Darkbound

by Scott Tracey

  What if the Prince is telling the truth, and there’s an escape clause?

  The thought haunted me so completely I was a zombie in the halls. I think people tried to talk to me once or twice, but I couldn’t concentrate enough to distinguish one voice from another. Somehow, I made my way to the office and managed to alarm someone enough that they showed me to a conference room and shut the door behind them.

  No one escaped the Coven bond. It didn’t happen. They were immutable, sturdy, and built to last. A coven didn’t sever if a member died, the bond just became smaller. Tighter. Until finally there was only one or two. There were stories that said the last members of a coven always died within hours of each other.

  “I saw him again,” I said without preamble when Illana, Quinn, and Nick came into the room. “I know what he wants.”

  Illana let out an aggravated huff when I let that one hang in the air. “We’re not concerned with what it wants, Malcolm.” The subtle reminder that what I’d seen was a monster, not a person. “We don’t negotiate. There is only one outcome to this situation.”

  They would kill him. The same way my parents killed his sister. I was sure that if the Prince was in the room, that thought would have bothered me, but outside in the real world, I knew it was the only right answer.

  “How did they manage to kill Kore? What happened back then?”

  Illana was shrewd, not stupid. “That is not something you need to know. Besides, weren’t you the one shirking away from any sort of responsibility in this manner?”

  “I just don’t like lies,” I said, raising my chin and staring her down. “For all I know, the fact that you covered up what Moonset did here had a direct hand in how they ended up where they ended.”

  Her lips thinned. “At the time, the only ones who knew about the Abyssal Prince in Carrow Mill were those who needed to know. The revised version only became public knowledge after Moonset’s crimes were exposed, no thanks to that confounded book of Adele’s.” Adele Roman had been the chief historian who’d cobbled together the rise and fall of Moonset. Nearly as famous as Illana Bryer, she’d made a career out of our parents.

  “So it wasn’t a conspiracy at all. Robert Cooper just found a way to bolster his reputation by claiming the takedown of an Abyssal Prince, and the rest of you backed him up. Because it would be too confusing for people to think that even monsters are capable of a moment or two of heroism.”

  Quinn’s face flared into an expression I hadn’t ever seen before, a kind of lumpy eyebrow shock. Or maybe his eyebrows were like air-traffic controllers, trying to wave out a signal of danger. Either way, it only lasted a moment before his face smoothed into the mask I was used to. A mask that said I was on my own.

  “Outside of this room,” Illana spoke slowly and distinctly, each word selected and released with infinite patience, “a comment like that would be considered treasonous. Especially from Cyrus Denton’s son. I understand you are under pressure, Malcolm, but you should remember where you are. Your parents did good things, once. Do not fall down the same path that led them astray.”

  “You’re right,” I said evenly, trying desperately for some of the calm that Illana had in buckets. “But I need to know what happened before.”

  “Grandmother, we’ll be alright,” Quinn said suddenly, pushing himself off of the wall. Nick didn’t say anything, although he shot his friend a quick look that Quinn ignored. “I’ll find out what Mal knows while Nick helps you set the wards around the school.” Off my look, Quinn added, “It’s come after you twice at the school. Safe to say that this is where it feels most comfortable right now.”

  Illana gave the pair of us a sharp-eyed look as she headed for the door. Whatever it was that Quinn was planning, I had the feeling that Illana knew exactly what he was up to. He waited until they were gone before he moved, but even then all he did was to pull down the window blinds, to wedge a doorstop underneath the closed door, and to dim the lights.

  “What did it offer you?”

  I flinched even though I knew better, turned away like it would somehow protect me. I exhaled. “I’m tired, Quinn.” Part of me wanted to confess everything, but another part of me was jealous, hoarding the information for as long as I could. “If you can’t stop him—”

  “We will stop it,” Quinn said grimly. “Trust me on that.”

