The Stone (Lockstone Book 1)

by Seb L. Carter

  Grenier’s mouth went tight. “Right.” He seemed to be taking this seriously, and Liam had to wonder if maybe Patrick somehow cast a spell over them all, because everything that was being told to them, he was sure, made little to no sense. But one thing was correct: These men were walking into a situation where very little was known, even to the extent that whoever they would run into might not follow the simple laws of reality. These military types were about to have their minds totally blown.

  They gave the team the rest of the briefing, as much as they could, anyway, without them calling the nearest psychiatric hospital and demanding a pick up. It was enough, though, and, somehow, the tactical team bought it.

  Afterwards, all of them were given headsets and tactical throat mics and given quick instructions on how to use them. One of the team members came up to Liam after the briefing. “Do you need a weapon?” he asked him.

  Liam showed him the stone. “I got it, thanks.”

  The tactical guy stared at the stone first then at Liam. He simply turned and walked away.

  Chicago, IL - Tellus, Inc. Headquarters

  Outside, the streets were empty. The police were already setting up a perimeter around the building to keep the flow of traffic to a minimum.

  They entered the lobby of the building. It was empty, for the most part, which, considering the time of the day, wasn’t unexpected. The security guard stood up behind his desk in the lobby and only held his hands up when the team moved in. One of the team members secured him and guided him from the lobby like they expected the place to go down at any second.

  Liam took up the rear with Patrick, Eoin, and the others. The two agents were just ahead of them, right behind the team as they moved swiftly through the lobby.

  Their entrance into the lobby was both exciting and anticlimactic. Liam knew they were on their way to rescuing his aunt and Nina, and he could only count the minutes until he saw them both again and was able to bring them safely out of the building. Rescue was the only acceptable outcome, bringing them out safe and alive.

  But, in their initial assault, he almost expected there to be sorcerers or whatever they called themselves waiting around the corner. Maybe even the security guard tossing a fireball at them or something. A big Matrix-style lobby scene with bullets flying in slow motion. But so far, nothing.

  Shepard looked to Patrick. “Where to?” They had building plans to this building, but they were outdated from before Tellus, Inc. took over the place. Paperwork had been filed to allow for construction, primarily taking place on the twenty uppermost floors of the building. The lower portion of the building housed the offices of the Tellus, Inc. while the upper portion, though owned by the Tellus, weren’t on record. That meant they were flying blind.

  Patrick concentrated for a moment. He reached out and grabbed Liam’s hand, and Liam let him. Considering the circumstances, holding Patrick’s hand was warranted. “Up,” Patrick said. Shepard gave Patrick what Liam read as a no shit look. Patrick amended his statement. “Top floor.” Patrick’s brow furrowed. “But they’re not together anymore,” he said.

  “What do you mean they’re not together?” Liam asked.

  “One is straight up, all the way. The other is one floor down.”

  That was worrisome. “Both alive, though, right?”

  Patrick nodded. That was a relief.

  The team broke up according to their assignments. Regular uniformed police officers were in the lobby while half the tactical team took to the stairs, accompanied by Grenier. It was to ensure no one used the stairs to escape. The remaining tactical team members took two elevators up to a floor two down from where they expected to find one of the hostages, his aunt or Nina. It made Liam anxious to find out who they’d find first.

  He rode up with Eoin, Patrick, Katina and Brodie, along with the two FBI agents. Three tactical team members were with them too. The three remaining took another elevator up.

  “I don’t suppose you can get a sense on how many others are up there,” Shepard asked Patrick as they rode up. Liam listened. He didn’t say anything.

  Patrick shook his head. “Not this time.”

  “But you can?”

  “Usually.” Patrick did a hand wave. “Something here is blocking it, though.”

  Shepard shrugged. “I still don’t know how any of this works. Forgive the questions. Why are you able to feel the two hostages and not anyone else?”

  Patrick shrugged. “Maybe they’re the only ones up there,” Patrick said, but it was clear he didn’t believe it. “Or they’re the ones I’m meant to find.”

