Gathering Storm: An Alastair Stone Urban Fantasy Novel (Alastair Stone Chronicles Book 17) Read online

  Raider almost looked disappointed, causing Stone to wonder once again if Professor Thaddeus Benchley’s echo might be hanging around the place on the sly. “Don’t look at me like that. It won’t work.”

  When he hung his coat on the rack inside the door, he remembered the clipping Verity had given him. He pulled it from the pocket and glanced at it again. It was a bit strange on second look—a bunch of kids getting high on something at an illicit party wasn’t anything to be concerned about, but the fact that they all claimed to have forgotten about it several days later was a bit more interesting. Sure, they could all be lying. But Stone had enough experience with young adults from teaching them for over ten years to know getting that many of them to agree on a story for any length of time was next to impossible.

  I must be truly bored, he thought as he gathered the Dragon Garden bag and a Guinness and carried them all upstairs to his study. Raider followed him, leaping up to perch on the edge of the desk.

  The little podunk town was called Devil’s Creek (how appropriate, Stone thought wryly) and it was located in Iowa, a couple hundred miles from Des Moines. As he pulled out his United States atlas and located it on a map, he wondered again if he shouldn’t take Jason Thayer’s advice and get himself a computer. He’d been resisting it for a while now, content to use the one in his office at work when he needed to print something out or look something up. But ever since Jason had opened his agency and gotten a new setup there so he could do internet searches, he’d been trying to convince Stone to get one of his own.

  “Come into the twenty-first century, Al,” he’d teased. “I promise, it doesn’t hurt. And it’s not like the thing’s going to blow up if you get near it or anything.”

  Right now, though, his hardcopy map was sufficient for his needs. He examined the area: Devil’s Creek was next to a small river (not likewise called Devil’s Creek) which made sense given the article’s mention of an abandoned paper mill. The dot for the town was tiny, meaning the town probably was, too—likely just another in the interchangeable series of wide spots in the road featuring a gas station, a McDonald’s, and a whole lot of farms or ranches depending on where exactly it was located. In all his years living in the United States, Stone had never properly sorted out Midwestern geography. He knew where a few of the big cities were—roughly—but most of the states east of Nevada and west of the Eastern Seaboard constituted a giant black box in his mind. He’d taken a road trip a few years back in an attempt to remedy that, but it hadn’t helped much.

  He was about to close the map and finish his kung pao chicken before getting back to his research when another thought occurred to him. Barely glancing up, he gestured and brought another large, leatherbound tome sailing across the room to settle on the desk. He opened it and paged through until he reached the spot he was looking for, then grabbed the other map and held it next to the new one.

  “Interesting…” he murmured, absently nudging Raider away. “Hadn’t expected that…”

  He examined the clipping with new interest, then pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and punched Verity’s number.

  “Hi, Doc. What’s up?”

  Stone heard muffled heavy-metal music in the background—she must be at Scuro’s shop. “I’m not keeping you from anything, am I?”

  “Nah, not at the moment. Scuro’s finishing up the job, so I’ve got a little while before he needs me. What do you need?”

  “Well.” He glanced down at the maps again. “Remember that clipping you gave me today? The one I didn’t seem interested in?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Well, I’m a bit more interested now. Can you put me in touch with your friend’s cousin?”

  The line crackled. “Uh…yeah, probably. Why? What did you find?”

  “Probably nothing. But I located the town on a mundane map and compared it against my ley line reference. Devil’s Creek, Iowa is right at the confluence of two of them.”

  “Wow. I didn’t even think to check that. So that means the chances it’s legit went up, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s still likely nothing, but at least it’s worth a look. I want to talk to the cousin. Can you manage that?”

  “Yeah. I’ll talk to Tiff tomorrow and see if she can have her call you.”

  “Thank you.”

  When she spoke again, the grin in her voice was evident. “And there’s the curious cat I know and love. Let me know if you decide to go. Maybe I’ll come with you.”

