by R. L. King
“No. And no lights on inside the house, either. You don’t think they already went to bed, do you?”
Jason glanced at his watch. “This early? No way.”
Verity hurried up to the door and knocked. “Doc? You in there? Ian?”
No reply.
Jason came up next to her, leaning close to peer in through one of the windows. “I don’t think anybody’s in there.”
“I don’t want to break in, but what if—”
“Let’s go around the back. Maybe there’s a bigger window and we can see more inside.”
They hurried around the cabin. Behind it a gentle, tree-dotted slope stretched downward, and they could hear the far-off crash of the waves against the shore. Verity and Jason both quickly peered in through the cabin’s rear windows, but even magical sight revealed nothing. “Where are they?” Verity demanded. “It’s a little late to go on a hike.”
“The town’s too far to go without the car.”
“You think maybe one of them got hurt, and they had to—” Idly, Verity turned toward the sound of the waves, switching on magical sight almost by force of habit. Not expecting to see anything beyond the faint green auras of the trees, she started when the two bright, familiar auras sprang into view at the foot of the slope. One of them, Ian’s silver and purple, flashed and rocked with turmoil. She gripped Jason’s arm. “Jason!” she whispered. “There they—”
As she watched in horror, too far way to do anything about it, a blast of crackling energy shot through the air and slammed into the other figure—Stone. Even from where she stood she couldn’t miss the impact, nor the bright red flash. And then Stone was gone, plummeting over the edge and out of view.
Ian screamed into the sky. His aura lit up now, red waves crashing over it like the breaking unseen sea below. He made no effort to go after Stone, but merely stood, rigid and trembling, at the edge of the drop.
“No!” Verity shrieked. Without waiting for Jason, she took off running down the slope.
“V! Wait! What the hell—” And then he was pounding after her.
“Doc!” Verity yelled as she drew closer. “Doc!”
Ian didn’t even turn to face them. He remained at the edge of the drop-off, crouched with his hands on his knees, back shaking and aura in chaos.
Verity stopped several feet behind him, already preparing a spell. “Ian! Get away from—”
Jason had pulled his gun from his jacket, and was now pointing it at the boy. “Ian!” he boomed. “Back up and step away from there. Now!”
Ian still didn’t even seem to notice them. He remained still, his entire posture radiating stress, confusion, and despair visible even to the mundane eye.
Verity edged closer to the cliff. Where was Stone? He had to be hurt down there—or even dead. How hard had that blast hit him? How far was the drop? Had he had his shield up? She had to get to him, or—
“Ian!” Jason yelled again. “Back up now or I’ll—”
From somewhere below came a roar of rage.
Verity staggered back, eyes wide, as Stone, wreathed in a glowing magical barrier, rose up above the cliff’s edge. She got a look at his face and shrank back farther: never in her life had she seen such unbridled rage on someone she knew—someone she loved. “Doc—”
Stone didn’t seem to notice the newcomers any more than Ian had. His burning gaze fixed on Ian, he raised his hand and, with another roar, loosed a pulsing bolt of energy.
Verity acted without thought, summoning a fast, desperate shield and throwing it up in front of Ian.
The boy didn’t even try to resist. The bolt hit Verity’s shield and blew it down, throwing him backward with the force of a speeding car and sending him tumbling. He slammed into the fallen tree and lay still.
Stone wasn’t done yet. Still floating, shield still surrounding him, he approached Ian with a single-minded purpose that frightened Verity more than the rage had. His hand glowed once more.
But even through the pain of psychic feedback from the destruction of her shield, Verity saw what he didn’t—or refused to. Even unconscious, Ian’s aura still spun and tumbled with flashing, unhealthy red energy. Something was going on with him. Something wrong. “Doc!” she screamed, running to put herself between Stone and Ian, raising her hands and reforming her shield over the boy. “Stop! Please!”
“Get out of my way, Verity.” Stone’s voice was a soft growl. He didn’t look at her, still fixed firmly on his fallen son.
“Doc! Alastair! Stop!” Her voice shook, almost sobbing now. “Listen to me! Something’s wrong! Something’s wrong with him!”
“Bloody well right something’s wrong with him.” Stone’s tone didn’t soften. “He tried to murder me, and he’s going to pay for that.”
Verity could see him better now. The shield’s glow revealed blood running down his face from a cut on his forehead, and the right side of his coat was shredded and likewise bloody. His eyes still blazed with controlled rage.
“Please! Doc, for God’s sake, listen to me! I don’t think he meant to! I think something’s controlling him!”
For a moment, it seemed Stone still wouldn’t heed her words. The glow around his hand grew brighter, and his burning gaze remained fixed on Ian’s unmoving form. But then something in his expression changed. The glow fizzled, and he slowly dropped to the ground, the shield around him fading.
Verity let her breath out and lowered her hands.
“What the hell is going on?” Jason’s voice came from off to the side. “What just happened?” He still had his gun out, still pointed at Ian, but when he saw the boy wasn’t going to get up, he re-holstered it.
Verity glanced at Stone, who stood where he’d landed, and then ran to drop next to Ian.
