Awakening

Awakening

## Blurb

**A Whole New World**

When Alastair Stone chooses to remain in captivity to save his son, he has no idea how much his life is about to change.

While he does manage to break free from his bizarre prison, his newfound freedom doesn’t come without a price. Everything around him is different—the world, his friends, what he thinks he knows about what he left behind. And despite all the power he commands, he can’t do a thing to fix any of it.

Worse, he’s still bound by an oath he made to his captor—and that contract is now coming due.

Still adjusting to the upheaval that is his life, Stone heads to a pair of tiny, remote towns that share a deadly secret. If he can’t figure out what his captor wants from the towns and find a way around it, hundreds of people could die.

And that isn’t even the worst part.

Welcome to your new world, Dr. Stone. You’d better get up to speed fast.

## Plot

Michael feels chronic anxiety and is unhappy with how his life is going, but the main reason he sees a therapist is the dreams. They’re beautiful, full of glowing people, and him doing impossible things. But they just make him more anxious and depressed. This session, when he’s asked to visualize the dream, all the glowing people are looking at him, waiting. He can’t do it. He jumps up from the couch, scaring the therapist, who ends the session for the day.

## Quotes and One-liners

Verity to Stone: "...being around you is like trying to play chess in the dark."

His live-in girlfriend, Jessica, is grumpy, as usual. He’s forgotten to stop at the store. Again. He knows their relationship should be over; he should have ended it before now. She says she has something to tell him after dinner, and he hopes it’s goodbye. But no, Jessica is pregnant. He tells her he’s happy, but all he can think about is being tied to her now, forever. He never wanted children. Still doesn’t.

A few days later, at the university, the office is abuzz with the news. Everyone is congratulating him on the coming baby. Then, in the department head’s office, he’s told his contract won’t be renewed. As of the end of the semester, he’ll be out of work. He’s a mediocre teacher at best, so now what will he do? He has no prospects in this nothing town, beyond retail. Sitting on a park bench, he has the sudden, overwhelming compulsion to return to his old home in England. Before he can think about it, he calls Jessica and tells her he’s sorry, he has to go home and get his head together. He’ll talk to her when he gets back.

On his way from the airport to Victoria Station, he gets several texts from Jessica, then voicemail. If he doesn’t call and explain immediately, she’s leaving him. All he feels is relief. At the station, he suddenly realizes the impact of what he’s doing, and has no idea why he’s doing it. That’s when he sees the man with the blue glow. Suddenly, everyone is glowing, just like in his dreams. His own hands are glowing! He jerks to his feet, knocking over his chair. Two security guards arrive to see what’s wrong. As they approach, their faces change, and he knows he’s seen them before. He’s yelling for their names, getting more agitated. They try to subdue him but he lashes out, burning one guard to ash, burning everything – expanding outward to burn it all.

Alastair wakes in the hidden prison below the Surrey house, in the place where Aldwyn had been imprisoned. He doesn’t know how long he was out--he’s not hungry and doesn’t need a shave—but he knows Aldwyn tricked him. Ian isn’t there, and his phone is dead. There’s nothing in the chamber except a mattress and a bit of energy around it that dissipates before he can identify it. Hoping Aldwyn doesn’t hijack him again, he pops to his home in Encantada.

The house seems off. It’s quiet, dusty, and Raider is nowhere to be found. Even the fridge is missing his Guinness and the leftover Chinese. He calls Verity, and her reaction has him confused. She seems surprised, asking did he really get away. She also asks him to tell her something only they would know. He does, and is full of questions as to her reaction, but she asks him to wait, she’ll be there in a few minutes.

The shocks keep coming when Verity arrives – from New York, she said – in just minutes, then tackles him in a hug that doesn’t feel like ‘I missed you since last night’. More, Verity looks different, older, with a different hairstyle and trendier clothes. Then she tells him he’s been missing for over three *years*.

While Stone tries to absorb that revelation, Verity says she needs to call Ian, Jason, Amber, Eddie and Ward to come to the Encantada house for an urgent meeting. She also assures Stone that Aubrey is still alive and well, as is Susan. Kolinsky hasn’t been heard from, and Madame Huan has disappeared. Verity asks how Stone could be gone three years, but look the same, right down to his clothes. He says he was apparently in suspended animation, and din’t feel the passage of time. She reassures him that his closest friends and family never believed he was dead, despite tracking rituals being useless. And Ian and Gabriel kept his interests going, at the house and the University – he’s currently on extended sabbatical.

