Homecoming: An Alastair Stone Urban Fantasy Novel (Alastair Stone Chronicles Book 23)

by R. L. King

  Amused, he let his thoughts wander even farther afield. Whitworth had said his own blood wasn’t potent enough to power whatever he’d been trying to do, and that Stone’s had been what caused the breakthrough. He wondered what kind of change Harrison’s blood could bring about. The guy obviously had power to spare—how else could he do the things he did so effortlessly? How else could he have survived a point-blank shot to the—

  Bloody. Hell.

  He must have made some physical indication of his sudden shock, because Harrison glanced at him for the first time. “Is something wrong, Dr. Stone?”

  “No. I…” He took a deep breath, wondering if he wanted to drop down this particular rabbit hole on this road out in the middle of nowhere. He decided he’d never get a better opportunity—he currently had Harrison as a captive audience, and that didn’t happen often. “Mr. Harrison…may I ask you what might be an exceedingly odd question?”

  “You may ask. I don’t guarantee an answer.”

  It was about as good a reply as he had a right to expect.

  “I…was thinking back to when we first met. When we closed the portal outside Las Vegas.”

  “Yes?”

  “Nakamura shot you point-blank. In the chest.”

  “Yes.”

  “Verity and I tried to heal you, but I’m rubbish at healing and she was only starting out at the time. There’s no way in hell we could have patched you up enough for you to recover that fast.”

  “Probably true.” Harrison was watching the road again. His expression, as was almost always the case, was unreadable.

  “And then, what happened on Calanar, when we rescued you from the Talented. It was the same sort of thing. You should have died, but you didn’t.”

  “Yes, probably.”

  Stone watched the road again. It stretched in front of them, flat and hot, dotted with dusty fields on both sides. The truck practically flew, passing lumbering semis. Even the other, smaller vehicles seemed to be dawdling by comparison. “Look—I’m curious. Of course I am. I have been since I first saw what you did. But I didn’t ask because I know you don’t like people poking their noses into your business. I respect that. I’m the same way.”

  Harrison didn’t answer.

  Here goes. “But…I’m starting to think it might be my business.”

  “I don’t understand.” Still Harrison didn’t look at him.

  “Look…” He shifted in his seat, uncharacteristically uncomfortable. As soon as he said it, it would be out there. He couldn’t pull it back or unsay it. “I…I wonder if something didn’t happen to me on Calanar.”

  “Something?”

  “Out in the Wastes, when we encountered the mana storm.” He spread his hands. “I got impaled on that spike. I saw the size of it, before I passed out. I saw where it was poking through. There’s no way I should have survived that. But I also…felt something.”

  Harrison glanced his way again, then back out the window.

  “It wasn’t just pain—though there was plenty of that too. I felt…a strange sort of energy. Like some kind of powerful force was going through my body. I didn’t think much of it at the time, because your healer was bloody good, and so was Tanissa. I figured your people must have had some sort of magical skill or technology I don’t have access to on Earth.”

  “I am certain they do.”

  Stone clenched his fists in his lap. “Yes…and if that had been all of it, I probably would have gone on believing that. But since then…other things have happened. Things I can’t explain.” This time, he didn’t give Harrison the chance for a monosyllabic reply, but pressed on before he lost his nerve. “A couple of years ago, not long after I returned from Calanar, an enemy poisoned my drink with an alchemical mixture. She was trying to kill me, no doubt about it. The stuff was essentially magical drain cleaner. It should have destroyed me from the inside out. But…it didn’t.”

  This time, Harrison’s sideways glance lasted a second longer, and his eyebrow crept up again. “Indeed.”

  Stone gave a bitter little chuckle. He wondered what Harrison and Stefan Kolinsky would think of each other. They could have eyebrow-raising contests and see who could produce the best deadpan expression.

