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

  Rite of Passage

  Alastair Stone Chronicles: Book Twenty-Six

  R. L. King

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Don’t miss Alastair Stone’s next adventure!

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  Books by R. L. King

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2021 by R. L. King

  Rite of Passage: Alastair Stone Chronicles Book Twenty-Six

  First Edition, June 2021

  Edited by John Helfers

  Cover Art and Design by Gene Mollica Studio

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people, except by agreement with the vendor of the book. If you would like to share this book with another person, please use the proper avenues. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  1

  “Dr. Stone—one of those strange young men is here to see you.”

  Alastair Stone looked up from the lecture notes he’d been perusing to find Laura, the Occult Studies Department’s dependable administration aide, standing in his open doorway. “Er…thank you, Laura. I’ll be right there.”

  He didn’t bother asking her for details, because he knew exactly what she meant. He closed the file and rose to follow her. As an afterthought, he paused for a long swallow of industrial-strength coffee. These kinds of visits sometimes required fortification, and since they frowned on him drinking alcohol on the job, the coffee had to be the next best thing.

  Sometimes he wondered where Stefan Kolinsky hired his messengers. They were rarely the same person, but always the same type: a young man in his early twenties, neat and clean-cut, dressed in a severe black suit that wouldn’t look out of place on an old-fashioned funeral director.

  This one stood in the tiny department lobby, examining the print of alchemical symbols hanging on the wall near Laura’s desk. He was tall, had dark brown skin and black hair, and stood so straight he might have had a steel bar shoved up the back of his suit. He stepped politely aside when Laura returned so she could resume her seat, but his attention was fixed fully on Stone.

  “Well,” Stone said. “Look what we’ve got here. Another missive from His Nibs, is it?”

  The young messenger merely inclined his head and pulled something from his inner jacket pocket. As always, it was an envelope of heavy, cream-colored paper, held closed with a wax seal.

  Stone took it. Also as always, the front was plain except for Dr. Alastair Stone written in bold, black ink. “Thank you. Are you waiting for a reply?”

  “Yes, sir, if it’s convenient.”

  That was polite Stefan-speak for I’m not leaving here until you’ve given me something to take back with me, so Stone quickly broke the envelope’s seal and drew out the card inside.

  This time, Kolinsky hadn’t bothered to enchant the message so it required magical sight to read. Stone supposed there was no need to, since it didn’t include anything anyone would find suspicious.

  I wish to discuss with you a matter of some importance.

  Are you free for dinner this evening?

  If so, please reply with time and location.

  If not, please advise your earliest availability.

  S. K.

  He chuckled. At least if Stefan was trying to score another free meal, this time he was letting Stone pick the restaurant. He considered a moment, then told the young man, “Tell him yes, I’m free. I’ll make a reservation at the Plumed Horse in Saratoga for eight p.m.” That should be posh enough not to offend the old dragon’s culinary sensibilities.

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” The young man bowed slightly to both Stone and Laura and departed, passing a beefy student in a Stanford hoodie on his way in.

  “Somebody die?” the kid asked, glancing over his shoulder at the messenger’s retreating back.

  “I hope not,” Stone said.

  The Plumed Horse was tucked away along the meandering historical district of Saratoga, another of the area’s high-priced, heavily wooded enclaves. Kolinsky was waiting in the bar when Stone arrived a few minutes early and informed the hostess.

  “Well,” he said, amused, drifting over as a server immediately appeared and took his drink order. “Haven’t heard from you in a while.”

  Nearly three months had passed since he had handed off the magic-blocking obelisk to his old friend, and neither of them had contacted the other since then. Life had once again returned to relative calm in the meantime, and Stone hadn’t complained. His only regret had been that he likewise hadn’t heard from Eleanor Newman, but that hadn’t surprised him. She was probably either busy doing something thrilling and dangerous on the other side of the world, or hadn’t been that into him in the first place, and now that the excitement was over, she’d moved on to more interesting pastures.

  “I have not had anything I wished to discuss.” Kolinsky’s tone was as calm and unruffled as ever.

  “Until now.”

  “Until now.”

  Kolinsky was nearly as hard to read as Trevor Harrison. Stone had no idea whether “a matter of some importance” would end up being a mildly interesting problem, a threat to the world, or something in between. You could never tell with Stefan, and he liked it that way, so Stone had given up trying. His friend would tell him on his own time.