Raider, Verity says, is fine and living with her. She also tells him he should look in his library; it will explain how she arrived so quickly. He leaves her to make her calls and goes downstairs to find there is now a private portal in his library. Verity joins him and says Ian's become very adept at portals and constructed it with Gabriel, Eddie and Ward. She convinces him to stay out of sight until the others all arrive, so he can have a big reveal. He conceals himself on an upper stair landing while his friends come through the portal.

As people arrive, asking Verity what’s up, Stone gets warm fuzzies that they all stayed on the case, looking for him, and never forgot him. When he steps out in view, jaws drop to the floor. Ian crushes him in a hug and yells at him for saving Ian instead of himself. All their reactions convince him he really *was* gone for three years. He knows they have questions, but wants to wait until Jason and Amber arrive. Meanwhile, he takes in the changes in all of them, especially a much more mature Ian, though they do butt heads a few times over Stone’s sacrifice. Ian keeps pushing, about the ring, about who imprisoned them… Stone is forced to evade because of Aldwyn’s deal, and Ian isn’t happy.

Eddie says he and Ward are much the same. Verity says Changelings have become part of reality now, but they’ll discuss that more later. Marta has retired and closed A Passage to India, so Verity and Hezzie renovated it into a second Sybil’s Apothecary location, with Ian building a dedicated portal between it and the San Francisco store. Verity also still works with Scuro, with Bron’s family, and with Jason on cases.

Mages are a lot more organized now, with advisory roles to help other mages, assist police (as Verity does with Leo Blum), and gathering and tracking more information on mages in general. They also test for magic ability and are classifying mages by power level. Three branches of the mage advisory exist in New York, LA, and at Caventhorne. Ian explains how he and Gabriel kept Stone ‘alive’, including Gabriel impersonating him at Stanford until he could arrange the sabbatical.

When Jason and Amber arrive, after they get over their shock, they tell Alastair their daughter was born fine and is now three. They named her Alice, after him. But, they also have a year-old boy named Jaden, now. Thayer Investigations has expanded into a new, larger office with more staff. Gina is now their IT and research head, as well as being a Changeling activist, since Changelings have swelled in the population (though still only about 1%), and created whole residential enclaves. At this point, they tell Stone that Jaden is a Changeling, born looking to Verity’s sight like a wolf-dog puppy.

Ian once more presses for information on who imprisoned Stone and kidnapped him to do it. Stone admits he does know who, but can’t divulge it, especially until he learns *why* it was done. He agrees to tell Ian what he can, when he can, and asks them to please trust him. Not all of it is his to tell. He assures them it is no one they know, though that isn’t reassuring. Aldwyn chooses that moment to call Stone and welcome him home.

Aldwyn is borderline mocking and invites Alastair to take two weeks to reacclimate himself to the world. He intends to hold Alastair to his oath to perform three tasks after that time. He refuses to say why he put Stone on ice for three years, saying all will be revealed in time. When Alastair says he’ll go to Kolinsky or Mme. Huan, Aldwyn says to go ahead, they won’t help him. Despite Stone taking the call to another room and trying to keep his voice down, Ian overhears enough to know it was whoever imprisoned him. The others pick up on the conversation and ask why the man called, is he going to try something else, and so on. Stone says yes, it was the person responsible, but he can’t say more, except that he doesn’t actually think the man is an enemy, per se. For now, he just wants to get on to re-learning about the world as it is now. As everyone departs, Stone arranges to retrieve Raider from her new loft the next day.

The next day, Stone drives around to see what’s new. Kolinsky’s shop is gone, and the neighborhood is being gentrified. Madame Huan’s shop is closed, but at least still there. Thinking about Kolinsky, he texts Ian and asks him to have Gabriel get in touch. Gabriel texts him and agrees to try to get in touch with his father, but says he doesn’t want to get ‘involved’, leaving Stone to wonder what that meant. Later, he receives a card from one of Kolinsky’s mysterious messengers, with ley line coordinates. He follows them and pops near to a cantina in Mexico.

Alastair becomes incensed when Kolinsky tells him that, not only did he know someone had taken Stone, he knew who, as did Mme. Huan and, eventually, Gabriel. Yet, none of them tried to help him. Before Stone’s disappearance, the dragons, minus Aldwyn and Gabriel, had been in conclave over the Changelings and how the non-interference with humans agreements applied. Changelings were taken, examined, and returned unharmed and with no memories of the event, though they never learned *how* the Change came about. Stone fills him in on the small, unnoticed rift Jeremy had caused in Minnesota, which Alastair eventually closed. It had been responsible for the contagion that created Changelings.

