Core of Stone

by King, R. L.

  ALASTAIR STONE CHRONICLES: BOOK FIVE

  CORE OF STONE

  R.L. KING

  Copyright ©2015, R. L. King

  Core of Stone

  First Smashwords Edition, March 2016

  Edited by John Helfers

  Cover Art by Streetlight Graphics

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  To John Helfers, without whom this book wouldn’t exist.

  Chapter One

  In the end, Aubrey was the reason Alastair Stone didn’t do it.

  It’s harder to kill yourself than you might realize. It’s not just the big things, like contemplating what your friends might think when they find your body, or wondering if you’ll just cease to exist, or if there really is some sort of afterlife waiting for you on the other side. Those are the classic Big Questions, with capital letters and a whole lot of words written by a whole lot of people trying to make sense of a subject there’s no real way to make sense of. Nobody’s come back yet from that last frontier to give the rest of the world a thorough report, so right now, speculation is all anyone has.

  But when people think about killing themselves, they rarely focus on the details until they’re pretty sure they’re serious about doing the deed. Especially when they’re trying to be logical and dispassionate about the whole thing instead of ending their existence in some spectacular, overblown display designed to cause the maximum amount of pain to the maximum amount of people who’d done them wrong.

  Nobody had done Alastair Stone wrong.

  If you got right down to it, he hadn’t even done himself wrong.

  Of course, he had no idea that opening the floodgates, releasing the strange otherworldly forces he barely had a grasp on, would burn out his own magical abilities.

  Would he have done it, if he’d known?

  He didn’t know if he found it a comfort that he was pretty sure he still would have.

  After all, he’d been willing to give up his life to stop the monstrous plan to open a permanent portal to Earth, to feed it with the power of a vast and ravenous spirit summoned from some horrific dimension, and to perpetually sustain it with the massive energy from ten intersecting ley lines out in the middle of the Nevada desert. To create a never-ending conduit the extradimensional predators quaintly dubbed “The Evil” could pour through so they could steal the bodies of thousands, perhaps millions of innocent people.

  One life: a small price to pay to stop such a thing, right?

  But that hadn’t happened. He hadn’t died.

  He just wished he had, once he’d found out the cost.

  What is the meaning of life when the thing you live for has been taken away from you?

  It was funny: he’d never thought of himself that way—as the kind of person who would put himself in the path of danger to protect others.

  Jason and Verity were good for him, he supposed. Or bad, depending on how you looked at it, and how much you valued sticking around on this plane of existence.

  It was late now, nearly two a.m., and he was walking.

  He’d started out running, nearly two hours ago, but slowed to a walk after his aching body protested that he’d only been out of the hospital for less than a week, and only back home in Palo Alto for two days. He’d fought it for a while—there wasn’t anything seriously wrong with him physically. Bumps, bruises, pulled muscles…inconsequential. Maybe if he hurt enough physically, it would overshadow the gaping, bottomless pit in his psyche where the magic used to be.

  He hadn’t been paying any attention to where he was; just kept walking, crossing streets whenever it felt like a good time to do it. This time of the morning, the tree-lined avenues of the residential areas near downtown were quiet and still, with only an occasional car driving by. A good place to get one’s thoughts in order, but maybe not the best place to be alone with them when you were in Stone’s current mood.

  He couldn’t even go to a bar and get good and drunk—they all closed at two.

  He stopped a moment on a corner and once again tried the familiar shift of his mind required to activate his magical sight—the ability that let him see the things normal people, or “mundanes” as the magical community called them—couldn’t. He’d done it on the average of once per waking hour since he’d regained his senses in the hospital and discovered the truth.

  Normally, the world lit up with color, with the throbbing beauty of life and energy. People glowed brightest of all, with auras of all the colors of the rainbow. Living things like trees and animals were dimmer, and mundane human-made objects didn’t glow at all, unless they had profound emotional significance. In some places, the pure, straight shafts of ley lines shone stark and brilliant, cutting through living and nonliving things indiscriminately.

  Stone couldn’t see any of it now.

  He squinted, like a nearsighted man trying to make out a faraway sign, hoping for the faintest trace of a glow to tell him that the magic wasn’t gone forever. He held his hand in front of his face, trying to focus on his own dazzling nimbus of mingled violet and gold—some particularly powerful mages’ and even strong-willed mundanes’ auras manifested in more than one color, and his, when he wasn’t hiding it, burned like a beacon. But his hand, like the scene beyond it, remained resolutely dark.

  Resolutely mundane.

  Like he was, now. Mundane.

  Stone started walking again, oblivious to his route. It didn’t matter where he was going.

