Game of Stone

by R. L. King

  “Couple more days.” Jason leaned on the windowframe and accepted a bottle of water, finishing off half of it in a long swig.

  Stone had been examining the finished floor when he noticed an odd edge to his friend’s voice. He glanced up to see Jason watching him. “Something wrong?”

  “No. Nothing’s wrong. But—can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “About what?”

  Jason retrieved the broom from the corner and swept up a bit of stray sawdust. “I haven’t seen you do any magic since I got here.”

  Stone tensed. “So? This job doesn’t exactly require magic, does it?”

  “No, but that’s never stopped you before.” He took a deep breath, replaced the broom, and faced Stone. “I know, Al.”

  Stone’s tension turned to a freezing sensation holding him in place. “Know…what?” he asked with care.

  “I know about you. What happened to you.”

  “Jason—”

  He settled back against the windowframe. “Look,” he said, “I’m not gonna lie to you. Last weekend, when you were off in England, V came down to visit me. She didn’t even tell me she was coming—just showed up in Ventura, and called me to let me know she was there.”

  “Did she?” It took all of Stone’s control to keep his voice even and casual. Verity hadn’t told him anything about going to visit Jason.

  “Yeah. And—listen, Al, I don’t want you to blame her for any of this. I think she forgets sometimes that even though I can’t see auras I’m still her brother, and I can tell when something’s bothering her.”

  “What…did she tell you?” He picked up a hammer and examined it.

  “Nothing, at first. I think she just wanted to get away from it all, you know? Come down, hang out, and relax for a while. But it didn’t end up working out like that. We went out for pizza, she seemed a little out of it, so I asked what was bothering her. She told me it was nothing.”

  “But you didn’t believe her.”

  “No. Like I said, she’s never been able to hide stuff like that from me. We went back to my place and I pushed—maybe a little too much. But finally she broke down and told me.”

  “Told you…what?” Again, Stone spoke with the kind of care he might use while addressing a man pointing a gun at his head.

  “About what happened in England. About how you two got kidnapped by some crazy cult that was trying to do some kind of sacrifice ritual. How they did something to your magic, and you…” He took a deep breath, and when he spoke again, his voice shook. “…about how you went black to save V’s life when they were gonna kill her.”

  Stone let his breath out. It appeared that Verity had adjusted the story to leave out some of the pertinent facts—facts like his own family’s involvement, the effects of the alchemically altered wine they’d drunk, and exactly what their captors’ plans had been for the two of them. “I—”

  “Yeah.” Jason’s voice still shook. “That terrifies me, Al. How close she came—how close both of you came—to dying. And…shit…you went black, man! There’s no recovering from that, is there?”

  “No.” Stone stared at the floor, studying the narrow seams between the boards.

  “You did that for my sister.”

  “She’s my apprentice, Jason,” he said, still without looking up. “I’m responsible for her safety. Especially considering she was put at risk because of me.” He reminded himself he needed to continue speaking carefully—he wasn’t sure how much Verity had actually told Jason, and the last thing he wanted was to let something slip. Jason might not be nearly as adept at spotting his lies as he was Verity’s, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t too damned perceptive at inconvenient times.

  “Yeah, but…” Jason let out a loud breath. “Al…I don’t know what to say. I know you say it’s your responsibility, but…you didn’t have to do it.”

  “No,” he said softly. “I didn’t. But that didn’t matter. What else could I have done? It’s—an adjustment, yes. But I’m alive. Verity’s alive. I still have my magic. Very little has changed, really.”

  “Bullshit.” Jason spoke in the same soft tone as Stone himself had. “Look at me, Al.”

  Stone met his gaze.

  “That’s not all V told me. She also said you haven’t been doing magic as much as before. That you went to somebody to get power and it didn’t work out, and now you’re avoiding doing it again. Is that true?”

  “That’s none of your concern, Jason.”

  “But it is.” Jason’s jaw set. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you…what, exactly?”

