Deaths Door

Death's Door

## Blurb

**A Friend Lost. A Horror Unearthed. An Enemy Reborn.**

It was meant to be a simple few days away: Verity heading off for a much-needed girls’ weekend in New York City.

But then comes her desperate call to Alastair Stone: A terrifying disaster has occurred, killing dozens of people—including a dear friend.

When Stone joins her to investigate, they quickly discover that magic is behind the catastrophe. Even worse, it’s magic that isn’t even supposed to exist.

As a long-simmering disagreement explodes into a rift between Stone and a grief-stricken Verity, Stone learns that things are even worse than he feared.

Someone has unearthed a long-dead mage's legacy, threatening to unleash nightmarish ancient magic that no one—living or dead—is safe from.

## Plot

Owen Goetz is a wild talent who can generate spontaneous temporary portals, and he’s used this ability to make a living thieving for others, in secure places mundanes can’t breach. He’s summoned to a creepy London house, where he meets with an unpleasant woman and her creepy, gray-skinned bodyguards and equally creepy one-eyed cat. The woman wants him to access a vault in the basement of a small NYC museum, retrieve a box, and deliver it to her. He has a bad feeling about her, and the job, but agrees. The payoff is too big to refuse.

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

Jason and Amber take their vows in Lake Tahoe, with Alastair and Verity in attendance. In the course of the evening, Verity asks about the rift in Oakland (Circle of Stone). Stone has no new info to share, and Verity expresses her frustration with the secrets Alastair keeps. She feels he’s moving up to levels, magically, where she can’t follow. She’s still unsettled by recent events with Kyla, and her new-found family (An Unexpected Truth), and feels she needs time away.

Ian vexes Stone, too, telling him he’s found a magic teacher on his own. Unfortunately, the man is also Ian’s ‘friend with benefits’. But Ian invites his father to dinner, saying he's quite sure Stone will agree that Gabriel is more than qualified to teach him.

Goetz easily portals into the museum’s basement vault and locates the ornate box his client wants. However, before he can leave, frightening shadow-beings appear to stop him. Panicked, he summons his portal quickly and jumps through, followed by a blinding white flash. He arrives safely in his Philadelphia apartment, though, and is immediately contacted by his creepy woman client, demanding he bring her the box immediately.

Verity and Sharra are touring New York City, enjoying the sights and food. Sharra takes Verity to a favorite ice cream shop, intending to visit the museum across the street after. Sharra leaves Verity to wait in line for seating while she runs across to the museum to get tickets and use the restroom. Verity is becoming concerned that Sharra is taking so long, when there’s a sudden concussion and rumble, accompanied by magical feedback that hits Verity hard. Woozy, Verity makes her way outside through dust, debris, and panicked patrons to find the museum has collapsed, sending people and vehicles flying in all directions. Her cell phone useless, she searches for any sign of Sharra, fighting the feedback, but eventually loses consciousness. She wakes on a gurney in a triage area, but quickly resumes her search. Her phone has service now, but is nearly dead. She manages a quick text to Stone saying something’s happened in NYC, and she’s afraid Sharra is dead.

In London, Stone has dinner with Ian and his new teacher, Gabriel. The man appears as young as Ian, but Stone gets the sense from his eyes and manner that he’s much older. Alastair is impressed with him, but still has many reservations. He’s never heard of Gabriel, who claims to be a ‘sometimes’ black mage who’s studied many different magical styles, some so old they’re no longer generally practiced, from all over the world. He won’t disclose his master and, most troubling to Stone, is involved in a physical, perhaps romantic relationship with Ian.

Despite all of it, Stone has a good feeling about Gabriel as he leaves the restaurant. He turns back, thinking to make a reservation for himself and Verity, but there is no restaurant. He texts Ian to congratulate Gabriel on a masterful illusion. Ian’s response includes that they actually did eat – Chinese takeout from a place nearby. Stone is bemused until Verity’s text comes through. Worse, he can’t get hold of her. He takes off at a run for the nearest portal.

James Brathwaite, inhabiting Miriam Padgett’s body, has received his box from Goetz, but also learned of the museum’s collapse. He and his undead henchmen arrive to examine the site. He’s surprised to spot the last remnants of an aura and magical shield. He finds the woman just as she dies and quickly preserves her, and has one of his undead carry her from the rubble.

Stone and Verity reunite blocks from the collapse, where a woman let her in to charge her phone. They return to the site, and Alastair detects portal energy, though there are none nearby. Later, at Verity’s hotel, she does a tracking ritual but it fails. Sharra is dead. Stone and Verity argue because he’s reluctant to tell her about the portal energy until he can determine what it was – a rift (which he can’t discuss), a temporary portal, or something else. He does fill her in but makes her promise not to pursue anything until he can find out more. She gives him a week.

