by R. L. King
Would he be able to find it and stop it once its black mate activated the last of the other side’s sleeper agents? He’d been lucky with this one—luckier than he had a right to be. Even now, he wasn’t sure whether he’d have been able to reach the assassin in time if she hadn’t been connected with someone he knew. The windows seemed to be shortening. How long would it be before the final piece made its move?
The cab rolled up and he got in, trying to ignore the large patch of dried blood stiffening the front of his T-shirt. He gave the address of the garage, barely aware of the driver or the traffic as he continued to mull over the problem. He’d have to be more careful from now on—perhaps even keep the last white piece with him at all times so he could act quickly.
For now, though, much as he didn’t want to accept it, he needed to get some sleep and get back to England. Now that the evening’s excitement was over, the temptation to open the old metal box from the crypt and discover the secrets it hid rose again, stronger than ever.
44
Stone allowed himself four hours of sleep before driving to A Passage to India. It was one a.m. now, and after the crush of San Francisco traffic, the relatively sparse number of other cars on the freeway down was a relief.
He used the disregarding spell to get into the restaurant without anyone seeing him, and a few moments later stepped out of the sarcophagus inside the mausoleum at his place. The marble cover was still where he and Aubrey had left it, which didn’t surprise him: there was no way the old man could have lifted it on his own. Equally unsurprisingly, the weathered casket remained in place. A darkly amusing image of his grandfather shambling through the cemetery as a zombie flashed through Stone’s mind as he hurried up toward the house.
What was surprising, though, was that he saw no sign of Aubrey. He reached the house and entered through the massive double front doors, expecting the caretaker to come bustling out of the kitchen. “Aubrey?” he called.
He checked the kitchen and the rest of the lower floor, then headed back out to knock on Aubrey’s apartment door. Perhaps he’d gone into town to get the sealant they’d need to replace the cover. It was only nine a.m., after all. Normally Stone wouldn’t even be up yet, let alone expecting to start a project.
It wasn’t until he peered into the garage that he realized what must have happened. His own little black convertible, covered with its familiar cloth, occupied one of the three spaces, and another had long ago been repurposed as a workshop where Aubrey did some of the minor household repairs. The third, however, was empty—Aubrey’s old truck was gone.
“Ah, of course,” Stone said aloud, relief filling him and the tension he hadn’t even realized he’d been feeling draining away.
It was Sunday morning, and Aubrey was a devout, if pragmatic, member of the local Anglican church. He must be at the service. Given that he no doubt hadn’t expected Stone to return for at least three more hours, he’d probably planned to make his usual stop at his favorite pub for an early lunch, pick up the supplies he needed, and head back to the house a bit after noon.
That was fine—it would give Stone more time to look through the box’s contents uninterrupted. He scrawled a quick note to let the caretaker know he was there and would be downstairs, added his mobile number since Aubrey couldn’t reach him there, and hurried back to the main house.
The box was where he’d left it, in the warded vault. He retrieved it, surprised at the tingle that ran through him as he looked at it again. Was it anticipation? Dread? He’d already acclimated himself to the almost certain fact that he’d be finding out more shocking details about his family, but given how much the last bits he’d learned about his mother, his father, and the circumstances of his birth had broadsided him, he knew it was possible he’d discover things he had no way to anticipate.
He set the box on his work table and pulled up a chair, staring down at the pitted surface. Last chance. You can just put this back, seal it up in the crypt, and forget about it, you know. Might be best.
Might be best, but it wasn’t going to happen.
He pulled the white figure of the winged serpent from his pocket and set it on the table next to him. After the events of the previous night, he didn’t intend to let it out of his control again until it activated. He was no doubt being far too cautious, but when dealing with ancient magic items that were inciting innocent people to commit horrific crimes, it was better to err on the side of safety. For now, the figure lay quiet and inactive, its violet jeweled eyes glittering in the table lamp’s glow.
With a shaking hand, he flipped the catch on the box. It stuck, corroded with age, and he had to tug hard to pull it free. “All right…” he murmured. “Let’s see what you’ve got to show me.”
As he expected, the box was full of papers. They were stacked nearly to the top, divided into thick sheaves wrapped in thicker paper and tied with decaying string. The musty, familiar odor of aged parchment wafted upward, but Stone saw no sign of bugs or mold. The oilcloth wrapping and the metal box itself had done their jobs to protect their contents.
He pulled them out one by one and laid them side by side on the table. There were five in all. A check with magical sight revealed no magic around any of them, so he chose the one that had been closest to the bottom of the box and tugged on the string. It came away instantly, almost disintegrating in his hand. He removed the covering paper and carefully spread out the contents.
The sheets in the first stack were related to the construction of the manor house in which he now sat. Included were floorplans, copies of contracts with craftsmen and builders, and letters exchanged between what looked like Stone’s great-great-great grandfather and some other men whose names he didn’t recognize, all dated from the late eighteenth to the middle part of the nineteenth century. He studied each one in turn, bringing the light over to get a better look at the fading ink. The letters were nearly illegible at this point, partly because of age and partly because of the spidery, crabbed handwriting. As near as he could determine, though, they didn’t include anything malevolent.
