Darkbound

by Scott Tracey

  “Macbeth killed his father and was in turn killed by Malcolm. You are a prisoner to both name and history.” He pulled one knee up and rested his cheek on it, looking to the side now instead of straight at me. “And yet, I miss it.” The more he talked, the more his words buzzed in my ears and kept me from thinking too clearly. I just wanted to talk to him, right? There was no reason not to talk. Just talk.

  “But you just said that names are cages.”

  “Not all cages are infinitesimal, you know. Some are as large as worlds. But even still, one shouldn’t forget that a cage is still a cage.”

  “Do you have a name?” I asked again, this time more delicate.

  He shook his head, but still wouldn’t look up at me. I almost missed it. His looks were a sharp knife that cut at me, kept me off my game, but when they were hidden from me it was an ache in my mind, a desire my eyes held independent of the rest of my body. They wanted to keep looking on him, feasting on the awkward, alien beauty of the Prince, even if I knew it was wrong.

  You wouldn’t be so calm if he looked like one of the wraiths that attacked Justin. It was true. I knew enough about looks—my own got thrown into the mix often enough—that I knew I was being stupid. I certainly couldn’t trust this … demon, just because he had a pretty face. And yet I still was. I couldn’t help it.

  “I don’t blame you,” he said. “I know you think of me as a monster. But I don’t feel like one. Do you think that makes a difference?”

  A strange thrill arced through my veins. My body was hot, all of the sudden. So hot, sweltering, smiling. “It matters what I think?” That he would think of me like that, the one who never mattered, the outcast even among the outcasts. That he would care what I think. How had I gotten so lucky?

  The creature smiled, a tentative, shaky sort of smile. Like it would fall away at any moment and reveal the crushing emotion that was hiding behind it. Anger, contempt, despair. Whatever it was, it was certainly sharp and deep. “All the difference in the world. In all the worlds.”

  “Tell me your name,” I promised, “and I’ll tell you what I think of you.”

  The smile was brushed away by frustration. His eyes closed, his mouth clenched in on itself until it all but vanished, and there was a glistening sparkle that welled up underneath violet eyelashes. “I can’t remember,” he whispered harshly in reply. “There are no names in my home. No need to call out to your brothers, for they cannot hear you. We are bound at the bottom of a chasm that spans nearly the whole of creation. Even though the darkness has broken us and made us dark reflections, we will always be foreign. We are all strangers in the Abyss.”

  Justin had told us the story of the Abyssal Princes, creatures born of Faerie, lords and ladies of chaos. Further back than the written word, the Faerie lords had warred against the armies of the Abyss—of Hell—and lost. And for the rest of their existence, they would owe a tithe of a soul every seven years. When they failed to produce a human soul, one of their own was taken. The Abyssal Princes was what becomes of a Faerie trapped in the Abyss. Changed and twisted until it became a demon itself.

  His eyes grew faraway. “I remember pain. I remember screaming. Even those are ageless memories of long-dead dreams. I am a shadow of a demon’s nighttime sigh. My brothers gave up much for me.” One single tear slid off his face and started to fall only to arrest itself in the air, inches from the Prince’s face. “I fear they will never understand the failure I have become.”

  Tears pooled in my eyes, rolled down my cheeks as

  sorrow and regret washed through me, a sieve to collect emotions too grand for one creature to hold on to by himself. “Who would ever call you a failure?”

  A self-conscious twist of the lips. “I still feel, young one. Longing for things I shouldn’t, desiring the fruits forbidden to me. My heart’s song is a wish to be anything other than what I am.” He reached out, touched the tip of his too-long fingers to the teardrop that hovered in front of him. “It must be a glorious thing, to be mortal. To love, and burn brightly, and let yourself be ravaged by passions and consumed by joys.”

  He finally looked up at me again, and I felt myself swallowing back my own feelings. “You know what I am, don’t you?” he asked. I nodded, but couldn’t trust myself to speak. “My people warred against Hell and lost. Only seven times have we failed to meet the tithe. I was the second they claimed. The second to break. Do you want to know why?”

