Stone and Claw

Stone and Claw

## Blurb

**WILD MAGIC**

Things are looking up for Alastair Stone. He's just moved into his new house, Jason's opening his investigation agency, and best of all, the University has finally hired a new professor for the Occult Studies department.

Carefree days never last long for Stone, though. The smart, sexy new professor turns out to have secrets—dangerous secrets. When he agrees to help her track down a powerful magical artifact, Stone is drawn into a deadly conspiracy involving a mysterious and reclusive clan, alchemical mayhem, and crimes even more horrific than either of them suspected.

And as if all that weren’t enough...his cat has started talking to him.

## Plot

Having settled back in to life on Earth, Alastair decides it’s time for so fresh starts, including packing up his townhouse and moving to the Encantada house. With the new semester just days away, Dr. Martinez informs Stone and Hubbard that a new professor will join the program on trial. The three meet with Dr. Marciella Garra, from Peru, and while Stone finds something odd about her he can’t pinpoint, she seems to fit in well.

### Pause here a moment WARNING, Possible Spoilers Ahead

At the same time, Stone proposes to invest in Jason’s private investigator business, now that he has his license. He takes a little time and thought before agreeing, and negotiates down the amount Stone offered. To add to the new developments, Raider begins acting oddly as soon as they move to Encantada. Having been told the house is haunted, Stone is nevertheless surprised when it becomes apparent that Raider is ‘possessed’ by the ghost of an old Stanford chemistry professor, Thaddeus Benchley. Communication is intermittent, though, and Stone has to wait on Dr. Benchley to be ‘present’ again, to find out what he wants.

In more news, Mackenzie Hubbard finally gets a publishing deal for one of his horror novels, and invites Stone to a small celebration his wife, Barbara, is holding. Stone learns Dr. Garra will be there as well, when he invites her for lunch. He’s still intrigued by her, though not in terms of dating. She shuts that possibility down, in any case-politely. After lunch, Stone runs down information on Benchley. He’d been a popularly professor who died at his home over 40 years prior, which fit with what he’d heard. But why had he hung around after death?

At Hubbard’s party, Stone chats with Dr. Garra and, using magical sight, sees she’s wearing a magical pendant. He wonders if she’s a mage, or from a magical family. When he goes to his car, parked down the way, he hears a scuffle and finds Garra, torn and disheveled, behind a trash can. She claims she went for a walk and fell, and insists she’s fine. She leaves, but Stone stays behind. Her necklace had been glowing more, activated recently, and he was sure she’d been attacked and lied. He snoops around a bit more and finds her discarded shoe, and deep claw marks in a tree, as well as traces of violent magical energy.

The next day, Garra shows no signs of the scratches she’d had the night before. So, after he and Jason sign the papers for the new detective agency and go for a beer to celebrate, Alastair brings her up and asks Jason to check into her background. They also briefly discuss his relationship with Verity. Jason is still uncomfortable with it, but more that they’re not exclusive than with the two of them being together itself. Meanwhile Raider has shown no further signs of Dr. Benchley’s presence.

Jason’s results regarding Garra are disturbing: the real Garra is fifty-something recluse in Peru, who bears no resemblance to the woman working at Stanford. It makes no sense that someone would fake an identity to lecture at Stanford so, after some discussion, Stone, Jason and Verity conclude she’s looking for someone or something magical, and she’s doing it clandestinely. The next night, Stone snoops through Garra’s office, finding little except a sketch of some kind of chalice, and a notation of a date, time and address, possibly to find “the item”.

While waiting for Friday, when he intended to follow Garra to her appointment, Stone looks over the articles about Dr. Benchley again. Raider, once again possessed, points him to a photo of Benchley with five grad students. The next morning, Dr. Garra asks Stone if he’d been in her office. He denies it, of course, but is at a loss as to how she knew. Needing to distance himself, he checks in with the chemistry department. He’s pleased to find out that one of Benchley’s grad students, Del Wright, is now a professor in the department, though he won’t be in until Monday.

Friday night, Alastair goes to the address from Garra’s notebook, and it turns out to be an abandoned school campus. Just when he thinks no one is coming, Stone hears an animal scream and a gunshot coming from the gym. He rushes there to find two men battling a large black jungle cat. At first, he tries to assist the men, until he notes their strange auras and inhuman strength, as well as Garra’s magical amulet on the floor. Then the men shoot at him. Stone has had enough. He blasts the men with magic, rendering them unconscious. The black cat leaps on him, but he calls her by name, and she transforms back into Dr. Garra.

Stone convinces her they need to talk, after letting her know he’s aware she isn’t really Garra. They meet at a diner, and hash out their mutual suspicion. Stone admits to searching her office (she smelled him). She admits her deception, but she knew the real Garra and decided to use her identity to search for a chalice stolen from her people – jaguar shifters. Due to the slow decline of Earth’s magic, many magical species have gone instinct. The jaguars are also declining, no longer able to reproduce successfully. The magic of the chalice can help females conceive and carry strong young that can survive. But, mages, or those working for them, stole the chalice three months prior. The clan tracked it to the San Jose area and, Not-Garra, one of few shifters able to function in human society, vowed to find and return it. Stone tells her he can help, that he knows a collector not on her list and, if she’ll trust him until the man returns from out of town, he may be able to locate the chalice.

