Homecoming: An Alastair Stone Urban Fantasy Novel (Alastair Stone Chronicles Book 23)

by R. L. King

  Damn. He hadn’t wanted to take a taxi or a rideshare, but it seemed he might not have a choice. There wasn’t much point in getting here this fast if he had to waste several hours waiting for things to open. Harrison could already be out there, poking around in the forest looking for the rift. Stone had no idea how precise his tracking methods were.

  He couldn’t take the chance, even if it meant he might get traced. He wondered if Agent Todd, or Fischer, or whatever the hell his name was, still had any interest in him.

  He left the garage and walked down a quiet side street until he reached one with a few open restaurants, where he summoned a rideshare.

  “You want to go where?” The driver, a young man with a scraggly beard and a knit cap covering his shoulder-length hair, twisted in his seat to get a good look at his weirdo fare.

  “I know it sounds odd, that I’d want to go out in the middle of nowhere this late. But I’ve got my reasons.”

  “I dunno, man…” He sounded dubious.

  Stone pulled out his wallet. “Tell you what—will two hundred dollars in cash, on top of the regular fare and tip, ease your mind?”

  The driver’s expression faltered, and Stone knew he had him. He looked like a university student, probably making some money on the side during the summer. He’d never met a student who’d turn down that much free cash.

  “Uh…okay,” he said. “But you gotta give me the money up front. And I can’t wait for you. I’m not gonna sit out in the sticks for who knows how long. I’ll drop you off, but you’re on your own after that. That cool?”

  “That’s all I’m asking.” Stone figured he could worry later about how he’d get back to civilization if he was wrong and Harrison wasn’t out there. There had to be people camping somewhere nearby. Worst case scenario, he’d have to walk long enough to get a phone signal and call somebody. He didn’t have time to focus on that now.

  He handed over the two hundred dollars. “Let’s go, then. I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

  “You got it, man.”

  The drive to Crested Butte took half an hour. “You sure you don’t just want me to let you off here?” the driver asked hopefully.

  “No, that won’t work. Keep going, please.” Stone had been sitting back, trying to remain calm as the time ticked away, attempting to banish the vision of Harrison punching through the illusion, finding the rift, and closing it before he got there. Nothing might happen, he told himself. He might just close it and that will be the end of it. You don’t know what will happen. You’re getting worked up over nothing.

  He didn’t believe that, though. Not for a moment.

  His life didn’t work that way.

  He also couldn’t help speculating about what Kolinsky had done to him. How had he managed to get him to Gunnison in the space of a few minutes? That implied not only a private portal in Kolinsky’s shop (something he’d long suspected) but also another one somewhere near where he’d appeared. That seemed unexpectedly random. Why would a powerful black-mage information broker have, or know about, a portal in the middle of Nowhere, Colorado?

  And if he did have or know about such a portal, what would have been the harm in merely telling Stone about it and letting him be on his way? Why all the secrecy? The two of them had been associates long enough that he thought they trusted each other. If Stefan didn’t want him using one or both of the portals after this, it would have been easy enough to merely change the activation parameters to lock him out.

  He made a mental note to ask Kolinsky about it later—but right now, Harrison was a far more pressing concern.

  The car left Crested Butte and crawled along the same narrow, switchbacked road Stone had taken during his first trip up here.

  “What’re you even lookin’ for up here?” the driver asked. He kept his eyes firmly fixed on the road, but Stone noticed he’d occasionally flick his gaze to the rearview mirror.

  Probably checking to make sure I’m not getting ready to murder him and steal his car.

  “My car broke down, and I’m meeting some friends.”

  It was a lame lie—why couldn’t he just call his friends to come pick him up?—and he could see the driver didn’t believe him. “Okay…” was all the man said, and returned his attention to the road.

  By the time they reached the end of the road where Stone had stopped before, the driver was radiating so much nervousness it didn’t even take aura reading skill to spot it. A quick glance with magical sight confirmed it: his medium-blue aura was awash in red streaks. Stone almost felt sorry for him.