  “About what happened. About needing power.” He stalked to the open window and gripped the sill, looking out into the yard. “Come on. Don’t be stupid. You need power. I have power. We’ve already proven I can give it to you without getting hurt. We’ve done it lots of times. I’ve even done it with V now. So why didn’t you tell me?”

  Stone swiped a frustrated hand through his hair and clenched his fist. “Because it wasn’t your concern. You’ve got your own life, your own things to do. Or must I remind you that part of why you left for Ventura the first place was to avoid—how did you put it—being the ‘waterboy’? What were you planning to do—drive up here once a month so I can take power from you? Or have me come to you?”

  “Well…yeah.” Jason shoved himself off the window, his eyes flashing anger. “Al—you saved my sister’s life. You sacrificed your white magic for her. What the hell else do you expect me to do? Let you go on doing this with other people? Or not doing it, because you hate what you are and you’re afraid you’re gonna hurt somebody?”

  “That’s exactly what I expect you to do.” Tension gripped Stone; suddenly he didn’t want to be here anymore. He wanted to get out of the house and drive off someplace where he could be alone and sort this out.

  Jason let out another loud sigh. “Al, I don’t get you sometimes. I really don’t. This literally has no downsides. You get the power you need to do your magic, and I don’t get hurt. There’s no reason why we can’t do this. You saved my sister—the only family I’ve got left. I want to help you. Hell, I’d be honored to do it. So why the fuck are you fighting it?” His voice rose.

  Stone stopped, fists clenched, turned away from Jason. He could hear not only anger in his friend’s voice, but frustration and desperation too. He heard something else, as well—something that made him stiffen and a wave of cold dread wash over him.

  I’d be honored to do it.

  Just like Aubrey: “It was my honor to do it, sir.”

  And suddenly, in an instant, all his stress and anger bubbled up until he could no longer contain them. “I don’t give a damn about your honor, Jason,” he snapped, doing nothing to attenuate the snarl in his voice. “This isn’t about you. It never was. None of this is any of your business!”

  He stood in the doorway, gripping both sides of it with shaking hands. “Verity shouldn’t have told you anything about it, but that’s done now and I can’t change it. What I can do, though, is tell you to mind your own affairs and leave mine alone. Can you do that, Jason?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he shoved himself forward and strode out of the room.

  Loud steps hurried up to him as he reached the wide hallway, and a strong hand gripped his shoulder and spun him around. “It is my business, Al!” Jason’s eyes were narrow, his jaw set, his face reddening. “It became my business when you did what you did for my sister. Damn it, why won’t you listen? Why do you have to be so fucking pigheaded about doing everything the hard way?”

  Stone wrenched his shoulder from Jason’s grip. His heart pounded, adrenaline slamming through him. “Get out of my way, Jason.”

  “Not until you listen to me!” Jason stepped sideways, blocking Stone’s route to the stairway. “Not until you tell me why the hell you’re resisting this so hard. Is it some kind of pride thing? Is that it?”

  “Get out of my way.” Stone spoke through gritted teeth now. />
  “Or what? You’ll move me? With magic? You got any of that left? I thought that was your problem!”

  Stone acted without thinking as Jason’s words—his accurate words—cut deep and frustrated rage submerged his better judgment. With a roar, he leaped forward and swung a wild fist at Jason’s jaw.

  He was fast, but he wasn’t a trained fighter. Jason avoided the blow easily, stepping aside and aiming one of his own at Stone.

  His connected. Stone reeled backward and crashed into the opposite wall, but almost instantly pushed off and flung himself back at Jason, wrapping his arms around the other man’s waist and attempting to bull him into the opposite wall.

  If Jason had been expecting it, he could have used his greater weight to plant himself. But he clearly hadn’t expected it. He lost his balance and pitched back, and the two of them went down in a heap of flailing limbs.

  Jason rolled over, flinging Stone off him and launching him across the hall with a hard shove from both feet.

