Rite of Passage: An Alastair Stone Urban Fantasy Novel (Alastair Stone Chronicles Book 26)

by R. L. King

  “I trust you did not discover any other unusual energy around or inside the cabin?”

  He tilted his head. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Specifically, portal or rift energy.”

  “No. Definitely not. Why?”

  Kolinsky shook his head. “Good. No reason. I am merely examining every possible angle.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It is highly unlikely your friend’s sudden appearance has any connection to the unusual rift we located in Louisiana. At this point, it is reasonable to assume the two are unrelated, but keep the thought in your mind if you should find anything else to examine.”

  “I bloody well hope they aren’t related. I don’t want to think of Daphne and her son anywhere near those tentacle things.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Anyway, thanks again. I’ve got to figure out a way to find Daphne, or hope she calls me again. And also hope whoever sent that odd bloke didn’t send any other ones.”

  19

  Stone had a lot of thinking to do when he returned home.

  He’d promised Daphne he wouldn’t try to find her. He still didn’t think it was possible—Verity was right that one of her notebooks was probably his best chance, but if she didn’t want to be found, even that wouldn’t be enough. But even if it was, should he break his word to her on a tenuous connection?

  Yes, the odd being he’d found behind the cabin was dead—but he had no proof that Daphne had killed him, or even that she and Jeremy had been connected with him. And again, even if he was (and it seemed unlikely to Stone that a being from another dimension showing up in proximity to where they had been was a coincidence) that could still mean any number of things. If he had been trying to find them, did Stone dare risk leading more of them straight to their quarry by finding them first?

  “Damn it, Daphne, you’re not making this easy at all,” he grumbled as he headed upstairs, Raider on his heels.

  His mind returned to the days when the two of them had been seeing each other. It hadn’t been long, only a few months a year or so after he’d moved to the US and taken the job at Stanford, but she’d made an impression on him with her brilliant mind, methodical approach to research, and maverick streak that made her want to investigate things more staid magical scientists wouldn’t touch. She’d never thought there was anything she couldn’t do, only things that took longer to figure out. Her enthusiasm had been infectious. He still wasn’t entirely sure why she’d dumped him for the equally brilliant but comparatively boring Neil Hanley, but he’d conceded with good grace. The heart wanted what it wanted, he supposed, and even with portals, maintaining a long-distance relationship wasn’t always as easy as one with someone in the same area.

  None of that mattered now, though. All that mattered was that she’d returned after being away eleven years, she had a son now, and quite likely somebody from wherever she’d come from was trying to find her. But why? Had she lied to him again, or still failed to tell him the whole story of what had happened? Had she and Jeremy been prisoners on this other dimension, and managed to escape? Was it possible Neil wasn’t dead, and she’d stolen Jeremy away and returned home without him?

  So many questions, and he wasn’t going to get any answers until Daphne contacted him again—or until he decided to try finding her.

  He sighed loudly, catching Raider’s attention. The cat padded over and head-butted him, purring.

  “I don’t know, Raider,” he muttered. “I haven’t got a clue what to do here.” He’d been hoping Kolinsky would have some insights, but the dragon seemed more interested in the odd rifts than in Daphne.

  Best to take his mind off the whole thing for a while, he supposed. He still had work to do, which he’d been putting off in favor of dealing with this situation. He’d give Daphne another day or so to decide whether to call him back, and if she didn’t, he’d figure out whether he wanted to use the notebooks to try finding her. She might resent him for breaking his word, but he’d have to deal with that when the time came.

  His phone rang at a little before seven p.m.

  He snapped it up, glancing at the time in surprise. He’d managed to lose himself in his work for longer than he’d expected. Raider, who now lay curled up on the sofa, raised his head, opened one sleepy eye at the sound, then settled back down.

  Disappointment flooded Stone when he saw the number, followed immediately by guilt. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to hear from Jason, but he’d hoped for another blocked number, indicating Daphne might be calling again. “Hello, Jason.”

  “Hey, Al.”

  Stone thought he detected an odd note in his friend’s voice, but wasn’t sure. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m guessing you haven’t seen the news yet.”

  He tensed. “Er—no. I’ve been working in my study all day. Did something happen?”

  “Yeah, an hour or so ago. Can’t be sure, of course, but I’ve spent enough time around you and V to be pretty sure there’s got to be something fishy about it.”

  “What happened?”

  “Half of some medium-sized town in Wisconsin went nuts. It’s all over the news.”

  Stone sat up straight. “Went nuts? What do you mean, went nuts?”

  “I mean, people have gone crazy. Running around destroying things, tearing down buildings, setting stuff on fire, even killing each other.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “Yeah. The cops are trying to get it cordoned off, but it’s a fairly big area. A bunch of people are dead. The reports from the ones who got out are talking about nightmarish visions, strange creatures—all kinds of freaky stuff like that. The authorities aren’t saying anything about what happened yet, but you can guess what the media’s doing with it. Aliens, some kind of mass drug trip, gas explosions…”

  Stone’s phone buzzed again, indicating Verity’s number. “Hang on, Jason, Verity’s calling. Let me set up a conference.” He switched over. “Hello, Verity. I trust you’re calling about the situation in Wisconsin?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jason’s on the line, too. Hold on a tick…” He fiddled with the settings. “There. Are you both here now?”