  He had to face facts: the magic might not come back. Probably wouldn’t come back. He remembered the exquisite agony when he’d thrown open the door to the extradimensional source of Trevor Harrison’s magic. When he’d let it tear through him with the force of water through a broken dam. How he hadn’t made even a token effort to stop it or stanch the flow. It had taken that kind of power to disrupt the spirit, to sever the portal’s near-complete connection with the world. But as the silvery energy burned its way through his body with such intensity that he could see every one of his neural pathways glowing like someone had plugged him in, he knew wielding that kind of power would come with a price. He’d accepted that.

  He’d just expected it to be his life, not the thing that gave it any meaning.

  Overwhelmed suddenly with anger, despair, and a sense of loss so profound he felt it might take him apart right there on the street, he gripped a nearby tree, digging his fingers into its bark, his whole body shaking.

  He wanted to scream.

  He wanted to sob.

  He wanted to run out in front of the next car to come by.

  Anything to make the pain stop.

  And even then, the worst of it wasn’t the loss of the magic—it was the shame. How dare he feel this way? What right did he have? A mother who’d lost a child—she had the right. An athlete who’d lost his legs. A man who’d lost his mind.

  All he’d lost was something few people even had in the first place. And without it,
what was he?

  Normal.

  Just like everybody else out there.

  What kind of arrogance fueled his rage?

  He still had his intellect. He still had his memories. He still had a healthy body. A good job. Friends who cared about him.

  He could cope with this. It would just take time.

  But I don’t want to cope with it.

  A car slowed, and a figure leaned out the passenger window. “You okay, man?” Young. Probably a couple of Stanford students on their way home from a party.

  Stone looked up. How do I even answer a question like that?

  “Fine,” he said, waving them off, pulling himself upright.

  The kid looked dubious, but the car rolled off.

  Stone lowered his head to his hand, scrubbing his face, pushing his fingers through his untidy, spiking hair. He glanced up at the street sign on the corner; unconsciously, he’d been walking in a big circle all this time.

  Appropriate.

  Stop it!

  He started back in the direction of his townhouse. As he went, his mind served up scenarios with clinical glee:

  Shooting? Too messy. Besides, I don’t have a gun and have no idea where to get one. Unless I ask Jason, and that conversation would not go well.

  Slashed wrists? Too dramatic. I’m not a sixteen-year-old girl. Wouldn’t inflict that cleanup on anyone.

  Jump off something high? Still too messy. Maybe a bridge…but that’s such a cliché.

  Jump in front of a train? Hell, no. No way am I dragging some other poor sod into this.

  Pick a fight with a street gang? Too unpredictable. Might not die.

  He sighed. The ideal way to do it would be to simply step into the portal to the Overworld and never come out. No one would find him there; he could just wander off and let the few remaining Evil who hung out looking for snacks have a good one. Ironic that the easiest way would be the least necessary, since he needed magic to get to the Overworld in the first place.

  Pills? his mind offered helpfully. Hmm. Possible. I’ve got the prescription for pain pills. Just take a few more, is all. Wouldn’t be messy. Peaceful, even. Just like going to sleep.

  Part of him recoiled at the thought, but only part.

  Perhaps not enough.

  By the time he trudged the rest of the way home he was exhausted, physically and mentally. Every one of his aches and pains seemed intent on making itself known at once, his feet felt like they weighed twenty pounds each, and his mind hummed and tumbled and threatened to shut down on him unless he let it rest. He fumbled with his key—normally he didn’t take it when he went running, since he could use magic on the door—went inside, and dropped it on the breakfast bar.

  The little orange bottle was there, almost full. He’d been saving them, in case the pain got worse. His hand closed around it.

  Certainly enough to do the deed. Just go upstairs, lie down, and before long it’ll all be over. A nice, simple, mundane end.

  The phone rang.

  He stared at it, startled out of his morbid reverie. It was two-thirty in the morning. Who would be calling him now?

  He didn’t answer it; it had to be a wrong number. Instead, he watched it as it rang two, three, four more times. The machine picked it up, and he heard his own familiar, brisk voice deliver the outgoing message. Then another familiar voice: “Hello, Dr. Stone? It’s me.” A pause, and then, “Oh, my. I’m sorry, it’s the middle of the night there, isn’t it? I just got back from a trip, and—“

  Stone picked it up. “Aubrey.”

  “Oh, sir, I woke you up, didn’t I?” Apology laced the old caretaker’s voice.

  “No, it’s all right. I was awake.”

  “Isn’t it—”

  “Two thirty a.m., yes. And I’m awake. Is everything all right?”

  “I was calling to ask you that, sir. I’d gone up north to visit James for a few days, and when I got back, I had a message from Miss Thayer that you were in hospital. What’s happened?”

  One of these days, he was going to have to teach his apprentice to mind her own business. “Nothing’s wrong, Aubrey.” He was surprised at how easily the lie came. “We—got involved in a bit of a situation, but it’s over now. I’m fine. I’m home.”

  “Are…you sure, sir?”

  Am I sure I’m fine? Of course not. “I’m sure, Aubrey.”

