Darkbound (The Legacy of Moonset) (20 page)

The quizzical look on Brice’s face grew stronger.

“
Do you love him
?
”

“Stop this!” I demanded.

“No,” Brice said, but there was less resistance this time. “No, I … I mean, I don’t think … ”

“Think about it.” The Prince focused his entire awareness around a boy who wasn’t even supposed to be here tonight. A boy who was innocent of whatever dark designs the Prince had in mind.

Designs that were slow to take root, but quickly spread once they did. “I mean, I think I could … ” Brice kept trailing off, listening to something that was both above and below the audible words being spoken. Messages to the subconscious, placating the ego and the superego. Faintly, I could hear a trace of music in the air, notes I couldn’t quite pick out.

“I … I think I do.” The slack confusion began to fade, and the confidence returned. Brice smiled, all teeth and brilliant. “I
do
love him.” My heart dropped into my stomach, because this wasn’t a confession I wanted. Not like this. Not
ever
like this.

The Prince’s lip twitched upward at the side, the most hideous attempt at a smile I’d ever seen.

“Stop it.” I walked out of my spotlight, or at least I tried. It followed me as I ran and merged when I caught up with the Prince. Our lights together were twice as bright, but I turned my back to it. Facing him. “You don’t have to do this.”

“You think you can just send me away?” The Prince turned to face me, and the spotlights caught his irises, making them flare into brilliant yellow suns. His were the eyes of an animal, not the eyes of a human being. He carried a predator’s feral rage and it smothered me. “You think you can just call on your Moonset magics and banish me like
I am some sort of bothe
r
!
”
His voice rose to a shriek, and it battered my eardrums louder than any concert.

Around us the walls splintered, started to crack. A snowfall of plaster seeped from the ceiling. He would bring the whole room down around us. “
I am of the blood of the old Aos Si, the Court of Kingmakers. I am a Prince of the Abyss and the scourge of Hamelin. My songs make devils weep and quelled the rage of the Undying. You do not dismiss me! I will not be so humiliated!
”

His words were a thousand lashes of fire against my back, flagellation for every sin I’d ever committed against his name. Agony awoke inside of me, and I fought for the breath to scream.

I took a step back, nearly stumbling to the ground. I managed to land on my knees, to press my hands against the floor and kept myself upright. Somewhat. Sounds ratcheted through my head, clawing apart my eardrums. His fury hollowed me out on the inside, and I almost wept in the face of it. Every muscle, every tendon in my body quelled under the fire of the Prince’s wrath.

And then it was over. Above me, I could hear the Prince’s breathing grow faster as he struggled to push down his feelings.

“Yes,” he said, “that was quite unbecoming.” The Prince reached down, grabbed my arm, and hauled me back up to my feet. Only he pulled too far, and my feet dangled inches above the ground. “Oh,” he said, as if realizing for the first time that he was taller than I. “Bother.” And then he dropped me back to my feet.

This time I remained standing.

“Brice, my darling,” the Prince said, taking care to smooth out any wrinkles to his shirt that the tantrum might have caused.

“Yes, my Prince?”

The Prince looked slyly at me and then that hideous smile returned, slow at the corners like it could somehow trick me into ignoring it. “Malcolm loves you too.”

Brice’s entire face brightened, the rush of joy filling him so full he could barely stand still and contain it. He moved tiny little movements, jerks of hands and feet and shifting weight back and forth between legs. He looked about a second away from fist pumping the sky in triumph.

“But … ” and here the Prince let his word hang in the air, thick like the noose I knew it to be.

“But?” Brice was guileless, unaware of where things were heading.

“Please,” I whispered, because that was all that was left of me. “Don’t.”

“Did you bring the knife like I asked?”

Shaky hands pulled the knife out of a back pocket. It was a big knife, something straight out of a restaurant kitchen. In the light trained upon him, it glowed like a forest fire.

“Malcolm would like it so much if you were to bleed for him.”

“No he wouldn’t,” I shouted immediately, but all protests died once the Prince clasped his hand around my shoulder. At the simplest touch, every muscle in my body contracted, flexed and tensed and surged to impulses that didn’t come from me. I tried to move my mouth, my hands, my anything, but they were under the Prince’s control. I was his puppet.

Brice looked down at the knife, and then back up at
the Prince. He nodded slowly. “You’re sure?”

