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

by R. L. King

  “Yeah, yeah. Not like you’re not payin’ us enough to look after Caventhorne. But like I said before, we do accept pints.”

  29

  Eddie frowned as he and Ward strode in. He glanced at his watch. “Somethin’s up with you, mate. ’Ow’d you get ’ere so fast?”

  Damn. Once again, Stone had forgotten to pad the time it took him to arrive. When he’d popped over using the ley line, his friends had been gone, presumably in search of lunch, so he’d settled down and begun poring through the piles of books and papers spread out across the research room’s table. There were even more of them now than there had been last time he’d visited. “Er—”

  “You sure you didn’t finish your portal and forget to tell us?” Eddie dropped two large bags on the table with a thump.

  “Er—” Stone said again. Even from where he was sitting on the other side of the table, the aromas wafting from the bags were enticing. “Bugger, that smells good. Now I wish I’d taken you up on your offer.”

  “Thought you might,” Ward said with a wicked smile. He shoved one bag across at him and placed a steaming cup of coffee next to it. “We figured we could always save it for later if you didn’t want it.”

  “Let’s not get off the subject,” Eddie said stubbornly. “’Ow the ’ell did you get ’ere this fast? I’m not buyin’ you were away from ’ome in the middle o’ the night.”

  Stone sighed. Not by any means for the first time, he wished he had dimmer friends. “Can’t really talk about it. I promised someone I wouldn’t.”

  Ward tilted his head. “You’ve got access to another private portal?”

  “Sort of. Look—I’d like to tell you, but I gave my word. Can we just get on with this? I don’t think Richter’s bluffing about my friends being in danger, so if there’s anything to be found that will help us, I want to find it.”

  Eddie continued to regard him, his stubborn expression remaining firmly in place. “Fine,” he finally said. “I s’pose it’s none o’ our business, but that doesn’t mean I’m not curious.”

  “Of course you are. Because you’re Eddie. But for now, this is more important. What have you found so far?”

  They settled back at the table and busted out the sandwiches. While they ate, Eddie and Ward took turns explaining what their research had uncovered.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t much. “There isn’t much literature about echoes in general,” Ward said. “And even less about mage echoes. They’re not only exceedingly rare, but they stay out of the limelight because they’re rare.”

  “Okay,” Stone said. “But what do we know about them? Can they still do magic?”

  “Theory says yes.” Eddie used a spell to clean the grease off his fingers and flipped through a book next to him. “There’s no documented evidence of them doing it, but that’s not surprising.” He found the page he was looking for and pointed at a passage. “This bloke ’ypothesizes that poltergeists are actually the echoes of low-powered mages, and that the energy in seriously ’aunted ’ouses might come from echo activity—both mage and mundane.”

  “Well, my house certainly corroborates that,” Stone said. “We haven’t seen any new activity since the mundane echoes faded. And if I’m right about Brathwaite, he’s probably moved on as well. My guess is he went back somewhere he felt safe, like his old place, to gather strength before he went looking for something to do.” He pointed at Eddie’s open book. “Does that say anything about locating mage echoes? Is there enough left to attach a tracking spell to?”

  Ward was looking at a different book. “Again, it’s all hypothesis. Nobody’s ever definitively proven whether magic comes from the spirit, the body, or some combination of the two.”

  “But let’s put aside magic for a moment,” Stone said. “I’m more concerned with whether a tracking spell latches on to the body or the spirit. If it’s the spirit, and Brathwaite is still knocking about, theoretically with the proper tether object we should be able to locate him, right?”

  “Interesting question.” Eddie rubbed his chin. “I can’t honestly say I’ve ’eard of anyone tryin’ to track an echo. Contact them, sure—Poppy does it all the time. But that’s not the same thing. Even if we set up a séance, I doubt Brathwaite would drop by for tea—especially if you’re right and ’e doesn’t want you knowin’ ’e survived the purge.”

