Darkbound

by Scott Tracey

  “The adults are going to stop you. They’re smarter than you are.”

  “No they aren’t,” he singsonged like this was a game. “They need something more concrete to worry about.”

  I needed to stop talking to him. The more I talked, the longer he was in control. And the longer he was in control, the more people were going to get hurt. So he continued talking, continued trying to seduce me with his words and his own particular brand of righteous carnage.

  And I focused on my family instead.

  Jenna’s words preceded the bond this time—just concentrate on your heartbeat and hold this in your mind—but the pulse points of the others followed, everyone but hers and mine were accelerating, fueled by fear.

  The image she sent was of three closing parentheses, an image of something broadcasting. Simple, but I followed her directions even as she was chiding me—I swear to God you’d better be listening to me. Damnit, Mal, where are you? Please be okay—and felt something click inside my head.

  Jenna? I tested.

  Her relief washed through the bond. Mal! Where are you? We’ll come find you.

  Whatever you do, don’t let anyone near the grave, I said. You have to make sure no one else finds it.

  Mal? Bailey. Bailey was okay. The lights went out. People in the hallway keep screaming. Hearing her voice in my head was a relief. I knew they were okay, but it was something else to hear her voice. The more I focused on her, the more I could see the things she was seeing. It wasn’t the Coven bond that flared around me, though. It was the darkbond.

  Bailey and Cole had barricaded themselves in with Justin, who was still out of it. I could feel Bailey’s exhaustion through her words. They’d been smart, and jammed the other hospital bed up in the small alcove by the door, trapping it between the wall and the open bathroom.

  Bailey was curled up on the bed next to Justin, her hand on his forehead. And she was doing everything she could to keep him docile, but she was scared, and weak, and the Prince’s sway was stronger than she was. Bailey’s gift for controlling people was stronger than anyone gave her credit for, and making Justin resist the Prince’s commands was taking a toll on her.

  Cole had a baseball bat in his hands, and he was on guard. Where the hell did you get a baseball bat? Of course Cole would have a baseball bat.

  Found it. Took it. Cole kept himself casually innocent. I remembered what the Prince had said about only infecting Justin. Cole had said there had to be a fire, but we’d stopped him before he could start one, and then Luca.

  But now wasn’t the time to worry about all of that. That would have to come later, after I’d stopped the Prince.

  How has he got a bat? Jenna asked. Are you there with them?

  No, I sent back. But I am at the hospital. Can’t you feel along the Coven bond, see where they’re at?

  No, she replied dubiously. They haven’t shown us the spells to access that yet. How are you doing it?

  Of course, because it was the darkbond, not the Coven bond that gave me access. That’s a very long story for later. But I promise I’ll tell you, I hurriedly added, before Jenna could voice the growing frustration I could feel from her.

  You guys stay where you are. Cole, you have to keep an eye on Bailey. The Prince is strong. Really strong.

  I’m fine, Bailey sent, even as Cole added, I always watch out for Bailey. There was an undercurrent of “how do you not know this by now” to his message.

  He’s hiding behind the kids he infected. How can I stop them without hurting them, Jen? Because when it came to magic, Jenna knew more than any of the rest of us. Bailey had a gift for mind control, but she could barely keep Justin down, which meant that was out for me. And Cole could use illusions, but I didn’t know how much good they’d do.

  The Prince said he’s making them resistant to magic. The Witchers can’t contain them, I added. So I need alternatives.

  Chloroform, Cole suggested.

  Hospitals don’t have a ready supply of chloroform, I don’t think. Even if they did, it would be locked up. Jenna was thoughtful. I have a few ideas. You guys, pool together anything you think might help.

  That was how I came to find a handful of spells I’d never bothered to learn myself. Magical cheat sheets in my brain. Three of them. Justin was the lone holdout, but then Justin was off in his own little world. But I could feel Jenna skimming through the spells that Cole and Bailey knew, and I saw the moment she crept into Justin’s head.

