Mortal Imperative: An Alastair Stone Urban Fantasy Novel (Alastair Stone Chronicles Book 24)

by R. L. King

  “I’m glad to hear you say that.” Stone was gladder than he’d admit, given his knowledge of who—and what—Gabriel actually was. “Because we’re going to find him.”

  It was at that point he’d revealed his plan, and at that point where everyone had stared at him like he’d suddenly gone mad.

  “No,” Verity said again. “Doc, it’s too dangerous. And we don’t even know if it will work.”

  “It’s not dangerous.” Stone tossed his croissant back on his plate, picked up Raider, and began stalking around the living room. “Not much, anyway. Eddie and Ward are some of the best I know at this kind of research, and they’re bloody good at setting up rituals. Verity, you’re as good with trackers as I am these days. And I’ll wager Gabriel’s taught you a thing or two, Ian, right?”

  “Well…yeah,” he admitted grudgingly. “But I agree with Verity—it’s too dangerous, using yourself as a tether. If something goes wrong, you could die, Dad.”

  Still not too sure about that, he thought, shooting a significant glance at Jason and Amber. “I’m not going to die,” was all he said, though. “Rituals get more stable with more participants, and you all know it’s possible to do this kind of ritual without destroying the tether. It just requires more care and a different circle design. Listen,” he added, “I’ve got full confidence in all of you. I know you can do this. And unless you’ve got any other ideas, it’s probably the only way we’ve got to find these three before they kill Lu and Grider, and finish whatever Richter’s ultimate plan is. I’m willing to take the chance, and I’m asking you to help me. Eddie and Ward have already agreed, so I’m doing it whether you agree or not. But I’ll tell you this: I’ll feel a hell of a lot more confident if I’ve got you two on my side too.”

  “But wait,” Verity said. “I thought tracking rituals were single-person things.”

  “They are—if we were doing a standard one. That’s what I’m hoping Eddie and Ward will discover. If not, we’ll have to do a bit of cobbling. But I’m confident we’ll work it out. We’ve got some brilliant magical minds on the case. So—what do you say?”

  Verity looked at Ian.

  Jason and Amber perched on the edge of the sofa, both of them looking uncomfortable because they knew they didn’t have a say in this decision.

  Verity and Ian both looked at Stone.

  “Doc…” Verity began.

  “Come on, Verity. Don’t forget, you want Brathwaite too. He’s almost certainly responsible for what happened at Berrycliff. Don’t forget that. I don’t think Padgett could have done any of that on her own. You said you wanted a shot at him. Here’s your chance.”

  Her gaze hardened. “That’s not playing fair.”

  “I know. And I’m sorry. But as I said—I’m doing this with you or without you. Will you help me?”

  She exchanged another glance with Ian, and then both of them reluctantly nodded.

  “Yeah,” Ian said with a sigh. “I’m in. As long as you promise not to rush this. Be careful, and make sure you guys know what you’re doing before you do anything.”

  “What he said,” Verity echoed. “And if I help, you have to promise I get to be in on finding Brathwaite and that bitch, and kicking both their asses.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Stone set Raider down, nudged him away from his half-eaten pastry, and faced his son and his friends. “Thank you. All of you.”

  “Thank us by doing this right,” Verity said.

  She found him in the basement later, as he worked to clear as much space as possible in the middle of the floor. Jason and Amber had already returned to the South Bay to wait for Stone’s call, and Ian was sleeping off his previous night’s party in the guest bedroom.

  “Are you sure this is going to work?” she asked softly.

  He didn’t turn to look at her, but continued using magic to push items and furniture against the wall. “Honestly, no. But it’s the best chance we’ve got. And I trust Eddie and Ward to judge whether they think it’s worth doing.”

  “Why are you doing it down here?” She glanced over at the intricate portal circle on the other side of the room. “I thought you didn’t want to risk messing up your work on the portal.”

  “I’d rather not, but there isn’t enough space in the attic for a circle this big. It should be fine—as long as everybody stays away from it, there shouldn’t be a risk.”

  She continued studying it, shifting to magical sight. “It’s almost done, isn’t it? It looks like the circle is ready to go, and I can already see some of the power gathering.”

  “Yes. I haven’t added the vanazarite yet—that will be the last step. But I’ve already begun the preparations for opening the conduit to the Overworld.”

  “How does that work?”

  He chuckled. “You’d know if you paid any attention during my portal-science lectures.” He crossed the room and stood at the edge of the circle. “Portal construction happens in three stages. The first is to finish the circle and make sure it’s correct. I’ve done that. The second is to create the connections to the Overworld—sort of like the equivalent of cutting a hole in the wall for a door. I’ve done most of that already. The third stage, which is the most important and the most potentially dangerous, is to use the vanazarite to create a permanent conduit, and wait to make sure it’s stable.”

  She tilted her head. “So…you’re saying there’s already a kind of connection to the Overworld? I do see some odd energy flickering around it.”

  “There is…but not anything a person could go through yet. At this point, if you walked in there, you’d go…somewhere. But you wouldn’t come out, because the mechanism for hooking it up to the other side isn’t there yet.”

