Blood and Stone

by King, R. L.

  “Stone, what the hell are you doing here?” Casner demanded. “Take your little crew and get the hell out of the area. We’ve got enough problems—”

  “Yes, exactly,” Stone said, mounting the gazebo’s steps. “We might be able to help you with your problem. Where’s Stan Lopez?”

  “How the hell should I know?” He made a sweeping gesture to encompass the park and the street. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m trying to coordinate this mess so we don’t end up with a massacre. Lopez is doing whatever he was told to do.”

  “Look, Lieutenant,” Stone said. “I haven’t got time to spoon-feed you this time. You’ve got a full-blown supernatural situation here. Some of these people are possessed, and they’re going to do their best to kill other people so they can bring over more of the things that are possessing them. If we don’t stop this very soon, it will grow exponentially to the point where you’ll have to mow down crowds of civilians to have a chance of stemming it. Now are you going to listen to me or not?”

  “Stone,” Casner growled, “I’m only gonna tell you this one more time, and then I’m going to arrest you and shove your ass in the back of a squad car until we get this under control. I don’t have time for your supernatural bullshit right now! Get. The hell. Out of here. Now. Do you understand?”

  Stone clenched his fists. Normally it didn’t bother him that most mundanes’ minds were truly breathtaking in their refusal to accept what was going on right under their noses. It meant that even when he was forced to use magic in front of them, they never believed that was what they’d seen after everything was over. They were masters at coming up with “logical” explanations for why the skinny guy in the long black coat was flinging lightning bolts out of his hands, or throwing people through the air with a gesture. Right now, though, it was going to get a lot of people killed, and that wasn’t something Stone wanted to deal with.

  “Casner, you idiot,” he snarled, preparing to turn toward the crowd and do something showy and magical that the man couldn’t deny.

  Until he realized that Aguirre wasn’t yelling into his mic anymore.

  He spun, and froze. “Casner! Down!” he yelled, already putting up a shield between Casner and Aguirre, who was pointing his gun at his boss. Aguirre’s eyes glowed red-orange.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  The gun went off with a deafening roar. The round bounced off the shield and ricocheted into the night. Aguirre’s expression went from enraged to dumbfounded, and he let the gun slip from his nerveless fingers.

  “Holy shit!” Casner’s gaze cut back and forth between Stone, the glowing shield that was still up, and the confused cop. He drew his own gun and pointed it at Aguirre. “Holy shit—Aguirre, you just tried to shoot me!”

  “Put the gun down, Lieutenant,” Stone ordered, shifting to magical senses and seeing that the green aura had left Aguirre. “He’s all right now.” He made a show of letting the shield drop as Jason, Edna, and Carly came running over. Despite the potential lethality of the situation he’d just defused, he had to give Faces credit: he couldn’t have asked for a better demonstration that something weird was going on. “Now do you believe me?”

  Casner was staring at Aguirre. “You tried to shoot me.” His gaze switched to Stone. “And you—”

  “Put up a shield to prevent it,” Stone said, nodding. “Casner, we don’t have time for this. We’re looking for someone, and we need to find him fast.”

  “Lopez—” Casner’s voice sounded strange—stunned and confused, nothing like his normal confident and authoritative tones.

  “Not Lopez, though we’d like to find him as well. The one who’s responsible for this whole mess.”

  Casner looked at Aguirre again, then at Stone. Then he took a deep breath. His expression went through a series of changes that Stone was very familiar with: they were the progression of a mundane who had finally been forced to accept that the supernatural really did exist and whose mind was steadfastly trying to shield him from this acceptance. Usually it stopped there: the person simply shut down and began the process of rationalization. This time, though, Stone could tell that after everything Peter Casner had seen over the last few days, he’d finally seen something that had broken through his self-imposed wall of ignorance. It was not a pleasant sight, nor, did Stone expect, was it a pleasant experience for Casner. But that didn’t matter now.