  “That’s reassuring,” Katina said with obvious sarcasm.

  One of the tactical team was looking at the both of them, his name tag read Morin, shifting where he stood as they rode the elevator up. Liam wondered what, exactly was going through his head, FBI agents, a CIA agent, and a guy carrying a rock, not to mention the other three who looked like dustier, grittier versions of super models.

  When the elevator doors hissed open, Liam started to get out, but Morin put a hand on his chest. Liam was about to protest when Morin ducked down and peered out. They were the first to arrive.

  The three tactical team members, led by Morin, pulled the elevator stop button and moved out into the hallway with their guns aimed. How they moved was impressive, their training obvious. They moved as one unit. When they gave a sign that said it was clear, Liam and the others followed.

  It was quiet throughout the floor. Dead space, what appeared to be an unfinished floor of the building. Other than the support columns, there was only a large, empty floor that overlooked the city on every side that Liam could see. After all the ritzy houses, this wasn’t what he expected.

  Still, there was no resistance, not even a tired office worker or cleaning person to ask what was going on. That was something else unexpected.

  “What now?” Liam asked.

  “We wait and coordinate with the rest of the team,” Morin said.

  Liam looked to Patrick. “You said they were on the top floor.”

  “This isn’t the top floor,” Patrick said.

  “Well, I know that. I’m saying that we should be going up there to save them, not hanging around here for a meet and greet.”

  “We don’t know what’s up there,” Patrick said.

  Shepard stepped closer to Liam. “We’re going to move up soon. We need to do this right.”

  Liam opened his mouth to say more, but Shepard cut him off by bending down to look directly at him, making hard, direct eye contact. Liam felt like he was about to get yelled at. But he wasn’t. Zach’s face was one of compassion. “Look, I know you’re worried,” he said. “But it won’t do anyone any good if we go rushing into something we know nothing about. We need to figure out our next steps.”

  Liam wasn’t ready to wait, but he guessed he had no choice. And he couldn’t argue. There was wisdom in Shepard’s words.

  It took them another ten minutes to figure everything out. The whole time, Liam gripped the stone in his hands. He felt like he could take all of this himself if he had to.

  The stone was almost vibrating, like it expected what was to come, that it would be used to free his aunt and save Nina. He tried to relax by putting his hand over the top of the stone, and he closed his eyes to take in deep breaths, a count of four and out a count of four. The stone only served to help him center his mind.

  And, to his surprise, he sensed himself moving deeper into the stone, almost a sinking sensation that he hadn’t expected. What he saw in his mind’s eye was a bright center, not a dark, dry interior like he expected, but something light and beautiful. So beautiful that it almost brought tears to his eyes. He thought himself blessed to be able to witness something this stunning, one of the few people in the world to really see what heaven might look like.

  This was the magic center, the essence of the world that had sought him out to bring him to this point.

  The stone spoke to him too. It whispered w
ords that he was unable to fully understand, only experience. They touched his mind and swirled around to combine into one single word.

  When Liam heard it, he opened his eyes.

  Thaddeus.

  It wasn’t long before the teams made it onto the empty floor, and they coordinated their ascent to the next level. None of them seemed particularly worried that they’d met no resistance yet, so Liam let his nerves go.

  Liam also didn’t say anything about the weird revelation he had with the stone. He still wasn’t sure what it meant or where the name came from. The name came up in his conversation with Katina that morning about Cyril going off on his own. Was he here? Maybe it was a warning. There was a bigger reason he was there. Once aunt Jonie and Nina were safe, then he could take all the time he wanted to ask Eoin questions about a man named Thaddeus.

  In two teams, they went up the stairs to the next level. It was only one flight, and they all crouched down like bandits, moving quickly, efficiently. The men with the guns took the lead. When they reached to door, the man on point tried the handle. It was locked. Grenier gave the signal to try to work the lock and get it open.