  “I’m not going,” he protested, even though he knew that wasn’t by any means true, depending on what he found out. “I just…want to learn a bit more about it, is all.”

  She laughed. “Yeah, Doc, you go right on believing that. It’ll make one of us.”

  3

  Stone’s phone buzzed just after his three o’clock class got out the following day, showing an unknown number. He answered on his way back to his office. “Yes, hello?”

  “Uh…hi. Is this Dr. Stone?”

  “It is. Do I know you?”

  “No. My name’s Leith McCoy. My cousin’s Tiffany Bailey.”

  “Ah! Right. You’re from Devil’s Creek.” He slowed his headlong pace to a more leisurely stride.

  “Well, next town over, but close enough.” She sounded wary. “I’m not exactly sure what you want from me. Tiffany said one of her friends told her you wanted to know what happened at the old paper mill.”

  “That’s right. Did she tell you what I do?”

  “She said you were some kind of professor at Stanford.”

  “Yes, exactly. My area of interest is…unusual events.”

  “Unusual?”

  Stone wasn’t sure how much he should say—in his experience, using the words “occult” or “supernatural” around mundanes resulted in one of two outcomes: unhealthy fascination or a nervous brush-off. Neither of those was likely to get him the information he wanted. “Er—yes. Unexplained phenomena, that sort of thing. I thought perhaps you might be able to tell me more about what happened.”

  “You’re not a reporter, are you?”

  He couldn’t miss the suspicion in her voice. “No, of course not. Have you had trouble with reporters?”

  “Not many. There were a few local ones sniffing around just after it happened, but that’s it. I’m still not really sure I can help you very much, though.”

  Even at Stone’s decreased pace, he still reached his office building quickly. He nodded to Laura the admin and swept by, ducking into his office and locking the door behind him. “I just want to get a bit more information than what I saw in the article. It didn’t provide much to go on.”

  “All I know is what my friend Liz told me. They had a party out at the old paper mill. It’s been closed for years, but people sneak in there a lot. The cops keep an eye on it, but they can’t always catch ’em.”

  “I see. The article said something about ghosts, out-of-body experiences, and feelings of terror.”

  “Yeah. There are rumors that the place is haunted, but I think it’s all bullshit, honestly. Pardon my language.”

  “Yes, I suspected as much too. I’m guessing there were drugs involved. Am I correct?”

  There was a pause. “I doubt it, actually. I know some of these guys. They drink, sure, but they’re pretty straight-arrow aside from that. I’ve never heard of any of them getting high. For sure, Liz wouldn’t do drugs, ’cuz her job does random checks. Plus, the cops tested some of them just after they broke up the party.”

  “Hmm.” He wondered if she was telling the truth—she didn’t know him, after all, which meant she probably wouldn’t reveal illegal drug use to him even if she knew about it. “I see. The part that interests me most is the bit about everyone forgetting about what happened.”

  The pause was longer that time. “Yeah. That was weird. I talked to Liz about it the day after the party, and she told me some pretty freaky things. But then I saw her again a few days later and she didn’t even remember what she told me. She look
ed at me like I was the crazy one. Like I was making it all up.”

  “And you don’t think she could have been lying to you, or concealing something?”

  “Nah. Liz and I have been friends since grade school. I can always tell when she’s lying. She was serious.”

  “And it’s not just Liz who’s claiming not to remember?”

  “Right. It’s everybody who was there. The cops are thinking they had some kind of mass hallucination or something. It’s freaky.”

  Stone jotted down a few notes. “Thank you, Ms. McCoy. I appreciate your time, and I won’t keep you any longer. I wonder, though—is there any chance Liz would be willing to chat with me directly?”

  “I dunno. I think she just wants to forget about the whole thing, to be honest.”

  “All right, then. Thank you again.”

  Stone tried to focus on work and put the events in Devil’s Creek from his mind for the next couple days, but he kept returning to the strange happenings, turning them over like Raider with a new toy. He searched for any other news stories about the situation, and even asked Jason to look it up for him, but found no other pertinent information. It was as if the story had simply passed from collective memory.

