by Scott Tracey
“Are you done being a four-year-old who throws a tantrum when she doesn’t get her way?”
It was a quick and easy change to the atmosphere in the room. However the conversation had started, whatever Jenna had said that initiated it, now things were different. Easier. Jenna was the spoiled, snotty sister, and I was the frustrated, irritated brother. My usual role settled around my shoulders like a mantle, and already I was breathing easier.
“Did you think they were going to move us again?” I continued. “Because we’re still here, Jenna. And I can’t walk the halls at school without people staring at me. Maybe they don’t know that you infected the whole school with your weird prank, but they know it had something to do with me.”
“I thought you liked the attention,” she snarked back. “Aren’t you Mister Popular?”
“Cut it out, Jenna,” Bailey said, pen poised over her notebook. “Stop trying to pick a fight.”
Cole peeked his head out from behind the refrigerator door. “Why aren’t you yelling at Mal? He’s the one interrupting a private conversation.”
It was a slap to the face. They didn’t want me here. Just because I’d walked in the front door didn’t mean I should be privy to their conversation, that much was true. If they’d wanted me here, if this had really been some kind of intervention like the other day at school, they would have told me about it.
“Good point.” I managed to hide my thoughts behind an even tone and a hesitant smile. Deflection was always a good response. “I’ll leave you guys to it, then. Just put a list together of all my faults, huh? It’ll save you lots of time in the future.”
“No, wait.” Jenna swore under her breath, and I could feel the heated look she shot at Cole, even though I’d turned my back to them. I didn’t wait, though. It would be safer and easier outside. Away from here. Maybe I could get in my car and just drive, drive, drive until there was nothing but the memory of family in my rearview window. “Mal, wait!”
Jenna caught me at the door before I could make my exit. I should have moved faster. Then the conversation would be over and I could figure everything out by myself.
“I know it was a bitch move,” Jenna said, her voice pitched lower than normal. If this was Jenna’s attempt at an apology, it made sense. There were few things that Jenna hated more than anything, and admitting fault was at the top of the list. Jenna dealt with apologies in only one of two ways: she either wielded it like a weapon, loud and in someone’s face, or it was a warm blanket, quiet and hidden away from the rest of the world. “I was just mad, and I wasn’t thinking. It was stupid.”
This was the latter, and I didn’t know how to handle it. I was never on the receiving end of apologies like this.
“You know me, it got out of control,” she added. Jenna kept her eyes low, hair falling into her face. That wasn’t like her either. Jenna stood tall, always, but most especially when there was every reason for her to cower and bow her head. Her hand reached out like she wanted to touch me, and she looked down at it in surprise. Hesitated, and then let it drop with a shake of her head. “I thought if a couple of your new friends developed little crushes on you, it would be funny. Maybe torment you a little. It wasn’t supposed to be the whole school. But it … spread. Like a virus. And then the whole school was infected.”
I shoved my hands in my pockets, rocked on my heels. What was I supposed to do with that? Did Jenna really want forgiveness? Or was this an elaborate plan to win me over somehow? I could see her doing something like that, placing a moment of weakness down on the table as an opening bid only to collect my participation as her winnings.
“I know you’re mad, and I know you don’t want to talk to any of us, but if there’s something you have to talk about, just … ” She looked up through the fringe, studying my face, looking for something in my eyes, or tucked into my skin or streaked through my hair. “Just find someone who can listen. Please.”
I grunted, which was about as well as I could do at the moment. My head kept saying that Jenna was playing me, that this was all a game to her. That she was just manipulating me the way she manipulated everyone else.
fourteen
The Abyssals are captivated by humanity.
Their songs enslave us, but our humanity is
a fire that hypnotizes them too. In some ways
they are so very human. Dark gods of Olympus, broken until they fit our molds.
The Princes of Hell
I had days to myself after that. I went to school, I had terse yet polite conversations with Justin and the others, and I started running after school. Maybe in the spring, I’d go out for track. There were no Witchers coming to me about any problems, no siblings pressuring me to take classes I didn’t want to take. I worked on my homework in the library during last period, while they were learning all about Coven bonds and how awesome they were.
Everything went great. For exactly a week.
I dropped off my books at my locker—having finished the last little bit of my homework for the week, I didn’t have anything to take home. People talked to me as I passed in the halls, some just saying my name and nodding their heads, others stopping me long enough to have a quick conversation.
I finally made my way to my first-period class when I saw it, in the instant just before my hand brushed the doorknob, which glowed with a golden, dangerous light. My hand connected, the symbol flared against my skin, and the world dropped away around me, like a curtain cut from the tethers holding it upright.
The hallways, which had been filled with the typical excited din of an afternoon free from the tyranny of school, dropped to a hushed murmur: a play on opening night. The longer I listened, the longer it faded until there was nothing but me.
The hall became grand, polished ivory and onyx tiles beneath my feet, columns of forest green and inlaid with gold and emeralds that held the ceiling back. They were impossibly wide, hundreds of feet across, a ballroom instead of a hallway. And when I walked into the classroom, I expected to find something like desks and knowledge. Instead, I found … a toy shop. Santa’s toy shop, if I was to be exact.
