Stone and a Hard Place (20 page)

The area was huge, a wide open expanse of concrete floor surrounded by more towering, shadowy forms of shrouded furniture, building materials, and rusty old gardening items. The ceiling here was higher too, rising about fifteen feet up. From where he was standing, Stone couldn’t see any other doors leading out, but it would be easy to hide them in the midst of all this clutter.

He took a couple more steps in, then stopped. “Anyone there?” he called. His voice sounded dead, muffled against the decaying cloth covering the furniture. It didn’t echo at all. High above him, he thought he heard the flutter of wings beating—the bats Iona had spoken of. Looking around, he tried to spot them; if they were here, they had to have some way to get out, but given that the floor was covered in dust but no bat droppings, he suspected he—and Iona—were just imagining them.

“All right,” he muttered to himself, just to hear some sound. “Let’s get on with this.” Moving to the center of the open area, he closed his eyes and reached out again with his magical senses. The feeling of the thing was very strong here—he was close, and it couldn’t fully hide itself from him anymore. “Where are you...?” he whispered. “You know I’m going to find you, so why don’t we just get it over with?”

The room creaked ominously, and a couple of the cloth-shrouded towers of piled furniture swayed back and forth.

“Oh, that’s the way you want to play it, then, is it?” Stone hurried back over to the safety of the entrance and watched the room to see if the swaying got any worse. If that thing dropped an armoire on him, by the time anyone was brave enough to come down here and find him, there’d be nothing left but bones and a few shreds of clothing. Just to be safe, he put up a physical shield and powered it with one of his remaining crystals. It wouldn’t be strong enough to stop anything seriously heavy, but if they were stacking things that heavy that high up, then more was wrong here than just demons in the basement.

Staying close to one side, and glancing up every few seconds to make sure nothing was about to fall on him, Stone crept forward and explored the room, magical senses at the ready. He’d been right: there were small walkways between the piles, radiating out toward the edges of the room. Some were blocked by items that had already fallen, probably many years ago or during the recent earthquake. The creaking wasn’t repeated.

He wondered how long it had been since anyone
had
been down here. Had it been back in the days of Edgar Sr.? Had the disastrous ritual that had taken the lives of Selena Darklight and her students, along with Amelia Bonham’s sanity, been the last time anyone had ventured down? It seemed unlikely, but the items here easily looked like they could have lain undisturbed for all those years. The musty smell of a long-unaired space was getting stronger; Stone wondered briefly if the air was even safe, but decided it must be if the rats were getting in and out. Even so, he wished he’d brought a scarf or a mask or something to avoid having to breathe the dust he was sending up with every footstep. Bad idea of breathing all that dust notwithstanding, his ribs weren’t going to stand for too many coughing fits.

“Remind me again why I’m doing this?” he muttered aloud. He could have been back home, sharing a good dinner and a lovely evening with Megan. “Because I’m an idiot, that’s why,” he answered himself, and moved forward again.

The feeling was growing stronger as he approached the back of the room, farthest away from where he’d entered it. He stood for a moment staring down one of the narrow walkways through the junk, focusing his senses.

Whatever it was, it was in this direction.

Making sure his shield was at full strength, he crept down the walkway. He had to pick his way over a smashed dresser and the remains of a player piano that disgorged a family of mice as he stepped past it. He shone the flashlight up ahead, wondering what he’d find when he reached the other side.

It was a dead end.

The way was blocked by a large bookcase, full of moldy old tomes and stacked with yellowing newspapers. He stopped, frustration growing. The feeling was so strong here—perhaps the next walkway over might be the one, but—

Wait…

He glanced behind him to make sure no one—or nothing—was approaching, then brought the flashlight in closer and examined the bookcase in more detail. He stepped back and looked at the floor: it was covered in the same layer of dust that the rest of the basement was, but he could just see faint, semicircular tracks that indicated that something had been moved here, though not recently. Setting down the flashlight, he moved his hands around the edges of the bookshelf, then skimmed his gaze over the titles of the books. Most of them were boring: old encyclopedia volumes, classics from the early part of the century and similarly unexciting books. But on a lower shelf a leatherbound tome caught his eye. Its title was in a language he didn’t recognize, a series of squiggly lines that made him uncomfortable to look directly at it for long.

