Darkbound

by Scott Tracey

  I looked up at Illana then. Saw her slow nod. She already knew.

  “I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll help.”

  eighteen

  Denton was the lieutenant, Sherrod’s right-

  hand man. He understood strategy and war. Sherrod may have called the shots,

  but Denton lined up the targets.

  Moonset: A Dark Legacy

  They were all in the living room, waiting for me. I could see it in Cole’s unnatural stillness, in the way that Bailey picked at the same threadbare spot at the back of her pants, and in the way that Jenna wouldn’t sit down, wouldn’t stop pacing because at least pacing was doing something. The waiting was driving them crazy. Anything was better than waiting. Even bad news.

  “Oh, Christ,” Jenna said, despite the fact that none of us had ever been religious in our lives. She ran a hand over her forehead and into her hair, and looked up and away.

  “She thought you were going to be Justin,” Cole said quietly.

  “Is he okay?” Bailey asked, almost running over Cole’s words in her haste. Jenna stilled at the question, her hand still caught in the tangle of her hair.

  All three of them had gotten dressed, or they’d never gone to bed, it was hard to say. A pair of Witchers stood in the kitchen, leaning against the counters and pretending like they weren’t blatantly eavesdropping on every word. I tried to blank them out, like the giant, black construction paper backdrops they were.

  “Justin’s fine,” I lied. We were always lying to each other. Even when we promised no more lies, not this time. It was a lie.

  “They wouldn’t tell us anything,” Bailey added, before anyone else could take the lead. “But we knew that something was wrong.”

  “Of course we did. They pulled us all out of bed,” Cole snapped, a night without sleep taking its toll on his mood.

  Bailey pulled herself up to every inch of her diminutive height. “Some of us knew even before that. You said so yourself. You had a bad feeling.”

  “I always have a bad feeling,” Cole muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets.

  But Jenna was the quiet one. She was also, ironically, the one I worried most about. An hour ago, I’d been ready to rip her head from her body. But now things were different. She thought Justin would be the one coming home. The one that was happy and healthy and whole.

  I would say that for most of us, Jenna’s love was a theory. Sure, we all loved each other, but it was a strange thing. Family but not family. Friends but not friends. A coven but not a coven. Our bond might have been unbreakable, but it was always up for debate.

  On the surface, I knew Jenna cared for us, but I had to wonder if Justin was the only one she loved. We called each other brother and sister, but it was make-believe. Justin and Jenna, though, they had the same blood coursing through their veins.

  The rest of us were just outliers. Pretenders. Jenna might have been sad if I’d been the one in the hospital instead of Justin, but no more so than if it was Quinn, or Maddy, or anyone else that casually made her acquaintance over the years. Justin was a different story. Justin was real to her in a way that the rest of us weren’t. He belonged to her.

  “He’s going to be fine,” I said to her and her alone. This time I meant it as much as I’d ever meant anything in my life. Justin would be fine. And I would do everything I could to help Illana make sure it was so.

  “When can I see him?” Jenna asked. Demanded, really. I’d expected their first questions to be about what happened. Who had done this to Justin, and how bad was he hurt? I should have known better. Jenna wouldn’t trust any of that until she saw him for herself. Jenna wouldn’t trust anything she couldn’t touch, or see, or experience for herself.

  I checked my watch, did the math. “We can go back after they’re done with rounds. But he hasn’t woken up yet,” I warned, “and they don’t know how long he’ll be out. So we can only go a couple at a time. Jenna and I’ll go first, and then you guys can come this afternoon.”

  “We’re not going to school,” Cole warned, crossing his arms in front of him.

  “So don’t,” I replied easily. “But you’re going to sit here, in the house, until they let you go to the hospital. You’re not hanging out there all day, getting underfoot. School might be a good distraction until you can see him.”

  “Whatever,” he said. I knew that was as close to an agreement as I was going to get, so I decided to take the victory where I could get it.

  Getting the kids settled in wasn’t nearly as difficult as I expected. Both of them refused to go home, instead choosing Justin and Jenna’s as their home for the night. They also refused to be separated, which was interesting. Bailey slept in Jenna’s room, and Cole slept on the floor. It was always a little weird to remember how divided we were. There were barely three years separating me (the oldest) from Bailey (the youngest), but we were split in two groups.

  Justin, Jenna, and I always had to be older than our years, and responsible for each other. Somewhere along the way, it became an unspoken agreement that Bailey and Cole should get to enjoy the childhoods we missed out on. Most of what we did was to shield them from the worst parts of our lives, even now. That’s how it always had been. That’s how it probably always would be.

  When I came back downstairs, it was no surprise that Jenna had decided to forego sleep. She sat on the couch, facing the window behind it, completely oblivious to the world. It was clear she didn’t want to talk. I wasn’t about to push her.

  I’d never had to be in the role of “oldest sibling” before. Justin was always the one that took charge, played the mediator. I was surprised at how easily I slipped into the position, and then felt ashamed for even thinking about it like that. It wasn’t like I was replacing him. But someone had to step up, and seeing Justin hurt himself, how could I not? It put things into a perspective I’d never had before.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” I announced. I knew she heard me, but she didn’t react. The two Witchers were in the kitchen still, both bent over a cup of coffee. I didn’t like the idea of leaving Jenna on her own, regardless of who else was in the house. She was unpredictable on a good day. I didn’t want to chance it.