  He didn’t wait for my nod this time, as though he already knew my interest was inevitable. He was right. “I sang a song during the war that was so painful, so devastating, that I brought the armies of Hell to their knees. Only once have the Hellborn ever shed tears, my human, and they have never, ever forgotten.” Another sad smile. “My threnody, my destruction, was a discordant scream that rippled through the walls of the Pit like a soothing balm. My unraveling was particularly brutal. I’m told that the Abyss itself smiled that day.”

  “That … is horrible,” I said, because I had no better way of explaining myself.

  “Horrible is just a word,” the Prince returned quietly.

  He reached for me then, and I leaned forward, eager to feel his fingers upon my face, but something changed. Gravity fell away, the floor puddled at my feet, and I stumbled down into a chasm of darkness.

  I woke up slumped against the side of the stage, one hand tucked up behind my head like a pillow. The skin in my hands was tight, reddened and swollen although there was no sign of the symbol burned into my skin. I stood up immediately, shoving back the curtain, but the symbol I’d seen there, the symbol I’d touched, was gone.

  Holy shit, that was an Abyssal Prince. I survived an encounter with one of the Princes.

  I slumped back down, waiting for that thought to make sense. My workout high was gone, vacated the premises, and the only thing remaining was a foggy memory of exhaustion. The auditorium looked the way it should be, the real-world version of itself. It was still empty, and I was alone again. But was it real? Or was it just a dream?

  My head was swimming, wrung out and emptied in a way I had never felt before. When the Prince spoke, feelings washed through me. Now that they were gone, my body felt stretched out and pushed too far, like a particularly rough workout. If Justin was here, he would want to know everything. He’d see this as another opportunity to go off on his own and put the rest of us in danger. That it was our responsibility.

  But still, if I didn’t tell him, it was at least as bad as what they’d already done to me. Lies, betrayal. He may have gone about it the wrong way, but Justin’s heart was always in the right place.

  “Screw that,” I muttered as I scrolled through the contacts in my phone log and clicked on Illana’s name.

  thirteen

  The magic of the witches is the only true magic amidst the darkness. Maleficia, Necromancy, Evanescence: monstrous birthrights for our monstrous counterparts. Our magic is the

  only thing that can stand against them.

  The Book of Hours

  There was a triumvirate waiting for me back at home. Illana had told me to leave school immediately, and of course, tell no one where I was going.

  She was at the head of the table with Quinn and Nick flanked on either side. None of them said anything as I walked in. This time, instead of pretending like she wasn’t there as I bustled around the house, I dropped off my bag and looked back towards the kitchen.

  “I … coffee?” My brain was still a little foggy, but I was pretty sure I was asking permission in my own house. There is definitely something wrong with me.

  Illana nodded her head graciously. I walked back into the kitchen, found a fresh pot of coffee already brewed and waiting for me like they’d already anticipated I would need something. But when I reached for a cup out of the cabinet, I saw my hands shaking for the first time. It slipped out of my grip, and would have probably shattered on the floor if not for the t
imely intervention of Quinn.

  “I’ll get it,” he said, setting the cup down on the counter. “Black, right?” I nodded. “When’s the last time you ate, Mal? Do you want something?”

  My stomach chose that moment to rebel. I closed my eyes, feeling the shame rising up again. That was all I did anymore. Felt ashamed for the things I couldn’t control. Just like I couldn’t control this.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” Quinn whispered, glancing over my shoulder. “You’re safe now. Come on, go have a seat. I’ll fix you a sandwich.”

  As much as I wanted to protest that I didn’t want a sandwich (an extra two miles on tonight’s run) my stomach wouldn’t be denied. The blood rushed from my head to my gut, and I found myself walking back into the dining room and taking my seat at the table. Quinn followed behind me, deposited the coffee in front of me. Nick and Illana were pretending not to notice me, but when my head dropped I could feel their eyes on me. Judging me.

