The Source

The Source

Original Cover

## Blurb

**Evil Wants to Watch the World Burn**

The portals are closed.

The Evil have lost their pathway between their home and ours.

No longer must humanity fear extradimensional bodysnatchers with a thirst for pain and terror pouring in to wreak destruction on Earth.

So that means Alastair Stone and his friends can take a break, right?

Yeah—maybe not.

True, no more Evil are coming through. But a lot of very powerful, very angry ones are still stuck on our side.

And now they’re desperate enough to put aside their differences and work together.

Stone’s got one last chance to stop the Evil before they unleash their devastating plan and kill thousands of innocents.

But this time, he’ll have to put more than his life on the line to make it happen.

## Plot

Someplace off the beaten path, a boy and his ‘father’ stop at a diner just before closing. The waitress, Darla, wishing she’d managed to close up first, waits on them, becoming uncomfortable with their eerie smiles – especially the boy. In the morning, José the cook arrives to firetrucks, the diner burned out, and Darla’s body being wheeled away.

In Palo Alto, Jason and Verity return from a visit home to Ventura to find that Stone has summoned some kind of imp, and lies unconscious with the thing gibbering at him. They manage to wake Stone, who jumps up, and asks Jason to power him up. He uses that energy to banish the imp. He’d been studying Harrison’s notes, which have to do with opening ways to other dimensions.

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

Later, the trio wonder what’s up with the Evil, having heard virtually nothing of them in the months since Las Vegas. Verity speculates that they might just be assimilating. While Stone suggests that, even if they wanted to reopen a portal to their dimension, the powerful Evil are territorial and don’t get along together. They’d require several mages with portal experience, and have to cooperate with each other, something they are unlikely to do. But, they don’t really believe the Evil are done.

Stone goes on to mention he’ll be out of town in a couple of weeks, for a mages’ conference. Verity seems put out not to be included, so Stone says she can go, see the sites in LA while he’s at meetings he says will only bore her, then join him for the social parts of the event.

Meanwhile, outside Chicago, the top-echelon Evil – some well-known, others like the boy, not – meet to discuss plans. Some are inclined to simply assimilate and bide their time until they can reproduce. The majority want to formulate a way to open a portal to their home dimension. One woman is adamant that they do so, but that they also must kill Alastair Stone as payment for his ruining their plans. The boy tells her to curb her need for revenge or she’ll endanger their other plans. A contentious consensus is reached. The woman, who has candidates in mind for portal experts to help them, will pursue that as the first step, having been told in no uncertain terms that Stone is not to be confronted until after they have a working portal. The group, hating to be in each other’s presence for long, break up. But the woman, still fuming about Stone, is revealed to be Trin Blackburn, now blonde and having had plastic surgery.

At the mage symposium in LA, Stone and Co. attend an informal get-together in the evening. Jason, bored, heads out to the main bar room. A while later, Verity tells Stone she’s going clubbing with some younger mages, including Sharra whom she’d met previously. Stone does spot a tall attractive blonde he’d have been tempted to try to hook up with, but she disappears. Resigned to being the only one not making a connection, Stone heads to their hotel.

Trin, watching from the shadows, fantasizes about getting Stone into bed, then killing him slowly and drinking in his fear and power, both. But the Others’ (what she calls the Evil) plans have to come first. She has to wait.

The next day, mage Pia Brandt’s mundane husband Mark, and daughter Anna are touring Disneyland. After lunch, Mark excuses himself to the bathroom, then comes back possessed an Evil. He lures his daughter to a warehouse where Trin and the boy, Sam, are waiting to stash the girl behind wards.

Pia returns to their hotel room to discover her family has been kidnapped. She follows directions and ends up at the warehouse, and is told she must agree to host an Evil or watch her family die. She consents, and then watches and feeds as her daughter is tortured and killed.

Verity begins spreading her wings socially, which doesn’t sit well with overprotective Jason, who is also angry that Stone won’t step in to her personal life. The siblings have a big fight, and Verity goes to Stone to say she wants to put her apprenticeship on hold for a time to go visit Sharra, and basically live life. Stone understands, and ends up being the one to talk Jason around.

A month later Stone is called and questioned by an LAPD detective following up on the disappearance of Pia Brandt and her family. Stone barely knew her and had nothing useful to say. The disappearance nags him, though, and he and Jason kick around thoughts on why and how it could happen, even to the extent of the Evil being involved. Jason says he’ll see what his contacts can find, and Stone decides to find out what Pia’s area of magical expertise is. Jason discovers another man who disappeared the same day, but he’s not sure from exactly where.

Eventually, Stone is sent some of Brandt’s research papers, but they’re in German. He knows they relate to portals, but that’s all. He bargains with Kolinsky to have them translated. In return, Stefan wants Stone’s blood, and assistance with a ritual to summon a spirit as a kind of research assistant. Despite caution about allowing a black mage his blood, Stone is intrigued by such a summoning and agrees.

