Blood and Stone

by King, R. L.

  “Damn it, Al,” Jason said in mock frustration. “Stop hogging the dirtbag. I want a shot at him.”

  The man was far too drunk to have any chance of figuring out what had just happened to him. He remained where he was, muttering obscenities under his breath.

  Carly Rosales came back out of the bathroom. She looked a mess: her hair hung in strings over her face, her shirt was in disarray, and she had the slack, unhappy expression of someone who was far too drunk and didn’t want to be anymore. “Who are you guys?” she slurred. “Thanks for helping me, but—”

  “We’ll talk after this little matter is taken care of,” Stone said, nodding toward the man. “We’ve come from Ojai. We’d like to talk with you, if you wouldn’t mind. Jason, perhaps you could get her a cup of coffee—”

  “Yeah,” Carly agreed, nodding. “Coffee’s good.” She started to wander back out of the bedroom and Jason followed her. Stone remained with the bald man. Once, the guy eyed him speculatively, and his thought processes were obvious: the big guy’s gone. All that’s left is the skinny guy. I can get past him. Or—can I? Stone raised an eyebrow at him and shrugged as if to say try it, but apparently two of his alcoholically challenged brain cells managed to find each other and initiate a connection, because he elected to stay put.

  The police arrived in ten minutes. Jason and Carly ushered them into the bedroom, and the next fifteen minutes were taken up by exchanges of identification, the snapping of photographs inside the bedroom and outside along the walk, and the collection of statements from everyone concerned.

  “What were you guys doing here?” one of the cops asked Stone and Jason after the bald man was cuffed and safely locked in the back of the squad car.

  “We’re friends of Ms. Rosales’s,” Stone said smoothly, with a quick glance at Carly. “We were in the area and coming by to visit, when we heard something from inside the apartment that made us suspicious.”

  “So you broke the glass?” The other cop looked dubiously at the glass on the outside walk.

  “No, obviously that was from the inside,” Stone said with a raised eyebrow. “I’m not sure how it happened, but it was right after we heard the noise from inside.”

  “So you don’t know what broke it?” The first cop was looking around outside, as if expecting to find something that had been tossed through the window. He directed the question at Carly.

  She shook her head. “I dunno,” she said. “Maybe Bill ran into it and broke it. He was pretty drunk.”

  The cop’s expression as he looked her over suggested that he wasn’t feeling terribly sympathetic toward either of the two participants in this crime, but he dutifully recorded her statement in his notebook. “I assume you want to press charges.”

  “Damn right I do!” Her voice sounded less slurred now. “Bastard tried to rape me!”

  “Do you need an ambulance?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Nah, I’m okay now. Jus’ drunk. These guys showed up before Bill could do anything much. He did slap me, though,” she added, touching an angry red patch on her face. “That’s assault, yeah?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the cop said. “Do you want to come down to the station now? We’ve got your statement, so you can come in tonight or tomorrow if you want, to file formal charges.”

  She glanced at Stone and Jason. “I’ll come in tomorrow,” she said. “I want to talk to my friends here first, since they’re only in town for tonight.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the cop said again. He gathered up his gear and departed.

  Carly faced Stone and Jason across the living room. “Okay,” she said. She still sounded drunk, clutching her cup of coffee like a lifeline. “You helped me out of a bad scene, so I owe you for that. Now what do you want?”

  Stone noticed her hands were shaking, and she looked very pale. The red spot on her cheek where Bill had slapped her stood out like a flag. “Sit down, Ms. Rosales, please,” he said. “That must have been quite traumatic for you. We can wait.”

  She shrugged. “Call me Carly. And yeah, it sucked. Not the first time I dodged a bullet, though. Man, what am I gonna do about my window?” She sank down into the nearest chair with a loud sigh. “What do you want?” she asked again. “You said you were from Ojai.” Something dawned on her. “Did that bitch Suzanne send you?”

  Stone shook his head. “No, she didn’t send us. We’ve been talking with her, though.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she frowned. “Look,” she said. “I’m done with that whole scene. I tried going back, but you know what? It just ain’t for me. I shoulda realized it a long time ago.”

  “This isn’t about your friends, Carly. Not exactly.”

  “They’re not my friends,” she said with some heat. “Oh, sure, they were all nice to me and everything, but it’s not like I ever fit in with their little suburban American-dream lives. I could just tell they were all laughing at me when I wasn’t around.”

  Stone took a deep breath. “Carly, we don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll get right to it. We need your help.”

  Her gaze came up. Her eyes were brown, wide and bloodshot. “My help? Why?” Again she frowned. “Who are you, anyway?” She eyed Stone, then Jason. “’Cause I know I’d remember guys who looked like you two.” She nodded toward Jason first: “You maybe could be from Ojai, but you—” she nodded toward Stone “—no fucking way.”

  “We’re not from Ojai,” Stone said. “Well, I’m not, anyway. Jason here is originally from the area. But we’re visiting. And we’ve run into a bit of a problem that it appears only you can help with.”

  “I told you, I don’t want anything do to with those bitches back in Ojai,” she said, more forcefully this time. “If that’s all you’re here about—thanks a lot for helping me out. I really do appreciate it. But you might as well go now. We’re done.”

