Darkbound

by Scott Tracey

  Woodbury, Minnesota

  Copyright Information

  Darkbound: The Legacy of Moonset, Book 2 © 2014 by Scott Tracey.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Cover models used for illustrative purposes only and may not endorse or represent the book’s subject.

  First e-book edition © 2014

  E-book ISBN: 9780738739373

  Book design by Bob Gaul

  Cover design by Kevin R. Brown

  Cover illustration: Aaron Goodman

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  one

  It is 100 years since our children left.

  Oldest Written Records from the

  Hamelin Town Chronicles (1384 A.D.)

  I was finally back in school, after a week of security protocols and constant supervision, and now there was a sorority girl trying desperately to piss me off. Now, instead of just one blowoff class about magical theory, the five of us had two: one before lunch and the other at the end of the day.

  Kelly was barely older than us, a recent college graduate who split her time with the Witchers between teaching and babysitting duties that came with being Cole and Bailey’s guardian. She smoothed her hair back every time she got nervous, until her hands spent more time in her hair than on the podium she stood behind.

  “Malcolm? What do you think about the Coven bond?”

  Five pairs of eyes turned to me. I’d taken up a spot in the back of the room where I could slump down in my seat and work on the Civics essay that was due on Friday. Nobody but me was concerned about all the school we’d missed after nearly getting possessed or murdered a few weeks ago. The others were still riding high on this new curriculum.

  Somehow Justin had talked the Congress into actually giving a damn about us. He had that way about him sometimes. It’s the only reason I was here right now. He made me promise to show up, but he couldn’t make me participate.

  They waited. Jenna rolled her eyes. Bailey and Cole looked nervous, and Justin calm but worried.

  Kelly seemed desperate to be the kind of teacher she thought we needed. I’d seen her in the halls that first day, the bottled blonde with the dark eyes and California tan. None of the guardians ever showed up at the school, so at first I didn’t recognize her. She’d changed from the comfortable, casual look, opting instead for something better suited to a private school. Her discomfort was obvious.

  If I was a nicer person, I’d smile at her. Give her a silent moment of reassurance. I knew that, aesthetically, she found me attractive. When guys checked out girls, they were obnoxious about it. Active. There was a running commentary, obvious gestures, or catcalls: ogling by the ignorant. But girls were sly predators of appreciation. They waited until they were unobserved before polite smiles turned hungry, and casual eyes devoured. Kelly always looked at me with hungry eyes.

  Girls have looked at me like that since I was twelve or thirteen. I’d become immune by this point. Kelly wasn’t much of an authority figure, but she wouldn’t have been the first to stare too long.

  We were wrangled in a small classroom in the fringes of the school, a room that I was pretty sure had only been storage a few weeks ago. Whipping up a new class in the middle of the semester meant scraping the bottom of the barrel, I guessed. The walls were a stark, chipped gray, plaster grooved away by something small, like a screwdriver or a pair of scissors.

  It was all such a joke. Didn’t any of them realize it? The Congress, suddenly giving a crap about the five of us. Like they’d really just turned over a new leaf and now we were all besties. I couldn’t believe I was the only one who was skeptical.

  Justin wanted me to wake up and smell the magic. To give our latest fresh start a chance. Like it was okay that we’d been used as bait, that we could have died, all so the adults surrounding us could smoke out a warlock. In exchange, now we would be taught magic like the rest of the kids our age.

  It was remarkable how quickly Justin and the others fell in line after that. All it took was a little attention, and all four of them were eager puppies who would do anything they were told.

  I was the lone holdout. I didn’t want anything to do with Illana Bryer’s plans for us. But they didn’t see it. All they saw was getting everything they’d ever wanted. Nevermind that it was the last thing I wanted. They didn’t understand me. They never had.

  How did I feel about the Coven bond? Or how did I feel about this class? Coven Bonds for Dummies. “I … think this is a waste of time,” I said finally. Jenna snorted, because of course she had to make her opinion known immediately. “Why does it even matter what I think?”

  People fantasized about doing what I could do. About being able to bend the world to their whims. Witches. Magic. Power. I fantasized about a senior year unmarred by devastation and changing schools, where I spent all one hundred eighty days in the same building. With friends who preferred sneaking beers and watching the game to sneaking spells and toying with chaotic forces.

  All I wanted was one day without magic. Was that really too much to ask?

  I sat up, grunted when my knees slapped against the metal bar underneath my desk. What do I think about the Coven bond? A few weeks ago, it had been the Coven bond that had nearly gotten all of us killed. One of us had been infected by Maleficia, dark magic, and the infection had spread into all of us like we were a single organism being brought down by a virus.