  The radio squawked, but both Casner and the thoroughly flummoxed Aguirre ignored it. “What do you want?” Casner asked Stone in a quiet monotone.

  “Call Lopez. Tell him to meet us here if he’s close.”

  “And then what?”

  Stone shrugged. “Then we try to find the source of all this. We—”

  Casner’s expression suddenly changed. His mouth worked, and a voice came out—flat, dead, but somehow amused. “I’m not hiding, mageling,”

  Stone and all the rest of them, including Aguirre, stared at him. “Well,” Stone said. “Nice of you to show up and talk to us.” So much for his theory about Faces’ inability to possess cops away from its shrine. Maybe it was growing more powerful. Still, though, as long as it was talking, it wasn’t out killing anyone else. Small victories.

  “I have nothing more to say to you,” Casner’s body said in the weird voice. “You will die like the rest. All of you will.” He turned his head, and settled his eerie red-orange gaze on Carly. “Not all of you. Why are you here, little sister of my blood?”

  Carly was shaking, her eyes huge and terrified. “M-me?” She tried to duck behind Jason.

  “What the hell is going on?” Aguirre demanded, backing away, his voice high and bright with near-panic.

  Everyone ignored him. He of Many Faces was still watching Carly. “I have no quarrel with you, little sister. Why do you aid these fools?”

  “I—” Carly’s voice shook. She seemed to gather a bit of courage from being behind Jason. She swallowed. “You have to stop killing people! Go home! Go away!”

  Casner/Faces laughed: an unsettling sound, like the creak of old hinges. “Oh, little sister. Your foolish friends have convinced you that you can command me. None can command me. I will fulfill the purpose for which I was called, and you can do nothing to stop it.”

  “Like hell she can’t,” Stone said, eyes blazing. “She summoned you. She can send you back.” He unzipped his leather bag and pulled out the book. He didn’t think they’d be able to do it here—that would have been too much to ask—but he wasn’t going to turn down an opportunity to give it a shot.

  Faces laughed again. “She has power, but she doesn’t know how to use it. She summoned me, true, but she did not give me direction. She is weak. She is nothing like those of her bloodline who called me into being and set my purpose so long ago. She will do nothing to stop me. She did not make me—she cannot unmake me.”

  Stone opened the book to the page where the ritual that Edna had found was printed. Doing this without a circle would be difficult and risky, if it were even possible at all. “Edna?”

  “Here,” Edna said, coming up next to him.

  “Carly, you too,” Stone said.

  “Al?” Jason called.

  “What?” Stone sounded impatient. He didn’t have time to deal with distractions right now.

  “They’re coming! A bunch of them are coming this way!”

  “Fuck!” Aguirre said. Behind them, he was finally getting himself back together, and he too had turned toward the park. “What are they—”

  Stone spared a glance in the same direction. A good half-dozen men and women, including one policewoman awkwardly carrying a gun, were moving in their direction. A quick magical glance told him all he needed to know: these were Faces’ minions, and the spirit wasn’t taking any chances that he and his group might be able to get their banishing spell off.

  “Fools,” Faces said again, and then the light left Casner’
s eyes and he stood there, swaying and confused. “Fine,” he said, reaching for the mic as if nothing had happened. “I’ll call Lopez, and then—”

  The armed group was approaching. The policewoman raised her gun and fired into the gazebo—everyone hit the deck except Stone and Edna, who both summoned shields, and Casner, who hadn’t clued in yet that he’d just lost a couple of minutes of his life. The bullets bounced harmlessly off the shield.

  “Hold that shield,” Stone told Edna. He let his own drop, shoved the book back in the bag, and spread both hands to point at the oncoming group. A wave of force issued from them, catching the possessed group at around chest level and bowling them over like tenpins. With his magical sight active, he saw the small insubstantial forms dart upward from the falling people, and flung a ball of magical energy at the two closest to him. They flared red and flew to pieces. Next to them, another one simply faded out of existence. He glanced sideways at Edna, and saw that she had dropped her own shield now that the gunwoman was down and was pointing her hand in a different direction. “Casner! Call Lopez!”