  “Yep,” Jason said.

  “I’m here,” Verity said. “What’s going on, Doc? This sure sounds like some kind of magical weirdness to me.”

  “Indeed it does. I haven’t got any more information than what Jason just told me, though. I’ve been working all day and haven’t seen the news.”

  “I’m wondering if it could be something like that ghost town you went to, or Ojai. People going crazy, killing each other, weird hallucinations...”

  “You may be right. Let me see what I can find out. I can’t do anything without more information.”

  “Are you gonna do something?” Jason asked. “Are you thinking about going there?”

  “I’m not thinking anything yet—not until I find out more about what’s happening.”

  “I want to go,” Verity said. “If you go, I want to come along.”

  Stone hesitated. He didn’t know yet how close to a ley line the town was, but he’d bet a lot of money that it wasn’t far. The closest public portal was in Chicago, which could add hours to the trip. “Let me investigate. I’ll call you back. Thank you both for letting me know about this.”

  “Doc—”

  “Verity, stop.” He didn’t mean to be so abrupt with her, but there was no helping it. “Whatever this is, it sounds bad. And if it’s our sort of problem—which it also sounds like it is—I’ve got to move fast.” He emphasized the last word, hoping she’d pick up on it.

  For a moment, he thought she might not—or that she’d refuse to. Then she sighed. “Yeah, okay. Let us know.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  Before he did anything else, Stone took a few minutes to pull up online news stories about the Wisconsin situation. It wasn’t difficult to find them—they dominated the news sites, and when he headed downstairs with his laptop to flip
on the television, it didn’t take long before he found a televised report.

  Details were still sketchy and inconsistent. The authorities had locked down the perimeter of the area, which comprised approximately half of a town called McCarthy in the middle of the state. Efforts were underway to evacuate residents from the affected area, but they were hindered by the fact that anyone entering soon lost contact with the people on the outside and didn’t return.

  He was about to close the laptop and find his ley-line map when a line from one of the news stories caught his eye, causing his heartbeat to increase and the hairs on the back of his neck to stand up.

  A number of people had managed to stumble out of the zone, mostly at the beginning of whatever happened. Some passed out, some were incoherent, babbling things nobody could understand, but a few of them made terrifying statements about “monsters” and “freakish things” and “it’s like a bad drug trip.” Those, Stone skimmed over. But the one that pulled him up short was a young man who’d yelled something within the earshot of a reporter, right before he’d passed out and begun twitching on the ground.

  “It’s like there’s this horrible hole in the world!” he’d screamed.

  Was it possible? Had another of the unexpected rifts shown up already? That didn’t bode well—were they going to start popping up all over the place? The last one had been hard enough to close, but it sounded like this one was even bigger. Would they keep getting bigger, or was this one larger because it had appeared in a town instead of out in the middle of the wilds?

  He grabbed his ley-line map and checked for the closest one near McCarthy, discovering to no surprise that the town had one running through the middle of it. He unfolded the map further, comparing the location of the Louisiana rift with the one in Wisconsin, but as far as he could tell the two had nothing in common aside from being relatively close to ley lines.

  But a lot of places were relatively close to ley lines. Did that mean these things were going to start popping up along any random ley line?

  Slow down, he told himself. You don’t even know these two things are related.

  That was true, scientifically speaking—but if the man’s terrified comment about “a horrible hole in the world” was accurate, and not merely the ravings of someone who’d been touched by drugs, magic, or something else, it certainly sounded like the two were at least similar enough for an initial hypothesis.

  The TV was still droning on, showing shots of a bunch of people milling around outside a police cordon. It was already dark in Wisconsin. Stone squinted at the screen, trying to spot anything unusual in the background, but nothing stood out. That didn’t surprise him; if anything was visible, all the cameras would be trained on it.

  His doorbell rang.

  He jerked his head up, immediately on high alert. The gates were closed, which would deter anyone trying to sell him anything. His first thought, as he strode across the room, was that Daphne had somehow managed to get out here and find him.

  He flung open the door.

  It wasn’t Daphne standing there.

  It was Kolinsky.

  “Stefan. This is—unexpected.” Was it, though? Stone didn’t know how much attention the dragon paid to the news, but he never seemed to be out of the loop about what was going on in the magical world, so clearly he got his updates from somewhere.

  Kolinsky looked grim. “May I come in?”

  “Er—of course.” Stone stepped aside. “I’m guessing I know what this is about.”

  “I do not doubt it.”

  “No messenger this time?”

  “There is no time.” He strode into the living room and glanced at the television, which was still showing a news report about the McCarthy situation. “How much do you know?”

  “Not much. Jason called me a few minutes ago. Something’s going on in some town in Wisconsin, and from the news stories I’ve been reading, it sounds like it’s another one of those holes, like in Louisiana. Do you know more? It’s not a normal rift, is it?”

  “It is not. I believe you are correct.”

