The Horned Mage: Books 1-5

by Hayden Harper

  “Those are darker than I remember.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I’ve…I’ve changed a lot. You’re alive.”

  I pulled her back into a hug again. I couldn’t think. Couldn’t process anything. The single thought that she wasn’t dead just kept playing on repeat in my head until I took a deep breath and my surroundings registered.

  There was a cot in the corner with a single filthy sheet. At the foot of the cot was a bucket where the worst of the stink was coming from. Her toilet. A small coffee table was pressed into a corner with a battery powered lantern providing our light. Beside it stood a bouquet of flowers—fresh flowers whose bright colors and soft petals didn’t belong here. They certainly didn’t belong next to the shriveled red thing beside them set up on some kind of display stand.

  My gorge nearly came up as the recognition began to stir. But it was too disgusting, too horrible to really process.

  “What is that?” I asked not because I wanted to know but because I needed to be proved wrong.

  Caroline Marshal pulled back from me and scooped the thing off the table, cradling it to her breast. She cooed at it, then smiled at me. “Caleb, I want you to meet your little brother.”

  I became very still.

  The red thing had a soft, bloated head that had clearly been stitched back onto the mostly skeletal body. Skeletal except for the equally bloated belly, from which a bit of umbilical cord was still attached. The eyelids had never fully developed so the reattached head stared at me through fleshy lenses that didn’t really conceal the dark spots beneath. It was covered in veins and should have been slimy. It wasn’t. For some reason that made seeing the taxidermied fetus even worse.

  “His name is Colin,” she told me. “He-he’s a good boy. He’s kept me—he’s kept me from being alone.”

  She fell to her knees, clutching the fetus tight to her chest as she shook. “He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead. He can’t be dead but he’s dead and you’re not really here. You’re not real. He’s not real. Colin’s dead. I’m dead.”

  I dropped to my knees beside her and grabbed her shoulder. “Caroline Marshal! You’re alive. I’m real. I’m here. We’re going to take you out now. Okay? We’re going to get you to a doctor.”

  She looked up at me, eyes watery with unshed tears. “We’re going to get Colin to a doctor?”

  My mouth was dry but I still needed to swallow. “We’re going to get you and Colin to a doctor. You need to come with me now.”

  Dammit, I had no idea what I was doing. She was clearly traumatized and there was no telling how badly she’d been wounded inside. For all I knew I could be making this a thousand times worse. No. Leaving her here was the worst thing I could do. Getting her out was the first step to getting her the help she needed. That had to happen no matter what. She needed out and she needed to get to a hospital.

  And we couldn’t stay here. This was Albert’s office. She was his wife. He had kept his wife locked up as a prisoner beneath his home office. He’d brought her flowers—the same kind that he’d given to his daughter last night—and had stuffed a baby. Albert was a fucking psychopath. I couldn’t let him find out what was going on. Oh shit, I couldn’t leave Sarah here either.

  God, if he’d been willing to do this to his wife, what the hell might he do to his daughter?

  “Victoria,” I called up. “Victoria, I need you to check to see if Albert’s still here.”

  “Who’s Albert?” she called down.

  “My adoptive father,” I told her. “I don’t know what time it is. But we can’t leave if he’s still here. And we need to leave.”

  I told her what kind of car he drove and she took off. Slowly I coaxed Mom out of the hole. She stopped at the trapdoor, wincing at the sunlight gleaming in through the windows. Her lower lip quivered.

  “It’s okay,” I urged in the kindest voice I could manage.

  She came out slowly, still clutching Colin.

  Lexus stared at it. “Is that—“

  I shook my head as hard as I could and made an abortive gesture with my hand.

  “—uh, is this your mother?”

  “Lexus, this is Caroline Marshal,” I said, then gestured at Lexus. “And this is my girlfriend Lexus.”

  “She’s black,” Caroline said. “And she’s pretty. You did good, Caleb. Who was the other young lady?”