  “Yes. But even then, I tried to rationalize it. It happened while I was performing with a little band I’ve got with some other professors at the University. Verity was there, and she got to me nearly instantly. Her healing powers had significantly improved by then—she’s amazing at it, and I’m not just saying that because she was my apprentice. So I decided she must have got to me quickly enough to deal with the worst of the problem before they packed me off to the hospital. But still, I began to wonder.”

  The silence stretched for a couple more miles. The truck flew past a semi hauling some kind of livestock, and the pungent, unpleasant smell came in through the air-conditioning vents.

  “I wondered,” Stone continued as the brief stench cleared, “but not too hard. I had no idea what might be going on—or even if anything was going on. Life went on, and the situation didn’t come up again. Until last month.”

  Harrison said nothing, but Stone was certain he had the man’s full attention now.

  “I was helping my friend—Verity’s brother Jason, who’s a private investigator now—look into a missing-child case. I won’t bore you with the details, but it turned out to have more than a bit of magic involved. I went to speak to one of the people connected with it…and when I returned to my car, someone hit me over the head.” He turned a little in his seat so he could look at Harrison’s sharp, severe profile. “They buried me alive, Mr. Harrison. For several days, in fact.”

  Harrison’s hand tightened almost imperceptibly on the steering wheel. “I see.”

  “Did you hear me? They either thought I was dead—and apparently from the look of the injury, I should have been—or they didn’t care because they knew burying me would finish the job. I woke up with my coat over my face, under a good foot of topsoil. If they’d gone deeper, I’m not sure how things would have turned out. As it was, I managed to dig myself free. I was a bit of a mess for a while, but I managed to contact my friends, who came to retrieve me.” He took a deep breath. “Mr. Harrison…a week later I was fine. Without magical healing. Without magical intervention of any kind. I had a bad headache and my brain was a bit scrambled for a couple of days afterward, but aside from that, I was fine. No lingering effects. Nothing.” His voice rose, and he lowered it. His heart pounded faster.

  Harrison said nothing.

  Stone swallowed, taking deep breaths to get his heartbeat back under control. “Do you have anything to say? Have you got any idea what might be going on? Did I…somehow pick up a case of whatever you’ve got?”

  There was a long pause. “I don’t know, Dr. Stone.”

  “You don’t know?” Stone twisted in his seat again, unable to keep the astonishment from his voice. “How can you not know? Obviously there’s something going on with you—something that makes it difficult or impossible for you to be killed.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you don’t know how you got it?” He narrowed his eyes. “Were you just…what…born like that? You told me once that you’re half-Calanarian, but obviously everybody on Calanar isn’t like you. I saw plenty of people die—magical and non-magical alike. You’re the only outlier. And you don’t know why?”

  “I do not.” Harrison’s voice was soft and even, but Stone got the impression of something behind it.

  “So…you didn’t get impaled on a crystal spike in the middle of a manastorm? You didn’t have some unexplained encounter with powerful magic?”

  “I have had many encounters with powerful magic. But none that stands out in the same way you describe.”

  Stone sensed he had more to say, so he remained silent.

  The truck blew past several more cars, including a silver-and-black Colorado Highway Patrol vehicle that didn’t appear to notice them. Almost a minute passed, during
which time Harrison’s gaze remained fixed straight ahead.

  “So…” Stone said slowly, “I’m not wrong, am I? You are impossible to kill.”

  “I don’t know. I am not sure it’s possible to answer that question. I haven’t voluntarily tested it.”

  “Yes…I haven’t either. I’ve got no idea how it works, or what its limitations are. Hell, I don’t even know if it’s permanent, or if it will wear off eventually. I suppose if it is true, the only reasonable thing to do is…nothing. Go on as I have before, with the idea that it might help me out of a tight spot at some point.” He snorted. “You realize how hard that is for me, as a scientist. I want to study it. But I don’t fancy using myself as a guinea pig.”

  Harrison didn’t answer, but Stone could tell he was still listening.

  “Could I ask you another question you probably won’t answer?”

  “You may always ask, Dr. Stone.”

