Mortal Imperative: An Alastair Stone Urban Fantasy Novel (Alastair Stone Chronicles Book 24)

by R. L. King

  That left only two more.

  No—wait.

  One more!

  Stone grinned as he spun to check on Verity and found her standing triumphantly over the motionless form of another creature, its head separated from its body by the chain. She’d picked it up again, gripping it in both hands like a gang member at a rumble, and was eyeing the final moving creature, which Maisie was doing her best to take apart.

  “Come on!” he yelled. “Let’s go! We can lock them in with the gate if we get out!” Once again, he refused to let himself consider the possibility that there might be more of them waiting outside. At least out there they’d have the advantage of space, and levitation spells.

  Verity immediately darted toward the door and disappeared through it, eyeing the two pinned creatures nervously as she passed. They lunged, trying to grab her, but she ducked and skated by.

  Maisie, however, seemed in the grip of some kind of savage trance as she continued ripping at the monster.

  “Maisie!” Stone boomed. “Come on! Let it go!”

  She growled at him, but made no move to follow.

  Stone growled back. He wasn’t going to get Chris Belmont out of here alive, and he’d have time to grieve over that later. But he was damned if he was going to leave Maisie behind too. He raised a hand and made a jerking motion, ripping the creature free of the young ghoul’s grip and slamming it into the wall headfirst. It hit the ground and struggled to stand with half of its head bashed in and its back ripped to shreds by Maisie’s claws.

  “Come on, Maisie! Go! Out!” He shot a quick glance up the stairs, where Verity waited for them at the top. So far, no other creatures seemed to be lurking up there.

  Maisie shook her head a few times as if clearing it, her long, greasy dark hair flinging back and forth. She glared at Stone, growled one more time, and then took off after Verity.

  Stone didn’t stay behind to see what would happen. He hurried after them, catching up as they reached the ground floor. As soon as they all dashed through the metal gate, he flung it closed and used magic to twist it so it couldn’t be opened. He didn’t think the creatures could manage a lock, but he wasn’t taking chances.

  The air outside was muggy and still warm. Stone stood panting, bent over with hands on his knees, trying to look in every direction at once. Verity was doing the same thing.

  Stone shifted to magical sight, but spotted no sign of any other creatures lurking. The one from the crypt slammed into the closed gate and tried to push past it, but it held—at least for now.

  “We’ve got to go,” he said between breaths. “Before more of them come. Maisie, you—oh, bloody hell.”

  This was going to be a problem.

  Maisie stood crouched a few feet away from them, her gaze switching back and forth between the two of them. Her clothes hung on her skinny body in slashed rags. Her eyes held the focus of a predator, and her teeth were bared.

  “Doc?” Verity ventured, taking a step back.

  “Stay away from her, Verity,” he murmured. “I don’t know how long she was stuck in that cage, but I think she’s hungry.”

  14

  “Hungry…” Maisie rasped. “Run…get away from me…” Her hands twitched, her clawed fingernails dripping with the bloody goo and strange greenish ichor from the abominations downstairs. Her voice sounded like she was going through a massive interior struggle.

  Stone didn’t run, though. “Maisie…I’m not going to let you go feral. Not after we got you out of there.”

  “Can’t…help it…please…run away. Go!”

  Still, Stone didn’t move. He didn’t like what he had to say next, but there was no way around it. He’d promised Tani he’d find her friend, and he’d already failed with Belmont. “Maisie…listen to me. Can you do that? I can help you.”

  “H-how?” Her whole body twisted now, and her eyes—hunting eyes—never left Stone.

  “We’re in a graveyard. We passed a fresh grave on our way in here.”

  “Doc—?” Verity began from behind him.

  “There’s no helping it, Verity. She won’t last until we can get her somewhere safe. It’s got to be done.” He risked a quick look back at her. “No shame if you don’t want to be involved. You can bring the car ’round.”

  She hesitated, but when she spoke again, her voice was stronger. “No. It’s—it’s okay. I’ll come. There might be more of those things out there.”