  “Well…all right, then.”

  “Anything else? I was just about to head to bed.” That’s one way to put it.

  “As long as I’ve got you on the phone,” Aubrey said slowly, “I was wondering if you’d be coming home at all before your new term starts. That’s near the end of September, yes?”

  “Erm.” Stone stared down at the label on the bottle of painkillers clutched in his other hand. Take one every four hours as needed for pain. That’s absurd. “I—I’m not sure yet, Aubrey. I’ve got a few things I need to do. I’ll let you know, all right?”

  “Of course, sir. It will be good to see you.” He chuckled. “I’m glad you weren’t seriously injured doing…whatever it was you were doing.”

  Stone’s hand tightened on the phone. “No. Not…not seriously. Thanks for calling, Aubrey.”

  “I’ll try to remember not to do it in the middle of the night, next time.”

  Stone hung up the phone slowly, leaning against the counter. Hearing Aubrey’s voice reminded him of a whole other set of problems he hadn’t thought about. He didn’t have an heir. If he let his black mood get the best of him, what would become of his crumbling old manor house back home? The legal snarls could take years, and with no one to take it over, the place would probably end up as part of the National Trust eventually. Until then, though, would Aubrey get chucked out and forced to find another position? The old man had been working for Stone’s family since his father was alive.

  And that didn’t even bring up the extradimensional travel portal hidden under the crypt in the family plot, or the priceless collection of magical tomes secreted behind a permanent ward in the basement.

  He sighed and tossed the bottle back on the counter.

  He’d figure this out tomorrow. Clearly, there were more things he needed to think about, and he was too tired to do it right now.

  If he was going to do the thing, he’d at least have the good grace to tie up all the loose ends first.

  Chapter Two

  The next day he called Madame Huan. He didn’t tell his old friend anything about what was going on over the phone—he hadn’t told anyone yet, not even Jason and Verity—but he felt like his head would fly apart if he didn’t talk to someone. She told him she was happy to hear from him, and invited him by for tea that afternoon.

  Madame Huan’s shop was on a tiny Palo Alto side street between a noodle house and a clothing store catering to old women stuck in fashion’s Twilight Zone. Hidden behind a nondescript door with a brass plaque reading Huan’s Antiquities – By Appointment Only, to the uninitiated it appeared to be a cluttered junk shop full of eclectic items run by a tiny, sharp-tongued Asian woman who apparently didn’t give a damn whether she ever made a sale.

  Stone picked his way down one of the narrow aisles, past a mummified stuffed octopus, a stack of dust-encrusted board games, an ancient wicker fishing creel, and numerous other items that had nothing to do with each other, until he reached the beaded curtain at the back of the store. It hung over a wide doorway, tinkling and shifting gently in an unseen breeze.

  When you’ve lost someone dear to you, one of the most unsettling aspects of the grieving process is the little things that remind you of them—little things that ambush you from cover when you least expect them. How easy it is for a fleeting familiar aroma, the sight of another person wearing the same color jacket, or a snippet of a shared song Muzaked in an elevator to dislodge a fragile sense of coping. In Stone’s case, s
omething deep within him clenched in despair as he stood facing that beaded curtain, looking through its strands to the drab storeroom beyond it.

  The storeroom was what the mundane customers saw. And the doorway, despite its flimsy curtain, incorporated a ward designed to gently discourage those mundanes from passing through it, suggesting that there must be far more interesting items in the front part of the shop.

  Stone had passed through that ward dozens of times during visits to Madame Huan, feeling its faint buzz as he crossed the threshold. Now, he didn’t try. If he didn’t try, he could keep the reality at bay just a little longer.

  “Alastair?”

  The curtain shimmered, and Madame Huan stepped out into the shop. Nearly a head shorter than him, dressed in a neat business suit accented by a jade necklace, she looked as ageless as ever. Stone had no idea how old she was, but he’d known her for almost twenty years and, typical of mages, in all that time she hadn’t aged a day.

  Right now, she smiled at him, her dark eyes twinkling with warmth. “It’s so good to see you,” she said, taking his hand in both of hers and squeezing it. “You should have come on back. You know you’re always welcome here.”

  He closed his eyes briefly and took a slow breath. He knew she couldn’t tell—no matter how powerful a mage was, either the target or the observer, it was impossible to identify another mage merely by looking at the aura, unless he or she had been performing magic recently. The “residue” left over from magical activity didn’t remain long, though, which meant if you wanted to spot a mage, you essentially had to catch him or her in the act. “Just—looking around a bit,” he said, encompassing the shop with a gesture.

  “Out here?” Her eyebrows arched, and she chuckled. “Nobody wants to look around out here. I don’t think I’ve sold any of this stuff in two years. Except for that one little boy who fell in love with the teddy-bear skeleton. I ended up just giving it to him, though, because I couldn’t remember where I’d left the cash register.”