Darkbound

by Scott Tracey

  Jesus, what was wrong with these people? Was this the effect of Moonset, or was their family drama to blame? Did Cyrus fall in line with Sherrod Daggett because of what his brother did to him? Betrayed and hurt by blood, he reached out for a family that had been created for him, allowed them to close ranks around him, and give him a new purpose.

  Had Sherrod used that information to manipulate my father? Did my father even ever need manipulating?

  The thoughts kept racing through my head like trains set for collision. Each one narrowly missed striking the next, but eventually they would collide and the fireworks would be intense.

  “You use an awful lot of words just to say you’re a bitch,” Charlie said sourly.

  I was up off the couch in an instant, though it was hard to say whether I was defending the honor of a woman I didn’t particularly like or just taking the chance to hit Charlie for a third time and make it really count.

  Illana made a tut-tut-tutting sound and waggled a finger. “It’s a compliment, Malcolm. Small men call a woman a bitch because they’re afraid to say that she scares them.”

  Then you’re definitely that. But at least I was smart enough not to say it out loud. She smirked, probably reading the thought right off my face.

  “Tell me what really happened, Charles. Tell me, and we all go away. Otherwise, I will drown every part of your world. I will have people in your home, at your job, waiting in your bar every night. Even that restaurant you go to on Thursdays. We will be everywhere, and we won’t stop. Because this stopped being your town, and your home, the minute your son took up his uncle’s mantle.”

  For a second, Charlie wavered, and I blinked in surprise. It was going to happen. Illana would break through his walls. He would split apart at the seams and admit that he’d treated his son badly but it wasn’t deserved. That he was scared, but the good man underneath wanted to help. That he knew something crucial.

  But it was only a moment. And there was still too much liquid courage in his veins, giving Charlie a backbone of Scotch and stubbornness. Whatever he’d been once upon a time, years trapped in his skin had rotted Charlie Denton through.

  “It keep you up at night? Knowing that you and Robert pulled the trigger and Moonset was the cost? You caused this, lady. All of you, smug little Covens. Whoring yourselves out to each other, protecting your legacies.”

  Illana gracefully rose to her feet. “Cyrus turned to the blackest of magicks to escape his family. You did that. Not us.”

  Charlie surged up, but that was exactly what Illana wanted. Something small was in her hand, but at his first movement she flung her wrist, and a telescopic baton sprung to life. With three swift, economical strikes she clubbed the back of one knee, deflected an arm, and then slapped it across his windpipe and held it there, bracing it between both hands.

  “Now you’re going to tell me everything I want to know,” she said calmly, somehow managing to overpower the drunk despite her age, “or I’m going to give your nephew his first lesson in how to beat a confession out of someone. I’m confident we’ll all learn a thing or two. I can be quite creative.”

  She didn’t have to make good on the threat. Charlie talked. A lot.

  Charlie told us all about how the senior class came under the Prince’s spell, and how Sherrod and Cyrus were the first to notice. But when they went to the authorities, looking for help, they were written off and ignored. Moonset was newly formed, and they didn’t have the clout to make anyone take them seriously.

  Moonset became Cyrus’s world. And it wasn’t Charlie’s fault, he claimed, that he was there to pick up the pieces. Then there was a three-day blackout, and Cyrus didn’t come home. Two days into it, when he finally showed up battered and bloody, it was to announce that an Abyssal Prince had come to town, and now it was dead.

  But in all the chaos, Charlie lost the love of his life when she ran from the darkness in Carrow Mill. Savannah took off on the first bus out of town and never looked back. Heartbroken, Charlie married her younger sister a few years later, but it was never the same.

  Charlie never knew anything more than that. He’d always believed the stories that Robert Cooper had saved the day.

  Or so he claimed.

  “He spins an interesting story,” Adele said when we met outside after. Two Witchers stayed behind to keep an eye on Charlie, while the rest prepared to leave.

