Showing results by author "R. L. King" in All Categories

When mage Alastair Stone’s fiancée dumps him for loving magic too much and her not enough, he never sees it coming. Craving a change, Stone picks a big one: moving halfway around the world to teach occult studies at Stanford. He expects to pick up where he left off, resuming a quiet life of study and putting the past behind him. But when a gang of cannibalistic serial killers targets the area, he’s certain their origin is supernatural. Drawn into the case after stopping a murder, he soon encounters a bizarre secret society.

Alastair Stone has some rare free time, so he agrees to help Jason with a case of a missing college student with a wealthy father who's desperate to bring her home safely. As often happens when Stone is involved, though, the girl's disappearance soon proves to be only the tip of a much larger and more dangerous iceberg, ultimately leading them to a malevolent megachurch with a lot more than salvation on its agenda.

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.

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.

Alastair Stone needs a break. He’d gladly trade a big chunk of his newly-acquired fortune for a few uninterrupted weeks of rest, but that’s not going to happen. On top of dealing with his new magical status and a relationship heading in unexpected directions, he soon learns the bombshell revelations about his family aren’t even close to over yet. As if all that weren’t enough, an ancient and malevolent set of magical game pieces has resurfaced, leaving a trail of murder and mayhem in its wake.

After 15-year-old Alastair Stone is caught performing magic at his prestigious boarding school, he can hardly believe his good fortune; not only isn't he punished, but his father arranges a trial apprenticeship - three years early - with one of the most powerful mages in all of Britain. He'll have a month to prove himself, or he'll be packed back off to school. But when Alastair arrives at his new master's vast, remote country house, he soon finds that his teacher's draconian style and exacting standards aren't the only challenges he'll have to face to pass his trial.

Alastair Stone has successfully finished the first of the three tasks he’s oathbound to complete for his powerful dragon ancestor. To his shock and surprise, the second turns out to be something he already wants to do: kill an old enemy who shouldn’t even be alive. Except Stone has no idea how to find his target, and the deadline he’s been given makes success by no means certain. Complicating matters, a new ally has a consulting job for him: figure out why somebody in the Changeling community is kidnapping young and seemingly unconnected children all over California.

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.

It starts with an article from Jason's crank file. Some campers have discovered an unconscious "space alien" in the wilds of Colorado. Every mention of the story quickly vanishes from the internet - but not before Alastair Stone gets a look at the single, blurry photo. The "space alien" looks tantalizingly familiar....

Alastair Stone knew it was only a matter of time. The demon called The Unspeakable is safely locked away, but nearly a dozen more of its kind remain behind, gathering strength like malevolent, ticking time bombs.

When Kolinsky asks Alastair Stone to investigate a curious anomaly near a familiar location, Stone is ready to find a connection between the two. What he's not ready to find is an old friend he thought was dead for eleven years. A friend who's got more than one shocking bombshell to drop on him - including an unexpected companion - before she goes on the run and disappears.

Alastair Stone figures using tracking magic to help Jason Thayer and his new wife Amber find a missing child will be a good diversion. At least it will take his mind off a summer that, without Verity around, is shaping up to be a lot less eventful than he’d hoped. But when the boy’s kidnapper turns out to be a mage — one who’s using the public portal network to steal children for some mysterious purpose of his own — Stone, Jason, and Amber are thrown into a terrifying web of mystery, mad science, and deadly peril.

Alastair Stone needs a vacation. He’s literally stepping through the portal to his home in England, when an old friend calls with a horrific tale of a grisly multiple murders committed by teenagers just back from a school camping trip. It doesn’t take long to convince Stone that the supernatural is involved. Goodbye peaceful vacation, hello magical investigation.

For Alastair Stone, problems rarely come one at a time. He’s busy helping an old friend with a case of blackmail, when he’s contacted about a mysterious wave of minor crimes in the Oakland area - one that might involve magic. He asks Verity to look into it. When tragedy strikes, and the petty crime spree leads to a friend's disastrous near-death, Stone hurries home to investigate the situation himself. What he finds suggests terrifying new connections to a problem he thought he’d already dealt with.

Still coming to terms with recent events, Alastair Stone is shocked when someone from his past—someone he still feels guilty he couldn’t save—resurfaces in his life with a desperate claim that he’s the only one who can help her. She may be right. He’d thought the Evil—extra-dimensional beings with a taste for human fear, misery, and rage—had settled down. But now it appears they’ve got a new plan—and a new leader.

Alastair Stone is intrigued when he’s asked to look into a bizarre series of murders united by intricate and unsettling symbols carved into the victims’ bodies. As the deaths pile up and the killer seems able both to travel and commit his crimes without a trace, Stone learns the murders aren’t only linked—they’re parts of a malevolent, massively powerful ritual with an ancient demonic artifact at its root.

Alastair Stone has already paid off two of the three favors he owes his ancestor Aldwyn. He expects the third to be big, but he has no idea how big. Aldwyn reveals he has another scion—a man the dragon has sensed, but never been able to locate.

The Sixth World doesn’t give people much time to grow up. Whoever you are, wherever you live, there’s going to come a time when the world is going to throw you some serious curveballs. And, if all you can do is bitch and moan about how you’re not ready for what’s coming your way, you’re not going to last long. Get strong, grow up, figure out how to survive. One of those tests is about to hit Lena. She doesn’t have much to help her, except for some new powers she does not understand. Using them, and some unexpected allies, is the only way she will live out the day.

Sometimes the biggest events begin with the smallest incidents. This time, it’s another one of Jason’s strange cases: a missing man a tracking spell can’t trace. It isn’t long before the man turns up. Except he’s…different. And he’s not the only one. A new magical affliction is creeping through the world, permanently altering people’s auras and changing their astral forms. As Alastair Stone and his friends struggle to understand it and trace its source, he soon finds he’s got another, far more personal, issue to deal with.

Magical Los Angeles is a ticking time bomb. The normally cooperative crime families are at each other’s throats, an unseen force manipulating them from behind the scenes like a sinister chess master. Nick Morgan and Bron Broome are the only ones who know what’s going on, and they've got a tough job: convince the crime lords a demon’s playing them like chumps before the whole town goes up like a powder keg.