Darkbound

by Scott Tracey

  “The teacup,” I explained. “You bring it out when you want people to think you’re not as intimidating as you really are. You want to remind them you’re just a little old lady who drinks tea. It doesn’t work.”

  She touched one hand to her heart, smiled, and set the cup back on its saucer. “You think I’m intimidating? You’re a sweet boy.”

  I exhaled at the same time that my stomach rebelled and growled so loudly it overtook Illana’s laugh.

  “When’s the last time you ate, Malcolm?”

  I shrugged.

  “I want you to go home, eat, and let us handle the rest. Tell me what you figured out about the Abyssal, and we’ll take it from there.”

  I’d seen the Witchers try to take out the Abyssal once before. I saw them fail. Spectacularly, but it was still a failure. “I don’t really know anything.” I forced myself to stop playing with the fringe on my jeans and to just look at her. She didn’t have any more power over me than anyone else, no matter what she might want me to think. “He admitted that he gave Luca the book, but he said his ties to Moonset didn’t really come until later. All he said was that Bridger, or whoever, wanted us here. That our … trials started here.”

  “And what else?”

  Was this how Justin felt when he held things back? Did he know that the next words out of his mouth could get someone killed? Maybe a lot of someones? I stopped the Prince once, but the Witchers were outgunned in almost every way. If they came after him again, I wouldn’t be able to make him disappear the way I had last time.

  “I’m not sure,” I said slowly. It was easier to pretend ignorance than I thought. “Did Quinn tell you about what Cole said?”

  I’d thought the change of subject was somewhat slick, but Illana’s eyebrows said otherwise. “He mentioned there was an incident.”

  “Cole kept talking about how it was important that there be a fire. That his fire would be the best alternative.” I let my words hang in the air, trailing off into worries I couldn’t let cross my lips.

  “Are you saying you think he knew somehow? Do you think Cole is still under the influence of the Abyss.”

  My response was immediate and vehement. “No! No, that’s not what I meant at all. But I think he knew something. He wasn’t weird like Justin was.” And then the worry clawed its way into my head and gave words to my fear. My voice dropped low. “I think he faked it.”

  “And why would he do something like that?”

  Because he knew something we didn’t. Because somehow, for some reason, Cole knew there was going to be a fire. “Bailey freaked out, right? She committed herself because of Cole. And then the fire with Luca. I think Cole knew what was going to happen today. And I think he was trying to stop it in his own way.”

  “You think he knew there was going to be a fire? That Luca would be assaulted?”

  I shook my head. It didn’t add up. Bailey was the one who sensed things sometimes, who was too in tune with her senses that she sometimes knew things that she had no way of knowing. But Cole had never been like that. Had he? Would any of us have noticed if he was?

  Justin would know what to do. He might not have trusted Illana with everything that I had, but he’d know what to do about Cole. He’d know how to keep Bailey’s spirits up.

  “Excuse me, Illana,” Kelly ducked her head into the room. “I apologize for interrupting.”

  “Don’t be. Come in.” Illana climbed to her feet, looking between us. “I doubt the two of you have cleared the air about what transpired between you.” She huffed out a breath, letting her sleeves swallow up her hands. “We’ve all been victims of a magical prank once or twice in our lives. And the boy is not exactly hard on the eyes.”

  “Hey, I’m sitting right here!”

  “It’s fine, Illana,” Kelly said kindly.

  I shook my head, and offered a grin. “Like she said, it was a stupid prank. I’m just sorry if it got you in any trouble. Jenna doesn’t think before she acts sometimes.”

  Illana looked between the pair of us with shrewd eyes. “Excellent. I want the pair of you to start working together. You have some things in common,” she mentioned. “Kelly is as close to a savant in ancient magic as anyone I’ve ever met.”

  “Ancient magic?”

  “Symbols, Malcolm. The written element of magic. All covens have a symbol: you’ve seen Moonset’s for yourself. There are many magics that lack a verbal correspondence. Things we can’t put into words. Sound familiar?”