“Al—”
Stone ignored Jason. He trudged to where Ian lay. “Can you heal him?” His voice was inflectionless now, dead, all signs of the rage that had gripped him gone.
“Yeah. I think so. Just—let me work.”
Stone and Jason stood silently by as she crouched over him, weaving her magic. When she finally looked up, letting her shoulders slump, both of them were watching her. Neither had spoken during the entire process.
“Will he be all right?” Stone asked.
“Yeah. You didn’t hold back much, though.”
“I didn’t hold back at all. What did you mean, you think something’s controlling him?” Still, his tone showed no emotion. It was as if all the feeling had been drained from him.
Verity closed her eyes. “I was wrong,” she said softly. “I saw it when I was healing him. Nothing’s controlling him—not the way I thought anyway.”
A shadow of the rage returned. Stone glared down at his son. “What, then?”
“He’s under a magical oath. And a pretty powerful one, from the look of it.”
56
“Something’s wrong.”
Blake’s pacing had become stalking. She prowled the room, glaring out past the blinds covering the windows, clenching her fists, pausing to examine the circle again.
Razakal said nothing.
“I’m telling you, I’m right,” she growled. “He’d have called by now. He’s fucked it up. I know he has.”
“You are correct.”
“What?” Blake whirled. All the other times, Razakal either hadn’t responded to her ravings at all, or admonished her to be patient. This was the first time he’d agreed with her. “What the fuck—?”
“Something is indeed wrong.” He sounded calm.
“What is it? How do you know?”
“Sit down.” He indicated a nearby chair.
“Like hell! If something’s wrong, I need to get over there! Maybe there’s still time to—”
“Sit. Down.”
He didn’t raise his voice, but he didn’t have to. She was all too familiar with that tone, and it wasn’t one she could safely ignore. She strode to the chair and dropped onto it, gripping its arms with both hands to keep from clench
ing her fists. “What, then? If something’s wrong, shouldn’t we do something about it?”
“I have been trying to teach you patience during the entire period of our association. I can see you have not learned that lesson as well as I had hoped.”
She glared. “Can you stop being fucking cryptic and explain?” As soon as the words left her mouth, she regretted them. Mindful of how the dark pits of his eyes had begun to glow red, she let her breath out. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. But we’ve been working toward this for so long.”
Razakal’s eyes settled back to unruffled black. “This is indeed a setback. The boy is stronger than either of us suspected, and he has managed to resist your oath’s pull long enough to give Stone the opportunity to retaliate. He has not, however, broken the oath.”
Rage rose inside Blake, but she quelled it. Venting it at Razakal was a fast track to a painful end. “Wait—the kid resisted the oath? But that thing was ironclad. You saw. You watched me put it in place.”
“Apparently it was not as strong as you had thought. But as I said—it is of no matter. Stone will not kill him, and he does not know about the oath. He will try to help the boy, but he won’t be able to do it. And, in time, he will let the boy out of his sight. When that happens, he will return to you.”
“Yeah, and get his ass kicked for failing.” She let out a loud sigh and resisted the urge to launch herself from the chair. “I’m telling you—working with other people—other humans,” she hastily amended with a glance toward him, “is a fucking waste of time. You want something done, you need to do it yourself.”
“You will not punish him. This is a time when you must show me your patience, and your caution. Let him return to you. Reassure him that the failure has not caused irrevocable damage to the plan. I will help you to reinforce the bond so this will not happen again, and we will try again.”
“But Stone—”
“Stone is consumed with guilt over his failure to be present for his son. He will forgive this. He will try to help his son overcome his mental issues.”
Blake closed her eyes, and tightened her grip on the chair. When did Razakal get so fucking patient? What happened to you’d better get on with this now or I’ll claim him tonight? “So what do you want me to do?”
“Remain here. Dismantle the circle and wait for the boy to return to you. We will evaluate our next steps when he is here.”
“You just want me to sit here?” She couldn’t sit still any longer, and began to stalk around again. “What if something else goes wrong? What if he can’t get away? What if Stone kills him?”
“Stone will not kill him. Listen to me. This is an unexpected circumstance, but not an insurmountable one.” His voice took on a warning edge again.
She ignored it. “What if Stone figures out how to make him spill his guts? That damn kid could blow the whole plan!” She looked down at her arms; the intricate tattoos there had turned from their normal black to red, their snakelike tendrils writhing on her skin.
“He will not. Now do as I say. My patience—with you and with him—is not infinite.”
“Fuck.” Blake stood and stalked toward the door. “I need a couple minutes. I’m just going outside.”
“Do as you need to. But do not wait long. We must plan our approach.”
Blake left the house and slammed the door behind her. Outside, she paused, glancing back toward the closed door, wondering if Razakal would come after her for the disrespect. When he did not, she let her shoulders sag and leaned against the wall, pulling a cigarette pack from her pocket. Her hands shook with rage as she lit one.
Despite Razakal’s assurance to the contrary, she was sure everything was going to hell. She only hoped he had some hidden plan to pull this whole operation out of the crapper, because underestimating Stone was a dangerous thing to do.
