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

It’s been a rough and harrowing few months for Alastair Stone and his closest friends—but despite all the mayhem they get up to together, they still have separate lives that sometimes take them in very different directions.

Kira Talon has a secret. Raised since childhood among the nonmagical “Dim” when her expected magical birthright didn’t materialize, she barely remembers her early time in the opulent floating city high above the war-torn sprawl below. Years later, she’s made a life for herself among the nonmagical, discovering an affinity with machines, making good friends, and venturing carefully into the dangerous, clandestine resistance against the magical overlords.

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.

When Alastair Stone’s former apprentice Verity approaches him with the story of a drugged and caged Changeling she spotted at a magical black market in Europe, Stone is quick to offer his aid to locate the victim. Once on the Changeling’s trail, though, Stone and Verity soon discover they have stumbled upon the tip of a horrific iceberg—a shadowy organization operating deep underground, kidnapping specifically-targeted Changelings for an unspeakable fate.

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 has just had a bombshell dropped on him about Aldwyn’s latest plans—but that particular problem will have to take a back seat to a more pressing one. Verity has disappeared. She never returned home following a weekend visit with her half-siblings in central California, and no one has any idea where she is.

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.

Wracked with guilt and rage following the death of an ally he felt he should have prevented, Alastair Stone wants nothing more than to track down the murderer and exact violent revenge. The Universe, however, has other plans. For one, the dragons want to put him on trial for revealing sensitive information to his friends, with the penalty for losing the case potentially worse than death.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's hard enough for Alastair Stone to keep his two lives - powerful mage and mundane Occult Studies professor - separate without an old friend asking him to take on a new apprentice. Especially after a university colleague wants him to investigate a massive old house for things that go bump in the night. Still, Stone figures it's an easy job: just turn up, put on a little show, and announce that the house is clean. Only it isn't. A malevolent spirit is reawakening in the basement.

Things are looking up for Alastair Stone. He's just moved into his new house, Jason's opening his investigation agency, and best of all, the university has finally hired a new professor for the occult studies department. Carefree days never last long for Stone, though. The smart, sexy new professor turns out to have secrets - dangerous secrets. When he agrees to help her track down a powerful, magical artifact, Stone is drawn into a deadly conspiracy involving a mysterious and reclusive clan, alchemical mayhem, and crimes even more horrific than either of them suspected.

Alastair Stone isn't proud of the dark deeds of his family's past, but he thought they were just that: past. But when a routine renovation of his ancestral home releases a horde of angry spirits bent on vengeance against anyone of his blood, he soon learns that his family's horrific acts were even worse than he ever could have imagined. Driven from his home, Stone must rally his most trusted friends and allies to discover the truth and find a way to exorcise the relentless spirits.

When Alastair Stone investigates a tale of odd events at an abandoned Midwestern paper mill, he figures it's just another hoax. After all, he's seen hundreds of them in his career. He soon discovers this one isn't a hoax, though - and neither is the backwoods hunter who's suddenly developed healing abilities in Pennsylvania...Stone knows he has to get to the bottom of this supernatural mystery - no matter how many enemies he has to make in the process. And when he finally does learn the truth, it comes with the horrifying revelation that he might already have made a terrible mistake.

A father's sins. A son's wrath. An enemy's revenge. When a shadowy, sinister organization begins killing apprentices, Alastair Stone is determined to track down the people pulling its strings. But Stone’s life quickly spirals into chaos when a young man contacts him - claiming to be his son.

When a police detective approaches Alastair Stone to consult on a grisly occult-related murder, he initially considers it nothing more than an intriguing puzzle to fill a few dull late-summer hours. But then the detective becomes a victim, and the murderer begins taunting Stone, daring him to discover the truth before more of his friends join the list of targets. As he delves deeper into the case, Stone soon learns that the murderer isn't human - and has committed similar crimes in the past.

With Jason and Verity in southern California, Alastair Stone quickly discovers he misses his best friends and favorite confidants far more than he expected to. It isn't long, though, before he's got some new matters to occupy his mind: a student who may have fallen under the influence of a magical cult leader, and a budding relationship with a sexy, intelligent, and stunningly beautiful woman who's everything he never dared to dream of.