  “But we couldn’t just…trip and fall through or anything, right?” She looked a little nervous.

  “No chance. Nothing solid could go through that yet. If you tripped and fell, the worst that would happen would be that you’d bugger up my circle. So please don’t do that, because it will make me quite cross.”

  She smiled. “I promise. But maybe you should put a couple of those couches or something around it to keep everybody away from it…you know, just in case.”

  “Not a bad idea.” He used levitation to lift some heavy boxes and place them around the boundary of the circle.

  She joined him in moving the boxes. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” she said softly. “Not even to get Brathwaite. If you’re right and he’s out there, he’s been out there ever since you kicked him out of your body. He’s not going anywhere. I’d rather wait to take him down than risk losing you.”

  He sighed. “It’s not just Brathwaite, though. It’s Richter. It’s the Ordo. Don’t forget what he did to Deirdre, Verity. I still owe him for that. And you never met Orville Lu and Frank Grider, but they’re good people. They don’t deserve to die for no good reason.”

  “We don’t even know what the reason is,” she pointed out. “You still don’t have any clue what Richter’s up to, do you?”

  “No, and that does bother me. I think you might be right that it’s related to alchemy somehow, and knowing him it’s probably more of his immortality rubbish. But regardless, I’ve let him go for too long. He can’t be allowed to finish whatever he’s trying to do.”

  “How do you know he hasn’t already?” She looked at her feet. “I hate to be the downer here, Doc, but you might be putting your life at risk for no reason.”

  “I don’t think I’m putting my life at risk.” He pushed a sofa against a bookshelf and dropped into a nearby chair, finally facing her. “Look. I can’t tell you everything, but at this point I’m reasonably sure it’s very difficult to kill me by normal means. Possibly as difficult as it is to kill Harrison.”

  “Maybe,” she said stubbornly. “But you don’t know that for sure. I mean, if it’s true, it’s a nice thing to have. But that doesn’t mean you need to keep going around testing it.”

  “I haven’t got a choice in this
case. Unless I want to give up completely, and I won’t do that. None of the rest of you can do this, because none of the rest of you had Brathwaite’s vile little spirit knocking around inside your body. The tethers we have aren’t strong enough to get through their wards—and even if they are, they’ll know we’re sniffing around. If we design this ritual right, it will have several advantages.”

  “Like what?” She used levitation to pick up a small crate full of candles and crystals and perch it on top of the sofa.

  “First of all, it should eliminate the range component. With five mages working together, our power should be amplified exponentially. I know that normally doesn’t work with tracking rituals, but this one’s a special case. Second, since I’m so intimately tied to Brathwaite’s echo, theoretically we should be able to get a lock on his location without tipping him off. That should give us time to get there, wherever ‘there’ is.”

  “Do you have any idea where it might be? What if they’re back in England?”

  “We’ll find them, wherever they are.”

  “And then what? You put together a magical commando raid and storm the fortress?”

  He rose from the chair and began pacing the room, examining the space they’d cleared so far. “Let’s figure out where they are first, and then we’ll make plans about how to deal with them. That’s an area where I think all of you—including Jason and Amber—will be a big help.”

  She looked dubious. “I don’t like it.”

  “Nor do I. But sometimes we’ve got to accept things we don’t like.”

  She was silent for a while, continuing to help him move items until they’d created the largest possible empty space in the middle of the floor. Then she said softly, “Doc?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is…anything else wrong?”

  “What?” He snapped his head up in surprise.

  She regarded him as if trying to decide what she wanted to say. “I’ve…been watching your aura. It’s pretty messed up, and I get the impression this business with Richter and Brathwaite and the ghouls isn’t the only thing on your mind.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  She shrugged. “Intuition. Because I know you. Just because we’re not sleeping together anymore doesn’t mean you can hide stuff from me. You never could.”

  “No…I suppose I can’t.”

  “Also, your aura just flared up when you talked about accepting things you don’t like.”

  Damn. He hurried to get it under control, but the damage was already done.

  “So…do you want to talk about it?” Her voice was gentle.

  “I’ve got to get back to Caventhorne and help Eddie and Ward with the research. That ritual isn’t going to be easy to design, and we haven’t got a lot of time.”

  “You’ve got a few minutes. You got this part done faster because I helped you.” She levitated the box off the sofa, sat at one end, and patted the spot next to her. “Come on. Whatever it is, maybe I can help.”

  “You can’t help.”

  “Try me?”

  Stone let out a loud sigh. Suddenly, he was tired of keeping secrets. There were so many he had no choice about, but this one was different. “It’s Aubrey.”

  She looked surprised, as if that wasn’t what she’d expected to hear. “Aubrey? What about him?”

  “He’s…not well.”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh, no. What’s wrong with him?”

  “Nothing immediate. I won’t reveal the specifics of his private health information without his permission, but…Ian noticed something a few weeks ago and mentioned it to me recently. I talked to Aubrey about it, and he admitted it.” He slumped, staring at his hands. “It’s not something that’s going to cause major problems right away. Maybe not for years. But it is progressive, and there’s no cure for it.”

  She moved closer, putting her arm around his shoulder. “I’m so sorry.” She hesitated. “Are you…sure nothing can be done? What about…magic?”