  Aguirre had recovered enough that he was back on his own radio. “I’ve got him here. He’s at the park, on the other side over by Signal.”

  “Tell him to come here,” Stone said, without taking his eyes off the group. One glowing-eyed young man wielded a baseball bat near the fountain; he’d already knocked down two people and was winding up on a third. Stone sent another bolt of magical energy at him, and he overbalanced backward and landed in the fountain with a splash. Next to him, Edna was using her more subtle magic to defuse tense situations, sending confused would-be rioters wandering off in random directions.

  “I can’t do this for long,” she told Stone through gritted teeth. Sweat stood out on her tanned forehead. “I need more preparation these days to be able to do anything big.”

  “We can’t keep doing this in any case,” Stone said. He wasn’t tiring yet: even though combat spells weren’t his strongest suit, the practice he’d gotten over the last couple years and the methods he’d studied meant he had more endurance with them than he used to. Adrenaline was helping. “Every time one of those things kills someone, it brings another minion into the physical world. We’ll be overrun.”

  “What else can we do?” Jason demanded. His gaze scanned the crowd, watching for anyone who might be coming closer or aiming a gun at them.

  Out in the park, the cops were struggling to contain the crowd, but there were so many that it was difficult: as soon as they pinned down one or two, another five ran off. Naturally, it was impossible for them to tell which ones were possessed and which ones were simply drunk and taking advantage of the mob situation to let loose. Stone scanned the area, and with just a quick glance spotted two dead bodies, one nearly decapitated, the other with gaping bloody slashes in its abdomen. The crowd was giving both of them a wide berth. Fire and emergency personnel were hurrying among the chaos, trying to aid victims who were still alive as the police tried to get the situation under control.

  “Here comes Lopez,” Edna said, pointing. Sure enough, his familiar form was approaching through the crowd toward the command post. He had his nightstick in hand, and was clad in uniform, bulletproof vest, and helmet. His face was grim, but he looked relieved when he spotted Stone, Edna, and Jason.

  “Thank God,” he said. “It’s been like hell here tonight. It’s like the whole town’s gone insane.”

  “I think that’s pretty much what’s happened,” Jason said. He ducked as another bottle flew through the air and smashed into the side of one of the police radios.

  Stone was staring out over the scene, his mind obviously elsewhere.

  “Al?” Lopez ventured.

  “I know what we have to do,” Stone said, snapping back on.

  “What?”

  “We can’t fight it here. It’s too easy for it to switch from one body to another, like it did with Casner. That, and there’s too much chaos here. We’d never be able to get any kind of circle going.”

  “Where, then?” Jason asked.

  But Lopez had already caught on. “At the tree,” he stated. And to Stone: “Right?”

  He nodded. “We need to take it to the source. That’s where it came into being—that’s where we’ll have to send it back.”

  Edna, too, nodded. “Yes,” she said. “It will be strong there, but with Carly along we should be able to do it. If it doesn’t kill us first.”

  “If we get moving, we might be able to get up there before it catches on what we’re planning,” Stone said. “Not likely, but it’s got a lot to be dealing with here. It might be distracted. Come on.”

  He turned back to Casner, who was on the radio again. “We’re leaving,” he said. “We’ll be in Stan’s truck. If you’ve got any roadblocks over near Creek Road, tell your men to let us through.”

  Casner, still looking dubious but a lot less so than before, nodded. “Where are you going?”

  “Best if we don’t say. Just tell them to leave us alone.” Without waiting for a response, he waved for the others to follow him out of the park.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  They got back to the truck without major incident. Twice they had to deal with groups of drunken rioters trying to hassle them, but both times a combination of Stone’s and Edna’s magic, Jason’s muscle, and Lopez’s police uniform got them through without any injuries on either side. They didn’t encounter any more possessed individuals once they got clear of Ojai Avenue. “I think they’re still focusing on killing descendants,” Edna said. “It’s the only explanation I can think of why there isn’t more of a bloodbath than there is. They can get their reinforcements while still fulfilling their orders.”