He paused a moment, then hooked his finger on top of the book and tugged.

The bookshelf swung out, rusted hinges protesting with every inch. Stone grabbed hold and pulled harder. It wanted to swing shut again, so he forced it open, grabbed his flashlight, and slid through. As soon as he let go of it, it immediately slammed shut behind him.

He spun and pushed at it, and was relieved to discover that he could still shove it open. It hadn’t locked behind him. Stone let his breath out slowly and just stood there for a moment, getting his bearings.

“Well,” he murmured. “
This
looks promising.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

He stood in a large room, though not nearly as large as the one he’d just left. This one, however, was not piled high with the cast-offs and detritus of the house’s former residents.

Instead, the floor was empty, except for a large, permanent ritual circle that had been built directly into it, laid out using different colored stone and tracings of gold and silver metal. Stone examined it carefully, shining his light around its entire border. It was one of the most complex circles of its type he’d seen in many years, certainly more complex than anything he’d used in his work recently. This was the kind of circle you used to do big things: summon or control powerful entities, send spells at large numbers of people at once, or perform the kinds of transformations that nobody did anymore because they were so difficult and costly. It was also the kind that you didn’t use alone. He estimated that the ritual that would need a circle this complicated would require a minimum of four people to power and direct it.

He was pretty sure he’d found the site of Selena Darklight’s disastrous summoning attempt.

Dragging his attention away from the circle itself, he looked around the room. There were no bones or bodies, but he could see dark patches on the floor and the walls that, even covered in a layer of dust, looked very much like old, long-dried blood. Great chunks had been ripped out of the wood paneling that covered a couple walls. On the far side of the room was an oversized, wooden armoire. Its doors were closed, but didn’t quite meet in the middle. Tables and bookshelves lined one side of the room, all stacked haphazardly with dusty tomes and piles of yellowed papers covered in diagrams and cramped writing. On the other side were a series of rotting, empty wine racks, attesting to what this room’s original purpose must have been before Amelia and Selena Darklight appropriated it for their own use.

Stone’s curiosity was on fire: if the books and other materials were what he thought they were, he’d just found a treasure trove of magical information. He could easily spend many days or weeks down here, studying them one by one. There was no time for that now, though. He could practically feel the energy of the creature straining against its bonds; it knew he was here, and he knew that it could well be in the same room with him, half-shifted between dimensions, invisible even to his magical senses. In order to see it, he’d have to set up a ritual of his own. And if he could see it, he hoped he could set up wards or other protective enchantments that would keep it contained temporarily—at least until after Adelaide’s party—to give him more time to see what he could do about it more permanently.

Picking up his bag, which he’d left just inside the room’s bookcase entrance, he began pulling out items and placing them on a nearby table. He’d have to make his own circle; there was no way he could or would use the existing one without further study. He glanced at his watch: a little after 8 p.m. If he was lucky, he could finish this up in a couple of hours and be home by 11:00.

He carefully constructed his circle behind the larger one, making sure every bit was secure, that there were no gaps, and he hadn’t skipped anything or written any of the sigils incorrectly. He felt a buzzing in his head now, almost like a low-grade background count of distracting energy. It didn’t quite hurt, but it did make it difficult to concentrate on what he was doing.

It’s fighting me.

Despite the cold down here, he was getting warm from the effort of setting up the circle. He stripped off his sweater and tossed it on the table, leaving just his black T-shirt. That was better. His body couldn’t decide whether it should shiver or perspire, so it did a bit of both. He pushed his damp hair off his forehead and stood back to inspect his handiwork.

The circle, which had taken him about an hour to construct, looked sound to both his mundane and magical senses. It was about six feet across and glowed with power, easily contained within its confines.

No point in waiting any longer.

Stone took a few deep breaths, stretched, and stepped into the circle. He felt its protective enchantments weaving around him, creating a barrier between him and whatever might be out there. Inside the circle, the irritating hum faded away to the faintest of sounds. He closed his eyes, centered himself, and reached out.

His senses were drawn to the armoire at the end of the room. With the altered perceptions that were heightened by the circle’s power, he saw a crack in the door where an unwholesome sort of light shone out. It crept around the edges of the doors, testing the boundaries, trying to find a way to force them open further. He also saw that the armoire was more than just an armoire: powerful enchantments still surrounded it, wrapping it in nearly unbreakable mystical chains.

