Core of Stone

by King, R. L.

  Stone glared after it and almost—almost—followed. He’d turned in that direction and shifted his weight forward to start after the figure, but then he stopped.

  You’re being absurd.

  Who would be following him? Nobody knew he was here except Nakamura, and he doubted Harrison’s assistant would have him tailed by such an inexpert pursuer, even if he had any reason to.

  It had to be just a coincidence. Casinos attracted a lot of weird people (himself certainly included) and in his long black coat he probably looked different enough from most of the T-shirt-clad tourists that he might attract someone’s fleeting attention. The guy, or woman, was probably just embarrassed at getting caught looking and hurried off to avoid a confrontation.

  Stone swept out of the casino and into the night. He refused to consider the possibility that he hadn’t followed the stranger because he didn’t want to risk a potential confrontation he might not be able to handle.

  Chapter Eight

  In the end, he did what he often did when his mind was restless and his thoughts refused to shut up and leave him alone: he ran. Or, in this case, he walked. Suddenly, he had no desire to be anywhere near the Obsidian. He didn’t know where he did want to be—or if he wanted to be anywhere at all—but that was the beauty of walking. You could just keep going until something made you stop.

  This time of night, the crowds along the Strip were thick, tourists moving in knots and herds along the long stretches of sidewalk separating one casino from the next, losing a few and gaining others at each location. Stone picked a direction at random and followed one of the groups, staying far enough back that he didn’t feel stifled, but close enough that he could purposely shut his mind off and simply move.

  He soon found that he had to keep changing groups; although he walked without purpose, his natural inclination was to move fast, eating up the ground with his long strides. It wasn’t long before the crowds began to thin, their lost numbers no longer replaced, the last of them peeling off to their destinations as he left the glitzy Strip hotels behind.

  Still, he kept going. As he walked, he focused on putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward, filling his mind with psychic white noise. Every time it tried to drag him back to his days in the hospital, to the time when he’d discovered his magic gone, he forced it away. He might not have his magic anymore, but he still had his meditation techniques. This wasn’t the kind of “clearing the mind” they were designed for, but he didn’t give a damn. Whatever worked.

  He didn’t know how long he walked, but it had to be at least an hour. He continued up Las Vegas Boulevard, passing smaller casinos, strip malls, occasionally a church or a supermarket. Sometimes the sidewalk dropped away and the road continued past wide, dusty, empty lots where the streetlights were sparse and only the headlights of passing cars provided illumination. Wherever he was now, it wasn’t a place most tourists ever saw on foot.

  He didn’t check to see if anyone was following him. In truth, he didn’t care. He put his hand in his coat pocket and felt the remains of the stack of chips he’d played blackjack with earlier; he’d never cashed them in. If someone wanted to accost him and take them from him, then they’d just have to do it.

  Eventually he saw lights glowing ahead, still a fair distance away—a collection of colored neon forming a nimbus above a series of buildings taller than those he was passing now. The glow looked like a multicolored aura.

  He realized then where he was: without knowing it, he must have walked all the way from the Strip to the Downtown area. Only then did he glance at his watch: he’d been walking for an hour and a half. No wonder his legs were beginning to tire. He was in good shape from all the running he normally did, but he hadn’t had much exercise in the last week or so and it was showing in his decreased endurance. He paused a moment, then picked up his pace in the direction of the lights. He’d stop somewhere and have a drink, then catch a cab back to the Obsidian and do his best to get some sleep before he left in the morning.

  Stone hadn’t liked downtown Las Vegas, the so-called “Fremont Street Experience,” the last time he visited it, and not much had changed since then. He was sure he’d never seen anything else approaching the level of tackiness per square foot as the area encompassing a few blocks of Fremont Street. Covered over with an enormous canopy that turned the whole thing into a glittering pedestrian mall, it bristled with tightly packed casinos, shops selling cheap tourist crap, and neon-soaked bars catering to the party scene. By the time he arrived, the nightly light show was already underway, projecting multicolored images and designs on the underside of the canopy. Crowds of people lined the street, holding drinks and craning their necks to take in the spectacle.

  Stone ignored it, and them, as much as he could. He paused a moment, chose a casino at random, and started toward it.

  “Spare some change, friend?” a voice called.

  Though it sounded like the man was shouting, Stone could barely hear him above the pounding music and the ambient murmurings of the crowd. He stopped.

  The request had come from a grizzled man of indeterminate age, dressed in a grubby fatigue jacket, Forty-Niners cap, and torn jeans. He crouched against the building on a folded blanket and held up a can while squinting up at Stone. “Spare a little change?” he asked again, rattling the can. It didn’t sound like it had much in it.

  Stone put his hand back in his coat pocket and fingered the chips. It wasn’t as if he’d be doing any more gambling tonight. He pulled out one of the green twenty-five-dollar chips and dropped it in the man’s cup. “Cheers,” he said with no enthusiasm, and kept going.

  “Thank you, sir!” the man’s astonished voice called after him.

