Gathering Storm: An Alastair Stone Urban Fantasy Novel (Alastair Stone Chronicles Book 17)

by R. L. King

  Gathering Storm

  Alastair Stone Chronicles Book Seventeen

  R. L. King

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Don’t miss Alastair Stone’s next adventure!

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  Books by R. L. King

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2019 by R. L. King

  Gathering Storm: Alastair Stone Chronicles Book Seventeen

  First Edition, March 2019

  Edited by John Helfers

  Cover Art by Streetlight Graphics

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people, except by agreement with the vendor of the book. If you would like to share this book with another person, please use the proper avenues. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  1

  If anyone had told Alastair Stone at the beginning of the year that he’d be sitting at his desk during his University office hour worrying about his son, he’d have laughed at them.

  Or called them mad.

  Or possibly both.

  Parenthood had always been something Stone didn’t even think about. It was something that happened to other people—like bowling, or monster truck rallies. The idea of being a father, even to a nineteen-year-old son he’d known nothing about until last month, would have struck him in much the same way as someone suggesting he move into a doublewide in the Amish country and take up woodcarving: in other words, something so foreign to his entire worldview as to be completely out of the question.

  Right now, he should already have left for lunch. He had a meeting in less than an hour, which meant going off campus wasn’t an option. If he wanted something, he’d have to brave the crowded lunch-hour rush at one of the University’s many eateries, and he wasn’t sure it was worth it at this point. As almost always happened when his mind was working overtime, his appetite had deserted him.

  Someone knocked on his door. Damn—probably some student with a question, which meant the decision about whether to even give lunch a try would be taken out of his hands. “Yes, come in,” he called, making no effort to hide his brisk impatience.

  “Hey, Doc.” Verity Thayer appeared in the doorway, wearing her familiar black leather jacket and jeans. She eyed him critically. “You forgot we were going to lunch today, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, bugger.” He glanced at his calendar: there it was, right there in front of him. Lunch with V., noon. “I’m sorry, Verity. It completely slipped my mind.”

  “You know absent-minded professors mostly happen in the movies, right?”

  “You’d be surprised,” he said dryly, getting up. “We’ve still got time, but we’ll have to make it a bit quick. I’ve got a meeting coming up.”

  “It’s okay. Quick’s fine.” She studied him, her gaze going fuzzy as she shifted to magical sight. “You’ve got something on your mind, and I don’t think it’s a meeting. It’s Ian, isn’t it?”

  She always had been perceptive—it was one of the things he admired most about her, but there was no denying it could get inconvenient sometimes. “I suppose it is.”

  “When did he contact you last?” She fell into step next to him as they left the office.

  “Last week.”

  “From where?”

  “Prague. He’s met up with a collection of young mages over there. Apparently there’s quite the magical party circuit around the area.”

  She chuckled. “Maybe you shouldn’t have shown him the portals quite yet.”

  “Eh, it would have happened eventually. Best he gets it out of his system, I suppose.”

  “You still haven’t taken him to England, have you?”

  “Not yet. I told Aubrey and he’s desperate to meet Ian, but we haven’t managed to get our schedules sorted yet.”

  She squeezed his hand. “It’ll happen, Doc. Don’t worry. I know this is all pretty chaotic for you, but maybe a little chaos is a good thing. At least the kind that isn’t trying to kill you for a change.”

  Stone supposed she was right. He hadn’t expected Ian would settle down in his old townhouse in downtown Palo Alto, get a job, and begin his magical studies right away. That was what he’d hoped would happen, but he’d quickly discovered his son was far too restless for such a settled life. As soon as Stone had taken him to A Passage to India and instructed him in how to use the portals to travel via the Overworld, his aura had lit up.

  “You mean I can fly all over the world in minutes, just by going through these things?” he’d asked, looking at the shifting, pastel-colored doorway in the restaurant’s storeroom with the wide-eyed wonder of a kid on Christmas morning.

  “Well, anywhere the public portals point. You can’t access the private ones without permission, but there are a number of public ones all over the globe. As long as you’re careful about the mundane authorities discovering you someplace you’re not supposed to be, there’s no reason you can’t go where you like.”

  “I’ve always wanted to see the world.” Ian gazed at the portal as if tempted to leap through at that moment. “When I was a kid, Mom didn’t have enough money. And Bobby—well, he didn’t see the point of it. Everybody kissed his ass in Winthrop, so why go anywhere else?”

