by R. L. King
Verity took his hands. “Doc…look at me.”
He didn’t want to, but he did it anyway.
Her eyes were big, dark, and fearful. “Does that mean…?”
He squeezed her hands, then let go. “Yes, Verity.” Turning, he trudged toward the doorway again. When he reached it, he stopped. “It means I’m a black mage now. Come on. We should find the portal and get the hell out of here before anyone gets brave enough to come looking for us.”
He didn’t wait to see if she’d follow him. He knew she would.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Two Days Later
Stone looked up from his book when he heard the soft knock on his study door. He’d been staring at the same page for at least the last fifteen minutes, and hadn’t remembered a single line of what he’d been reading. “Yes?”
The door opened slowly, revealing Verity. A moment later, Raider jumped up on his desk and perched on top of the book he’d just put down.
“You okay, Doc? You’ve been up here a long time.”
So many ways to answer that.
“Fine,” was all he said. “Something I can do for you?”
She remained in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. “I thought maybe we could go get some food, if you want. I don’t really feel like cooking tonight.”
He watched her as her gaze traveled around the room, taking in the scene: the scattered papers, piled books, half-empty bottle of scotch with the half-empty glass next to it. Mostly, though, her attention was fixed on him: unkempt, unshaven, slumping in his chair. He shook his head. “Not really hungry. You go on.”
She came in then, and perched on the edge of his old leather sofa. Raider leaped off the desk and settled himself next to her; she focused on petting him for a long time before she finally spoke. “Doc…we need to talk.”
She was right, of course. They did need to talk. About a lot of things. “About what?” was all he asked.
“About what. You’re seriously asking that?”
He took another drink from the glass and said nothing.
“I’m worried about you.”
“You needn’t be.”
She eyed him critically. “You look like a homeless guy. Have you shaved since we got back? I know those are the same clothes you wore yesterday. And this place smells like a bar.”
“Is that what you came in here to talk about?” He closed the book and put it aside, but still didn’t look at her.
They’d gotten back two days ago, after locating the portal at the complex. Nobody bothered them on their way out—in fact, they hadn’t seen a sign of any of the women on their entire trek up from the underground chamber. It turned out the chamber was located below the visitors’ center, hidden behind an illusion in one of the unused conference rooms. From there, all they had to do was get to the portal. Stone hadn’t been sure he wanted to see anyone as they left. Part of him—the part that still surged with power clamoring to be released—hoped Nessa Lennox would show up with a group of her compatriots, trying to stop them.
Most of him hoped they wouldn’t, though. For all the power still thrumming through him, he was tired in a way he didn’t think it was possible to be. It wasn’t a mere physical exhaustion, but one that reached to his core, rendering him unwilling to exert more than a minimal effort for any purpose. He’d simply hit his limit for the number of shocks one man could handle in such a brief amount of time. He had to make sure Verity got home safe—that was the extent of what he could deal with at the moment.
Aubrey, terrified with worry, had intercepted them on their way back to the Surrey house from the cemetery. He’d eyed Stone’s and Verity’s rough brown robes, bare feet, and disturbed appearances, obviously brimming with questions, but one look at Stone’s expression had stopped them unspoken. He’d focused on his duties, making sure they had food and drink, gave Stone a look that suggested his questions would be postponed but not forgotten, and left them alone.
They had departed soon after, pausing only long enough to shower and change clothes. Marta Bellwood, too, didn’t ask questions as they swept through the restaurant on their way out.
Stone spent the next two days largely alone in his study, unable to sleep as he continued trying to process everything that had occurred. He felt guilty about it—Verity had been through a significant ordeal as well and he felt as if he should be trying to comfort her, but this one time he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He tried to seek her out a couple of times, lured by the drone of mindless TV downstairs, but both times he’d aborted the plan and retreated back to his study before he’d come near her. A couple times, he thought he heard her footsteps on the stairs, or a floorboard creak outside his office, but she didn’t knock either.
Essentially, the two of them had spent the last two days with each of them living alone and apart in the same space, neither one wanting to disrupt the other’s solitude. They spoke when necessary, in as few words as possible, and otherwise stayed in their own corners of the house with only a bewildered Raider serving as a connection between them.
Now, though, apparently she’d decided to break her silence. “No,” she said. “That isn’t what I came to talk about. Like I said, I’m worried about you.”
“And as I said, you needn’t be.” He gathered a few of the books and stacked them on the edge of the desk. “I’ve got a lot to think about.”
She stared at her hands. “I’m sorry…” she murmured.
“About what?”
“If I hadn’t met Kathleen and Muriel at the gathering…if I hadn’t been interested in learning about their magic…”
“Verity. Look at me.” Something stabbed at him, rousing him from his torpor; his voice was louder and sharper.
Her gaze came up, reluctantly.