  I was gone barely a minute when it happened. The Prince’s sigil flared into the door the moment I pushed my way into the bathroom, and I tumbled through the ether into another world.

  The bathroom was an eastern European bathhouse straight out of a torture porn horror movie. Huge, vaulting arches separated one bathing pool from the next. The walls were a dirty rust color, filigreed with something that might have once been brass but was now so tarnished it simply looked black in the dim light. At the bottom of the pool was an entire scene painted over tiles, a woman surrounded by many tiny creatures swaddled in white cloths.

  There was no water in the pool, nor in any of the others that I could see. The pools themselves weren’t that creepy. The chains, though, were a different matter altogether. Thick, rope-like links of metal hung from the ceiling in a variety of configurations, some of them thick with viscera and dripping rust and carmine onto the floors.

  “I know you’re here,” I called, when after several minutes I was still standing there, waiting for him to show his face. “Are you a coward now? Ashamed after what you did?”

  Steam rose in the air, a hanging cloud of mist despite the fact that the air was dry as dust. It grew thick and left a slick sheen on the surface of everything around me, but didn’t so much as brush against my skin. Nothing more than illusions. There was nothing in this world that was real.

  One moment I was alone, and the next he was seated at the edge of the bath, long and muscular legs stretched down where the water would be if there was water here. By this point, I recognized the effect he had on my senses, the way my eyes couldn’t help but try to pick every piece apart and keep it for always, but every time made him a little more huma
n. A little easier to process. The face wasn’t a blank glow of eyes and mouth anymore, but made up of a strong, chiseled jaw and long eyelashes.

  Waves of discontent and nerves filled the room with a careless energy. The air grew heavy with something incendiary, like it would only take the smallest spark for everything to be blown to kingdom come. Which meant that the Prince, whatever else he might be, wasn’t an idiot.

  “Do you know what lip service is?” I asked, crossing my arms in front of me.

  He didn’t speak. But then again, if I was an ageless, de-monic orphan I probably wouldn’t advertise my ignorance either.

  “It means when someone tells you that they wish they weren’t a monster, and then they turn around and do monstrous things, they’re just paying you lip service. They don’t really want to be different. They’re happy being monsters, and coloring outside the lines. They like it.”

  There was a very long moment where the Prince didn’t say anything, didn’t share anything, and then he surprised me. He smiled. A beaming, bright smile that was as captivating as it was hideous. “You should be happy,” he exclaimed, a cavalier joy spreading from his words to my limbs, electrifying my body with his excitement. “It weighed heavily on your mind. Our bargain: my sister for your freedom. To give in to your own selfish, human desires or remain true to the principles of your masters. I took away the heaviness on your heart. You no longer have to help me because you want to. You will help me because you have no other choice.”

  Justin was recovering in the hospital and the Prince was making it out to be my fault. “You’re sick.”

  Confusion puffed out into the air between us, a cloud of trying and failing in equal measure. Thoughts that would not process, connections that could not find the proper sockets to fit into. “But I’ve given you what you wanted,” he said slowly, each word more hesitant than the last. “I do not understand. How have I disappointed you? I removed all obstacles to your salvation.”

  “You infected my brother! And now it’s going to spread, isn’t it? You’re going to do the same thing to the rest of us.”

  “The rest of them,” he said gently. “I told you once. You are my champion. I’ve chosen you, Malcolm. The best and the brightest the world over, and you surpass each and every one.”

  He meant it as a compliment, but all I could think of was Justin’s madness spreading and all the people who would get hurt in the aftermath. Thoughts that curdled around in my head, thick and viscous.

  “Make it stop,” I demanded. “I told you I’d help you. There was no reason to bring Justin into it.”

  “Ahh, but the human heart is fickle. You’ve already turned away from me, haven’t you? They try to turn you away from me, even as they teach you to bow your head and beg for favors. You’ve become their pet. All this, for want of punishing me.” He made a tutting sound as I opened my mouth to protest. “Their time will come soon, my champion. Never fear, I will free you from their chains, just as I promised.”

  “You started this, not me. You shouldn’t have gone after my brother.”

  “I don’t plan to take the Daggett scion, nor any of the others. For now they are a loan. I have merely borrowed your brother’s vessel and will return it more or less intact at the conclusion of our arrangement. “

  “It’s the ‘less’ part I have a problem with. We aren’t defenseless.” The Coven bond would have to kick in eventually, wouldn’t it?

  “I am not so ignorant of the darkbond, my sweet. The travesties they wreak will be theirs and theirs alone, but I made an oath to you. I have not come for your bondmates. A melody of witches brings nothing to my table, the harmony never quite achieves its true reach.”

  “I don’t want this. And if you’re going to hurt the people I care about, I don’t want any part of you either!”