After an elegant dinner, the mages conduct the ritual, Stone fascinated that its intent was persuasion rather than coercion. But the summoned spirit didn’t see it that way, lashing out at Kolinsky, then Stone. Kolinsky fires back with magic, and is flung into the wall, unconscious at best. Stone uses his knowledge of Harrison’s notes to open a magical conduit to draw power, and blasts the spirit out of existence, then collapses.

Stone is able to call Jason, who arrives to find Stone barely mobile, and his ‘associate’ unconscious. He wakes the guy who gives him a number to call. Shortly, and Asian man arrives and says he’ll take over. Jason takes Stone home and, just before leaving, tells him the other missing man from LA also disappeared from Disneyland.

Stone awakens the next morning groggy and tired, cleans himself up, then checks messages. Aubrey tells him the Surrey House has been broken into. Stone heads to the Sunnyvale portal, and Jason is at the restaurant. He offers to go along, Since Stone is still not recovered.

At Stone’s estate, he finds several books have been stolen from his secret, warded library. The next day, he and Jason go to the mage library Eddie Monkton manages, and meet with him and three others. All of them have been burglarized, but the books taken, like at Stone’s seem random and unrelated. At least, until Stone lists them all together and fine each is missing a tome on summoning. At their insistent questions as to why this happened, and the significance, Stone gives them an overview of the problem with the Evil, but says he’s not sure if it’s them, with the switch in focus from portals to summoning.

On the train back to Surrey, Jason draws various facts together, and he and Stone theorize that Pia Brandt was coerced into working with the Evil by threats to her family. But the fact that Daphne’s portal notebooks were not taken, and no one has made any attempt on them or Verity puzzles them.

A minor wild talent named Zack had been hired by Trin to steal the books she needed, plus others as an obfuscation. She’d specified whom to rob, but Zack had heard of a place in Surrey with a big library, so he robbed it, too, thinking Trin would be pleased. She had to restrain from killing him when she found out he’d robbed Stone. Sam is even more concerned that Stone will begin putting pieces together.

Alastair goes to Kolinsky to see that he’s almost fully recovered, and to ask if any of his books have been taken. Kolinsky first wants to know how Stone defeated the spirit they’d summoned, since the magical aura of what he’d done was unfamiliar. Stone sidesteps the question and chalks it up to being *in extremis*. Kolinsky isn’t fooled, but lets it go. He gives Stone the German translations he’s finished so far, and comments that there is more going on than Stone is admitting. Alastair makes his decision, and fills Kolinsky in on the Evil. Stefan is insulted that Stone had withheld the information on the possibility that Kolinsky was Evil. Once they get past that, Stone tells Kolinsky he wants to set a trap for the book thief.

Verity and Sharra are sightseeing in Brooklyn when Verity feels she’s being watched. They head for the subway, thinking any attack will come in the confines of a train. As the next train arrives, someone darts through the crowd and pushes Verity off the platform. She manages to catch herself with levitation, then launches a concussion spell at the fleeing perpetrator. She catches him before the approaching police and expels his Evil. Refusing to press charges, she and Sharra retreat to the restroom, where she has to fill Sharra in on the Evil and the Forgotten, given what she’s just seen. Verity decides she needs to go back home, and Sharra asks to come along.

Zack is lured to Kolinsky’s shop, and trapped by Stefan and Stone. He spills all he knows about the ‘scary lady’ who had him steal books, including that she’d been angry he’d stolen from Stone. Alastair leaves dealing with the kid up to Kolisnky, despite knowing the black mage will probably kill him. He returns home to a message from Jason that Verity’s been attacked by an Evil.

Once Verity is back with Sharra, safe and sound, Stone plunges himself into researching Pia Brandt’s papers. He draws several conclusions, not least of which is that a portal built on a large ley-line confluence could possibly reach a dimension with no corresponding portal, and allow for summoning beings over from that side. Consulting ley line maps, they rule out all but one confluence in far northern Nevada. Jason remembers this is where Burning Man is held, while Sharra fills them in on what that is – a very large group of people doing unorthodox things that could hide the Evil’s actions in plain sight.

Having no intention of ‘roughing it’, Stone rents a motor home with a Jeep in tow, the crew gathers supplies, and they head to Burning Man. The RV blows a water pump on the way, though, so they regroup and restart with the Jeep towing a decrepit trailer.

Meanwhile Trin, Sam, Dr. Brandt and others are already at the site, and the other top Evil are beginning to arrive. They find out Stone is also on his way, and Sam has to talk Trin down from wanting to kill him immediately, again. She contents herself – for now – knowing that the thousands of hippies arriving will all be dead in a few days. Stone and crew arrive at the site, disguise themselves with illusion-generating pendants, and find a place to camp and set up. Stone notes the high level of magic power available.