  “Wait!” Katina whispered as the guy in front was pulling out a set of lock picks.

  Everyone turned around to look at her.

  “Let me through,” she said as she was pushing her way forward. When she got up to the door, she reached out with a hand and placed it on the metal. She closed her eyes, and the sensation of magic touched Liam’s skin. He recalled what Eoin had told him about the secret door leading to the lower levels back at the house. The wards that were in place that would kill anyone who wasn’t allowed through. He guessed that’s what Katina was searching for—and undoing. After a moment, she turned to the guy with the lock picks, and gave him a nod that it was all clear.

  “You people are strange,” the lock pick guy whispered, and he went to work.

  Once through the door, this floor of the building was entirely different than the one below. Where the lower level was unfinished, this one was completely done. And it was done with no expense spared. This was the décor that Liam expected.

  It looked to Liam a lot like walking into a opulent devil’s den. At least how he would imagine it. It was all stark marble on the walls and on the floor with huge pillars leading down a central hallway. At the end of the hall, the room opened to a much larger space. It was clear that this was the top floor. Even though they’d stopped two levels below what was supposed to be the penthouse level, this floor had been retrofitted to become a two-story suite. The hallway reached up almost to blackness, but as Liam craned his neck, he could see the stars through a set of skylights that went the length of the hallway.

  Everything about this place made Liam uneasy. It sung along his skin in a dark melody. This wasn’t a typical penthouse. Magic was here, thick in the air and almost stifling. Eoin, Brodie, and Katina felt it too. They shared hard stares with each other. Patrick too.

  And to confirm his part in all this, Shepard rubbed his arms and wore an uncomfortable grimace on his face.

  Bravo team in position, came a voice over the headset. There were too many for him to know who spoke.

  He stood by Katina. “You feel that, right?”

  She turned to him. “All over the place,” she said. “Like it’s coming at us from all sides and moving around over our heads.”

  Shepard looked to Patrick who only pointed down a hallway. This direction was shared with the others over the headset.

  Alpha Team in position and moving forward.

  Grenier gave a hand signal that Liam figured probably meant move out, so he followed when all of them crouched down and moved toward the end of the hallway and the large open space.

  They passed rooms that looked like conference rooms, a small hallway, and closed doors. They didn’t stop at any of those places to check, which only made Liam more nervous. He felt like they should probably look into every nook and cranny of this place. Yet they continued to move forward until Patrick held up a hand to signal a stop. After checking the room, half of the team moved in.

  We got someone, came the voice over the comms. Liam wasn’t sure who it was or in what direction.

  “Where?” Liam said aloud.

  North side, down the hall.

  Liam wasn’t really sure which direction was north, but he followed the flow of footsteps. They found the small hallway, and they turned down it.

  Liam made it to the room. It was a large room, an office with a outsized table on one side and a leather seating group facing a window toward the back. Seated in one of the plush leather chairs, there was a woman. Her back was to them, and she hunched forward, almost as if she was burying her face in her hands.

  The tactical team had their weapons trained on her.

  She was dressed in a short-sleeved shirt from what Liam could see. But it was her hair, the shape of her jawline that he recognized.

  “Aunt Jonie!” Liam pushed his way through, and he made his way to the front of the room. Someone from the team tried to tackle him, but he dodged out of the way and slipped through.

  He ran down the side of the room, ignoring the chatter over the headset. As he got closer, something was wrong.

  Her arm was pale. The hair he recognized from further away was sloughing off to reveal pale, white bald spots.

  The face—his Aunt Jonie’s face, unquestionably hers—turned to him. Even through the gaunt features, the black eyes, this was his aunt, the one who came to his rescue after Walter Yates killed his family then himself. She was the one who sat at his bedside when he slipped, when he sunk so deep into despair. She was the one who was there to pull him back, the one to draw him in and bring him close.

  She was the closest thing he had to a mother. His Aunt Jonie.

  She turned to him and opened her mouth to reveal the sharp, needle-point teeth. Her black eyes filled with rage.