Nearly
unbreakable.

He nudged his perception open a bit more, probing for information.
What are you?

He didn’t expect to get an answer, but his mind was suddenly flooded with images that flew by too fast for him to make sense of them. Gritting his teeth, he tried to slow them down or, barring that, to pick out individual frames.

—A large room.—

—A hellish domain seething with creeping, crawling creatures.—

—Magical sigils spinning in a mad circle.—

—Several robe-clad people standing in a circle, hands clasped.—

—A desperate attempt to stop something, to slow it, to send it back.—

—Darkness.—

—A vast rumbling as the earth moved.—

—A tiny crack in the structural integrity of the prison that held something back.—

Stone probed further. He didn’t think he’d be able to get it to reveal its name, even imprisoned as it was. He felt it probing back, poking around the edges of his mind, trying to gain any knowledge it could of him—who he was, why he was there, whether he could be persuaded or coerced to help it. And all the while, he felt the sheer malevolence of it.

This thing could not be allowed to get free.

Once, a long time ago, he’d seen a poster depicting the side view of an iceberg—the part that emerged above the level of the sea was only the tiniest fraction of the vast bulk floating below the water line. He couldn’t get a good look at the thing from here, not without a much more complicated ritual and probably at least two more participants, but he could tell that the part of it that was emerging into their plane of existence was a similarly small fraction. If the whole thing were allowed to come through, the entire area—and perhaps much more—would be in peril.

He couldn’t allow that.

But how the hell was he going to stop it?

A whole ritual group, led by a woman who was probably every bit the practitioner he was, and assisted by another powerful mage and several lesser ones, hadn’t been able to do more than imprison it temporarily. And they had
had
its name. All he had was his resolve, his experience, and a body in no shape to be throwing around forces anywhere near potent enough to deal with something like this.

He couldn’t send it back—not yet, at least. But he could do his best to reinforce its prison. Gathering his strength, he began weaving patterns and enchantments, taking cues from those that were already there, and interweaving his own with them in much the same way that one braids a series of thin ropes together to form a stronger one. He knew it wouldn’t hold for long, but if he could stay its momentum long enough to gather some more mages, then maybe it would be enough. He could call Walter Yarborough, and a few others he knew—

The crack was widening. The light around him was changing.

The world shifted.

He still stood in the center of the same room, though it didn’t look the same now. His circle was gone.

The room was lit by candles in sconces along both of the long walls, as well as a large brazier in the middle. Flames licked up from the brazier, creating a strange-smelling, cloying, purple smoke that wound up to the stone ceiling and then dissipated.

Stone looked around. The dust, the smell of mold and disuse, were gone. Everything in the room looked new and fresh, including the paneled walls (now blood free) and the brilliant circle in its center. Several robed and hooded figures—a quick count revealed seven—stood swaying inside the circle; six arrayed around its inside perimeter, their hands clasped and energy coursing between them. The seventh figure stood in the center, hood lowered, gathering the energy flowing from the points around the diameter and weaving the separate threads into a powerful whole that glowed like a small sun. Stone had to squint as he looked at it, but he could tell the level of power it contained was immense. Certainly far more powerful than anything he could call up on his own.

He stepped forward. The circle occupants didn’t appear to notice him, or if they did, they didn’t react. They continued swaying and chanting, feeding power to the tall, olive-skinned woman in the middle. The woman herself was turned away from him, focused on the other end of the room.

Stone followed her gaze—the armoire was there, looking solid and substantial, but its doors were open. More light, as brilliant as that inside the circle, but an unhealthy red-purple, shone from inside, illuminating the entire end of the room in its eerie glow.

The woman in the center of the circle chanted loudly, her body writhing with either ecstasy or agony—it was hard to tell which. Stone edged farther forward, his gaze never leaving the group in case they noticed him, and saw sweat streaming down her face. He couldn’t make out any specifics in her chant, though he struggled to pick out anything intelligible.