They tour the area the next day, looking for anything amiss, while the Evil – the Others – meet to discuss plans. Then, Trin plants magical crystals inside The Burning Man using magic, in order to make the burning more spectacular and inspire greater fear when the time comes.

While Stone’s group continues to look for anything amiss, Trin visits Dr. Brandt to make sure all is proceeding as planned. Reassured, Trin nevertheless decides to go looking for Stone again, concerned he could pop up last minute and interfere. She returns to her camp to find Sam fiddling with some vials of a substance that was supposed to enhance fear. She files this away for future reference.

Jason has hooked up with a girl who eventually tells him about a dance ‘ritual’ she’s involved in, to ‘send off the Man’. Suspicious, Jason heads off to find Stone. And Trin gets word from Aisha, who is coordinating the ritual, that there are couple of new girls in the dance who had seen some guy’s diagrams that reminded them of the precise dance choreography. The guy’s description is nothing like Stone, but she decides to check it out, in case.

Verity, frustrated by their inability to find the Evil, Verity goes on her own to search, eventually casting invisibility and levitating above the crowds. Using magical sight, she spots a few hotspots, and hurries back to camp to plot them on a map before she can forget them, so she can check them out in person. Trin, on her own expedition, eventually spots Stone in his camp, despite his illusion disguise. She plots how to lure him in and end him.

Back at their camp, Sam tries to stop Trin from her plan to kill Stone. She knocks him out and binds him, then hides him in the RV cargo bin and sets about preparing her trap for Stone. She locates him and, using the name Tanya, lures him to her RV for beers. Sam begins to thump the cargo area, and Stone goes on alert. Her fantasy of killing Stone during sex ruined, she manages to inject him with the fear drug. As he begins to hallucinate, she tells him who she really is, and that she’s going to feed on his fear before he dies. Panicked, Stone lashes out with magic and escapes.

Trin regains consciousness to find Stone gone and, when she checks, Sam dead by suicide. Now not only did Stone know she was there, but Sam’s Other was free, and probably already ratting her out to the rest of the group. To make matters worse, a big dust storm is rapidly approaching.

While Stone’s group worries increasingly that Alastair hasn’t returned, and Trin lies low, Stone stumbles into a camp of aging hippies, still hallucinating and in abject terror. They restrain him until he tires out. Raina, their leader, spots the injection site on his back, and is concerned that whatever drug he’d been given had been forced on him.

Trin goes to the rest of the Others when the storm lets up, and confronts Sam in a new, adult body. She delivers the ultimatum that they follow her and forget about her messing up with Stone, because she’s the only one who can pull of the ritual to open the portal.  They have no choice. Before she leaves to see Dr. Brandt, she ashes Sam, releasing his Other yet again.

Jason and Verity locate Stone, who tells them what happened. He’s weak, but determined to find Trin and the other Evil and stop them. Time is short. Dr. Brandt is also on the move, looking for Trin as the Burning – and the ritual – draw near.

Looking for Trin at her RV, Stone and Co. spot Dr. Brandt, who flees. Verity gives chase and evicts her Evil. At the same tome Trin looks for Dr. Brandt at her camp. Not finding her, she hurries to the Others’ tent to check in, then to Aisha’s troop of dancers. The Man is about to Burn.

Stone manages to get out of Pia what the plan is – a summoning of a spirit to call the portal, requiring blood sacrifices. Just then, the Man begins to burn, the ritual begins, and something dark and enormous begins to form. Jason, Verity and Sharra take off to try and find the Evil leaders, while Stone goes to stop the spirit, which is now forming the portal, while killing the ritual dancers. Trin has promised the spirit the lives of everyone present except herself, including the Other leaders. Once it has the portal stabilize, it has free rein to feed.

Feeling things are in hand, Trin leaves the Man to find Stone. At the same time, Stone launches an all-out attack on the spirit, to no effect. Despairing, he still pulls himself together and continues on toward the spirit. Jason and the others, meanwhile, run down an Evil soldier, evict his Evil, and find out from him where the leaders are.

Stone blasts again, this time at the Man, causing it to collapse, but that allows Trin to spot him. She takes aim, but Pia Brandt also spots her and launches a spell that stops her attack on Stone. Trin turns and kills Pia, but now Stone has seen her, as well. At the Evil’s tent, flaming debris has set it afire and the trio pick off the fleeing leaders with magic and gunfire, though Jason is wounded by return fire. The Evils' attempt to direct the portal to their dimension is broken, and the spirit notices.

Trin and Stone battle, both nearing exhaustion, but Stone prevails, flinging Trin so far away, he couldn’t see where she landed. Then, he opens himself up to the energy Harrison taught him to access, and fires everything he has at the spirit. And wins. Jason, Verity and Sharra, having just arrived on the scene, are all leveled by the energies released, and they and Stone all collapse.

A few days later, in the hospital, Stone wakes to find his magic is gone.