  Either that or nobody gives a damn about it because it’s pointless, he told himself.

  But he kept coming back to the ley lines. Confluences of two ley lines weren’t that rare—they existed all over the world—but any time more than one of them converged in a single location, it made supernatural events that much more likely.

  Finally, on Friday afternoon, he pulled out his map of public portals in the United States and compared it with the location of Devil’s Creek. The closest one was in Chicago, nearly a four-hour drive away, but if he caught a short flight from there to Des Moines it would cut his travel time considerably. He didn’t have a class until Tuesday—the three-day weekend should be plenty of time to investigate.

  He pulled out his phone and called Verity. “Fancy a little trip?”

  “Where?”

  “Thought I’d pop over to Devil’s Creek and take a look at that abandoned paper mill.”

  She chuckled. “Ah, so your curiosity finally caught fire. Took long enough. Did you find out anything new?”

  “No, just been thinking over what I already know. So—want to come along? I was planning to take the portal to Chicago and get a flight from there.”

  “I can’t, Doc.” She sounded rueful. “Kyla and I have tickets to a concert tonight, I’ve got a job with Scuro tomorrow night, and Hezzie was going to show me some stuff this weekend. But if you really want me to come—”

  “No, no, it’s quite all right.” Stone was sure his disappointment hadn’t reached his voice. “You do what you need to do. I’ll be fine. I’ll probably find nothing interesting anyway.”

  “You sure? If you really need me—”

  If you really need me. That was an interesting way to put things. “No—it’s fine. Tell everyone I said hello. I’ll let you know what I find when I get back. I’ll leave plenty of food and water out for Raider, but if you’re in the area at all, would you mind stopping by to check on him?”

  “Yeah, no problem.” A pause. “Be careful, Doc.”

  “Come on, Verity—it’s not as if I’ll find a portal to Hell or anything in some nothing little town in Iowa.”

  “Well, if you do, call me. I’ve never seen a portal to Hell.”

  “That’s a promise. Enjoy your concert, and don’t blow up the alchemy lab.”

  He broke the connection and put the phone away, wondering at his uncharacteristic melancholy. This wasn’t anything new—his schedule and Verity’s often didn’t coincide these days—but for some reason this time it hit him harder than usual.

  4

  Stone didn’t take much with him for the trip. Raider watched him from the pillow as he gathered a few things into an overnight bag in his bedroom. “Don’t you worry,” he told the cat. “I’ll be back soon. You’ll probably enjoy having the place to yourself for a couple of days.”

  He wondered if that were really true, or just wishful thinking on his part. He and the rangy tabby complemented each other’s lifestyles surprisingly well, each of them combining a love for solitude with the periodic need for bite-sized portions of company from another living thing. They each had a good sense of when the other wanted to be left alone, though Raider had his species’ typical compulsion to be in the middle of anything that might be going on. Stone had evicted him from the overnight bag twice already as he packed.

  He zipped the bag, slung the strap over his shoulder, and ruffled Raider’s fur. “Right, then. You be good. If I end up staying longer than expected, Auntie Verity or Uncle Jason will be ’round to top off your food and water.”

  Raider yawned and licked his paw.

  A Passage to India was doing a brisk business when he arrived a little after seven. Marta Bellwood, busy filling a complicated takeout order, waved as he strode past but didn’t stop him to chat. He’d been frequenting the place fairly often lately, going back and forth between his Surrey house or Caventhorne on weekends, so his appearance now wasn’t unusual. He returned the wave and hurried down the hall before she changed her mind, then quickly slipped past the illusion concealing the door that led to the downstairs portal.

  Barely glancing at the serene, pastel-colored gateway shifting in front of him, Stone pulled a card from his pocket and consulted it. He knew the coordinates to his typical destinations—the private portals in Surrey, London, and Caventhorne, along with the ones in Lowell, Massachusetts and New York City—by heart, but it had been quite some time since he’d had occasion to visit Chicago.

