by R. L. King
As the time grew closer to when they would need to provide blood to the casting, Stone opened his eyes and switched on his magical senses. In the inner circle, something swirled, gray and indistinct. Although it didn’t have any kind of form, humanoid or otherwise, Stone sensed a keen intelligence coming from it, and a curiosity. He allowed himself to believe that it might be possible for them to pull this off: most spirits, when ripped from their home plane and imprisoned inside a small cage, gave off waves of hatred, frustration, and malevolence. This one seemed simply interested in what was going on. Stone watched, fascinated, but kept his concentration steady. This was the part where it was most crucial not to make any mistakes.
“All right…” Kolinsky murmured, reaching for the knife on the left side of the table. “Are you ready, Alastair?”
“Ready.” Stone took the knife on his side. Together, the two of them held their arms—his left, Kolinsky’s right—over the wide carved bowl. They hovered the knives over their palms. Inside the circle, the foggy form moved closer to them, as if pressing against the inside of an aquarium trying to get a closer look.
“Now.” Kolinsky’s voice didn’t rise; it remained calm and steady. He slashed the blade of his knife across the palm of his hand and turned it upside down so the blood ran into the bowl.
Stone did the same thing, gritting his teeth as the razor-edged blade sliced into his flesh. He mirrored Kolinsky’s gesture, turning his hand and watching his blood drip down to join the black mage’s. When the two met, they began to sizzle and glow with a faint red light, and traces of what looked like reddish smoke wafted up from the bowl to surround the center circle. Inside it, the spirit seemed to grow more animated, smacking itself against the boundary.
Kolinsky began speaking Latin again, still as careful and precise as before, though when Stone risked a brief sideways glance, he saw lines standing out in the older man’s face. Kolinsky raised his non-bloodied hand, clenching his fist as if trying to gather something into it. His hand shook.
Stone could tell that the spirit, curious as it was, wasn’t as willing to roll over and give up as Kolinsky had hoped. It was fighting him. Stone sensed great power in it: certainly more power than either of the two of them possessed individually, though possibly it was not a match for them together. It was hard to tell. He focused harder, struggling to feed energy into the spell’s matrix, to keep the magical fields steady so Kolinsky could do his work.
When everything went wrong, it did so in a bare second. The only reason Stone was able to do anything at all about it was that he’d sensed the spirit’s growing resistance, and even then he was almost caught by surprise.
One moment the spirit was bouncing around inside the circle, following the red smoke tendrils wafting up from the blood like a cat trying to catch a laser pointer; the next, the circle erupted in a flash of light so bright and sudden that it seemed to freeze the room in place like a flashbulb. A backlash exploded from the circle as the magical cage blew down, detonating outward and flinging Stone and Kolinsky back as if they’d been hit by an invisible bus.
The only thing that saved them was Stone’s partial shield, which he barely erected in time. The foggy form, more humanoid now, was no longer gray: it was red. And it was larger. The curiosity was still there, but now it was laced with a more malevolent intelligence. It raised its appendages and opened its “mouth,” sucking in the red tendrils from the bowl. And then it turned its attention to Stone and Kolinsky, its intentions clear: it wanted more blood.
Stone struggled to his feet, reinforcing his shield as he did. With the inner circle down, he didn’t know if it would be sufficient to hold off the spirit, but he dared not step free of the outer circle. It wasn’t designed to hold the spirit within it, so if they left it, they would lose any minimal amount of protection it afforded.
Next to him, Kolinsky was also getting up, but more slowly. His face was ashen with fatigue: he had been doing the majority of the heavy lifting for the ritual, which meant that he’d been more strongly invested in it. The backlash had hit him harder than it had Stone.
“Stefan?” Stone called.
Kolinsky didn’t answer; he seemed to be focusing his remaining will on the spirit. His black eyes glittered as he raised his hands and spat several harsh Latin syllables at it. It reared back, but only a short distance. Then it raised its right appendage and flung something at the black mage.