He put a page aside to look at the next one and frowned. This page had a symbol at the top of it—one he’d never seen before. It wasn’t the Stone family crest, and it wasn’t any society, magical or otherwise, he’d ever encountered. It featured an open triangle in the center, with three arcs tracing its edges. In the center was a sigil Stone didn’t recognize, and it had more symbols between the triangle’s sides and the arcs. The text below it was written in a language he’d likewise never seen—neither English, Latin, or the pseudo-Latin language mages sometimes used to inscribe their spells and rituals. It didn’t even use the same alphabet as these languages, but something more like odd pictographs interspersed with symbols that looked like text. Stone retrieved his jeweler’s loupe and examined it more closely, but it didn’t help.
He put it aside for now with the rest of its stack, thinking perhaps he could ask Eddie Monkton to research the language for him later. On a whim, he grabbed a notepad and sketched the strange symbol.
The second stack, as weathered and faded as the first, focused on a more familiar subject for Stone: ritual records. As he paged through each of them, a cold sense of dread flowered at the base of his neck and crawled down his back. “No…” he whispered.
He’d expected to find evidence of the darkest of black magic, but seeing it right there in stark black and white provided a much more visceral shock than mere speculation. Staring down at the pages, he couldn’t deny it any longer: his family, at least back to his great-great grandfather and probably farther than that, had participated in formalized rituals of the most vile sort—rituals involving everything up to and including human sacrifice. The papers included not only write-ups of the actual processes, but records of their performances, including dates. The victims were not named, but only described: “a young traveler,” “a trollop from the streets of London,” “a Spanish sailor,” and so forth.
Stone clenched his fists. He won
dered where these unfortunates had ended up—had their bodies been reduced to ash to provide energy for these powerful men—men who, by virtue of their wealth, magical power, and social position, answered to no one but themselves? Or had they been secreted away, buried in the dead of night in unmarked graves where they’d never be found? Had the victims left people behind who would never know what happened to their sons, their daughters, their husbands?
He slipped another sheet aside and stopped. There was that symbol again—the same one he’d seen before. What did it mean? Perhaps he could ask Eddie about that too, assuming he could bring himself to reveal any of this shameful information to his friend.
Quickly he moved on, wondering how much worse this could get. But both the third and fourth stacks looked to include mostly records from various business ventures his ancestors and their partners had been involved in. They covered eclectic areas: imports, building materials, agricultural products, precious metals and jewelry, spices, and many others, and encompassed a large number of different names. It appeared that these businesses had been highly profitable, judging by the several ledger sheets included in the stack.
Stone flipped through the third stack again, confused. Had all of these businesses been in his family at some point? He’d never had the impression that his ancestors had been businessmen—most of them, from all he knew, had been wealthy aristocrats who dabbled here and there in various things but never took any of them terribly seriously. He recognized some of the other names as contemporaries of his relatives—some of their names had been included in James Brathwaite’s journal that Eddie had shown him at the library.
The last few pages of the fourth stack weren’t careful business records, but handwritten letters between Stone’s ancestors, along with other magical families whose names he recognized, and these partners. They were written in English this time, though the handwriting, faded ink, and antiquated phrasing still made them difficult to follow.
Difficult, but not impossible. Stone squinted at the cramped text until he could make it out…and then he read it again, because he couldn’t believe he’d understood it correctly the first time.
“Bloody hell…” he whispered.
Once again, the language in the letters didn’t come right out and say anything in so many words—of course not. The men involved wouldn’t have needed to, because all of them knew exactly what they were talking about. But it was all there, clear enough that Stone had no trouble reading between the lines.
The businesses and other ventures the letters referred to hadn’t been started or run by his ancestors and their cronies. That’s why Stone hadn’t heard of them, and why they never came up in any records of the various accounts and trust funds he still controlled.
No—it was all here in black and white: the mages, both his people and their contemporaries, had been “silent partners” in these ventures, and not through any mutual agreement between them and the men who ran them. No doubt they had used their vast influence—social and economic, but almost certainly magic had been the primary motivator—to muscle in on the operations, skimming profits from the proprietors’ honest work and probably threatening them with all kinds of dire consequences if they refused, or if they revealed the arrangement to the authorities.
Stone stared at the papers, his entire body growing cold. Had anyone attempted to fight back against their scheme, unaware of exactly the kind of unholy power these men wielded? If anyone did, had they ended up as part of the rituals described in the other papers?
He let his breath out, propping his elbows on the table and burying his hands in his hair. So these were the kinds of people he came from. These were the unbroken line of male mages he’d always been so proud to be the latest member of. Had anyone in his accursed family been worth a damn, or had they all allowed power to corrupt and twist them until they’d lost any shred of human decency?
No. They weren’t all like that. His father hadn’t been like that. Aubrey had been around—he’d known. Yes, Orion Stone had gone black like all the others, but he’d only done it to save his son—as Stone himself had done it to save Verity and his own as-yet-unborn child. Orion had borne his new status as a mark of shame, hiding it from everyone until his death. He’d broken this horrific cycle.