Everything was red and green, filigreed and overwrought. Explosions of color, even the doorknob was hideously intricate. The garbage can was molded out of fleur-de-lis, the light switch was a chain wrapped in ribbons, complete with a bell.
And the Prince, somehow understated, sitting on the bookshelf near the wall. Watching. Waiting.
It was like before, the way my eyes hungered to break him down into pieces and parts, to file them away as corrupted memories that would never be able to be played back. But I didn’t care. I dropped my bag at the door and stared.
The silence gave me time for my mind to clear, to cast off the wonder like spiderwebs and remember where I was. Well, not exactly where I was, but who I was with. An Abyssal Prince, a denizen of Hell. A creature that lived a life of eternal torment and deconstruction, a demon whose very presence broke down the walls of reality around it.
“I resent that implication,” his voice trilled.
“What?”
He looked disappointed, but not terribly so. The emotion was shrugged off his face easily enough, like water off a raincoat. Were the things he felt even real? Or were they just copies of real emotions, like a cell phone picture of a priceless piece of art. It wasn’t the same thing by half. “Though I am cousin to the crawling chaos you call demons, I am nothing like them. Such an insinuation is offensive.”
“You can read my mind?”
His neck popped in a series of clicks as it twisted to one side like a bird. He studied me in silence for a moment. “If you wanted to keep your thoughts private,” he finally offered, “then perhaps you should hide them better. They dance behind your eyes like fireflies; how can I not be dazzled by their spark?”
I crossed the room, for a moment staving off the urge to shudder, and then finally giving in
to it. The idea that he was in my head. Inside my mind. Again.
After Bailey had been infected by one of them, she’d spread the infection to us. It was slow at first, a pressure in the back of my head like a headache that was waiting for the sun before it was able to blossom. Each of us was abducted inside our own minds, tucked away behind locked doors and chains where we could see out, but we had no control.
The idea that there was something in my head—something that could control me—was something I tried very hard not to think about. I had enough trouble trying to control my own life. To have that wrested completely away from me, and there was nothing I could do to stop it—
“Send me back.”
The Prince looked startled, worry radiating out from him like a spotlight. He reached out a hand in supplication, and for the first time I took in a detail I hadn’t seen before. A ring, carved out of silver with a smoky gray stone across the top. “Have I done something to offend, my human?”
His words claimed me. I shook my head, anger surging inside of me that kept the rush of his emotions at a distance. I was my only master. No one else: not Illana Bryer, not Moonset and all their plans, and certainly not the demon standing in front me.
Stay out of my head. You have no right. You are not welcome, never welcome. My mind. Mine.
The Prince flinched and pulled his hand back. He didn’t seem to move at all, and yet one moment he was seated and the next he was dancing. No, he was walking. Well, he was walking and he moved like dancing, like there was a pattern and steps he was following, and they just happened to bring him closer to me.
“Are you going to try to kill me?” I demanded, crossing my arms in front of my chest. “Because you should know that doesn’t tend to work out for people.”
His expression was hesitant, and I could tell he wanted to smile, but he refrained. Which was good because I don’t know what I would have done. “I know all sorts of things about what your bond can do, little human. The question that hangs between us, though, is how much do you know?”
It was an open secret that Moonset had experimented upon us. That our Coven bond was … unique. But how would a creature straight out of Hell know about that?
“There’s the Coven bond,” I said, only a little uncertain, “and then something else. Another layer.”
“Many layers,” the Prince corrected, and now he did smile. “They were quite crafty, your parents. Never have I seen a darkbond crafted in such a way. You should be proud. There are those in the Abyss who would put you in beautiful bone cages and stroke your head when you sang, all for want of your vicissitudes.”
“A darkbond.” I kept my voice neutral, happy at least so my words didn’t broadcast my feelings the way the Prince’s seemed to.
The Prince hummed a few notes, and the walls lit up and became transparent crystal. He walked to one side of the room and stood at the edge, his feet brushing up against the glass. Colored lights moved beneath him, each a different shade and blinking with its own unique pulse. Fiery reds that were as slow as turtles, and brilliant viridians that were hummingbird fast. As many colors as there were colors, and as many speeds as there was speed.
His song continued, light and airy, spilling from his mouth with a presence that made it somehow more. It wasn’t just a song, it was life and reality and nature all rolled up into one. There was a power to that voice, and though I could hear an encroaching finality laced between the notes, a song like that of universes collapsing, I didn’t care. I would listen to that song forever if I could.
But soon it faded, and the lights below glowed just a bit darker. “Better to ask what it means to be one of the darkbound. To find yourself free from fate, to know that there is a place where you will always be cherished and safe. It is the greatest of honors and the sweetest of songs. Imagine your life, where all your cares and whims are cared for by another. Where you exist and serve in bliss. Where one controls many.” A sour note escaped the Prince’s mouth, then, that shattered the glass walls in an instant. The room around us shook and shattered, the walls splitting apart so that airy columns of green and gold became rust and steel, dripping red and hanging chains. Sulfur in the air and smoke in my eyes. From heaven to hell in an instant. “And all because your fathers stole something that did not belong to them.”
