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

by R. L. King

  Stone turned his attention back to Verity and Maisie. “All right, Maisie,” he said in a comforting tone. “Everything’s fine. You’re doing a brilliant job. Please, just carefully repeat what you heard them say.”

  Nothing happened for several seconds. Sweat beads broke out on Verity’s forehead, and she swallowed hard as she leaned in closer to her subject. Her mouth worked, but no sound came out.

  “Come on, Maisie…” Stone murmured. “I know it’s in there. Just let Verity help you get it out.”

  “Buh…” she began. She was trembling now.

  “Are they okay?” Tani whispered. “Is this hurting them?”

  Stone honestly wasn’t sure. He wanted to shake Verity, to break the connection before something happened, but this was their best chance to get something they could use. He shifted to magical sight to watch the two women’s auras, ready to sever the trance if things grew too bad. “Wait…” he whispered back. “It’s all right so far. Listen…”

  “Buh…” Verity said again. And then the rest came out fast, in a rush of words almost too fast to follow: “Beeil dich. Wir müssen uns bei Lane melden. Der Chef will bis morgen mehr frisches Blut für diese gruselige Frau haben.”

  She jerked, almost falling backward off the ottoman. Her face was dead pale now, the sweat droplets tracing paths along her cheeks. She swallowed, snapping her head up, and her eyes flew open.

  “I gotta go,” she said in a strangled tone, leaping up and dashing toward the back of the apartment. A moment later, Stone heard the muffled sounds of her being sick.

  He exchanged glances with Tani, then got up and hurried after her as the ghoul woman moved to tend to Maisie.

  The bathroom door was closed. Stone knocked softly. “Verity? Are you all right?”

  “Y-yeah. I’m good. Just give me a minute.” The toilet flushed, and a moment later water ran in the sink.

  Stone remained where he was, debating whether to knock again.

  The door opened. Verity stood there, still pale but looking better than before. She let her breath out in a long sigh. “Sorry…that was…intense. I’m okay now.”

  They returned to the living room, where Tani had helped Maisie to sit up and had gotten her a glass of water from the kitchen. Another one sat on the coffee table.

  “You okay, V?” Tani asked in concern. Her eyes were big and scared.

  “Yeah. Yeah.” She threw herself back down on the ottoman and grabbed the glass of water gratefully. “That stuff can get pretty nasty. Never puked before…but one time the person I was working with did. It’s fine.” She looked up at Stone, who still hadn’t sat. “So…I hope that was worth it. Did you get anything good?”

  “Maybe.” He nodded at Tani’s phone, which was now on the table. “I’m sorry, Maisie, but we did have to record you for a brief time.”

  Maisie was still pale too. She shot Stone a suspicious look, clutching her glass of water in both hands. “Why? You said you wouldn’t.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I’ll let you listen to the recording, but it couldn’t be helped. You were speaking in a language I don’t know, so there was no way I could write it down accurately.”

  “I…was?” Her suspicion turned to confusion.

  “She was?” Verity frowned. “Which one?”

  “German, I think. Tani, if you wouldn’t mind—”

  Tani retrieved her phone, cued up the recording, and tapped the button.

  All three of the others listened in silence. When the unfamiliar words finished, Maisie looked first at Verity, then at Stone. “That was me?”

  “Yeah, apparently,” Tani said. “It was like your voice coming out of V’s mouth, but you were tryin’ to sound like a guy.”

  “But…how? I…don’t speak anything but English. There’s no way I’d remember all that. I don’t remember anything about them saying those things.”

  “You didn’t consciously remember it,” Stone said. “The mind is an amazing thing, though. Even normal, non-magical hypnotic techniques can sometimes call up things we’ve no idea we’ve still got stuck in our brains. Verity’s method simply adds another layer to it.”

  “So…what does it mean? What I said.”

  “I don’t know. Tani, can you send me a copy of the recording, please?”

  Tani fiddled with her phone for a few moments. “There.”

  Stone retrieved it and listened again. “I recognize a couple of words…Frau means woman, and Blut means blood.”

