Alastair Stone Chronicles Box Set: Alastair Stone Chronicles, Books 1 through 4

by R. L. King

  “This place gives me the creeps,” Verity said suddenly.

  “Huh?” Jason gave her an odd look. “Why?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t explain it. It just feels—wrong.”

  Stone regarded her, frowning. “Do you want to leave?”

  “No—it’s not bad. It’s just kind of a low-grade hum of uncomfortableness.”

  Jason looked around, checking out the people as they walked by. “I don’t see anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Nor do I,” Stone said, “but I haven’t lasted as long as I have by ignoring instincts—mine or anyone else’s. Let’s stay on our guard. I’d advise against more than one drink, if any.”

  The waitress came by and took their orders. Verity didn’t even try ordering anything alcoholic; she seemed restless and twitchy, unable to sit still as she craned her head around trying to look in every direction at once without seeming too obvious about it.

  “V, you look like you need to use the bathroom,” Jason said. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “I can’t explain it,” she said. “It started as soon as we came in, but I figured it was just all the lights and stuff.”

  Stone didn’t reply, but Jason noticed that he was keeping a closer eye on Verity than he had before. Their drinks arrived, and they sat there for a half-hour or so, nursing them and continuing to people-watch. From their vantage point, they could see into the casino itself; the oval-shaped pits of the tables were interspersed with banks of slot machines both small and large, with a couple of shiny new Corvettes parked on conspicuous raised platforms surrounded by more banks of slots and large flashing signs exhorting gamblers to try their luck for a chance to win one of them.

  Jason amused himself by trying to spot the casino’s security measures: eye-in-the-sky cameras were everywhere, as were jacket-clad security guards circulating unobtrusively through the crowds. Within the pits were more well-dressed individuals who nevertheless had the watchful look of cops or military types. Jason was pretty sure it would be impossible to make a move in this place, or in any of the big casinos, without being watched or recorded by at least one camera. Possibly even in the bathrooms. The thought made him nervous. Suddenly he felt very visible.

  “Let’s walk,” Stone said. “Seems like neither of you wants to be here any longer. We’ll find Verity’s white tigers, and then we can take a stroll outside and play tourist while we get the lay of the land.”

  “You know what?” Verity said. “I can see the tigers later. I think I just want to get outside.”

  They left the Mirage through the front where they’d entered and headed off down the Strip in the direction from which they’d come. “This is a lot nicer than when I was here,” Jason said. “In the summer, you pretty much get smacked with a wave of hot air every time you leave a building. It was like stepping out of a refrigerator into a blast furnace.”

  They joined a throng of tourists working their way down the street, doing their best to blend in. “Feeling better out here, V?” Jason asked.

  She nodded, looking around. “Yeah. I don’t feel like something’s pushing on my head anymore.”

  They passed the Mirage and a large, upscale shopping area connected to Caesars Palace, then strolled past Caesars itself, with its fountains and massive statuary. Some of the tourists peeled off to head up the sweeping ramp toward it, and Verity momentarily slowed down to take it all in. She hurried to catch up, though, when Jason said under his breath, “Look.”

  Verity and Stone turned to look in the direction he was indicating. Caesars Palace was on the corner of the Strip and Flamingo Road, and the light was red for crossing, so a crowd formed at the intersection. Something seemed to be going on up there. Stone motioned for them to step out of the flow and pretend to be looking at the Dunes across the street ahead of them as they tried to figure out what was happening.

  A man stood there, holding a sign in one hand and a book in the other and yelling something they couldn’t quite hear over the rumble of the crowd and the traffic noise. They edged closer.

  He was tall, about forty, dressed in a shabby overcoat and dirty red baseball cap with greasy corkscrewing hair poking out from beneath it. He had the wild-eyed look of someone who was either insane or high—or possibly both. As they approached him, his words became clearer. “Repent, sinners!” he boomed to the crowd, who laughed and jeered at him as they waited for the light to change. “Repent your sinful ways! Cease your gambling and fornication and your affronts against God! The end is near! The demons are soon upon us! Make your peace with God now, or you will burn in eternal Hell! Do not wait! It’s later than you think!”