  “You think he’s lying?” Illana asked, slipping on a pair of sunglasses. The afternoon sun wasn’t too bad, but she looked a bit more pale than she had earlier.

  “I’ve always found that life is hardly an orderly pursuit. People are the ones who trim threads, who make tangles into knots and shave away all the things that don’t fit. They want things to make sense, and I think Charlie makes quite a bit of sense.”

  “He’s lying,” I said with conviction.

  “Oh?” Now Illana was amused. “Please, share your expertise with the rest of the class.”

  I knew she was mocking me, but I didn’t give a crap. “Notice how helpful he was? What are the odds he had a change of heart? He’s a dick, he’d happily tell you a story peppered full of lies just to mess with you. He doesn’t care if anyone gets hurt. He just likes misery.”

  “I agree with the boy,” Adele said happily. “I think I’ll stick around, see what else I can jog loose from the man. I think there’s more to the girl’s disappearance than he’s saying. I think we might have found the Abyssal’s host after all.”

  Illana tapped on her lower lip. “Get in the car, Malcolm. I’ve been meaning to pay a visit to an old friend of your father’s. I think having you around might prove useful in this instance.”

  Illana drove the same way she did everything else: with a cool demeanor, incredible poise, and a soft undercurrent of terror that she was going to kill everyone in her path. She drove into the center of town and parked near the curio shop.

  “Why’d you want to bring me along?” I asked, once the car was stopped. Illana didn’t seem in any rush to get out, and I followed her lead.

  She held up a hand, displaying all five fingers towards me, wagging one with each point. “He’s a witch I’ve never heard of. Born and raised in Carrow Mill. He stays under the radar and I dislike that. He was a friend of your father’s. You might shake something loose without knowing it.”

  “But I’ve already met him,” I said absently. “Never even looked at me like I was familiar.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” she said, though there was a faraway look in her eyes. “You look more like your cousin than your father. He might not have realized.”

  I followed her inside, ducking my head down as we passed through the front door. The curio shop was about what I remembered. Ten acres worth of garbage packed into a half acre’s worth of space. Dogs played poker next to cats in togas, and there was a buffalo head hanging on the wall with a trio of silver necklaces hanging from its snout. A ceremonial-looking knife was stabbed into a small end table etched with elephants so that the knife passed right through one of the elephant’s eyes. Chessboards were filled with something on every square: crystals, keys, and even a Hershey’s Kiss.

  “Hi there, can I help you?” A red-haired man popped up from behind the counter like a jack-in-the-box. The only way the effect could have been stronger was if the welcoming chime had actually played “Pop Goes the Weasel.”

  “Matthew Dugard?” Everything Illana was screamed “Police.” Tasteful pantsuit, hair pulled from her face, serious tone, and severe expression.

  “Yes,” the man said slowly, letting the word stretch out for a span of seconds. “Can I help you?”

  “You knew my friend’s father,” she said, indicating a hand towards me. Like I would really be friends with a woman like Illana Bryer. A woman old enough to be my mother’s mother. Or maybe my mother’s grandmother.

  Mr. Dugard looked towards me, but
there was no recognition in his eye when he shrugged. “Could have.”

  “You went to school with him,” Illana prompted. Normally she wasn’t one for dragging things out. She liked to cut right to the heart of the matter.

  “I went to school with a lot of people. School’s big enough for more than one at a time.” His tone was pleasant, easy. Whoever he was, he wasn’t intimidated by her. That alone was enough to make me think that Charlie was wrong, and this man had barely even known my father. Unless he wasn’t a witch at all: that might still be a possibility.

  Illana didn’t seem to agree. “Town full of Witchers and you don’t know who he is? That seems odd.”

  At the word, the man stilled, like she’d said something foul. Satanist instead of Witcher, maybe. More than the fake smile, the phony cheer, this was a real reaction. Something he couldn’t mask behind a shopkeeper’s veneer.