  “I heard something about a chef,” Verity said. “Maybe a woman is cooking something with blood?”

  “Maybe more ghouls are involved,” Tani said.

  “Possibly,” Stone said. “I suppose it’s a reasonable thought.”

  “If they’re doing alchemy, they might have taken blood from Maisie,” Verity said. “It makes sense. Still doesn’t explain what they need it for, though. I wish I could have gotten more.”

  “I doubt the grunt workers would know much more about the plan.” Stone held up his phone. “I need to get this translated. Maisie, are you all right?”

  “Yeah.” Her voice still sounded a little shaky, but she was sitting up now and didn’t look like her ordeal had scarred her. “That was…freaky. But I hope it helped.”

  “Me too,” Verity said. “I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to do that again for a while. Doc, do you have somebody who can do the translation?”

  “No doubt I do. I’ll take it to Kolinsky—he’s translated some German material for me before. Remember Pia Brandt back at Burning Man?”

  “Oh, right.” She chuckled. “And you haven’t learned German yet? Come on—you’re slipping.”

  “Yes, because I’ve had so much free time since then.”

  Maisie and Tani were sitting on the couch, watching them. “Uh…” Tani began, “do you need us for anything else tonight?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Stone said. “Thank you so much, both of you. Especially you, Maisie. I know things have been unpleasant for you. I hope this recording will give us enough to move forward.”

  “Me too.” She stood. “I think I’d like to go back now, though.”

  “Yeah,” Tani said. “But call us if you need anything else, okay? I mean that. We want to get whoever’s doing this too.” The two of them left, leaving Stone and Verity alone in the apartment.

  Verity picked up the two empty water glasses and carried them to the kitchen sink. “Tell me what you find out, okay? None of this is making sense to me. Even if we’re right and alchemists are using ghoul blood, what’s that got to do with necromancy? Everything I come up with sounds fairly terrifying.”

  “Yes, I agree. I think whatever we discover, it’s not going to be pleasant. And I fear it will be a lot more far-reaching than simply blackmailing peaceful ghouls.” He sighed. “I’d best get going. It’s too late to stop by Kolinsky’s place tonight, but I’ve got a few things I could take care of in the meantime.”

  “Yeah. I think I’m going to curl up with a glass of wine and a good book. That spell takes a lot out of me. Drive safe, Doc.”

  He didn’t bother telling her that wouldn’t be a consideration.

  Outside, he pulled up his collar again and began the two-block walk toward the ley line. His mind spun with speculation about who might be involved in abducting the ghouls, and what their connection with necromancy was. The Frau part disturbed him. Was Miriam Cheltham involved in this? It seemed coincidental, and there were certainly a lot of other women out there who were adept at alchemy. Necromancy, though—not so much. Either he, Eddie, Ward, and Kolinsky had all completely missed something when they were investigating it, or else Cheltham was somehow involved.

  He pulled out his phone and listened to the recording again at low volume, holding it up to his ear as he walked. The phrase was spoken in a normal conversational tone, so it was too fast to make out much of it. Spoken language was always harder to follow than written, even if you had a passing familiarity with the language. Tantal
izingly familiar words like Blut and Frau and morgen stuck out, but without the rest he couldn’t make any sense out of them.

  The fact that the men had been speaking German at all had to be relevant, though. Maisie and Belmont had been held in or near Tennessee, or possibly Georgia if their captors remained near the Atlanta portal. Were there large German communities in either of those areas? Large enough that hiring two German-speaking workers would be common? Or had they brought the men with them from somewhere else? He had no idea.

  He stuffed the phone back in his pocket again and quickly made the preparations to travel. Seconds after he finished, he stood in his study back in Encantada. Barely noticing what he was doing—he was amazed at how fast he’d become used to this new travel method—he left the room without switching on the lights and headed downstairs. Raider caught up with him halfway down, winding around his legs and trying to trip him.

