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

by R. L. King

  “This just seems really weird,” Verity said as they sat in a small coffee shop a short while later. “It seems like there ought to be a lot of Forgotten around here, but we haven’t found any? Did they all leave town to escape the Evil?”

  “Hardly seems likely,” Stone said. “Aside from Vegas and the surrounding communities, we’re out in the middle of the great bugger-all out here. Unless the Forgotten around here are better off financially than our friends back in California, I’m guessing that if they were here at all, they’re still here.”

  “Okay, but where?” Jason asked.

  “Maybe they’re in hiding,” Verity pointed out. “If this town is really as full of Evil as we think it is, they’re probably keeping a pretty low profile. I mean, look what happened to that street preacher guy. So far he’s the only one we’ve found who seems to have any connection to the Forgotten at all.”

  “True,” Stone said. “I wish we could have had a chance to talk to him before they took him away. He might have proven informative.”

  Jason had allowed his attention to wander while Verity and Stone were talking, doing his usual sweep of the surroundings for anything that looked suspicious. He didn’t expect to see anything, so he was surprised to notice a man in a tacky Las Vegas T-shirt and a floppy hat standing near the coffee shop’s front window, looking in.

  Directly at them.

  When the man caught Jason looking back at him, he pulled what looked like a guidebook from his pocket, consulted it, and then slipped off and disappeared into the crowd.

  “Uh, guys?” Jason spoke up, debating whether to go after the guy and deciding it would be useless at this point, “I think I just saw a guy out there watching us.”

  Stone and Verity immediately turned their attention to the front of the coffee shop. “I don’t see anybody,” Verity said.

  “He’s gone now. He noticed that I’d spotted him and took off.”

  Stone frowned. “What did he look like?”

  “Generic mid-thirties chubby white guy, dressed like a tourist. Nothing out of the ordinary, except that I’m sure he was watching us.”

  Stone shrugged. “Well, it’s worthwhile keeping our wits about us, but it’s probably just a coincidence. Perhaps he saw something else in here, or thought one of us looked like someone he knew. Nobody but Madame Huan even knows we’re in town. We didn’t even tell Lamar and his group that we were leaving.”

  Jason nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, I guess. It just gives me the creeps. This whole town gives me the creeps, now that I know it’s crawling with Evil. It’s weird—when I was here for my birthday that was only four years or so ago, and I don’t remember noticing anything strange. We all just partied on, completely oblivious.”

  “Not surprised,” Stone said. “The Evil aren’t stupid—they’ve proven that on numerous occasions. It would be counterproductive for them to bother the tourists, since they’re the town’s lifeblood. I’m guessing with the number of drug addicts, prostitutes, people going broke at the gambling tables, and other unfortunates, the locals generate enough misery to keep them fed quite nicely.”

  “Yeah, true. And they can fill in with the mob hits and the murders and other stuff like that if they need a little extra kick.” Jason sighed. “Still makes me nervous that the guy was watching us, though. I want to know why, and I’m not gonna get to find out.”

  Stone nodded. “Well, best not to take any chances. Let’s go back and check out of where we’re staying. We’ll relocate to another base, just in case somebody’s figured out where we are. Then if we want to, we can head back out later and do some more searching for Forgotten. I don’t want to stay anywhere too long anyway.”

  “Good idea,” Jason said, relieved. “I know it’s probably paranoia, but you know the old cliché: it’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you.”

  “I sure hope that guy wasn’t watching us,” Verity spoke up. “Because if he was and he’s Evil, you know what that means, right?”

  Stone started to look at her in question, but then his expression hardened as he realized what she meant. “Indeed,” he said, looking grim. “It means the Evil here have somehow gotten the message about us. Quite probably because the portal’s opened.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  After that sobering realization, all three of them were more watchful as they headed back to the car. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, though: nobody looked at them oddly, appeared to be following them, or even paid them any attention. By the time they reached the lot and reclaimed the BMW, they all felt a bit sheepish at their overreaction.