  “Aunt Jonie, it’s me,” Liam said, weak.

  There was no recognition. Gone was the love that he’d longed to see.

  She screeched, the horrible sound of the Fae-touched. The team at the back of the room moved and shouted for Liam to get back.

  But Liam was rooted to his spot. He didn’t want to believe what he was seeing. It was easier to not believe it, to simply shut it out as if he was a spectator of some different reality.

  She leapt from the chair, onto a marble-top coffee table, and she crouched to face him. He almost lost his will to stand.

  “Oh God, Aunt Jonie, no.”

  And she spoke to him. “Niftan kak tel anan,” she said.

  Liam had no idea what she was saying. It was a language similar to what he’d heard when Eoin or one of the others cast some sort of spell. Perhaps the language of the Fae.

  “Aunt Jonie, it’s me,” Liam said again. He didn’t want to give up. He hoped it would work as in fiction, the sound of his voice awakening his aunt’s trapped soul, urging her to fight.

  She only opened her mouth wide, wider than seemed possible for a human mouth, and she hissed. She bent low to the ground, her hands on the marble tabletop, her legs bent at a weird, wide angle like she was ready to leap at him.

  “Kattan il nakh tartoum, nik tal a’Moriggun!” She shouted it at him, and she leapt into the air. And Liam remained where he was, ready to be taken.

  The screech that filled the room as his aunt leapt up into the air made the sound of the gunfire seem distant.

  Her scream turned to pain, and her trajectory at Liam was thrown off by how she jerked when the high-capacity rounds entered her body. She still hit Liam at an angle.

  She reeled up over him and lifted a clawed hand into the air. Liam stared up at her twisted face, a face that once held only love and happiness for him, turned to rage and hatred. He knew it then: His aunt was gone.

  A blast hit his aunt in the chest, and that time, unlike the gunfire, she was thrown hard against the wall. Liam turned to see Katina standing there, arms out in front of her. Her hand
s radiated the power she’d called to her.

  Another flow of power hit his fae-touched aunt from a different direction. This time from Eoin. A third came at her from Brodie. Liam screamed.

  He remained there on the floor where he’d been thrown. He watched as his aunt became consumed by the fire of magic and the gunfire. Before long, her body no longer moved, her screams silenced.

  And Liam could only watch her fall.

  Thirty-Four

  Chicago, IL - Tellus, Inc. Headquarters

  Zach lowered his weapon when the thing stopped moving. He was still worried that it would come after them, but it looked dead.

  “What the fuck was that?” One of the tactical team, a man named Thibideau, according to his vest.

  “A fae-touched.” Katina said. She stood with her hands together, almost like she was praying, but aimed. Zach understood now why she and the others didn’t feel the need to arm up when the rest of them were getting weapons.

  But fae-touched was a term he hadn’t heard before.

  “No!” Thibideau shouted. “The shit you did.” He had his gun aimed at Katina, and that was when Zach realized it could potentially go bad for them. Katina seemed to notice it too, and she turned her attention to the guy and held up her hands, this time in a gesture to show she was unarmed.

  “You were told that there was a lot you guys hadn’t seen before.” She stood straight. “You were warned.”

  Zach felt a little vindicated too. After what he’d seen, the fire or whatever it was that shot out from the three newcomers, Eoin, Katina, and Brodie, he knew then for sure that the sword he’d seen from Stephen Penrose wasn’t some sign of his impending insanity. It was, in fact, something he’d only scratched the surface of, even as he came to the slow realization that he was somehow involved in it all. How, though, he wasn’t sure.

  “Lower your weapon,” Zach said to Thibideau. “She’s on our side, remember?”

  “I never seen that kind of firepower before,” Thibideau said. He still hadn’t decided that lowering his gun was a good idea. The other tactical team guys were taking it all in stride. They still had their guns, and they weren’t in a hurry to crowd around either of the three who shot magical fire, but at least they weren’t ready to pull a trigger.