Kolinsky got his own shield up, barely; combined with Stone’s, it managed to deflect the worst of the spirit’s attack. However, the force threw Kolinsky out of the circle and into the wall, where he hit with a crashing thud and slid down, stunned.
Stone took his chance when the spirit wasn’t paying attention to him. Legs shaking and brain reeling from the psychic backlash, he raised his bloody left hand, flexed it to open the wound wider, and flung a handful of blood drops at the spirit, screaming a command in Latin. He wasn’t sure it would work, but he hadn’t been the primary summoner. If the spirit’s hatred was mostly aimed at Kolinsky for daring to try to deceive it, then Stone might be able to catch it by surprise and drive it off if he was fast. Maybe.
He hoped.
The spirit turned on him, and the space where its eyes would have been glowed brighter red than the rest of it. It lashed out again, its attack breaking against Stone’s shield and then blowing it down, shoving him back into the opposite wall. It surged forward again.
From the other side of the room, Kolinsky put his hands together and barked out a sharp word; a wave of magical force issued from his clasped hands and hit the spirit, momentarily disrupting it. It didn’t shriek or cry out, but the air was full of its pain and anger.
Stone struggled up again. Kolinsky was powerful, no doubt about it. That force bolt would have been enough to kill a mundane—it might have been enough to kill him, even through his shield. But already the spirit was reforming, turning its cold rage on Kolinsky. And the black mage’s shield was down.
Stone thought fast. Nothing conventional would work here. The spirit was simply too strong, especially with the circle gone. Desperate, his mind locked on to the scene with the imp, remembering. That summoning had been his first test of his understanding of Harrison’s power methods, and it had worked. Sure, he couldn’t control the thing once it had arrived, and the mere act of channeling power in that new and unfamiliar way had knocked him out, but he didn’t have a lot of choices right now. He’d have to risk it.
The spirit hit Kolinsky with another force-wave, knocking him once more back into the wall. This time he hit hard, slid down, and didn’t get back up. The spirit loomed over him, preparing to strike the deathblow.
It had to be now.
Stone concentrated as hard as he could manage. What little he’d been able to glean from Harrison’s notes indicated that the man drew his power not from within himself, and not from others, but from some other source entirely. Another plane of existence.
Stone had managed—barely—to tap into that source once. That meant he could do it again.
He hoped.
He reached out and felt the conduit open, just a bit, and fought to manage this strange, alien power. It felt like trying to channel Niagara Falls through a funnel. So much power. Near limitless power. And it wanted out. He couldn’t use much—he knew that. Just trying to control more than a fraction of a fraction of it would rip him apart. Just a little. Just a second or two…
The spirit turned to him, drawn by the new and potent power source. It advanced on him, full of hate and curiosity and hunger.
Stone released the power.
He screamed as it tore out of him. There was no refinement to it. No shaping. No control. It was simply the opening of the magical equivalent of a fire hose, aiming it straight at the spirit’s core. It lit up Stone’s magical pathways in a kind of exquisite agony, and for a second he understood—just the smallest bit—what kind of wellspring of power he might someday be able to tap into.
If he lived long enough.
The blast of pure magical energy hit the spirit. It lunged forward, shrieking out a psychic cry that threatened to split Stone’s head open.
Then it winked out.
The room went dark.
Stone dropped next to Kolinsky. He wondered if that was the end.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jason had barely gotten to sleep when his phone rang. He blinked a couple of times, glancing at the digital clock next to the bed: 12:07 a.m. Early for him to be in bed, but it was a weeknight, and he was beat after a long shift at the restaurant.
He fumbled the phone into position, his emotions starting at irritation (damned idiot drunks wrong-numbering me at this hour) and working their way to fear (oh, God, what if something’s happened to Verity?) before he managed to line it up with his ear. “…Yeah?” he muttered, voice thick with sleep.
“Jason?”
It was Stone. He sounded strange. Faint, weak, and almost as rough as Jason did. “Al? That you?”
“Jason…I need your help.”
Hoo boy. That woke Jason up in a hurry. He sat up and switched on the light. “What’s going on? Where are you?”