  Stone didn’t think so—but he also thought whatever had sent this lot might show up to check on things, and he didn’t want to be there when that happened. “Will you come with us, Maisie? You’re doing very well. Can you hold it together just a bit longer?”

  She swallowed hard, shook her head again, and clenched and unclenched her fists. “Yeah…yeah…but don’t want to…hurt anyone.”

  “You won’t hurt us. Come on—you go on ahead, just up this path here. We’ll follow.” His trust only went so far, and allowing a hungry ghoul to follow behind them was beyond that point.

  “Okay. Okay.” Immediately, she took off in the direction Stone had pointed, and they hurried to follow. After only a few moments she seemed to catch a scent, and picked up speed.

  When Stone and Verity reached the fresh grave, they found Maisie already clawing at the dirt, sending a plume of it flying behind her like a dog burying a bone.

  “Let me help you,” Stone said. “Verity, please keep watch.”

  He thought she might object, but she seemed relieved he wasn’t asking her to join in. “Yeah. Okay. Hurry, though.”

  Stone already had some of his energy back. He focused his power again, this time using it to shove dirt away from the grave in piles. He was glad the grave was still relatively new; magic affecting the living earth was notoriously difficult, requiring specialized training, and he’d never spent much time on it. Loose dirt, however, was another story. In less than fifteen minutes, he and the frantically-digging Maisie had uncovered the top of a simple wooden casket.

  When the ghoul made as if to rip the lid off, Stone said, “Maisie. Wait.”

  She growled again and didn’t seem as if she’d listen, but finally jerked her head toward him. “What?” Her voice was so raspy now it was barely human.

  “I know this is what you need, but you’ve got to treat this person with respect. You can’t destroy the casket—and you’ve got to only take what you need. If you can’t agree, I won’t help you. Understood?” Stone had no idea if his words would get anywhere with her. She was halfway to feral already, and might be too far gone to reach.

  Her shoulders squirmed. She opened and closed her hands, and her breath came in short, sharp gasps.

  “Maisie…”

  “Yeah,” she snapped. “Yeah. But hurry. I can’t—”

  “Stand back.”

  She almost couldn’t do it. She crouched there at the edge of the grave, rocking back and forth, clenching and unclenching her fists.

  “Maisie…stand back.” Stone kept his tone even and firm. “You’ll thank me for this later, I promise.”

  She hovered on the precipice for a few more seconds, then flung herself backward. “Do it,” she growled.

  Stone used magic to pull the lid from the casket. He was glad it wasn’t one of those fancy, hermetically-sealed jobs, which he’d probably have had to break to get it open. He floated the simple carved lid free of the grave and set it on the nearby ground, then leaned in, holding up a light spell.

  Inside the open coffin was a woman. It was hard to tell her age—the body hadn’t begun to decay yet, but even the best embalming jobs had trouble making their subjects look completely natural—but she had gray hair and leathery skin, and wore a conservative blue dress. Someone’s grandmother, most likely. Stone bowed his head, picturing the little knot of sobbing loved ones standing around the grave during a memorial service only a day or two ago. He was disgusted with himself for what he was doing—but the alternative was worse. This woman was dead—beyond feeling any pain or
humiliation. Maisie was alive and needed help.

  The young ghoul surged forward, her eyes fixed on the body, her grasping hands reaching out.

  “Maisie—listen to me. Take only what you need—and take it from her lower body. Understood?”

  “Y-yeah…” She swallowed hard. “Let me…I have to…”

  He waved her forward, turning away from the grave and raising his shield. Either she would heed his order or not, but either way he didn’t plan to watch her devouring her grotesque meal. He glanced around for Verity, and had to use magical sight to spot her standing twenty feet away, also facing the other direction. Her jade-green aura flashed with discomfort.

  The process didn’t take long. Stone tried not to listen to the scrabbling sounds behind him, the soft little grunts and slurps. After only a couple of minutes, the sounds stopped.

  “It’s okay now.”