And then something burst through the armoire’s doors, pouring out into the room. For a moment Stone just stared, unable to believe what he was witnessing. A series of—things—boiled out through the opening, moving toward the circle. The creatures were humanoid, barely, made of tentacles and flayed flesh and great glowing greenish eyes. The sounds they made weren’t anything close to human, and each time they moved, it sounded like flesh being ripped from bones. Behind them, dark slime trails stretched back to the armoire.

They surged toward the circle.

One by one, the six participants around the edges became aware of them, shifting position, crying out in alarm. The woman in the middle yelled out an order and directed some of the power she was handling toward the first couple of creatures. They screamed and exploded in sprays of ichor.

The other creatures were not idle, though. Two of them reached the circle; they grabbed the two closest figures and pulled, seemingly unaffected by the circle’s protective power. Stone watched in horror as the creatures yanked the hooded figures out of the circle and began devouring them, accompanied by screams and great wet rending sounds.

The others screamed too, but the woman in the center barked a command. The remaining four figures around the outside quickly moved to clasp hands, while the center woman adjusted her chant. The power coursing around the circle changed, and the light at the center shifted from bright white to a deep red. She yelled something, and directed the red light toward the armoire.

Something else was coming through.

Something big.

The four remaining participants looked as if they might panic at any moment and flee, but they held it together for now. Stone had to summon rarely tapped reserves of will to do the same, and he still wasn’t sure how long he could do it. His heart pounded; his mind screamed for him to run, to flee, to get himself away from this thing as fast as he could, before it pushed itself through into the light. He had trained most of his life to deal with things that shouldn’t exist, but this—this was an entirely new level. He was reminded suddenly of the H. P. Lovecraft stories he used to read back in his University days. Whatever this was, he’d never seen anything even remotely like it…and he was becoming more and more sure that he didn’t want to.

Stone forced himself to move around the rear of the circle, wondering if the creatures could see him, wondering if he could help. He saw now that they had changed their tactics, and were attempting to seal the armoire gateway. He knew he couldn’t join the circle: he wasn’t sure how the creatures had gotten their two terrified victims out without breaking it, but he had no confidence that he could do the same if he tried to step in. Instead, he focused on one of the creatures and flung a concussion spell. The creature was knocked off its feet (or tentacles) and sailed back toward the armoire opening.

The circle participants paid him no attention, but unfortunately, the other creatures did. More were coming through now, and the ones that were already here changed direction to head toward Stone. Inside the circle, the four remaining edges and the woman at the center continued their chanting. The armoire door was closing, but slowly.

Stone took two steps backward and summoned a shield spell. It came up around him just as the first creature reached him. He had a better look now and wished he hadn’t: the thing had two long arms ending in wicked, clawed hands. It shambled like a zombie, ichor drooling from its open mouth.

It reared back and swiped at him. His shield flared red, but the attack didn’t get through. Stone backed off another step.
The shield won’t hold long. Those things are bloody strong.
He risked a glance at the armoire again: the doors were nearly closed, but more creatures had gotten through. They were heading for the circle.

Another creature took a swing at him. The shield blocked it again, but even as it did, it flared a second time and went down. Hastily-constructed shields like that weren’t designed to fend off more than one or two attacks before they failed. Stone backed off again, but found his back against the far wall.

The creatures moved in closer. He could smell them now: wet and moldy and impossibly disgusting, like a dead, gassy body found floating in a hot, fetid swamp. Gritting his teeth against his rising gorge, Stone blew another creature back with a concussive blast.

The woman’s voice rose in triumph, and he spared another glance over: the armoire was nearly closed now. She directed the red light, and two more of the creatures flew back through the tiny opening, flailing their strange arms. There were only a few left now.

Stone couldn’t look anymore, though: two more of the monsters had reached him. He struggled to erect another barrier, but before he could manage it, the closer of the two swung at him. Its claws were like a sloth’s: long and wicked, extending out past the end of its hands for several inches. His feint to the left was too slow: the claws raked across his chest and abdomen, shredding his T-shirt and leaving bloody trails. He cried out and flung himself sideways, heedless of the pain. Beyond him, he could hear the shrieks of the circle participants as the creatures went after them. The entire room smelled of rot, blood, and terror.

Barely able to get a breath, Stone threw another concussive blast at the closer of the two creatures. His head pounded with the effort, but he knew he couldn’t hold back this time. If he didn’t get out of here, he would be dead.