  “O-okay,” the guy said. “Here we are. This is as far as I can go. See? The road ends here.”

  “Yes. Brilliant. Thank you.” Stone paid the significant fare with his credit card, adding a substantial tip. There was nothing illegal about coming out here, so if Fischer wanted to trace his paper trail and give him trouble about it, he’d have to deal with it. “I do appreciate it, and I’m sorry for dragging you all the way out here.” He took out another hundred and handed it over. “This is for your trouble.”

  The driver looked like he couldn’t decide whether to be elated at the extra several hundred dollars he’d just made, relieved the whole thing was over, or terrified his odd passenger still had something up his sleeve. Finally, he plucked the hundred from Stone’s hand and said, “Thanks, man. You take care of yourself, okay?”

  “I plan to.” Stone got out of the car and closed the door.

  He’d never seen a Prius turn around that fast. The driver backed up, made a three-point turn, and rolled off the way he’d come far faster than he’d driven in the first place. It couldn’t have been clearer that he wanted to put as much distance between himself and Stone as he could manage.

  Stone watched the twin red glows of the car’s taillights recede until they disappeared around a bend, then turned back and took stock of his situation. The night was cool but not too cold, with only the faint rustle of branches and the far-off calls of birds and small animals breaking the otherwise calm silence. The sliver of moon provided only faint illumination.

  He looked around, trying to spot any sign of another car. If Harrison was here, he’d have needed to get here somehow. They’d traveled from the Nexus to Denver when they went after Liria, which probably meant Harrison didn’t have teleport pads hidden in every wide spot in the road. Stone supposed he could have left his car in Crested Butte and levitated out here, but that was still a long way to go.

  Besides, Harrison had no reason to suspect Stone would be this close on his trail—or perhaps he didn’t even care. He’d made no effort to hide his intentions, probably because he was convinced Stone had no chance of stopping him.

  Stone took out his phone and pulled up the compass app. He shouldn’t need it—once he got above the trees, he should be able to see the energy from his own illusion using magical sight—but it didn’t hurt to check anyway. Feeling a little foolish and increasingly aware he’d have a long walk ahead of him if this whole mess didn’t pan out, he lifted off the ground and floated to the west toward the lake.

  It was still there.

  Stone let his breath out in a whoosh of relief when, after a couple minutes of floating, he spotted the familiar glow up ahead. Either Harrison hadn’t been here yet, or else he was here somewhere and hadn’t found the rift. Illusions worked that way: the caster could see them easily, but anyone else would need a combination of magical skill and the knowledge (or at least strong suspicion) that one was nearby. Stone had begun using them more over the past couple years, partly because he’d gotten better at them following his time on Calanar, and partly because they were usually the best method to confound highly intelligent and powerful opponents.

  He hoped they’d managed to confound Harrison.

  He dropped down, landing in the leaf-and-needle-carpeted ground twenty feet from the illusion-obscured rift. Almost immediately, the same pull he’d felt last time he was here began tugging gently at him, urging him closer. He ignored it for no
w—it was easier to do now that he knew what it was—and began pacing around.

  Would Harrison experience the same tugging sensation if he got close? Could that interfere with the illusion’s effectiveness? He was far more strongly connected to Calanar than Stone was. Would the tug be correspondingly stronger?

  He paced around the rift, remaining several feet away at all times. The tug was annoying but not overly so, almost like he was swimming against a weak current.

  Now that he was here, the area was quiet, and nobody seemed to be in the vicinity, other, more practical thoughts began to poke at the edges of his mind.

  What the hell was he supposed to do now? He’d come out here as fast as he could, not pausing to think about what might happen if he arrived and Harrison wasn’t here.

