Alastair Stone Chronicles Box Set: Alastair Stone Chronicles, Books 1 through 4
Page 22
Picking up his bag, which he’d left just inside the room’s bookcase entrance, he began pulling out items and placing them on a nearby table. He’d have to make his own circle; there was no way he could or would use the existing one without further study. He glanced at his watch: a little after 8 p.m. If he was lucky, he could finish this up in a couple of hours and be home by 11:00.
He carefully constructed his circle behind the larger one, making sure every bit was secure, that there were no gaps, and he hadn’t skipped anything or written any of the sigils incorrectly. He felt a buzzing in his head now, almost like a low-grade background count of distracting energy. It didn’t quite hurt, but it did make it difficult to concentrate on what he was doing.
It’s fighting me.
Despite the cold down here, he was getting warm from the effort of setting up the circle. He stripped off his sweater and tossed it on the table, leaving just his black T-shirt. That was better. His body couldn’t decide whether it should shiver or perspire, so it did a bit of both. He pushed his damp hair off his forehead and stood back to inspect his handiwork.
The circle, which had taken him about an hour to construct, looked sound to both his mundane and magical senses. It was about six feet across and glowed with power, easily contained within its confines.
No point in waiting any longer.
Stone took a few deep breaths, stretched, and stepped into the circle. He felt its protective enchantments weaving around him, creating a barrier between him and whatever might be out there. Inside the circle, the irritating hum faded away to the faintest of sounds. He closed his eyes, centered himself, and reached out.
His senses were drawn to the armoire at the end of the room. With the altered perceptions that were heightened by the circle’s power, he saw a crack in the door where an unwholesome sort of light shone out. It crept around the edges of the doors, testing the boundaries, trying to find a way to force them open further. He also saw that the armoire was more than just an armoire: powerful enchantments still surrounded it, wrapping it in nearly unbreakable mystical chains.
Nearly unbreakable.
He nudged his perception open a bit more, probing for information. What are you?
He didn’t expect to get an answer, but his mind was suddenly flooded with images that flew by too fast for him to make sense of them. Gritting his teeth, he tried to slow them down or, barring that, to pick out individual frames.
—A large room.—
—A hellish domain seething with creeping, crawling creatures.—
—Magical sigils spinning in a mad circle.—
—Several robe-clad people standing in a circle, hands clasped.—
—A desperate attempt to stop something, to slow it, to send it back.—
—Darkness.—
—A vast rumbling as the earth moved.—
—A tiny crack in the structural integrity of the prison that held something back.—
Stone probed further. He didn’t think he’d be able to get it to reveal its name, even imprisoned as it was. He felt it probing back, poking around the edges of his mind, trying to gain any knowledge it could of him—who he was, why he was there, whether he could be persuaded or coerced to help it. And all the while, he felt the sheer malevolence of it.
This thing could not be allowed to get free.
Once, a long time ago, he’d seen a poster depicting the side view of an iceberg—the part that emerged above the level of the sea was only the tiniest fraction of the vast bulk floating below the water line. He couldn’t get a good look at the thing from here, not without a much more complicated ritual and probably at least two more participants, but he could tell that the part of it that was emerging into their plane of existence was a similarly small fraction. If the whole thing were allowed to come through, the entire area—and perhaps much more—would be in peril.
He couldn’t allow that.
But how the hell was he going to stop it?
A whole ritual group, led by a woman who was probably every bit the practitioner he was, and assisted by another powerful mage and several lesser ones, hadn’t been able to do more than imprison it temporarily. And they had had its name. All he had was his resolve, his experience, and a body in no shape to be throwing around forces anywhere near potent enough to deal with something like this.
He couldn’t send it back—not yet, at least. But he could do his best to reinforce its prison. Gathering his strength, he began weaving patterns and enchantments, taking cues from those that were already there, and interweaving his own with them in much the same way that one braids a series of thin ropes together to form a stronger one. He knew it wouldn’t hold for long, but if he could stay its momentum long enough to gather some more mages, then maybe it would be enough. He could call Walter Yarborough, and a few others he knew—
The crack was widening. The light around him was changing.
The world shifted.
He still stood in the center of the same room, though it didn’t look the same now. His circle was gone.
The room was lit by candles in sconces along both of the long walls, as well as a large brazier in the middle. Flames licked up from the brazier, creating a strange-smelling, cloying, purple smoke that wound up to the stone ceiling and then dissipated.
Stone looked around. The dust, the smell of mold and disuse, were gone. Everything in the room looked new and fresh, including the paneled walls (now blood free) and the brilliant circle in its center. Several robed and hooded figures—a quick count revealed seven—stood swaying inside the circle; six arrayed around its inside perimeter, their hands clasped and energy coursing between them. The seventh figure stood in the center, hood lowered, gathering the energy flowing from the points around the diameter and weaving the separate threads into a powerful whole that glowed like a small sun. Stone had to squint as he looked at it, but he could tell the level of power it contained was immense. Certainly far more powerful than anything he could call up on his own.