  The light changed and the tourists moved on, a couple yelling responses back over their shoulders as the man raved on. Stone took a step to approach him when suddenly someone shoved past from behind them. “Move away, please,” the newcomer called in a clear, authoritative tone. “Move aside.”

  Stone, Jason, and Verity moved back out of the way as a uniformed Las Vegas policeman strode past, another following closely behind him. The two cops confronted the street preacher, who immediately switched his patter. “You can’t run me off,” he protested. “I got a right to be here! It’s a public street! These sinners need to hear the word of God!” He waved his Bible in emphasis.

  The cops didn’t even speak to him. Each one grabbed one of the man’s arms and they hustled him off, back in the direction of their squad car which was parked a bit up the street, its lights still flashing red and blue. “You can’t do this!” the man screamed, struggling. “They must hear! The evil is coming! We are all doomed unless we know the love of God! Only God can keep us safe from the demons!”

  One of the cops growled something at the man, drawing his arm up behind his back until he screeched in pain and dropped his Bible. He cried out and tried to lunge for it, but one of the cops cuffed him on the side of the head and they dragged him off, still screaming. Jason, suddenly angry at this injustice, took a step forward toward them, but Stone touched his arm and shook his head, a grim look on his face.

  The three of them watched in silence as the cops shoved the man into the back seat of their squad car and drove off. Verity skittered forward and snatched up the man’s Bible before the next group of tourists could reach them.

  They joined the crowd crossing the street toward the Dunes, then stepped off to the side again out of the moving stream. “What the hell was that?” Jason demanded, indignant. “Cops in this town are fucking hardcore. I mean, I know sometimes you have to roust out the crazies if they’re spooking the tourists, but nobody seemed too spooked. And hurting the guy’s arm like that when he’s not a threat—smacking him in the head—that is not cool.”

  “I think the rules are different here, Jason,” Stone said, still looking grim. “You did say you thought Las Vegas was probably crawling with Evil, which makes sense given the proximity of the portal and the amount of misery this town can generate to feed their hunger. I’d be very surprised if the majority of the police force wasn’t possessed.”

  “You think that guy was Forgotten?” Jason asked, looking back up the street in the direction where the police car had disappeared.

  Stone shrugged. “No way to know. I hate to say it, but I’m not holding out much hope that we’ll ever see him again to ask him.”

  Verity riffled through the street preacher’s Bible. “I think he might be,” she said. “Look at this.”

  They gathered around, huddling under a street light to get a better view. She paged through it, showing them a few random sections: every page’s margins were scribbled with notes so dense and illegible that some of the pages looked as if they were enclosed in elaborate black frames. He had underlined a few passages with a heavy hand, and in the few places without notes in the margins, they were full of hauntingly familiar symbols.

  “Forgotten code,” Jason said. “It has to be. Al, do you recognize any of these?”

  Stone nodded. “I’ve se
en some of them before, though I’ve no idea what they mean. Except for the obvious ‘bad place’ one, of course.”

  “And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, ‘Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird,’” Verity said.

  “Huh?” Jason stared at her.

  “He’s got that not just underlined, but actually highlighted,” she said, pointing to a page. “I don’t see any other highlighted bits. He must think this one’s really important.”

  “It’s a pretty good descriptor of the Evil,” Stone said. “And if he’s Forgotten, he must know they’re here.”

  “I just wonder why he let himself get picked off that easily,” Jason said. He started walking again, and the others followed him, rejoining the throng as they passed the Dunes.

  “He didn’t seem right in the head,” Verity pointed out. “Sometimes they’re even too far gone to hook up with the rest of the Forgotten.” She sighed, stowing the Bible carefully in her bag. “Sad, really. I hope they don’t kill him and dump his body somewhere. I’d like to give this back to him if we can.”

  They continued down the Strip, passing the Dunes, letting themselves be carried along by the flow of pedestrian traffic. Crossing Harmon Avenue, they passed the vast complex of the MGM Grand on the other side of the Strip. On their own side, the massive black tower of the Obsidian rose up into the sky until it seemed to become one with the darkness.