Stone consults with Stefan Kolinsky, both to spur him to look into the collapse, and to allow Verity in on the secret of the dimensional rifts. Kolinsky refuses the second, but says he will at least determine whether a rift was responsible. He also obliquely warns Stone to keep Verity from learning about or interfering with the rifts.

Verity seems to be avoiding Stone, but he keeps busy with the private portal he’s working on. Kolinsky contacts him and they meet for dinner, where Kolinsky tells him the collapse was caused by an accident with a temporary portal. A thief portaled into the museum’s sub-basement, stole something, then was startled by something unseen on the security footage and fled through a new portal, immediately followed by the building coming down. He refers Stone to a police contact in NYC to see the footage, as well as one of the museum’s executives to determine what was stolen. He says such a dangerous wild talent must be found and either eliminated, or put to better use. As a last bit of business, Stone asks if Kolinsky knows of a mage named Gabriel, who is teaching his son, Ian. Kolinsky’s reaction is surprising. He tells Stone that Gabriel is his son, and immediately leaves. Concerned because he considers Kolinsky to be a dangerous man, he leaves a message for Ian to contact him. Gabriel sought Ian out, not the other way around, and that’s troubling.

Alastair views the security footage and confirms that someone entered the vault, stole what looked like a box, was frightened by something and messed up his escape portal. He tells Verity and shows her the footage. She’s livid and wants the man to pay for killing and injuring so many people, especially Sharra, whose body was never found. But incarceration would be impossible with his talent, and killing him like a vigilante… She suddenly leaves, though she does thank him for the information; she’d been afraid he’d keep things from her.

Stone meets with Ian and is nonplussed when his reaction to Kolinky’s reaction to Gabriel being his teacher is amusement. He didn’t know Kolinsky’s name, but he did know Gabriel sought him out to piss off his father. Stone is even more worried, but Ian assures him that Gabriel is nothing like his father. He wants nothing to do with power games and mage politics. Stone warns him to be careful anyway; he’s convinced Kolinsky isn’t quite human and is far older than he appears. That means the same for Gabriel.

Kolinsky’s museum contact is able to show Stone what was taken from the museum - an empty box from the 1600s. She also says she’d put an illusion generator down there that, when triggered by intrusion, showed ghostly figured coming out of the walls. Alastair sets Eddie to tracking down the box, and its possible contents. He’s sure the box wasn’t empty, but its contents hidden by illusion. He consults once more with Kolinsky, who flatly refuses to discuss Gabriel, but is willing to look into the origins of the box.

Meanwhile, Brathwaite has taken over a manor in Essex in Britain. He’s constructed the circle and obtained the components he needs to attempt his experiment, aided by the notes in the stolen box. It once belonged to another necromancer, a contemporary of his. He successfully reanimates Sharra and, because she is a mage, she retains some volition and intelligence, at about the level of a 5-year-old.

Stone invites Verity over to discuss what he’s learned, even entertaining thoughts of suggesting they get away together, since Verity had been through so much recently. But in talking about the thief, and what should happen to him, the pair once again end up in an argument. She reiterates her position on needing a magical oversight body, and then is incensed when she realizes what Alastair isn’t saying – that if possible, Kolinsky wants to put the thief under magical oath to control him, and use him for his own purposes. Stone sticks to his opinion that her idea wouldn’t work, that the most powerful mages wouldn’t go along with having some governing body, including himself. The evening ends with Verity leaving abruptly.

Later, Verity unburdens to Jason and Amber; she hadn’t even told them about Sharra’s death. Then she describes her fight with Stone. Jason points out that Alastair didn’t agree and wouldn’t help, but he wouldn’t oppose her, either. He and Amber advise that she give it a try; prepare for the objections and be able to counter them. And also, be prepared to accept it if it turns out that Stone is right.

Wracked with guilt over the deaths he’d caused, and terrified someone would figure out his wild talent and all but enslave him, Goetz flees to the Bahamas. Unfortunately, the creepy woman tracks him somehow, and calls with another job. Goetz gathers his things, and even the bedding, so no one can find a stray hair or something to track him with, and once again flees through his portal.

Stone tries to invite Verity over but she refuses, saying she needs time. Jason and Stone discuss it over beers, and Jason sees both sides. He advises that Stone give her the time she needs. Their differences in opinion are fundamental, but he hopes they can work it out.

Brathwaite is frustrated, despite his success with Sharra. His goal is to create sentient servants from mundanes, since there are so many of them. But the notes Goetz stole are incomplete. He needs to find where the rest are hidden so he can advance his experiments.

