Core of Stone

by King, R. L.

  Stone clenched his fists, frustration and anger clamoring for release. He got up. “Are you going to show me where I can get a cab? Once I get back to my hotel, I’ll send you some money. If that helps, then brilliant. But that’s all I can do for you. Unless you plan to keep me a prisoner here, then—”

  “Maybe you can find your own way out,” Luke said, his face darkening. “Man, ain’t you listenin’? That thing’s killin’ us down here, whatever it is. I can’t believe you’re just gonna—”

  The dam broke. “I…can’t.” Stone said through gritted teeth.

  “Whatcha mean, you can’t?” Malcolm asked.

  Stone closed his eyes, clenching his fists tighter. He took several deep breaths, then opened his eyes and looked at Malcolm. “When you found me up there—when you saved me from those two Evil—didn’t you wonder why I needed saving?”

  Malcolm shrugged. “You were drunk off yer ass. We figured ya couldn’t—”

  “I’m quite capable of casting spells when I’m drunk,” Stone said.

  “So why didn’t you—” Luke started.

  “Because I bloody can’t!” Stone yelled, so loudly that a few others across the room turned to look at him. He took another series of deep breaths, trying to quiet the tension in his body and the pounding in his head. “I can’t do it. Not anymore.”

  Malcolm stared at him. “You can’t do the mojo?” he asked in a soft, incredulous tone.

  Stone shook his head, then bowed it. “No. I’m as mundane as you are. More so, actually, since you’ve at least got your Forgotten abilities.”

  Now Luke was staring at him too. “How the hell—”

  “Happened a week or so ago,” Stone said, dropping wearily back down into his chair. “Burned it out dealing with the Burning Man situation.”

  “Burned it out?” Malcolm asked.

  “Used too much of the wrong kind of magic, and now none of it works anymore,” Stone said.

  Luke slumped in his chair. “Then we’re fucked,” he said. “We are gonna have to move. We can’t keep lettin’ this thing pick us off.”

  “Where we gonna go, though?” Malcolm asked. “How we gonna take all these people to—”

  “I don’t fuckin’ know,” Luke said. He swiped his hand over his face, then looked at Stone. “You’re right, though. This ain’t your problem. You ain’t got mojo, you’d just be in the way—somebody else we’d have to look out for, and you don’t even know yer way around here so it’d be worse.” He sighed. “Malcolm, get a couple more guys and show him how to get out. Bridger exit, prob’ly. There’s a phone there he can use to get a cab.”

  Malcolm nodded soberly. “C’mon,” he said to Stone. All the animation had gone out of his voice. “We got a bit of a hike.” He pushed himself up out of his chair with effort, his shoulders slumping. “Hang out here for a couple minutes while I get a group.” He trudged off without waiting for an answer.

  Stone sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said to Luke. “Believe me, I wish more than anything I could help you, because that would mean I’ve got my magic back. Why do you think I came to Las Vegas in the first place?”

  “Whaddya mean?”

  “I thought there might be someone here who could help me. But he’s gone, and I’ve no way to find him. Not sure he could help me anyway. Probably just wishful thinking.”

  Luke nodded. “Yeah, that sucks. Sucks for you, sucks for us. When the guys came back and said they’d seen you topside, I thought they were high. Then when they brought you down here…”

  “How far will you have to move?” Stone asked softly. He scanned the various people sitting around the big room. “How many do you have in your group now?”

  Luke shrugged. “Got like fifty, give or take. But some of ’em are old, or sick, or so fucked up on drugs or whatever they can’t do much.”

  “But you’ve still got your abilities, right?”

  “Some of us do. Some of ’em, they been startin’ to fade.”

  “Probably because the portal’s closed,” Stone said. “I expect they’ll all fade eventually.”

  “Hope the Evil don’t figure that out, or we’re all fucked.” Luke swiped his greasy black hair off his forehead. “Anyways, here comes Malcolm. You watch yerself. And no more gettin’ drunk in bad neighborhoods. We ain’t always gonna be around to rescue yer ass.”

