by Scott Tracey
It was the question I should have asked myself from the moment I realized Charlie was involved. There was only one reason Charlie would come back here. He summoned the Abyssal Prince, and in some way, he was responsible for what had happened to his girlfriend. Whether he gave her to Kore, or Kore took her because of who she was to Charlie, either way it was his fault.
“Moonset didn’t stop her,” I realized. “Charlie did. All Moonset did was cover it up. That’s why they let Cooper take all the credit. They didn’t want anyone asking questions, and the best way to do that was to make someone else responsible.”
Kevin walked up next to me, opposite of Jenna. “Is that true?” There was something strange in his voice. Maybe the boy scout needed to hear him confess for it to stick.
“Damned anyway. What’s it matter?” Charlie’s surly attitude wasn’t exactly an admission of guilt.
“Is it true?”
I reached out and put a hand on Kevin’s shoulder. It was cold to the touch, so much so that I snatched my hand away as soon as the feeling stretched up my arm. It tingled like an electric shock, my skin hissing from too cold and spasming from stun gun. I looked to him in horror, my thought processes dulled by the sensations running up my arm. My jaw was locked. I couldn’t speak.
Charlie didn’t notice, though. Charlie never knew when to shut his mouth, and I couldn’t stop him from barreling on. “Thought I was the smarter one. Thought I’d found something that would show Cy he wasn’t so great. But then it took her, and they came to me for help.” There was a haze of sadness in his eyes. “You have to bury the body beneath a circle of iron, y’know. Lucky for them, we got one big one right here.”
One second Kevin was next to me, the next he was twenty feet away. Charlie was on the edge of the carousel, and Kevin in front of him, standing solid with nothing but air beneath his feet. Charlie flailed, Kevin’s hand gripped around his throat. The sound of the old man’s gasp brought me back to myself.
The sound of his neck snapping, though, was something else entirely.
thirty-one
Not all creatures die a mortal death.
Sometimes death is cunning: a caress instead
of a slap. Even death can fall in love.
Even death can dare to break the rules.
The Princes of Hell
Kevin let the body drop, and Charlie flopped onto the ground the way that corpses do. Silver light spilled out of his eyes, spotlights that washed the expression out of his face. He stared at the three of us, head cocked to the side like an animal studying prey. Looking for weaknesses and patterns to exploit.
“Kevin?” Maddy’s whisper fell to the dirt around us and crawled forward.
“He hasn’t been Kevin for a while,” I said dully. How long? When had Kevin stopped being Kevin, and when had he started to be the monster?
“I asked you to name me,” the Abyssal Prince said, using Kevin’s mouth. “You refused. I was forced to take a name for myself.”
“You didn’t take a name,” I spat. “You stole Kevin’s!”
Jenna and Maddy came up on either side of me, and for a second, I thought they were protecting me, like they were somehow going to shield me from whatever it was that the Abyssal was going to do.
“Borrowed.” The Prince held up his pointer finger. “Though quite a bit more permanent. He’s still in here, alive and well. Only we’ve become something more. It’s really a beautiful thing, Malcolm. I am him and he is me. We are one. My spirit, his soul, one inspired blend of creation.”
“He’s not going to let us go,” Maddy said, even as she was busy tying up her hair to keep it out of the way.
“He will.” I stepped forward, because everything was okay. Charlie was the reason we were all here. He was the one who invoked Maleficia, summoned up an Abyssal Prince, then found a way to kill it. He was the one who took all those repressed loathings about his own past and his brother’s crimes, and spat out a kid to repeat the same cycle of darkness.
Bad blood indeed.
That was all good news, though. Because Charlie was dead, and that was the deal. I stared the Prince dead in the eyes, letting the light blind me. I didn’t have anything to fear from him. “You got what you wanted. Charlie’s dead. You know where Kore’s buried. Now you promised you’d fix Justin and the others, and leave. Let the kids go. You’ve got your vengeance.”
