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

by R. L. King

Stone waved him off. “No, go on. Let us know if there’s anything we can do to help you.”

  When he was gone, they left the theater. Jason let out a long sigh. “Feeling pretty useless myself right now. What do you say we go get some dinner and figure out what to do after that?”

  They began walking through the casino toward the restaurants. “This is all so weird,” Verity said. “So Tarkasian’s a real mage, and he’s disappeared along with his assistant. You don’t think the Evil grabbed him, do you? That maybe he knows something about portals, and they’re getting desperate?”

  Stone shrugged. “Who knows? I’d like to think that Harrison is sharp enough that if he knew Tarkasian was a portal expert, he’d have mentioned it. He’s probably just some kind of minor talent using his abilities to help him do a better job as a stage magician.”

  “I hope that lady finds her kid, too,” Verity said. “That’s got to be scary for a parent, when you send ’em off on a field trip and then the bus doesn’t come back.”

  “Yeah,” Jason said, his expression sober. “She’s got to—” He stopped when he realized that Stone was no longer following them. He turned to see the mage standing in the middle of the walkway, swaying. He’d gone dead pale, his expression suggesting that someone had just punched him hard in the gut.

  “Al?” Jason hurried back over to him, grabbing his shoulder. “You okay?”

  “Bloody hell,” he whispered.

  “What—” People were slowing down to look at them in concern now. Jason waved them off.

  “Come on,” Stone ordered, whirling and taking off at a fast walk back the way they’d come.

  “Al—”

  But Stone didn’t answer, and he didn’t even slow down until he’d reached the same bank of phones from which they’d called Nakamura before. He snapped up the house phone, punched a number, and waited impatiently. When there was an answer, he said without preamble, “Mr. Nakamura, we need to talk to you. Immediately.”

  Nakamura took less than two minutes to find them. He looked concerned. “What is it, Dr. Stone? I told you, I need to—”

  “What’s this art contest?” Stone demanded. His eyes blazed with intensity.

  “A-art contest?” Nakamura looked at him like he’d suddenly gone insane.

  “The contest that nervous woman’s son won. The one where they sent them off on a field trip!” His voice pitched up a bit, taking on an urgency that was entirely incongruous with his words.

  “Er—” Nakamura struggled to answer the question in a way that would calm Stone’s agitation. “It’s—an art contest. For kids. Under 10, I think. I saw the flyer up in one of the break rooms for a while. Draw or paint a picture of something about the history of Las Vegas. It was open to kids of all the casino employees.”

  “Sponsored by whom?” Stone demanded.

  “Dr. Stone—” Nakamura started, but then got a good look at Stone’s face and shook his head. “I don’t remember. The museum, maybe? Or one of the casino employees’ associations? I’m not even sure it said, honestly. But one of the prizes was a field trip to one of the local art museums. I guess it was today. Why—”

  Stone passed a hand over his forehead. “Dear gods, I hope I’m wrong,” he muttered. Then he focused on Nakamura again. “Where’s Harrison? I need to talk to him. Right now.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Well, find him, man!” Stone snapped. “This is vitally important. We’ll wait here. Go!”

  To his credit, Nakamura didn’t waste time asking questions. He took off at a jog, disappearing into the early-evening casino crowd.

  “Al,” Jason growled, clamping a hand on Stone’s shoulder. “Damn it, no more secrets. If you know something, spit it out. Now.”

  Stone nodded; all the air seemed to have gone out of him. His shoulders slumped, his head bowed. “I hope I’m wrong...” he whispered. “But I don’t think Tarkasian’s disappearance and the disappearance of that busload of schoolchildren are coincidental.”

  “You think they’re related?” Jason asked. “How? Why?”

  He took a deep breath. When he spoke, his voice shook. “Because I don’t think they have a mage capable of stabilizing that portal for them using the proper methods. So I think they’re going to try to do it using brute force.”

  “Brute force?” Verity asked, still confused.

