Balance of Power

Balance of Power

## Blurb

**Stone Enters A High-Stakes Race for a Deadly Prize**

Alastair Stone had long thought the ability to interfere with arcane energy to be the holy grail of magical study.

Until a piece of an item capable of doing just that turns up in a collection of mundane occult art, and someone nearly kills one of his colleagues while trying to steal it.

The search for the other half of the item leads Stone to a stage magician who died more than fifty years ago—but Stone isn’t the only one on the trail.

It's bad enough that not one, but two ancient and powerful magical organizations are also after the artifact. But the non-magical can arguably benefit from it even more, and a shadowy group possibly connected with the mundane government elevates the race to an even higher level.

Stone can't let this terrifying device fall into the wrong hands—but what are the *right* hands?

And even if he manages to get hold of it, what is he going to do with it?

## Plot

Alastair finally gets to celebrate a traditional British Christmas at the Surrey house with Aubrey and Susan and Ian, and his friends, Verity, Jason and Amber. Things have settled down, and even work is better, with Brandon Greene having taken some classes as an adjunct instructor, taking some of the burden from Stone and Mackenzie Hubbard. Stone admits he’s considered retiring, but won’t do it yet. As it is, he’s only working two days a week, so he has plenty of time for magical study – or mysteries.

When the new term at Stanford begins, Beatrice Martinez calls a meeting with the Occult Studies group. She tells them that a collector of arcane artifacts has passed away, and his collection is being stored on campus until its auction date comes. The department has been given permission to look at, and even sign out and study the items in it. Having nothing more on his calendar that day, Stone goes to the storage area where the collection is housed, signs in, and begins to browse.

## Quotes and One-liners

Stone occasionally wondered, now that he knew more about what his friend really was, if the suits were the product of a draconic illusion generator, and Kolinsky was really wearing sweatpants and an old T-shirt.

Three items turn out to actually be magical, though weakly so. But as he’s studying them, Alastair is surprised when their magic winks out in the vicinity of a small carved pyramid that doesn’t appear to have any magic at all. That is a big deal, magically speaking, and potentially dangerous. Stone slips it in his pocket and leaves.

He meets Jason for an early dinner at A Passage to India, and a chat with Marta. She is considering closing the restaurant, but not soon, and would make sure it – and the portal – were properly transferred to another custodian.

Later, Stone studies the pyramid, taking photos and notes. Trying to work magic on it directly is difficult. It nullifies magical items placed in its vicinity, and even renders a weak magical item permanently powerless. It also appears to be part of a larger construct.

The next morning Beatrice Martinez calls to tell Stone that Greene was assaulted and injured during a break-in at the storage facility housing the collection. Greene will be OK, but took a hard blow to the head. The guard saw no one come in, and the sign-in sheet was taken. No one is sure what specific items might have been stolen because the collection was disorganized. Stone answers question for the police, then goes to visit Greene in the hospital.

Greene never saw or heard his assailant, just suddenly was coming to from the head blow. He does remember that someone else had signed in to the collection before him, an anthropologist named Inouye. Stone is convinced the thief is a mage, and wonders what they were after, and if they found it. Concerned about the pyramid, he stores it in Desmond’s hidden office at Caventhorne before going to dinner with the Thayers.

During dinner, Greene calls with an update. He recalls the person who hit him being a man. While he was semi-conscious, the man was muttering to himself ‘why isn’t it here?’ and even searched Greene’s pockets. Stone realizes the pyramid was the likely target. He tells the group about it, and admits he took an item from the collection, giving them the details about the pyramid. Jason questions whether the thief, knowing about Dr. Inouye’s visit, might go after her. He also wonders how the thief even knew about the thing and, if he did, why wait until it was under lock and key to try to steal it. Alastair remembers there is an online catalog for the collection he can look at, but Jason holds him off. Anyone could be watching the traffic on the site. He asks Stone to wait and he’ll have Gina find it.

Meanwhile, Stone creates a ‘to-do’ list, beginning with adjusting the wards at his house to hold an intruder. He also left a message for Eddie to call. He does, in the middle of the night, and Stone fills him in and asks him to look into both the pyramid, and the man who’d had it in his collection. Next day, Gina gets online to find the auction catalog. It turns out that the pyramid was original bought from a Leander McGrath, but the name means nothing to Stone. Eddie confirms that the collector was a mundane when Stone meets him and Ward to show them the pyramid. Eddie takes photos and notes, saying the markings look familiar somehow. He also looks up McGrath, who was a stage magician – possibly a mage hiding in plain sight.

