The Other Side: A Novel in the Alastair Stone Chronicles

by R. L. King

  “No, too far away. He might just be up there having a smoke or something.”

  “Did he see us?”

  “I don’t think so.” She continued to watch the figure; it moved at a steady pace, its aura watchful but not overly agitated. “Get ready—I’m gonna wait until I can’t see him anymore, then take us over toward the opposite end. I don’t want him to spot us—at least not till we get there.”

  They crouched tensely behind the unit as Verity tracked the figure. The more she watched it, the more convinced she became that it was in fact a guard: it had a patrol pattern that took it around the corner of the building and out of sight, and it re-emerged on the other side a couple minutes later and repeated the same circuit. She told Jason about it. “Okay,” she said. “As soon as he goes out of sight on the right side, we’re gonna go to the left. That should put the maximum distance between us and him.”

  Jason nodded grimly. “If he spots us, will you be able to take him out?”

  “Not while we’re in the air.” She was still watching the figure; he’d reappeared and was now heading toward the right-side edge. “Get ready.”

  He crouched so she could climb on his shoulders. “Go.”

  Verity lifted off and angled them up and toward the left side of the taller building. She didn’t keep magical sight up—it would have made things easier, but she didn’t dare waste any power she might need to keep them aloft. Sweat formed between her shoulder blades and trickled from her brow, and her heart pounded hard as she forced herself to concentrate on nothing more than keeping the spell going. Until they reached their landing spot, nothing else mattered.

  They bobbled a little in the air when they were still two floors from the top, and Jason’s hands tightened around her ankles. “V?”

  “Shh…” She was panting now. Jason’s power was almost depleted, and she’d used a good portion of the bracelet’s stored energy to fuel the spells she’d used down in the mall. Just a little farther and they’d have it…

  Her strength failed just as they reached the top edge of the building. She was about to make the last push to get them up and over when a sharp pain lanced through her head and she faltered. Oh God, no! Not this close!

  “Jason—!” Her voice was a strangled croak as the spell slipped. She clamped her legs around him and fought to get it under control again.

  “Hang on!” His hands shot out and grabbed hold of the lip of the roof. She felt corded muscles knot in his arms, shoulders, and back as he pulled himself up and pitched her over the edge, then flung himself over after her. They landed in a panting heap.

  “Oh, God…” Verity moaned. “Jason…I almost—” Images of both of them plummeting to the ground ten stories below replayed themselves in loop in her aching head.

  “It’s okay…We’re okay…” His voice shook, though. That had been far too close. “Where’s the guy?”

  She’d forgotten about the guy! She scrambled around, still breathing hard, and shifted to magical sight. For a moment she didn’t see him, but then she turned toward their side of the building.

  There he was—already rounding the far corner and heading right toward them! “Jason! Up ahead!” she whispered, barely audible, struggling to quiet her puffing.

  “I see him,” he whispered back. “Stay low.”

  He began crawling toward a nearby pile of debris. Up here, the wind noise was loud enough that their faint scrabblings wouldn’t reach the guy—all they had to worry about was being seen.

  Verity stayed prone, continuing to watch the guy with tense anticipation until he drew level with Jason’s hiding place. Then, cat-quick, her brother leaped from behind cover and jammed his gun barrel into the guy’s back. The guy stiffened, his aura flaring red, then raised his hands. Verity jumped up and hurried over.

  The guy was muscular, in his early thirties, and a couple inches shorter than Jason. “What’s this about?” he demanded. “How the hell’d you get up here?”

  With one hand, Jason patted him down and removed a handgun from a holster inside his jacket, and a radio from his inside pocket. He handed the guy’s gun to Verity. “Hold this on him a sec while I tie him up.”

  Verity reluctantly took the gun—she didn’t like them, but the guy didn’t have to know that—and held it while Jason pulled out some zip-ties and bound the guard’s wrists and ankles.

  “How do we get in?” Jason demanded, taking the gun back, checking it, and stowing it in his pocket. He kept his own aimed at the guy.

  “I’m not tellin’ you anything.”

  “We don’t have time to wait,” Verity said, looking nervously around. “What if he has to report in or something?”

  Jason put the gun to the guy’s head. “I will shoot you if you don’t tell us. We know what they’re doing in there with kids, so I’m not in a sympathetic mood right now. You guys are already fucked. Make it easy on yourself. How do we get in?”

  Verity watched his aura. It was nearly solid red now. “He’s more scared of somebody else than he is of us, I think. There’s gotta be a door up here somewhere. See if he’s got keys or a card or something.”

  Now that the guard was trussed up and no longer a threat, it was easier to search him. After a moment, Jason found a keycard inside another of his inner jacket pockets.

  “You’re dead if you go in there,” the guy said.

  “Let us worry about that,” Verity told him.

  “You gonna kill me?”

  In answer, Jason pulled out his pocket knife and cut a strip off the bottom of the guy’s shirt, then tied it around his mouth to make a gag. “If you’re smart, you’ll just stay here and be good. If I see you again, I will kill you. Got it?”

  The guard glared at him, but gave a curt nod.

