by R. L. King
“Name’s Alastair Stone,” he said, still sounding annoyed. “Are you lot some sort of all-woman vigilante street gang or something?”
“Something like that. What’s it to you?” the lady wrestler said.
“Wait,” Hezzie spoke up, stepping forward. “I’ve heard of him.”
“You have?” The dark-skinned leader looked surprised.
She didn’t answer her, but instead focused on Stone. “You’re from south of here, aren’t you? Palo Alto?”
“Yes…” Stone narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
Hezzie’s plain features showed shock. “He’s powerful. Like big-time powerful. What’s he doing here?”
“We’re wasting time!” the oddly crouched woman spoke from the shadows. Her voice had a strange rasp. “He’s gonna get away, Kyla!”
The dark-skinned woman, apparently Kyla, considered and faced Stone again. “You said you were looking for this guy. Why?”
“Long story. But I can track him, if you’ll stop asking questions and let me get on with it. Your friend’s right—if he strikes, aside from that being bad for whoever’s in his sights, it will also make it harder for me to track him. Don’t ask why, but it will.”
Kyla growled under her skull-jaw mask. “We’re coming with you, then. We want a piece of this guy. Like I said, he’s already attacked four women that we know of. He’s not getting any more.”
Stone looked them over. “We’ll never get near him if I’ve got five of you tromping along behind me.”
She pulled her mask up, and her smile was predatory. “Don’t worry, Stone—you’ll never know we’re there.” She nodded toward the others, and they faded back into the shadows. “Just find him, and we’ll take it from there.”
At that moment, Stone’s phone buzzed. As he reached into his pocket for it, Zel’s gun clicked from the darkness.
“Put that thing down,” he snapped again, at the same time Kyla held up a cautioning hand. He quickly hit the button to answer. “Yes?”
“Stone? It’s Blum. You left me a message. You got somethin’?”
Great timing, Blum. “Yes, I think so. I can’t explain the details now, but I think another one of those pieces has activated. I’m tracking it now.”
“Where?”
“Where are we?” he mouthed at Kyla.
“Who’s that?” she muttered back.
“Police.”
“We don’t need any cops involved in this.” She dropped her voice so low Stone could barely hear her.
Stone started to say something, but before he could, her cat-quick hand snaked out and plucked the phone from his grip. She hung up, turned it off, and stuck it in her pocket. “You’ll get this back when we find him. No cops.”
He glared. “You know I can take that from you, right? I can take on all five of you, and it won’t be pleasant.”
“Yeah, maybe so, but you won’t. Because you said you want this guy too, and I believe you. Come on—like you said, we’re wasting time. Your cop buddy can have the guy when we’re done with him.”
“I won’t let you kill him.”
“Nobody’s killin’ nobody,” Zel’s voice came from the shadows. “Not like he don’t deserve it, though.”
“Go,” Kyla ordered Stone.
Stone glared at her again, but unless he wanted to attack all five of these women—including two whose capabilities he had no idea about—his options were limited. They were after the same objective, after all, and if they waited too much longer the man would strike again.
“Fine, then,” he growled, pulling the white figure from his pocket. “Keep up.”
He strode off down the alley, following the thread. It still glowed brightly, still in the same general northeasterly direction as before. He increased his speed to a slow jog, and didn’t hear any sign of the women following behind him.
The would-be rapist had apparently left this block, because the thread pointed across a nearly deserted street at the other end of the alley. Stone paused for a quick look; this was a two-lane street lined with parked cars, but none of them were moving at the moment. On the other side was a series of ramshackle tenement apartment buildings, some of them boarded up and abandoned.
The thread pointed directly at one of these, halfway up the street.
“There you are…” he murmured. He put on a burst of speed and darted across the street, stopping in the shadows of the building next door to his target. Glancing back the direction he’d come from, he still saw no sign of the women. If they were still following, they were damned good at it. Even magical sight didn’t reveal them.
He pulled up his disregarding spell—he had no idea if it would conceal him from the women, but he didn’t want anyone else lurking in the shadows to spot him—and sidled along the building until he reached the one containing his target. A quick check with magical sight revealed the thread pointing upward now. The man was on one of the upper floors.
All the doors and windows on this side of the ground floor were boarded up, so getting in that way wasn’t an option unless he wanted to make a lot of noise. There had to be a way in—he could check around the back, but that would take too much time. If the man was already inside a building, he’d probably already identified a target. He’d have to move fast.
He looked up. The structure was three stories tall, and after squinting a bit he spotted the skeletal form of a rusting fire escape, its broken ladder extending downward halfway to the second floor. Next to the top of the steps, it appeared a couple of the windows’ boards had been ripped free, leaving a dark hole of an opening.
Stone checked to make sure nobody was watching him, then levitated upward and landed lightly on the third-floor fire escape platform. It creaked alarmingly when he allowed his whole weight to press on it, and he felt it beginning to pull away from the building. Quickly he resumed the spell, hovering an inch above the platform while he examined his surroundings.
