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

by R. L. King

  It wouldn’t be long—only a few more days and they would all have a feast. She smiled, thinking of the panic the ritual would cause as it began to take shape. Even those who didn’t die in agony would run away in terror—and that exquisite terror would more than make up for the long dry spell.

  They just needed to be patient a little longer.

  She ambled toward the center of the circle, deliberately not moving too fast or too decisively. Dressed in the same style as many of the other playa residents: jeans, sneakers, long-sleeved T-shirt, and baseball cap, she’d also wrapped a scarf around the lower part of her face to keep the dust out. She was grateful for this last, and not only because of the dust: between it and low bill of the hat, it was nearly impossible to identify what she looked like, and since everybody else was similarly attired, she didn’t even stand out.

  That was a good thing, because what she was planning to do could cause a lot of problems if anyone spotted her.

  In a few minutes, her seemingly aimless meandering took her to the center of the circle, following a line of wooden structures dedicated to various purposes: she passed some sort of temple, a makeshift casino, and a bar on her way along, each one full to bursting with people.

  It was the last structure in this group that she approached. She strolled around behind it and stopped when she got there, craning her neck to look upward.

  The “Man” of Burning Man rose several stories into the starry black sky, constructed on the top of another wooden structure. It too was made of wood (of course), a framework representing a stylized human form with its legs spread wide and its arms hanging down at its side. It was lit with strips of glowing blue, making it visible from almost every point around the playa, and probably for a fair distance out into the surrounding expanse of darkness.

  Trin stood a moment, staring upward as if she were having some sort of religious experience while contemplating its majesty. In reality, her attention was focused on the knots of people moving around and past her. A few others had stopped near her and also looked up; she was waiting for them to leave.

  After a few moments the groups wandered off, and Trin took her opportunity before more drifted over. Muttering a few words under her breath, she summoned a spell that would make anyone around her pay her no attention. She could have made herself invisible—especially with all the power from the ley lines making it easy to cast far more potent spells than she was used to—but even then she didn’t know how long she’d be able to hold it, so she went for the safer route.

  She paused a moment, then walked over next to the structure and waited for more people to come by. A group of five did, talking and laughing among themselves. They swept past Trin without acknowledging her presence in the slightest. Satisfied that her spell was working properly, she murmured more words and lifted up off the ground, rising high above the playa next to the Man.

  Once there, she worked quickly. She pulled items from her bag and flitted back and forth, seeding them in various locations around the figure. After verifying they were in the proper locations, she secured them with bits of wire. From the ground, the crystals wouldn’t be visible: they didn’t need to be large. Technically, they didn’t need to be here at all. Trin had always enjoyed putting on a show, and the crystals would not only add potency to the ritual, but also contribute to some pyrotechnics that were bound to get the crowd in the proper—that was to say, terrified—frame of mind when the fun started.

  The whole process took her only a few minutes; normally holding the two spells for even this brief period would tire her, but the ley lines and the power she’d drawn from various people during the day meant that by the time she drifted back down some distance away, she felt no more fatigued than if she’d walked a leisurely block or two.

  Oh, yes. She could get to like this.

  Aisha Darby had been busy today, and now it was time for the good part to start.

  She stood at the front of a large, cleared area near her camp at the outer edge of the circle. The area was bounded by a series of flickering tiki torches, and a couple of soldiers had been deployed near the circle’s edge to cheerfully redirect anyone who blundered into the area. “Sorry, folks, can’t stay here,” they told the curious. “We’re working on something cool for the Burn.”

  A few remained behind to watch, which was fine. Some of them even joined up, which was fine too. The more the merrier, as long as they were all willing to go along with the plan.

  Aisha had spent the few days prior to heading out to Burning Man studying the diagrams Trin had created for her. Trin herself had been busy for most of that time, but the two of them had gotten together for a few hours to make sure that Aisha understood what was expected.

  “The details aren’t really important,” Trin had told her. “You can make up whatever steps you want to go in between, as long as everybody’s in the right place and hits the right marks when the time comes. And the more of them you can recruit, the better it’ll be. So go nuts.”

  Aisha had indeed “gone nuts” the last couple of days. She had walked the playa, scanning the crowds for anyone who was dancing and who looked like they had more than a normal share of grace and dexterity. She herself had been a dancer and choreographer for many years, and had learned to spot the telltale signs of those who might possess the talent that would let them learn routines quickly. When she found a likely prospect (or even two or three of them in a group), she approached them and suggested that they might like to join a special dance to be held the night of the Burn—sort of a joyous celebration of what had occurred these last few days, and a proper sendoff for the Man. To sweeten the deal, she’d spun stories of an amazing party that would occur after the Burn was done: music, free-flowing liquor, and even the possibility of more exotic substances if that was what the recruit was into.

  Most of them had accepted; Aisha’s only requirement was that they show up for rehearsals once a day for an hour (“you miss rehearsal once, you’re out”) and that they agree to follow Aisha’s directions. “It’ll be a lot of fun!” she had promised them, giving them the location and the time of the first rehearsal. “Let’s get together and make something amazing!”