  “And before you ask,” Ward added, “contacting an echo doesn’t use the same methodology. A tracking spell reaches out actively to find the target. All a séance can do is put out the call. If the spirit isn’t nearby and receptive to the message, it won’t work.”

  Stone paged through another book in front of him without seeing much of the contents. “Okay. So what I’m hearing is that it might be possible to use the objects we have to track Brathwaite’s echo, but you’re not sure it’ll work.”

  “Yeah.” Eddie nodded soberly. “There’s no way to know. Especially since those items are so old. I mean, bloody ’ell, that stuff got squirreled away in that priest ’ole over a ’undred and fifty years ago.”

  “Exactly,” Ward said. “Even if it were possible for an object to retain a connection for that long, do we have any idea if Brathwaite had enough of an emotional affinity to those particular objects?”

  “Sure, his papers would probably ’ave worked,” Eddie put in. “But those are gone. The box is just what they were stored in. And for all we know, ’e just stashed that cat thing in there because ’e was experimentin’ on it at the time. I doubt ’e’d toss ’is favorite pet in a box and leave it there.”

  “I doubt Brathwaite had any pets, favorite or otherwise,” Stone muttered. He pulled the doll dress from his pocket. “All right. To summarize: we’ve got this dress, which apparently was important to Miriam Padgett back before she went full necromancer. We’ve got Brathwaite’s box and items, which we know belonged to him a hundred and fifty years ago, but we’ve got no idea if they were important enough to serve as a tether. And we’ve got nothing at all on Elias Richter.”

  “Sounds about right.” Ward looked dubious. He pointed at the books and papers. “If I were asked to speculate, I would say it might be possible to find an echo with a tracking spell, but you’d probably need a better tether object. Something with a much stronger connection to him than an old box.”

  Stone got up and began pacing again. This was looking hopeless. As much as he’d hoped the items from Brathwaite’s house would work, he didn’t think they would either. If only they hadn’t destroyed the journals! Surely they would have retained a stronger connection. Perhaps if they went back to the boarding school that used to be Brathwaite’s ancestral home, they might find something else. But what? What could have a stronger connection with a man who’d lived nearly two centuries ago?

  “It’s too bad we ’aven’t got something ’e interacted with more recently,” Eddie was musing. “That would make things easier. But I s’pose if you found somethin’ like that, you’d find the man ’imself, so that doesn’t do much good.”

  “Yes…” Stone muttered. “We can’t use the crypt where his body was imprisoned, since that whole part of the catacomb caved in. We destroyed the body itself, so that won’t work. I don’t know what else—”

  “Y’all right, mate?”

  Eddie and Ward were both looking at him with concern as he suddenly stopped pacing.

  “Stone?” Ward tilted his head in question.

  Stone barely heard them. As he’d paced, an image had risen in his mind: the nightmare he’d had the previous night. The three figures swirled in his head, floating behind the oncoming wall of undead creatures and feral ghouls. During the dream, he’d been focusing on what they’d wanted him to see: the shocking, grotesque sight of Chris Belmont’s severed head being tossed around like a football, Lu and Grider shambling along with the rest of the zombies, the hopelessness of the scene as a whole.

  But another sight had startled and terrified him in the dream: Brathwaite’s echo streaking toward him and re-ente
ring his body. Sure, that wasn’t possible—not even an echo as powerful as that one could take control of his body while his spirit was still inside—that was why it was a nightmare.

  But Brathwaite had been inside his body before. The echo had taken him over, controlled him, and very nearly killed his friends before he’d managed to eject it.

  But it had been in there. It had interacted with his body in the most intimate possible way—even more intimate than sex.

  Could it be possible…?

  “Stone?” Eddie had risen from his chair now and was approaching Stone. He looked worried. “Y’all right? Do you need a drink?”

  Stone snapped back to the here-and-now as the vision faded from his mind. He fixed his gaze first on Eddie, then on Ward. “I just had the maddest idea ever.”

  “I doubt that.” Eddie flashed him a wry grin. “But what’s on your mind?”