  “How did you discover it? Obviously, something must have happened—something like what happened to me, where you should have died but didn’t.”

  The silence stretched out again, so long Stone was certain Harrison was not only not going to answer, but he wasn’t even going to acknowledge the question. He wondered if he’d finally managed to offend the man.

  “All right, then—sorry. I suppose I overstepped—”

  “I attempted suicide.”

  Stone jerked his head up, shocked. “Bloody hell.” He glanced over; Harrison was still staring straight ahead, watching the road.

  “You…tried to kill yourself, and it didn’t work? And you’re sure you didn’t—” What? Botch it? Not go far enough?

  “There was little ambiguity about it, Dr. Stone. I shot myself in the head.”

  An electric jolt shot up Stone’s spine. “Bloody hell,” he said again. If asked to name the person he least expected ever to try to blow his brains out, Harrison would have been high up the list.

  He wondered if he should keep going, but while Harrison hardly seemed relaxed, neither did he seem hostile. “When…was this?”

  “Some time ago.”

  A sudden insight struck Stone. “Wait a moment…did this have anything to do with you discovering you had magic? I remember when I was on Calanar, you told me you didn’t learn you had it until you were much older…in your late thirties, if I recall correctly.”

  “Thirty-seven. And yes, the two were related.”

  Stone focused on the road. He had so many questions he wanted to ask, but already felt like he was pushing his luck. “All right,” he said at last. “I won’t pry into your past—it’s obviously none of my concern. I’ll stick with the bits we seem to have in common.” When Harrison didn’t respond, he said, “Do you think what…well, what you did…and the manifestation of this…I don’t even know what to call it. Ability? Power? Whatever it is, do you think your attempt was the beginning of it?”

  “I doubt it, but there is no way to be certain.”

  Stone stopped himself before he asked the next question that popped into his head: How did trying to kill yourself and failing to die lead to you learning you had magic? Instead, he sighed. “So there you go, I guess. You haven’t got a clue about how this happened to you, and I…well, I sort of think I do—the crystal spike and the manastorm seem like a reasonable guess, since magic is so unpredictable in the Wastes—but I can’t be sure either. And I haven’t even got any idea how I might test it. Not exactly the standard sort of experiment.”

  “No,” Harrison agreed.

  Stone glanced at him again. Something had changed in his nearly unreadable expression. Shifting to magical sight revealed his eerie black-and-ultraviolet aura looked calm and even, but Stone got the impression no more answers on the topic would be easily forthcoming.

  “Okay,” he said. “I get it. Enough questions. I guess I’ll have to sort this out on my own. Suppose we talk about your plan for getting the Traveler out of this...facility without killing anyone.”

  Harrison’s posture relaxed infinitesimally, and his grip on the steering wheel loosened just as minimally. “I don’t expect it will be difficult.”

  “You just expect to waltz in there, grab her, and take her out the front door?”

  “Of course not.”

  “What, then?” Once again, Stone remembered the scene at the abandoned military base outside Las Vegas. Harrison had, with no apparent regret, killed a squad of twelve Evil-possessed survivalists with no more effort than another man might brush an annoying insect from his face. Once again, he wondered if getting the man involved might not have been the wisest idea.

  “To begin, we need not leave through the front door—or any door.”

  “So…you’re planning to grab her and pop back to Calanar.”

  “Yes.”

  “You can do that from anywhere?”

  “Yes. Returning to the Nexus is significantly more straightforward than traveling to any given location here.”

  “So all we’ve got to do is get in.” That was at least a partial relief. Less chance of encountering resistance.

  “Yes. And find her, obviously. My sources could not pinpoint her location precisely.”

  “How do you propose we do that?”

  Harrison indicated the leather bag he’d tossed in the back seat. “Once we are in closer proximity, I have a device that should prove helpful.”

  Stone tilted his head. “A device. You mean—what, a sort of Traveler detector?”

  “Yes.”

  “You whipped that up during the few hours you were away? I can’t imagine it’s the sort of thing you keep around the place just in case.”