“None of this is your fault,” he said. “The worst of it started when I got the journal from Desmond, telling me what had really happened to my father. That’s what set me to investigating this whole mess. Even if you’d never met them, it would have led me to them eventually.”
She nodded, but it didn’t fool him. “Yeah…Maybe…but—”
“But what?” He hadn’t told her what Canby had told him about their night together—about how the wine had been doped to help determine if the two of them were, euphemistically speaking, “compatible.” He hadn’t thought it would do any good to tell her, especially since he suspected that chapter of their lives might be over before it had barely begun. Certainly it was over for now.
“You came after me, and you…you wouldn’t do what they wanted you to do.”
“No. I wouldn’t.”
She dropped her gaze once more, and when she spoke again, her voice shook. “You…went black. To save me. I’m so sorry…”
He shoved the chair back and hurried to her, settling next to her on the sofa and putting a gentle arm around her trembling shoulders. “Is that what you think this is about?”
She looked up, tears glittering in her eyes. “Isn’t it?”
“No. It isn’t.”
“But—” She took a deep breath. “Your magic—”
“My magic is fine. I’ll just have to find a new way to cope, won’t I?”
“I’m—I’m just thinking of what happened the last time. When you lost your magic before—after Burning Man—”
He closed his eyes, guilt and shame slicing through him. “Verity. Listen to me. Look at me.”
When she did, he took her shoulders and met her gaze head-on. “I want you to know something. Watch my aura to make sure you know I’m telling you the truth.”
She shook her head, even though her magic had returned, just as the women had said, when the drugs had worn off late the previous evening. “I don’t have to do that. I know you wouldn’t lie to me.”
“All right, then. I want you to believe this, because I won’t lie to you.
You’ve no need to worry about any suicidal intentions I might be harboring. I promise you, there aren’t any. I did exactly what I wanted to do. I’m proud of what I did. I’d never have been able to live with myself if I’d…hurt you, or forced myself on you, with or without coercion. Not to mention if I’d been responsible for creating a child whose only purpose was to be murdered. I only had one chance to fix that. I took that chance, and it worked.” He squeezed her shoulders. “Verity, I would gladly have given up my magic completely to prevent that. I didn’t have to do that. This just means I’ll…have to learn some new tricks.”
“But…” She paused, looking down at Raider, who was watching the two of them with confusion. “You didn’t see you back there, Doc. You were—scary. You wanted to kill those women. You wanted to bring down that entire cavern and kill all of them.”
Something inside him clenched at her words. He couldn’t deny them. That was one of the things he’d been thinking a lot about over the last couple of days. Before, he’d always described black magic to his students as a rush, a compulsion, something that felt good to do. That was why it was so addictive, and why white mages who dabbled in it usually ended up compelled by its allure. Why white mages who used it to kill, to ash another human being—like me, now—were irrevocably transformed, unable to go back. A dabbler, given time and iron willpower, could possibly do so, but killing was the point of no return.
He’d described it, but that was all it had been: a description. He’d been like a health teacher who’d never touched drugs trying to explain their appeal and their danger to a classful of high school students. Aside from a few brief experiments, all of them involving rituals, Stone had confined his magical practice to the white side.
Now, though—now he knew. He’d felt the rush, and it had been like nothing he’d ever experienced before. Even now, as the seemingly limitless power he’d siphoned by killing his sister began at last to ebb, he felt the pull—the compulsion to replenish it, to recreate that rush, to feel that power surging through his body again. To feel like he could do anything he wanted to do, and the power would be there to support it. How different it was from white magic, which was all about care and control and balancing resources.
He felt all of that, and he also felt the implications of the knowledge that, if he wanted to continue practicing magic, he’d have to come to terms with these new realities. If he wanted magical power to fuel his spells now, he’d have to get it from other people. And as much as that rush pulled at him, he couldn’t do it again until he was sure he wouldn’t kill or injure anyone.
He wasn’t sure he could do it again at all.
That thought, and others like it, had been a significant portion of the reason the bottle on his desk was not his first.
“I…did want to kill them,” he admitted, because he’d told her he wouldn’t lie to her, and he owed her that much, at least. “I wanted them dead. I wanted to destroy them for what they did to me…to my father…to Desmond. To you. But I didn’t. And I won’t. Not anymore.”
“But how will you—?”
“How will I manage? How will I resist the pull? I’m still working that out. But I promise you, Verity: I’ll be fine. I’ve still got all this family stuff to sort out, and that’s going to take me quite some time, I think. It’s not exactly the sort of thing you can go to a counselor about, is it? But as for the rest—would I have chosen this path? Of course not. But it was worth it.” He pulled her into a tight hug. “Gods, Verity, if you don’t believe anything else I say, believe that: it was worth every bit of it.”