  “There’s no way they can know about us this soon,” Verity said as Stone eased the car back out into the heavy downtown traffic. “And even if they did, how would they find us anyway? We didn’t even know where we were going next.”

  Jason nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I just got a little freaked and overreacted. Sorry, guys.”

  “Not a problem,” Stone said. “Better safe than sorry. And I still want to move our base. Easy enough to do—plenty of vacancies in town this time of year. We know they’ll work it out eventually, even if they haven’t already.”

  They arrived back at their hotel a little after 11:00. After checking the suite to ensure nothing was amiss, they packed up their gear and stowed it in the trunk before heading to the office to turn in their keys.

  The guy behind the counter didn’t seem surprised or disturbed that they were leaving in the middle of the night. “Hope you enjoyed your stay,” he said in a rote tone. Then he glanced at the keys and raised a finger. “Oh. Wait a sec. There’s a message for you.” He spun his chair around and fished a folded, pink piece of paper out of a cubby with their suite number on it. “Which one of you is Alastair Stone?”

  “I am,” Stone said, perplexed. Who would have left a message? He took the paper from the man and unfolded it.

  “Who’s it from?” Verity asked.

  “Thank you,” Stone said to the desk clerk, and left the lobby without answering Verity’s question. Once they were outside, he stopped. “It’s from Madame Huan. She called earlier this evening.” He indicated the note, which was on one of those “While You Were Out” phone message forms and obviously scrawled by the clerk. “She says one of her people turned up the name of someone in town we should talk to. She didn’t say much, but she thinks he might be worth checking out. Someone named Scotty.”

  “Where?” Jason asked.

  Stone consulted the note again. “Apparently he’s often found at a place called Nemo’s. Let me see that map.”

  Jason pulled it out and spread it over the hood of the car. Glancing at Stone’s note, he pointed at a spot. “Yeah, it’s a couple blocks from Downtown.”

  “Should we head over there now? Or find another place to stay first?” Verity asked. “Maybe we should call first to find out if he’s there.”

  “Let’s just go,” Jason said. “And I don’t think we should call.”

  Stone nodded. “The fewer people who know our plans, the more comfortable I’ll feel. We can find a place after we talk to him. Our gear should be safe enough in the car.”

  Back in the Downtown area, Stone chose to put the car in the same lot where they’d parked before. “It gives us a bit of a walk,” he said, “but at least we’re reasonably sure it will be safe here.”

  It wasn’t long before he had cause to regret this decision. Almost as soon as they turned off Fremont Street and away from the casinos, the entire feel of the area changed. Gone were the million-watt neon lights and hordes of tourists, replaced instead by infrequent streetlights, blowing trash, graffiti, and disreputable-looking businesses. They spotted several bars, a couple of adult-novelty shops, tacky souvenir stores, a bail-bond business, and a myriad of massage parlors and strip clubs, some of which had women lounging in their doorways trying to entice Stone and Jason (and sometimes Verity) inside. All of these businesses were currently open, but had few customers. Every one of
them had at least one slot machine and sported garish lighting, though nothing that could compete with the excesses of Downtown. Jason turned to look back over his shoulder and was struck by how strange it looked to see the glow of the casinos receding behind them, lighting up this marginal neighborhood like some kind of far-off post-nuclear glow.

  “It’s just one block from this one, right?” Stone asked, glancing around. He didn’t look nervous, but he did look more watchful than usual.

  “Yeah.” Jason didn’t want to pull out the map again right now—looking that much like a lost tourist in a neighborhood like this was a bad idea. “One block up and then a right. You aren’t concealing us, are you?”

  “Not yet.”