  He poured a drink and threw himself onto the sofa. The cat immediately jumped up and claimed his lap. “What do you say, Raider? Is speaking German among your hidden talents?”

  He played the recording again, this time turning up the volume and slowing the speed to half. Not for the first time, he regretted not focusing on learning more languages in his youth. Or at least more languages people actually spoke in the modern day. Latin and Enochian didn’t get you very far when trying to order dinner or find the bathroom in a hurry.

  Or decipher cryptic messages from mysterious workers.

  “Beeil dich. Wir müssen uns bei Lane melden. Der Chef will bis morgen mehr frisches Blut für diese gruselige Frau haben.”

  Something tickled the back of his mind. Someone who’d spoken German, or at least English with a German accent. He replayed the recording another time, slowing it even further. There was something odd, but he couldn’t quite place it. He wished he could have heard the words in the men’s original voices, instead of from Maisie by way of Verity. The word Lane didn’t quite sound the same as the others. It almost sounded as if she fumbled over it.

  He called up Google Translate, set it to translate German to English, and typed Lane.

  The result was the same. “Lane” in German apparently meant the same thing it did in English. Were they referring to a location?

  He didn’t know enough German to even attempt spelling most of the words, but the one after “Lane” sounded like “Melden.” He tapped that in and hit Translate.

  Report.

  That was interesting, assuming he’d got it right. Was someone reporting to someone else? To the chef? About the blood, perhaps, or the progress with the ghouls?

  Wait. “Chef” wasn’t a German word—at least not the way he was interpreting it. Sure, people sometimes mixed different languages in conversation, but…

  He typed “chef” in the box.

  Boss.

  Ah. That was beginning to make more sense. Something about reporting something to the boss.

  But where did “Lane” come in? Was it a location? Or was it a person? Did he know anyone named—

  He gripped the phone tighter, startling Raider.

  “Oh, bloody hell…”

  No, that was absurd. Too farfetched to be possible.

  But he had known someone named Lane, connected with someone who spoke German.

  Could it be possible Elias Richter was somehow involved with this mess?

  His anger grew as he considered the possibility. Elias Richter held a prominent place in his memory. He hadn’t thought about the man in quite some time, mostly because his attempts at locating him hadn’t been successful and other more pressing matters had moved Richter down his list of priorities. But every time he remembered what had happened with Deirdre Lanier, the woman he’d thought he loved…the woman Richter had destroyed during a ritual in his mad pursuit of immortality—his rage rose anew. Richter had lain low over the ensuing few years, to the point where Stone wondered if the man might have died. But was he back now, with his remaining magic-immune henchman Lane (rest in hell, Hugo), trying something new to attain his goal? Was he trying to exploit the ghouls’ regeneration power?

  And worse, was he investigating necromancy? Had he somehow found out about Miriam Cheltham, and enlisted her to work with him?

  The thought was chilling.

  Even Richter couldn’t be that mad.

  Could he?

  “I’ve got to get the rest of this translation,” he told Raider.

  19

  When Stone stumped downstairs late the following morning in search of industrial-grade caffeine, he found Ian lounging on his living-room couch with Raider sprawled in his lap.

  “Hey, Dad,” he called, leaping up to the cat’s annoyance. “Sorry I let myself in, but you didn’t answer the texts I sent. Figured you were sleeping in.”

  Stone fumbled his phone from his pocket and glanced at it. Sure enough, there were three recent texts from his son, each around twenty minutes apart. “Sorry about that. Long night last night. I guess I needed sleep more than I thought.”

  He looked Ian over. He hadn’t seen him since the night they’d had dinner with his mentor Gabriel at the illusionary restaurant in London, though they did text fairly regularly. As usual, he wore stylish, expensive clothes with effortless grace: designer jeans, a skintight plum T-shirt made of whisper-thin fabric, and high-end boots. A leather jacket was tossed carelessly over a chair. Stone, unshaven in his robe and shorts, felt more underdressed than usual, though Ian didn’t seem to notice or care. “Er—why don’t you give me a few minutes to make myself presentable, and then we can chat.”

