Darkbound (The Legacy of Moonset) (27 page)

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Upon their surrender, Moonset offered up the location of the compound where we found
the children. What was once a finishing school for southern girls a century ago was filled with plans, schematics, hit lists, and incendiary devices.
And five babies, sleeping sound.

Moonset: A Dark Legacy

Chaos descended upon the hospital quickly, a wave of psychotic rage tangible in the air. There were lights and electricity for another thirty seconds before the building went dark. Screams and other sounds of fury rumbled through the floor. I had no idea what was happening inside. Had everyone gone feral? Were the Witchers holding them back? I had no clue what I was stepping into.

“Why are you doing this? You know me. You know what it is I want. That hasn’t changed.” His voice continued to haunt me while I planned my next move. “
I
haven’t changed. I am the same as I was that first day.”

“Lesson number one about humans, then,” I muttered under my breath, wiping my face down with my shirt. “Monsters might stay the same, but people change every second.”

“Yes, you did,” Kevin replied over the speaker system. “Changed. Who taught you hoard starfire? I hoped I was wrong, that the way you banished me was a fluke. You’ve been keeping secrets, Malcolm. I do not like it.”

Starfire?
The power inside me, the one that doesn’t have a name.
It was woven into the darkbond. But the Prince, who was more perceptive than most, couldn’t see it. And he’d acted like he knew so much about what Moonset had done to us! It had been a lie all along.

I crept down the hall and past the gift shop. There was another stairway towards the back, and it wouldn’t come out right by the elevators. If anyone was going to be waiting for me, I was sure they would be there. But if I could sneak up through a side hallway, maybe I could get away without catching any of his darkbound minions in a bad mood.

But where did I even start? Where would the Prince go? There had to be hundreds of rooms in the hospital, and he could be hiding anywhere. And it wasn’t like I knew the kind of magic that could track him down.

But maybe one of the others did.

The more I reached for the Coven bond, the easier it was to find, becoming like a second awareness in my head.
There was something comforting about it, feeling four pulses of light all around me, knowing that they were still alive without a shadow of a doubt. That they were okay.

Malcolm? Malcolm, can you hear me?
Jenna in my head.
Mal, you’d better still be okay, I swear to God I will kill you myself if you’re not.

I tried to send something back, some confirmation that I was okay, only to hear silence in my head. Maybe if I hadn’t blown off all the Coven bond classes, I would know
how
to communicate with them now. I kept trying for a few seconds before I finally broke and texted her.

This was just great. Here I was, trying to kill something older than the dinosaurs and I could barely use enough magic to light up the stairwell so that I could see.

My fingers slipped over the keys when I heard gunfire coming from the floor above. I froze and crept towards the wall and out of the way, just in case. Who thought that guns were a smart idea to bring into the hospital? Did the Witchers even use guns?

Above me, the fired shots grew louder when I snuck into the pitch-black stairwell. I grabbed for the handrail before the light disappeared and took a few deep breaths. Acclimating myself. But I didn’t have long. A shaft of light appeared a few floors above me as someone opened the stairwell door. The sound of the next shot recoiled into the stairwell and intensified it a thousand times over. I staggered back towards my own door, barely able to hear anything.

But when I got back out into the hall and ducked around the corner, nothing happened. My ears continued to ring for a few minutes, and the only bright side was that I missed the specifics of Kevin over the loudspeaker. I could hear him talking, but couldn’t make out the words.

Finally, the ringing quieted, and I crept back the way I’d come.

With all the noise, I lost my connection to the Coven bond. Connecting a second time was more of a struggle. Every time I reached for it, I found myself recoiling again, anticipating more shots ripping through the hospital, and maybe me.

The stairwell door flew open before I could grab it. I fell back as bodies flew past me. They didn’t pay any attention to me. All of them were rough and ragged, dressed in hospital gowns over pants and shirts. All of them teenagers. Kids I knew on sight.

“You cannot stop me. And you cannot stop your children, can you? The way your spells fall past them. My words are all they hear now.” Kevin laughed over the loudspeaker. He’d stopped talking to me. Now he was talking to someone else, and the rest of us were in on the call. One of the adults, maybe? One of the Witchers?

“I told you they belong to me. Only my magic speaks to them.” His voice sharpened and grew louder. “The adults don’t trust you. But you are my children, and you are
strong.
They seek to lock you up, afraid of what they see in your eyes. I want you to show them. Let your passions catch flame and show them who you are!”

The Prince wasn’t just mobilizing a personal guard, he was deploying an army. “What are you doing?” I didn’t have to raise my voice, but I did anyway. “Why are you doing this?”

“They continue to resist. I won’t let them hurt my children.”

“They’re not
your children,
” I broke in hotly. “Children shouldn’t be sent to
wa
r
!”

“Your parents certainly didn’t think so,” the Prince said slyly. Hearing Cyrus’s voice might have thrown me off balance, but there were a solid dozen years of walls in place. The Prince seemed to think he could use my parents against me, but I wasn’t the one who crumbled under their pressure.

“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.