One more stack remained—the fifth and largest. Go on, Stone told himself. Look at it. Get it over with. There’s no reason to believe it’s any worse than the others. Already, he wanted nothing more than to destroy the whole collection—to toss it into the massive fireplace in the great room upstairs and watch it burn while he drank until he couldn’t remember any of it any longer.
The little winged snake figurine caught his attention, its purple jeweled eyes glimmering at him in the pool of light the desk lamp cast.
He picked it up and studied it, needing to get his mind off the rest for at least a few moments. It hadn’t activated yet—he’d have felt that, and magical sight revealed nothing—but merely seeing it reminded him that he didn’t have the luxury of getting blind drunk and passing out to drive the horror away for a few hours. As much as he wanted to, this thing was like a ticking time bomb—and likely one that would cause a lot more damage than a simple assassination this time if he walked away from his responsibility.
Do something worthwhile with your life, his little interior voice told him bitterly. You can’t make up for everything your ancestors have done—you couldn’t if you had ten lifetimes. But at least face this. You can wallow in your own grief later.
He put the figure down on the table and picked up the last sheaf of papers.
By the time his mobile phone rang an hour later, he sat slumped forward, his numb gaze fixed on the last of the pages.
At this point, he no longer even saw them.
Without thinking about it, he dragged the phone from his pocket. “Yes?”
“Sir?” Aubrey, of course. “Are you still here?”
“I’m still here.” He wondered if his voice sounded as lifeless to the caretaker as it did to him.
“Are you…all right, sir? I’m sorry I was away when you arrived, but I was in town for my church service, and—”
“I know. Quite all right, Aubrey. I worked that out.”
“Sir…you sound…odd. Where are you?”
“Downstairs. In the warded area.”
There was a pause. “Yes, sir. I—should I not disturb you? Would you like something to eat?”
“I don’t want anything to eat. No—it’s fine. I need to come up there and help you put the cover back on the crypt.”
Why? the bitter little voice spoke in his head. Let him rot. It’s better than he deserves.
“We can do that when you’re ready, sir. No hurry.”
“No, I should do it now. I’ll be up in a few minutes.”
“Yes, sir.” Even over the bad connection—the house’s heavy stone construction played havoc with cellular signals—Aubrey’s voice sounded worried. “I’ll be in the kitchen when you’re ready.”
Stone hung up and regarded the piles of papers on the table in front of him. He’d restacked the first four in a neat row; the fifth still lay spread out in front of him where he’d left it.
I should destroy these, he thought again, glancing at the large brazier in the corner of the room. I should just toss them all in and light a blaze.
He didn’t do that, though. As a mage, he shared his kind’s reluctance to destroy any sort of records—but more importantly, he didn’t think the shameful things deserved to be destroyed. These events had happened. His own ancestors and those like them had done these terrible things. Stone had no idea if any other records of their deeds existed, and it wasn’t the sort of thing you could go around asking about. If these were the last remaining records of this activity, destroying them would, in a way, be letting his ancestors get away with what they’d done without suffering any consequences.
Of course, they were long dead. If there was a Hell, they were probably there—but Stone didn’t belie
ve in Hell. In any case they were gone, and beyond punishment. But Stone was still alive—did he have the right to simply sweep all this horror under the rug and pretend it hadn’t happened, just to assuage his own guilt and shame?
He gathered the fifth stack of papers into a final pile, then put all the piles back in the metal box with dividers between them. Finally, he carried the box to his warded vault and put it back in there. He’d have time to decide what to do with them later.
His gaze fell on the sketch he’d done of the odd symbol he’d found on some of the sheets, and the cold feeling of shame intensified. He closed his fist around the paper, crumpling it into a ball, then held it up on his open palm. With a bit of concentration, barely a thought, a tiny blue flame erupted around it, incinerating it to ashes. He threw the ashes on the floor, jammed the winged serpent figurine back in his pocket, and stalked out of the room.
Aubrey was waiting for him when he arrived at the kitchen. Anyone who didn’t know the caretaker would think he was cooking, but Stone knew better: one of the ways Aubrey dealt with stress was to putter around the house without doing anything specific. He’d seen it dozens of times over his life.
“Hello, sir.” Aubrey looked him up and down, then offered him a plate of cheese, crackers, and fruit from the sideboard. “Would you like a bit of something before we start?”
Stone shook his head. “Let’s get on with this.” Without waiting for an answer, he turned and trudged off. He didn’t want to talk to anyone at the moment—not even Aubrey—but he’d promised the old man he’d help with the project.
He didn’t stop until he got to the mausoleum. While he waited for Aubrey to catch up with him, he stood in front of the open crypt, gazing at the casket inside the niche.
It had certainly been a fine thing in its day, exquisitely made of rare wood and silver fittings, probably costing more than the majority of the people of his grandfather’s time would have seen in many years of work. It had certainly held up better than a lesser-made vessel would have, but even so, it still showed the ravages of age.