  “That place looks creepy,” Verity commented. “Looks like the Evil’s secret clubhouse.”

  Jason nodded. “No kidding.” The Obsidian was one of the newer of the large hotel-casinos; unlike most of its Strip counterparts, it eschewed flashing lights and in-your-face marketing to entice its clientele. The building itself was nothing but mirrored black glass with the hotel’s name vertically down the side in electric blue. The marquee, currently advertising a magic show, was similarly understated.

  It took another hour to finish their tour of the Strip, moving south as far as the Hacienda, and then turning back and returning up the other side of the street. They didn’t stop at any other casinos, but kept their eyes open for anyone else who might be Forgotten, or for Forgotten symbols scrawled in unobtrusive places. They didn’t see any signs of either. By time they arrived back at the Mirage and picked up the car from the lot, it was after midnight.

  “We’ll go downtown tomorrow evening,” Stone said. “Perhaps we’ll have better luck there.”

  The next day they all made an effort to sleep in, and Jason and Verity weren’t even out of their beds before noon. They found Stone in the common room, hanging up the phone.

  “I called Madame Huan,” he told them. “Gave her the number here so she can reach us if she turns up anything. I doubt she will, but she’s got a wider network of contacts through her business than I do, so anything’s possible.”

  Since Stone didn’t think they’d turn up much useful downtown before dark, they spent the rest of the afternoon devouring a big breakfast at one of the smaller casinos (where Verity inexplicably didn’t feel uncomfortable) and then playing tourist, going back to the Mirage so Verity could see the tigers, dropping a few dollars in the slot machines (Jason won a $200.00 jackpot), watching the outdoor show at Treasure Island, and wandering through the upscale shopping center next to Caesars Palace. Jason remained constantly vigilant, watching for any sign of suspicious looking people or anyone appearing to be too interested in their activities. He suspected Stone was doing the same, but it was hard to tell with the mage. He didn’t seem to be engaging with what they were doing, but instead followed along behind Jason and Verity, hands in the pockets of his overcoat, with an expression suggesting that his mind was once again far away.

  At five thirty when it was at last getting dark, they set off for the downtown area on Fremont Street. The so-called “Glitter Gulch” was aptly named; Stone raised an eyebrow as they drove past casino after neon-soaked casino along what looked like an electrified canyon. “The pictures most certainly don’t do this justice.”

  “Pretty wild, huh?” Verity asked.

  “Pretty tacky, actually,” Stone said. “The subtitle of this place should be ‘Taste Takes a Holiday.’”

  Jason chuckled. “From what I understand, the locals hang out here more than up at the Strip. Everything’s closer together so you can walk it, and it’s more focused on the casinos than the hotels. Also, the limits are lower.”

  Stone found a secure looking lot down near the far end of the Fremont Street casino row. They parked the car and started off on foot back in the direction they’d come from.

  Unlike on the Strip, Downtown’s casinos weren’t set back from the street in opulent pleasure complexes. Instead, they butted right up against the sidewalks, their entrances yawning open like glittering mouths, their clanging and clattering banks of slots and bouncing neon practically reaching out to grab hapless passersby and entice them inside. And if that wasn’t enough, nearly all of them had at least a couple of scantily dressed women lurking in their entranceways calling out invitations.

  As they passed a threadbare establishment called the Coin Palace, a dead-eyed woman in a short skirt standing next to a large, luridly colored wheel of fortune reached out and plucked at Stone’s sleeve. “Spin the wheel,” she exhorted in a near monotone, her left eye tracking somewhere over Stone’s left shoulder while the right one fixed on his forehead. “Spin the wheel, win a prize.”

  Stone, trying hard to keep the distaste off his face, pulled his arm back. “Er—no thank you,” he said, drawing away.

  “Spin the wheel, win a prize,” she urged, waving a sheaf of booklets under his nose.