  But I don’t. I don’t trust any of you. I don’t even know if I trust myself. That was the crux of the problem. One tiny little promise and everything I thought I was came up in question. I was seriously considering helping a monster. I could go. Justin and the others, they could keep living the dangerous life they wanted. They could be chased, pursued, hunted. And I could have a career. A life. Maybe even a dog.

  This was what I wanted.

  I kept him behind me, walked to one of the windows and leaned against the counter. Peeked out from the corners. But I didn’t answer his question. “They said my dad was the one who set the bombs. That he’d figured out some way to trap Maleficia inside little vials, and he’d build an entire bomb up around them. That way, when the bombs exploded, the Maleficia was released to spread the violence as far as it could. It was the only reason they managed to kill everyone they did in that first strike. Normal bombs wouldn’t have caused half the damage it did, not once someone was aware there was an explosion.”

  The London bombing had been Moonset’s first “official” strike, their coming out as a terrorist organization. The witch Congress, then known more predominantly as the Invisible Congress, had met in the building the Covens had owned for two hundred years. There were committees and branches to the government then, each Coven dividing themselves up by interest. A centralized location where the strongest, most powerful, and most importantly, the battle-tested Covens were all located at once.

  A week, maybe a month’s worth of planning and Moonset crippled the opposition in just a handful of minutes. Human rescue crews worked to put out the fires and look for survivors, while in the magical circles, no one knew what to do because everyone who made the decisions was buried beneath the concrete and ash.

  “They also say that your dad was one of the first ones to realize there was an Abyssal in Carrow Mill, feeding on his classmates,” Quinn pointed out. “Just because he went down the wrong path doesn’t mean it should negate everything he’s ever done.”

  I snorted out a laugh. “You are literally the only person I’ve ever heard who has that opinion. He’s the Bogeyman, he’s Jeffrey Dahmer with a spellbook. I’ve heard all the stories, Quinn. Cyrus was the playground bully, the monster in the halls, the scourge of seventh grade.”

  “You’ve read Adele’s book, haven’t you?” Quinn asked, unusually gentle. I shrugged. Adele Roman might have written everything there possibly was to write about Moonset, but that didn’t mean that anyone took it as gospel truth. People skimmed the early chapters, only gaining interest with the London bombing. No, that wasn’t actually correct. People gained interest during Moonset’s missing years: after high school, the six of them had vanished into obscurity, only returning after whatever it was that inspired their descent into a Maleficia-fueled cult. They took jobs with the Congress, ingratiating themselves amidst the very people they planned to murder.

  “We’ve all read it,” I said tonelessly. At one point or an-other, we couldn’t help ourselves. Sometimes, it was a teacher who wanted to rub our noses in where we’d come from. Other times it was personal curiosity. To see exactly where our blood had come from. When we were younger, I’d tried to keep it from the others, but that only lasted so long. There were only so many times you could be called Moonset like it was the foulest insult before you had to know.

  “People loved your dad growing up.” Quinn leaned against the wall. He was looking away from me as much as I looked away from him. “I’ve talked to some of them. The humans who don’t know about Moonset, at least. They never understood his bond
with Sherrod Daggett, but he couldn’t go anywhere, or do anything, without a crowd of people following in his wake.”

  “I don’t want to hear this.” Because it was safer not knowing. Safer to blanket my thoughts of him in the crimes and monstrosities. It made him less human. It kept him a monster. Monsters were safe because they lurked in closets and in the shadows under the bed. They weren’t people with blood in their veins and full of mistakes made and insecurities and bonds that they couldn’t break no matter how much they could have wanted—

  “The only person responsible for his actions was him. And the only person responsible for your choices is you.” I heard the door twist, the lock give way as Quinn made for an exit. “Let us handle the Abyssal, Mal. Whatever it offers you, remember that Moonset got an offer once too. All it takes is one slip, and suddenly you’re someone you don’t recognize.”

  Charlie Denton was in the same waiting room I’d left him at a week ago, surrounded by the same litter of Styrofoam cups and self-loathing. The cups themselves might have been different, but the contempt curling the air was identical. “So are you just waiting here hoping you can get one last beating in?” I asked.