  Harrison said nothing.

  Then Stone got it. “Ah—you were gone more than a few hours, weren’t you?” He’d almost forgotten his surprise when he returned home after spending three months on Calanar and discovered he’d only been away for three days.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know who it is? Did you find her people?”

  “No, but I did speak with some other Travelers, who have promised to contact the other bands until they locate hers.”

  “I see.” Once more, Stone wanted to ask so many questions, but trying to get information out of Harrison was like trying to coax a bear out of a cave. You might succeed, but you might not be pleased with the reception you got when it emerged.

  He subsided back to silence, leaning back into the soft leather of his seat and staring moodily out the window.

  His phone dinged, indicating a new text.

  Glancing sideways to see whether Harrison had reacted, he pulled it out.

  Hey Doc, you there?

  He smiled. Just the thing to take his mind off the uncomfortable, extended periods of silence. Good afternoon. How are you today?

  Eh, could be better, but okay. Picked up a nail in my tire, so I’m in this little town called Alturas getting it fixed.

  Everything all right?

  Oh, yeah. Just inconvenient. I was hoping to get further today. But if they can fix it soon, I should be home tomorrow night. You still in Vegas?

  No. I’m out in the middle of the great bugger-all. Won’t tell you precisely where, but it involves a lot of dust, large trucks, and cows.

  Where’s you-know-who? Did you guys rescue the you-know-what?

  He’s right here next to me. You might be amused to discover his driving makes mine look positively matronly by comparison.

  You guys are driving? How…normal. Road trip! But that’s where you’re going? To find ET?

  I can neither confirm nor deny that.

  Yeah, yeah. Well, be careful. Enjoy the road trip. I’m trying to picture you guys wearing trucker hats, stopping for Ding-Dongs and beef jerky at some janky convenience store.

  Stone flicked a glance sideways again, chuckling at the thought of Trevor Harrison anywhere near a trucker hat. Or a Ding-Dong. Talk to you soon.

  He slipped the phone back in his pocket. “Verity,” he told Harrison. “She’s gone off on a
sort of journey of discovery. Been knocking around the country for the last month or so. I get updates periodically.”

  Harrison merely nodded.

  All right, then. Man’s a regular Chatty Cathy, he is.

  They continued driving for nearly three more hours, during which time the scenery didn’t change much. To his surprise Stone found himself dozing, his head against the chilly side window. Harrison kept the air conditioning at a frigid level, effectively blocking out the heat, and Stone had no objection. He rarely slept in vehicles unless he was exhausted; usually, riding in one while somebody else was driving made him uncomfortable because he didn’t trust their skills. Jason was one of the few who didn’t cause this reaction, and apparently Harrison was another.

  Stone chuckled. Can’t imagine why. A couple of powerful mages who also may or may not be immortal—what could possibly go wrong?

  Harrison shot a quick look at him, but didn’t say anything.

  “Sorry…sorry. Didn’t mean to drop off on you. Just thinking. I suppose that’s why you’re such a daredevil, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Stone shrugged. “Well, if it’s true—if no matter what you do, you can’t be killed, that might lead to a certain…disregard for personal safety, yes?”

  Harrison was looking at the road again, but Stone didn’t miss a tiny, wolfish half-smile. “I haven’t changed, Dr. Stone.”

  “Ah…so you’ve always been this way.” Stone grinned. “I seem to attract people like that, for whatever reason. My son’s magic teacher, for instance. Those two are probably off…I don’t know…ski-jumping with rockets attached to their boots, or deep-sea diving with great white sharks or something.”

  “Your son?”

  Ah. Right. The last time he’d seen Harrison, he hadn’t even met Ian yet. Apparently Harrison hadn’t been keeping tabs on him, which was something of a relief. “Long story. We didn’t discover each other until early last year. He’s twenty now, and he’s got serious magical potential. His teacher is…unusual. You might like him, though I suspect he’s probably a bit hedonistic for your tastes.”