  And the shock that struck her when she did.

  Most of the magic we knew was similar. Each of us, in theory, got taught a few unique things. Spells geared towards our skill sets. So Bailey knew spells that Cole didn’t, and vice versa. Justin and Jenna, as the most capable out of all of us, knew the most. I, by choice, knew the least. That wasn’t the problem.

  The problem was everything else Justin had in his head. There was a whole compendium of magic that not only didn’t look familiar to me, but to none of the others, as well. Spell after spell. Dozens of them.

  Justin’s been hoarding magic. Jenna voiced the betrayal that cut her the deepest, but it cut the rest of us all in different ways. For Bailey, it was the advent of more secrets. For Cole, it was a renewed, and broken, trust. For me, it was just the same gnawing worry as always. Each of them thought magic was the solution. Not the problem. But at least Jenna was honest about her power cravings.

  I brushed up against the part of us all that connected to Justin, and caught nothing more than flashes. A book. Something about a postcard. And a gnawing terror that woke him up every night.

  This can be what you’re looking for, Jenna said, having choked down her own feelings. For a moment, our connection

  became more than just words, as she showed me spells and pieced different ones together. A cobbled-together arsenal of magic that none of us knew the origin for.

  Jenna was diligent, handing me almost a dozen different spells, and explaining the ways to use them. The only flaw to the plan was that I had to keep my concentration on the Coven bond, because the knowledge I was using wasn’t mine. And the moment I lost them, I lost all of it.

  The Witchers couldn’t stop the Prince. They tried. The Prince was going to burn the town down and take the children as an added insult. There was only me. Only me, and the magic.

  Good luck, Bailey said quietly.

  I didn’t tell them how much I was worried luck wouldn’t be enough.

  “You don’t want to do this,” Kevin whispered over the speakers as I came out onto the fourth floor. Part of me just knew that he was in Luca’s room.

  Emergency lights led a murky atmosphere to the hallway. I thought all hospitals were supposed to come equipped with backup generators, but then again, I didn’t know that it was the Prince or his followers who’d cut the power. Maybe the adults thought it would give them the tactical advantage. Or maybe they just wanted to hedge their bets. It was harder to tell you were losing in the dark.

  Waves of regret curled up in me, and my steps stopped. Why was I doing this? Why was I the one who had to fight? I shook my head. The adults should be the ones to deal with all of this. Not me. My conviction wavered.

  When I tried to figure out what changed my mind, I couldn’t latch onto anything. Those weren’t my feelings. It was the Prince. His passions swept over me and blotted out everything but the jangly adrenaline locked in my limbs. Manipulating me without even trying.

  There had been three symbols that had flared in my mind when Cyrus was talking. Three of the spells in the darkbond grimoire that had been pulled from the shuffle. One to open the grave. One to kill. And the last, to protect myself.

  Warning bells rang with nerves that were all mine. Instincts told me not to use it, warned me against the cost. But I had to. I pulled the symbol down from my head and into my mouth, but even as it scurried over my teeth and out into the world, m
y body erupted with pain. Burns flared across my collarbones, and I screamed as the world burst into hues of red and white agony.

  Just below my neck, an invisible knife carved along my skin, swayed and curved lines like a figure skater’s dance of swirls and loops. I pulled my shirt away from my skin, dizzy when I realized what it was sticking to was blood. I dropped to my knees, howling, but the wounds continued to grow along my skin.

  This was my protection? This was my defense? I was killing myself, and I didn’t know why. I struggled with the tee shirt, pulled it down just enough for my skin to breathe, and saw the black and red lines on my skin. My skin split beneath the knife, cauterized by the heat, and healed over again. At first the bleeding was heavy, but it dissipated quickly, vanished until I thought I might have imagined it.

  In minutes, the skin all along my collarbones was scarred and puffy. I panted, trying to figure out what I’d done to myself, when the scars started to darken—taking the shapes of the spell I’d unleashed.

