House of Stone
Page 41
Sometimes, if she was feeling particularly cheerful, she might stop for a dish of ice cream before heading home, or spend a couple hours at the cinema.
She hadn’t done either of those in a while, though, because she hadn’t felt cheerful in a while. Lately, in fact, she’d been entertaining herself as much with thoughts of sticking her head in the oven or turning the gas on and letting herself drift peacefully away as she did with The Great British Bake-Off and Strictly Come Dancing. It wasn’t as if anyone would miss her. She wasn’t even sure her mother would.
The truth of the matter was, whether she wanted to admit it to herself or not, she didn’t feel there was much point in remaining alive. When she considered what her life might be like in ten years, she couldn’t come up with much that would be different from now. She’d still work at the shop, cook meals in her tiny kitchen (she was good at cooking, but didn’t have the space or the resources to do the thing properly), go to sleep each night in her single bed with its patchwork comforter, and then get up and do it again the next day. The only difference might be that her mother might be dead by then, but judging by the old lady’s stubbornness so far, that hardly seemed something she could take for granted. Given that her mother’s continued existence had been the primary reason Miriam had failed to implement one of her suicide plans thus far (the other reason was fear), she supposed it was a good thing Mum hadn’t shuffled off this mortal coil quite yet.
The worst of it all—and once again, she would die of embarrassment before she’d ever admit it—was that she was fairly sure there would never be any romance in her life. She was a practical woman, and she knew she didn’t have the face, the body, or the temperament for romance, but that didn’t mean she’d have turned it away if it had presented itself at her doorstep. She never told anyone about the little flutters she got while watching the handsome young men on Hollyoaks, because she was sure the other women at the dress shop, not to mention her mother, would merely laugh at her. She almost wished she fancied women, figuring she might have an easier time of it if she did.
In any case, she was quite surprised when a man started appearing in her dreams.
At first she thought nothing of it. Her usual dreams of men were usually more erotic in nature, involving being swept off her feet and ravished in a field of windblown flowers by the likes of Tom Hiddleston or Benedict Cumberbatch, but in this case both the man and the subject matter were at the same time stranger and more…ordinary.
For one thing, the man talked to her.
A lot.
Most of the men in her previous dreams had other things than conversation on their minds.
In the beginning she barely remembered the exchanges, but as time went on they reinforced themselves to the point where she could recall them clearly when she awoke in the morning. The man, who told her his name was James, spoke of their connection, of power, of how unfortunate it was that she was wasting her life. Didn’t she want something better? Didn’t she want to be strong, make the rules, interact with people on her terms instead of slinking along life’s sidelines like a mouse? Didn’t she want to get back at those who’d wronged her? Didn’t she want to be special, rather than a frumpy, forgotten middle-aged spinster living in a backwater flat?
Slowly, she realized she did want those things.
She wanted them more than anything, in fact.
After that, the conversations changed. She could have them, he told her, but only if she followed his instructions to the letter. That was very important. She could have her dream only if she did as he directed.
That Saturday, for the first time in four years, she did go into London but didn’t visit her mother. Instead, she followed James’s directions to a tatty little magic shop in the West End. She didn’t even think it odd when he instructed her to walk through the wall. It almost seemed as if he was controlling her actions at that point, but that was all right. She was following his directions, and he hadn’t steered her wrong yet. She rattled off a series of items to the saleswoman in the much more interesting shop behind the wall, departed soon after with a bulging bag, and two hours after that she was back in her tiny flat in Basingstoke, firing up her stove.
She could sense James’s approval as she put her long-dormant cooking skills to work, combining the strange ingredients according to his recipe and heating them in a metal pan. When he asked her to add some of her own blood to the mixture, she didn’t hesitate. At last, near midnight, she’d distilled the solution down to less than an ounce of viscous red liquid with silvery flecks. She held it up to the light, staring at it, marveling at its beauty. She had made this.
Now drink it, he told her. Drink it, and you will have everything you desire.
Miriam Padgett didn’t ask questions. She tilted the little bottle up and felt the warm, oily liquid crawling down her throat, already thinking about how nice it would be to get back at some of those people who had mocked her, or pitied her, or disregarded her.
Her last conscious thought as something wrenched at her from deep within, tearing her soul away from her body and casting it off into the ether like so much unwanted detritus, was one of surprise.
James Brathwaite deeply regretted what he’d been forced to do.
It wasn’t because he’d used his spiritual and magical abilities to enter the mind of an innocent woman, leading her on with promises of power and admiration until she agreed to brew the potion that would rip her spirit from her body so he could replace it with his own.
No, he’d intended to do that all along. What he regretted was that his only viable choice was a mere woman—and a pathetic one at that.
He could have tried for someone else, he supposed, but after nearly two hundred years’ imprisonment within the altar back at Stone’s house, he wanted to get on with his plans. Being driven from Stone’s body had weakened his spiritual form, to the point where trying to possess another body—a body with magical potential—would require not mere permission from the occupant, but an actual vacant vessel. And the only way he had a chance of contacting someone on the material plane and guiding their actions was to choose someone directly related to him, even if distantly.