  The spells that were hidden into the darkbond. When I used them, something came out of my mouth, but it wasn’t in words. It was something else entirely. And when I flipped through all the spells, I’d seen dozens of symbols, more complicated and intense than anything I’d ever seen before.

  I got up without another word and hurried behind the doctor’s desk. There was a stack of papers in one corner. I flipped them over and started to sketch out the whirlpool symbol I’d seen when the Prince summoned me.

  “This is what he—” I stopped and cleared my throat. “This is what the Abyssal uses to summon me. It makes the world shift around me until I’m somewhere completely crazy. I think it uses the symbol to manipulate me.” I held the paper out to her, even though it was a crude drawing it was still as close as I could get. “It moves. Clockwise, like a whirlpool, it’s not static.”

  Kelly took the paper and bit at her lower lip. “It’s definitely old. So it doesn’t take you anywhere, it just makes everything look different?”

  I nodded. “I think he creates a world that he wants to live in, and forces me to see it too. But if there’s someone else there, the world changes. I think everyone sees something different.”

  She brushed her fingers around the wake of the whirlpool, but never let them actually touch the ink itself. “You want to know how to stop seeing what it wants you to see?”

  “Or how to break the spell once I’m inside it.”

  Kelly hmmed. “It’s a filter. Instead of bending space and time to move you to somewhere else, the Abyssal bends reality, creating a world it can more comfortably inhabit. The more of a hold it has on our reality, the more powerful it becomes.” She tapped her finger against the edge of the paper and looked to Illana. “A clear heart spell might work, don’t you think?”

  Illana’s response was surprising, to say the least. “Absolutely not! I will not put that kind of magic out into the hands of a child.” She glowered at Kelly as though she had very purposefully disobeyed her.

  “How about someone explain what a clear heart spell is?” I offered, raising my hand a little bit. “If it’ll keep the Abyssal Prince from getting in my head, I’m all for it.”

  Illana’s eyes flashed fire when Kelly opened her mouth, and the younger girl closed it just as quickly. Illana turned to me. “It’s a very dangerous kind of magic for those who haven’t prepared fully. It clears the heart of any stray emotions, making it an empty platform.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “If the spell lasts too long or is cast improperly,” Illana continued, “it remains empty. No one can manipulate them, but they stop feeling. Anything. As long as the spell remains, they won’t feel anything at all. The damage to the mind can be … incalculable.”

  Kelly ducked her head down at the silent rebuke. “Illana’s right,” she said, her voice now less animated than it had been before. “Think about how behaviors have changed with the Abyssal’s influence. If you never felt anything at all, it would be just as bad. You’d lose your empathy, your morals, your judgment. It would put a lot of people in danger.”

  “There is no discussion. Malcolm will have an appropriate guard at all times. We will not allow the Abyssal to come after you at his leisure. Not any longer.” Illana’s eyes honed in on me, cutting me down in an instant. “This is not your battle. Whatever the Moonset fanatic seemed to believe, we will not
put you in harm’s way. Your trials, whatever they may be, are at an end.” She sank down into the doctor’s chair behind the desk and let her hands brush against her forehead. I couldn’t tell if she was exhausted or sick, but the sudden bit of frailty didn’t sit right across her shoulders. “Take him home, Kelly. Make sure the boy eats.”

  My stomach, traitor that it was, rumbled its approval.

  There were two women sitting in a parked car out front, and a convenient number of black-clad, athame-armed dog walkers on the sidewalks of my neighborhood. I took a minute to get my bearings while Kelly went inside. Despite the fact that it only felt like I’d gotten up a few hours ago, an entire day had passed, and somehow my body knew it. The fatigue had continued to grow the further we got from the hospital until I was yawning almost constantly.

  Jenna was on the couch by herself, leaning against an arm tucked under her hair, and fast asleep. Nick, Quinn, and Kelly were huddled around the table, talking in low tones.