  “Whatever they’re doing, we need to get away from it,” Jason said. They piled into the truck, shifting around to make room for Lopez, who took the wheel.

  “Look sharp,” Stone said from the shotgun seat as Lopez took off back down the back street away from the Arcade. “If Faces figures out what we’re up to, he’s going to try to stop us.”

  All five of them were on edge as the truck headed toward Creek Road. Lopez drove quickly but carefully, scanning the road for anyone who might dart out in front of them. Fortunately, most of the action seemed to be downtown. Lopez left the police radio on, so they were able to keep track of the chatter as more reinforcements from the Ventura Sheriff’s Department arrived and were deployed. It sounded like they were beginning to get the panic under control, but there were still dozens of civilians and the police were confused by the unexplained behavior of some of the crowd. As Stone and the others listened, a report came in of another death as someone had scaled to the top of Libbey Bowl and jumped off headfirst into the concrete below.

  “This is unreal,” Lopez muttered. “This town’s never gonna be the same after this. And the worst part is that they’re not gonna know what the hell hit them.”

  Stone nodded. “I don’t doubt that as soon as this is over, Casner will find some way to rationalize what happened. Aguirre didn’t really shoot at him—he was shooting at something over his shoulder. Something like that. You lot are masters at coming up with convoluted explanations instead of just accepting what is.”

  They paralleled Ojai Avenue until they got out of the downtown area, then Lopez took the first left and headed south. Stone recognized it as the route he’d taken on his first trip out to Creek Road what seemed like several lifetimes ago.

  “Jason,” Lopez said, “Dig around back there under the seat. There’s a portable light down there. I want this traffic to get the hell out of our way.”

  Jason found it and passed it forward; Lopez turned it on, lowered the truck’s window, and stuck it to the roof. “Might not help,” he said, “but won’t hurt.”

  It was a good idea: Ojai Avenue, even out this far, was still at a standstill with traffic in both directions. Lopez blasted the h
orn a few times and the cars shuffled themselves around, barely making room for him to squeeze the big vehicle through. He cruised along half on the road and half off, then turned onto Country Club Drive as soon as he could, still mirroring Stone’s route.

  Fortunately the traffic seemed confined to the main drag; this road was deserted, and when they reached the intersection with Creek Road, it was as well. Lopez opened up the truck a bit more, and in only a couple of minutes he’d turned onto the fire road leading up to the area containing the shrine.

  “I hope you’ve got some gear in here somewhere,” Jason said. “How are we gonna find the place without light?”

  “Flashlights in the toolbox,” Lopez said.

  “We can provide light if necessary,” Stone said, indicating himself and Edna. “But I don’t want to use too much magic until we get there. Don’t want to give Faces anything to notice.”

  “Keep your eyes open,” Edna said, looking out the front window. “I’d be surprised if it hasn’t already noticed.”

  The truck jounced along the narrow dirt road, the light from its headlights bouncing eerily into the thickly growing trees on either side. Stone shifted to magical senses, on the watch for the glowing forms of Faces’ minions approaching. Thus far, though, he saw nothing. “Maybe not,” he said. “Do you see anything, Edna?”

  “No, but I don’t think it’ll show its hand yet,” she said. “It knows this is going to be the end—it’s saving its energy. I can sense the area, though—we’re getting close to where we need to stop.”

  “Just let me know,” Lopez said. “This all looks the same in the dark.”

  Stone glanced around at the back seat. Carly was huddled in a corner, staring down into her lap. “You all right, Carly?”

  “No,” she said in a small voice. “I’m really scared. Those people were—killing each other. That guy jumped off the post office tower—” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I can’t do this. I’m gonna fuck it up, I just know it.”