  “What about your magic training? You said you wanted to keep up your studies. I just need some time to find you the proper teacher—”

  “That can wait, can’t it? I mean, it’s waited this long, and I’ve already got two years done. I’ll catch up, right?”

  Stone had no doubt he would. His test results, after he’d had finally stopped pretending to have some kind of magical learning disability, had been impressive. And technically, since he started at barely seventeen, he was a year ahead of where he normally would have been. “It’s up to you. You�
�re old enough to make your own decisions. Just tell me what you want to do, and I’ll help you make it happen.”

  “That’s just it—I don’t know what I want to do yet. This is the first time in my life where I’m free to explore. Are you cool with me taking some time to do that before I make up my mind?”

  “Of course.” What could he say? Ian was an adult—and mostly, Stone was glad of that because it freed him from the obligation of being responsible for raising another human. But the downside was that his son had been living on his own ever since he’d fled his abusive stepfather and weak-willed mother to seek his dubious fortune in Los Angeles at sixteen. Stone suspected trying to steer him in any particular direction would likely do nothing but cause friction between the two of them.

  So, instead he’d set up a comfortable bank account for Ian and let him go. “I’m not going to support you forever,” he told him. “At some point, you’ll need to find something to do, whether it’s continuing your apprenticeship, going to University, or getting a job. But for now—go have fun, find yourself, do whatever makes you happy. But do come back now and then, and stay in touch. I’ll see about finding you a teacher if that’s the way you decide to go.”

  Ian had taken his words to heart, and immediately made plans to set off on a portal-based world tour. True to his word, he’d sent Stone periodic updates, either by phone, text, or even an occasional postcard, but every time Stone had asked him when he planned to return, he’d said he didn’t know yet.

  Verity walked next to him, content in the silence until they reached one of the small eateries halfway between his office and his classroom. They grabbed sandwiches and sat down at a little table on the patio. It was a brisk spring day, not too cold, but most of the other customers had still opted to sit inside.

  “So,” she said, “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah.” She seemed unsettled, and her aura supported it. “You know Scuro’s dad does the same thing he does, right? That’s where he learned it?”

  “Yes.” They’d discovered that recently, when the magical tattoo artist had approached his estranged father for information about Trin Blackburn’s animated ink. “So?”

  “Well…his dad’s decided to cut back. He wants to focus on some other things he’s been putting off.”

  “Er…good for him, I suppose.” Stone didn’t see where she was going with this.

  “Yeah. But even though Scuro and his dad don’t really get along all that well, Scuro’s the only one in the family who inherited the magical-tattooing talent. So that means a lot of his dad’s customers will be switching to Scuro.”

  Stone took a sip of coffee, watching a group of chattering students walk by. “Yes, and—?”

  She stared at her sandwich. “Well…with all that extra business, he’s going to need more help. He’s really come to rely on my healing. It makes the whole process a lot faster and less painful, and his customers have been asking for it.” She sighed. “He’s offered me a job. Just part-time, but regular. I’d only have to work two nights a week, and he’ll give me a big raise. A seriously big raise. Like…enough that I could afford a place in San Francisco.”

  Ah. So that was where she was going with this. Stone glanced at his watch. He’d have to leave soon, but he couldn’t bail on Verity now. “So…you want to move to San Francisco.”

  “Yeah, I’m thinking about it.” She still didn’t meet his gaze. “It makes sense—I’d be closer to Scuro’s shop, and Kyla, and Hezzie. I’ve been making a lot of headway with the alchemy stuff, and it would be a lot easier to get some regular practice in if I was closer. But…it would mean being further away from Jason. And you.”

  “Have you talked to Jason about it yet?”

  “No. It’s only come up in the past week or so. One of the apartments in Hezzie’s building is opening up. It’s not the best end of town, but the place is nice, and it’s bigger than the one down here. I could have my own alchemy setup. She said she’d help me with that.” She looked up at him. “So…what do you think?”

  “Why are you asking me what I think?”

  “Because I want to know. It affects you too. We probably wouldn’t be able to see as much of each other.”

  Stone didn’t point out that they didn’t see that much of each other now—though their unconventional relationship remained as passionate as ever when they spent the night together, their mismatched schedules meant that only happened two or three times a month. He chuckled. “It’s not as if you’re moving to New York or anything.”