  “That was Victoria.” I debated on how much to tell her, then decided she’d been through enough without me lying to her. “My other girlfriend.”

  Caroline scowled at me. “Caleb Marshal you had better not be two timing on this nice young girl.”

  The nice young girl in question grinned at her. “I think I like your mom.”

  “I’m not cheating on her, Mom. We’re both together with Victoria. She’s both of our girlfriend.”

  “Both?”

  “Yes, she’s Lexus’s girlfriend too.”

  Caroline blinked at us both very slowly. “Is that what the kids are doing these days? I don’t know if I like that. You’d better not set a bad example for Colin.”

  I did my best to smile. “I’ll try not to.”

  Victoria opened the door, making us all jump. Caroline actually took a step toward the trap door as if she meant to flee back into her prison.

  “He’s not here,” she said. “But there’s another car in the driveway.”

  Sarah. Right. This was going to be awkward as all hell.

  “Okay, let’s get Sarah and get out of here. There’s no way we’re leaving either of them here with that fuckjob.”

  Caroline smacked me upside the back of the head. “Watch your language.”

  I stared at her for a moment and then grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Slowly, Caroline took her first tentative barefoot steps outside into the morning sunlight. She winced, then took a moment and simply basked in the sun’s glow. How long had it been since she’d felt the touch of it on her skin? The full two years I’d thought she’d been dead or did that fucker take her out for walks? The image would have been beautiful, even with the grime coating her, if it weren’t for the fetus in her arms. Was it supposed to look bloody or was that just how they naturally looked?

  I gently took her by the arm and guided her across the backyard. We made it all the way to the back door before Sarah threw open the door. She didn’t even look at Lexus or Victoria, just at the woman beside me.

  “Mom?”

  Caroline grinned. Her teeth were brown and crooked but it was the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen. It lit her up from within and made her eyes shine. “Sarah.”

  Sarah reached out slowly, as if afraid she might be electrocuted at any moment, and touched her mother’s face just as Caroline had touched mine just moments before. And then they were hugging, silent tears streaming down Sarah’s face.

  “Mom. Oh, God, Mom I’ve got so much to tell you.”

  “Oh baby. Baby I missed you so much.”

  I didn’t want to interrupt but we had to move. If Albert caught wind of what was going on…damn, I don’t know. I should fry the fucker. I could do that now. Oh my Dear and Fluffy Lord I wanted to roast him.

  No. Sarah and Caroline were the priority, not hurting him. I cleared my throat. “We have to get out of here. Now.”

  Sarah pulled away from her mom, looking as if she hadn’t heard a word I’d said. “What? How?”

  Okay, I guess she hadn’t. In her defense, her mother had just come back from the dead.

  “I found her beneath Albert’s office. The storm shelter had been made into a prison. We have to get out of here before he realizes she’s not there.”

  Sarah stared at me for a moment and then took off at a sprint, tearing around Lexus and Victoria as she bolted for the shed. She vanished inside, the door swinging wildly on its hinges behind her. What was that about?

  The girls and I exchanged glances. Did she think I was lying or something? I mean, this was pretty unbelie
vable but I’d never lied to her before. Why would I make up something like this?

  “Where’d she go?” Caroline asked. “She can’t go in there. She’ll get trapped in there. Caleb, go get her—bring her back. Bring her back!”

  I was just starting to do that when the shed door burst open again and Sarah came bolting out, just as quickly as she’d gone she was suddenly at our side. “We’re getting the hell out of here.”

  Thank you!

  Chapter Five

  The adrenaline rush wore off after about an hour on the road. Sarah and Caroline rode in the back of Sarah’s car, which I drove, while Lexus and Victoria followed in Reagan’s car. Lexus had gotten permission to borrow it from her mother to come pick me up. None of us had a car of our own, though Victoria had her motorcycle, but fitting three people on that wasn’t a good idea, let alone for a longer trip.