  “The Denton boy,” the man said, studying me closer. “Right, yes. You were in here a couple months ago.”

  So he did know who we were. “Your dad went a little nuts last time.”

  The man shrugged. “My dad spent four years tormenting and being tormented by Sherrod Daggett. His doppelganger walks in the door, what’s he supposed to think? Senility’s a bitch, but sometimes remembering is worse.”

  “I’m afraid you’re a new one to me,” Illana said, her voice as soft as pillows. I didn’t trust it for a minute. Neither did Matthew. He stiffened up behind the counter, and then made a show of relaxing his body, spreading his arms. Communicating without words that he had nothing to hide. “Exactly how is it you live in this city and I don’t know you. I know all of the witches.”

  The man sighed, ran a hand through his frizzled red hair, and turned his head to the side. He pointed to the plastic device curled up inside his ear—a hearing aid. I hadn’t noticed the last time I was here. “Not a lot of call for partially deaf witches,” he said. I expected him to sound bitter about it, but he wasn’t. To him it wasn’t anything traumatic, just a fact of life.

  “Your father taught you?”

  He shook his head. “My mother. Elizabeth. They divorced when I was young. Elizabeth Raines.”

  Illana inclined her head, though I couldn’t tell if that meant she believed him, or she was still skeptical. She didn’t press the issue any further, though. “How long since you started losing your hearing?”

  “Little bit all my life. It keeps falling away like breadcrumbs, gets a little worse after time. The hearing aids make it impossible to cast. I can’t hear the words right, so I can’t repeat them with the same inflections.”

  Magic was all about the mouth and the ears. Words spoken and heard. Inflections memorized and tasted on the tongue. If one of those senses was damaged, then it would make the whole process harder. I’d heard of witches who were born with problems: ones that couldn’t speak, others that couldn’t hear. It had to be incredibly difficult, being able to touch something they couldn’t fully master.

  At least, I assumed it would have to be difficult. For me, not much would have changed.

  “How is it that no one knows about you,” Illana pressed. “You are still a witch. Still a part of our society regardless of what challenges you face.”

  The man looked at her and laughed, and then hesitated like he’d heard the joke wrong. He sobered quickly when her expression only sharpened. “I’m not a witch. Not really. I’m not in a coven, but I’m not a Solitaire either. I don’t use magic, so I don’t participate in the government. If I fell through the cracks somewhere, I’m sorry, but that’s not my fault. As far as the Congress is concerned, I’m useless, therefore I don’t exist.”

  The speech only managed to intensify the cold front warring across Illana’s face. “No witch is useless to the Congress. Or do you not realize to whom you are speaking?”

  “You didn’t even know my name yesterday,” the man said sadly. “I’m not one of you. And claiming me now doesn’t do either one of us any measure of good. I accepted that I was an outcast a long time ago. I keep my head down, stay away from trouble, and live a normal life. That’s fine enough for me. Nothing shameful in it at all.”

  I noticed he hadn’t admitted whether or not he knew who she was. Illana’s expression changed—softened, really—as I think she came to the same conclusion. “I am sorry if we have failed you,” she said stiffly. “But that is not actually why we are here.”

  He smiled. “I didn’t think you were. What can I do to help, ma’am?”

  “You went to school with Cyrus Denton,” Illana said, returning the attention where it belonged. On her. “You were his friend. So now you’re going to tell me everything you remember about the Abyssal Prince that came to Carrow Mill, and what really happened to it.”

  The man was quiet for a long time, still in a way that said he was somewhere else. There was a faint shimmer in his eyes when they focused again, and he nodded once. Sharply. “If you’d be so kind as to turn the sign and lock the front door,” he said, looking towards me.

  I went back to the entrance, turned the lock, and flipped the sign to Closed. When I came back to the counter, a crystal decanter was on the counter, and the man’s hands shook as he poured himself a tumbler of courage.