  Other than the amorous strip-club shills, no one else accosted them or impeded their progress as they worked their way up the block and turned right, though several young men slouching in doorways regarded them with bored indifference when they passed, and once they had to quicken their pace as they spotted an obvious drug deal going down at the far end of an alleyway. This street was even more sparsely populated than the one they’d just left—it was clearly a commercial district, but a good half of the businesses along the block were closed and shuttered.

  Their destination, Nemo’s, proved to be a ramshackle bar with a glowing neon crab on its sign, about halfway up the block. On either side of it were another strip club and a pawnshop featuring an impressive array of artillery locked up behind its barred display window.

  “I don’t like the look of this place,” Jason said, glancing around.

  “Come on, it’ll be fine,” Verity said. “Let’s just find the guy and talk to him and get out of here.”

  The moment they opened the door and stepped inside, they were hit by the intermingled odors of beer, cigarette smoke, and the faintest far-off hint of a bathroom in bad need of cleaning. Off to the left of the narrow hallway leading inside the bar proper was a bank of ancient slot machines, and on the right side a sour-eyed man slouched on a stool next to an out-of-order cigarette machine, his hat pulled down over his eyes. Stone went in first, followed by Verity, with Jason taking his usual watchful position at the rear where he could keep an eye on the two of them.

  They passed some small tables in the corner; one was occupied by a youngish couple, their eyes glazed, groping each other with insistent obliviousness. Another had a frowzy woman in too much makeup and too little clothing who was obviously much older than she wanted people to think she was. She nursed a large drink and examined first Stone, then Jason with an appraising gimlet gaze. A couple of tables over from the woman, two young men in heavy-metal band T-shirts and jeans puffed away on cigarettes; they looked Verity up and down, which earned them a glare from Jason. It seemed as if everyone in the place was watching the newcomers. A stereo pumped out a pounding hard-rock beat from unseen speakers.

  Stone headed immediately to the bar, with Jason and Verity right behind him. The bartender, a squat man with a graying crewcut, narrowed his eyes. “Yeah?”

  Stone raised an eyebrow. “We’re looking for someone we were told might be here. Name is Scotty.”

  The guy gave Stone a contemptuous sideways glance: clearly he wasn’t used to well-dressed British tourists wandering into his bar at close to midnight. He considered for a few seconds, then nodded. “Yeah, Scotty’s around. Who wants to know?” His gravelly voice held no hint of welcome.

  “A friend,” the mage said, with a look that suggested he wouldn’t be providing any other information. He slid a ten-dollar bill across the stained counter. “Just point him out, or tell him we’re here and we’d like to speak with him, will you?”

  The ten-spot disappeared. “Yeah,” the man said again. “Wait here and I’ll go get him. I think he’s next door at the titty bar.” He motioned for the only visible waitress to come over and relieve him, then headed off toward the front door.

  The waitress gave them a gap-toothed grin. “Getcha somethin’ while ya wait?” She wore a low-cut T-shirt that emphasized her ample bosom, one side of which was tattooed with a large and amateurishly drawn butterfly. The way she was leaning forward, it looked like the butterfly was attempting to crawl into her cleavage.

  “Nah,” Jason said. “We’ll just wait.” When she’d wandered off, he said, “I’ll be back. Gotta hit the head. You guys gonna be okay out here?”

  Verity rolled her eyes. “Of course not. Without you to watch over us, we’re gonna get eaten by bears.”

  Jason was still reluctant to leave, but he didn’t have a choice. “Okay. Just—be careful. I’ll just be a minute.”

  He hurried to the back of the bar where he assumed the restrooms were, and found a battered door marked Men right where he expected it to be.

  The restroom was appalling—it looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in at least a month, and the stench was nearly unbearable. Jason finished as fast as he could, zipped up, and decided it would be more sanitary to wash his hands with a glass of water and some bar napkins than to touch the sink. He turned to head back out and froze.

  The inside of the restroom’s exit door featured a prominent and unmistakable Forgotten ‘bad place’ symbol, emblazoned across the upper half with what looked like spray paint. Below it was a line of smaller symbols Jason didn’t recognize, interspersed with crude drawings of male anatomy and hookers’ phone numbers.