  Stone offered his hand. “Take care, Luke. I wish you all the best. All of you.”

  “Yeah.” He gripped it quickly, then backed off. “I gotta go. Stuff to do.”

  Malcolm approached with two more Forgotten: a young man Stone hadn’t seen before, and the woman who’d been with them last night. “Let’s go. It’s safer during the day, so that’s good, anyway. Here,” he said, offering Stone a wrapped protein bar. “You probably hungry after last night.”

  Stone only now realized he was, in fact, ravenous. “Thank you,” he said. He wanted to apologize again, to say something to make them realize that he wasn’t just deserting them, or worse, lying about his lack of magic. He closed his eyes for a moment and concentrated as he had dozens of times over the past week, trying to summon up even a vestige of the power, but as always, nothing happened. He sighed, bowed his head, and followed the group.

  They led him out a different exit this time, down a tunnel lined with old mattresses, milk crates, and piles of sandbags. They didn’t speak except for an occasional admonition to him to watch his step through a couple of uneven spots, or to murmur quietly to each other up at the front of the group. Stone walked along behind them, lost in his morose thoughts. He wasn’t accustomed to being the useless one in a group; even when the situation called more for Jason’s practical talents than his own esoteric abilities, he could still fall back on the fact that magic was extremely versatile, limited ultimately only by one’s imagination.

  Now, though, he was worse than useless. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t help these people—people who’d saved his life after his own self-destructive tendencies had led him into grave danger. No, it was worse than that: he was forcing them to divert some of their people to lead him through their labyrinthine territory and to the safety of the upper world, when a deadly threat was stalking them and their number was dwindling.

  He let his mind drift over what Luke and Malcolm had said as he continued following Malcolm and the others, devouring the protein bar as he went. The dying man had spoke of a “monster,” something big, something that made off with its victims without any trace. But that didn’t make sense. Something that big couldn’t operate without leaving traces of itself behind: droppings, scent, blood, bits of its victims, some kind of trail.

  A lot of people made the Las Vegas Underground their home—surely someone must have seen it, or heard it. He didn’t know this group’s particular Forgotten abilities, since the last time he and Jason and Verity had been here, they hadn’t stayed long. But he did know they were damn good at sneaking around, tracking, and not being seen when they didn’t want to be. If that were the case, it didn’t make sense that no one had caught even a glimpse of the thing disappearing down a tunnel. They had guns and they were very familiar with the layout of their corner of the Underground; it likewise didn’t make sense that one of them hadn’t gotten off a shot at it.

  He shook his head, picking up his pace to catch up with the group that had gotten a little ahead of him as he pondered the facts as he knew them. Hell, the way they were describing it, the thing only existed when it was attacking someone. But that was absurd. That was—

  No…

  No, it wasn’t!

  Stone stopped abruptly in the middle of the tunnel. “Malcolm!” he called. “Stop!”

  The group all stopped, turning back around to face him like he’d suddenly gone crazy. “What’s the problem?” Malcolm asked, his expression puzzled and stressed. “C’mon, man, we got a ways to go yet. We need to—”r />
  “No. We’re not going. Take me back.”

  “Back?” All of them looked confused now.

  “Back to Luke!” he said, impatience and excitement creeping into his voice. “I think I can help you!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The trip back to the Forgotten took considerably less time than the trip out had. Stone, energized, strode along beside the others, occasionally getting ahead of them and having to wait for them to catch up. “Come on, come on,” he urged. He’d refused to give them any other information until they got back—he didn’t want to do it twice.

  When they arrived at the Forgotten’s main meeting area, Luke was huddled in his corner with three others, including the Latina woman who’d been there before, a short white woman, and a muscular young black man. He looked up and spotted Stone and the others. “What the hell—?”

  “I need to talk to you,” Stone said. “Now. It’s important. I think I might be able to help you.”

  Luke frowned. “We ain’t got time for—”

  “Just listen,” he said. He looked around at the others. “Something occurred to me on the way out. Let me talk to you and Malcolm for a moment, and you can decide if what I’m telling you is worth following up on.”