  Stone shook his head, his expression grim. “I’m sorry, Carly, but that’s not an option.” Very slowly, as he watched her grow more frustrated, he was formulating a hunch. “Tell me,” he said, seemingly at random, “how did the window get broken in your bedroom?”

  She blinked. “W-what?”

  Jason looked at him sideways, questioning.

  “A simple question: How did it get broken? You said Bill didn’t blunder into it. The police found nothing tossed through, and in any case, the damage is far too extensive for that unless you’d used something large enough that it would be impossible to miss. Clearly the break was from the inside. So how did it happen?”

  Carly hesitated, her confused gaze going to the hall leading toward the bedroom. “I—I guess I don’t know.”

  Stone nodded as if that was the answer he was expecting. “Carly,” he said, in a very soft, gentle voice, “Have things ever—happened around you? Odd things? Especially when you were angry, or agitated in some way?”

  She stared at him. “What—are you talking about?” But there was something in her voice, a little quiver, that told him that she knew exactly what he was talking about.

  Jason’s eyes widened as he caught on. “Al—”

  “A moment, Jason,” he murmured. “Actually, Carly, could we use your phone?”

  “Uh...sure.” She seemed completely flummoxed by his careening train of thought.

  “Jason, could you please call Stan and make sure all is well?”

  Jason nodded and headed to the kitchen.

  Stone directed his attention back to Carly. “I think you do know what I’m talking about,” he said in the same soft, even voice. “About things happening, I mean.”

  She swallowed. “What—kinds of things?”

  “Hard to say,” he said, shrugging. “Things falling off shelves, perhaps. Unexplained mechanical failures. Or—windows breaking,” he added, leaning forward to pin her with his gaze.

  Carly gaped at him. “How...how did you know that?” she whisp
ered. “How could you know it? I’ve never—”

  “—told anyone?” he finished. “No, of course not. Because they’d think you’d gone mad, or perhaps had too much to drink. You can’t control it, can you? It just happens sometimes, when you’re emotional.”

  “Sometimes...” she agreed, looking down into her coffee. Then her eyes came up to meet his. “How did you know, though?”

  Stone paused, formulating the best way to answer without going into a long discussion that they didn’t have time for. He was about to say something when Jason came back into the room. “Uh, Al?”

  Stone looked up, stiffening when he caught the grim look on Jason’s face. “What’s wrong?”

  “I think we need to get our asses back down there. Stan’s being called back to duty. They’ve had five new murders tonight. And he doesn’t think it’s over. Edna thinks something big’s going down.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Stone froze. “Bloody hell,” he murmured. Leaping to his feet, he stood over Carly, who was staring at him and Jason in shock. “Listen, Carly: I’d like very much to be able to ease you into this, but we don’t have that luxury. Here’s the bottom line: There’s something in Ojai that’s killing people. It’s here because of the ritual you and the rest of the Sisterhood performed a couple of weeks ago. And the only person who has a chance of sending it back is you.”

  As might have been expected, Carly’s reaction to his words was to gape at him as if he had just announced that the Space Alien Armada had arrived on earth with the ghost of Elvis Presley at its helm.

  Stone took a deep breath and let it out slowly, visibly forcing himself to calm. “It’s true. Counting the five who died tonight—so far—I believe we’re up to thirteen now. Including Karen Blanco, one of the Sisterhood. And if what our friend back in Ojai says is true, that’s only the beginning. You have to come with us. We have to stop this.”

  “Karen’s—dead?” She was still gaping. “And you want me to come…with you? Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I don’t have anything to do with any killings! I’ve been up here since I left the reunion. I heard there were some murders in Ojai, but—”

  “It’s not you, Carly. It’s what you helped to summon.” Another deep breath. Stone hated doing this to her, especially after what she’d already been through tonight, but in the back of his mind he could feel the minutes ticking away and almost hear Many Faces laughing at them as it touched off its massacre—the massacre it had waited until the mage who’d gotten its number had left town to orchestrate. “You’ve got magical talent. That’s what’s causing things to happen when you get emotional. That’s what’s broken your window: the manifestation of your magic that you can’t control yet coming out in any way it can.” He spread his hands. “I know it all sounds preposterous, but it’s true. The fact that you’ve got this magical talent was what took a ceremony staged by a group of school friends for fun and allowed it to summon a being from another plane. And it happened before, Carly. Do you remember when you were a teenager, and you joined the Sisterhood? You wanted to do a curse, because you were angry at a boy who’d dumped you? Do you remember what happened to that boy?” His voice picked up speed again, despite his efforts to stay calm.

  Her eyes were steadily growing more huge as he spoke. “Oh, my God...” she whispered. “Dean...”

  “Dean?” Jason asked. Like Stone, he nearly thrummed with pent-up energy, stalking back and forth across the floor.

  “He almost got killed...” Her voice sounded dead. “Jerry Bekin tried to stab him...But he said he didn’t know what he was doing...”

  “That’s because he was possessed by the thing that was summoned in your ceremony,” Stone said. “Carly, you’ve got to believe me. Come with us back to Ojai. You’re the only one who can stop this. If you won’t come with us, countless more people could die tonight.”