  I didn’t reach for the coffee cup again, terrified of what would happen if I saw my hands shaking again. Everything’s spinning away. Spinning and rolling and off on its own. My shirt clung to my skin, sticky with sweat and stinking of fear that hadn’t reared its head until I came into this room. Until I was fully faced with what had happened this morning.

  A Prince came to talk to me. To talk. Like we were friends. A wraith nearly killed Justin and Jenna, and I get the chatty, pretty boy demon. But thinking back, all I could remember of the Prince was a silvery blur in my mind. No impression had stuck, he was just a placeholder of feelings I couldn’t explain and sensations that had hollowed me out. I could have died, and instead I’m having a breakdown. The thought made me laugh. And once I started, I couldn’t stop.

  “He’ll be fine,” Illana said crisply as I looked up, and saw Nick half out of his chair. “It’s not exactly a trauma, but it is traumatic in its own way.” She leaned forward, fixing her clasped hands over her knee. There was nothing of the harsh, knife-like woman I’d come to know. She smiled, her eyes sad but sincere. “It becomes easier, Malcolm. Take your time. Get yourself together as best you can. Then tell us what happened.”

  The plate being set down in front of me made me jump, the contrast in sound from Illana’s soothing tone. Who even knew that Illana had a soothing tone? Justin would never believe it. Justin. I looked up at Quinn immediately, but the words tangled on my tongue. “They … it … what … ”

  “Everyone else is fine,” Quinn confirmed. “We’ve got people keeping an eye on them. The creature didn’t try to make contact with anyone else.”

  Just me then. I nodded gratefully and then looked down at the sandwich. I devoured it with single-minded purpose, barely chewing before the entire thing was gone and there were only crumbs between my fingers.

  I tested the coffee, taking only a small sip. Hot, but the burning sensation down my throat wasn’t because of the temperature. I sniffed the cup, then shifted towards Quinn. Illana was the one who answered, though. “A bit of Irish whiskey to help calm the nerves. Drink up. There is still much to be decided today.”

  None of my siblings were big drinkers. Lowered inhibitions meant the possibility that someone slipped up, that spells were cast when they shouldn’t. Now, though, I downed the rest of the cup gratefully, feeling the burn down my throat and settling into my stomach.

  “That’s a good boy,” Illana hummed. “Now when you’re ready, tell us everything that happened.”

  It was harder than it sounded. Once I started, I couldn’t find a single thread to follow through to the end. My thoughts were scattered, broken things. Memories were disjointed and didn’t fit properly together. I told them first what the thrones looked like, then followed it up with the Prince’s talk about being human. Then jumped back to the beginning, and talked about the glowing symbol on the stage.

  The more I talked, the more I couldn’t hold it in, but I couldn’t make my brain focus long enough to put the pieces in order. Finally, I stopped, mid-sentence, and looked up at the three of them. Their faces had gotten darker and more grim the longer I talked. “What’s wrong with me.”

  Nick leaned back in his chair, thoughtful and relaxed. None of this bothered him in the slightest, and I clung to that. To them, this was normal. They would make sense of it. They would take control and stop it from ever happening again. “An Abyssal is big, metaphorically speaking. It’s a lot to take in. It’s not unusual to have troubles after it’s over. You know how some people go through a trauma, and they suffer PTSD after? It’s like that. Sometimes it takes the mind awhile to condition itself. To put what happened into a context that makes sense.”

  “But this is normal,” I pressed. “I’m not going crazy?”

  “Of course you aren’t crazy,” Illana spat. “Don’t be absurd. Do you know how many people have knowingly met an Abyssal Prince and lived to speak about it?” She held out a hand, took away two of the fingers. “Three that we know about, including yourself. It is rare for one of them to escape, despite their numbers. Rarer still for them to appear to humans.”

  Despite their numbers. “Seven,” I mumbled.

  Illana stared at me. “What was that, child?”

  “Seven,” I repeated. “There are only seven. That’s what he said. That his people had only failed to pay the tithe seven times. He was the second taken. Second of seven.”

