The Other Side: A Novel in the Alastair Stone Chronicles

by R. L. King

  He dragged Duncan down the hall and into another side room, slamming the door behind him. He shoved the producer into a chair, making sure to keep himself between Duncan and the door. “Right, then—you’re going to talk. The sooner you do it, the sooner you can go.”

  Duncan glared at him. “You watch your tone, Stone. Where the fuck do you get off ordering me around like—” He made as if to jump out of the chair.

  With a flick of his mind, Stone held him fast. “Wrong answer, Larry. You’re not going anywhere. You’re going to tell me what you were really doing up there on the hillside last night.”

  “What the hell—?” Duncan began. He struggled harder to get out of the chair, gripping the arms and trying to lever himself up, but Stone’s spell held him fast. His eyes bulged, his face reddening even more. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “Answer me, Larry. We might still have a chance of stopping this.”

  “Stopping what? What are you doing? Why can’t I get up?”

  “What were you doing up there on the hillside?”

  “What? That’s what this is about?”

  “Tell me, Larry.”

  “I already told you! I was looking for an old graveyard!” The producer struggled in the chair again, more energetically this time.

  “Wrong answer again. That’s two.” He crouched, fixing Duncan with his most intense gaze. “You don’t get it, Larry. People are going to die if you don’t tell me the truth. It might already be too late.”

  “Whaddya mean, people are gonna die?” Fear showed in Duncan’s small eyes, and his voice shook. “Who’s gonna die?”

  “Were you looking for a mine entrance, Larry? Is that why you were there? Something you didn’t want anyone else to know about?”

  Duncan’s expression shifted from terror to growing anger. “I’m not telling you anything. You can go fuck yourself, Stone! Now let me fucking go!”

  Stone shifted to magical sight. There it was—the red mist was strong around Duncan, stronger than it had been even around Mortenson back at the winery. Damn. It wasn’t a surprise, but he was hoping he could keep Duncan scared long enough to spill his story. Now, though, the man would probably work himself into apoplexy or a heart attack before he revealed anything. He’d have to take the risk of doing another mental shield. They were hard to maintain on multiple people at a time, especially at a distance—he could already feel Mortenson’s trying to slip, but he couldn’t afford to let that happen. If he added Duncan’s to the stack, it would split his magical concentration more and cut down on his available power. But there was no helping it—he could always drop it when he got the information he needed, as callous as that sounded.

  He extended a hand toward Duncan.

  The producer’s eyes widened. “What are you doing?” His voice pitched higher, and louder as he tried to shrink back into the chair’s dusty, cracked upholstery. “Help! Somebody get this fucking lunatic away from me!”

  Stone kept his concentration—this time to make sure he had Duncan’s entire body locked down, since the producer could undoubtedly kick harder than Mortenson—and wove a quick barrier that would only need to hold for a few minutes. Then he stood back and waited, watching Duncan’s aura as the red fog receded from around him. “Are you all right now?”

  Duncan stared hard at him, but already he’d stopped wrenching against Stone’s spell. Agitation still flared bright around his aura, though—he might not be in the grip of the curse any longer, but he was seriously worked up over something. “What…did you do to me?”

  “Nothing permanent, I promise. Just calmed you down a bit. Now tell me what you were looking for. I don’t have time to dance around with you right now. People are going to die, Larry. Tell me.”

  Suddenly, as if someone had released all the air from him, Duncan deflated. “Fine. It doesn’t matter anyway. Not anymore. I didn’t find what I was looking for.”

  Stone frowned. That was bad. “You didn’t find the mine?” He released the spell; he didn’t think Duncan was going anywhere at this point.

  “Oh, I found the mine all right. It was right where it was supposed to be. I went back after I ran into you, and I found it.” Duncan’s entire posture, not to mention his aura, radiated dejection and despair.

  “Why were you looking for it? Did you know something about the curse?”

  Duncan’s gaze came up, surprised. “Curse? Come on, Stone, you don’t believe that bullshit, do you?” He glanced sideways, toward the closed door, as if expecting someone to come bursting in, then lowered his voice. “I wasn’t looking for any curse. I was looking for the gold.”

  Now it was Stone’s turn to be surprised. He leaned forward. “Gold? What gold?”

  “The gold that was supposed to be up there. But it’s not there. I went to the exact spot I was supposed to, but it wasn’t there.”

  This conversation was growing stranger by the minute. “Duncan—what the hell are you on about? What gold? Who told you there was gold there, and why were you looking for it in the middle of the night?”

  “Fuck, it doesn’t matter now. I’m screwed anyway. Can’t hurt to tell you, I guess.” He moved as if to reach inside his multi-pocketed jacket.

  Stone stiffened.

  “Cool your jets, baby. I don’t have a gun or anything.” He fished around for a moment, then removed a folded piece of paper and offered it to Stone.

  He took it, unfolded it, and glanced down, still keeping Duncan in sight and himself between the producer and the door in case he changed his mind about making a sudden and violent departure.