  Stone landed hard and lay stunned, glaring up at Jason, but before he could scramble back to his feet Jason was on him again, dragging him up by the front of his shirt and slamming him into the wall.

  “Take it, damn you!” Jason yelled in his face, shaking him by the shoulders until his head rattled. “Do it!”

  Stone almost hit him again. He stood puffing, seething with rage, adrenaline racing through him. Every part of his body urged him to act—either to lash out or to rip himself free and run to anywhere Jason wasn’t.

  But without realizing he’d done it, he’d shifted to magical sight. Jason’s aura—his solid, clear, blue aura, flashing now with the red of anger and desperation—swirled around him, nearly engulfing him. Jason stood so close that the blue aura and his own purple-gold mingled, dominating his vision until he could see nothing else. He made one last effort to wrench himself away. “No! I won’t!”

  Jason held fast. “Do it!” he yelled, but now his voice shook. “You can’t hurt me—you know that! Just DO IT!”

  Unable—or unwilling—to fight any longer, Stone gave in. He clamped a hand on Jason’s shoulder, took hold of that strong blue aura, and pulled.

  The power came, and kept coming. Jason seemed to be a bottomless well of it—no matter how much he took, more rose up to take its place.

  Finally, after a few seconds—or a minute, or an hour—he slumped back against the wall and slid down, drawing his legs up and letting out the breath he’d been holding the entire time. Eyes wild with fear, he jerked his head up to look at Jason—he hadn’t made any effort to stem his power draw, and now he was terrified his friend would collapse, unconscious…or worse.

  Instead, Jason stood there in front of him, looking no different than he had before. Actually that wasn’t true—the anger and frustration had left his face, and the red flares were gone from his aura.

  His strong, pulsing blue aura, none the worse for wear from the drain.

  “Jason…” he whispered on a rush of air. “Are you—” All right? Alive?

  “Yeah…I’m fine.” He wasn’t even breathing hard, except a little from the effort of their fight. He offered a hand, and when Stone took it, hauled him up. “Did it…work?”

  Stone nodded, still puffing, not trusting his voice. The power surged through him, filling him until he didn’t think he could handle anymore.

  “You’re—you’ve got power now?”

  Again, Stone nodded. “I didn’t…hurt you, did I?”

  “Not a bit. Didn’t feel a thing. Just like always.” He leaned in a little, fixing his gaze on Stone. “Are we good?”

  That was a hard question to answer. Finally, he offered a minimal shrug of one shoulder.

  “Al? Are we good?”

  Stone dragged his gaze up again to meet Jason’s. “What do you want me to say, Jason?”

  “I want you to say you’ll stop acting like a pigheaded idiot and let me give you power. We just proved you still can’t hurt me. You didn’t hold back, did you?”

  “No.” The word came reluctantly, but he couldn’t lie about it.

  “So there you go. It solves your problem—you don’t ever have to worry about hurting anybody again.” He gripped Stone’s shoulder, and when he spoke his voice was rough. “Al…man…you saved V’s life. I can never repay you for that. I know you don’t think I need to. And I know you’re right. But please…if you won’t do this for yourself, do it for me. Let me do something to thank you for the fact that I still have a sister.”

  “Jason—”

  “Please, Al. Give me one good reason—just one—why you won’t do it, and I’ll back off. But I don’t think you can do that. Be honest with me. Can you?”

  Silence hung in the air for a long time before Stone answered, and in all that time Jason didn’t shift his gaze. “No,” he finally said. “No. I can’t.”

  “Okay, then. So are you gonna let me do this for you, like you should have done all along?”

  “I’ll…think about it.” Right now, he felt like he’d never need to take power again—but he’d felt that way after Acantha, too, and he knew it was no more true now than it had been then. “Thank you, Jason.”

  “Yeah. No problem. And I mean that.”

  Stone rubbed his jaw where Jason had hit him. It throbbed, and he’d probably have a bruise, but it didn’t seem too serious. “I’ve got to head out—things to do tonight.”