The hole didn’t encompass the entire window. Someone had ripped away two of the lower boards, leaving an opening less than three feet square. Jagged shards of glass and rusty nails poked out from the sides.
Stone carefully pushed himself through the hole, taking as much care as possible to avoid the nails. Still, by the time he wormed through and dropped to the filthy floor inside he’d managed to rip a long slash along the arm of his overcoat.
He paused a moment to listen. The building was silent, except for the far-off sounds of traffic and the creaking of old boards. This place had probably been condemned; he hoped he didn’t put his foot through the floorboards when he started moving.
He was about to rise from his crouch when a faint sound reached him.
What was that? A rat? Another creaking floorboard? This place felt like it was about to fall down any moment.
But no—there it was again.
The softest of whimpers, like a child trying desperately not to cry.
Stone stiffened.
His target was here. Was he planning to assault a child?
No time to be subtle or careful now. Once again, the heady rush of not having to conserve his power gripped him. He had plenty to spare right now—why not use it? He levitated a couple inches above the floor again and shot across it, all the while craning his ears to catch the whimper again. This place was full of weird echoes and holes in the floor—it could be coming from anywhere on this floor or the one below it.
When he reached the door, he consulted the figurine once more. This time, the thread pointed almost fully downward through the floor.
Below me, then. I’ve got you now…
Grimly, he floated forward, using a faint, barely visible light spell to illuminate his way. In front of him, a rickety stairway with several cracked or missing steps led down into shadows.
The whimper rose again, then a sharp, muttered order and it abruptly ceased.
Stone gritted his teeth and increased his speed, reaching the bottom of the stairs. Were the women here already? Had they foun
d another way in, either around the back or through another upper window? He didn’t hear them.
Another whimper—but this one didn’t sound like a child, but a woman. “No…please…”
It was the room off to his left, the one with the door hanging crazily in its frame, mostly closed but still letting a dim light out into the hallway.
Stone pulled up a shield around himself and used a telekinetic grip to grab hold of the door, ripping it off its feeble hinges. He tossed it back into the hall with a loud crash, then strode forward and stood in the doorway, increasing his light spell to take in the scene.
They were all in the corner of the room. A stained, ripped mattress had been pushed against the wall, and on it lay the sobbing figure of a woman. Another figure, male, knelt between her legs, his pants pulled down, trying to shove her shabby coat and dress upward as she struggled.
Near them huddled two children—Stone barely glanced at them, except to note that neither looked older than five or six.
The man acted fast—faster than he should have been able to. At the sound of the door’s crash, he launched himself forward and grabbed the woman around the neck, pulling her into the room’s corner.
“Get out…” he growled in a low, guttural tone, his small, glittering eyes fixed on Stone. “Or I’ll snap her neck.”
“No…” one of the kids wailed. “Don’t hurt Mommy!” She flung her small body at the man, trying to get hold of one of his arms.
He lashed out at her with a booted foot. He didn’t connect hard because of the angle, but the kick drove the child staggering back with a shriek of pain. The other child, a boy, leaped toward her, grabbing her before she fell.
Stone didn’t let the man’s inattention go to waste. Focusing his concentration, he took a strong telekinetic grip on the would-be rapist’s hands and ripped them from the woman’s throat, then slammed him hard into the opposite wall.
He yelped and tried to jump to his feet, but his lowered pants hindered his movements.
Stone grabbed him around the neck with a magical grip and threw him back into the wall. “Stay there!” he snapped.
He turned quickly toward the woman. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”
“N-no…no…” The woman’s breathing came so hard and fast she was almost hyperventilating. The two children piled on top of her, both wailing with terror.
Stone focused once again on the man. “Where is it?” he demanded, moving closer. “And pull your bloody pants up!”
“I—can’t—“ the man puffed, clawing at his neck where Stone held him securely against the wall. A stocky white man with a bald head and workman’s clothes, he gaped at Stone with bulging eyes. His jeans and shorts puddled around his boots, leaving his lower half exposed.
And then, suddenly, the room was full of figures.
“There he is!” Zel’s familiar voice called.
“Kick the shit out of him!” the wrestler urged.
“Wait!” Stone yelled.
“Out of the way!” The wrestler shoved him aside and she, Zel, and the oddly-crouched woman converged on the rapist. Kyla and Hezzie entered the room last and stood back, apparently to watch.
“Wait!” Stone yelled again, louder this time.
The wrestler finished planting a muscular knee in the man’s vulnerable nether regions, drawing a high-pitched, keening shriek from him. At the same time, Zel lashed out with a fist into his meaty gut. He doubled over, retching, and dropped to his knees.
“What?” the wrestler demanded to Stone, leaping back out of the way as the man vomited all over the floor.
“See to them,” Stone ordered, jerking a thumb over his shoulder toward the victims. “He kicked the little girl. She might be injured.” Without waiting to see if anyone complied, he used magic to shove the wrestler, Zel, and the other woman away from the rapist. Carefully sidestepping the puddle of stinking vomit, he pulled out the white figurine and traced the thread directly to the man’s pocket. He reached down toward it.