  Getting Caroline into the car had taken more effort than expected. She really hadn’t liked being outside, growing more and more agitated the longer we were beneath the open sky. I don’t think she was even aware of the change in her demeanor. Getting her into a small, confined space like the back of the vehicle though? That had been a challenge, but Sarah had eventually coaxed her in there and now sat with her mother leaning against her, her dead son, our dead brother, still cradled in her arms.

  God I hoped we didn’t get pulled over. That would be a hell of a thing to explain to the cops. What’s that officer? Oh, that’s just my mother’s dead baby. Illegal? You mean driving around with a dead baby is against the law? Are you sure? I had no idea! Yeah, that would go over real well.

  But no sirens flashed. No cars chased after us. Sarah received no mysterious or threatening phone calls from Albert. We just drove with Lexus and Victoria following behind us, an awkward silence steadily growing heavier with every mile. Caroline didn’t seemed bothered by it. She had a small smile at her mouth and kept caressing Colin’s bulbous head. I tried not to look at the thing or think about what Caroline had been through.

  I failed horribly at both.

  It made me nauseous. No sunlight or anything to do except wait for her captor to come back and…do whatever it was he did to her. Nobody to talk to except for her oppressor and her dead baby.

  Her stench hung in the back of the car like a cloud, making everything that much worse. My knuckles whitened over and over again on the steering wheel. As soon as she was taken care of Albert was going to be seen to. I didn’t know the exact details yet, but it would be violent. Thinking of Albert gave me the anger and focus to finally keep my eyes from flitting back to the rearview mirror every few seconds to check on Sarah and Caroline.

  There were plenty of woods around Woodhurst. Lots of wilderness. Hiding his body, especially after I’d burned away all of his flesh wouldn’t be hard. I’d have to destroy his teeth. I’d seen enough detective shows to know that his dental records could identify him. How hard would it be to break up a charred skeleton and shatter the bones into smaller pieces? The more I could reduce his remains into broken bits the less likely anyone coming by would be to recognize them for what they were. Especially after the animals and exposure got to them.

  Maybe I’d even break him apart before I burned away the flesh. What would hurt more, being burned alive or complete dismemberment?

  The sound of snoring sounded from the backseat and I started. I’d been so caught up in my thoughts and planning that I had lost track of my surroundings. That was dangerous. I needed to keep my eyes on the road. And what the fuck was wrong with me thinking about all of this stuff in such detail? Anger surged through me again. Nothing. Not a damn thing was wrong with me. Albert was the sick fuck who’d done horrible things. He needed horrible things done to him and dammit I would be the one to do them.

  I glanced back to see who was snoring and found Caroline had finally nodded off, her head in Sarah’s lap, fetus tucked under her arm like the world’s most morbid teddy bear. I caught Sarah’s eyes and saw a mixture of emotions that I couldn’t identify, in part because they were hidden deep beneath something flat. If her eyes had been dark instead of pale I’d have said that she reminded me of a shark. Only…were these they eyes of a predator or of someone in the process of becoming one?

  “Thank you,” she said.

  I blinked. “For what?”

  “For everything,” she said. “But mostly for not asking why I went back into the shed.”

  That question really hadn’t been on my list of priorities but I had thought about it. Eventually I came to the conclusion that she must have wanted to make sure that 1) the hole really was there and that 2) the office had been put back the way it had been before all of this. The longer that Albert went without realizing that his wife—ex-wife?—was gone, the better off we were.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said.

  “No,” she said. “I should worry about it. I should—it’s my fault you’re caught up in this.”

  “Hey, you knock that the hell off right now! You’re my sister. Of course I was going to come when you needed help.”

  Sarah shook her head and hid her face behind a curtain of pale hair. “Not that. That’s part of it, but this…it’s…God this is hard.”

  “Sarah, none of this is your fault.”

  She reached up and wiped at her eyes. There was something clutched in her hand but I couldn’t tell what it was. “It is.” She swallowed. “Caleb. It’s his baby.”

  My eyes glanced at the fetus. Oh wait, she was still pregnant. I’d forgotten in the chaos of discovering Caroline and getting away from Albert. “Whose baby?”