The conclave split, between those who favored including Changelings under the non-interference protection, and those who didn’t. It was clear Changelings were no longer human. Kolinsky and Madame Huan, as well as Morathi and Vic, lobbied to extend the agreements and their protections to Changelings. Thalassa Nera and Cassius took the stance that, as inhuman, Changelings didn’t merit that protection. Both Aldwyn and Gabriel stayed away. While he doesn’t give their identities, Kolinsky says the other twelve dragons did vote, resulting in a split.

Meanwhile, Kolinsky explains that Aldwyn, formerly a pariah, has gained adherents. He is no longer a loner. After the schism in the conclave, he approached those who chose not to see Changelings as human, and formed alliances. At the same time, Kolinsky, Mme. Huan and Gabriel looked for loopholes in the agreements that would allow them to find and rescue Stone. They found none: a dragon has sole, inviolable right to treat his or her scions as they will, without interference.

A visit to Verity’s new loft reunites Stone with Raider, who is hesitant at first, then remembers him. He also meets Verity’s new cat, Luna. Stone asks if Aubrey’s been told of his return. When she says no, he asks if she would let the old man know. Alastair doesn’t want to startle him into cardiac arrest. Then, he’ll visit once Aubrey’s had time to process. Verity reminds Stone he wanted to catch up on the state of Changelings in the area, and suggests they visit some friends of hers in one of their enclaves. She warns him that Changelings, in general, don’t like mages, so not to do any magic while they’re there.

The Changeling enclave gives Stone a feeling of unease, which Verity says even some mundanes can feel. Shortly after they arrive, they’re stopped by a group who tell them to leave, and behave menacingly. But, two of the Watch – a self-policing group of Changelings, since the police either ignore or fear them – defuse the situation and tell Verity and Stone to get to their friends and don’t stay long, to prevent trouble. One, a friend of Verity’s named Ellie, says they’ve been busy with gang problems in the area, and younger Freaks (a self-appellation like LGBTQ people use queer) don’t react well.

As they continue on their way, Verity explains the new classification scheme for mages, who range from highest – Stone’s level – to lowest, being a low-powered, untrained mage. There are also levels of ‘X’ for wild talents. They’re interrupted by sounds of an altercation that Stone says he can’t ignore. They rush around a corner to find a growing group of mundanes in gang colors throwing smoke grenades through the windows of an apartment building, while Changelings converged to surround them. Stone grabs a mundane kid and learns that the gang is retaliating for the Changelings taking over a bar on their territorial border, and there have already been injuries.

Things heat up, with several people down, when the Watch shows up. A full-blown riot is imminent, so Stone and Verity decide to levitate to a rooftop to stay out of the way, and to watch. But Stone is suddenly overtaken by hallucinations of beautiful, swirling colors. Verity has to slap him out of it. Some Changelings can exude substances from their saliva or through their pores, including hallucinogens. Apparently Stone got tagged. Once he’s back in his right mind, they take position on a roof.

Stone tries to defuse the situation by blowing up a nearby transformer. When that doesn’t work, he creates an illusion of police lights and sirens approaching. This scatters the mundanes, some pursued by Changelings. The pair head down to offer help, and Verity quickly starts work on a badly injured lizard man. Stone is about to help another Changeling with a bone break when he spots a fallen mundane whose aura is flickering weakly. The Changelings try to stop him helping the kid rather than their man, but Stone manages to convince them the boy will die, and then the authorities will be all over them. He does what he can, pouring energy into the kid, at least enough to stabilize him until approaching EMTs can arrive. The crowd has disappeared, and the Watch tells Stone and Verity to go before they arrive, and thanks for the help.

Alastair visits Aubrey, once Verity has prepared him for his return, finding the caretaker looking well. Verity has been treating him with an alchemical potion to slow the progression of his Parkinson’s. Next, he pays a visit to Gina at Thayer Investigations, and meets Derik, one of the new staff and also a Changeling. Unfortunately, his pleasant day catching up sours when Aldwyn calls and orders him to return home.

Aldwyn has a task for Stone, the first of his required three. He’s to go to a small town in Oregon, find and steal a portion of a tapestry, and frame another man, Chase Cassidy, for the theft. He doesn’t answer any questions about the tapestry or why he wants it, or another man framed. He also refuses to let Alastair take anyone along for assistance. Stone. has a week to complete the task.