Stone continued speaking as if he hadn’t heard Jason. “Jason—I need your help. Please.” He rattled off an address in Los Altos Hills.
What the hell was Stone doing in Los Altos Hills after midnight? “Okay, Al. Okay. I’m coming. But you gotta tell me what’s going on, man.”
“Hurry,” Stone whispered. “Building…around the back. And…mind the wards.” Then he hung up. Or passed out. Or something.
Jason stared at the phone for a moment before bending down to gather his clothes. “Mind the wards”? What the hell was that supposed to mean?
Never a dull moment with Al, that was for sure.
It took him a little time to find the place: he never had any reason to go to Los Altos Hills, and always vaguely felt like he and his old Ford would get hassled if he did. The address Stone had given him was a big old monster of a house behind a wrought iron gate and a stone wall. The gate was closed.
Jason considered his options. Sometimes it wasn’t easy being friends with Alastair Stone. Most guys might need you to bail them out of jail or run interference with a girl at some point during the friendship, but with Stone, it was much more likely that he’d need to be rescued from some damn-fool experiment he’d tried without considering that maybe he should’ve had a spotter. Or whatever the hell you called it when you were doing magic.
The gate wasn’t just closed. It was locked. Jason considered trying to climb over, but remembered Stone’s words: “Mind the wards.” Were there wards around the wall?
He thought about that, trying to remember what Stone and Verity had told him about wards. They weren’t easy to cast, for one thing. That probably meant that if there were any, they wouldn’t be big enough to go around the whole perimeter of the property. He decided to take a chance. He grabbed the first-aid backpack he kept in the trunk of the Ford and slung it over his shoulder (Stone hadn’t sounded so good—better safe than sorry). Then he took a running leap, caught the top of the stone wall, pulled himself up, and dropped down on the other side.
Nothing fried him, so he guessed he must be right about the wards. He just hoped that, whoever’s house this was, they didn’t have guard dogs. Should have thought of that before you went over, dummy, he thought as he loped toward the house. Stone’s black BMW was parked out front: at least he knew he hadn’t gotten the wrong address.
Stone had said to go to the building behind the house, so Jason detoured around it. He jogged through a garden lit with small, decorative pole lamps and before long found himself standing in front of a two-story building that looked like it might at one point have been a stable or a garage. It had no windows that he could see, just a single door illuminated by an old-fashioned carriage lamp.
“Al?” he called, nervous that someone else would hear him, like a neighbor. Or something more dangerous. Was Stone under attack? Jason thought the mage would have mentioned it if he was, and thus decided to proceed under the assumption that no hostiles were in the area. “Al?” he called again, louder.
The door opened, slowly, and a familiar tall, thin figure appeared.
“Al, is that you?”
The figure sagged in the doorway as if having trouble remaining upright. “Jason…” he rasped. “So—good of you to come.”
Jason stared, wide-eyed. Under the harsh overhead light, Stone looked dead pale. His eyes were sunk into deep hollows in his face, his hair was in wild disarray, and he wore dark slacks and a stark white dress shirt with its front covered in blood. More blood had run down from his nose and mouth.
“Holy crap,” Jason whispered, running forward to catch him before he keeled over. “Al! What the hell’s going on? Come on—show me where the phone is, and I’ll call an ambulance.”
Stone held up a hand, its palm sliced open. A fair bit of blood had dried around that too, and some droplets welled up as the wound’s fragile clotting broke. “No. It’s—all right. It’s not me. Come on.” He grabbed Jason’s arm with his bloody hand and tried to drag him inside. He had no strength.
“What do you mean it’s not you? Al, you’re bleeding! What did you do?”
“Come on,” he said again, staggering back inside.
Jason had no real choice but to follow. Sometimes when Stone got fixated on something, it was better just to play along until you could figure out what was going on. He sighed, slinging Stone’s arm over his shoulder and supporting him as he moved forward. “You are gonna tell me what this is about, right?”