“I—I don’t understand what you’re talking about.” Moonset had done something, of course they had. This wasn’t the first time something had come for us because of what our parents had done.
“You people call magic a language,” the Prince sneered, and I crumbled to my feet at the contempt in his voice. My body shook with grief and despair, rocked beneath the wake of my own misery, summoned up by his ire. It was easy to hate myself, easy to hate what I was and where I’d come from. No one else would ever be able to hate me in all the ways I already hated me. “But you forget it’s just a language. Just one. You think yours is the only one that’s holy. Maleficia may be dark, but this world is a bottle of equal parts, containing just as much darkness as it does light.”
With every word, with every ounce of spite, I curled up tighter and tighter, until I could not possibly make myself any smaller. And then, only then, did I start to cry, succumbing to my flaws. I hate them because of what they did to me. I hate myself for not being strong enough to break free. I hate that I can only eat if someone’s watching. I hate that I always have to pretend, always have to hide behind the calm. I have a fate I can’t control, and I’m going to drown someday.
“Zealots, the lot of you. So many languages: Necromancy, the songs of Evanescent, the shrieks of Maleficia. Your parents stole what they could not barter for, and killed for what they could not steal. I have waited for this time, Malcolm Denton. They ripped the secrets of the darkbond from my sister’s mouth before they slit her throat. And then swaddled their children up in stolen magic. You will make reparation for what was taken from me.”
There were books about Moonset, about what they’d been like before they’d formed a cult and turned into terrorists. Books that asked “where did they go wrong.” Most people agreed it started with the Abyssal Prince when they were in high school. One had escaped, or been released. Sherrod, Justin’s father, and my own were responsible for alerting the adults, but everyone agreed that it was Robert Cooper and his coven Eventide that ended the threat.
At least until Justin found out the truth. The Abyssals in the fireplace had claimed a different story. That it was Moonset, not Eventide, that saved the day. But letting people remember that story would only confuse the narrative that Moonset was destined for a dark end. They’d covered it up, and if it hadn’t been for the five of us, that story might have stayed.
“Your … sister,” I said, trying to think. Trying to remember her name. “Kore?”
The Prince snarled, and I saw how beautiful could become a weapon. It hammered at me, each line on his face, the rage-contorted muscles and the unquenchable fire in its eyes. I could lose myself in that face, swallowed up in emotions that would shred me to pieces and leave me empty and dull while he could do anything he wanted to me.
The Prince looked away first, and the fascination lifted. I was breathing heavy, panting really, and it unnerved me. I was not myself around the Prince—the more I looked at him, the more I fell by the wayside. Determination coursed through me, though it was fickle and thin, like promises on paper.
A switched flipped, and the Prince was in control of himself once more. “That is why you are here. You will be my hand in this world. You will find the truth where it lies buried in a potter’s grave, and bring it to me.”
I stayed silent, and kept my gaze elsewhere. I refused to bow my head and look at the floor, though, so instead I focused on the grime-crusted ceiling.
“I have chosen you, Malcolm. There are few honors as great as this. Tell the tale of my sister’s demise. Bring me the truth, bring me her bones, and I shall tie a bow arou
nd your heart that will make all ills well. If you would ask, I would give you worlds undreamt, but I don’t need to.” He leaned forward then, his hand sloped towards my face like he wished to caress my cheek, but he never touched me. I looked away, even though my body leaned to the side after his hand was gone, leaning into that phantom touch. “I already know what your heart desires most.”
“What?”
“Freedom.” A simple word that rang with hope and promise. Feelings of possibility and closure flooded through me, and he didn’t have to explain. I knew. He could free me from the Coven bond. He could free me from the darkbond. And whatever other bonds our parents had laid over us, tying us tighter than fate should ever allow.
“How—how do I know that you can really do this? How do I know you’re not lying to me?”
“I may wear a different face and speak a different tongue, but I am still bound by ancient laws. If I say it thrice, it cannot be construed as false. Bring my sister’s killer to me, and I will unravel the bonds laid upon you. Bring her body to me, and I will free you from the chains that trap you. Bring me my vengeance, and I will make it so that no man may claim your soul again.”
Before, his words had made me drown in emotions that were as vast as an ocean, but this was like a shiver and a promise up my spine, reaching out and tugging on every bit of hair on my skin until they all stood straight as soldiers. These words had a weight I could almost touch, and hold and lay down against.
To be free of Moonset’s curse upon us—what the Prince called the darkbond. Freedom from it, and from the Coven bond. He was right; he knew what I wanted more than anything.
Would I really help him?
fifteen
During the day, they ran with different crowds. Emily was a cheerleader, Diana the brilliant rebel, Cyrus the most popular, and Sherrod the all-star. But once the day let out, they always came together.
Moonset: A Dark Legacy