  “Take your time. I’m having a nice time chilling with the furball here.”

  “Oh, sure,” Stone muttered, already heading toward the stairs. “You love him more than you love me.”

  “Was that a surprise?” Ian called with a chuckle. “He’s a lot cuter than you are.”

  “Well, he is now, I’ll give you that.”

  Fifteen minutes later Stone returned after showering, shaving, and dressing in something more appropriate. Ian was in the kitchen now, cooking some eggs while gently using magic to nudge Raider away from the hot stove.

  “Oh, so you cook now?” Stone arched an eyebrow. “Between you and Verity, you’re beginning to make me feel bloody inadequate. Even Jason’s learning his way around the kitchen.”

  Ian grinned. “Sure, why not? I like gourmet food, and I figured it would be fun to learn to cook some of it. You know, you could learn too, if you wanted to.”

  “I prefer getting my gourmet meals from restaurants.” Stone waved it off. “So, did Gabriel teach you that?”

  “Lots of people did.” He gave a sly smile. “Most recently, this hot Spanish chef I met in Monte Carlo last month. He taught me a lot of things.”

  “Yes. Well.” Stone hadn’t quite settled on how he felt about his son’s hedonistic lifestyle, but he supposed it was none of his business—especially now that he was no longer financing it. “What are you making there?”

  “Nothing exciting—just some scrambled eggs. Your refrigerator is embarrassingly empty, you know. Even magic can’t do much with nine eggs, five bottles of Guinness, some expired Chinese food, and—I’m not sure what that was in the back, but I think it might have been fish. I tossed it, so I hope you weren’t saving it for a ritual or something.”

  “Oh. Right. I think I brought that home from a restaurant intending to give it to Raider, but I forgot about it.”

  Ian sighed, grinning. “You’re hopeless, Dad.”

  “So they tell me.”

  He finished scrambling the eggs, tipped them onto two plates, and slid one across the breakfast bar along with a glass of orange juice. Leaning on one elbow while he ate standing up, he regarded his father. “So—what’s this interesting problem you’re having? Were you serious about the stuff at the Surrey house? You were talking about the walking dead that attacked us, right?”

  “I was. Only this is a bit more interesting—and potentially dangerous—than that. Co
me on—let’s go out to the other room and I’ll give you the whole story.”

  Stone explained the situation so far. As he’d done before, he left out details of names and places, but other than that, he gave Ian everything about the missing ghouls and the ambush at the cemetery.

  Ian listened with growing focus, going back to petting Raider once he’d finished his eggs. “Uh—wow,” he said at last. “I’m not sure where to start. I didn’t even know ghouls were a real thing.”

  “Gabriel hasn’t taught you about them?”

  He shook his head. “Mostly, we split our time between learning magic and having fun around the world. He’s introduced me to a few…fairly unusual people, but he hasn’t told me specifically what they are. Aside from Amber and her shifter bunch, I’m pretty much in the dark about magical creatures.” He chuckled. “For all I know, I could be partying with vampires and werewolves and faeries and never even know it.”

  Or dragons, Stone thought but didn’t say. In any case, he couldn’t fault Gabriel for leaving out that part of the curriculum. Most magical beings kept to themselves, and William Desmond hadn’t taught him much about them either.

  “Well, in any case, yes—they are a real thing. And so is necromancy, as you well know. I just didn’t expect to find the two of them in bed together, at least not yet.”

  “Yeah…that’s not something I want to think too hard about. So, what are you going to do? What do you need my help with?”

  “Maybe nothing. I was honestly hoping you’d bring Gabriel with you, since he’s probably got more useful knowledge. But you’ve got a good head on your shoulders, so at least you might be able to help me with a few deductions.”

  Ian didn’t seem offended at his father’s comments about the relative potential helpfulness of him versus his mentor. “Don’t expect Gabriel any time soon. He said he had some things he had to take care of, so I’m on my own for a month or so.”

  Stone raised an eyebrow. “He’s just…taken off without telling you where he’s going?”