  The Forgotten leader’s hooded gaze shifted between Stone and the others. “Okay,” he finally said. “You guys, clear out for now. Malcolm, you stay.” He pointed at a chair. “Sit,” he ordered Stone. When he had, Luke continued, “Okay, talk.”

  “I was thinking about what you said,” Stone said, leaning forward. “About how no one ever sees this so-called ‘huge monster,’ and how it never turns up unless it catches people in singles or pairs.”

  “Yeah…?”

  “I was also thinking about how it could be possible for a predator that large to live here without leaving traces. And the conclusion I came to is: it couldn’t.”

  “But we told you,” Malcolm said, “it’s killin’ us. Somethin’s killin’ us.”

  “Right,” Stone said, nodding. “Something is, or at least it’s making your people disappear. You said yourself, you’ve no proof they’re actually dead. But in any case, I asked myself: if it couldn’t exist here without leaving a trace, then how could it exist?”

  “I don’t get it,” Luke said. Malcolm nodded agreement.

  “The answer,” Stone said triumphantly, “is it can’t.”

  Luke glared. “You wanna make some fuckin’ sense one of these days?”

  “It doesn’t exist,” Stone said. “Obviously I can’t be sure, but all the variables fit. It’s some kind of illusion, it’s got to be.”

  Luke and Malcolm exchanged glances. “Illusion?” Luke demanded. “That’s crazy! You mean like some kinda see-through thing? My guys wouldn’t get fooled by somethin’ like that.”

  Stone shook his head. “No. Good illusions not only aren’t transparent, but if they’re sufficiently convincing, they can actually do physical harm. The concept’s a bit hard to explain, but trust me: it’s true.”

  “So you’re tellin’ us there’s somebody down here slingin’ mojo?” Luke asked. “But why? Why would a guy like you wanna hang out down here and pick off homeless people?”

  “No idea,” Stone said. “I didn’t say I had all the answers. I may not have any of them. I could be wrong. But I don’t think I am.”

  To his surprise, Luke didn’t look pleased or happy to have this information. Instead, he stared down at his hands in his lap, then clenched them into fists. “Well, fuck,” he said.

  Stone tilted his head. “Why? Don’t you want to—”

  “It don’t matter,” Luke said. “It don’t change anything. In fact, it makes things worse.”

  “How so?”

  He glared. “Because if you’re right, that means there’s a fuckin’ mage down here. One who for whatever reason wants us dead, and who’s pickin’ us off one by one. How we supposed to fight back against that? We don’t know where he is, or what he looks like, or even why he’s doin’ this.”

  “But we can find him,” Stone said. “I can help you.”

  “How can you help us? You got nothin’. No magic, you can’t fight—”

  “I might not have magic,” Stone said, getting up. “But I still know magic. There’s nothing wrong with my mind. If we can’t fight this thing head-on, we’ll have to use our brains.” He began pacing, then whirled on the two Forgotten. “You lot know everything that’s going on around your parts of the Underground, right?”

  “Yeah,” Luke said. “Maybe not quite as much as before since we gotta patrol in groups, but yeah.”

  “Has anyone new shown up in the last few weeks? Any new groups, or people?”

  Malcolm shook his head. “We thought o’ that right away. Figured maybe some new gang wanted to muscle in on our turf, so they brought some wild animal or somethin’ down here. But if they here, they hidin’ well.”

  “Okay,” Stone said. “Who is here? Besides you, I mean.”

  Luke thought about that. “The Hi-Lifes hang out south of us,” he said. “They been here longer’n we have. We got a truce, though—they don’t fuck with us, we don’t fuck with them.”

  Malcolm nodded. “North of us are the Boxcar’s guys. They ain’t really a gang. They’re homeless too, but they ain’t Forgotten. We help ’em out a little when we can.”

  “Hmm,” Stone said, “Doesn’t sound promising. Anyone else?”

  “There’s a little gang kinda north of the Hi-Lifes,” Luke said. “Ten, twenty guys. Way too small to fuck with us. They mostly do their thing topside, just hole up here when they need to get the heat off. No way they could be doin’ this.”