  “I know it’s a conundrum,” I said, slipping off my jacket. “Three guards for two kids. That kind of math always gives me a headache. Tell you what. Double up on Jenna. She’s the troublemaker.”

  “Bite me, Zoolander,” Jenna said without opening her eyes.

  “Aren’t you the one with a demon boyfriend?” Quinn looked skeptically towards me. Jenna smirked and settled back in on the couch.

  I scowled and walked up the stairs to my room. It hadn’t surprised me that everyone was waiting for me. Ever since Justin had been hospitalized, their house had stopped being base camp. And now that Jenna and I were the only two left, of course they would all migrate here. They knew how much I hated having to share my space with too many people.

  But if Jenna thought she was crashing in my room, she had another thing coming.

  I managed to get a shower and scrub the smell of smoke and hospital off of me without interruption. I was tense, though, expecting someone to start banging on the door at any second. But I got out and into a fresh pair of sweats and a tee shirt before Jenna appeared, walking right in like she knew I was decent.

  “They know you’re holding back,” was all she said as she curled up on a corner of my bed.

  “No,” I said firmly. I wasn’t giving up, or worse, sharing my bed with her. It didn’t matter that she was my sister in all the ways that mattered. I was not dealing with a night full of elbows and cover hogging.

  “Relax, I’m not here to ruin your beauty sleep.” She craned her head back towards the door and whispered, “Audos fet.”

  On a list of a thousand things I wanted to deal with, Jenna using magic in my room was pretty close to the bottom. “What was that?” I asked tiredly.

  “They’re down there eavesdropping. You know they are.” Jenna patted the other side of the bed, like all I was waiting on was an invitation. However long she’d been pretending to sleep downstairs, there wasn’t a trace of it on her now. “So are you going to tell me what’s happening or not?”

  It wasn’t just Jenna asking me to catch her up; it was deeper than that. It was a question about whether or not I trusted her. For years we’d had our ups and downs, but she would still be there five years from now, and ten after that, assuming we lived that long. Without Jenna, my life might have been easier. Simpler. But it was also Jenna that helped me stop the Abyssal Prince before he killed the Witchers. Without her, there wouldn’t be any sort of resistance at all.

  “School’s canceled tomorrow. Too many absences. I think they’re hoping that if everyone stays home, it’ll limit how many outbursts there are.”

  “Okay.” I climbed onto the bed next to her, still baffled that we were the last two remaining. “Maddy and Kevin?” I asked suddenly. “What’s going on with them?”

  “Both normal. At least as of today. Why?”

  “See if they want to come over tomorrow.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  I wasn’t thinking anything. But I wanted some extra hands on deck in case Quinn decided he didn’t like what I was going to propose in the morning. Too many Witchers might provoke the Prince into another fight he couldn’t possibly lose.

  Of course, that morning conversation never came. Jenna and I woke up to the same roar of fire engines surging down the street at a little past six in the morning. I climbed off the bed and over to the window, stretching out my arms as I walked, trying to work out some of the kinks.

  The fading red tails of the fire trucks were quickly followed by a pair of white police cars, a black sheriff’s car, an ambulance, another police car, and then another ambulance.

  “Someone brought a parade to town and didn’t tell us?” Jenna snarked, but both of us hurried downstairs immediately. Quinn was in the kitchen, wrapping up a sheath across his forearm, dressed in the all-black paramilitary uniform of the Witchers.

  He didn’t look pleased. “The Abyssal’s turning the volume up to eleven. Nick will be here. I need to get downtown. There’s already been two fires started, and a fifteen-year-old stole a van and drove it through the front of the bank.”

  He wants all the adults distracted. I knew without being told that this was the Abyssal’s plan all along. Now that I had some kind of idea about where Kore was buried, and who had been responsible all along, that must have meant the Prince knew too. We were connected in some way, even still. And he didn’t want interference when it came to the end.

  I was okay with that.

  “Fine,” I said flippantly. “Have they shut down the roads yet?”