  Stone nodded. “Remember the difference between white and black magic? Remember how black magic is powered? What needs to be done in order to gain the ability to perform the most powerful of spells?”

  Verity still looked like she didn’t get it. “They get their power from others instead of themselves, but—”

  “Oh, holy shit...” Jason whispered as he caught on. He too went pale. “Al...no...”

  “What is it?” Verity looked back and forth between them. “What are they gonna do?”

  “You saw it once with your own eyes, Verity,” Stone said softly. “A few months ago, before we even met. Black mages get the most power by completely draining the life essence of the people they use to feed their spells. And the most power of all comes from the most innocent victims.”

  He closed his eyes. “Children.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Verity stared at him, shocked, as it finally sunk in. “You mean—Tarkasian’s a black mage? And they’re gonna use him to stabilize the portal by killing a busload of kids for the power?”

  “They might be forcing him,” Jason pointed out. “His assistant’s missing too, and they looked like they were a couple. Maybe they grabbed her, and are using her to make him do it.”

  “The details aren’t important,” Stone said, clearly distracted. “Maybe he is a black mage and maybe he isn’t—it’s too early to jump to those kinds of conclusions. But if I’m right about what whoever’s responsible for this is planning—and I hope I’m just seeing bogeymen where there aren’t any—then we have to find that bus, fast.”

  “How do you hide a school bus?” Verity asked.

  Stone wasn’t listening to her. “Where the hell is Harrison? We—”

  “Here he comes,” Jason said, pointing, and indeed the mage was slicing through the crowd toward them, with Nakamura in his wake. Harrison didn’t ask questions, but simply motioned for them to follow him to a private back room in one of the nearby bars. Then, without sitting down, he looked at Stone and waited.

  Stone quickly explained his fears. Harrison listened, the only indication that the mage’s words had affected him was an increased intensity to his gaze. “So,” Stone finished, “We have to find that bus, and we have to find it now. I suspect they’ve taken the children to wherever the portal is, which means that finding it just became our number-one priority.”

  “Where do we even start?” Jason asked. “Al, we’ve all been trying to find it for a week, and we haven’t—”

  “Which museum was it?” Verity broke in. “Where they were. Is it still open? Can we go there now?”

  Nakamura picked up a phone and had a quick conversation with someone on the other end. “It’s the Native American Art and History Museum, out on the north edge of town,” he told them, coming back to the table. “The big one they built a couple of years ago.”

  “We don’t need to go there, but we do need to contact them,” Stone said. “We need to find out if that bus really did disappear.”

  “I’ll handle that,” Nakamura said, and headed off toward the phone again. After a moment, he returned. “It’s missing,” he said. “It left the museum around 4:30. Nobody there saw it leave, since it was parked out back. It didn’t arrive back at the school as scheduled, and the police can’t locate it.”

  “How the hell did they manage that?” Jason said.

  “My guess is that the Evil connection is on the bus,” Stone said.

  “The teachers?” Verity whispered.

  “Yes, and probably the bus driver as well. I’m guessing all the adults are possessed—if even one of them wasn’t and got suspicious, they c
ould stuff up the whole operation.”

  “What about the kids?” Verity asked. “Wouldn’t they catch on when the bus didn’t go back to where it was supposed to?”

  “Kids are trusting,” Jason said. “If all the adults were telling them everything was okay, then why wouldn’t they believe it?”

  Stone sighed “I hope I’m wrong about this. I still might be. The bus might simply have taken a wrong turn and broken down somewhere.”

  “You don’t believe that, do you?” Jason asked.

  “No. I don’t. Which means we need to get on about finding that bus.”

  “How long do you think we have?” Verity asked. “This ritual you were talking about—how long will it take them to do it, once they get where they’re going?”

  “Is it just ‘gather up the kids, say abracadabra and they all go poof’, or do we have some time?” Jason added. “Because if it’s the poof thing, then those kids are probably already dead and we’re fucked.”