  On his way to the casino he’d chosen—he wasn’t even sure what it was called—he gave away the rest of his small stack of chips, one at a time, to various other beggars and homeless people he passed on the way. In each case, he stopped only long enough to drop a chip into a cup, an outstretched hand, or an open box and murmur something noncommittal in response to their thanks. Sometimes they didn’t thank him—a couple looked like they weren’t even aware of where they were—but Stone didn’t care. He wasn’t doing it for their gratitude. Just because he was miserable didn’t mean the rest of the world had to be, so if his small contribution could buy them dinner or a few drinks or packs of smokes to make their evening a little better, great.

  It was the same as last time: a lot more of the down-and-out here than on the Strip, probably because the police and casino security guards—many of them possessed by the Evil—spent more time and effort rousting them out in the area that catered to more affluent tourists. Even with all the neon and glitz, Stone thought downtown Las Vegas had a shabby, desperate feel to it—one didn’t need to see auras to see it in the faces of many of the people here.

  He took a quick look at and around each of the recipients of his chips, trying to spot the familiar symbols indicating the Forgotten, but oddly he saw none. Had the Forgotten drifted away when the portals to the Evil’s home dimension had been closed? Stone had no idea if they still even retained their odd, unpredictable abilities this long after the portal closure; he knew Verity had, at least as recently as Burning Man, but he hadn’t spoken with any of the others in a long time.

  Doesn’t matter, really, does it?

  He reached the casino he’d been heading for, but now that he stood in front of it, he didn’t want to go in. He paused, regarding its hyperactive neon and the crowds beginning to drift back toward its entrance (the lightshow on the canopy had wound down, so many of the people watching were in the process of returning to their gambling) with a combination of distaste and frustration. Sometimes, particularly when in the grip of one of his black moods, Stone used to catch himself wishing he’d been born a mundane, to some normal family in some normal town. It would have made a lot of things easier. He watched the groups of tourists, chatterin
g happily away, tipsy from their oversized novelty drinks, just having a good time without having to overanalyze everything they were doing.

  He didn’t think he’d ever be able to do that, even if he did end up remaining mundane. But regardless, the thought of going in there, of rubbing elbows with a chatty collection of drunken tourists, almost made him shake.

  No, this was a bad idea. He still wanted a drink—needed a drink—but not here. And not back at the Obsidian, where gods knew who might be watching him.

  Someone bumped into him from behind, so hard he had to take a step forward to keep his balance. “Sorry, buddy,” a chubby, thirtyish man in cargo shorts and a T-shirt reading FBI – Female Body Inspector said as he pushed past and was swallowed by the gaping, neon-lined mouth.

  Instinctively, Stone checked his coat pockets, though now that he’d given his chips away, they were empty.

  I have to get out of here.

  Chapter Nine

  Despite the elimination of the Evil’s top leadership, Las Vegas undoubtedly still harbored one of the highest populations of garden-variety Evil in the United States. Wandering off the beaten path was never a wise thing to do—doubly so if you weren’t familiar with the area, and triply so if you didn’t have a solid means of defending yourself.

  At this point, Stone didn’t give a damn about any of that.

  He picked the bar at random: it was a small place on a side street a few short blocks from the glitz of Glitter Gulch, and the only neon it sported was a couple buzzing beer signs that cut out every few seconds like badly tuned TVs. It looked like the kind of blue-collar, no-bullshit place where construction workers and deliverymen and plumbers—in other words, people who had nothing to do with the pulsing extravagance of Las Vegas’s public face—might come to hoist a few drinks after a long day.

  Inside, the place looked pretty much like he’d expected it to: dim lighting, pool table in the back, bank of three old-style slot machines in the front, long, scarred wooden bar lined with beer taps and backed with several glass shelves’ worth of various liquor bottles. Two large television screens suspended in the corners showed sports nobody was watching: a college football game on one, and a pair of ESPN talking heads on the other. Overhead, an anemic ceiling fan made a valiant but unsuccessful effort to push the sluggish, smoky air around. The place smelled like beer, stale cigarettes, and honest sweat.

  It was about a quarter full, all men, with a couple groups of burly guys in T-shirts around tables, three spaced out along the bar, and two more ostensibly having a game at the pool table, but who seemed to be spending more time leaning on their cue sticks and drinking beer than actually playing. All of them glanced up briefly at Stone as he entered, but then went back to their conversations and their drinks.

  Perfect. The kind of place where people would leave you the hell alone.

  Normally, Stone would have chosen a table as far away from everyone else as he could manage, but this time he headed for the only stool at the bar that wasn’t currently flanked by at least one other occupant. The bartender, a squat man in a chambray shirt open over a white T-shirt, drifted over. “Whatcha havin’?”

  Stone studied the rows of bottles for a moment. “Do you have Macallan?”

  He snorted. “Nothin’ that fancy here, buddy. We got Johnnie Walker—that do?”

  “Why not?”

  The man poured him a glass and set it in front of him. “That’ll be eight bucks.”

  Stone handed over his credit card. “Might as well start a tab.” He picked up the glass and took a sip. Nowhere near as smooth as a good Macallan, but it would do. More to the point, it would accomplish the same purpose.