  The paper was very old—more vellum than paper—and faded. It showed what was clearly the Brunderville area, though just as clearly it depicted an earlier era of the town’s history. It showed the locations of several gold claims along the river, and a few entrances to underground mines dotted along the ridge up above what was now the winery. One of these entrances, marked with a red X, was located in the area Duncan had been poking around the previous night.

  He glanced back up at Duncan. “Who gave you this?”

  The producer shook his head. “I’ve had it a while now. It was in my kook file—you know, the stuff people send to the show, trying to get themselves featured? This was supposed to point to a lost gold stash one of the miners had left deep inside a hidden mine. He died before he could get back to it, but the guy who sent it claimed to be a relative—too old to hunt it for himself. I didn’t think anything of it until we were coming back here to do the Brunder place. I tried to contact him, but it turned out he’d died in the meantime.”

  This didn’t make sense. Larry Duncan might be an egotistical blowhard, but as yet he hadn’t shown himself to be gullible, nor an outright idiot. “So you went poking around inside an abandoned mine in the middle of the night in the rain, looking for some hidden cache of gold, on the word of nothing more than a piece of paper sent to you by a stranger? Surely you’ve got enough of your own money to keep you from doing something so stupid.”

  To his surprise, Duncan bowed his head. He looked miserable. “Yeah, I know. You’re right, it was pretty fucking stupid, especially since I didn’t find fuck-all down there. There probably never was anything there, or somebody else found it years ago and kept it quiet. Or it’s behind a cave-in and nobody will ever get to it. Either way, I’m fucked.”

  “So why, then?” Stone glanced at his watch. Time was wasting. Any minute now somebody would be here to check on Duncan, and he needed to get back to Mortenson. “Why did you do it in the first place?”

  “You’d think I have money, wouldn’t you?” He didn’t meet Stone’s gaze. “But the truth is, I’m busted. I’m worse than busted. I…well, I got a bit of a problem with the ponies, y’know? And fact is I’m into some really bad guys for a seriously large amount of cash. So…”

 
“So you agreed to do the show so you could get up here and hunt for this nonexistent gold.” Damn, but people could be idiots sometimes! Especially when dealing with either sex or money. But at this point, Stone didn’t give a damn about Larry Duncan’s gambling problem or its consequences. “Did you find anything in the mine? Anything at all? Did you feel—odd while you were inside?”

  Somebody knocked on the door. “Larry? You coming? Riley’s not here yet—Rita went to check on him.”

  “Be there in a minute!” Duncan yelled. He turned back to face Stone. Suddenly, he looked tired. “Yeah, I found something. That’s why I left.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Bones. Quite a few of ’em.”

  Stone stared. “Human bones?”

  “I didn’t stick around to take a close look. Either they were human, or a bear or something was using the place as a lair. Either way, I didn’t want to be around. I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want them to know I was up there, y’know?”

  “Right…didn’t want to reveal what kind of a towering idiot you were. I get that,” Stone muttered almost to himself. He paused, mind whirling. “Okay. Okay. Listen to me, Larry: I want you to tell all these people to go back to their rooms at the winery. All right? It’s vitally important that you lot all stay away from each other, at least until tomorrow morning. Do you understand?”

  Duncan shook his head. “Come on, baby, that’s crazy. We can’t do that. We got a show to shoot. As it is, I think we might be fucked unless the power comes back on soon. If we don’t get moving, the genny’ll go out and we’ll have to film with battery power and fucking candles. I gotta salvage something from this clusterfuck of a trip.”

  Stone rubbed at his face. Mundanes. They’d be the death of him—or more likely in this case, of each other. “Look. You do what you like. But I’m telling you—the Brunderville curse is real. It might not really be a curse. It might be gas from the mines, or something in the water, or—hell, I don’t know. But its effects are real. It amplifies people’s strong emotions toward each other. Why do you think you’ve all been at each other’s throats since yesterday? If you don’t listen to me, that’s going to be a literal thing before the night’s over.”

  Duncan snorted and stood. “I gotta get back to the shoot, Stone. That’s all I give a damn about right now—that, and tryin’ to figure out how to keep the mob off my ass long enough to get the money they’re after. You and your crazy-ass curse aren’t even on my top ten.” He patted Stone’s shoulder as he moved past. “Get some rest. Like I said, you’re off the segment. Oh, and you can keep that thing if you want it,” he added, nodding toward the map Stone still held. “Go look at the bones if you want, but good luck tryin’ to find anything else.” He started for the door.

  Stone grabbed his arm. “One more thing.”

  “What?”

  “Was that you who broke through the bricked-up passageway in the wine cave?”

  Duncan wrenched his arm free. “Yeah. I did it this afternoon. Figured I could find another way in—like maybe the map might be wrong about where the gold was. But the passage caved in about forty feet in. Fucking useless.”

  Stone watched, frustrated, as he swept past and headed out the door. He knew if he left them all here together it wouldn’t go well—but what could he do? Knock them all out? Stun spells weren’t precise things, especially with the curse active. Even if he put them out, it would only be for a few minutes—half an hour if he was lucky and the curse didn’t rile them back to wakefulness sooner. He couldn’t lock them all up, since there was no place to do that. And even if he managed to neutralize the people currently in the house, he didn’t have time to go hunting for the other crewmembers and the rest of the townsfolk.