  The darker they grew, the more my thoughts cooled. Calmed. The adrenaline was still there, because adrenaline was physiological, not emotional, and it was crucial to survival. The Prince’s voice continued to echo all around me, but his feelings couldn’t touch me. But my thoughts were clear enough to realize I wasn’t feeling anything. No more anger, no more guilt.

  “Don’t make me do this, Malcolm.” Kevin’s voice was a plea, carried through the floors and ceilings by the hospital’s address system. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Stop this. You’re making it harder than it has to be.”

  “I offered you everything,” he spat in a violent surge of feedback.

  “I offered you something too,” I replied. “A quick death.”

  The walls shook with the wail that came next, rage and melancholy and hurt rocketing through the hospital like the emotional bomb that it was. For the first time since I’d first stumbled into the Prince’s realm, I felt nothing in his wake. But immunity had its price, and I felt nothing at all.

  “If you love me—” the words choked out, bolstered by the Prince’s supernatural presence. Regret turned to resolve as it swept past me. “If you love me, you will kill him. Bring me his flesh. Bring me his eyes. Come to me cloaked in his blood, and you shall have all of my love. Forever.”

  The second time the walls of the hospital shook, it had nothing to do with the Prince himself. It was the combined berserker rage and fervor that he had stoked all throughout his darkbound. Was this what Moonset had planned for us—foot soldiers who would do everything they commanded? Those who remained roared in triumph and acquiescence.

  They started to pour into the hallway. First came a lanky red-haired giant and a blond girl who’d been one of the first to approach me after Jenna’s spell took effect and the school fell in love with me.

  He swung at me, and as I dropped down to duck out of the path of his fist, the girl went for one of my legs. My balance was off, and I went tumbling down easily. She jumped onto my chest and reached for my face, her nails looking long and sharp. Just like I told you, Jenna said calmly in my head.

  “Aavis ul vacus. Din renardi.” I shouted, clawing my own hand as I faced it towards her. As I climbed to my feet, I repeated it, this time clawing my right hand as I held it towards the red-headed kid. Both of them gaped, confusion painting their faces as their mouths moved, swallowed, and tried to understand what was happening to them.

  You’re depriving them of oxygen, but once they drop, let the spell go. It shouldn’t take long. It sounds like it’s a sleeper-hold spell. Like she said, they dropped a few seconds later. I let my hands drop and walked over to them. I touched each of them on the forehead with my fingertips. “Dormic daia.” To keep them unconscious, Jenna had explained.

  Hands grabbed me from behind, spun me around, and tossed me. The guy who’d snuck up on me wasn’t much bigger than Cole, and once I realized what was happening, I caught my stride and reversed myself as I grabbed at his arm and turned his own momentum against him. Even one-handed, I was strong enough to spin him into the wall he’d been planning to throw me into.

  The kid had the wind knocked out of him, but it didn’t stop him for long. He charged forward, sliding on pajama pants that were just a bit too long for him. By the time he reached me he’d almost sprawled into a pile at my feet, but I grabbed him before he could fall. “Corous ven manus,” I whispered, palm against his forehead.

  Maybe you can turn them against each other, Jenna had said. That spell will cross the wires in his mind. Fair is foul, and all that.

  I didn’t expect it to work, despite what Jenna had said, but all the fight dropped out of the kid and he looked up at me and shrugged, then turned back and started walking the way I’d already come.

  I hurried after him, turned him back around and sent him off as a scout. When a dark-haired girl came around the corner and snarled when she caught sight of me, the tiny kid snarled right back and went after her.

  Picking the kid was the right choice. He was small but fast, and the more he blocked the dark-haired girl, the more confused she got. Because she only had one purpose, one objective. Give the Prince the gore he savored. She swung, and the kid darted around her and leapt onto her back like a monkey, tumbling both of them to the ground.

  While they wrestled on the floor, I hurried past the pair of them and turned down the next hallway. There were almost a dozen more, all spaced out between here and the end of the hall. It looked like a mix of all the best athletes in school too. Kevin had chosen well.