  Quinn shook his head, and then strapped a second knife around his calf. It still amused me that Witchers didn’t need guns, but they still used all the same tricks to conceal them.

  Once he was gone, and Nick outside to see him off, I nodded to Jenna. “Call Maddy and Kevin, and plan to get dirty.”

  “You know where we’re heading?”

  I nodded. “Unhappiest place on Earth.”

  thirty

  “Robert Cooper is the worst kind of snake:

  the kind that pretends he is anything but.

  I can’t wait to meet him again. I want to

  watch him slither before I slit his throat.”

  Cyrus Denton

  From notes recovered from

  the Moonset compound

  With Nick in charge, the house became a central hub of comings and goings. The furniture was removed from the dining room and a map of Carrow Mill was tacked onto one of the walls, with a growing mass of red dots for every incident. Within an hour, the city was lost in a haze of crimson. Witchers pushed their pins into the wall, studying the growing chaos, and left wearier than they’d entered.

  The teenagers of Carrow Mill, almost to a man, had lost their minds.

  None of the younger witches had been affected, aside from Justin. Cole had played at it, and Bailey locked herself away just in case, but the rest of us were untouched. I wasn’t sure why the Prince had done me the favor. Or if it even was a favor.

  Everyone was so busy around us that they didn’t even notice when we walked right out the garage door. The air outside was a thing of sirens and smoke in the air. The city was still quarantined, and every sound and smell justified it now.

  The streets could have stood in for a zombie apocalypse. There were cars overturned, six-car pileups. Once, on the way to Maddy’s, we had to back up and circle through an entire development to find a working road.

  Kevin and Maddy waited inside the house, but came out before we’d even pulled into the driveway. On the far end of the street, a trio of dark shapes pulled themselves out of the shadows like the first wave of zombies in a movie.

  Now, with the four of us, we were ready for what was probably the stupidest call I’d ever made in my life. Four teenagers against a killer and a demon.

  “So you think Moonset’s super secret lair has been in the Enchanted Forest all along?” Maddy was of
course skeptical.

  “Remember how you said that kids used to break in, but there wasn’t much to see?” I said, raising my voice against the howl of sirens as two cop cars sped past us in the other lane. Once they were gone, I took my foot off the brake and started rolling forward again. “I think there might be more to see than you think.”

  “There’s no magic there,” Maddy said waspishly. I think she was more annoyed about the fact that she was a local, and she’d never thought to look there herself. How dare anyone else figure out something before her. “Everyone would know.”

  “Moonset dabbled in a lot of different kinds of magic,” Jenna said. “Who knows what’s there. It could be masked from humans and witches both. Or it could be that only the six of them could get past their wards.”

  “I still think we need some of the Witchers. We can’t go up against that thing by ourselves,” Maddy added.

  Jenna was all confidence, and I didn’t like it. She’d pinned her hair back and thrown a black skull cap on, like we were some sort of teenage crew planning a heist. “Malcolm banished it once. He can do it again.”

  I didn’t have the nerve to tell her how wrong she was.

  The rust-covered, battered, and practically decrepit gate surrounding the entrance to the Enchanted Forest was probably imposing once. It was, in places, almost ten feet high, and the tips were the kinds of spikes that looked naked without a skull to skewer. But over the years, the gates had bent, bowed, or in places been shoved out of alignment, and then someone came along and put up chain-link fencing. Only five feet high, but still new and in good repair. And in front of both gates were a variety of actual chains with an overcompensatingly large shackle and faceplate.

  There was even a wooden sign above the gate, although it dangled from only one of the lines that had held it up before, and the only part that was still legible was the chant of Enchanted.

  “How long has this place been closed?” I asked.

  Maddy walked right up to the lock and shrugged. “Dunno. Back when my parents were kids? Maybe earlier than that. It was open for almost a hundred years, I guess. People wanted real amusement parks with real roller coasters. Not some spinning teacups and giant pumpkins.”