  The meaning of that big symbol was clear, though. He flung open the door and rushed out, half expecting to walk into the middle of a bar fight or find Stone and Verity missing. Neither happened: they sat at a table near the back hallway, watchful but relatively unconcerned. He leaned down to whisper to them in an urgent tone. “We have to get out of here.”

  “Huh?” Verity asked, and Stone raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “We have to go. Now. Come on.”

  “But Scotty—”

  “Fuck Scotty. I’ll bet there isn’t even a Scotty.” He leaned in closer. “Al—I saw a Forgotten sign inside the bathroom door. Big one. Bad place.”

  That got them moving. As Stone and Verity rose from their seats, Jason glanced toward the front door, and stiffened when he spotted several shadowy figures coming in. “Fuck!” he whispered. “Incoming. Go! Back door!”

  “There they are! In the back!” one of the figures at the front yelled, pointing. They all broke into a run, their hands going to their pockets.

  “Go! Fast!” Jason urged Stone and Verity ahead of him. “Al, can you conceal us from anything outside?”

  Stone shoved open the door. “Already done. Won’t help if they see the door open—”A loud bang and a bright flash went off to their left somewhere, and a bullet spanged off a dumpster near the door.

  “Holy shit, they’re shooting at us!” Jason whispered, his gaze darting around wildly, trying to find the source of the shot.

  “Down!” Stone ordered, grabbing Verity’s arm and ducking around the other side of the dumpster. Another bullet hit where he’d just been standing.

  The door slammed open again and the group from inside dashed out into the lot. There were four of them, three men and a woman. Two of the men held pistols. They paused and looked in all directions, obviously searching for their quarry, and then two ran off toward the alley and the other two hurried in the other direction, toward where Stone, Jason, and Verity hid.

  “Behind the trash!” a voice yelled from the top of a nearby building. “Get ‘em!”

  Stone didn’t wait. He rose up and pointed his hands at the two approaching attackers. Glowing energy formed and streaked toward them, engulfing them. They shrieked, clutched their heads, and dropped.

  “We gotta get out of here!” Jason whispered. “We don’t know how many there are!” He was right: he was certain he’d seen at least three shadowy figures moving in from three different sides. They didn’t have long: the other two would be back any second, and at least one lurked on the roof. Staying here was suicide.

  “Where do we go?” Verity said under her breath. She lo
oked wide-eyed and scared, but ready to act.

  “My concealment spell won’t help us now,” Stone said. “They know where we are, so they’ll be looking.”

  “Come on,” Jason urged. Still ducked down, he moved along the wall next to the dumpster and around the corner. Another bullet barely missed him: the guy on the roof was obviously on the move. Stone flung another spell in the same direction; the shots stopped, but none of them thought that would last long. “Let’s get out to the street. If we try to run back here, they know the terrain better than we do.”

  “We’ll be sitting ducks out there,” Verity protested.

  “No we won’t,” Stone said. “Once we get to the end of the alley near the street, I’ll make us invisible. I can’t hold it for long even with Jason helping, but it might buy us enough time to find a hiding spot.”

  They hurried down the dark alley, stumbling over old, splintered pallets, boxes, and other debris littering it. Jason held Verity’s arm tight and moved fast—he knew if they got boxed in on both ends of the alley, they’d be in trouble.

  They’d almost made it to the street when another bullet hit the wall near them, knocking pieces out of the brickwork. One shard hit Verity in the cheek, and she yelped in pain.

  “That’s from up above,” Jason snapped. Looking up, he pointed at a shadowed figure leaning over the edge of the roof three stories up. Stone flung a spell at it, and it shrank back out of sight.

  “Should we try to get back to the car?” Verity asked, her hand covering her bleeding cheek. They ran out of the alley and dropped down behind a parked car.