He stepped forward. The circle occupants didn’t appear to notice him, or if they did, they didn’t react. They continued swaying and chanting, feeding power to the tall, olive-skinned woman in the middle. The woman herself was turned away from him, focused on the other end of the room.
Stone followed her gaze—the armoire was there, looking solid and substantial, but its doors were open. More light, as brilliant as that inside the circle, but an unhealthy red-purple, shone from inside, illuminating the entire end of the room in its eerie glow.
The woman in the center of the circle chanted loudly, her body writhing with either ecstasy or agony—it was hard to tell which. Stone edged farther forward, his gaze never leaving the group in case they noticed him, and saw sweat streaming down her face. He couldn’t make out any specifics in her chant, though he struggled to pick out anything intelligible.
And then something burst through the armoire’s doors, pouring out into the room. For a moment Stone just stared, unable to believe what he was witnessing. A series of—things—boiled out through the opening, moving toward the circle. The creatures were humanoid, barely, made of tentacles and flayed flesh and great glowing greenish eyes. The sounds they made weren’t anything close to human, and each time they moved, it sounded like flesh being ripped from bones. Behind them, dark slime trails stretched back to the armoire.
They surged toward the circle.
One by one, the six participants around the edges became aware of them, shifting position, crying out in alarm. The woman in the middle yelled out an order and directed some of the power she was handling toward the first couple of creatures. They screamed and exploded in sprays of ichor.
The other creatures were not idle, though. Two of them reached the circle; they grabbed the two closest figures and pulled, seemingly unaffected by the circle’s protective power. Stone watched in horror as the creatures yanked the hooded figures out of the circle and began devouring them, accompanied by screams and great wet rending sounds.
Something else was coming through.
Something big.
The four remaining participants looked as if they might panic at any moment and flee, but they held it together for now. Stone had to summon rarely tapped reserves of will to do the same, and he still wasn’t sure how long he could do it. His heart pounded; his mind screamed for him to run, to flee, to get himself away from this thing as fast as he could, before it pushed itself through into the light. He had trained most of his life to deal with things that shouldn’t exist, but this—this was an entirely new level. He was reminded suddenly of the H. P. Lovecraft stories he used to read back in his University days. Whatever this was, he’d never seen anything even remotely like it…and he was becoming more and more sure that he didn’t want to.
Stone forced himself to move around the rear of the circle, wondering if the creatures could see him, wondering if he could help. He saw now that they had changed their tactics, and were attempting to seal the armoire gateway. He knew he couldn’t join the circle: he wasn’t sure how the creatures had gotten their two terrified victims out without breaking it, but he had no confidence that he could do the same if he tried to step in. Instead, he focused on one of the creatures and flung a concussion spell. The creature was knocked off its feet (or tentacles) and sailed back toward the armoire opening.
The circle participants paid him no attention, but unfortunately, the other creatures did. More were coming through now, and the ones that were already here changed direction to head toward Stone. Inside the circle, the four remaining edges and the woman at the center continued their chanting. The armoire door was closing, but slowly.
Stone took two steps backward and summoned a shield spell. It came up around him just as the first creature reached him. He had a better look now and wished he hadn’t: the thing had two long arms ending in wicked, clawed hands. It shambled like a zombie, ichor drooling from its open mouth.
It reared back and swiped at him. His shield flared red, but the attack didn’t get through. Stone backed off another step. The shield won’t hold long. Those things are bloody strong. He risked a glance at the armoire again: the doors were nearly closed, but more creatures had gotten through. They were heading for the circle.
Another creature took a swing at him. The shield blocked it again, but even as it did, it flared a second time and went down. Hastily-constructed shields like that weren’t designed to fend off more than one or two attacks before they failed. Stone backed off again, but found his back against the far wall.
The creatures moved in closer. He could smell them now: wet and moldy and impossibly disgusting, like a dead, gassy body found floating in a hot, fetid swamp. Gritting his teeth against his rising gorge, Stone blew another creature back with a concussive blast.
The woman’s voice rose in triumph, and he spared another glance over: the armoire was nearly closed now. She directed the red light, and two more of the creatures flew back through the tiny opening, flailing their strange arms. There were only a few left now.
Stone couldn’t look anymore, though: two more of the monsters had reached him. He struggled to erect another barrier, but before he could manage it, the closer of the two swung at him. Its claws were like a sloth’s: long and wicked, extending out past the end of its hands for several inches. His feint to the left was too slow: the claws raked across his chest and abdomen, shredding his T-shirt and leaving bloody trails. He cried out and flung himself sideways, heedless of the pain. Beyond him, he could hear the shrieks of the circle participants as the creatures went after them. The entire room smelled of rot, blood, and terror.
Barely able to get a breath, Stone threw another concussive blast at the closer of the two creatures. His head pounded with the effort, but he knew he couldn’t hold back this time. If he didn’t get out of here, he would be dead.
