by King, R. L.
They were sitting in Lopez’s truck in the parking lot of the Nest Motel. “Do you want to take the time to call Casner?” Stone asked. “Because if Faces gets wind of what we’re up to, there’s no telling what he might do. Even if I’m right, he might kill Jason just to keep us from getting him back.”
Lopez thought about it, his face a mix of frustration and resolve. “Fuck it,” he said at last. “I’m gonna retire soon anyway. I can live with a reprimand if it comes to that.” He got out of the truck and slammed the door.
Stone followed him into the motel office, carrying the black leather duffel bag containing his magical gear. Behind the desk was a middle-aged woman in a neat floral blouse. “May I help you?” she asked.
Lopez flashed his badge. “Can you look up a record for us, please?”
She frowned. “A record?”
“We need to know which room one of your guests was staying in on Friday night, and we need to take a look around it if possible.”
Behind him, Stone remained silent and used a minor version of his disregarding spell to fade into the background. This was not one of those instances when his memorable appearance would be helpful.
When Lopez told her the name he wanted her to look up, light dawned in her eyes. “Oh! That’s the gentleman who’s missing, right?”
“That’s right,” Lopez said.
She searched through her records. “Ah, here we are. Mr. Thayer. He was in room one forty-two. He was supposed to check out Sunday morning, but—” She consulted another book. “That room is booked for this evening, but the parties haven’t arrived yet. They aren’t due until after nine p.m.”
“Can we take a look around?” Lopez asked. “It shouldn’t be long.”
She looked uncertain. “I’m not sure—”
“Please,” he said. “I promise, we’ll be out and gone before your guests arrive.”
“All right,” she said slowly. She pulled a key off a board and handed it to Lopez. “The room’s been cleaned, so—”
“We won’t mess anything up. Thank you, ma’am,” Lopez said, and turned to go before she changed her mind or asked for his name. Stone followed him out, and they headed across the parking lot.
“This whole thing just keeps getting crazier,” the cop said as he opened the door to room 142. “You’re saying Jason is still in this room somewhere? How the hell can that even be?”
“I don’t think you want a magical theory lecture right now,” Stone said. “You’re just going to have to trust me.”
In fact was, he wasn’t entirely sure himself, but he was convinced he was correct. It all fit: Jason was still in the area, but he couldn’t find more than traces of him. He of Many Faces and his minions couldn’t deal very well with human bodies beyond basic physical functions, which meant they sounded odd when they talked. It also meant that driving was likely beyond their capabilities, so they’d have to have possessed someone nearby and they had no way to get Jason out of the motel. As farfetched as it all sounded, everything Stone had deduced implied that he was still at the motel somewhere.
And when he started thinking along those lines, it was an easy leap of logic to consider the possibility that the reason he couldn’t find Jason was that he either wasn’t on this plane of existence, or was somehow out of phase with the material world. And that led to the idea that there had to still be some connection between Jason and this plane, otherwise Stone wouldn’t have picked up the traces of him. The odd dream he’d had when he’d stayed here reinforced that idea further. As yet, he had no idea what that connection was, and why Faces and Co. were maintaining it, but that could come later, once they had Jason back.
The room was identical to the one he’d been staying in before, down to the photo of the pink-tinged mountain range and the tasteful Native American-print bedspread. He stepped into the center, sat down on the bed, and reached out with his magical senses. He used a bit of power from his second ring to augment his search, finding it perversely ironic that the whole thing would be much easier if he could have made use of Jason’s odd innate ability to serve as a sort of “mana battery” for helping mages power spells.
“You getting anything?” Lopez said, moving over to close the door and drawing the curtains closed.
“Shh.” Stone focused, carefully looking around the room. His theory was that if He of Many Faces had somehow managed to shift Jason’s physical form to another plane or out of phase, there had to be at least a thread of magic connecting him to the material plane. They wanted him for something, otherwise they’d have killed him already. If he could find that thread, he’d be able to examine it and figure out how to shift Jason back.
He hoped.
If the thread existed at all, it was well hidden. Stone wasn’t even sure what he was looking for, just that he was fairly sure he’d know it when he saw it. There weren’t that many places it could be hidden: the room was only about fifteen feet square, and the only furniture aside from the bed was a table and chair, a dresser with a TV set on top of it, a tiny nightstand, and a mini-fridge. Rising from the bed, he began pacing around the room, peering into the dresser drawers and the nightstand, and even opening the mini-fridge. He could sense rather than see Lopez sidestepping to stay out of his way, confusion radiating from him like waves.
“What are you looking for?” he asked. “Anything I can do to help look?”
Stone shook his head without replying. Where was it? He was so sure he was right. If he wasn’t, then they were back to square one, and he had no idea where to go from there. He stopped a moment, frustrated, and considered his options.
“You didn’t look under the bed,” Lopez pointed out. “Maybe it’s there, whatever it is?”
It couldn’t hurt. Again Stone didn’t reply directly, but he dropped down to the floor and lay flat on his stomach, lifting the bedspread and peering into the shadows underneath. He had assumed that the bed, as in most hotels, was on a platform rather than on legs—but he was wrong.