Needing to speak with Kolinsky again, Stone contacts Gabriel. He does pass the message, but tells Stone he’s done being their go-between. Stone meets Kolinsky at a bar this time, primarily to see if his bogus corporation and false identities are still intact. Of course Kolinsky will not help with Aldwyn’s ‘task’, though he does guess that Alastair is being compelled under oath to do it. He offers several warnings about Aldwyn, particularly that, whatever the dragon wants Stone to do, there is much more to it, and to his motivations. He says he will consider giving Stone a way to contact him more directly.

Verity is understandably upset that, having just reappeared, Stone is going off on another mysterious mission. She’s smart enough to determine he’s under oath not to tell her any details, but she doesn’t have to like it. Stone says he hates it as much as she does, but he’s not being given any choice.

Stone pops to the nearest town in Oregon with a car rental, then drives to tiny Rydell. Before he gets there, he stops at a “T” intersection, curious as to why no sign points to Rydell. He’s standing in the intersection, assailed by feelings of despair and longing emanating from ahead of him, when he’s nearly his by a box truck he didn’t hear coming. The angry driver gets out, but Stone is equally angry the man didn’t see him standing in plain sight. When they calm down, the driver tells him Rydell, which just come from, is weird. People there don’t seem to like visitors.

Perplexed, Stone continues to Rydell, finding it an idyllic place, pristinely clean, with no vacant buildings or storefronts. He quickly discovers he has no cell service. In a coffee shop, where everyone takes notice of him, he learns there are also no cable TV, hotels, or B&Bs. The waitress asks one of the local boys if his mother is still trying to rent her cabin. He follows the boy, Brady, to his house, behind which is a very basic cabin with little beyond basic necessities. Not having much choice though, he decides to take it. He beats the boy’s mother and she finally agrees to let him have the cabin even though she’s a bit standoffish. Stone asks if there are any museums or libraries in the area I’m fine so there is a spot library. He also finds out from Brady that there is a place called the Weavers when he says he’s interested in textiles. Hearing is Brady’s mother stops the conversation and tells Brady he has to go into the house. Stone considers this odd, but placates the woman until they go back in the house.

At the library, his inquiries about the Weavers seem to trigger a reaction in the librarian so, after pretending to go to the restroom, Stone overhears her calling to tell someone about the stranger asking questions. When he returns to the cabin, the wards tell him someone had gone through them. His things had been searched, but nothing taken. Brady arrives with some cookies and is about to ask Stone something when his mother interrupts and orders him back to the house.

Alastair kills some time at a bar until it’s late enough to do some snooping. He finds and breaks into the Weavers lodge, but it seems innocuous until two people arrive and two others exit from a door hidden by an illusion. Once it’s quiet, he slips through the illusion and finds a basement, in which two people sit at looms, weaving. The entire room is hung with an almost continuous – and ugly – tapestry. To magical sight, though, their weaving is also producing a column of orange energy that exits through a wall to the west. He wonders what is going on. But, for his purposes, he can’t just grab a bit of tapestry. He has to find this Chase Cassidy and frame him, as well.

It seems the weavers work in shifts, and in pairs, so the looms remain active 24/7. He calculates from the amount of fabric on the walls, they’d been at it for over 20 years. The tapestry was obviously a byproduct of weaving the orange power, but why? And where was it going?

The next day he sets out for the neighboring town of Tuttleton, where Cassidy lives. On his way, he checks out the closed road at the crossroads where he’d felt the unsettling emotions, but all he finds is an abandoned campground, little more than an old, cleared space. Tuttleton itself turns out to be nearly a copy of Rydell – idyllic, with not much going on. A visit to the library there nets him little information beyond Cassidy being in charge of the major local fraternal organization there, the Music Makers.

When Stone visits Cassidy in his real estate office on the pretense of thinking of moving to Tuttleton, he learns that another stranger, a woman, had very recently been in for the same reason. Cassidy encourages Stone to join the Music Makers if he stays, Stone having mentioned he plays guitar. He says nearly everyone in town plays, or at least sings. Tuttleton is as odd as Rydell, prompting Stone to wonder what they do with any undesirables. In fact, he hadn’t seen a single homeless person or Changeling.