  Of course, she’d recruited more than she expected to show up, because in a place like this you couldn’t count on your whole crew showing up on any kind of schedule—or even having any idea what time it was. The best she could hope for was to get them all trained and then hold the performance with whomever they had at the time. According to Trin’s diagrams, they really only needed about ten of them to show up and hit the right marks anyway. The rest were all gravy.

  And as for the party—well, she wouldn’t need to worry about that, since none of her eager recruits would be in any mood to party after the ritual.

  You know, being dead and all.

  Aisha smiled, and it was impossible to tell if the smile was coming from her or from the Other inside her. Either way, it would be great when it all came together.

  “Okay, everybody!” she yelled, infusing maximum enthusiasm into her voice. “Let’s get this party started!”

  Stone leaned back in his chair, reaching his hands up above his head and stretching until little pops echoed up and down his spine.

  He was alone; he wasn’t sure where Sharra, Verity, and Jason had gone, or when they’d be back. They had all gotten together for dinner earlier in the evening and then the three of them had gone off, as usual with Verity and Sharra together going one way and Jason going another. Jason had taken one of the mountain bikes this time. Stone had volunteered to do a shift as “camp sitter” while they were gone so they didn’t have to lock up their gear this time.

  It felt good to be alone for a while, even if it meant slouching his tall frame into an uncomfortable folding chair and hunching over a too-low camp table while he studied Kolinsky’s spirit ritual. At least he had decent light: he’d given up trying to read by the meager light of the fading battery-powered lantern, and instead taken one of his magic
al crystals and infused it with a light spell. Suspended from the tent’s ceiling with a twist of wire, it cast a bright all-over glow.

  He was getting used to the constant sound outside—probably for the best, since he was far too concerned about being jumped by the Evil to wear the earplugs Sharra had given him a couple of days ago. He’d tried sleeping with them, but the silence had put him on edge so badly that he’d finally just resigned himself to being stuck in a world that never slept for the next few days. It did get quieter during the day when most of the playa residents holed up in their tents and RVs and tried to sleep, but the oppressive heat was every bit as bad as the noise.

  He didn’t want to admit to the others that even he was getting discouraged: here it was Wednesday night, and they’d seen no sign of any of the Evil or their activities. Maybe Jason was right: maybe they weren’t here. All signs pointed to this being an ideal place for them to implement their plan, but that assumed that Stone was even right about what that plan was. Sure, it made sense that they were either trying to open a portal to their home plane or do something with summoning a spirit to help them bring over their fellow Evil—the disappearance of Pia Brandt and the thievery of all those books on spirit summoning were good indicators of that.

  But what if he was wrong?

  What if the Evil had hatched an elaborate hoax, to draw him and the others away from their real plans?

  Stone stretched in his chair, took a long drink from his water bottle (he’d been laying off alcohol for the duration, which also made him grumpy), and considered that possibility. What if the disappearance of Pia Brandt had nothing to do with the Evil? What if she and her family had simply decided to drop off the face of the Earth for some reason of their own? She was a mage—despite what Jason had said about the difficulty of such a disappearance, it wouldn’t be impossible.

  What of the thefts, then? Would the Evil put themselves at risk to steal a bunch of books they had no intention of using? Had they wanted Zack to be caught in the act? The thief had been borderline incompetent—why employ such a person if you didn’t want him caught?

  Or—what if there was something in that collection of books that the Evil had wanted, but it wasn’t the summoning material? If they had been attempting to hide the object of their search, they hadn’t done a very good job of it. But the Evil’s leaders were an intelligent and devious lot: what if they had hidden their intentions in plain sight, and Stone had misread the signs?

  He leaned over and buried both hands in his hair. “No…” he murmured aloud. That way lay madness. He could sit here and second-guess himself all night, and it would do exactly zero good. They were here now, and here they would remain until Burning Man was over. If the Evil’s plans lay elsewhere—if there even were plans—then he had no idea where that was, how to find them, or how to stop them.

  They’d made their wager, playing all their chips on this one spin of the wheel. Either they’d be right or they wouldn’t.

  He wished he had taken Jason’s suggestion and built an Evil detector to bring along. He’d been so certain that they would be here that he thought it would be useless to do anything but confirm what he already knew, but at this point even knowing that they were somewhere nearby would go a long way toward convincing him that he hadn’t just dragged everyone out here for no good reason. He couldn’t do it now, though: the detector was a complex bit of magic that took many hours and specialized materials to build. He had the time; time was one of the few things he had in abundance. But the closest source of materials was several hours away.

  Mopping his forehead with a cloth, he returned his attention to the elaborate diagrams of the ritual. He wished, and not for the first time, that they still had the RV. Even after dark, the heat was strong enough to be distracting.

  Lost in study, he had no idea how long he’d been staring down at the pages when he felt a gentle buzz on the tent’s ward as a voice behind him said, “Hi!”

  He spun, nearly overturning his chair. Two women stood there, just inside the tent flaps, watching what he was doing with bright-eyed, medicated interest. They were both in their early twenties, lean and pretty in a hippie sort of way; one wore short shorts, a tiny bikini top, a floppy hat with a large fake flower on it, and flip-flops. The other one wore…body paint. Quite a lot of body paint. And not much else, beyond a microscopic sea-green thong and a hat similar to her friend’s.