The Prince’s smile was warm and his words carried
contented
and
proud
across the room. The feelings swept over Brice and his smile became less strained. More easy. “Wherever you think is best,” the Prince added. “Though Malcolm loves danger. He enjoys a threat. So be sure to give him a show.”

No,
I wanted to scream.
Don’t do this.
But Brice stripped off his pajama pants and his tee shirt, leaving him clad in only a pair of black and blue designer briefs.

I could feel the Prince’s avid interest as his breath swept past my ear. Brice studied his body, piece by piece, looking for the best place to start. Eventually, his arm dropped down at his side, and he nodded to the Prince.

“Malcolm is scared for you,” the Prince murmured.

“Don’t worry.” Brice gave me a small, trusting smile. The kind of smile I might have wanted once, but I’d never earned it. I wanted to
earn
it. “I bust the curve in AP Anatomy.” For a moment, I was a fool, convinced everything was going to be okay. That Brice could defy the Prince in the same way I’d managed. That he was too smart, too studious, to be in danger. Because he might have to cut himself, but he knew the anatomy. He knew where to cut, and where to avoid, in order to not bleed out in seconds.

For a moment, my heart was so full of hope and relief that I strained to bursting. If even one person could resist the Prince’s song, then it wasn’t all for nothing. We could fight him together.

Brice didn’t flinch as the knife sliced across his skin. There was nothing but a pleasant gasp as the femoral artery released a spray of blood that carried all the way to the tips of my shoes, staining them crimson.

I’d never worked up the courage to get to know Brice outside of the play. And now I never would. He dropped to the floor. The smile didn’t fade from his face even though the light from his eyes did.

“Draw the curtain on the second act,” the Prince said coldly, snapping his fingers.

The throne vanished. The lights returned. The Prince was
gone.

The body was not.

t
w
e
n
t
y
-s
i
x

Sensitive witches can read things in the Coven bond and know when trouble is happening. But seeing the future before it happens is dangerous, rare, and deadly. Almost always there is a dark origin to that power, a pact made and bound
in the bloodlines. It never ends well.

From a lecture series on
rare gifts among witches

Quinn beat the cops to the scene, despite the fact that the police station was only a few blocks away. “The Prince?” he asked quietly, even though it wasn’t a question.

“The Prince,” I agreed.

There was drama once the officers arrived. A boy dead
and bled out before they’d arrived, me with the blood-
soaked skin and clothes. Quinn, who was
obviously
not a student, yet hanging around like he had every right to be there. But it was drama that the Witchers made disappear, with a few pointed looks and a lot of magic.

It wasn’t the first time they’d interfered in a police investigation. It wasn’t even the first time they’d interfered in a
homicide
investigation. There was the trail of bodies back in Kentucky, and several since we’d come to New York.

“If you’ve got any more tricks up your sleeve,” Quinn said quietly while his eyes focused on the investigation around us, “now would be the time to pull them out.”

“If it was that easy, don’t you think I would have?”

I knew Illana would tell Quinn everything that I’d confided in her. More than anyone, he was the one she trusted. They weren’t even technically related—he was Robert Cooper’s grandson, and she was Robert’s second wife. At best, she was his step-grandmother. But it didn’t seem like either one of them acknowledged the difference.

“And what about him?” Quinn asked, nodding his head towards Brice. “What’s the story there?”

“He was just … a friend or something,” I said. I was dubious about Brice. I didn’t really know him all that well, and
he was either conveniently intrusive or just dogged in latching onto new people. “The Prince wanted his message personalized.”

There was a disconnect as Quinn’s eyebrows shifted in one direction with his mouth turned in another, a salsa dance or a tango of movement as he tried to pull together a response. “That’s fine,” he managed a second later. He looked a little constipated, but then treading the love lives of people only a few years younger than him was probably incredibly awkward. “Did you find any leads on what really happened to Kore?”

“Not as such.” I wiped my hands on my jeans, but the only thing it did was smear the colors into my skin. “The Abyssal has a host, though, I know that much. I think he might be using Luca somehow. That’s why no one can get him to wake up, because the Prince is holding him captive. The Abyssals
did
protect him when the farmhouse started coming down.”

“So what do you want to do?” Quinn asked.

Why was he asking me? I wasn’t an expert. I was the least educated of my siblings and probably the least talented witch in the entire town. I was the last person who should be making the decisions.

They say Cyrus liked to take orders too.
The thought spurred me to say something, anything. “Isn’t there a test? Something you can do to see if he’s the Prince’s butt monkey?”

Quinn spread his hands out in front of him. “You saw what happened the last time I went against that thing.”