Stone didn’t respond, except to try to pick up his pace a bit. He led Jason through a small room full of stuff he didn’t get a chance to identify, and then into a much larger area.
Jason stopped, staring. The room was similar to Stone’s attic sanctum, complete with an impressive-looking magical circle on the floor. Much bigger, though. He got a brief impression of a table in the center containing a bowl and some papers, but Stone was already steering him to the right side of the room, away from the circle.
It was only then that he realized they weren’t alone. Another man lay on the floor, apparently unconscious, with a couple folded jackets under his head. If Stone looked bad, this guy looked worse. Jason studied him for a moment: ashen complexion, faint sheen of perspiration, harsh shallow breathing. “Who’s this guy?” he demanded. He threw his pack down and unzipped it.
“An—associate,” Stone said, sinking down against the wall next to the man.
“He needs a doctor. Why’d you call me instead of 911?” He glanced back at the circle. “And what were you two doing?”
“No—no doctor,” Stone whispered. “He would—never forgive me. I’ve—I’ve—” he trailed off, his head dropping a little.
“Do not pass out on me, Al!” Jason snapped, shaking him.
His head came up again. “I—tried to heal him. Couldn’t do it. Too tired. Not…my speciality. Wish Verity were here.”
Jason turned to the man, pulling things from his pack as he did. “What did this to him?” Like Stone, the man had dried blood around his nose and mouth, and like Stone, a slash wound stood out bright red across one palm.
“Can you wake him up?” Stone whispered.
“Shh.” Jason took the man’s blood pressure, then pulled out a stethoscope to check his heart. “Well, he seems better than I’d expect, given what he looks like, but I’m not a doctor. I can’t make these calls. He looks like he’s in shock.”
“Wake him up,” Stone whispered again. “Let me—ask him—”
Jason didn’t like it, but short of just ignoring Stone and going to call an ambulance on his own, he didn’t have a lot of choice. That was another fun thing about hanging around with Stone: you spent a lot of time not having much choice about what you were going to do next. He pulled out a small bottle of smelling salts, opened it, and waved it under the man’s blood-caked nose.
The man jerked a little
, drew a gasping breath, and his eyes flew open. The first thing he saw was Jason. His expression grew hard and he raised a weak hand.
“No, Stefan!” Stone ordered, leaning forward to put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “It’s all right. He’s a friend.” He stayed there, propped on his hands, his head hanging down like he didn’t have the strength to hold it up.
“Alastair—” the man whispered.
“Stefan, listen to me,” Stone said without looking up. “You’re not doing well at all. You need medical attention. Tell me who to call for you.”
The man considered that for a moment, like maybe thinking through anything beyond ‘I feel really bad’ was hard for him, but eventually he seemed to get his neurons firing in a row long enough to get out a telephone number.
Jason pulled out his notebook and jotted it down, then handed it to Stone. “Lie down, Al, before you pass out and crack your head open.” Truth be told, he didn’t feel terribly charitable toward either of these two right now—he was pretty sure he’d managed to reconstruct the sequence of events that had led to this scene, and was equally sure that it had something to do with two pathologically curious mages doing something monumentally unwise in their ongoing search for Things Man Wasn’t Meant to Know. He gave some serious thought to waiting for Stone to recover from whatever was ailing him, and then pasting him a good one right in the jaw. Just because.
He ended up having locate the ancient phone and call the number himself, because once Stone got down on the floor, he showed no sign of getting back up any time soon. The person who answered was male and sounded quite old. Jason told him that some guy named Stefan needed him, gave him the address and the location of the building, and then hung up. He was in no mood to carry on long conversations with mage doctors, or whatever the hell the guy was.
Jason wandered the room until the man got there, careful to stay away from the circle. He didn’t know if it was loaded, but he’d learned a long time ago that you stayed well the hell away from magical circles unless you were invited into them. By the time the visitor, a tiny, elderly Asian man in an immaculate suit, arrived, Jason had built himself up a good head of steam. As the man bent to attend to Stone’s friend, Jason went over to Stone. “Now what?”