  “You’re looking for the body,” he said slow and clear. “Now let me convince you not to.”

  twenty-five

  Diana killed because it was fun. Sherrod killed to send a message. Cy Denton? He was the worst. Sherrod said “kill” and he did it, and never

  asked why. People meant nothing to him.

  Jack Wyatt (S)

  Carrow Mill, New York—

  From Moonset: A Dark Legacy

  Matthew threw back his glass, swallowing down the amber liquor, then poured a second glass and repeated the gesture.

  “I know the stories. Everyone says Moonset summoned that thing. But there’s no way. Cyrus and I were close—maybe not so much after the Coven formed, but before that, definitely. I hung out with him and Charles—sorry, Charlie—all the time. Cy was the only kid who didn’t make fun of me for my hearing aids. Back then I had to wear two, really ugly things.

  “No one’s seen an Abyssal Prince in a hundred years, so the adults in town, they never believed them. But Cy and the others, they wouldn’t give up. They did all the research and investigating on their own. They monitored the rest of the school, trying to find a pattern. And eventually, they figured out who the Abyssal was.

  “I don’t know what happened when they fought it, but they came back different. They saw things, maybe did things, I don’t know. What happened changed them all like they were soldiers coming back from war. I always thought that thing got in their heads. Maybe it didn’t make them evil overnight, but it could have been the first step. Got them all mixed up on the path that ended … ” He scratched the back of his neck. “Well, we all know how that ended.”

  “This isn’t relevant to my questions,” Illana said coolly. She didn’t like when people talked about why Moonset went dark. To Illana, all that mattered was that they had. Wondering why didn’t make anything more clear. I was with her on that—I didn’t want to speculate on where our parents had gone wrong. It wasn’t my concern.

  “It should be relevant, because they were always jumpy afterwards. I think that whatever happened, they didn’t end it. Just stopped it for a while. And that someday it was going to come back to bite them in the ass … only it’s not their asses on the line anymore.”

  My father was already too real for me as it was.

  “I don’t know what I can tell you. There weren’t any witnesses, and Cy was like a bank vault when he didn’t want to talk. They crawled home to recover and meanwhile some hotshot guy came to town and took credit for everything, and they let him. But if there’s a chance that thing could come back, you have to back off.”

  “The Abyssal needed a host,” I said slowly, caught
up on another thread.

  “Yes?” Illana turned to me. I turned back to Matthew.

  “Charlie’s girlfriend. That’s the weekend she disappeared, isn’t it?”

  “You mean Savannah?” Matthew shook his head. “I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but she’s not dead. She took off. Left town and never looked back. Charlie ended things, said his brother was more important. She ran, but it was too late. Cy never forgave his brother for running her off.”

  “Charlie was quite clear. The girl is dead, not a runaway.” Illana tapped a finger against the counter, a solid press and twist like there was something underneath she was trying to squash.

  “You talked to Charlie already?” Matthew looked surprised. “Then I don’t know why you’re here talking to me. Didn’t he tell you all this already?”

  “If he had,” Illana said witheringly, “do you really think we would be here now?”

  The man scratched the back of his neck again and glanced towards the rear of the store. “I don’t know what you want from me. This was all so long ago. I’m sorry I can’t be more help, really, but I need to check on my dad. He gets antsy if he doesn’t see Wheel of Fortune.”

  Illana looked at me for a moment, then shrugged. “If something else comes up, we’ll be back.”

  The man nodded immediately, and then realized his face was blank and expressionless. The feigned smile slid back on with a practiced air. “Of course, ma’am. There’s a stack of business cards by the door. Call any time.”

  Illana waited for his back to turn before she rolled her eyes. I stifled a snort at her irritation.

  “Oh, hey,” he called right before we left. “He never told me where it was, but him and the other Moonset guys had some sort of secret hideout. Some place they’d always go to get away from everything in town. I don’t know if that helps or not, but there might be something there to help you figure out what happened.”