  It confirmed what I’d guessed, though. The Prince was hiding out in Luca’s room. I still wasn’t sure why, or what their connection was, but maybe he thought of Luca like the only safe port in a storm. Luca had set all of this into motion. It was only fitting he be there at the end.

  The first of the guys charged at me, dropped his head like a bull, and thundered down the hall.

  I can help, too, Cole said, supplying a handful of illusions. Some of the same ones that Jenna had utilized earlier. Seriously, first with the Prince and now with his minions, Cole was becoming indispensable. I made a mental note to tell him later.

  “Phantous nic.” I took a giant step to the left, grinning when my body split into two and a duplicate Malcolm stood where I’d been. The guy charged right through the illusion and crashed into one of the walls. Okay, maybe now I saw a little of what Cole did when he messed around with illusions.

  When the next one charged me—one of the guys who’d helped beat on Brice—I shifted position and wound up like a pitcher, only instead of a ball, at the apex of my throw I whispered, “Luxic dai.” A ball of light flew from my hand and smacked him right in the face, exploding a shower of light into his eyes.

  He dropped to the ground, hands pressed against his eyes as more surged up from behind him. And then it was a good old-fashioned street brawl. I went on the offensive immediately, punching the guy at the front in the face and grabbing him by the arm. I swung him around and used him like a shield, and the next wave of attackers clocked him instead of me. I winced in sympathy when one of the punches slammed his head back into my shoulder, and he slumped in my grip.

  One of them came in at the side while I was distracted and a foot slammed into my ribs, and down I went. My head smacked against the concrete wall, and for a moment there was nothing but swimming anarchy. But I shrugged off the pain, not because it didn’t hurt, but because it didn’t matter.

  I climbed back to my feet and this time, when one of the basketball horde charged me, I kicked him in the stomach before he closed the gap. Then, while he was hunched over, I shoved him into his friends. Down they went like bowling pins, and I crossed the hall and walked into Luca’s room.

  “You might as well call them off now,” I said, casually closing the door behind me. “It’s over.”

  “Why are you making this so difficult? I would have tak
en you with me. Showed you this world, as much a fresh start for me as for you. All you had to do was give me this one thing.”

  “I’m not smarter than my father.”

  There was a startled pause from inside the room, but I still wouldn’t look at him. Wouldn’t give him the power. I couldn’t hear the breathing devices. Luca must be somewhere else. Or else they’d evacuated him when the kids started to rampage.

  “I know you think you are, Kevin. You think you can save me from my fate, unravel the Coven bond and free me from the rest. Maybe even take the magic out of me.” I rested my head against the cool metal of the door. Closed my eyes. “But did you really think you were smarter than Moonset?”

  “Why do you keep trying to hurt me, Malcolm? Why do you insist on fighting me at every turn? Why can’t you see things the way they truly are? The chains that shackle you are unnecessary. I can show you how to cast them off.”

  “And what happens then? They had an entire contingency plan in place for the minute you showed up here. Because they always knew one of you would find a way out. And they made sure I had what I needed to put you back down where you belong.”

  “You have no idea the forces you’re tampering with, Malcolm. Please, I’m begging you. I know it feels good,” his voice drifted, “I know it feels so good, but that is a power better left buried. I don’t know where they unearthed it, or how they manipulated the darkbond the way they did, but you have to let it go. It is not meant for you, my human. Nor for any other human.”

  His concern washed over me and then fell away. I didn’t need him to tell me. “The oldest magic. The primal voice. I know.”

  A long pause. Elsewhere in the hospital, I heard shouts. Screams. But the room around me was quiet. My heartbeat was slowing down to even, now that the threats from the hallway were gone. Now that we were alone.

  “I can take you away from here. Still. All you have to do is ask.” Kevin’s voice lost the throbbing hypnotic lilt that made the Prince’s words so potent. “Please, Malcolm. Don’t do this.”