I was too tired to glare at him. “I like you better when you’re monosyllabic.”

“Funny, I was just going to say the same thing.” Quinn’s expression grew serious. “I’ll have someone head to the hospital to check Luca over again. But we should keep looking at alternatives. The Abyssal could be anyone, and they might not even know it. They could be walking around, completely unaware that there’s a demon in their head.”

Jenna was on the end of the bed when I woke up the next morning. “Huh?” I sat halfway up, trying to see through the haze of a glorious sleep and then being unceremoni
ously ripped from it. At first she was just a pale, black blob, a gargoyle someone had left by accident.

At least that seemed far more likely than Jenna herself being in my room. Voluntarily.

“Whuzzat?” My head dropped back to the pillow and I yanked the comforter over my head. Blessed warmth started to return, seeping back into my skin.

It didn’t last long. The covers were yanked off, and now the gargoyle was perched above me, scowling.

“Something’s wrong with Cole,” the gargoyle said. “Again.”

I slapped my hand against the nightstand three different times before I managed to smack against my phone. With the treasure in hand, I burrowed back down under my covers and winced at the light.

“It’s only eight thirty,” I muttered. “Can’t something be wrong with Cole after eleven?”

“He’s been up since five.”

Oh, Christ. It was supposed to be Saturday. After getting home last night, I’d laid awake for hours staring at the ceiling, trying to think of anything other than Brice in that auditorium, and how callous the Prince had been. The questions had been the fuel that kept everything running.
How long until he comes after someone else? Will he keep killing people if I don’t solve this fast enough?

“Coffee.”

The sound of a cup settled just to my right. “Black like your heart,” Jenna confirmed with an understated smile. Her hair was down and in her face, fresh from sleep and just a little poofy. It must have been serious if she came over without putting on any makeup first.

“What happened?”

“There’s a girl in his gym class. I’m not sure about the details. I don’t know if there
are
any details.”

I stared at her for a moment, then sipped at the coffee. Once I realized it wasn’t scalding hot, I downed the whole thing in a single motion. There wasn’t enough coffee in the world. “You think it’s the Abyssal’s spell?”

“I think he got up and left sometime this morning before anyone else was awake,” Jenna said simply. “They did the last bed check around five. He disappeared sometime after that.”

I climbed out of bed, all thoughts of sleep faded like my dreams. “Let’s go,” I grumbled.

We went through Cole’s room and the rest of the house, even asked Bailey for information, but there was no sign of where he headed. No clue as to what he had planned.

“You’re
sure
he’s about to do something bad?” I asked for about the thirtieth time.

“It’s Cole,” Jenna fired back, and really that was all she had to say.

“Has he been acting weird?”

Jenna favored me with a dark look, while Bailey coughed her way into the conversation. We both turned toward her.

“He keeps talking about some teacher. But he wouldn’t tell me anything about her. Just kept saying I wouldn’t understand.”

“We can handle this,” Jenna said a moment later, forehead wrinkled in thought. “Malcolm and I tapped into the Coven bond when the Witchers were getting beat down. If the three of us work together, we should be able to find him.”

I scrubbed a hand over my face.
More magic.
“Have you ever done that before?”

She pointed a finger in my direction with a very firm, “Don’t start.” And then, “Bailey, help me move the coffee table.” Together, the two girls cleared a space in the living room. We sat in a circle, close enough
that our knees were touching, Jenna to my left, and Bailey to my right.

“Close your eyes. Concentrate.” Once again, Jenna was taking the lead. I think she liked it, the chance to be the one in charge, the one who made the decisions. Ever since Justin’s attack, she had thrived. As horrible as it was to think, maybe the distance between them would do her some good. Force her to grow up and stand on her own.

“In class, they talked about finding your common ground. But we lose more of it every day,” Jenna spoke quietly, each word slow and smooth. “You can feel it, can’t you? We’re falling apart, and
things
are coming between us. Luca. The Abyssal. We have to trust each other. All we have is each other.”

Unlike the last time, when it had taken a confession of things I didn’t want to dwell upon, this time I fell into the space Jenna’s words carved out easily. The Coven bond was there, light and elastic and wrapping around the three of us like a cocoon. And above it, around it, were the other rings. The other layers. Now that I knew they were there, I could feel them, feel the
way they interacted with each of us and with each other. The circle of tar and chains was a counterpoint for a circle of ozone force, kept active and in motion by their repelling forces.