  A look passed between the three of them, one I didn’t know how to interpret. Justin was better at that than I was. Somewhere along the way my hands had stilled—whether from the coffee, the alcohol, the sandwich, or the calm itself. The way they were all so quiet in between words, giving me moments and time to collect myself. My thoughts started to come together, organized and filed away in ways that made sense. Illana was right. It only took time.

  I took a deep breath. The first time I’d felt like myself since walking away from the auditorium. “Can you stop him? Kill him?”

  Illana inclined an eyebrow, her eyes careful as they regarded me. I wished I knew what she was thinking. “Perhaps,” she said, making the word sound like a finality. “They are elusive creatures, the Abyssals. No doubt this one has found somewhere to hide, to disappear in plain sight.”

  There was a discomfort in the room that I didn’t pick up on first. But Quinn scowled and Nick squirmed in his chair, and then I knew. “You still want me to be bait.”

  “What I want,” she stressed, “is that you understand your place. For you to want to help.”

  If you help, a traitorous voice inside me whispered, you’ll get to see him again. As bad as it had been, there was something about the Prince that confused me. They called him a monster, he called himself a monster, but he seemed so sad. Lost.

  They all stared at me and waited for my response. Illana had a way of using her stillness as a weapon to club and batter until she got the answer she wanted. It was there, tucked between the clasp of her hands, there in the sharpshooter-

  narrowed focus of the eyes. In the way she was simultaneously leaning forward and yet completely at ease in her chair. It was like she wasn’t waiting for my response at all. I was the one waiting on her reaction to whatever it was I would say next.

  “I won’t,” I said finally, my heart thudding painfully in my chest. “I don’t want any part of it.” The lie burned a blistering score through me, but I grabbed hold of the goal, which was exactly the opposite of what she was asking. A normal life. Not a life filled with spells and Princes. “I did my part. I told you what’s going on. Now I want you to leave me and the others out of it. Last time this happened, we almost died.”

  “The Abyssal came to you. We did not set any of this into motion.” Illana lifted her hands, steepled the finger like a gun, and watched me closely. “But ask yourself, who will bear the responsibility this time if you walk away now? If someone dies, and you do nothing, how responsible are you?”

  The woman was unbelievable. This was
not my life. This was not my world. “Go to hell,” I spat. I needed air. I needed to be anywhere but here.

  “You don’t see it?” Jenna’s voice carried through the front door. Guess they’d cut school too. I hesitated on Justin’s porch—I thought maybe I could hide out in the living room, watch some television until Illana and the others left my house. But Jenna’s serious tone caught me off guard. I pushed the door open quietly and heard her follow up with, “He’s in trouble.”

  “Mal’s not in trouble,” Cole said, sounding so jaded and full of scorn that I almost didn’t recognize his voice. “He’s just being a baby about Luca.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have antagonized him,” Bailey added.

  “It’s more than that,” Jenna said. I heard frustration, but that wasn’t the part that was blowing my mind. I would have expected Justin to be the one with all the concerns. But I never would have expected something like that out of Jenna. “It was a bad joke, I get it. We joke about how he’s always in a bad mood, but haven’t you noticed him lately? Something’s wrong with him. It’s eating him alive.”

  “You’re just trying to start something. Quinn told you to leave it alone,” Justin commented.

  I let the door slam shut behind me. The sudden silence coming from the kitchen was almost laughable. The four of them were spread out around the kitchen: Cole in front of the fridge, peering through its contents; Jenna, arms crossed in front of her, wary and pissed off; and Justin and Bailey, seated at the table, each of them swamped behind stacks of homework and textbooks.

  “Am I dying?” I asked, feeling some sense of normalcy. The four of them against the one of me. This was good. It was usual. “Because I don’t feel like I’m dying.”

  “Nobody’s dying,” Jenna said, a frown forming on her face. She didn’t like that I was here. She thought this was going to be private. I wasn’t meant to overhear. “Are you done being a five-year-old and ignoring the rest of us?”