  As he calibrated the portal to take him to his destination, he thought about how much easier this was than it used to be when the Evil was still lurking in the Overworld. Portal travel wasn’t exactly what one might call completely safe—you could still get into trouble if you didn’t keep your wits about you—but it was a hell of a lot safer nowadays since the Evil were no longer preparing ambushes for anyone who let their emotions get the better of them. In the years since the Evil’s gateways had finally been shut down, Stone personally knew of several magical practitioners who were now brave enough to use this handy travel method, when they never had been before. Officially, very few people knew the reasons for why the Overworld was safer now, but people talked and the story had gotten around.

  Stone finished his calibrations and hefted his bag. The trip would take only a couple of minutes, and he’d step out on the other side in the unused storeroom of a bar on Milwaukee Avenue. From there, he planned to find a hotel for the night, then catch a flight to Des Moines in the morning. After that, a two-hour drive would get him to Devil’s Creek by mid-day.

  With one last, brief twinge of regret that Verity couldn’t accompany him on the trip, he stepped into the portal.

  He paused only a moment, glancing around at the familiar foggy tunnel opening in front of him. As always, swirling gray mist formed a passageway that stretched out as far as he could see, making it impossible to take a wrong turn if you did your calibrations correctly. These days, all the traveler saw was the mist itself; the dark, fishlike shapes of the larval Evil cruising around in the walls, homing in on strong emotion, were long gone. Occasionally, if you paused for several moments and fixed your gaze far out into the grayness, you might see one or two isolated figures patrolling aimlessly back and forth, but the vast majority of them had either given up and gone home to their own dimension or died for lack of sustenance. Stone wasn’t sure which one was true, and he didn’t care. As long as they were gone, he was fine with it either way.

  He began walking, his footsteps silent on the tunnel’s floor. His feet disappeared halfway into the fog, and the whole process felt like trudging through a hallway lined with cotton wool. It didn’t impede your progress, but the utter silence and deadness of the tunnel contributed to an overall unsettling feeling. Despite the openness of the tunnel, claustropho
bic people didn’t tend to do well in the Overworld.

  Stone maintained a steady, unhurried pace and didn’t look back. Based on previous experience and the distance between the Bay Area and Chicago, he expected the trip to take perhaps a minute or two at most, but the Overworld’s strange geography had a way of altering perception, stretching seconds into minutes. By the time you got out, you could swear you’d been walking for ten minutes, twenty, even an hour, only to discover barely a couple of minutes had passed in the “real” world. It was weird, but any practitioners who used the portals regularly took it in stride.

  Up ahead, he spotted a flash of light. Good—that must be the other end of the tunnel, the one that opened into the Chicago bar. He figured he’d stop in, get a drink or two and catch up with any mages who happened to be hanging about, and then find a place to crash for the night. Maybe he’d even get a little work done in his room.

  The flash of light grew brighter, changing to a purple hue. Stone paused, narrowing his eyes. That was odd—normally the Overworld exits either looked like faint glows, or doorway-shaped darkenings in the unrelieved gray of the fog. The place had an eerie way of washing out any color that entered it, deadening voices and dulling even the brightest of shades on its travelers’ clothing. One thing Stone had never seen here, and never expected to see, was any kind of bright color.

  “Odd…” he murmured. His voice came out in the familiar monotone, the fog catching and damping all its nuance and overtones. He shifted to magical sight, expecting to see what he always saw when he did the same thing: the muted glow of his own aura surrounded by the same gray-white mundane vision revealed.

  Instead, the tunnel came alive with flashes of color, in spots so bright and vibrant it looked like the inside of a nightclub. The spots didn’t remain in the same places, but seemed to dance around the tunnel—sometimes quick and choppy, sometimes flowing like water. They seemed to chase each other around the fog-shrouded tube, exuberant puppies out for a romp.