  Stone shook his head. “You’ll forgive me if I’m not up to date on the sorts of rituals that require mass murder to work, but even if they’ve been preparing themselves for this for a while, which is possible, it still won’t be instant. Killing the kids one at a time would be pointless—they’ll need to kill all of them and siphon the power at once, which means they’ll need some sort of ritual to link them all together first. Those take time—they’re tailored to the individuals involved.”

  “What makes you think they’ve been preparing this for a while?” Verity asked.

  Stone glanced at her. “I don’t follow.”

  “Well—these portals have been around for five years, right? And they haven’t done anything about trying to do this before, which kinda makes it seem like they’ve been okay with the speed that the Evil have been coming through so far.”

  “And—?” Jason asked.

  But Stone had caught on. “So you’re saying the only thing that might cause them to step up their plans is knowing that we destroyed the other portal?” He nodded. “Excellent thought, Verity, and actually quite probable.”

  “What’s that mean, though?” Jason said.

  “It means we might have a bit more time than I first thought. They’ve likely only known for a week or so that the other portal had been destroyed. Obviously they’d want to make sure they got the ritual just right, since they’ll only get one shot at it. And—again, I’m not intimately familiar with black magic of this magnitude, but if it’s anything like a white magic ritual, it will require a massive quantity of materials. Not the sort of thing they could gather in a day or two. They’d probably have to hit up every magical supplier on the West Coast to get enough supplies—especially if they didn’t want any one place having a chance of figuring out they’re up to something this big.”

  “Yeah, I get that,” Jason said. “But I’m guessing they wouldn’t pick up the kids if they didn’t have all that stuff ready to go. It doesn’t make sense. I can’t imagine that they’d want to hold on to them any longer than necessary—for one thing, they’d get suspicious and a lot harder to deal with if they realized they were prisoners, and for another, every hour they had that many kids would mean more chance they’d be found. Even if the police are Evil and mostly useless, those kids’ parents aren’t gonna give up.”

  “True,” Stone agreed. “But it does make sense that they might be putting the finishing touches on things as they go along. Think about it—they’re impatient, they know we’re on their heels, they might even know that we’ve got Mr. Harrison and his information network helping us track them down. They’d want to get this sorted as soon as they safely could. And since there’s no way I know of for mundanes to track that bus, as long as they can hide it for a few hours, they probably figure they’re safe enough.”

  “You said ‘mundanes.’ Is there a way for mages to track the bus?” Jason asked.

  “Not the bus itself,” Stone said. “But we can track the occupants.”

  “Right!” Verity exclaimed, gripping the table. “You could do a ritual, if you had something that belonged to one of them!”

  “Yes, yes,” Stone said. “That sort of ritual is slow, though. There might not be enough time—”

  “Can I help?” Verity asked. “Would it be faster if we both did it?”

  Again, Stone nodded. “Yes, it would. Have you been—”

  “I’ve been studying,” she said, her voice shaking with excitement. “I was gonna tell you I was ready to try it, when this whole thing was over. Let’s do it.”

  “Can you get the stuff we need?” Jason asked Harrison, who had been watching silently from the far side of the table.

  “I think what we’ve got in the box from Madame Huan will do the job for materials,” Stone said. “All we need is an item from one of the children. And a private place big enough to set up the ritual.”

  “Why don’t we just track Tarkasian?” Jason asked. “He’s got to be involved—you said so yourself. And I’m sure there’s all kinds of things in his dressing room you can use to find him.”

  “Mages can protect themselves from tracking rituals,” Stone said. “He’s probably protecting Tammy as well, so we’ll likely waste time by trying to find them. But he can’t protect them all.” He glanced at Harrison. “Can you get us something belonging to one of the children?”

  He nodded. “Mr. Nakamura, please see to that.” He headed for the door. “Come with me—I’ll show you where you can set up the ritual.”

  “Verity, you’re with us,” Stone said. “Jason, if you could go up to the suite and grab our box of materials—”

  “On it.” He hurried off.