Over the weekend Stone tries to research the chalice, but is surprised to find no information on it whatsoever. His frustration is added to by Raider remaining an ordinary cat, with no sign of Benchley. On Monday, he visits Dr. Wright in Chemistry. Wright tells him that Benchley was a good professor and colleague, kind, with a sense of humor. In other words, not much to indicate why Benchley is still haunting the Encantada house. Later, Alastair fills Jason and Verity in on Wright, and gives a heavily edited account of his discussion with Garra – keeping her shifter identity a secret.

Stone visits Kolinsky’s shop the next day, and Stefan tells him the chalice was offered to him, but he declined to buy; it simply didn’t interest him. He’s aware it has to do with shifters and fertility, but those things aren’t an area he’s studying. While Stone has agreed to give Stefan time to study a particular book from Desmond’s collection for information on the chalice, Kolinsky wants something more for the name of who offered it – he asks why Stone’s aura has changed. Having noticed a change in Kolinsky’s aura as well, Stone says he could ask the same. Kolinsky is adamant his aura has not changed; Stone concludes his own perception must have. He can’t tell Kolinsky about Calanar, so tells him it happened recently during a ritual. Kolinsky isn’t fooled, but relents with the caveat that Stone understands he won’t stop attempting to find out on his own. He shows Alastair an illusionary vision of a Jimmy Tanuki, based in Oakland.

Alastair updates Garra on what he’s found out, then puts in a call to Leo Blum and asks him to look into Jimmy Tanuki. It takes three days, but Blum reports tha Tanuki is dead – torn limb-from-limb. He reluctantly gives Stone the address, and insists Stone update him if there is any threat to the public involved.

On the way to Oakland, Stone finds himself opening up to Garra about his open relationship with Verity for some reason. At Tanuki’s house, Stone got the impression Tanuki had no idea why he was targeted. He levitates Garra in her jaguar form so she can scent the room without leaving prints, and she confirms that the same men who attacked her killed Tanuki. Just then, smoke canisters are thrown into the house. Garra is temporarily unable to shift back to cat form. Stone shields them and gets them out of the house, where they’re fired on. Garra shifts and takes off into the woods, coming back wounded, but not badly. She tells Stone the men had fled. She’s weak, still healing, so Stone carries her, naked, to the car, where she dresses and they leave. At Garra’s apartment, Stone offers his townhouse for her to lay low in. Things take a turn, though and, neither wanting to be alone, the pair end up in bed.

The next day, Stone works on fixing Garra’s amulet, then has a gig with the Cardinal Sin that night. Verity and Jason attend, and even Jason is impressed with Alastair’s playing. Suddenly, during the second set, Alastair collapses, feeling like he’s being stabbed from the inside. Before he loses consciousness, he tells Verity to get his glass; he’d left his beer unattended and it had tasted flat.

Two days later, Stone wakes and is told he should be dead. He’d drunk a caustic substance (magically disguised, he assumes) that should have burned him fatally from lips to stomach. Even Verity says she can’t account for his survival – her healing simply can’t account for his recovery. In any case, aside from fatigue and some loginess from the painkillers, Stone insists on checking himself out AMA the next day. He can’t contact Garra, and is worried she’s dead, since someone apparently tried to kill him. Verity and Jason checked out her place, but she wasn’t there and it seemed undisturbed.

Once they get Stone home, Jason leaves to try to track Garra down mundanely, while Verity stays to make sure Stone rests. Alastair confesses to her that he slept with Garra, but Verity assures him she’s not upset – she’d be a hypocrite if she was. She loves him and always will, and she knows he feels the same. She says that, even if Stone did love Garra, it’d be OK; she’s aware Stone loves Imogen and always will. As they reach a kind of understanding, Stone gets a call from a male, warning him to stay away from the chalice or they won’t fail to kill him next time.

Unable to rest, Stone heads to his new sanctum to conduct a ritual to track Garra. Raider follows, and insistently paws at a wall, but there is no time to deal with Benchley’s problem. Stone and Verity prepare the ritual, and Stone tracks Garra to the north of San Francisco, But she’s beyond his range, and he feels someone trying to track back to him. He calls Jason and tells him to move his search to Sonoma, and that he and Verity are headed there. Jason insists on going along.

On the way north, they stop to give Hezzie the remains of Stone’s beer to analyze. Jason’s told them a dark-haired woman’s body was found in Sonoma with her hands and face mutilated to prevent identification, so they head to a small town there, where Jason has gotten permission to see the body. Alastair is relieved that the woman is not Garra, but the coroner discloses that the woman wasn’t murdered, but died from complications to pregnancy. The woman died on Saturday, and Garra was taken on Sunday – it’s possible someone is breeding shifters and took Garra to replace the dead woman.