Inside the house, Razakal regarded the slammed door with an amused smile.
They were so easy to manipulate. A little threat here, a little persuasion there—that was all it took.
He recalled the scene as he’d viewed it through the boy’s eyes—the boy who was already bound and promised to him, regardless of what his minion did or did not do. His minion’s oath didn’t matter. Her foolish vendetta didn’t matter. What mattered was that the boy was his. All that power would be his, in time.
He could wait, though, because he had more prizes in his sights. Why settle for one source of power when he could have three? His minion didn’t understand patience, but that was all right. He would have her soon enough as well.
And best of all, he would have the one called Stone.
Razakal’s smile grew wider. He had thought the boy had power—but that power paled next to his father’s. Everything had changed tonight, when Stone had blasted the boy with a bolt of pure energy. Energy Razakal had never seen before. Energy that came from…somewhere else. He didn’t know where, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t seen it, tasted it, let it wash over him as the blast hit the boy.
That power was something he had to have. Even losing the boy didn’t matter, if he could claim that for his own.
But he didn’t think he’d have to lose the boy—or the minion—if he played this correctly. His minion would obey him. She had to obey him. They were bound, as irrevocably as he and the boy were. Stone was the only variable here.
Razakal rose from his chair and faded from view.
All was going well. As long as his own presence in the game remained hidden, everything else could fail and his own plan would still succeed.
57
Stone stood, numb and astonished, switching his gaze between Verity and Ian, who still lay unconscious between them. “A magical oath?”
Verity nodded soberly. “Yeah. It’s really hard to see—I doubt I would have noticed it when he was awake. But it’s there. And it’s strong.”
For a moment, Stone didn’t know what to say. His brain, normally at its best during crisis situations, felt locked, as if his thoughts couldn’t find their way to his mouth. Someone had put a magical oath on his son? Apparently one that involved trying to kill him? “Who—?” he finally got out.
“I don’t know. I didn’t get that much. I was trying to heal what you did to him.” Her voice held an edge, and she didn’t look at him. “You nearly killed him, Doc.”
“He nearly killed me.” There was no power behind the protest, though. All the rage he’d felt when the blast had slammed into him, as he tumbled over the cliff and barely managed to summon his shield before crashing to the rocks below, had evaporated—but Verity was right. At that moment, through the pain and the anger and the horrified disbelief, he had wanted to kill Ian.
He’d wanted to kill his own son, without even giving him a chance to explain his behavior.
Father of the bloody year, you are.
He put his hand to his forehead, rubbing at the still-bleeding cut there. His left arm hurt—he must have hit it on the way down, before he got the shield up—but he barely noticed the pain. He glanced at Jason, who stood off to the side, watching the scene with an expression that suggested he still wasn’t quite sure what was going on. “What are you two even doing here?”
“I’ll tell you later. It might be related. But we need to get Ian inside.”
“He’ll be all right?”
“Yeah. He’s tough. Help me, okay?”
Stone nodded, still numb. He levitated Ian’s body and trudged back toward the cabin with it floating next to him. Verity and Jason followed. Inside, they settled the boy on his bed. “Can you keep him unconscious until we’ve got this sorted out?”
“Yeah. I already did that—he’ll be out for at least an hour before I have to do anything else.”
“Still, I want to keep an eye on him. Let’s talk in here.”
“I’ll get more chairs,” Jason said, and left the room.
Verity glanced at Ian, then moved to Stone. “Take off your coat,” she said. “And sit down.”
Stone t
ossed his overcoat on the bed and lowered himself into the room’s only current chair. He barely noticed Verity’s healing efforts as she worked over him; instead, he continued staring at Ian. Even unconscious, the boy still looked somehow troubled, as if something bore heavily upon his mind. His silver-and-purple aura was still streaked with shots of red. It didn’t take Stone’s power to see that something was wrong with him, but had any of that been there before? Had he missed it? He’d examined Ian’s aura thoroughly many times during their association, beginning with the initial evaluation and continuing through their magic training sessions, but he’d never seen anything remotely like this. Agitation and frustration, sure, but he’d chalked that up to the boy’s anxiety about his lack of satisfactory magical performance.
Jason returned with two more chairs and plunked them down on either side of Ian’s bed. “Okay. So somebody want to tell me what the hell’s going on here? Somebody put a magical oath on Ian? Like what happened to that guy from Portas Justitiæ?”
“If Verity is correct,” Stone said. “And I must say I hope she is. The alternative is that my son just tried to murder me of his own volition.” Verity had done a good job on him, healing both the cut on his head and the damage to his arm. The only thing left was the blood, and he could deal with that later. Nothing on earth would make him move from this room until he had answers.
“Can you check?” Jason asked Verity. “You know, to be sure? Can you tell who did it?”
“I don’t know if I can tell who did it,” she said, looking at Ian thoughtfully. “Can you, Doc?”
“You’d have a better chance than I would. You’ve always been better at that kind of magic than I am.”
“Can you break the oath?” Jason leaned forward, peering into Ian’s pale face as if expecting something to jump out at him. “Al, you said that was dangerous.”