  The man two stools down tossed a couple of bills on the bar, muttered something, waved, and headed for the door. The bartender scooped them up, hit a key on an ancient cash register, and stowed them away. “Ain’t seen you around before,” he said, turning back to face Stone.

  “Is that so odd?” Stone took another sip. Someone had carved TINA G IS A SLUT into the bar’s wooden surface next to his glass. “I’d assume you get quite a lot of people passing through around here.”

  “Not really,” he said. “This place ain’t big with the tourists, y’know?”

  Stone arched an eyebrow.

  “You don’t really look like a tourist, either, though.”

  “Not really. Just looking for a place to have a few drinks and get away for a while.”

  “That we got. Just don’t make any trouble and we’re good.” He held out his hand. “Got keys?”

  Stone shook his head.

  “Okay, but if you’re lyin’ and you wrap your car ’round a streetlight after you leave, ain’t my fault.”

  “Understood,” Stone said. He took a long drink of the Scotch, then set the glass back down and stared into it, hoping the bartender would get the hint.

  He did. After a moment, he drifted back off toward the other end of the bar.

  Stone glanced around again, verifying that none of the other customers seemed to be paying him any attention. They weren’t. Remembering the last time he’d been in a dive bar like this, he made it a point to identify the location of the back door, and filed the information away. Then he turned his attention back to his drink. He finished it in one long swallow and motioned to the bartender for another.

  He sipped this one a little more slowly. For lack of anything else to capture his attention, he glanced up at the TV showing the college football game. He had no idea who was playing, except that it wasn’t Stanford or Cal—even after being in the States for several years, he still didn’t grasp many of the nuances of what Americans called football. Jason had tried to explain the rules to him once, but he’d glazed over and waved him off halfway through describing the functions of the various positions. “Hey,” Jason had said jokingly, “if you ever hope to be a real American guy, you gotta understand football.”

  “Yes, well, sport bored me senseless back in England,” he’d replied. “Why would it be any different here?”

  He switched to the other TV, the one showing ESPN. It looked like some kind of news show, with a pair of talking heads in bad plaid suits and a video screen behind them showing some football player. Stone couldn’t hear what they were saying over the rumble of the bar’s conversations, but the caption below them read Kendrick Out with Career Ending Injury.

  “Damn shame,” said a voice.

  Stone looked up. The bartender had drifted back over in his direction. “What?”

  He nodded toward the TV. “Kendrick.”

  “Sorry, I…don’t follow football.”

  “Don’t matter,” he said. “Just stinks for a kid with that kind of potential to fuck up his knee in his second pro game, y’know? Career over, just like that. Ain’t fair.”

  “Life isn’t fair,” Stone said softly. He downed the rest of his drink. “I’ll have another, if you please.”

  Chapter Ten

  Stone was thin, but he’d grown up in a culture that placed a high value on being able to hold your liquor. He also had a lot of practice. It took three drinks to get him to comfortably tipsy, and two more after that to finally start getting a proper buzz on. The problem was, the drinks weren’t doing their other job, which was to nudge his mind off its incessant spinning over the fact that the thing that defined almost every aspect of his life was gone and showing no signs of coming back.

  If he’d been wiser (or perhaps less stubborn, which was probably more accurate), he’d have cut his losses and headed back to the Obsidian to sleep it off. From previous experience, he knew he had two reactions to liquor, depending on his mental state at the time: he either got cheerful, silly, and perpetually amused, or he got bitter, sarcastic, and nasty. Sometimes a few drinks with friends could turn around a bad mood—he could usually tell after the first couple, and if they weren’t working, he’d bid his friends good night
and take a cab home before he said anything he’d later regret.

  This time, though, drinking alone in a seedy bar in the ass end of Las Vegas, he was fairly certain things wouldn’t go well. By the time he got to drink number three, he was sure of it. You should go, a little voice in his head—the last vestiges of good sense—advised him.

  Bugger off, he told the little voice, and ordered another drink.

  Peripherally, he was aware that some of the men who’d been in the bar when he’d arrived had left by now, replaced by others, though he neither knew nor cared about who they were or what they were doing as long as they left him bloody well alone. The bartender switched one of the TVs to a different football game, and the other to basketball. From the far side of the room where the pool table was, the occasional raucous cheer rose above the general hubbub—apparently whoever had taken over was actually playing.

  “You okay, buddy?” The bartender was in front of him again.

  Stone raised his glass, sloshing the amber liquid a little. “Just bloody brilliant,” he said sourly.

  “You think maybe you’ve had enough? I can call you a cab…you stayin’ at one of the hotels downtown?”

  “I have most certainly not had enough,” Stone said. He drained the glass and tried to set it down on the bar, but his hand shook and he knocked it over. He righted it and pointed. “Another, if you please.”

  “You sure?” The bartender looked dubious.

  Stone glared at him. “I don’t need a minder. I said I’ll have another.”

  “Okay. You got it.” He got the bottle and poured another. “You know you’re runnin’ up quite a tab, yeah?”

  “Do I look like I give a damn?” Stone asked, glaring harder. “I’d be running up an even bigger one if you had some proper Scotch around here.”

  “Hey, hey, simmer down,” he said, holding up both hands. “Just tryin’ to look out for my customers.”