  The hostess appeared and led them to a secluded table. They perused the menu in silence, and neither spoke to each other until they’d placed their orders. Stone opted for the beef tenderloin, and Kolinsky chose Pacific sea bass. Stone let Kolinsky pick the wine, and wasn’t disappointed in his selection. Much as he teased the dragon about these expensive dinners, he had to admit he enjoyed them. This level of fine dining wasn’t something he wanted to do every day, or even every week, but it was a nice change from the usual takeaway he picked up on his way home from work. Aside from Stefan, the only people he knew who enjoyed this sort of culinary adventurousness were h
is son Ian and Ian’s boyfriend, Stefan’s son Gabriel, but he hadn’t seen either of them in person for months.

  “Before you bring up whatever you wanted to discuss,” he said, “we haven’t talked for a while. Did you ever figure out anything about the little item I dropped off with you? Unless tonight has anything to do with that?”

  “It does not. I have discovered nothing specific, beyond what I have already told you.”

  “So, it does work the way you say—with the substance that doesn’t exist anymore?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that means we’re not likely to see more of them popping up to cause trouble.”

  “Highly unlikely.”

  Stone had never told Kolinsky about the chamber beneath his Surrey house—the one buried by the cave-in and only accessible through ley-line travel. He’d considered it, if he’d been able to find any of the extradimensional substance there. But since he hadn’t, he didn’t see the point. The obelisk was apparently unique, which Stone found comforting. Especially since, as long as it was in Kolinsky’s custody, there wasn’t much chance someone would try imprisoning him with it again.

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter, then—as long as you’re keeping it safe and under wraps, I needn’t concern myself further with it.”

  “Indeed.”

  Stone sipped his wine, which was exquisite, and swirled the remainder in the glass. “Right then…so what’s on your mind?”

  “You remember, I trust, the circumstances of our discussion in San Francisco, and the days immediately following?”

  “Of course. Not something I’m likely to forget.”

  “I mentioned that at some point in the future, I might request your aid.”

  Stone narrowed his eyes. “Yes…I do remember that too. Is this one of those points?”

  “That will be up to you. As you might also recall, I assured you there was no requirement for you to agree to any such requests.”

  “Well…I can’t give you an answer until I’ve heard the details.” Stone set his wineglass down. Half of him was intrigued to find out more, and the other half apprehensive. If this was an issue Stefan couldn’t—or more likely wouldn’t—deal with on his own, that could make it either interesting or highly dangerous.

  Possibly both.

  Kolinsky appeared unfazed by Stone’s reaction. “I have been keeping a periodic watch on the various extradimensional rifts that have appeared since I became aware of their renewed existence.”

  “I’m not surprised. So have I.” He’d made a point to visit the London house once a month or so, to check Desmond’s magical globe for any signs of problematic rift activity. So far, he’d noticed them appearing and disappearing in a fairly predictable pattern, with groups popping up and fading over anything from a few days to a few months. He’d also asked Jason’s computer expert, Gina, to continue monitoring odd news events around the world and send him anything particularly unusual. Over the past few months, she hadn’t produced anything interesting enough to spark more than passing curiosity, and none of the stories had been anywhere near the locations of the rifts.

  Kolinsky didn’t ask him how he was doing that. He’d never told the dragon about Desmond’s globe, and he’d never inquired.

  “Something…unusual appeared recently.”

  Stone frowned. “What do you mean by unusual? And how recently?” The last time he’d checked the globe had been over two weeks ago.

  “Yesterday. And…unusual in the sense that a rift—or some kind of extradimensional activity—appeared and disappeared far more quickly than even the fastest of the rifts in the past.”

  “How quickly are you talking about?”

  Kolinsky’s expression was more sober than usual. “If I had not been specifically searching at the time, I likely would not have noticed it. It appeared and vanished in the space of less than ten minutes.”

  “What?” Stone leaned forward, intrigued now. “Ten minutes? That’s not possible, is it?” As far as he was aware, the fastest a pair of dimensions had drifted in and out of phase in the past had been a few days. Most of them took around two weeks, and a few much longer, but ten minutes was a definite outlier. Dimensions were like continents, or bureaucracies—they didn’t move that fast. Not even the small ones.

  Kolinsky didn’t reply.

  “Are you sure it was a rift at all? Does whatever method you use to study this sort of thing only pick up dimensional drift?”