Stone expresses worry about the thief knowing who else was in the storage room, especially the mundane Inouye. Eddie says he has something that might help. He and Ward worked up plans for a magical ‘dye-pack’ tracker. The three get busy putting several of them together. Then Stone goes back home to place them. He puts one in the Stanford storeroom, and more around Inouye’s house, keyed on a male, since Inouye is a woman.

Late the next day, one of his trackers goes off while he’s at Stanford. After checking the storeroom, he tracks the energy to a bar not far from Inouye’s home. Alastair finds him and creeps up unobserved to snap some photos. Just then. The man spots him and disappears. The tracker magic has faded, so he can’t follow. Jason advises Stone to send him the photos so Gina can scrub the metadata, then send them to Leo Blum for a facial recognition search.

When Stone visits Eddie to discuss the tracker results and look at the photos of the mags, he again forgets to take his time. Eddie demands answers. Stone tells him he has a new travel method, but it doesn’t work for everyone, so he can’t teach it to Eddie. His friend is disappointed, and a bit bitter and envious that Stone is now rich, hard to kill, *and* able to pop around the world almost at will. Eddie warns him that he and Ward will be looking into how these things are possible, and Stone cautions him not to try anything dangerous; his method travel simply won’t work for someone else, and he doesn’t want Eddie to get hurt trying something.

But Eddie has news. He finally realized why the markings on the pyramid look familiar – they’re the same as those used to trap Aldwyn under Surrey House. Alastair wonders if there were items like the pyramid in the room they hadn’t found. Brathwaite would know, but he was in the wind, and there was the remote possibility he was behind this. Aldwyn would probably know, but Stone wasn’t ready to go there.

When he goes to Blum to ask him to search the photos of the mage, he brings him up to speed on the pyramid, including that he has it. Blum sees applications for the pyramid for mundanes, in relation to Verity’s idea for mundanes to police mages: the pyramid could be used to incarcerate mages. He also tells Stone that Dr. Inouye’s house was broken into.

Later, a remark by Martinez that the police are speculating someone might have taken something from the store room prior to the assault prompts Stone to have Eddie commission a convincing fake replacement for the real magical pyramid. When he gets it, it looks very close to the original, and the artist even gave it a faint hint of magical trace. When he leaves Eddie, his friends asks to watch. He smiles, waves – and pops out.

When Stone goes to put the fake pyramid in the storeroom, and group of men are there packing everything up and loading a truck. Disguised as one of them, he does manage to walk right in, then duck out of sight to hide the pyramid in one of the boxes. He has a near miss when the man he’s impersonating walks in but, with a distraction, he manages to escape unseen.

A few days later, Gina comes up with a reference to a small Tilley museum with a display dedicated to Leander McGrath, which includes the catalog from the original auction of his property after he died. Stone figures he needs to make a trip to Tilley, but Leo Blum calls. The thief has been killed in a hit-and-run ‘accident’. When Blum sends Stone the autopsy photos, the dead man sports a tattoo with “MNPV” and a cross. *Maleficos non patieris vivere*. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, the motto of Portas Justiciæ, the witch hunters.

Alastair calls his friends together for a skull session and explains about the dead thief, and the meaning of his tattoo and Portas’ involvement. The idea of religious anti-magic fanatics having a magic-nullifying artifact is terrifying to the mages. Ward speculates that the death of the thief indicates someone else is looking for the artifact, such as the Ordo Purpuratus. Stone thinks they’re likely busy after Richter’s disappearance or death (Mortal Imperative).

Stone visits the museum in Tilley but is frustrated to find someone has beat him to the catalog, leaving an illusion in its place. Using his charms, he gets the older woman caretaker to tell him about McGrath and show him another copy of the catalog. He ultimately buys it for a generous donation to the museum. He gets a cab to head back to a town with a ley line. The cab is forced off the road into a ditch and, when Stone tries to extricate himself, someone takes a couple of shots at him before driving off. He does what he can for the driver and calls 911, then starts walking.

Still heading away from the wreck, Stone calls Verity so she’ll be at his place when he arrives. He’s not in danger of dying, but needs healing. He hitches a ride to get to they ley line, then pops home – faster than he should have been able to. After healing him, Verity asks about his ability to get around so fast. He tells her what he told Eddie, that he does have a new method but it’s not something he can teach.

Leo Blum asks Stone to meet with him – clandestinely and in disguise. He tells Stone that he got a visit from a pair of bland government types, asking about Stone and the collection of occult artifacts. So now, Portas, the Ordo, and the shadow government were all involved.

Alastair takes the catalog to Gina and asks her to try to find an item from it – what appears to be the other piece of the magic nullifier. He gives Jason a rundown on what’s been happening. Jason says it’s a good thing Stone put the fake pyramid in the collection. But Stone counters that whoever gets their hands on it will realize it’s a fake, and circle back around to Stone to find out where the real one is.