Kevin stepped off the carousel, ignoring me as he started to circle it. There was a frown of concentration on his features, not a look I’d normally ever seen before. Kevin didn’t have to work for anything, and he definitely didn’t struggle for answers. But the Prince was.
Something was wrong.
“You haven’t delivered my sister’s body. Not completely. Not yet.”
Had to bury her beneath a circle of iron. Charlie had said as much. That meant … “You can’t get under there. That’s why she’s buried here. She can’t get out. And you can’t get in.” The words slipped out without meaning to, and Kevin’s head whipped around. He didn’t like me knowing one of their weaknesses. Even less that I spoke it out loud.
I might have just signed all of our death warrants.
“If you think we’re going to help you, then you’re not listening to the human you’ve got hostage up in there.” Jenna would pick now of all times to really push her luck. “If there’s a hole in the ground big enough for one dead Abyssal, there’s room for two.”
The Abyssal laughed. Kevin’s face twisted in ways I didn’t even think were possible, rictus extremes of a Joker’s grin that made my jaws hurt. “Stupid little girl. You’re trying to anger me. So transparent. There is nothing I fear in your darkbond. I can’t harm you, but … ” He reached out a hand, and a three-part harmony slid out of his mouth like the call of a snake-oil salesman.
I’d seen the kind of damage his songs could do. Whatever magic the Abyssal had, it was wrapped up in his voice. But the song wasn’t meant for me, and Jenna wasn’t reacting either. We both turned towards Maddy, the only one of us not protected by the Moonset curse.
She took a halting step forward, and then another, her forehead a giant knot of confusion. She looked to be struggling, which was good, but I knew it couldn’t last forever.
“Leave her alone! She’s got no part in this!”
The Prince’s silver eyes slammed into me with a physical force, and I took a step back in surprise. “She came along for the ride. She knew the risks.” The words echoed all around us, as his mouth was busy with the sonata call. His torchlight eyes turned to Maddy. “You’ve always loved me, haven’t you, my dear?”
Jenna ran to block Maddy’s path, and with a wave of his hand like a maestro’s flourish, the Prince threw her to the side. Jenna crumpled to the ground and found my eyes. For a moment, we both hesitated, waiting. Praying for the curse to activate. But there was no intent to kill us in his motivations. Our greatest defense—the Coven bond that was supposed to kill anything that tried to kill us—was useless.
“You don’t have to do this!” I didn’t try to stop Maddy, instead I made a beeline for Kevin himself. “What happened to not wanting to be a monster? What happened to all that talk about wanting to be human? About wanting to escape what you were?”
But my pleas fell on deaf ears. “Did you really believe that I would want to debase myself that way? That I would become anything less than what I am now?” He sounded surprised by my questions.
I gritted my teeth. “Yes.” Ten feet away. I kept walking forward, refusing to be intimidated by the song and dance.
But Maddy was still walking forward too. And she was going to reach him first, unless I picked up my speed, or did something to distract him.
“I thought you loved me. Is this how you show your love? By showing off and hurting some stupid girl because you’re afraid of what happens if you hurt one of us? Afraid that all your power is nothing compa
red to the curse cocktail my daddy whipped up?”
The song stopped, and the Prince held up his hand to halt her. Maddy jerked to a step as he stormed towards me, literally stormed. He kicked up clouds of dirt around him with every step, and thunderclaps struck every time his heel stomped down. The heavens above us became a hell as the clouds turned tornado-drill black in a span of moments. The sky could barely contain his rage.
I never stopped, though. I wasn’t afraid of him. Despite everything he’d done. Everything he’d set into motion. He’d killed in front of me. Twice. And yet, he was a bully. And the first thing I ever taught Justin and Cole was the most important rule in life: you never, ever back down to a bully.
So he stormed into my space and I shoved him back. Got in his face, pressed my forehead against his and used my larger size to my advantage. “Fight it, Kevin. You’re stronger than this.”