  “Er—” he said, shoving the papers together so they weren’t visible. How much had they seen? “Something I can help you with?” Too late, he realized he’d spoken to them in his normal, British-accented voice instead of the American one he’d adopted to go with his disguise persona. He shifted quickly to magical sight, but saw no disguises or illusions around them—just strong clear auras, a little muddled by whatever substances they’d indulged in.

  They both smiled. “Wow,” said the one in the body paint, moving closer. “That stuff is trippy. What is it?” She pointed at the stack of papers.

  Stone paused, getting his thoughts together and trying not to look too closely at her. She wasn’t anything close to his usual type, but she stood two feet away from him wearing nothing but body paint and a thong. It was difficult not to notice. “It’s—er—just something for an art project I’m working on.” He did his best to morph his tones into the American accent, hoping they hadn’t noticed his slip.

  “Cool,” said the other one, also moving closer. She drew out the word: coooool. “We saw the light on, and—” She waved her hand vaguely around. “I’m Rosie.” Patting her hand on her friend’s shoulder, she added, “This is Wendy.”

  Wendy smiled, looking Stone up and down. “What’s your name?”

  “Er—Spike.” Stone gathered up the papers and stuffed them into his pack under the table. “Sorry, but—the project’s a bit of a secret until it’s ready to go.”

  “Ooh, is it something for the Burn?” Wendy asked, taking another step closer.

  “Yes. Yes, that’s it.” Stone kicked himself mentally for how awkward he sounded, but the disguise and the fact that he hadn’t expected to be surprised by two women—one of them all but naked—while in the middle of studying complicated magic, combined to play havoc with his usual confidence. “For the Burn.”

  “Cool,” Rosie said again. “Hey, Spike, you want to party with us? There’s this amazing thing going on down at the Temple of Love…”

  Wendy put a hand on his shoulder. “Ooh, you’re tense,” she said. “Let me give you a shoulder rub.” Without waiting for permission, she moved until she was standing behind him, gripped his shoulders, and began squeezing and kneading his tight muscles.

  Stone swallowed. “Wait, I—” he began, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. But damned if her hands, strong and sure despite the fact that she was clearly high, didn’t feel wonderful on his knotted shoulders. Perhaps just for a moment, he could surrender to the spirit of things. “Mmmm…” he murmured. “That’s quite nice.”

  She went on for several minutes, expertly finding the kinks in his neck and shoulders and working them out. “That’s better…” she said, smiling as she leaned in, pressing against his back as she dropped her hands down the front of his shirt and began massaging his chest.

  Stone struggled to sit up before the situation got out of hand—though part of him began to wonder if perhaps letting things get out of hand occasionally might be good for him. “Er—no, wait, I think—”

  She kissed the top of his head. “Calm down, baby,” she urged. “Don’t be uptight. I’m not doing anything bad. It’s just a little massage. Feels good, doesn’t it?”

  It did feel good. “Mmm…” he agreed.

  “Hey, will you do me?” Rosie asked, moving closer.

  Stone’s eyebrow crept upward. “Er—”

  “Massage, silly,” she said with a goofy grin, patting his head. “Here, turn your chair around a little.”

  That was how Verity and Sharra found him when they returned a short time later. “Knock
knock,” came Verity’s voice from outside.

  “Come in!” Wendy called before Stone could reply.

  They came in.

  And stopped.

  And stared.

  This was probably not good, Stone decided. He slouched in his chair, his head lolled back like a relaxed cat. Wendy was behind him, leaning enticingly over his shoulder. At some point she’d gotten him out of his shirt and was moving her expert hands over his chest, his neck, his shoulders. Rosie sat on the floor, leaned back into his lap, as he did his best to mimic Wendy’s practiced massage movements on her shoulders while simultaneously trying to convince his traitorous body that this was just a massage, they were too young for him, they weren’t his type, and nothing else was going to happen.

  Damn.

  “Uh—” Verity started. “Sorry!” She grabbed Sharra’s arm and tried to drag her back out of the tent.

  Damn, indeed.

  Stone forced himself to sit up, acutely aware of how this must look in front of his teenage apprentice and her girlfriend. The only saving grace was that with the illusionary disguise up he didn’t look like himself, so there was that level of dissociation at least. “No. It’s all right. Come back in.”

  Wendy and Rosie, clearly sensing that the party was over, also got back up. Wendy leaned over and planted a kiss on Stone’s lips, trailing her hand down his chest. “That was fun, baby. If you decide you want to come to the party at the Love Temple, it’ll be going all night. Look us up. We’ll loosen you up some more.” She giggled, and she and Rosie slipped past Verity and Sharra and out into the night. “He’s all yours!” she told them.

  A long silence ensued.

  “Uh—” Verity finally said, and then grinned. “Dr. Stone, you dog. Sorry we interrupted your—um—threesome.”

  Stone scrambled up, looking around for his shirt. “It’s—er—fine,” he said hastily, pulling it over his head, glad that his punk-rocker persona preferred baggy shorts. “Did you find anything?”