A discussion with Kolinsky reveals that he’s aware of magical nullification devices, but they were forbidden long ago, and he didn’t think anyone knew how construct them anymore. Further, they require a substance not available on Earth to create. A dragon would be susceptible to such a device, but only a much, much stronger one. Stone comes clean about Aldwyn and the chamber under his house in Surrey, though he reassures Kolinsky that it’s inaccessible now. Kolinsky won’t help with the device, or the Ordo or Portas, but he will help Stone get fake identities and paperwork to hide his travel better. He also informs Stone that there is likely a third piece to the device: the operating instructions. The two pieces can’t be made fully operational without the correct ritual component.

After a gig with the Cardinal Sin, Stone is literally run into by a woman fending off a drunk. Stone intercedes and bouncers remove the man. He and the woman, Eleanor Newman, hit it off, and he takes her home with him. Something in her behavior makes him suspicious and, when she insists on wine before sex, he weaves an illusion that he drank it, then pretends unconsciousness. When Eleanor leaves, he follows, to find her rifling through his things. He holds her with magic and questions her. She doesn’t know much about who hired her, but the way she describes them indicates the Ordo. He offers her a deal – play along that she’s got him hooked and, while she didn’t find anything so far, she wants to keep looking to earn her pay, and Stone will pay her additional. She agrees, and they both agree that they really did have chemistry, so…

Gina learns that, while the second part of the device was in the auction catalog, it was never presented at auction. Stone taps Eddie, and he remembers an article about McGrath. In it, the man’s son mentions a hidden room in the house. Alastair checks in with Kolinsky. He doesn’t have his fake identities yet, but he gives Stone a corporate card for a shell company, and a driver’s license. Stone just has to use an illusion to look like the photo on the ID as a temporary solution. In return, Kolinsky wants to study the pyramid.

Unfortunately, when Stone gets to Tilley and finds McGrath’s old house and sneaks in, he finds a clean spot in the dust where the second part of the device had been, and the symbol of the Ordo drawn in the dust next to it, as a taunt.

Stone, the Thayers and Leo Blum infiltrate the auction containing the fake pyramid in hopes of at least identifying the players looking for the pyramid. When the pyramid comes up, a bidding war ensues between Stone, a couple of people possibly from one of the groups they’re trying to identify, and a famous magician. The magician, known for his petulant and overbearing behavior, overbids and wins the pyramid. He figures that either Ordo or Portas will try to get the pyramid away from the magician, who just wanted it because others did. He’s held up, though, by two other bidders – agents from the shadowy government agency that’s been dogging him. By the time the gang reaches the parking garage, the magician and his car are gone, and his assistant is lying in a pool of blood. Verity helps the man while police are called and a BOLO is put out on the car. The magician is found, unharmed, but Stone is feeling pressure, knowing so many groups will ultimately be after him.

Eddie turns up information indicating that there are actually two Ordo branches, who aren’t fond of each other. The Europeans are more disdainful of mundane human life, while the Americans are more inclined to pursue areas of knowledge better left alone. Eddie also says he thinks he, Ward and Stone could create a magic nullifier themselves. Alastair says no, it requires a substance not available on Earth, then he remembers the chamber under his house and wonders…

Stone thinks he can pop into the underground chamber, assuming it was reinforced and didn’t cave it. Eddie and Ward instantly walk back their idea as too dangerous, but quickly realize Alastair is going to try it, and someone needs to be there if he gets himself trapped. At the Surrey house, it takes Stone several attempts to reach the chamber. Once there, he searches for energy signatures, but quickly runs out of oxygen, and he has to pop back out before he faints.

A few days pass, during which time Eleanor breaks off with him, Jason goes to LA on a job, and Verity goes to Australia with Scuro, also on a job. Then Stone gets a call from someone who says they each have something the other wants, and they should talk. He goes on to explain his organization merely wants to see if the device works, and have no intention of having such a thing available for someone who is anti-magic, like the ‘zealots’. After, he and Stone would each secure their piece of the device so it can never be put together and used.

Realizing a trap is likely, Stone nevertheless agrees, proposing a local coffee shop as the meeting place. Then he sends a text, pops to Caventhorne for the pyramid, where he leaves a note for Eddie and Ward, then goes early to scout out the location. He and the other man – unassuming, nervous – meet, Stone casts an illusion to disguise their activities, and asks the man if he has the instructions. Alastair says he was given to understand there was a manual, of sorts. The Ordo man says he never heard of it, and they should put their pieces together and see what happens. Nothing is what happens. Stone mutters that if there was a ritual required, he doesn’t know it. The Ordo man demands why called if there was a piece missing, and Stone says no, the Ordo called *him*. Suddenly a vase on the table emits green gas and both men fall unconscious as the barista moves in to capture them.