Moonset hadn’t just crafted one bond to keep us together. There were many of them. And there, in the space between them, was the darkbond. I could feel it pulsing, and through it, I could see each of the others.

The Coven bond made it so that we could always find each other in a crisis, like now, but the darkbond made that access more personal. I could feel what the others felt: Justin in the hospital, bored with a nagging darkness in his gut that was just waiting for the chance to break out; Jenna worried and exhilarated: managing something Justin never could. Bailey, quiet and terrified. And Cole: Cole was planning. Determined. His focus was startling, he was committed to what he was planning. I’d never known him to be that serious about anything. But whatever it was, it was going to be bad.

“I feel him,” Jenna said, at just the moment I was going to open my mouth.

“He’s in town,” Bailey added a moment later.

The picture in my head clarified by degrees until I could
see
him. Books, and the smell of dust and tannin soaked into the woodwork. Stale air, recycled a thousand times over until it was nearly as old as the oldest volumes on the shelves. “He’s in the library.”

“He wants to … ” Bailey hesitated. “I think he wants to burn it down. Why would he want to burn down the library?”

Because someone must have told him it was a good idea. Maybe they complained about a miniscule library fine, or how much they hated writing research papers. Who knew how flimsy the reason was.
People all over town were overreacting off the slightest trigger. The Prince’s curse had spread to Cole, and now he was acting on some sort of sociopathic instinct. The library was the enemy, therefore the library must be burned down.

“Illana said that sometimes you can communicate with them. People in your coven. Even from long distances.” Jenna’s presence in my head grew troubled and sluggish. “But there’s something blocking him. He’s resistant.”

I could feel the two of them in my head, pulsing, and close and real. But I could also feel all the layers of the bond around us, and before we lost this, I had to know for certain. “What’s the bond feel like to you? Do you feel all that?”

“It’s warm like summer,” Bailey said, and I could feel her wrapping herself in it. “I know you’re all out there and it makes me smile.”

“I know I can find you no matter where you go,” Jenna followed up the moment Bailey started speaking. “I know if we’re ever separated you’ll still be there. In my head.”

“But what about the rest?” I pushed. “What about the chains, and the weird gravity, and the bones?”

Twin sources of silence made my words an empty echo. “You don’t feel it?” I asked. Was I really the only one?

“There’s just the bond, Mal,” Jenna said, but now her words were slow and soothing. I could feel
things
passing between the two girls, the equivalent of guarded looks and pointed gestures. Psychic, nonverbal communication. “Don’t panic, okay? They didn’t
actually
do anything to us. We’re just a normal coven.”

They really couldn’t feel it. That meant they couldn’t sense the mental grimoire that existed somewhere in the ether all around us. I couldn’t tell if I was more worried or relieved.
Any
of the others would have abused the power at the first chance. But it was more than just a happy coincidence that I was the only one who could tap into it. I would never be free of them, regardless of what I wanted. Whatever Moonset had planned, I was an integral part of the equation.

How much had they known? Did they know one of us would grow up to despise where we came from? That we’d turn away from the magic entirely. Was that why they did it? Maybe they knew the only person that could be trusted with true power was the one who didn’t want it in the first place.

Had they known, even then, that it would be me?

I pulled away from them first and let the connection between us sever, a rubber band snap that put me back in the living room. I looked up to find Quinn leaning against the wall, arms crossed in front of him. “Well?”

“Library,” Jenna and I said at the same time. It was such an unexpected moment that the pair of us stopped and stared at each other. We never had moments of synchronicity like that. Maybe her and Justin, but never the pair of us.

“Bailey, will you go tell Nick and Kelly what’s going on?” Quinn asked, leaning forward to stare down at her.

She climbed to her feet and walked towards the front door. But she stopped by the table and turned back towards us. “I can do that, but I—I don’t think I should go with you. I think I should stick around where someone can keep an eye on me.”

Jenna realized what that was all about just a few seconds before me. Bailey still carried the guilt from her part in Luca’s crimes. She wasn’t able to move on. “That wasn’t your fault,” Jenna said firmly. “You got hurt trying to help save people. No one blames you for what happened.”

Bailey could be stubborn when she wanted to, though. “I still think I should stay home. It’s safer. Kelly’s been trying to show me some defensive stuff. I think I’d rather be here and be watched. Just in case.”

“Sure,” I said, summoning up a smile. Jenna stared at me. “If she’s that worried, she’ll be safer here. You and I can handle Cole.”