“Oh, Malcolm.” He reached up to run his hand down the side of my face, but I slapped it away. “Do you really believe everything that fairy tales say? They are wonderful lies, masterful even, but what do you expect? They are named for my kind, and we are the most beautiful lies you will ever swallow whole. Kevin is gone. I am everything he was and more.”
“Kevin’s my friend. And I’m going to find a way to free him from you if it’s the last thing I do.”
He mulled that one over. “It could be. Malcolm, don’t you see? This isn’t an invasion, with my spirit pushing his soul aside. This is a merger. Even if you could find a way to force me from this body, Kevin is me now. You’ll leave nothing but an empty shell behind.”
“No.”
“That’s why they buried them together,” Jenna said in a whisper behind me. “Because they couldn’t get Kore out of the girl.”
“There is no together. Only the Prince, and the shell.”
I took a step back. Kevin’s fate had the power to do what the Prince could not. Hurt me. Wound me. He’d been the first person who actually seemed like he got it. He was a witch, but he was also a decent person. Something that I’d always thought was about as rare as unicorns. To know that he was … that there was no fixing this. Not for him.
Kevin was dead.
Was this how Charlie felt, once upon a time? When he’d come to stop his girlfriend from killing his classmates, and she pleaded with him? When she professed her love and made him promises?
In my moment of distraction, Maddy and the Prince came together like two magnets. He ran fingers through her hair, and crooned to her, soft and quiet. “I can kill her quick, or I can make you watch. It’s your choice, Malcolm. Or you can choose how she hurts herself first. My song cannot be ignored. She will do anything I ask, because I ask it of her. Because she loves me. Don’t you, pet?”
Maddy tipped her head to one side, exposing her neck. There was a quiet, dreamy smile on her face. “Hey, Kevin?”
The Prince leaned in towards her, Kevin’s hair falling rebelliously into his eyes. “Yes?”
“I’m into girls, asshole.” The knife came out of nowhere. Maddy shoved it under and up, one smooth plunge through the skin. But that wasn’t all she had up her sleeve. She used the momentum to shove herself backwards and shouted, “Lex divok!”
The Prince hurtled backwards almost a dozen feet, the fury in Maddy’s voice matching the extra punch in the spell. He stumbled off the ground for a moment and flailed, but just as he should have toppled to the ground, preternatural grace kicked in and he landed as carefully and as easily as if he’d planned the attack himself.
“You should have been more specific,” Maddy called out. “Because Kevin’s been my best friend for years, and I already love him like a brother. But not like what you’re going for.”
A blossom of red crept out from underneath Kevin’s hoodie, but the Prince plucked the knife from his skin like it was little more than a scratch.
“Calm down,” I shouted, stepping in front of Maddy be-fore the Prince could retaliate. “We’ll move the carousel. You can have your sister’s body, or whatever is left, and no one has to be filleted in the process.”
I put my hand on Maddy’s shoulder and pointed her backwards. “Stay behind Jenna.”
“I’m not scared of that thing!” she replied, indignant.
“Good for you,” I said, my words short. “But if he tries attacking you again, he has to go through Jenna first. And she’s got the curse on her side. This is the only way to keep him from using you.”
The Prince eyed the three of us as we gathered together, but he didn’t move from his perch. He crouched down, playing with the knife that Maddy had left in his gut, flipping it around his hands like he was some kind of badass. Was that something Kevin knew how to do? Or something the Prince had picked up?
I turned my back on him, because worrying about what the Prince could or could not do wasn’t getting me anywhere. Jenna was biting her lip, but she still looked ready to fight. “We can’t beat him,” she said softly. Too softly for the Prince to overhear. Hopefully.
“We don’t have to beat him. We just have to … ” but I didn’t know what we just had to do. Nevermind that. I switched tactics. “Back in Coven class, they said you can share knowledge through the Coven bond.” Jenna nodded slowly. “So you could theoretically use spells that you’d never been taught, right?”
“What are you thinking?” she asked slowly.