  Everyone knew the saying “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” What we didn’t know was that it had been a witch who had first coined that phrase. And she’d been talking about the Coven bond. The idea that our lives weren’t really our own had never been more clear. I could live my entire life on the straight and narrow, and one of the others could destroy me in a matter of minutes. They were my biggest threat, and my biggest weakness rolled up into one.

  They said that was how Moonset devolved. That when Justin and Jenna’s dad snapped, his invocations to the Abyss corrupted his entire Coven. It took years to put them down, and along the way they’d murdered thousands of people, stolen grimoires and priceless artifacts that were never recovered, and committed acts of terrorism that had struck more than just the mag
ical world. Moonset didn’t care which terrorist groups took credit for their attacks, they encouraged it. The world was happy to speculate in its ignorance.

  All because one member had been weak and succumbed to the dark power of Maleficia, of the Abyss itself. Now our parents were all dead—executed—and we lived in their shadows. One mistake was all we could afford. One mistake might even be too many.

  Bailey turned away, ducked her head in shame. She’d been our weak link, but it wasn’t her fault. The darkness slipped in while her guard was down, after exhausting herself trying to do the right thing and save innocents. She blamed herself. Our entire Coven could have been taken, and all that strain weighed heavily on her. Since we’d been saved, Bailey had withdrawn, prone to nerves and more apprehension than I’d ever seen out of her.

  Being in a Coven meant you could do things other witches couldn’t. You had strengths they didn’t. And you had other people to rely on when there was trouble. But that’s not all it meant. It meant that you were in the line of fire more often. You had no choice but to deal with the bickering between Coven mates. You were shackled to other people for the rest of your life. Their weaknesses were your weaknesses. Forever. They could manipulate your friends in order to manipulate you.

  And those were just the normal problems I had to deal with.

  “And why do you think that?” Kelly asked.

  “Don’t bother asking him.” Jenna reclined back in her chair, hands tangled in her hair as she shook it out. “Malcolm hates everything.”

  No, I just hate the things you like. I decided not to say it. There was no point in fighting with Jenna. She and I never agreed on anything, but this was something we worked extra hard at disagreeing on. Jenna thought magic would solve all her problems. She hated the idea that anyone else had the authority to tell her what kinds of magic she could or couldn’t use.

  I could be honest. Tell them everything I was thinking. But what was the point? Jenna would play the wounded princess. Cole would sulk. Bailey would probably cry. Justin would get that constipated look he got when trying to mediate, even when he’d already chosen a side.

  I chose to be silent. To wait it out. Kelly would get bored eventually, and she’d learn not to call on me soon enough. Focus on the others who wanted to be here.

  She stared me down at first, probably assuming I’d crack sooner or later. “Malcolm?” she prompted. Like I’d forgotten to speak.

  I pulled out my mp3 player and popped in one of the earbuds. Only one, to maintain the pretense that I cared about this class. Cared about Coven bonding.

  “These lessons are only going to work if all of you are committed,” Kelly continued. It was ironic that Kelly was pulling double duty. At home, she was both a guardian and a jailer. And now she filled the same role at school. Charged with putting us down if we gave them even a whiff of dark magic. “The Coven bond works by finding the common ground you all share, and tapping into it. Without that basis, these lessons won’t do anything but waste your time.”

  I slowly, insolently, stared her down as I slid the second earbud in and let the rest of the class blur into a montage set to industrial rock. Jenna’s shoulders squared in front of me, and even though she never once turned around, I knew that all her focus was on me.

  I sighed. It had been a few weeks since our last big blow up. I guess we were due.

  Two

  The Coven bond has been central to magic

  since the beginning. Covens are how we know

  we are meant for something more. That there

  is a grand design that we are all a part of.

  Coventry in the 21st Century

  Winter in New York was underrated I thought as I focused on the window instead of the lecture. Snow days were a luxury you didn’t get in the far south, where it snowed once if you were lucky. This was the first time in a few years we’d gotten a real East Coast winter.

  I didn’t mind the snow at all. It might have been nice not to be the only one driving in it, since Justin and Jenna weren’t allowed to drive, and Bailey and Cole were still too young. But there was still something to be said for the snowy, quaint town we called home. For now. Carrow Mill was the perfect small town nexus—tiny in itself, but ten minutes in any direction led to a city three times its size. Cities that held all the amenities Carrow Mill lacked.

  I kept my focus on the outside because it was infinitely better than the brewing tension inside the classroom. I’m sure the others were eager and attentive, but even still I knew that I was a stone in their shoe they just couldn’t shake. Even if they wanted to ignore me, I was there in the back of the room. Insolent. Ruining everything. I knew they were just biding their time until class was over.