  He hadn’t brought anything with him, other than his phone and his coat. No camping gear, no food, no water, no magical paraphernalia. He’d been so convinced he’d find Harrison already here, either attempting to close the rift or studying it, he hadn’t considered his course of action if the man wasn’t here. Should he find a comfortable place to sit and wait? Should he try reinforcing the illusions around the rift to make it even harder to find? Should he study the rift himself, and try to come up with a way to close it without risking trouble?

  That last idea was probably a bad one. He’d learned how to close the other rifts without causing them to blow up, even before he’d had no way to know what effects his efforts might have on other potential rifts down the road. But this one was completely different: if someone on the Calanar side had created it, it might not follow the same rules as the ones occurring naturally. If he tinkered with it without knowing what he was doing—

  “Dr. Stone.” A quiet, even voice spoke from somewhere behind him.

  27

  Stone spun.

  A tall, straight figure stood behind him, twenty feet away. It was too dark to see his features, but Stone didn’t need to.

  “Hello, Mr. Harrison. I thought I might find you here.”

  “I did not expect to find you. Not yet.” Harrison moved forward, his easy gait radiating calm. As he drew closer, the scant moonlight revealed he wore all black: shirt, trousers, and light leather jacket.

  “Yes, well, I’m just full of surprises, aren’t I? How long have you been here?”

  “I have been searching for the rift. Your illusions are effective. Until you arrived, I had been concentrating on the wrong area.”

  Stone mentally kicked himself. Bloody hell, I’ve led him right to it. That hadn’t been something he’d considered, but he should have. He pictured Harrison perched invisibly at the top of some tree, scanning the area for the telltale glow of an aura. “You found the area so quickly? I’m impressed. Does that mean the manastorm’s moved?”

  “No. It is moving, but slowly. It isn’t safe yet to venture into the area, so I was forced to return here.” He paced the edges of the illusion, looking for all the world like a predatory cat testing the boundaries of a holding pen. “I will break your illusion, Dr. Stone. I can feel the portal’s pull now that I am close. It would be easier for both of us if you merely removed it.”

  It probably would, and he had a point. “First we need to talk.”

  “About what?” Harrison continued pacing the illusion’s perimeter.

  “About this.” He gestured toward the rift. “It’s not what I thought it was.”

  “Indeed?”

  “I’ve had some new information since we last talked. I tried to call Nakamura, but you’re bloody difficult to get hold of. Would it kill you to answer your phone occasionally?”

  “Very little here commands my immediate attention.” Still, Harrison kept pacing. He seemed to be listening to Stone, but only tangentially.

  Stone stalked after him. “Will you listen to me for a moment, please? You’ve got to hear this. It might change what you do—or what I do.”

  Finally, Harrison stopped. He turned back to face Stone, his expression as unreadable as ever. “What must I hear, Dr. Stone? Please do not try to stall.”

  “I’m not stalling.” He sighed loudly. “Damn, but you can be irritating sometimes, Harrison, and I don’t mind saying so. But you’re also rational, thank the gods, so maybe we can get somewhere.” He pointed at the illusion-shrouded rift. “This thing isn’t what I thought it was. It’s not the thing I can’t tell you about.”

  It was too dark to see Harrison’s eyebrow rise, but Stone was fairly sure it did. “You aren’t making sense.”

  “I am. You’re just not listening. If you had all the information, you’d probably have figured the whole thing out before I did. But this won’t be easy because I can’t give you all the information. All I can tell you is that I’m certain this rift is…different.”

  “Different. From what?”

  “From…” Stone struggled to come up with words the oath wouldn’t prevent him from saying. “…from what Verity told you about today.”

  Harrison considered. “The reason you argue against closing the rifts.”

  Stone didn’t answer. He wanted to, but the oath’s magic wouldn’t even let him nod.

  “You maintain that I should not attempt to close this rift,” Harrison said, eyes narrowing, “but yet you claim it is different from the others.”