“Cole knows a hell of a lot of illusions.” It was convenient that that was his talent, because he had a habit of making even the most innocuous spells destructive by accident. Illusions couldn’t set things on fire or knock walls down. “When the Witchers fought the Prince, they used force. Attack spells, violent spells. Maybe you can’t kill it with fire, but maybe we can trick it.”
A slow, vindictive smile started to spread across Jenna’s face, the kind of smile that made principals tremble behind their desks. There was no one better suited for driving someone crazy. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to figure out a way to move the merry-go-round.”
“Mal, this isn’t an extra set of reps at the gym. I don’t care how strong you are, you can’t move the whole thing. It has to weigh tons.”
In such a short amount of time, I’d come to rely on the spells hidden in the darkbond. Spells that our parents had left for us. Why, I still didn’t know. I should be worried that by tapping into their secret magic, I was somehow playing into their hands. But at the same time, this magic was the only thing I’d seen slow the Prince down even a little.
I didn’t dare keep my eyes closed for more than a moment. I didn’t trust him not to strike out at the others the moment my attention was turned away. So I had to concentrate on the bond between us, on the things that kept us together. The fights. The wars. Jenna and I on the roof of the hospital, the two of us against the world. Cole on my nerves and Justin on my back, and Bailey, scared little Bailey who I sometimes thought was the most like me. She wanted things she couldn’t have so badly.
Maybe we were chained together, and maybe that meant that there were things I wouldn’t be able to do. But that didn’t mean I stopped fighting.
We all had our battles. Maybe mine weren’t the mountains I’d thought they were. A month ago, I never would have thought I’d have given in to our heritage and actively pursued the magic that might save all of us. But here I was.
The Coven bond opened around me, and I could feel us like the five points of a star. Equal points. Their lives swarmed around me, and I felt the four of them rallying together. The Prince could do a lot of things, but he couldn’t do what he’d once promised me. He couldn’t break this down.
No one knew how the Coven bond formed, or what caused it to form. But I did. The five of us together were a perfect circle, balanced in ways I couldn’t entirely understand, and some that I did. When it came to our hunger for power, Jenna and I were opposite points, and Justin the fulcrum in
between. But in other ways, Justin and Jenna made up one side to themselves, and I was the fulcrum between them, and our younger siblings.
Moonset’s magic spun around me like a halo, and I knew somewhere deep in my head that this was why I was the one who could use it. Because I was the only one who would hesitate before pressing the button. I was the last line of defense.
I didn’t have the slightest idea what half of the magic inside me did. But I knew it was dangerous. It was powerful, and though it didn’t feel dark, it came from Moonset. And they weren’t the good guys, no matter the good deeds they’d done along the way.
Both times before, when I needed something to happen, the selection was done by instinct. I reached out, and grabbed whichever symbol or spell felt the most right. But just as I reached out this time, my eyes slipped up, and I saw the symbol painted onto the roof of the carousel.
Once when we were younger, Cole had been obsessed with the idea of camping. He wouldn’t shut up about it until Justin and I took him out back to camp in the yard. But once we got out there, he realized how dark it got at night, and he freaked. Flashlights wouldn’t cut it. And so Justin and I had to drag out every extension cord we had just to reach all the way back into the kitchen and plug in the tiny lamp from Cole’s bedside table.
Looking at the symbol was like plugging in that last extension cord, and the sudden explosion of light caused by the connection.
I could hear Jenna and Maddy moving around me, but I couldn’t look away. I heard the Prince snarl, and prayed they were still safe. Because I didn’t know what was about to happen. But it was going to be big.
The thousands of spells spinning around me in the aether cycloned around me and stopped on a symbol like an arrow, careening into the darkness. My mouth opened reflexively and the arrow exploded out of me. The symbol beat against my skin, hummed in time with my heartbeat. This was mine. Something that wasn’t meant for the others.
The last of the symbol forced its way out of me and left me gasping for air, my lungs screaming from drought. How long had I been locked like that, mouth opened but not a single sound to be heard? Sweat dripped down my face, down my sides and back.