  “Come on,” Verity urged. “We have to get in there.” She was already feeling better—the few moments of rest and the adrenaline rush from capturing the guard had revitalized her. “Let’s find the door.” She hoped it wasn’t under an illusion too.

  It wasn’t. Apparently, whoever ran the show around here didn’t figure they’d need to hide their rooftop doorway, since theoretically there was no way to get up here from the outside. As they crossed the roof toward a small central building, Verity noticed there wasn’t even enough open space to land a helicopter. That didn’t explain why they’d stationed a guard up here, but maybe they were just ultra-paranoid.

  The small, featureless building squatted in the middle of the roof, surrounded by debris, air-conditioning units, and other protuberances they couldn’t identify in the dark. Beyond the building, they spotted an area dotted with lounge chairs, pole lamps, and what might have been a covered bar area. All of this was currently dark and deserted. “Careful,” Jason whispered as they approached. “They might have cameras.”

  Verity squinted at the building, but magical sight didn’t help her spot electronic devices. “I don’t see—”

  “There—by the door!”

  Now that he’d pointed it out, she saw the small, dark form of something just above the building’s single, reinforced metal door. “Can you disable it?”

  “Yeah, but not much point. They’ll be monitoring it. When it goes out, they’ll know something’s up. We’ll have to go in fast and sneaky.” He crouched around the building’s corner and turned to her, his expression hard. “You sure you’re ready for this, V? You could still back out—”

  “I could back out. And you’d just go in without me?”

  He nodded soberly. “Yeah.”

  “Hell with that. We go in together.”

  He looked as if he might say something, but didn’t. Instead, he gripped her hand. “You okay now?”

  “Yeah.” She hoped she was right—she still didn’t feel completely okay, but the power she had would have to do for now.

/>   Jason took point, ducking around the corner. “Get the door,” he whispered, handing her the key. “And stay to the side in case they’re waiting for us.” He pulled out his gun and crouched behind a nearby pile of debris.

  Verity took a deep breath, swallowed hard, and slid the card into the door’s lock. With a soft click, the light went from red to green.

  No turning back now.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Stone sagged to his knees, gripping his head with both hands, heart pounding.

  “Alastair?” Mortenson’s voice was soft but urgent. “Alastair?”

  The candles had gone out now, and the diary had slipped from his nerveless fingers. He remained silent for a moment, breathing hard, letting the pain settle back down to manageable levels. “He killed her…” he said numbly.

  “Is it—safe?” she asked, indicating the circle. When he nodded, she took his arm and led him out of it, helping him to sit down against the wall. “Who killed her? Killed Sarah, you mean?”

  Again he nodded without opening his eyes. The pounding was settling down, but it still felt as if a mining team was trying to excavate his head. “She tried to leave…I think he was keeping her prisoner in the house, probably waiting until the baby was born so she could have it in secret and he could send it away to pretend she was never pregnant. She sneaked out…set the curse…but when she tried to escape the town he caught her. And he killed her.” He opened his eyes and looked up at Mortenson.

  “He…killed his own daughter?” she asked, horrified. “The baby?”

  “I think the curse was already in operation by then. It all moved too fast, probably because of the ley line. I doubt she knew about it.” His voice came out ragged, exhausted.

  “Ley line? A—magical power line? Those exist?”

  He nodded. “There’s one running through the town. I’m sure it amplified the curse beyond what Sarah intended. I think her father was affected by it. They got into an argument when he caught her trying to escape, and he killed her. I think he panicked. He buried her body in the basement of the Brunder place.” He dragged himself back to his feet. “That’s got to be where the other part is—she didn’t do it on purpose, but because she’d laid the curse in the first place, her murder added an extra component she never intended.”

  “So…we have to…find her body?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And…do what with it?”

  “Same thing we’re doing here. Neutralize the curse so she can rest. That’s why her echo is still here—the curse is holding it, the part anchored by her body. She wants to go, but she can’t.”

  For a moment, Mortenson was silent, taking it all in. She looked like someone who’d just been smacked between the eyes with a baseball bat. Finally, she swallowed. “Alastair…you’re going to have to explain all of this to me.”

  “I will,” he assured her. “I promise. I’ll tell you everything when we’re finished. But for now, I need you to hold your questions until the end of the class. Can you do that for me?”

  Her expression hardened. “Yes. Do what you need to do.”

  He gripped her arm. “Brilliant. Right, then—now that we know where the rest of the curse is, we can take care of this bit here. Then it’s back outside and up to the Brunder house, where hopefully we can get down to the basement without anyone noticing us. I suspect it’s going to be quite a madhouse up there. I just hope we’re not too late to save them before they kill each other.”

  “Horrible,” she said, shuddering. “So…what will you do here?”

  “Just need to put up a little circle and a ward around it, in case anything goes wrong, and then take apart the gris-gris and burn the components. With a little magic tossed in to make sure nothing goes wrong.”

  “Magic…” she murmured. Some of her shock had given way to a clear undercurrent of fascination. “Real magic…I can’t believe it.”

  “Oh, believe it,” Stone said, kneeling in front of the shrine and already setting up another circle. This one would be much faster, since it was so much smaller and only had to power a tiny ward.