There weren’t many to choose from—apparently the Brathwaites had been unsuccessful in building a large family, and most of those he tracked down hadn’t an ounce of magical potential.
He’d begun to grow desperate when he’d finally found Miriam. Although she wasn’t anything impressive, she did possess latent magical ability—probably due to some long-forgotten alliance between the Brathwaites and another clan that passed the Talent down the female line. By that point, James Brathwaite knew he didn’t have time to be picky: once he’d been released from his prison, his spirit had begun to degrade. The fiasco with the Stone heir had only hastened the process, and if he didn’t secure a body soon, he wouldn’t have the power left to do it.
In other words, beggars couldn’t be choosers, and now his magnificent intellect was occupying the frumpy, unpleasant body of a weak and unremarkable woman.
If he’d had any sense of humor, he might have thought it ironic.
In any case, it was what he had to work with, so he had to make the best of it. At least in this new world, females had more freedom and rights than they had in his day—by the gods, they were treated for the most part as equal to men! He found the whole concept distasteful, but given that he was now stuck inside one of them, it was also useful.
Having a body—even a wretched one such as this—meant he could continue his work. He would have to be patient, as many things needed to be done before he could begin in earnest, but patience was a quality he had always possessed in abundance.
He’d taken the biggest step. Now, everything else would be much easier.
Now, late one Saturday night several weeks later (he had not gone to London to visit Miriam Padgett’s aging mother today or any of the previous Saturdays, and even after he learned how to use a telephone he didn’t return her calls), he sat in the kitc
hen of his tiny apartment, writing notes in a journal he’d found in one of Miriam’s drawers. It had flowers winding up and down its pages, but he didn’t care.
He’d cleared the table in front of him and taken most of the day to draw a small, complicated magical circle on its surface. Now, he lit the black candles carefully placed around it, sat back in the chair, and began a familiar ritual incantation. He didn’t need the books and other materials he’d hidden back at the family’s old house, the ones now in the Stone heir’s possession and thus likely destroyed—he’d memorized the incantation long ago.
As power swelled around him and the orange candle flames turned to a brilliant blood red, he carefully lifted a tiny form from a nearby shoebox. The shaggy gray rat hung limply in his hand, its tail and head drooping, its filmed eyes open and staring at nothing. He hadn’t had much trouble finding it in a nearby alley today, and a quick spell had ended its life before it could scurry away.
He stroked it with a long, gnarled finger. “Be patient, little one,” he murmured. He placed the rat’s body in the center of the circle, wrapping its tail around it almost lovingly, and then began the incantation again.
It took fifteen minutes of intense focus before anything happened. The candles’ red flames continued to dance, casting weird shadows over the furry body. It almost looked as if it might be moving.
James Brathwaite smiled a smile no one who knew Miriam Padgett would have recognized—certainly not her employer at the dress shop, or her old mother—as in the center of the circle the rat writhed and twisted as if in pain. Then, slowly, it climbed back to its feet and looked up at Brathwaite, its oil-drop eyes milky. Its nose twitched, and its tiny paws scratched at the table.
“There we are,” Brathwaite said in Miriam’s voice. “Well done, my little friend. And now, after far too long’s delay, I can finally take up my great work again.”
The rat, unsteady and strange in the flickering candlelight, did not reply.
Alastair Stone will return in
Book 19 of the Alastair Stone Chronicles
Look for it in Fall 2019!
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Books by R. L. King
ALASTAIR STONE CHRONICLES SERIES
Stone and a Hard Place (Book 1)
The Forgotten (Book 2)
The Threshold (Book 3)
The Source (Book 4)
Alastair Stone Chronicles Box Set (includes books 1-4)
Core of Stone (Book 5)
Blood and Stone (Book 6)
Heart of Stone (Book 7)
Alastair Stone Chronicles Box Set 2 (includes book 5-7)
Flesh and Stone (Book 8)
The Infernal Heart (Book 9)
The Other Side (Book 10)
Path of Stone (Book 11)
Necessary Sacrifices (Book 12)
Game of Stone (Book 13)
Steel and Stone (Book 14)
Stone and Claw (Book 15)
The Seventh Stone (Book 16)
Gathering Storm (Book 17)
ALASTAIR STONE CHRONICLES STANDALONE WORKS
Shadows and Stone
Turn to Stone
Stone for the Holidays
Devil’s Bargain
SHADOWRUN (Published by Catalyst Game Labs)
Borrowed Time
Wolf and Buffalo
Big Dreams
Veiled Extraction (coming soon)
About the Author
R. L. King enjoys hanging out with her very understanding spouse and small herd of cats, watching way too much Doctor Who, and attending conventions when she can. She is an Active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the Horror Writers' Association, and the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers.
www.alastairstonechronicles.com
rat@magespacepress.com