The open space underneath was empty, with two exceptions: a large dust bunny that had apparently escaped the maid’s vacuum cleaner—and a slender, reddish thread of energy that ran tight against the back wall of the room and disappeared into nothingness as it rose up alongside the mattress.
“Yes!” Stone said triumphantly, leaping to his feet.
“You found it?” came Lopez’s eager voice from behind him.
“Under the bed,” he said, pointing. “Brilliant idea.”
“So—now what?”
“Now I’m going to need a bit of time—and probably to break the promise you made about not messing up the room. Can’t be helped. Can you make sure to keep anyone out who might come to call?”
Lopez frowned. “Uh—the motel clerk, yeah. Supernatural stuff, though, maybe not so much.”
Stone waved him off. “This won’t take long. Just watch the door and don’t distract me.”
He tossed his duffel bag on the chair, unzipped it, and began pulling out items: candles, chalk, crystals, bags of sand, bits of incense. He set them all on the table, then, moving quickly but methodically, sketched a circle directly on the bedspread with a thick piece of white chalk.
Lopez started to say something, then decided against it. He kept turning back and forth in place, watching the bed and the door in turn, his hand on his gun butt.
“This is a simple circle,” Stone said as he placed crystals around its circumference. “It won’t need to do much. The connection wasn’t even meant to be noticed, let alone withstand any sort of strain. I think I’ll be able to break it without much difficulty.”
“What happens then?”
“We’ll see, won’t we?” Moving with a lot more grace than he’d have given himself credit for after everything his body had been through over the last couple days, Stone leaped neatly onto the bed without disturbing the circle, then lowered himse
lf into the middle of it. “Might want to have that gun out, just to be safe. Just make sure you know what you’re shooting at if you have to.” Stone checked him quickly for green auras, but still found none. His theory about Faces’ power relative to its base seemed to be holding, at least for now.
Lopez drew his pistol and took up a position near the door, his eyes never leaving Stone.
“All right, then: showtime,” Stone said. “Standard disclaimer: please keep all arms and legs out of my circle at all times. Don’t break it or otherwise disturb it. And stay quiet. I don’t want to bugger this up.”
Without turning to see if Lopez had any reply, he took a few centering breaths, closed his eyes, and fed power into his circle. It began to glow to his magical senses, a clear, pale blue that thrummed along his nerve endings like a low-grade electrical current.
Now that that he knew what he was looking for, the slender crimson thread was very obvious. He couldn’t see all of it because it was obscured by the mattress, but all he needed to see was the tiny bit poking up from in front of the headboard. He focused his will on it, reaching out to examine it so he could figure out how to dismantle it.
It would be easiest if he could just break it: that he could do with a mere flick of his mind, but he saw right away that that wasn’t possible. He could sense Jason’s essence, very faint and distant, making up part of the thread like one strand in a woven rope, blue against the red of the rest of it. If he broke the whole thing cleanly, one of two things would happen, neither one desirable: either Jason would be stranded wherever he was being held with no way to return and no way for Stone to find him, or snapping the part of the cord that contained his essence would snuff out his life force. No, Stone realized, this was more like defusing a bomb than cutting a tether. He’d have to unravel the connection, separate Jason’s thread from the others, and then break the remaining bits while keeping a tight hold on Jason’s.
It was going to take longer than he thought.
Time passed, but he didn’t notice it. Unraveling the glowing cord was delicate work, requiring all of his concentration; he had to trust Lopez to keep any potential distractions or threats away from him. Hold on, Jason, he sent, though he had no idea if Jason would hear him wherever he was.
The strand representing Jason’s essence was tightly integrated into the rest of the cord. Stone sensed power coming through it, flowing from the unseen end to the one located in their own plane. This puzzled him: were they trying to power something on this side using energy from the other? That seemed odd—normally, once spirits manifested themselves here, they no longer needed supplemental power to keep them around. He didn’t have time to examine the reasons for it, though. It required all his will and focus to keep his ethereal “hands” from shaking. With this new mysterious power source in play, he had to treat the operation as if one misstep might cause not only Jason’s death, but a possible backlash that could take out him and Lopez and possibly a good portion of this motel.
Carefully, carefully—
At the periphery of his awareness he thought he heard Lopez say something, but he didn’t have enough spare concentration to make it out. He risked a quick glance toward the door and saw only Lopez’s glowing blue aura: it looked nervous, but not frightened or overly agitated.
Suddenly, something jerked in his grip. He spun his head back around and stiffened.
The red, multi-stranded cord with that single thread of blue had bucked, rearing up like some kind of glowing snake. It lunged toward him, the strands at the end snapping and seeking as if to latch onto him.
Stone pulled back, gripping the cord with one hand and holding it away from him. He sensed that if he dropped it now, all would be lost. That’s what it wants me to do. It’s probably an illusion.
It lunged again, sliding through his hand, and nipped his arm. Pain flared as it sunk its “teeth” into his ethereal form and held on. Stone set his jaw and kept going. He couldn’t afford to stop now—he almost had the blue thread separated from the rest. Just a few more seconds—
Lopez’s voice sounded again, louder this time. Stone ignored it. He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t do anything to help the cop right now.