  He let his breath out. “I don’t know, Verity. He’s being treated, and as I said, it’s not something that’s likely to be an issue for a long time.” He gave a bitter little snort. “He was trying to reassure me. He told me with the way medical science is these days, something else is likely to get him before this does.”

  “But still…” She rested her head on his shoulder.

  “Yes. But still.” It felt good having her there. There was nothing romantic about it, surprisingly—more like the warm touch of a good friend. He wasn’t the sort of person who encouraged that kind of touch in most people, including those closest to him, but sometimes there weren’t any better alternatives. “He’s got a lady friend now, you know.”

  “He does?” She pulled back with a small smile. “Since when?”

  “Not sure. Her name is Susan Fletcher. She’s a lovely woman. He met her down in the village, he said. They seem quite smitten with each other.”

  “Aww, that’s sweet. I’m glad he’s found somebody.”

  Stone didn’t answer.

  “Doc?”

  “It’s nothing. I’ve got to go. I want to help craft the ritual, since I’ll be depending on it.”

  “Come on,” she said gently. “There’s something else. I can tell.”

  He sighed. He didn’t have time to go into this right now. He had things to do.

  But he always had things to do.

  That was part of the problem, wasn’t it?

  Even so, he still couldn’t bring himself to say anything. He had no idea where to start.

  “Can I try to guess?”

  He met her gaze and nodded once. “Might as well, I suppose.”

  She covered his hand with hers. “You feel guilty.”

  “Guilty.”

  “Yeah. You feel like you should have been there for him, and somehow it’s your fault he’s got whatever he’s got. Like, if you’d been paying more attention, maybe you could have prevented it.”

  He wondered sometimes how she understood him so well. Nobody else did—except perhaps Aubrey himself. He didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to.

  “You know that’s not right, don’t you?” Her voice was even more gentle than before. “People get sick, Doc. They get old. It sucks, but you couldn’t have done anything to change it.”

  “I could have been there more often.” He shook his head. “Sometimes, I resent the fact that Ian’s off gallivanting around the world all the time—I mean, yes, he’ll come home if I ask him to, but he’s always so busy doing his own things, he doesn’t often find time to do it just because he wants to. But I haven’t got any right to feel that way—because I’m no better.”

  Verity didn’t answer, but merely listened, her comforting eyes never leaving him.

  He jerked up from the sofa and turned away from her, staring at the portal circle. “I’m not. I’ve always got some excuse for why I can’t stay home for a few days. I pop over there to do…whatever the hell it is I need to do at the time…I say ‘hello’ and ‘happy to see you’ and ‘can’t stay’ and then I’m gone again. Hell, I do the same thing with Marta.”

  He shook his head. “Sometimes I wonder why you lot put up with me. And no, I don’t mean that in a feeling-sorry-for-myself way. I’m serious. I’m rubbish at relationships, and it’s time someone called me on it.”

  He heard the sofa creak, and a moment later she was behind him, gripping his shoulders and resting her chin on his back. “I don’t think you’re nearly as rubbish as you think you are. Aubrey loves you. You love him. I know it. It can’t be more obvious. I don’t think anybody expects you to spend all your time over there hanging out with him.” She chuckled. “You’d probably drive each other crazy if you did. Tell me I’m wrong. I dare you.”

  She was right, of course. It was the reason he and Aubrey had gotten along so well over all the years: both of them knew when to leave each other alone. “Well…”

  “Well, nothing. It’s true, and you know it. And anyway, you’ve
got it a lot better than most people.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “You’re a mage.” She gently turned him around so he was facing her. “Think about how hard it would be if you were a mundane. Taking a trip to see him would take all kinds of planning and long plane rides. You can be there in less than an hour if he needs you for something, counting the time to drive to Sunnyvale.” She pointed at the portal. “And if you ever get that thing finished, it’ll be even faster than that.” Once again, she chuckled. “Hell, Doc, once your portal’s done, you could get to Aubrey faster than you could get to me or Jason if we were in trouble.”

  Not so sure about that anymore, Stone thought, but that was beside the point. She was right. With the ley-line travel, he could be at Aubrey’s side instantly if there were any problems. He could visit more often, without even the inconvenience of having to drive a few miles, let alone making ten-hour plane journeys.

  “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “But I still think I’ve got some soul-searching to do once this whole Richter mess is sorted. I’m a bit of a rubbish friend.”

  “We’re used to you.” She squeezed his shoulders. “You’re never going to be the touchy-feely, big-hug type. Honestly, I think it would creep us out a little if you started. Seriously, Doc, your friends love you the way you are. Sometimes we’re not the easiest people to get along with either. I mean, you put up with me when I was going through my whole…thing. Don’t think I don’t cringe sometimes when I think about how I treated you, and you just…rolled with it. I’ll always love you for that.”

  He pulled her into a hug. “We’re a bit of a mess, aren’t we?”

  She shrugged. “Everybody is, one way or another. If it’s not one thing, it’s something else.” Tilting her head up, she gave him an amused smile. “You’re like that brilliant, absent-minded professor who figures out the secrets of the universe but forgets to put his pants on before he heads outside.”