  Jason wondered if she even had any idea where she was, or what she was doing. “Go ahead, Al,” he said, grinning. “You might win a free watered-down drink or something.”

  Stone, obviously more to get the strange, raddled woman to leave him alone than anything else, reached out and gave the wheel a hard spin. It rotated several times and landed on a space with a green dot on it. The majority of the spaces had green dots. “Winner!” the woman cried, her monotone increasing in volume, if not in enthusiasm. She peeled off one of the booklets and pressed it into his hand. “Take that to the back to collect your prize,” she added, hooking a thumb over her shoulder toward the rear of the casino.

  “Uh—some other time, perhaps,” Stone said, stuffing the booklet into his overcoat pocket and moving off. “Thank you.” But the woman had already lost interest in him, directing her wandering attention at a man in a Hawaiian shirt and his sundress-clad wife.

  Verity stared back over her shoulder at the scene for a moment, then caught up with Stone and Jason. “That was really creepy.”

  Jason nodded. “Kind of sad, really. I wonder what she was on.”

  “I don’t care,” Stone said, shuddering. He pulled the booklet from his pocket and tossed it in a nearby trash receptacle, where it joined several others.

  They kept going, managing to avoid being accosted by the shills for several other establishments by walking closer to the curb and away from the entrances. The crowds were large—larger than the ones they’d seen on the Strip—and seemed to be drifting from one casino to the next, where some would leave the group to enter one while others would exit and join the current of humanity.

  One thing the three of them all noticed right away: the down-and-out were a lot more represented here than they were up in the land of the mega-complexes. From the lost souls working to entice gullible rubes into their dazzling caves with promises of prizes to the street performers with their donation cans to the silent huddled figures in ragged clothes who sat against any available wall space, it seemed the police didn’t consider sweeping them under the rug and out of sight of the tourists to be as high a priority as it was on the Strip. Jason indicated a one-legged man sitting against the wall of the Four Queens. “Do you want to start talking to anyone?”
<
br />   “You do it,” Stone said. “You’ll be less conspicuous.” He motioned for Verity to follow him and they moved a few feet away. He pulled a map from his pocket and pretended to consult it.

  Jason moved over to the man. “Hey,” he said noncommittally.

  The man nodded. He looked to be in his sixties, sitting on a scrap of old carpeting with a sign next to him reading VETERAN - PLEASE HELP. His unkempt gray beard was stained with the runoff from many years of chewing tobacco.

  “How’s it going?” Jason asked.

  “It’s goin’,” the man said, shrugging. “Spare a little change, man?”

  Jason fished in his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins, which he dropped in the man’s cup.

  “Thanks, friend.”

  Jason nodded. “Hey, can you answer a question for me?”

  When the man didn’t say anything, Jason pulled his little notebook from his pocket, opened it to the page where he’d drawn the Forgotten’s “good place” symbol, and held it out. “Guy back home told me this was a lucky sign, so I’ve kinda been lookin’ around tryin’ to spot it. You seen anything that looked like this anywhere?”

  The old veteran studied the page with squinty, watering eyes. “Sorry, man. Ain’t never seen nothing like that. Looks kinda Chinese or somethin’.”

  Jason sighed. “That’s okay. Thanks anyway. Take it easy, buddy.” He moved back over to where Stone and Verity were studying their map like a couple of tourists, and shook his head. They folded up the map and moved on.

  Over the next hour they talked to a dozen more people who they suspected might have a connection to the Forgotten: vagrants, beggars, hustlers, a pair of aging prostitutes who looked like they’d rather be anywhere but where they were, parking attendants in tiny out-of-the-way lots, a couple of the casino shills—but had no luck. In each case the individuals in question glanced at Jason’s sketch of the Forgotten symbol and shook their heads, told him to fuck off, or, in the case of the prostitutes, hopefully propositioned him and Stone to accompany them to the alley behind the Golden Nugget, where they’d show them a good time for ten dollars each. Jason actually went with them to check for Forgotten symbols on the alley walls, but declined their rather explicit offer, leaving them with five dollars and a suggestion that they be more careful in the future who they approached.