  Stone and Verity followed Harrison as they waited for Jason to return. “If we can find where they are, we’ll need to get there fast,” he said. “And we’ll have to be relatively quiet about it. We can’t go in with an army, even if you’ve got one. Too much chance that any Evil coming out of the portal will possess them and use them against us. Also, I’m afraid if we do that, they might just cut their losses and kill the children.”

  “First we find them,” Harrison said. “Let me deal with the rest.” He stopped in front of a conference room door, which he unlocked with a keypad. “This should be sufficient for your needs.”

  “Thank you,” Stone said. “Verity and I can get started with the circle, so we can begin the ritual soon after Mr. Nakamura returns.” He examined the conference room: a medium-sized unused area cleared of chairs and tables. “Yes, this will do nicely.”

  “I’ll leave you to your ritual, then,” Harrison said. “Call me when you have an answer and we can decide our next steps.”

  “We could do this even faster if you’d help us,” Stone called. “Time is definitely of the essence here.”

  “No doubt,” Harrison said. “But I’m needed elsewhere. Please excuse me.” And he was gone before either of them could say anything else.

  With both Stone and Verity setting up the ritual, it only took them about forty-five minutes to draw the circle, place the candles, crystals, and incense burners, and have everything ready to go. Nakamura showed up about ten minutes into the circle-casting with a paper bag. “It’s the boy’s lucky baseball glove,” he said. “Will it work for what you need?”

  “Excellent,” Stone said, taking the bag. “Thank you.”

  Nakamura nodded. “Good luck,” he said, and departed.

  Jason had brought not only the box of magical supplies, but also several of his maps; he fanned them out on the floor and studied them while Stone and Verity put the finishing touches on the circle.

  “Okay,” Stone said at last, standing up and brushing chalk dust off his hands. “Let’s do this. Verity,” he said in an apologetic tone, “Normally I’d have you do it—it would be an excellent test for you. But—”

  She waved him off. “No, no. Way too much pressure for my first time. You do it.”

  Stone nodded and took his place in the middle of the circle, holding the bag conta
ining the baseball glove. He motioned for Verity to light the incense burners.

  “I hope this doesn’t set off the smoke detectors,” she said as she moved around the edges with a lighter.

  The ritual itself took about fifteen minutes, and looked similar to the one Jason had seen Stone do several months ago when he was trying to find Verity. So intent were he and Verity on watching the glowing crystals and the flickering colored candle flames that they didn’t see Harrison slip into the room and stand silently next to them. It was only after the candles flared, the baseball glove disappeared with a soft little fffft! and the spike of light lanced upward through the ceiling that they noticed him .

  “Did you find him?” Jason demanded, hurrying into the center of the circle to help the panting Stone over to a chair.

  “Map,” the mage ordered, swiping his hand across his forehead. “The one of the whole state.”

  Verity grabbed the maps and brought them over, and all four of them gathered around as she spread out the one he had requested. They all remained silent with anticipation as Stone studied it. “Well?” Jason finally asked, unable to contain his curiosity any longer.

  Stone stabbed a finger down on a spot about fifty miles northwest of Las Vegas. “He’s somewhere in this area,” he said. “I can’t pinpoint it any closer with the ritual, unfortunately. It will be a fairly big space to search, I think.” He sighed, shoving his hair back again. “It’s a good sign that I found him at all, though—that means he, at least, is still alive.”

  “You can’t get any closer than that?” Jason asked. “I’ve seen you do these before—you’ve narrowed it down to a city block.”

  “Not this far away, though,” Stone said. “The farther away it is, the less precise. Especially when I’ve never even met the target.”

  “What’s out there?” Verity asked, perplexed. “I don’t see any towns or anything. It just looks like desert. How can they hide a portal in the middle of the desert without someone seeing it?”

  They all looked at Harrison. “Do you have any idea what’s out there?” Stone asked. “Something in the area that isn’t marked on the map, perhaps?”