  “Yeah. Okay—I gotta go too. V’s home from work in an hour or so, and we were gonna go get some dinner. You want to come along?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  It appeared as if he might push it, but he got a look at Stone’s expression and nodded. “Okay. Maybe I’ll see you before I go. If not—promise you’ll call me. You know, next time.”

  “I will.”

  “Take care, Al.”

  Stone waited until Jason headed down the stairs and the front door closed behind him. Numbly, he gathered up the tools they’d used working on the floor and returned them to their places, still doing it the mundane way. It was getting dark now, the sun setting below the tree line and wreathing the house in shadows.

  When he finished putting the tools away, he pressed his back against one of the room’s walls and slid down until he sat on the floor. He pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. His mind spun with unease.

  Jason was right, of course. Perhaps his method of pounding it into Stone’s head had been a bit…well, primitive…but sometimes that was what it took. He’d gotten his message across. Stone hadn’t made any effort to slow down his pull. He’d taken everything he could, drawn power until his nerves throbbed with the magic he was holding, and it hadn’t fazed Jason in the slightest. He hadn’t hurt him—hell, he hadn’t even tired him as he had Phoebe.

  It made sense for him to do what Jason had suggested. It solved all his problems.

  Except…

  His hands, clutching each other around his drawn-up knees, tightened as guilt and shame gripped him.

  He’d thought the worst of it would have been making himself beholden to Jason for power—depending on him as the only person around he could reliably pull magical energy from without risking something unthinkable.

  That was bad enough, true—his “I will” in response to Jason’s demand for a promise didn’t constitute one, at least not in his mind. Jason may have been right in feeling he owed Stone a debt for the sacrifice he’d made to save Verity—but Jason didn’t have the whole story. Would he still feel that way if he knew Stone was sleeping with his beloved sister? If he knew the witches led by his mad grandmother and his even madder sister hadn’t planned to kill Verity, but to use her as a vessel for a life they did plan to kill? Would that change anything?

  But even as he wondered it, he knew it wasn’t the worst thing about this. And that was why the guilt and the shame gripped him until he thought they would rip him apart as he sat there.

  “No…” he whispered aloud. “Damn you, no. That doesn’t matter.”<
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  But somewhere in the back of his mind, it did matter.

  He dragged himself to his feet and stood staring at the room, at the floor he and Jason had installed together today, and tried not to think about the rest—but he couldn’t help it.

  The fact was, he’d felt nothing when he’d drawn power from Jason.

  There was no rush, no wild orgasmic sensation as the magical energy filled him up. When he’d killed Acantha, the feeling had been so strong he thought he might die right there of the sheer ecstasy of it. When he’d taken power from Phoebe it hadn’t been anywhere near that strong or that rapturous, but the rush had still been there—even before he’d lost control and taken too much.

  With Jason, it had been the same as all the other times he’d drawn from him—he’d gripped his friend’s shoulder, called for the power, and Jason had willingly provided it. The whole process was no more enticing than a handshake.

  He finished upstairs and headed down to where he’d left his overcoat. As he pulled it on and then locked the front door behind him, his guilty feelings intensified.

  You want that rush, don’t you? the traitorous little voice in the back of his mind drawled. You like it.

  No. No, I don’t— Without realizing it, he set off at a jog toward the BMW, perhaps trying to outrun the voice in his own head.

  That was, of course, impossible. But you do, it said. You didn’t want to be a black mage, but now that you are, that’s what you’re supposed to get out of it, right? Sure, you’re rubbish at wards now and you can’t use your power objects anymore, but that’s all right—now it feels good to draw power. And it’s okay—everybody understands that. Phoebe and the others know how it is. They do it willingly. You wouldn’t have to hurt anyone to get it.

  But I did hurt her. That’s the point! That’s why I should just let Jason—

  Yes. Just let Jason. Because he feels like he owes you. You’ll love that, won’t you? Seriously, how long will that last before you two can’t stand looking at each other anymore?