  Stone turned back around. Maisie’s voice still sounded raspy, but not nearly as much as before. More importantly, the feral growl was gone. “Are you all right?”

  She crouched next to the grave, facing him now instead of the body. “Yeah. I…just took a little. From her leg. I…covered her up again. So you don’t have to see.”

  Reluctantly, Stone walked back over to the grave’s edge and peered down. As Maisie had said, she’d brought the shroud back up to cover the woman’s lower body. There was no obvious indication she’d been disturbed.

  “Thank you, Maisie,” he said softly. He levitated the lid back onto the coffin, then began using magic to shove the piles of dirt back into the hole.

  Maisie immediately joined him, moving with more control and less jerky urgency than before. With the two of them working together, it took only half as long to fill the grave as it had to dig it up.

  Stone held up his light spell when they finished, surveying the area. It wasn’t a completely clean job: if anyone came by in the next few days, they’d probably notice the loose dirt around the grave’s perimeter. But that couldn’t be fixed without staying a lot longer than Stone wanted to.

  Maisie sighed. “I’m sorry…”

  “Don’t be sorry. You are what you are—you can’t help that.”

  She studied his face as something dawned on her. “Who…are you people? How did you find us? How did you know?”

  “Come on—let’s go back to the car. I don’t think anyone else is coming, but I don’t want to take chances, do you?”

  Clearly, she didn’t. She followed him back to where Verity stood, and together the three of them headed for the car. Stone noticed Verity didn’t look at Maisie.

  “I’m gonna get your back seat all dirty,” the ghoul said after they’d levitated over the wrought-iron fence and reached the rental.

  “Don’t worry about that. That’s the least of our concerns right now. We’ll take care of it.” He waved her into the car.

  She hesitated, but then climbed in. After a moment, Verity got in the shotgun seat and Stone drove off.

  “My name is Alastair Stone,” Stone told her when they’d exited the graveyard. “This is Verity, my former apprentice. I’m…an old friend of a couple members of your colony. Including, unfortunately, Mr. Belmont back there.”

  Grief gripped him at the mention of Belmont’s name—before that, he’d been more concerned with fighting for their lives, or keeping Maisie from slipping over the edge and going feral. Now, in relative peace, the images flooded back. Belmont in his Stanford office pretending to “interview” him to find out whether he’d been bitten during the murder in the Palo Alto park. Working with him to figure out where the semi-feral ghouls were hiding. Fighting alongside him in the Santa Cruz mountains as they tried desperately to take out the ferocious semi-ferals and save Imogen from becoming their latest meal. The two of them had never been close friends, but Belmont had been brave and loyal despite his unfortunate affliction—just like all the other non-feral ghouls he’d met.

  And now he was dead.

  Maisie shifted in her seat. She hadn’t put her seatbelt on, and seemed uncomfortable. “So…you were lookin’ for Chris?”

  “We were looking for Chris, yes…but also Dr. Lu. And you.”

  “Me?” Her surprise was clear in her voice, and when Stone glanced at the rearview mirror, he saw it on her face.

  “Yes. As it turns out, your friend Tani is a member of a group that also includes Verity.”

  “Yeah?” She leaned forward, eyes wide. “Wait, you’re that Verity? You know the Harpies?”

  Verity didn’t answer.

  Stone rolled down his window. He tried to be discreet about it, but there was no hiding it: Maisie stank. In the close confines of the car, the combination of body odor and the stench of rotting meat was almost too overwhelming to bear. “Er—yes, we know the Harpies. Tani overheard Verity and me discussing Lu and Belmont’s situation. She told me you were missing too.”

  Verity swallowed hard and rolled down her own window, sending another blast of fresh, muggy air into the cabin. “I never knew Tani was a ghoul,” she said. “She never told any of us.”

  “Yeah, well, she wouldn’t.” Maisie shifted again. “Sorry about the smell.”

  “It’s…all right,” Stone said. “No helping it.”

  “It’ll be better if I can get a shower…some clean clothes.”