The “snake” reared back and struck again, this time hitting his shoulder. Again, pain flared. He felt blood running, but wasn’t sure if it was physical or merely ethereal. Not that it mattered: pain was pain.
He thought he felt something else—a pressure on his other shoulder. He snarled aloud and wrenched it forward as the blue, pulsing network of energy provided by the circle began to sputter. Someone or something had breached the circle! A crushing pain pressed in on him, centering on his head as the feedback built.
There was no more time. The circle was failing, its energy collapsing in on itself. He’d have to take the chance: no time to separate the strands further. Gripping the blue thread of Jason’s essence in one hand and holding fast, he clamped his other hand on the bundle of red ones and wrenched with all his ethereal strength (which, being born of willpower rather than muscle and bone, was significantly more impressive than his physical strength), pulling the cord in a sharp jerk as if trying to yank a phone line out of a wall.
Dimly he heard a scream, but he didn’t know if it was coming from himself, someone else, or both. Searing pain lanced up his arm as the cord ripped free, and then white-bright light flared. He felt his body go stiff and then crash backward. The last thing he felt before the room went to black was a vast frustration, and rage: pure, primal rage, all of it directed at him.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Tired…
So tired…
Muttered sounds, far away. Muddy voices filtered through multiple layers of cotton.
Shifting lights. Figures, moving. Looming.
“Al?”
Stone stirred.
“I think he’s waking up.”
He didn’t want to wake up. Waking up took energy, and he didn’t have any left. He just wanted to drift back off to the embrace of blessed, wonderful sleep, where he’d never have to do anything again. Ever. How lovely that would be.
“Al?”
Deep in the midst of the cotton wrapped tightly around his brain, one thought managed to get through: That isn’t Lopez’s voice.
That was important, somehow. He’d have to wake up to find out why.
Damn.
With great reluctance, he opened his eyes.
“Hey, Al,” said a blurry form. “Welcome back.”
He blinked, and the blurry form resolved itself into the familiar figure of— “Jason?”
“Yeah, it’s me.” He grinned. “Can’t get rid of me that easy, I guess.”
Stone blinked again. His brain didn’t want to work right—it was as if all the myriad of questions he wanted to ask were backing up, and none of them could fight its way to the front of the line. “What—?” was all he could manage, and even in his brain-deprived state, he knew he sounded like an idiot.
“Wow, Jason, you told me he was a smart guy, but you didn’t say he was this smart,” came another voice. Lopez’s face swam into view. He was grinning too.
“Yeah, college professor and all. Sharp as a bowling ball, Al is.”
“Oh, sod off, both of you,” Stone said sourly, mock indignation managing to finally begin piercing the layers of cotton. Everything was flooding back to him, which brought up even more questions. But right now, all he could do was stare at Jason. He was there, in the flesh, alive and well and safe, so clearly whatever Stone had been trying to do had worked. His expression grew serious. “Tell me what happened.”
Jason pulled up a chair and sat down, and after a moment Lopez did the same. Stone realized he was lying on his bed in Lopez’s spare room. “I take it no one got arrested, then?” His voice sounded so weak to him, and he was so tired. His shoulder hurt, along with his arm and his head. He didn’t wa
nt to move, but he had to know what had happened.
“Took some fancy footwork,” Lopez said. “I figure I’ll be hearing from Casner soon, but we’re okay for the moment.”
Stone nodded. “What happened? Start at the beginning.” He hunted around in his memory. “I heard you calling something—”
“Yeah. You want anything, by the way? Jason’s eaten nearly everything that isn’t nailed down, including a whole pizza all by himself, but I might have something—”
Stone looked at Jason, only now seeing the slight pallor under his friend’s tan. There was more going on here than was immediately visible. “No. Thank you. Just tell me.” He glanced around the room, looking for a clock. “What time is it?”
“About two thirty a.m. You’ve been out for a few hours, but we figured it’d be better just to let you sleep it off, since you didn’t seem too hurt. Jase slept for some of that, too.” Lopez took a deep breath. “That was some freaky shit tonight, Al. You said it would be simple, and it wouldn’t take long.”
“Apparently I don’t always know what I’m talking about,” Stone said.
“Yeah, I got that.” He leaned back in his chair and took a moment to organize his thoughts. “So, there you were in the middle of that circle of yours on the bed, twitching your hands around. I don’t know what the hell you were doing, but you sure were focused on it. That went on for a while, and then somebody knocked on the door. That’s when I called you for the first time.”
“I think I heard that,” Stone said. “But I couldn’t break my concentration. I assumed you would handle it.”
Lopez nodded. “And I did. It was the desk clerk. Apparently the people who weren’t supposed to get there till nine arrived early, and they wanted their room. I didn’t open the door, just yelled that we’d be done soon. She left and I figured that was that. But then a few minutes later she came back, and she had the people with her. I yelled out that I’d let her know when we were done, but then she used the key and opened the door. She had those glowing eyes—and so did the other couple.”