She hugged him back, her chin resting on his shoulder. “Just don’t shut me out, okay? You said you can’t go to a counselor, and maybe that’s true. But you can talk to me. I’ll help you any way I can.”
“I don’t think you can help me with this. I think it’s something I’ll have to work through on my own. I also think it’s best that we keep my new…status…between us right now. My father managed to hide it for twenty years. I think I can do it for a while, at least until I sort out how I’m planning to deal with it.”
He pulled back and kissed her forehead. It was a gentle gesture, more paternal than romantic. “Until then, we’ve both got things to do. You wanted to get your own place—by the way, I’m now in a better position to help you with that than I was before—and I’ve got to get back to work. I’ve been AWOL for so long this quarter I think they’d probably have sacked me by now if I didn’t have tenure.”
He stroked Raider, who’d crawled into his lap. “This is all over, I think. I doubt Nessa Lennox and her lot will bother us anymore—at least not any time soon. I think I’ve proved sufficiently that isn’t a wise idea. So right now, I think the best thing for both of is to try to get life back to normal. Don’t you agree?”
She nodded, looking at her hands again. “Yeah. I do. I think that’s a damn good idea.” She stood, picked up the bottle from Stone’s desk, and put the top back on it. “First step to normal—enough of this. Go clean up and change clothes. We’re going out to dinner. My treat. We can even go to one of those nasty-hot little Mexican places you like if you want.” When he hesitated, she glared at him, mock-stern. “That’s an order, Doc.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he murmured, hauling himself to his feet.
He watched her retreating form as she left the study with the bottle and smiled, just a little. Once again, he remembered Imogen’s words: Everything’s going to change now, isn’t it?
He wouldn’t have chosen this new chapter in his life. He still didn’t know if he’d be able to adapt to it. But ultimately, none of that mattered.
“Doc? You moving?” She’d already reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Yes, yes,” he called back. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll be along.”
He paused at the top of the stairs a moment, looking down, and then turned and headed back down the hall.
He left the bathroom twenty minutes later, showered and shaved with a fluffy white towel wrapped around his waist. As he entered his bedroom to search for fresh clothes, a languid, amused voice called to him from the open doorway. “Hi…”
Startled, he spun, grabbing the towel to make sure it was firmly in place. “Verity! Er—sorry. Running a bit late. I think I might have nodded off in the shower.”
“It’s okay.” She leaned there, smiling, looking more relaxed than she had before, but also a little hesitant.
Still clutching the towel, he tilted his head in question. “Something I can do for you? If you’ll give me a moment to get dressed, I’ll be with you in—”
“I was just thinking,” she said, studying him. “Maybe we could go to dinner…a little later.”
He froze. “Er…”
Her expression sobered, but her eyes still gleamed. “Here’s the thing. What happened back there—I don’t want to think about it. I want to forget it happened. And…I don’t think I’m ready for...” She trailed off.
She didn’t have to finish the thought. He knew exactly what she meant—I’m not ready for anything long-term—which increased his confusion. “I…agree,” he said slowly. “But, then—why—” He indicated her in the doorway.
“Because that’s not what I want to remember,” she said softly. Her gaze never left him. “I want you to know that…whatever happened…whatever caused it…I don’t regret it. Not one bit.”
Again, he tensed. So she hadn’t been as disoriented as he thought. She had heard about the wine. He bowed his head. “I’m sorry, Verity…”
She walked into the room then and stood in front of him, still looking up into his eyes with her steady, unflinching gaze. “I’m not. I’m not sorry at all. I wanted it then—and I want it now. But I want it on our terms. Not somebody else’s. I want you to see I wasn’t lying to you, or pretending. Just this once. For now. Before we go back to normal.” She chuckled. “Or as normal as we ever get, anyway.”
>
Still tense, still feeling as if walking on eggshells, he looked into her eyes, once again noticing the lighter flecks in their dark depths. “Are you sure?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m sure.” With a hint of her old impish grin, she reached out, slowly enough so he could stop her if he chose to, and tweaked his towel loose. It dropped to the floor around his feet.
He pulled her to him, and she came readily into his arms. He still had plenty of power left for magical sight; her aura flared with red waves, but they were unexpectedly unruffled. Passion, yes, but something else, too. Something more.
Oh, yes.
Some things were absolutely worth whatever cost was necessary.
Alastair Stone will return in
Alastair Stone Chronicles Book 13
March 2018
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thanks to my multi-talented audiobook narrator, Will Watt, for helping me out with the locations in this book. It’s quite nice having a real Brit on the team!
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BOOKS BY R. L. KING
The Alastair Stone Chronicles
Stone and a Hard Place
The Forgotten
The Threshold
The Source
Core of Stone
Blood and Stone
Heart of Stone
Flesh and Stone