  It wasn’t like Kolinsky to look this stressed. Granted, his version of “stressed” was most people’s version of “mildly out of sorts,” but Stone knew him well enough not to miss it. “What do you want to do? I was thinking of going back there to investigate, but I didn’t think you did that sort of thing.”

  “Normally, I do not. But this is not a normal situation. And given the state in which you appeared on my doorstep after dealing with the last specimen of these anomalies—”

  “You don’t think I can handle it on my own.” He raised a hand when Kolinsky started to reply. “No, I get it. Honestly, I don’t either. The other one was bad enough, and there weren’t a whole load of wound-up people hanging about taking shots at me while I tried to close that one. I was going to take Verity with me, but she’s limited by the public portals. It would take too long to get from Chicago to the site.” He paused his pacing and glanced at Kolinsky. “Will it cause trouble with the other dragons if you handle this?”

  “No. As I said, this is not a normal situation. I have spoken with some of them already. They do not wish to become involved personally, but my doing so will not create an issue. They are also curious about the phenomenon.”

  “Well, then, let’s figure out what it is so you can get back to them.” Every minute they remained here increased Stone’s tension. Would the rip get larger if left alone, or would it heal itself on its own, or go away in time like the dimensional intersection rifts? He had no way to know. This was new, and new, as he’d noted before, was dangerous. “It’s making me a bit more nervous, honestly, that you lot are as much in the dark about this as I am.”

  “You are not the only one,” Kolinsky said grimly. “As you might have guessed, we do not like…surprises.”

  “Yes, I worked that out. And given how long you’ve been around, I expect there isn’t much that’s new to you.” He raised his hand, brought his black overcoat to him, and shrugged into it. “Let’s go, then. The sooner we deal with this, the happier a lot of people will be.”

  20

  Kolinsky chose their destination, and Stone was content to let him.

  They appeared on the roof of a three-story building. Darkness wreathed the area; wherever lights had been on were out now, either because of the phenomenon or because the crazed people had pulled them down. Even from here, Stone could hear the sounds of screams, shrieks, gunshots, and glass breaking.

  Kolinsky was already striding to the edge of the building. “We should be close to the epicenter, if my calculations are correct.”

  Stone joined him, instinctively augmenting his magical shield to stop physical attacks in addition to mental ones. He didn’t doubt the dragon’s calculations; he also didn’t miss that Kolinsky had referred to the tear as “the epicenter” rather than “the rift.” He was nothing if not precise. All around Stone, the air felt strange—a combination of electrically charged and claustrophobic, like something was pressing in on him from all sides. “Do you feel that?”

  “Yes. Best if we do not remain any longer than necessary.” Kolinsky was turning in place, scanning the area. He stopped, tensing, and pointed. “There.”

  It was barely visible, half-hidden behind a building two blocks away, but Stone had no trouble spotting the end of it that stuck out into the street. It looked similar but not quite the same as the one in Louisiana—for one thing, it was a lot bigger. There were no black tentacles or spider-things trying to escape it, but an eerie, multicolored glow surrounded it, picking out the jagged, uneven edges. Also unlike the one in Louisiana, this one was moving, undulating up and down almost as if it were alive.

  It might be alive, for all we know.

  Between them and the hole, the street was full of jumbled cars. None of them were moving, and most looked as if they’d run into each other or nearby buildings. One had crashed through the picture window of a restaurant, and was now half-in, half-out of the b
uilding. An unmoving figure lay slumped over the hood, with more scattered around the area.

  “Looks like a bloody demolition derby down there…” Stone muttered. “Or a riot.”

  Someone whooped from the other side of the street. A gang of shadowy figures, most of them waving clubs or other weapons, erupted out of another building, pounding on the cars as they ran. They made it halfway across the street and then turned on each other, using the stricken vehicles for cover as they flung around whatever they could get their hands on. As Stone watched, one beaned another one with a club. The victim dropped to the street, and both of them were screaming. Then, as if the whole group had received some message, they stopped attacking each other and took off, leaving their fallen comrade behind.

  Stone shifted to magical sight to look at their auras. Instead of the normal bright, blazing colors he expected to see, all of them had bizarre, clashing hues and the same ragged edges as the hole up ahead. “Look at their auras,” he said, stunned.

  “Yes.” Kolinsky still sounded grim. “Keep your mental shields strong.”

  “No bloody kidding.” He watched until the group disappeared around a corner, then stood straighter. “How do you want to do this? I assume you want to close that thing.”

  More gunshots went off, this time to the left of them, followed by more screams.

  “I do not believe we have a choice. I am certain now that this anomaly is not the result of dimensional drift. It is possible it might heal itself given time, but I do not wish to take the chance.”

  Stone was relieved to hear him say that. Given what had happened in Louisiana, he wasn’t looking forward to trying to close that thing, but the alternative was worse. “Well—normally I’m not good at deferring to anyone, but in this case, I’ll make an exception. You tell me how I can help, and I’ll do my best.”

  Kolinsky was still observing the tear, ignoring the chaos around them. After a few moments, he nodded once. “We will need to get closer. I am certain the phenomenon you are feeling now will become much stronger as we approach, so do not allow your shields to slip.”