  “It’s…amazing.”

  “It is that. Bloody dangerous, too, though. Sometimes, anyway.”

  “Alastair…?” Her voice was soft, tentative—completely unlike her, in other words.

  “Yes?” He still didn’t look up from what he was doing.

  “Do you think it might be possible for you to—after this is all over, I mean—could you…teach me to do magic?”

  He did turn to look at her then. Despite her muddy face, wild hair, and general aura of complete disarray, her expression looked like nothing more than that of a young child who’d just come downstairs on Christmas morning to find the most incredible and unexpected gift ever under the tree. Though she still looked shell-shocked from everything that had occurred over the past few hours, her eyes shone with eagerness.

  Despite their rocky history together, he wished he didn’t have to burst her bubble. “We’ll…see, Edwina,” he said gently. “After we’re out of here.”

  “Thank you. I’m sorry. I’ll—be quiet now, so you can work.”

  Stone turned back to his circle, closing his eyes for a moment. He hadn’t ever examined Mortenson in depth for any signs of the Talent, but he suspected if she had it, he’d have seen some evidence of it over the nearly ten years of their acquaintance. Stranger things had happened, though—he thought about what might occur if he discovered she did possess magical ability, and the “sensitivity” she’d always claimed (and never proven) ended up being the real deal after all. The thought of Edwina Mortenson, who was more than twenty years his senior and had a personality that defaulted to “vaguely grumpy,” acting as his apprentice was—well, pretty much out of the question. Good thing the odds of her having the Talent were so low, but letting her down wouldn’t be easy or fun.

  Now, though, none of that mattered. He had to concentrate on the curse. He finished the circle—which was only a half-circle, since the walls of the alcove formed a natural barrier, and knelt inside it.

  “All right—ready to go. I’m going to bring up the ward and then see about taking this little thing apart.” It amused him how easily and naturally he’d fallen into “lecture mode,” explaining to Mortenson what he was doing as he would have to Verity if she’d been here. He wished she were here right now—he could have her deal with the gris-gris while he headed up to the house to find Sarah Brunder’s bones.

  For a moment he wondered how she was—Las Vegas still wasn’t safe, but she and Jason knew what they were doing and what they were up against. With luck, he’d see them both soon, and get started on the necessary steps to help Verity move back up to the Bay Area. He had to admit he was looking forward to having her back as his apprentice again.

  But that was for later. With a flick of his mind, he fed power into the circle and a small, swirling, dome-shaped ward sprang up around him, visible only to magical sight. Now, if anything went wrong and this blew up in his face, it wouldn’t bring the whole cavern down on top of them.

  He hoped.

  With the care of a surgeon, he picked up the gris-gris. It felt strange in his hand, as if it were writhing even though it wasn’t moving. Power thrummed through it, its malignant energy struggling to push him away. He fought back the nausea and unease it was trying to inflict on him, and bent to his task.

  Slowly, gradually, he picked the little thing apart, removing each of the tiny representative objects one by one and setting them aside. Bits of faded fabric, clumps of hair, and splinters of wood came off one after the other—as he’d expected, as soon as they lost contact with the gris-gris’s main structure, their potency faded along with their individual glows. Then he removed and opened each of the little bags, dumping out sand, clumped dirt, small pebbles, powders, until finally, after sev
eral minutes, he was left with nothing but the leather bag that everything else had been attached to. Behind him, he was aware of the intensity of Mortenson’s scrutiny.

  “There we go…” he murmured, looking around. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he noticed the red fog dissipating somewhat. “Now all I need to do is remove what’s inside here. Then we’ll burn everything with a little ritual, and that should be the end of it, at least from this end.”

  With care, he opened the leather bag. Inside, just as he’d predicted, were several tiny vials stoppered with corks, each one stained with what had to be dried blood. He wondered who the blood had belonged to, but the vials weren’t marked. Also inside was a gold nugget the size of a bottlecap, glinting in the beam of Mortenson’s flashlight. Larry had been right, in a way, he thought idly: there had been gold in here. Just not in the amount—or the manner—he’d expected. He set the items aside along with the others, checked the bag for any remaining contents, and put it down next to the group. “All right—here’s the tricky bit. Might want to stand back, just in case anything goes wrong.”

  Mortenson backed off to stand over near the entrance to the chamber. “Be careful…”

  “I’m always careful. Now…let’s see…” He shifted back to magical sight and looked over the collection of items. They were all inert now, their glows stilled, though the red haze hadn’t dissipated any further. He collected them into a pile, pulled a candle from his pocket, and lit it with a bit of magic. The red mist roiled and crashed against the edges of the ward, but couldn’t get inside. With a final glance at Mortenson, he touched the tiny flame to the pile of items.

  They went up like tinder, a whoosh of flame shooting up and then settling to engulf the items. Stone shifted back as far as he could while still being inside the ward, switching his attention between the little pyre and the altar. To his surprise—these things almost never went as planned in his experience—nothing flared up as the items burned to ashes and the flame guttered out. The red mist receded from him, gathering around the edges of the chamber.