  “Did any of them lose anyone?” Stone asked.

  “They ain’t sayin’,” Malcolm said. “But we hear things. Some o’ their guys got picked off too. Everybody down here scared.”

  Stone stopped pacing, his mind flitting through possibilities and discarding them. “I wish I could get a look at this thing…” he murmured. “If I could see it, I could tell for sure whether it’s an illusion.”

  “But if it ain’t,” Malcolm said, fear showing in his eyes, “it’ll get ya. Same as all the others.”

  Luke stood up, fixing his gaze on Stone. “How sure are you that you’re right?” he asked abruptly.

  “What?” Stone asked, surprised.

  “How sure? You willin’ to bet your life on it?”

  He thought about it. Even without his magic powers, he had one of the strongest minds he knew. He doubted he could be fooled by anything short of a world-class illusion, if he knew it was coming. That was the thing about illusions: they were a lot less effective if you knew they were illusions—at least if you truly believed they weren’t real. Granted, that could be tricky if the illusion were lifelike enough—even mages could be fooled. But odds were good any mage he found around here wouldn’t be sufficiently potent to deceive him. “I want to get a look at it,” Stone said. “Show me where to go, where others have encountered it before. Lend me a gun if you have one to spare. I’ll check it out.”

  “That’s crazy,” Malcolm said. “You can’t go out there by yourself. You don’t know the tunnels. Even if there ain’t no monster, you’d get lost in no time. Ain’t a lot of easy ways to get topside, and once you get outta our area, they’re guarded.”

  “I’ll go with him,” Luke said.

  Both Stone and Malcolm stared at him in shock. “Luke?” Malcolm asked, uncertainly, and then shook his head. “Naw, man. You can’t go. We can’t afford to lose ya. Not with all this shit goin’ down.”

  “Somebody hasta go,” Luke said. “He says he’s pretty sure. If he’s right, we’ll have more information. If we gonna fight this, we gotta know what it is.”

  Malcolm looked like he wanted to say something, but instead he just sighed. “At least take some more guys wit
h ya.”

  “Can’t,” Luke said. “You know’s well as I do it don’t show up when it’s groups.”

  “Yeah,” Malcolm said. “Damn it.”

  Stone pondered. “Wait a moment. Some of your group are good at sneaking, right? We could send a couple of them behind us, staying well back. If they hear anything, they can help.”

  “They’d hafta be pretty far back,” Luke rubbed his neck, considering. “Yeah, okay, that makes sense.” He addressed Malcolm. “Find Tembo and Kyle. They’re good at sneakin’ around. But make sure you tell ’em to stay way back. We gotta have this thing show up.”

  “Got it,” Malcolm said, nodding. He waved another Forgotten over and gave him instructions to find the two men, then sighed and shook his head. “This whole business scares the shit outta me.”

  Luke clapped him on the shoulder. “You gotta hold it together, Malcolm. You’re in charge while I’m gone. You and Zenna.” He pointed at the Latina woman, then turned back to Stone. “Let’s go. I sure hope you’re right, otherwise we’re all screwed.”

  Stone hoped so too. Going out on his own, betting his own life on his hunch, was one thing. Gambling someone else’s wasn’t something he had any wish to do. But he knew both of them were right—he didn’t know his way around down here, and he wasn’t exactly equipped to deal with slogging through the Las Vegas sewers without a guide.

  “Lemme get lights and a gun,” Luke said. “You know how to handle a shotgun?”

  “Truthfully—no.”

  “Okay, I’ll do the shootin’, then, if we need it. Ain’t riskin’ you blowin’ my ass off with a wild shot. Be right back.”

  Stone, Malcolm, and the others watched him go. “I don’t like this,” Malcolm said.

  “Nor do I,” Stone said. “But if I’m right, I might be able to help you figure out how to deal with this thing.”

  Malcolm nodded as Luke returned carrying two lanterns, a battered shotgun, and a box of shells. He shoved the shells into the pocket of his jacket and handed one of the lanterns to Stone. His expression was grim, and Stone didn’t need to be able to read auras to know he was scared.