  She pulled in on herself and stroked her mother’s dirty hair. “My baby. Dad…it’s….”

  My stomach became ice.

  Lights ahead caught my eye. Break lights. Oh shit!

  I swerved into the next lane over, narrowly avoiding a collision with the car that had pulled in front of me and then braked. A car horn screamed behind us and I jumped, jerking the wheel so that we swerved.

  A moment later I got the car under control. It took a little bit longer for my heartrate to slow.

  Caroline gave a huge snore and burrowed her face deeper into Sarah’s lap. Sarah had a death grip on the oh-shit-handle above the door and was glaring at me. “What the hell, Caleb?”

  “Sorry!” I said. “I was…I wasn’t paying attention to the road.”

  “No shit.”

  I took a deep breath. “Albert is your baby’s father?”

  Her mouth went flat and she swallowed. Then nodded.

  “Fuck.”

  She looked away.

  My mouth opened and closed several times as I struggled to find words. Albert had always been a domineering bastard and seriously overprotective of Sarah…not overprotective, over-controlling. Someone who was overprotective didn’t rape you. Assuming that it had been…of course it had. I couldn’t ask that. Dammit, what the hell could I say that would help? ‘Are you okay’ was so not enough.

  “That…did he hurt you?” Fuck that dinner I’d intruded on suddenly held a whole lot of new meaning. He’d intended it to be romantic and celebrate his baby, not his grandchild. Oh God that man was…I was going to hurt him so bad.

  Green fire flickered over my knuckles. I paid it no mind.

  Sarah let out a little bark of laughter. “Sort of. No. Yes. It’s complicated. He’s never liked hurting me.”

  Was she defending him?

  “I was so stupid, Caleb. I went to see him for Christmas Break. I swore I was never going back and then he called and….” She held something up. I slowed down and looked in the rearview mirror. In her fingers was the flash drive I’d seen in the office drawer when I’d been looking for a phone charger. Considering that same drawer had held the key to Caroline’s prison I could only imagine that it contained something just as horrible.

  “He’s got photos of me. Videos.”

  She didn’t need to say what kind they were.

 
; “He threatened to put them on the Internet. I could deal with those getting out. It would suck but I’d deal. I told him that before I left. I told him I wasn’t going to be his…I wasn’t doing it anymore.”

  No wonder she’d been so keen to make it work. And military service…she didn’t just want to fund her education, she wanted to defend herself.

  “Then over Christmas…he told me that it wasn’t just me on the drive.”

  I didn’t bother masking my confusion. What the hell could he have used to control her? Blackmail was only good if you cared about the secret getting out and Sarah had thrown away whatever hold he’d had on her with his recordings. My God, I found a sudden new respect for my adoptive sister.

  To know that that stuff could have been released at any day and still gone forward toward her goals. My God she was strong. She’d overcome so much. It made me realize just how pathetic I was. In a way, it was as if I hadn’t really started living until a few months ago when I’d broken my curse.

  Sarah glanced down at her sleeping mother. Whatever she was about to say, she clearly didn’t want Caroline to hear it. “You remember that thing we promised we’d never talk about?”

  There was only one thing we had promised to never talk about. That promise had been a part of a larger promise that we could talk to each other about anything else. And we had. Sarah had been my sounding board, mentor, and in an embarrassing way, my diary ever since.

  “Yeah.”

  She swallowed. “He put me up to it. He said…he promised to hurt you if I didn’t do what he said back then.” Tears slid down her cheeks. “Caleb, he recorded us.”

  I had been fourteen when the Marshals adopted me. I had only been there a few months when Sarah visited me late at night in my room. I’d had a huge crush on her and had been trying to hide it. I’d thought I was the luckiest guy in the world. She came to me three nights in a row and then stopped.

  For a week we didn’t speak. We didn’t even look at each other. It was the most awkward thing in the world. And then we’d talked about it and things had gotten better.