The other creature, however, had other plans. It fell on top of him, raking its claws across his arms, his chest, his legs. Beyond coherent thought now, he screamed, trying to shove it away. It was far too heavy for that, though, and in any case he had no strength left.
It grabbed his arm and began dragging him back toward the armoire. He felt his shoulder pop out of its socket, and new waves of agony washed over him.
“NO!” he cried feebly, struggling to break free. The creature’s claws sunk into his arm as it dragged him toward the opening with relentless strength. His last conscious thought as he finally blacked out was to wonder if anyone would ever find his body.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The first thing Stone noticed when he awoke was that he was chilled to the bone. He lay on his back on a surface of cold stone, crumpled like a broken doll, every muscle shivering, despite his efforts to quiet them. Fearful of what he might find, he opened his eyes.
He was in total darkness, so thick that he couldn’t hope to pierce it. He heard no sounds at all: no screams, no skittering of rats or flapping of bats, no ripping-skin-on-bone sounds from the horrific creatures that had poured through the armoire’s open door. The only thing he could hear was the ragged sound of his own breath as it wheezed in his throat.
He coughed, and must have passed out again from the pain. After a few moments—or perhaps it was a few hours, he had no way of knowing—he struggled again to consciousness. This time he didn’t try to move, doing his best to take inventory from a still position.
Why am I not dead? Those things ripped me up—
Very carefully, still shivering and miserable, he moved his arms to his stomach. He was terrified of what he would find there.
There was no crust of dried blood, no sudden flare of agony. His thin T-shirt had ridden up when he’d fallen; he shoved it up the rest of the way and probed the skin of his chest and stomach with tentative fingers. He was whole and unslashed. He pulled the shirt back down, though it did nothing to alleviate the bitter cold.
What the hell—?
He lay there, listening. Still no sound, but he smelled the musty, dusty odor of the room he was in. He realized why it was dark: The flashlight’s batteries died. How long have I been out?
Convinced now that whatever grievous injuries the creatures had inflicted had somehow only been in his mind, he dragged himself up to a seated position. His ribs still burned and he was unable to stop shivering, but aside from that he seemed to be mostly unhurt. He risked a light spell.
He was sitting on the stone floor of the circle room. The armoire was still there, still slightly cracked open, but a quick look with his magical senses confirmed that he had managed to supplement the protective wards around it before things had gone south. He was fairly certain that as long as no one tampered with it, it would hold long enough Adelaide’s charity ball to go off safely. Still, complete certainty was a luxury you didn’t get very often with this kind of magic.
He struggled up to his feet. His legs felt like limp rubber, his whole body weak, as if he’d exerted himself too hard for too long without a break. His head throbbed from the strain of channeling too much magical energy, and he tasted the sharp tang of blood, probably from another nosebleed. He staggered over to the table where he’d left his sweater, and shrugged into it. That was a little better; at least the shivering abated somewhat. Then he glanced at his watch: he’d started the ritual around 9, and it was a little after 10:30 now. He’d been unconscious for about an hour.
Gripping the table, he fought to understand what had happened. What had he seen? Had the creature showed him something? The night it was imprisoned, perhaps? Why? Had it wanted something from him, and he’d managed to fight it off?
He had no idea. Right now he didn’t care very much, either. He still had
a long way to go before he even reached the main part of the house, and he wasn’t sure his legs were up to the task. He wanted nothing more than to lie back down and let the blackness have him again, but he couldn’t do that. Not yet.
Somehow, he made it out of the hidden room (the bookshelf was a struggle: he’d never been the strongest of men physically, and right now he wouldn’t bet on himself in a fight versus a reasonably robust kitten) and back through the enormous room full of piled-up furniture. There was no creaking or swaying now: either the thing was truly locked back away, albeit temporarily, or it had expended enough energy in putting on its little stage show that it was resting. Either way, Stone slowly headed back, retracing his steps until he reached the stairway to the service area, and the door where he’d broken the lock what seemed like a very long time ago.
Barely on his feet now, he moved down the hallway, back through the kitchen, and continued until he reached the main part of the house. He didn’t know where Adelaide and Iona were, but if they were still awake he guessed they were probably in the sitting room, especially if she’d had a new television delivered by then. As he drew closer, he was rewarded by the sound of the TV and of faint voices coming from the room. Holding on to the open doorframe, he called, “Mrs. Bonham—?”
She turned, and her eyes widened as she got a look at him. After a second, Iona turned too. “Oh, dear God, Dr. Stone! What happened?” She got up and hustled over to grab his arm.
“I’m—I’m all right,” he mumbled. “Just—tired.”
“You’re white as a ghost, and covered in blood worse than the other night!” she protested, steering him toward a chair. Adelaide moved closer, her blue eyes huge with fear. She was about to say something when another voice came through the open door where Stone had just come in.