Later, while eating at a diner, Stone spots Cassidy looking furtive. He leaves and follows the man to a theater. Once inside, it looks innocuous, as did the Weavers hall, though he hears faint music. Then he spots Cassidy coming out from behind the movie screen and leaving. In back, he finds a hidden room from which a column of blue energy is emerging, exiting the building to the east. He can hear the music more clearly, now – two stringed instruments. It’s coming from a room above with a retractable stair. What is the purpose of the energy? Does it converge with the Weavers’ orange energy somewhere? And what did Aldwyn know about all this?

Stone breaks into Cassidy’s office for something he can leave as incriminating evidence. He passes over a baseball cap as likely to be missed and takes a phone slip instead. He the heads to the crossroads to solve the mystery of the strange feelings he experienced there. He finds a clearing that turns out to be a cemetery with a squat stone structure in the middle. The feelings emanate from the structure so Stone clears the top of debris to find the symbols of the Weavers and the Music Makers etched into the stone.

Alastair opens himself to the entity he senses and gets its story of being entrapped, enslaved, and fed only enough energy for it to survive, and exude its own beneficial energy into the area of the two towns. It’s tired, spent and begs Stone to let it die. The communion overwhelms Stone and he screams and collapses, in mental pain.

He wakes to find a woman standing over him. She is Renata Huxley, agent for an unnamed government organization keeping tabs on supernatural events, and intervening to protect humans. They have an enormous file on Stone, since he’s on hand at so many strange events, though they consider him on the same side as them. They trade questions back and forth, often not answering to preserve secrets. Huxley had been in the area looking for clues to what happened to her missing partner. He vanished from Tuttleton; she was told he’d ‘gone for a walk’ in the woods.

Stone gets more information from the entity – protecting his mind better this time – and knows he needs to not only shut down the energy feeds, but do it simultaneously in both locations. He enlists Ren to help and, in return, sets out to do a ritual to find her partner. But, when she shows him a photo, the man is wearing a baseball cap he recognizes. The ritual confirms that her partner is dead. The entity had shown Stone people digging recently, and they locate her partner’s body in the cemetery, in a shallow grave. He’d been ritualistically killed to ‘placate’ the entity, who told Stone it grieved over the deaths; they meant nothing to the power that was imprisoning it and were completely unnecessary.

Without cell service, Stone devises a plan to shut the energy streams down. They synchronize their watches, planning to disrupt the streams in exactly one hour. He sends Huxley back to Tuttleton, trusting her to wait to confront Cassidy about her partner’s murder. Alastair goes back to Rydell, but Brady interrupts him before he can head to the Weaver’s lodge. His girlfriend is missing, and he’s afraid the townspeople are going to kill her. Stone checks the time and hopes he can disrupt the sacrifice and still shut down the Weavers on time.

Brady directs him to the church, where they find the townspeople about to kill his girlfriend – his own mother holding the knife. Stone knocks them all silly with a concussion spell and tells Brady to grab his girlfriend and run. But back outside, he finds his Jeep’s been stolen. He sets out at a run; there’s still time. But someone tries to run him down with a car. He flings himself aside in time, but sees he’s broken his watch.

He soldiers on, getting to the Weavers six minutes late. But nothing had blown up, so he disguises himself as Cassidy, stuns the weavers once he’s sure they’ve seen him, and grabs a section of tapestry. But the power that had been coming from the looms has gone a muddy red. He opens his mind to the entity and it’s begging for help, trying to hold its energy back now that it’s no longer being drained.

Stone races to the cemetery, where the entity struggles not to blow the whole area up. Stone blasts the structure holding it, freeing the small ball of energy which sends him gratitude and…dissipates. He returns to Tuttleton to find Huxley has Cassidy in custody. Stone tells her the man actually believed that the ritual murders were necessary, so to take that into account. She offers him an ‘opportunity’ to work with her agency, freelance, because he’s so much more powerful and knowledgeable than anyone they have on staff. Alastair’s boundless curiosity prevents him from saying ‘no’ outright.

Aldwyn summons Stone almost as soon as he gets home. Aldwyn appears unhappy. Stone confronts him, saying he never wanted the tapestry at all. He was actually hoping Stone would disrupt the energy flow, causing the trapped entity to blow. That way Aldwyn could swoop in and unearth whatever it was buried more deeply between the two towns without pissing off the other dragons by ‘interfering’. Aldwyn admits it’s all true and, while he’s not happy, Stone showed himself a powerful ally – a word Stone objects to. In any case, the dragon calls the task satisfactorily complete.