  “I had thought so. But this does seem highly unusual for that kind of phenomenon.”

  “Bloody right it does.” Stone thought back to a few months ago, when the mages on Calanar had managed to construct an unstable portal between their dimension and Earth. But he and Harrison had closed that portal, and Harrison had dealt with most of the people responsible (“dealt with” being Harrison-speak for “terminated with extreme prejudice”). Not only that, but he’d also done something to the Nexus to decouple the two dimensions, making it nearly impossible for anyone to re-create the portal or travel between them.

  Had someone else done something similar from a different dimension?

  “There is more,” Kolinsky said.

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  The dragon didn’t acknowledge his question. “I also noticed a high degree of magical energy centered around the activity. Again, it appeared and disappeared quickly, but it was much higher than anything I have ever observed related to standard rifts.”

  “Interesting. Normal magical energy? Unusual or dangerous in some way?”

  “I do not know. The method I use for gathering such information is not as precise when dealing with nonstandard applications.”

  Ah. There it was. Stone smiled. Should have seen this one coming sooner. And I haven’t even had too much wine. “Now I see what you wanted to talk about.”

  Kolinsky leaned back in his chair and sipped his wine.

  “You want me to pop over wherever it is and investigate it.”

  “Yes. If you are willing to do so.”

  Stone wondered how much of this truly was up to him, and what Kolinsky would do if he declined. It didn’t matter, though—he was already intrigued. He had no intention of declining.

  But that didn’t mean he couldn’t gather a bit of extra information before agreeing, though. “You’re a curious bloke, Stefan—probably more so than I am. Why don’t you investigate it yourself?”

  “I may, depending on what you discover.”

  “But you don’t want to give the hint of anything untoward and upset your little cabal.”

  “I would not put it in such a way, but…essentially, yes.”

  Stone nodded sagely. As dragons went, Stefan, despite his old-fashioned, formal ways, was actually one of the more progressive of the lot when it came to working with humans. Or scions, at least. Aside from him and Madame Huan (and Gabriel, but he didn’t act like a dragon at all), the others hewed far closer to their byzantine agreements, reluctant to make any moves to involve themselves in human affairs for fear of causing offense and touching off disagreements that could come back to bite them—possibly literally.

  “So, you want me to act as your agent, poking around to see what I can find out and reporting back.”

  “Yes. Although you cannot deny that I have already piqued your considerable natural curiosity.”

  Stone didn’t even try. “Yes, well, there’s that too.” He shrugged. “Sure—I’ll take a look. I assume you want me to go on my own.”

  “I would prefer it, since time is of the essence. The location is near a ley line, but not near any standard travel portals.”

  “That, and if I go by myself I won’t have to work out more creative ways to keep from telling anyone what I’m up to.” He sighed. “Are you ever going to let me out of that oath, Stefan? It’s bloody inconvenient not being able to at least tell Verity and Ian.”

  “We shall see. Assume, for the moment, that the answer is no. If that changes, I will inform you.”

&n
bsp; Well. That was slightly more encouraging than “you’ll have to carry this secret to your grave.” Especially given recent developments suggesting that might be a much longer time than he’d originally thought. “Fair enough. I’ll leave tomorrow, if that’s soon enough.”

  “That is acceptable, yes. Thank you, Alastair.”

  Stone was already humming with curiosity about whatever was going on. “Where is this place, by the way?”

  “Northern West Virginia. Roughly an hour’s drive from an area called Morgantown.”

  He jerked his head up. “Is that right?”

  “Does that mean something to you?”

  “Probably not. It’s almost certainly a coincidence. But remember the Evil I told you about, a few years back? The extradimensional creatures who could take people over and control them like puppets?”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s where one of their portals was—somewhere near there, anyway. The other one was near Las Vegas.” Stone waved it off. “But we destroyed both of them, and I haven’t heard a peep about the Evil for years. I doubt it’s related. I’ll keep it in mind, though.” Still, the thought of the Evil—at least the more powerful of them—turning up on Earth again sent an involuntary shiver through him. “Give me as much information about where this anomaly you spotted occurred, and I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  Kolinsky pulled two small folders from his inner jacket pocket and offered Stone one of them. “This details the location, as closely as I could determine, including the position of the nearest ley line. My methods are precise, but you will likely need to spend some time scanning the general area.”