  Her eyes got wild. “Why me?” she demanded, high and brittle and shrieky. “How the hell can I stop it? I was only one part of that ceremony! Even if you’re telling the truth, Suzanne was in charge of it. Get her to help you!”

  “She’s already helping,” Stone said. “She’s already given us the book where she got the latest ritual. But she can’t stop it. Only you can do that, Carly. Only you are the descendant of the people who originally summoned it, hundreds of years ago. You’re the only one who has a chance.”

  Carly looked like she couldn’t decide whether to scream or cry or vomit. Her face was dead pale, her eyes wide and terrified. Across the room, two books and a small figurine teetered and crashed to the carpeting with small thumps. She jumped. “Oh, my God! Was that me?”

  Stone nodded. “I can help you,” he said, leaning forward. “I can help you deal with your powers, Carly. I promise, I will. But you have to help us first. Please. I beg you—come with us. If you’ve ever wanted to make a difference in your life, now is the time to do it.”

  Without trying to, he’d hit on the right words. He could see it in the change to her face. She still looked terrified, but something in her eyes hardened and her jaw tightened. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. I’ll go. But we have to figure out something to do with my window first. If I leave it open like that I’ll come home and all my stuff will be gone.”

  “I’ll do that,” Jason said, and hurried out in search of something to board up the window with.

  Carly started to rise; Stone took her hand and helped her up. “Thank you,” he said softly.

  “I’m not doing it for you,” she said. “I’m still not sure I believe you. Let me get some stuff together.” She started down the hall, but turned back. “Uh—what’s your name, anyway?”

  “Alastair Stone. My friend is Jason Thayer.”

  She nodded. “So—you can really help me with my—problem?”

  “I can,” he said. “Absolutely.”

  “Guys lie to me all the time. You know that, right? So maybe I don’t believe them very often anymore.”

  Stone held up a hand, making light flicker and dance around it. “I can help you, Carly, and I will. I promise.”

  She swallowed hard, her eyes fixed on the glimmering light, and backed up toward the hall. “I’ll—get my stuff.”

  Fifteen minutes later, they were on the road and flying back toward Ojai under Stone’s disregarding spell. Jason, who had found some plywood around the back of the neighboring building and nailed it over Carly’s window, was driving. Despite the gravity of the situation he couldn’t help looking a bit like a kid in a candy shop as he piloted the powerful car at over a hundred miles per hour down the nearly deserted freeway.

  Carly sat in the back seat, clutching the small bag she’d packed. She still looked shell-shocked by everything that had happened, and had said nothing as Stone had guided her to the car and got her settled.

  She didn’t speak again until they’d been on the freeway for several miles. “So—” she started, her voice still shaking. “We’ve got time now, right? You can explain a little better about what’s going on?”

  Stone nodded, still focused on the road ahead to watch for anything that might get in their way. Trying to make it as clear and simple as possible, he told her about the renegade group of Chumash exiles who’d summoned He of Many Faces to get vengeance on the Spanish interlopers, and how it had reappeared as a result of the Sisterhood’s ceremonies years ago and again recently.

  “Where’s it been?” she asked. “If this is real, why wasn’t it killing people all along?”

  “No one knows where it was for the intervening years. And the first time it was summoned back by the Sisterhood, they didn’t have a proper invocation,” Stone told her. “Essentially, you didn’t summon it properly, which was a good thing. It was still able to react to your bloodline, though. That’s why you got it at all.”

  “Man...” she breathed, looking down into her lap. “I’ve always been kind of
a screw-up, but now you’re saying this is my fault, too...” Her voice was bleak, beaten.

  Stone got the impression that she’d experienced a lot of similar feelings throughout her life. “Carly,” he said softly. “It isn’t your fault. It tells me much more about you that you’re willing to take the word of two strangers and try to set this right than it does that an accident of birth made it possible to bring it here in the first place. There’s no possible way you could have known.”

  She nodded, but her expression suggested she didn’t believe it. “So—how are we gonna get rid of it? I still don’t get how I’m gonna be able to help. Even if what you said about—magic—is right, I don’t know anything about it. I’m still pretty sure you’re just trying to put something over on me.”

  Stone did turn around then, his eyes grave. “Carly. Do I look like I’m trying to deceive you? Can you possibly believe that we’re not sincere about this? I’m a decent actor, but I’m not that good.”

  She took a breath. “I think something’s going on in Ojai,” she said. “That part I believe. But magic—” She shook her head. “I just don’t know.”

  “Well,” he said, turning back to face front. “It doesn’t matter anyway, fortunately. You don’t have to do very much, and nothing magic-related. All you need to do is be present, and focus as hard as you can on sending the spirit back where it came from. Just keep thinking ‘go home’ to it. I and a colleague will do the rest.”

  “That’s—all? That’s crazy,” she protested. “You know that, right? This whole thing just sounds insane.”

  “That’s a good word for it,” Jason agreed without taking his eyes off the road. “The whole thing’s fucking insane. But every bit of it’s true. We’ve seen it.”