gun!”

  Jason spun. “Give me that,” he ordered. She handed it over and he inspected it, checking to see if it was loaded. “I thought the DMW didn’t use them,” he said. “But I’m not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  Stone was checking out the rest of the room. “Are you sure there’s nothing useful in that room?” he asked the captives. “We’ve not much time.”

  “Just bodies, I think,” the man they’d first been talking to said.

  Stone sighed. “Cover the door, Jason,” he said, and moved over to check. Jason got a quick glimpse of something red as he opened the door and a horrible smell, worse even than before, fetid and coppery and almost tangible, rolled out. When Stone closed the door and turned back to the group, even his normally unflappable demeanor was slipping. “Let’s go,” he said in an odd tone. “Nothing to save in there.”

  “Wait!” It was the young boy who spoke this time.

  Stone turned to him. “What?”

  “There’s more of them here,” he said. “Mister—you’re not gonna believe me, but—I saw Gordon Lucas!”

  “Who?” Stone asked.

  But Jason and Verity were both staring at the boy like he’d sprouted a second head. “Gordon Lucas? The talk show guy?”

  The kid nodded. “Yeah. That’s how they got me. I went to one of his homeless benefit things, tryin’ to get some food. His people asked me a bunch of questions, and then when I left, I got grabbed by those guys.” He pointed at the gangers. “I didn’t think it was connected ’til I got here. I been here awhile, before the rest of these guys got here, and I seen him. He comes in here sometimes! In this room! They torture people and he sits there and—and—and watches!” Tears streamed down the boy’s cheeks.

  Stone’s eyes widened. “The philanthropist?” He clapped his hand to his forehead. “Of course! It all makes sense. Who else could possibly be less obvious, but more logical?”

  “Wait a sec,” Jason said. “Gordon Lucas is the Big Evil? The guy gave up the talk show a few years back to help the poor?”

  “Quit—a few years ago!” Stone almost yelled it. “I remember it now! It was all over the news. Everyone was so surprised he’d quit at the top of his popularity. Why would he do that? everyone was asking.”

  “Because he’s possessed!” Verity filled in. Her eyes got big too. “And he’s here? In this building?” She stared at the boy.

  “I don’t know who Gordon Lucas is,” said the first man, “But there’s a guy who comes in sometimes—a couple of them. One looks like a movie star—older guy, tan, gray hair, big teeth—”

  “That sounds like Lucas,” Jason said.

  “The other one’s—this mousy-lookin’ guy in a suit.”

  “I think he’s a mage,” said the Forgotten man. “The mousy guy.”

  Stone’s expression hardened. “Come on,” he said quickly. “Jason, any more guns on those gangers?”

  Verity answered: “I checked them all—just that one. And no extra ammo that I can find.”

  “All right,” Stone said. “Jason—and you.” He pointed at the first homeless man. “Drag them into those cages and lock them up. We have to get you out of here, and fast.”

  Jason and the man did as di
rected, and Jason pocketed the key when they were done. The other homeless people huddled together, still looking terrified. Everyone was clearly trying hard not to look at the grisly body parts swinging on the overhead hooks.

  “How are we gonna get them out?” Verity asked. “We have to—do what we came here to do. And we haven’t seen any other exits except through the club. We can’t send them through there. They’d get grabbed again as soon as somebody spotted them.”

  “We—” Stone started, but he didn’t get a chance to finish. From the hallway outside came the far-off sound of running feet and yells. “Damn!” His gaze darted back and forth between the people in the room. It locked for a moment on the boy. “Did Lucas say anything about where he is when he’s not in here? When was he here last?”

  The boy looked panicky. “Uh—uh—” He was almost hyperventilating—Stone’s intense focus was obviously spooking him almost as much as the torture chamber. “He was here—like an hour ago. He—said something about the office. That’s all! I’m sorry!”

  “It’s all right, it’s all right.” Instantly Stone turned away. “You lot might need to hide for a bit. The only exit we know isn’t feasible to use right now.”

  Jason was peeking around the doorframe, gun ready. “I don’t see them yet,” he reported. “But they’re getting closer.”

  “All right, everybody out,” Stone ordered, making shooing motions. “Directly across from this room is a stairway, and underneath that is an under-stage storage area.” He motioned to the prisoners. “You go there, be quiet, and wait. Try not to get noticed.” He pointed at the Forgotten man. “I’m guessing you don’t have a concealment power.”

  The man shook his head, looking miserable. “I—I’m good with animals.”

  “Great,” Stone snapped. “If they have a dog, we’re set.”

  “Go!” Jason called urgently, trying to keep his voice down. “Go now. They’re getting closer. I think they’re on the stage!”

  Stone, Jason, and Verity herded the homeless group out and directed them under the stage. “Al—can you conceal them if you’re not with them?”