  “Again, I don’t understand. You hurt them every day. You keep them from their destinies, you tie their hands and legs and throw them into the water to sink. You hide behind a mask of indifference and tell lies with every look. I could not possibly hurt them any more than you already have. So why do you cast me as the villain? All of this, I do for you, my Malcolm.”

  “I am not yours!” I snapped. There was a single moment where I saw eyes that glistened blue and shimmered with hurt before the bubble we were in collapsed around me. Just like that, my vision cracked in half, and the pieces of the Abyssal’s world fell before me, a shattered mirror into another reality.

  I didn’t tell anyone about the Prince’s appearance in my bathroom. If I had, they would have woken up Bailey and Cole, moved them to another location, swept the houses so thoroughly that none of us would be able to go home for days, and generally be pains in the ass. I had something much different in mind.

  The Prince was watching me, stealing me away only once I was alone. I felt it when the connection to his world broke—something inside of me cracked a little at the same time. There was a bond between us. Maybe not the darkbond he always talked about, but whatever the connection was between a Prince and his champion. Twice now my anger had displaced me out of his world, only this time I saw the hurt first. My anger was a knife, and when tempered with my frustration and disappointment at the Prince, it was enough to cut me free.

  I never ended up taking the shower, just stripped down and changed my everything, scrubbed my face with the morning scrub that Bailey had promised would make a morning person out of me. The bags under my eyes weren’t nearly as bad as I was expecting, but I studied my reflection for a long time anyway, tilting and turning at different angles. Was my face thinner? Was all my baggage starting to show? It was hard to tell, and the more I studied the Malcolm in the mirror, the more the knots in my gut tightened.

  I had to wipe my hands onto my jeans three times before they felt dry enough to make the trek back over to Jenna’s. She was in almost the exact same position she’d been in when I left, only she’d gotten up and changed at some point while I

  was gone.

  “Ready?”

  Jenna didn’t reply. She didn’t even look at me. It was almost eerie.

  When we left the Witchers in the kitchen were caught up in quiet, but furious conversation. One of them had their phone out, texting faster than even Bailey could. They looked up exactly once as we left the house, and though neither of them said anything, I could feel their eyes on us up until the door closed.

  Did they know? No, there wasn’t any way. Unless there was some residue left from when the Prince collected me, but I didn’t know the first thing about it. Didn’t even know how the symbol made the world warp around me. It could have triggered any number of warnings, but then they hadn’t stopped us at all, which made me think I was overreacting. If they knew anything at all, then they would have stopped us from leaving the house, right?

  We sat in the car for a few minutes before we left, waiting for the heat to kick on. At any moment, I expected Jenna to launch into a tirade, demanding answers about what happened to Justin, or explanations. Or something. But the longer the silence stretched out, the more awkward I felt. Every time I shifted, the noise was unbelievably loud, the shift of my jeans against the leather an audible nightmare. And what was worse, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching me. That no matter how fast or slow I drove, there were eyes on me no matter what.

  I could count on one hand the number of times Jenna was shocked into silence. For her, silence was like everything else that came out of her mouth. The sharpest kind of weapon that she could wield with deadly accuracy. But this was different. This wasn’t Jenna cloaking herself in quiet and ready for war. This was a Jenna I’d never seen before.

  “Do you … want to talk about it?” I knew it was awkward, and I did it anyway. Justin would want me to.

  Nothing. She didn’t even look away from her window.

  Was I supposed to push? What would Justin do in this situation? No, Justin would ne
ver be in this situation, because he would have diffused Jenna already. He would have her making jokes and snide comments, tossing her hair back and relaxing instead of stressing.

  “Illana said he should be fine in a few weeks,” I continued, now desperate for anything other than the silence. I would have taken raging Jenna on a power trip any day. Quiet Jenna was scary as fuck. “Healing magic is pretty difficult. And they don’t trust just anyone.” There was a coven somewhere in New York that was supposed to have specialized in healing magic, but I had the feeling the quarantine would make it impossible to bring them here now. Besides, the rumors said that the coven only performed healings for those who could pay.

  Still, Jenna said nothing. I thought for sure that between the topics of magic and danger, something would have stoked a fire. Even a roll of her eyes would be welcome at this point.

  “I … really don’t know what to do here. So if you’re about to have some sort of breakdown can you at least try to warn me? Because Justin knows what to do in these situations. I don’t. And this doesn’t have to mean anything. We can go back to hating each other tomorrow, I’ll even promise to call you a bitch if you want.”

  “Bailey thinks it’s your fault.”

  Five words that stopped my heart. Bailey is almost right, I almost confess immediately. It was there on the tip of my tongue. Confession was supposed to be good for the soul, but I just … the Prince took Justin because of me. It was my fault. No almost about it. And it occurred to me now that Jenna was the person who could help me with that.

  “The thing from the fireplace. It’s still here. It … infected Justin. But it’s not going to stop there. It wants all of us, maybe everyone in Carrow Mill. The one that Moonset stopped, it tried to take the whole senior class before they stopped it.” Maybe a selective truth was the way to go.

  “How do you know all this?” she asked, her hair still a shield hiding her face from me.