  Livid red eyes squinted up at me. “You think you’re so smart. You’ve got it all figured out. Mean old Uncle Charlie ruined poor little Luca’s life. Well, you listen to me, you little bastard. That kid was wrong from the first time he screamed. You can’t beat the Devil out of someone if that’s what’s under the surface.”

  “You beat your kid and you think he’s the Devil? Looks like the drunk didn’t fall far from the family psychopath tree.”

  The glare he shot was weak and unstable, an offense that toppled out of his eyes like a dimmed light. “You’d know all about that. Rotten fruit, rotten tree.”

  I sat across from him, leaned forward and invaded his space. It smelled like stale cigarettes and gasoline, which thankfully drowned out the smell of Charlie himself, who still hadn’t showered. “Spoken like a withered branch. Hey, you remember Kore, don’t you?” I watched his eyes, waited for a flicker of the old Charlie, back when he was probably Charles, or Chuck, or maybe he was even a Chaz. “Did you try to stop her? Cyrus was a monster, but he fought her. What did you do?”

  A complicated series of muscles flexed and atrophied in Charlie’s face, and I couldn’t tell if he’d suddenly aged a few decades, or if the last few decades had been wiped from his face completely. Eyebrows stopped and started like remote-controlled cars with spotty batteries, lines appeared and disappeared. I saw more of his eyelids than I’d ever seen before with the way they fluttered.

  “I don’t have to take this.” The man they all said was my uncle stumbled to his feet and spilled out of the room, his feet wavering under a floor that seemed to rock beneath him. He couldn’t get away fast enough. The elevator chimed a moment later, and by the time I walked out of the waiting room, a pair of nurses split their shocked stares between me and the blinking elevator light down to the lobby.

  They let me see him, because they didn’t know any better and because they were just nurses. No witches in sight, which was strange. Suspected of acts of Maleficia, unconscious in a hospital, and Luca wasn’t under guard?

  I understood why once I was led through gated doors one at a time, each round of security for my protection, the nurses claimed. Despite the fact that Luca was catatonic, the hospital was worried about his mental state. Thus, they’d sent him for monitoring on the long-term psychiatric floor, with the patients who would live out their days in the same tepid hallways.

  The nurse waited outside, giving me a five-minute window to see my cousin. The boy who’d been responsible for bringing us here in the first place.

  There were more tubes than I expected. Tubes leading into his mouth, tubes running along his hands, tubes leading into machines that did more than just monitored his vital signs. They’d said Luca was just in a coma, but this was more than a coma. This was keeping something alive that would be dead on its own.

  Underneath the equipment covering his mouth, his skin was pale, almost translucent. Freckles stood out stark against his skin as if they were drops of ink across snow. And there were lines like scars, raised bumps that ran along both cheeks, above both eyebrows, and I even saw a peak of them cutting up from his chin. A half-dozen lines. One line too many to link up to fingers, and yet it was so perfect a comparison that it had to be.

  Maybe it was the result of whatever the Abyssals had done after he’d summoned them. Maybe when they marked him, it had been physical. I don’t know what I was looking for in his room. Maybe a sign that Luca wasn’t as bad as they seemed to think. But I wasn’t getting any answers out of him tonight.

  Justin said he looked half-finished, like someone had dulled and smoothed all the edges, created smoothness and youth where edges and age were meant to go. There was an undeniable list of things that Luca and I shared. Cut our hair and set it side by side, and no one would be able to tell the difference. Underneath papery eyelids were eyes the exact same shade as mine, a spattering of green surrounding a brownish-orange interior. He was probably due another growth spurt, if he ever woke up again, which would put him close to my height.

  “I don’t know what he did to you exactly,” I said, lingering in the doorway, “but that doesn’t make what you did okay. You should wake up, just so you can pay for what you’ve done. You don’t deserve the easy way out.”

  But wasn’t that always the way?