  “We’ll work on that.” He glanced back at her again. “Can you tell us what happened? Did someone kidnap you, or did they blackmail you into going with them? Do you know who it was? Did you see them?”

  His barrage of questions seemed to overwhelm her. She raised her hands in a stop gesture. “Hold on. I’m…still not back to myself completely. Brain’s not firin’ right yet. I don’t know all this stuff.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Stone didn’t want to slow down—now that they had one of the missing ghouls right here in the car with them, he wanted all the answers as soon as possible. But Maisie had obviously been through a traumatic experience. “Let’s start at the beginning. Did someone come to your colony and blackmail you?”

  “No.”

  “No?” he asked, surprised. “What about Lu and Belmont?”

  “I don’t know. I never saw Orville. Didn’t even know he was missing. I only saw Chris when…when…” Her voice shook, and she made a vague gesture of discomfort.

  “When they used him to bait the trap for us,” Verity said. Her voice sounded almost monotone, as if she were trying to participate in the conversation while simultaneously distancing herself from the reality of having a cannibalistic ghoul sitting less than three feet away from her.

  “Yeah,” Maisie said miserably. “He was…already dead when they brought him in.”

  “Who brought him in?” Stone asked. “Did you see any of them?”

  “Not really. Just…a couple guys. I think they were muscle. You know…hired. I didn’t wake up until I was inside that cage.”

  “Muscle…” Stone mused. “So they didn’t talk? Did you hear them say anything? Anything at all?”

  “Uh…” she seemed taken aback by his intensity. “Uh…trying to remember. Everything was fuzzy. They said something about…a trigger. I don’t know what that means. I didn’t see any guns.”

  “Bloody hell,” Stone murmured, slapping the steering wheel. “That’s how they did it.”

  “What?” Verity asked, showing a little more interest but still keeping her gaze firmly fixed forward.

  “A trigger spell. That’s how they kept my light from piercing the darkness, and how those things stayed dormant before they attacked us.”

  “You mean they put some kind of trigger in there so anybody coming in would wake them up?”

  “Yes, exactly. Not sure if it’s anybody, or us, or whatever. Damn—I wish I could have found the object they put the trigger on. It might have given me some insight into who’s done this.”

  “I am not going back down there, Doc,” Verity said firmly.

  “No. No, of course not. At this point that would be foolish. But it’s
still unfortunate.”

  “What about those monsters? What’s going to happen to them? Will they attack the groundskeepers if they get too close? Will the cops find them in there?”

  Stone pondered. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not? They’re gonna get loose from those things you stuck them to the wall with eventually, right?”

  “Possibly not.” He shot her a look. “Remember what happened back at my place in England? With the skeletons?”

  She was silent for a few moments, but then jerked her head up. “Wait a minute. You’re saying they’ll fade at sunrise? Turn to dust?”

  “Yes. Those did, so it’s a strong possibility these might as well. Since there isn’t much chance anyone else will go to that graveyard between now and sunrise, we’re probably all right.”

  Again, she fell silent.

  Stone turned onto the main road and headed south. “Verity? Are you all right?”

  “Just…thinking.”

  He didn’t miss the odd edge to her voice. “Thinking about what?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Maisie, either wanting to be alone with her thoughts or sensing this conversation didn’t involve her, remained quiet too.

  “Verity?”

  Verity sighed. “I was just thinking about…Sharra.”

  Of course. He should have figured that one out on his own. “Yes,” he said gently.

  “So…now there are more necromancers floating around? That horrible woman back in England…I don’t think she’s dead, do you?”

  “I…couldn’t say. But honestly, I doubt it.”

  “Do you think she’s teaching this stuff to other people?” She swallowed loudly. “And…how come Sharra didn’t fade? She and those…other things that woman kept around?”

  Stone glanced down at his hands on the wheel, then back up at view out the windshield. “I don’t know for certain. I’m not that well-versed in necromancy, even after going through those notes before I destroyed them. But if I had to make a guess, I’d say that…whatever process was used on Sharra…was different from the one used on these garden-variety grunts.”