  “We need something Brathwaite interacted with recently to use as a tether object, right?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  Stone didn’t stop to consider his next words before he spoke them. “I think I’ve got just the thing.”

  “What?” Ward asked.

  “Me.”

  Their eyes widened.

  “What the ’ell?” Eddie demanded. “What do you mean, you?”

  “Think about it.” Stone forged ahead, knowing if he thought too hard about what he was saying, he might not say it. “Brathwaite’s echo possessed my body after we separated my spirit to make the echoes think we’d sacrificed me. He popped right inside and took up residence.”

  The two of them exchanged glances, and when they turned back to Stone, they both looked grim.

  “Are you suggesting…” Ward began slowly, “that we use you as the tether object in a tracking ritual?”

  “Not just me.” Stone snatched up the dress from the table. “I’m convinced the three of them are together: Richter, Padgett, and Brathwaite’s echo. We haven’t got anything for Richter, but we’ve got this for Padgett, the box and the cat-thing which may or may not be strong enough to work for Brathwaite—and me to seal the deal.”

  “Forget it,” Eddie said, making a firm slashing motion and shaking his head. “It’s too dangerous, even if it would work.”

  Stone rounded on him. “Will it? Do you think it’s got a chance?”

  He looked at Ward, and some unspoken communication passed between the two of them. “I…dunno,” he said reluctantly.

  “Come on, Eddie, don’t lie. Your nose will grow. Do you think it has a chance of working?”

  His friend looked even more uncomfortable. “It…might.” He jerked his head up and glared at Stone. “But come on, Stone—you know as well as I do, the tether object gets destroyed in a tracking ritual.”

  “There are ways around that,” Stone said. Part of him couldn’t believe he was saying these things at all. What he was proposing, if it was even possible, was insane. “I can do rituals that don’t destroy the tether. Sure, it’s trickier, but it can be done. You can too—both of you can. I know that.”

  “Yes,” Ward said. “But if those rituals fail, if something goes wrong and the tether is destroyed, it’s just an object. Even if it’s an important or valuable object, it’s a thing. Not a person.”

  Stone began pacing again, almost as if trying to outrun his own thoughts. “I’ve been grinding this over in my head for a long time now, and I’m not coming up with anything else that even has a possibility of working. Are you?” He glared challenge at them.

  “No,” Eddie said. “But—”

  “We’ve got to find Richter,” Stone said. “And even more importantly, we’ve got to find Brathwaite. If he’s still out there somewhere after all this time, that means his echo is stable. And if he’s taught Padgett necromancy in this short a time from essentially nothing, think of what he could do if Richter starts hooking him up with mages who have real power. What if that’s Richter’s latest plan for the Ordo: teach them all necromancy. Can you imagine what might happen if we let that go without doing anything about it?”

  Eddie and Ward exchanged glances.

  “Well?”

  Eddie let his breath out. “But mate,” he said, “think this through. Who’s gonna do the ritual, if you’re the tether?”

  “You. Or Ward. Or both of you.”

  Ward shook his head. “I wouldn’t trust myself. I’m solid with theory, but my practical skills are too rusty to trust with something like this.”

  “Yeah,” Eddie said. “I’ve got more practical experience than Ward, but still—you’re asking us to take your life into our ’ands. No way.”

  Stone pondered. He had to admit his friends were right. Both of them probably had more raw magical knowledge locked up in their heads—or at least access to it—than he did. But the situation beneath the Surrey house last year had been the first time in a long time when they’d been called upon to practice practical magic. Sure, they’d come through admirably, but those had been different circumstances. They hadn’t had a choice. This time, they did.

  “Okay,” he said quickly. “What about this: I ask Verity and Ian to help too. Rituals are more stable with more participants, and both of them are bloody strong mages. Verity’s got a lot of experience doing tracking rituals, since she works with her brother to find missing people. And don’t forget: I can help work out the details of the ritual, set it up, and look everything over before we start. We’ll have five sets of experienced eyes on the thing before any magic even happens.” He realized how unhinged he sounded, but kept going anyway. “Look—Richter and Brathwaite themselves notwithstanding, they’ve got two of my friends. Padgett and Brathwaite are already responsible for killing another good friend. I don’t want to let him have these too.” He stopped pacing and faced them. “So—will you do it?”