  I didn’t stay much longer than that. There was nothing to do—Luca was out of it, and no amount of talking would change that. Whatever happened to him, it wasn’t like a normal coma. The Abyssal Princes had done that to him. So maybe he would only wake up when they were ready.

  It wasn’t until I was on my way out the front doors of the hospital that things really went to hell, full stop. Flashing red and blue lights, shouting, a dozen more people than I expected to be crowded around a trio of headlights. A constant spin of red and blue lights. And the sound of Justin, shouting, “Get your hands off me, you stupid motherfu—!”

  sixteen

  Let everyone in love come and see. I want to break Venus’s ribs with clubs and cripple the goddess’ loins. If she can strike through my soft chest, then why can’t I smash her head with a club?

  Graffito left on the walls of Pompeii

  It was some sort of standoff. A small crowd of people frozen around an angry center. There was a cop car off to one side, their lights spinning. Through the crowd I saw a sharp motion, and then one of the police officers went hurtling into the air. Like way into the air. The kind of lift that only magic can accomplish. “I’ll kill you, you piece of shit,” Justin snarled. I finally pushed through the crowd—easier now that he was getting violent and people were trying to get away—and found something I wasn’t sure how to handle.

  It was definitely Justin, but it was Kevin standing across from him that caught me by surprise. Justin wasn’t a slouch in the size department, but Kevin was a varsity athlete. There was no contest. Justin looked … wrecked. His hair stuck up at all angles, he somehow managed to look like he hadn’t gotten any sleep since last July, and he was panting like a madman.

  He snarled out another spell, a pitch that Kevin almost casually connected with. He brushed his hand casually to one side and muttered something, and the spell bounced away from Kevin. That was what sent the cop flying I realized. This time, he avoided the innocent bystanders, but Justin was still advancing.

  I ran between them and grabbed my brother by the shirt. “Justin, what happened? What’s wrong?”

  “Get out of my way, Mal.” The growl was barely recognizable as my brother’s.

  “He just went nuts,” Kevin, on the other hand, was totally calm behind me. “He rammed into my car when I got here. Started threatening me.” His eyes trailed away for a moment. “And now there’s an unconscious cop to deal with.”

  “Not
to mention a crowd of witnesses,” I muttered. “Call someone,” I ordered Kevin over my shoulder.

  “You’re helping him?” Justin couldn’t believe it. The betrayal in his voice was so thick he choked on it. “How could—why are you—” And then he snarled another word, one I didn’t know and hadn’t heard before. His shirt fell out of my hands at the same time the ground fell out from underneath me.

  I landed some distance away, the concrete slamming and scraping against my back. The breath whooshed out of my lungs and I struggled on how to breathe for a moment. And then, with a rush, the air came back to me, my lungs inflated, and my body processed the rush of pain.

  Someone came to my side, helped me up. The crowd had grown sparse now, backing away slowly from the two boys at the center of it all. But now, Justin’s attention was on me.

  “Justin, what are you doing? Did something happen?” I gasped out, struggling to my feet. Justin always tried to be the levelheaded one.

  “He was talking to her,” Justin spat. Literally spat. Like, it flew from his mouth and he didn’t even realize it. “I saw him.”

  “This is because I was talking to your girlfriend?” Kevin stepped back into the frame. “Are you kidding right now? Dude, you wrecked my car!”

  “There’s got to be more to it than that,” I assured him. “Right, Justin? There’s something else?”

  My brother’s expression was completely blank. His words carried his rage, his posture and his hands and everything about him expressed fury and frustration. But there was nothing written across his face, no explanation for what had set him off.

  “You’re helping him.” The words themselves were empty. But the condemnation they carried was clear as day.

  “No, Justin, I’m not—” But again, Justin reacted before I could finish defending myself. But this time, when his spell ripped me up and threw me back, I was more prepared. Instead of slamming down into the ground, I rolled with it, and managed to avoid a repeat of the last time. I was back on my feet in a moment, although my back was probably going to be a mess of bruises in the morning.