  Until the real lesson could begin.

  I kept an eye on my watch, but otherwise let the rest of the room fade out around me. There was still too much going on today: one more class with Justin, then our afternoon lesson, and an excruciating ride home before I could escape them and be free for the rest of the day.

  Ten minutes before the bell, movement in the corner of my eyes made me look up and freeze. The tension in the room was more apparent, even though we were one person short. Kelly was gone, and Cole had shut the door behind her.

  The four of them watched me each in their own peculiar way. To Cole, I was like a science experiment he thought might explode. Jenna, like something she stepped in. Bailey, something that broke her heart. And Justin, like I was a showdown he was resigned to lose.

  I sighed, pulled the music from my ears and stood up.

  Of course Jenna was the first to start. She prowled across the room until she was on the other side of my desk, her dark eyes narrowed.

  “It’s simple,” she said, tapping her nails against the laminated desktop. Her nail polish was royal purple, the exact shade of her top. How Jenna had been elected to lead the intervention, I didn’t know. “If you screw this up, I’m going to kill you.”

  The other three alternated who looked at me, and who looked away. Justin shifted closer to the door, matching Cole on the other side. They acted like I was a wild animal, and any sudden movements might spook me out of the room entirely. If only it were that easy.

  “Come on, Mal,” Bailey said softly from my left, staring with the baby deer eyes that might have worked a few months ago. But not now. “We need this.” Ever since Luca’s attack, Bailey grew quieter, day by day, fading into the corners. Was I the only one who noticed?

  Two weeks ago, the five of us were subdued and attacked. Luca had invoked Maleficia and painted the town with Moonset’s symbol. A circle shaded except for a crescent moon of white, with six curving rays like a sun. It had been Moonset’s marker during the war, and Luca’s calling card fifteen years later. He’d brought us here and hoped to sacrifice us to his masters in the Abyss. Only Justin was able to fight back—we owed him our lives. Later that night had come a second attack, just as unexpected, and again Justin fought for the rest of us.

  Part of me wished that he had lost. One of them. Maybe both. It was hard to say. He’d faced off against a warlock who had summoned a group of monsters straight from Hell—monsters who tried to possess us and take our magic for themselves. Then he fought the witches who were supposed to be looking out for us—the government that used us as bait, as sacrifices, as tools. They wanted to lock us up and throw away the key.

  They thought we were dangerous. We were the children of Moonset. There wasn’t a witch alive who didn’t know about Moonset’s crimes. Most couldn’t help but wonder: how far had the apples fallen from the tree? My father had named me Malcolm, and in Spanish, “Mal” meant bad. It was a little on the nose as far as I was concerned. But no one had ever asked me what I thought.

  “We don’t need this,” I snapped. Bailey winced at my tone. “Are you all insane? They used us as bait and hoped Luca would kill us. And now you want to cozy up to them because t
hey’re promising to teach you some scraps?”

  “They want to teach us to protect ourselves,” Cole chimed in, parroting words that Jenna had most likely repeated several times before. He even matched her tone—part disdain, part amusement. “So that what happened never happens again.”

  “And you’re just going to trust that that’s the truth?” I asked, arching an eyebrow at Jenna. This wasn’t really four against one. It was Jenna versus me, the same as it always was. Justin might step up to her when she went over the edge, but when it came to magical power, they had the same hunger. Feast or famine, it put us all in danger either way.

  She pursed her lips and shook her hair out again, the helmet before battle. “That doesn’t matter,” she said. “We protect ourselves. You know that’s the only way.”

  There were certain rules we’d come to live by. Some were more important than others, but two were particularly

  sacrosanct. The first: we could only ever rely on ourselves. The second: adults couldn’t be trusted. I agreed with the second wholeheartedly, but I was an island compared to the others: the only person I could rely on was me.

  But now it seemed like the rules had changed, and all it had taken was for Jenna to fake a change of heart. The adults saw contrition and it had soothed away seventeen years of bad behavior and outrageous stunts. It really made me wonder who was more naïve: Jenna, who thought the adults were doing this to help us; or the adults, who thought that Jenna would use her power responsibly.

  Either way, I wanted no part in it. But there was only so far I could go. The albatross was never far.

  The issue at hand was the bond that chained all of us together.

  Our coven bond was … unconventional. Most bonds form in high school, sometimes in college. Ours was prenatal, or something close to it. Moonset had learned ways of manipulating the Coven bond, and ours had peculiarities.

  Normal covens could come together or move apart as they wished. Their bonds would stretch from one side of the planet to the other. But ours was not made out of elastic, it was forged out of steel chains.