  Eddie and Ward looked at each other again. For a long time, they didn’t speak.

  Finally, Eddie sighed. “Okay. Maybe. But this is the best I’ll agree with: you’ve got to give us a day to research this. Make sure there’s no reason we shouldn’t do it. I’ve got a lot of stuff at the library specifically about tracking rituals, and I think there’s more here too. I’d like to ’ave the chance to do a test run first, but I realize that’s not possible. But I’m not liftin’ a finger until I know there’s no reason this is gonna crash and burn no matter what precautions we take. Take it or leave it, mate.”

  Stone wanted to protest, to get started with this as soon as possible, but he knew they were right. “Fine,” he said. “You do that, and I’ll go back and talk to Verity and Ian. But I want to do this as soon as we possibly can. As long as they don’t know we’re on to them, we’ve got time. But Richter’s smart. I don’t want to give him a chance to get suspicious and either move my friends somewhere else or kill them. Or even worse, finish whatever he’s trying to do.”

  Eddie stood. “Right, then. I’ll ’ead down to the library and start gatherin’ my reference material. Ward, you get started ’ere. I think your best bet’s the library in the west wing—the one with the big statue of Anubis in it. Look on the eastern wall, ’alfway up the shelves.”

  Stone smiled. Now that he had them energized, he wouldn’t have to worry about them doing the job. Even though Eddie was probably eager to find a definitive reason not to do the ritual, at least he and Ward would do the research thoroughly. And given Eddie’s uncanny talent for remembering where to find things and Ward’s research wizardry, he didn’t doubt they’d locate every bit of possible reference material.

  The thought comforted him. He refused to admit it to his friends, but this mad plan did make him nervous. Even though he was beginning to believe he might actually be difficult or even impossible to kill, he still didn’t want to take unnecessary chances.

  “Thanks, you two,” he said briskly. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then. And get some rest. I don’t want you nodding off during the ritual. If we pull this off, I won’t just be buying you pints for the rest of the year. I’l
l open up Desmond’s cellar and we’ll pull out some of the really good stuff.”

  “All the more reason to make sure we keep you alive,” Eddie said, but his grin was more than a little forced.

  30

  “You are crazy,” Verity said, glaring at Stone. “There’s no way I’m going to be part of this.”

  “Me neither,” Ian said.

  They were seated in Stone’s Encantada living room four hours later, along with Jason and Amber. All four of them were still looking shocked at what Stone had told them.

  He’d called them as soon as he could get away with it, which was still earlier than he’d have liked. All he told them was that he had come up with a potential idea for how to deal with the situation, and asked them to come to his place as soon as they could manage.

  To his relief, they’d all showed up without question. Even Ian, who was sleeping off the effects of last night’s party, hadn’t made even a token protest.

  As they all sat around sipping coffee and munching donuts and pastries from the big box Stone had picked up from a local bakery, he caught them up with all the latest news, including the call from Richter, Grider’s disappearance, his trip to visit Winifred Padgett, and his wild theory about Brathwaite’s echo.

  “Hold on,” Jason had said, gaping at him. “You’re sayin’ you think Brathwaite’s ghost is still out there somewhere, and it’s actually functional to the point where it can still do magic?”

  “That’s exactly what I think.”

  “But you don’t have any proof, do you?” Verity had asked, looking almost as skeptical as her brother.

  “No—but it does explain a lot. I think it’s far too interesting that Miriam Padgett is a Brathwaite descendant for it to be a coincidence. And since I can’t come up with a way that a woman who up until a year ago thought she was a mundane could learn magic that fast on her own, I’ve got to conclude that she had help.”

  “It makes sense,” Ian had said. “Gabriel told me it’s possible for mages to make echoes. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, they can be really powerful. Possibly almost as powerful as they were when they were alive.”