  “No, but…you know as well as I do that it’ll make a difference. There’s no portal in San Francisco.”

  He hated to see her looking so conflicted. “That’s true…on both counts. But it’s hardly insurmountable. Mundanes commute from San Francisco to Palo Alto every day. If that’s what you truly want to do, we’ll manage.”

  She took a bite, swallowed, and sighed. “You took that a lot better than I expected. I wonder if Jason will too.”

  “Doesn’t matter, does it? He’s got his own life, and you’ve got yours. We’re hardly all joined at the hip these days.”

  “You don’t know much about overprotective older brothers, do you?” Her eyes glittered, and she shot him a crooked smile.

  “Haven’t had the pleasure, no.”

  She finished her sandwich and wadded the wrapper. “Anyway, it’s not happening overnight. Hezzie just found out her neighbor’s moving out in a month, so I’ve got a little time to make up my mind. And it’s not like I couldn’t take the job without moving—I could crash at Kyla’s when I’m working. But this would make it a lot easier.”

  Stone leaned forward and touched her arm. “You don’t have to convince me of anything, Verity. You’re not my apprentice anymore. You’ve got to do what’s best for you.”

  “Yeah…” She let that trail off and grabbed her bag. “Anyway, let’s talk about something else before you have to go, okay? I saw something I thought you might like.” She pulled a folded newspaper out and pushed it across the table toward him, eyes twinkling with mischief.

  Stone scanned it. She often showed him strange articles either she or Jason had found, usually amusing crackpot pieces about bat boys, mysterious bigfoot monsters, or other fanciful supernatural beasts. Most were from publications he was familiar with that got their “stories” from the reporters’ fertile imaginations and relied on the gullible for their subscriber base.

  This one was different. It was on a half-page torn from a paper he’d never heard of from some nowhere town in the Midwest, and the story was a small one, barely three column inches instead of the usual sensationalistic splash complete with Photoshopped image.

  He read through it quickly. It didn’t give a lot of details, but simply mentioned that a group of young people showed no ill effects several days after a series of bizarre events they experienced at a party held in an abandoned paper mill on the outskirts of the town.

  “Interesting…” Stone murmured. “They reported feelings of being out of their bodies, sightings of ‘ghosts,’ and an overwhelming sense of terror.” He tossed it back on the table with a shrug. “They probably all went out there and got good and high. Where did you get this?”

  “Tiffany from the coffee shop’s cousin sent it to her. She’s friends with one of the people involved. Tiff showed it to me because she knows I’m into that ‘weird shit,’ as she calls it.” She picked it up and pointed at it. “The really weird thing, according to Tiff’s cousin, is that this happened a couple weeks ago, and already everybody involved barely remembers it, even though they were all seriously freaked out at the time.”

  “Hmm.”

  She grinned. “You don’t sound very interested. I mean, it’s not Bat Boy or anything, but I thought I’d at least get more than a ‘hmm.’”

  Stone snapped back to attention. “I’m sorry, Verity. I’m afraid I’m a bit preoccupied right now, between the meeting and Ian.”


  “It’s fine. You’re right—it’s probably nothing.” She shoved the clipping back across the table toward him. “You can keep it for your collection, anyway.” She finished her sandwich and stood. “I’ll let you get going now, so you’re not late.”

  “Want to get together later tonight? There’s a new Thai place in Menlo Park I’ve been meaning to try.”

  She looked rueful. “Can’t. Scuro’s got a big job tonight so I need to head back up. Maybe later this week?”

  “Yes—of course. That’s fine.”

  She bent and brushed a quick kiss across his lips. “See you soon.”

  Stone slipped the clipping into his coat pocket and watched her go. By the time he got up and hurried off to his meeting, he’d already forgotten about it.

  2

  Stone didn’t get home until after nine that night. He pushed open the door to find Raider waiting for him, eyeing him in that accusatory, “you realize you haven’t fed me in days, right?” way, even though he had full dishes on all three levels of the house.

  “You’re not fooling anyone, you know,” he muttered, tossing the bag from the Dragon Garden on the table. He hadn’t bothered going to the new Thai place—it hadn’t seemed worth the effort to drive all the way to Menlo Park just for takeaway. “And you’re not getting any of this—it’s spicy, and I don’t want to deal with the aftermath of whatever digestive shenanigans it might cause.”