“No!” Still on his knees, the man tried to scramble backward, but Stone held him fast. “It’s mine! You can’t have it!” He shifted his hands, which had been clutching his injured crotch, to try preventing Stone from accessing his pocket.
Stone pushed his arm aside and yanked the little black figure free. Like the white one, it depicted a goatish, leering satyr with sickly pink eyes; the two were identical save for their color. On a hunch, he raised the black one with one hand, the white one with the other, and brought the two together.
As soon as the two figurines made contact, a bright light flared for an instant, and mirror-image cracks appeared down the middle of both of them. The thread disappeared as both figures fizzled, now inert and dead like the other black ones had been.
The rapist slumped at the same time, catching himself with his arms before he collapsed forward into his own vomit.
“What the hell—?” Kyla demanded.
Stone wheeled on her and extended his hand. “Phone, please.”
“I don’t—”
“Phone,” he snapped, more forcefully this time.
She glared back at him. “I don’t take orders from you. I don’t care what you are.”
“He’s just like all the others,” the wrestler growled. She was eyeing the downed rapist as if contemplating painful retaliation.
“Look,” Stone said. “I don’t know what your issue is, and frankly I don’t care. But I’m not going to let you kill this man, and I want my bloody phone back. Now.”
He glanced over to where Hezzie had crouched next to the would-be victim and her children. “Are they all right?”
Hezzie looked up. “They’ll be fine. We’ll take care of them.” Her expression was unreadable, her voice flat.
Stone took a quick look at their auras. They shone in a multiple of colors, but all of them were cold, steady, and unwelcoming.
“You don’t really have much of a say about it, do you?” Kyla asked. She faced Stone without fear or hesitation. “Unless you want to take all of us on. But I’m guessing you’re not that type, are you?”
Stone let his breath out. “Are you planning to kill him?”
She eyed him for several seconds with a steady, appraising gaze before she answered. “No. But we’re going to make him wish he was dead before we hand him over.” She indicated the man with a contemptuous head-toss. “This piece of shit raped at least four women that we know of, and this one was almost number five. He deserves it.”
She nodded toward the door and dropped her volume so only Stone and the wrestler, standing next to him, could hear her. “You’ve done your good deed, mage. We’re grateful you helped find him, however the hell you did it. But now this is our business. You can go.”
This was different. Her entire demeanor had changed since they’d last spoken in the alley. Before, she seemed willing to listen, at least. Now her tone dripped with cold contempt. “What’s your problem?” he asked. “Why the sudden hostility?”
“We don’t like your kind,” the wrestler said.
“Greta, let me handle this.” Kyla waved her off.
Greta stiffened and her eyes narrowed, but after a moment she nodded and stumped back over to where the slim, crouched woman and Zel stood over the panting rapist.
“What do you mean, my kind?” Stone asked. “From the look of things, you’ve got some of my kind in your little group.” Then it dawned. “You don’t mean mages, do you? You mean men.”
“I mean both.” Kyla turned her back on the rapist and lowered her skull-jaw mask. Beneath it, her mouth was set in a hard line. Like her companions, she wore no makeup. “Hezzie’s not a mage. She’s a witch.”
“Semantics.”
“No.” If anything, her expression grew harder. “It’s not. Witches help. All you mages care about is power.” She looked him up and down. “I know your type, Stone. You’re an arrogant asshole with too much money and too high of an opinion of yourself.” Pointing at the two figurines i
n his hand, she added, “I’m guessing you didn’t give a damn about stopping this piece of shit—you were just tracking some puzzle. Am I right?”
“Now, just a—”
“Am I right?”
He glared at her. “No. You’re not. Not entirely, anyway. Yes, I was tracking the figurine. But only because I knew something would happen when the white one activated. I was trying to prevent it.”
“What are those things?”
“Ancient magic items.” He held up the black piece. “When the black one activates, it mentally influences its owner—probably a latent talent—to commit a crime. This one obviously represented rape. The white one—” He held that up. “—allows its holder to track its counterpart.”
“You’re shittin’ me.”
“No. And there are still two more of them out there, somewhere.” He extended his hand. “Give me back my mobile. Now. You don’t have to be involved in this, but the police have to be informed. I won’t ask politely again.”
Greta and Zel stepped up behind Kyla, flanking her on either side. Three cold, angry gazes settled on Stone.
He tensed, hoping they wouldn’t push it, but preparing himself if they did. They wouldn’t find his newfound black-magic abilities easy to deal with.
“Fine,” Kyla said at last, pulling Stone’s phone from her pocket and tossing it to him. “Call, if you must. We’ll be long gone before they get here. In the meantime, though—” She cast a significant look over her shoulder at the rapist. He’d made a couple attempts to rise, and both times one of the women pushed him roughly back down. Greta had one combat boot resting on his back, just below his neck.
A whimper sounded from behind Stone. The woman was sobbing softly; her two children, also crying, were assisting Hezzie in rearranging her clothes. Every few seconds they cast fearful looks in the direction of the fallen rapist. Stone remembered what Kyla had said: that this man had raped other women in the area before they’d caught him.