Stone wakes in a dungeon cell, naked except for his briefs, alongside the other man who is in similar condition. Nearby but inaccessible in a cage is the fully-assembled device. When Stone tries to use magic, he can’t, not even Calanarian power. The device is working perfectly. The other man, Richard, turns out to be a hopeless pessimistic, but Stone manages to chivvy him into helping to push on the cage surrounding the device, hoping to disassemble or disrupt it. It doesn’t work, and a new man arrives – from Portas Justiciæ.

This man explains that his people had the instructions – a book with the ‘foul ritual’ needed to activate the device. It works very well, except it inhibits magic, not remove it. Therefore, since Stone and Richard can’t be cleansed, they will die. But not before he, the Reverend, learns some things, especially about Richard’s ‘nest of vipers’, the Ordo. He says he’ll return soon, so they should pray for forgiveness.

Richard has a bit of a meltdown, while Stone ponders how strong the obelisk is – could it block whatever it is that keeps him from dying? It doesn’t matter, though. He’s on his own and needs to stop Portas, even if that means death.

The Reverend returns with a young, callow assistant, and a cart full of torture implements. Stone notes that the boy, Caleb, is disturbingly eager for the torture to start. So much, in fact, that Stone wonders if he has one of the Evil onboard. When the Reverend is ready to begin, saying he’ll get answer about the Ordo, Richard tenses. The Ordo routinely makes their people swear magical oaths, so he won’t be *able* to answer. Trying to distract them, Stone fires taunts about Portas, including asking why the Reverend wanted them all but naked, implying deviance. The Reverend has to repeatedly pause and reprimand Caleb, who gets more and more riled up by the taunts. It doesn’t help, though, and Richard dies, eventually. The Reverend and Caleb leave Stone with the body, to think on his brief future. He, meanwhile knows he only has one play, and it’s dangerous.

When the pair return, Stone begins his plan. First questioning their religious beliefs and dogma, then their morals. They don’t even want information from him, just to enjoy his torture. The Reverend says it’s punishment. Caleb keeps getting more riled, asking to do the torture of Stone himself. The Reverend agrees. As soon as Caleb moves in to ties his legs, Stone begins talking to him quietly: yes, he has the touch for this; he likes the touch; was it his idea to strip them; maybe they can get rid of the Reverend for a bit and have fun, first… Caleb, worked into a frenzy, stabs Stone directly in the heart before the Reverend can stop him.

Stone wakes in a vacant lot with Eleanor freaking out, saying she thought he was dead, no he’s dying… Alastair is able to convince her not to take him to a hospital, so she muscles him into her car. He says he needs to stop Portas, but she says some – Feds – raided them. She describes the two from the auction. Stone is upset that now he doesn’t know where the obelisk is, but Eleanor says she can come up with a plan for that.

Once back at his house, Stone uses what energy he has to pop to Caventhorne, where he knew Eddie and Ward would be waiting with a healer. The gruff Scot does heal him, though blood loss can only mend with time. Promising a full report, Stone pops back to his house where Eleanor is still waiting, monitoring the tracker she put on the Feds’ car. They’re in a hotel.

Stone and Eleanor go to the hotel, where she first disables the Feds’ car. Then, since Alastair can/’ do anything magical near the intact device, she sneaks in to the sleeping agents’ room and steals the thing. Back in the car, Stone tries to pull the two pieces apart but can’t. Eleanor says to try the book – the instructions are in the bag with the device, but he can’t read it.

Alastair directs Eleanor to Kolinsky’s shop and has her wait in the car with the device while he speaks with Stefan. Kolinsky is a little nonplussed that Stone would just give it to him, but definitely agrees to take it. He gives Stone address to take it to. They drive there, then Eleanor says she has to go, she has another job back east. Stone promises her payment will be waiting, and gives her a kiss as an IOU for the future.

At the Dancing Dragon, Stone relates his tale to the gang, with all of them in awe that he’d allowed himself to be killed. He also gave Kolinsky just the device – not the book. That, he gave to Eddie and Ward for safekeeping and study.

Aldwyn, not happy that Stone gave the device to Kolinsky, sneaks into the Surrey house and liberates the last remaining undamaged vial of the critical substance from their hiding places in his former prison. He also stole into the London library, borrowed the ritual book, made a copy, and replaced it. He could easily subdue his greatest enemy, Brathwaite, with these.