Verity avoids Stone, afraid they’ll argue again, even though she’s no longer angry. She travels to London, to the magical library to see if Eddie has some kind of listing of mages. She explains her idea and Stone’s objections. Eddie says mages are too private to want a kind of White Pages to exist. He also says that, while he disagrees with Stone’s more personal objections to a magical authority, he does agree it likely won’t work. However, starting in the US with less hidebound mages is the way to go. He suggests she attend the annual Symposium, coming up soon in Chicago and seek supporters.

Kolinsky contacts Stone with information on the stolen box. He tracked it to an old mage family, now extinct. But the mage in question had been a necromancer named Crowther. He tells Stone the notes inside the box must be found and destroyed, and whoever had them as well, if possible. This reminds Alastair that he still has Brathwaite’s notes; he’d never gotten around to destroying them.

Brathwaite realizes that the remaining notes he needs must be in the necromancer, Crowther’s, old home, now a tourist spot. He ‘infects’ the place with mold and gets it shut down, so he can search the place without interference.

Stone goes to Caventhorne and removes Brathwaite’s research from its protected vault and enlists Eddie and Ward to see if the three of them can find any reference to Crowther and his own research. Verity calls in the meantime, still prickly, but asking to see him. He arranges to meet her the next day. Then he and the others finish their unsuccessful search, and then burn the papers to ash.

Goetz has been hiding in Mexico, but he gets a letter from the creepy woman, obliquely threatening his family. He returns to London, realizing he has no choice. She enlists his indefinite services, though she’s disappointed to learn he can’t take anything living through his portals. Still, since her minions aren’t alive, he can still help shuttle them around where she needs them.

Verity and Stone meet for lunch, and she’s angry to find out he’d never destroyed Brathwaite’s papers. Stone, in turn, is not happy that she went to Eddie and didn’t tell him. Still, he brings her up to date, saying he needs to see if Crowther has more papers somewhere, to destroy them before the unknown necromancer can get to them. They might even be able to use them to bait a trap.

Though still avoiding Stone, Verity calls with an idea: Crowther had to live someplace. Maybe, like Brathwaite, he had his necromantic research hidden there. She makes him promise to take her if he finds out where that might be. Eddie finds the place, now open as a public tourist stop but shuttered temporarily due to a mold outbreak. He contacts Verity and they make plans.

The pair argue again on the trip down to Crowther’s Berrycliff Manor but, at the hotel that night, they make up, at least in part. The next morning, they sneak into the manor house, but are discovered by a woman who claims to be an inspector named Miriam Cheltham. She orders them to leave, but Verity makes up a story about them being urban explorers, looking for interesting photo opportunities for their blog. Cheltham seems to buy it, but insists they need masks and goes to get them. Instead, she her undead minions attack and they’re overpowered, drugged, and imprisoned.

They wake in adjacent basement cells, unable to see each other. Cheltham arrives and tells them their cells are magically rigged; if either of them use magic, the other’s cell will fill with poison gas. She seems to know Stone, though he’s never seen her before. She assures them she has plans for them, once she finishes her search of Crowther’s house, and that she’ll send someone to watch them, to make sure they don’t manage to foil her trap and escape.

Stone is horrified and Verity devastated when their jailor turns out to be zombie Sharra. Despite Stone being sure it won’t work – Sharra isn’t there anymore – he uses the time while Verity pleads with Sharra to think and remember her to examine his cell. He concludes Cheltham was bluffing; she had no time to rig an elaborate trap with gas. But when he hears a note in Sharra’s voice that indicates Verity may be getting through to her, he joins the effort. They realize that Sharra is the trap – she has a button she’s to push if they try to escape.

They manage to open their cells and get past a confused Sharra. A running battle ensues with Cheltham’s zombies, and Sharra in pursuit. Verity tries to fight off the zombies while Stone goes for Cheltham. She disables him with an alchemical hallucinogen and he’s about to be carried back to his cell when Goetz appears through his portal and whacks the woman over the head with a candlestick, then disappears again. Stone manages to clear his head and break free of the zombie holding him, hearing Verity’s anguished scream.

He returns to her to find she’s pulped the last zombie – and Sharra. Sharra had regained some of herself and helped Verity against the zombies, but begged Verity to end it; she didn’t want to go on this way. Verity dropped a massive iron chandelier on Sharra and the remaining zombie she’d been restraining.

Goetz reappears and begs them to forgive him. Cheltham was going to kill his family and turn them into more zombies. Goetz portals away while Stone restrains Verity from attacking him. Shortly after, Goetz throws himself off a cliff. Cheltham is nowhere to be found.

Brathwaite is still nursing his head wound two weeks later, when he receives a visit from a man who introduces himself as Elias Richter. He says they have much to discuss, and shows him the seal of the Ordo Purpuratus on his briefcase.

Verity tells Stone she’s leaving to travel and try to find herself. She’s not breaking up with him – exactly. They spend a last night together to say goodbye.