  “Yes.” Stone cast about for a way he could say something. Then he remembered what Kolinsky had said, and pumped his fist in triumph. “Yes. Exactly. I can’t tell you anything about…what’s happened before…but I can tell you about this one, since it’s not covered under the oath.”

  Harrison waited in silence.

  “Okay.” Stone began pacing back and forth, gathering his thoughts. “You mentioned the way you could find this portal was to go back to Calanar and extrapolate from where the manastorm was. Remember that?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you said the reason you could do that has to do with the Nexus. Because it’s an anchor point between dimensions. Calanar and Earth are sort of…stuck together relative to each other, right? Maybe Calanar and other dimensions too, though I don’t think that’s relevant at present. That’s how you can find a point on Calanar and track it to its corresponding point on Earth.”

  “Yes, you are correct.”

  Stone realized he’d come to the end of what he could say easily. He could talk about Calanar and anchor points and other dimensions all day long, but unless he could say something about the relative difference between the way Earth and Calanar worked versus the way Earth and every other dimension worked, he would get nowhere.

  “This…is different,” he said lamely, fixing a hard stare on Harrison and hoping the man’s legendary intellect was up to making the jump.

  For a moment, it seems it wouldn’t be. He resumed his pacing. “Different. I don’t…”

  But then he paused and turned back. His expression still didn’t change, but his gaze sharpened. “A moment. I think I might see what you aren’t saying.”

  He approached Stone and indicated the illusion. “You are implying that, unlike the connection point at the Nexus that holds Earth and Calanar at the same relative position to each other, these other portals—other rifts—do not possess the same properties.”

  Stone wanted to shout “Yes!” and clap Harrison on the back, but he did neither: the former because the oath wouldn’t let him, the latter because touching Harrison without permission seemed a very bad idea. Instead, he flashed him a fierce grin and made a “go on” gesture.

  “You mentioned earlier that you believed the problem would resolve itself in time if it were left alone.”

  Stone made the same gesture. His heart pounded harder. Harrison was so close…

  “That implies other dimensions not affected by the Nexus do not remain in a constant position relative to this one. They move—presumably meaning they drift in and out of phase with each other.” He nodded as if that were obvious. “Of course they do. Hence the need for the Nexus.”

  Stone felt
like a small child bursting to reveal a secret, but overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of it all. He made the gesture a third time, more energetically.

  Harrison’s gaze sharpened further. “When the dimensions drift into proximity, that is the cause of the rifts Ms. Thayer spoke of. They exhibit unexplained and unquantifiable magical phenomena for the brief time they are in confluence, but eventually move out of that confluence and the location returns to normal.”

  Stone wanted to hug Harrison. Metaphorically speaking, anyway. The real thing was an even worse idea than clapping him on the back. He settled for what he hoped was a look of agreement.

  Harrison pondered. “So, to summarize: this rift, or portal, is not caused by normal dimensional drift.”

  Stone didn’t answer.

  His eyes narrowed. “If that is true, then something else has caused it.”

  “I think it’s from your end,” Stone blurted. The words almost startled him. So far, he’d had no success telling Harrison anything, but apparently they’d moved beyond the constraints of Kolinsky’s oath.

  Bloody finally.

  Even though nothing showed on his face, Harrison’s calm demeanor suddenly tensed. “I had mentioned before that I got word of some of the mages making incursions into the Wastes.”

  “That’s what I thought too,” Stone said. “Is it possible somebody from your side of the world was trying to create a portal from there to here? Maybe they got caught in the manastorm before they could finish it?”

  “I did not think them capable of such things.” Harrison turned back toward where the illusion still hid the rift. “Will you drop your illusion, please?”

  “What are you going to do if I do that?”

  “Close this portal, of course. If you are correct—and I suspect you are—it cannot be allowed to remain. If the mages are aware of its existence and simply unable to reach it due to the manastorm, it will not be long before they succeed.” He fixed his gaze on Stone. “You have met them, Dr. Stone. You do not want them in your world any more than I want to allow a connection between the two.”