  No, his best bet at this point was to move as fast as he could and hope he could do something to deal with the curse before it got a chance to ramp up to a point of no return. If he was lucky, Duncan’s explorations had done something to activate it, and a ritual in the same location could shut it down.

  If he wasn’t lucky…he’d just have to try harder.

  He headed out of the house and took off at a run toward the winery.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Verity whirled, readying a spell, but let it fizzle uncast when she saw what they were facing. The three men, all dressed in suits or sport coats and looking as hard-edged as Toro, each had a handgun leveled on them.

  Behind her, Toro lashed out snake-fast and she heard Jason’s gun clatter to the floor. Damn! She’d hesitated too long, unsure of whether her shield could block the fire from all three of them—four now, since Toro had drawn his—and now they were spreading out, almost as if they’d dealt with magic before. No way could she even begin to hit them all. Better to wait and see if she’d get a chance later, unless they made any immediate threatening moves.

  Toro nodded at one of the gunmen. “Make sure the hallway’s clear. Rest of you take ’em into Benny’s office.” To Jason and Verity he said, “And I’m warnin’ you—no funny shit. I saw what you did out there in the hallway, and if I see a hint of anything like that, these guys are gonna blow your heads off. Don’t make me hafta bring the cleaning crew in here, okay?”

  “So you just want us to follow along like good little sheep so you can kill us someplace private?” Verity demanded, as one of the gunmen stowed his weapon and headed out. “You know that’s not gonna happen, right?”

  “Damn straight,” Jason agreed. “I’d rather take at least a couple of you with us.”

  “What kill?” Toro snapped. “Nobody’s killin’ nobody, unless you make us. Like you two said, we’re just gonna talk.”

  “Like you didn’t kill Gary Woods?” Verity probably should have kept her mouth shut at this point, but she’d never been any good at that. “You gonna toss us in a dumpster too? I’ll give you a free hint—that would be a bad idea. Seriously bad. We’ve got some friends you don’t want to fuck with.”

  The guy who’d left poked his head back in. “All clear, Mickey.”

  “Let’s go,” he said, jerking his gun toward the door. “Like I said, no funny business. We’re just goin’ down the hall so the chicks can have their crapper back.”

  Jason glanced at Verity questioningly. After a second’s thought, she nodded. She was still reasonably confident she could handle the situation if necessary, so as long as Toro wasn’t doing anything but talking, she was willing to take a little risk to hear what he had to say.

  Toro’s men, their guns hidden by their bodies, escorted the two of them down the hallway and through another door into a large, wood-paneled office cluttered with newspapers and betting sheets. It smelled heavily of cigars. Toro waved them toward a pair of leather chairs. “Siddown.”

  When they did so, Toro took a seat behind the desk, and the other three gunmen spread out once again so they could keep Jason and Verity covered.

  “I wasn’t kidding about our friends,” Verity said. “You said you saw what I did in the hallway? We know people who can do it a hell of a lot better than I can.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Toro waved them off. “What are you two, anyway? Why the hell do you give a fuck about any of this?”

  “We’re investigating Gary Woods’s murder for his wife,” Jason said. “Looks like we found his killer.”

  Toro snorted. “I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ about that. Like I said before, you two don’t know nothin’ about what kinda can o’ worms you opened up gettin’ involved in this.” He got up and began pacing back and forth across the thick carpet. “What am I gonna do with you now?”

  “Why don’t you tell us why you killed him?” Jason asked. “And what about David Ames? You kill him too?”

  “Jesus…” Toro shook his head. “Every time you open your mouth, you show me even more that you don’t have a fuckin’ idea what’s goin’
on.”

  “So let us in on it, why don’t you?” Jason said.

  While Toro’s attention had been focused on her brother, Verity had been watching the auras of their captors. The other gunmen’s seemed calm, unworried, almost amused—they had the advantage and they knew it.

  Toro’s, on the other hand, rippled with confusion, unease, and a hint of anger. The oddest thing, though, was that she didn’t think the anger was directed at her and Jason. She deliberately let herself begin to look worried, as if it was sinking in to her what kind of predicament they were in, and let her hand drift over to take Jason’s.

  Fortunately, he caught on fast. When she asked for power, he gave it to her without question, and once again she felt energy surging around her. Apparently, Toro knew about magic but thought she needed to make gestures or mutter incantations to cast spells. This was as good a time as any to disabuse him of that notion.

  With a quick flick of her mind before anyone caught on, she telekinetically snatched Jason’s gun from Toro’s desk and pointed it at the side of the mobster’s head while simultaneously calling up a shield around herself and Jason. “Okay!” she ordered. “Everybody put the guns down or Mickey gets it.”

  The gunmen erupted into action, all three of them stiffening and leveling their guns at Jason and Verity. Mickey Toro was still pointing his at them as well, but he’d gone pale.

  “Fuck,” he breathed. “Nobody shoot.” He made a placating gesture toward Verity, whom he was now regarding with a lot more respect. “Come on, honey. Nobody has to get hurt here. Just put the gun down.”

  “Them first. On the desk there. Now.”

  “Mickey?” one asked, looking nervous.