Once again, Jason comes through with the location of a nearby animal sanctuary, long abandoned but now owned by a research organization. The road there is somewhat hidden, but they’re nearly there when a police cruiser and two cops stop them. The cops aren’t ‘normal’, and a battle ensues. One cop escapes, but the second suffers cardiac distress during the fight. Verity heals him and, grateful, he turns over the alchemical mixture that gave him his strength and speed, but ultimately nearly killed him.

Officer Foley explains he and the other men had accepted the elixir in exchange for leaving the facility alone. It enhances them so they can fight entrenched drug manufactories in the mountains, and they turned a blind eye to whatever went on in the facility. Having gone there since childhood, Foley is familiar with the layout of the place, and offers to guide them in.

Once near the compound, they continue on foot. Stone and Verity take out an enhanced guard, then they return to the fence and levitate Jason and a terrified and confused Foley over and into the compound. They advance with Foley’s guidance to a derelict reception building, and that’s when the attack comes. The trio fight off the enhanced attackers with magic and bullets, and Stone tears away the illusion hiding the real building. Inside, they face more goons, but win through to a lab, where they find Viajera, as well as four other shifters, all woozy from sedation. Two lab workers dive for cover, clearly not fighters.

Alastair frees Viajera, and she shifts back to human. She explains that an alchemist referred to as “the doctor” is using shifter blood to make the elixir Foley and the guards take to enhance their strength, speed and endurance, selling it worldwide. But Viajera was taken to replace the dead woman – the doctor needs a steady supply of shifters, so has started breeding them. Stone interrogates one of the lab technicians and is told there are five of the enhanced guards, who have probably fallen back to the admin building where the alchemist’s main work is done. While Foley helps get the shifters – including the dead woman’s cub – to safety, Stone, the Thayers and Viajera head out to find the alchemist, and the chalice.

More battles ensue and Jason is wounded. Before Stone can stop him, he drinks some of the elixir he’d confiscated from Foley. He’s almost immediately enhanced, and healed. He’s able to make short work of another attacker, and urges everyone to hurry before the dose wears off. The alchemist’s building is hidden behind another illusion, but Stone locates it and tears it down, and Jason tears the locked metal door open. Finally, behind wards and another security door, the group finds the alchemist – the real Dr. Marcielle Garra. She’s inside a ritual circle with lots of alchemical tubes and retorts and the like, as well as a huge cauldron. She has the chalice suspended over the cauldron, which is full of a caustic solution that will render the chalice useless. She threatens to destroy the chalice unless the groups leaves and allows her to relocate her operation.

Viajera asks Garra why – she and her people had been friends to Garra. The woman scoffs, saying they would never share their secrets. And, she’s made herself very wealthy by making and selling her elixir. Simple greed and envy. In any case, both Viajera and Stone admit the woman has them – they can’t allow the chalice to be destroyed. They’ll have to let her go, and track her down again later when they have a better plan. Jason and Verity object, but he begins backing them to the door.

He suddenly casts a quick illusion of them still retreating, then blasts the (illusionary) chalice away from Garra while Viajera leaps – shifting – at her, knocking the chalice away. Verity takes care of the cauldron by upending it with telekinesis. Garra lunges for her elixir, drinking it, and tosses an anti-shifter potion at Viajera, rendering her back to human form. She escapes into the woods, but Viajera takes off after her.

Stone and the others follow, but can’t find them until they hear Viajera roar – having shifted once more once away from the potion. They find her in jaguar form standing over the dying Garra. She’s torn the alchemist’s throat out.

A day or two later, Stone and Viajera have a farewell dinner. She’s been dismissed from Stanford for falsifying her credentials, but says it’s for the best. She is returning to the jungle to reconcile with her clan and return the chalice, as well as raise the rescued cub. She advises Stone to trust that Verity loves him. Viajera scented no jealousy in her at all, despite Verity knowing that she’d slept with Stone. And their chemistry together is obvious and genuine.

Raider, with Dr. Benchley driving, helps Stone solve who murdered him, so Alastair heads to the chemistry department to confront the department head, Dr. Wright. He’d been cooking drugs on the side, and Benchley had found out. Benchley was going to go to the school and tell them, so Wright secreted a digitalis compound in the air vent in Benchley’s study, intending the fumes to make him sick so he’d have to retire and, hopefully, be too distracted by that to follow through with turning Wright in. He hadn’t intended to kill him. Stone tells him Dr. Benchley’s ghost doesn’t want him prosecuted, but he’d better retire immediately.

Finally, Jason and Verity take Stone out for dinner for his fortieth birthday – which he’d forgotten about. They talk briefly about Jason taking Garra’s elixir, and Verity promises to look into duplicating it – without harming anyone. The pair’s gift to him, acquired with Aubrey’s help, is Stone’s old Stratocaster from his university days, which had been gathering dust in an attic. His black Strat had been destroyed when he’d fallen from the stage at the Cardinal Sin show.

Raider is no longer speaking to Stone.