Darkbound (The Legacy of Moonset) (25 page)

The decapitated body of the clown slumped against the Tunnel of Love, hunched over and posed like he was taking a leak. Only one of the swan-shaped cars was still on the track. “I’m
not
going in there,” Maddy announced, a sentiment that was unanimous. The water was brackish or possibly even solid, thick like sludge that had time to settle.

Past the tunnel was a junkyard’s worth of garbage strewn in a line, a barricade against intruders. Jenna and I shared a look. If the symbol at the pond wasn’t enough, the blockade was a definite sign. It seemed like the exact sort of thing an adolescent group of know-it-all punks would have conjured up. I bet Jenna was just pissed they thought of it first.

“Here, grab that board,” Kevin directed. He and I started shifting around some of the salvage, creating a gangplank up one side. He went first, turning back long enough for a simple, “There’s a bench!” before he leaped out of sight.

The rest of us followed, climbing to the top of the mound and then jumping down to a bench that was still standing upright. Once we were at the bottom, Maddy surged ahead, only to scream and fall back. The three of us surged forward, only to be confronted with … a giant, plastic spider the size of a VW Bug.

Jenna looked down at Maddy, hands on her hips. “Oh, calm down, Little Miss Muffet, I’m pretty sure it’s non-violent.” I don’t know how Jenna managed a straight face, because once Kevin started laughing I lost it. Maddy, on the other hand, just got redder and redder.

“I just hate bugs,” she muttered.

The temperature continued to rise until it was rainforest hot. “Maybe we should have tried this at night.” I used the sweatshirt over my face and hair like a towel, trying to soak up at least some of it. Not that it would do much good. None of us had brought supplies. This was supposed to be a simple “sneak into the park and see what we find” mission. Not one requiring snacks and hydration.

And then things took a turn on the creepy side. It wasn’t just the spider. Along the wrought iron gate, someone had skewered baby doll heads at regular intervals. Sometimes the dolls were in decent, if weathered, condition, and sometimes they were mutilated: heavy makeup, hair now a faded gray but obviously had once been black. But all of them, from the perfect blond-haired child to the dark devil-spawn versions a few rows away, had completely black eyes.

And every so often, just in case we still weren’t sure which way we were headed, someone had glued or melted some of those dolls’ arms onto the horizontal bar of the fence, pointing their way towards the carousel.

Wings rustled, and once in a while I heard the faded caw of a crow, but every time I looked, I couldn’t find any sign of it, or them. Definitely more than one bird, and yet the skies were clear. This part of the park was clear of trash and debris, and looked like it could have been abandoned only yesterday. There were no wayward plants, no weeds growing up through the ground. As a matter of fact, there wasn’t anything growing at all.

There wasn’t much of anything as we approached the carousel. Up near the top of it, there was a symbol drawn in spray paint. It clawed at my eyes, something that sent my chest yearning for something it couldn’t have. Some spells could be boiled down to their basest parts, a sigil of intent and force. This one was like that, a metaphoric punch to the spirit. How could a few lines of spray paint
want
so much? It burned against the metal frame of the carousel with barely repressed need. I tore my eyes away before the pull got any stronger. There were enough things trying to work their way into my head.

Beneath our feet, the bricks and concrete crumbled down into dirt. The fences fell away, twisted and deformed like plastic brought too close to the flame.

“What is this?” Kevin was the first to voice his concern, but we were all feeling it. None of us were stupid. The setting around us had every indication of
bad mojo
and it would be the smart thing to do to back away and let the adults handle it.

I was ready to do that, to call it a day and convince everyone to leave with me, when I saw it. Right there at the edge of the metal circle holding up a variety of real and imagined equine breeds, some with horns and others with painted black eyes, was a very human intrusion. A dark-blue sleeping bag, recently used. A lantern. Empty beer bottles, and a bigger bottle, clear and nondescript that housed barely an inch of clear liquid. I doubted it was water.

“’Bout time, you little shit-stain. Been out here for days.”

I sighed and straightened my back. “Charlie Denton, ladies and gentlemen. The drunk and only.”

How long has he been here?

“Thought you’d come alone.” Charlie spat out a hunk of something brown and vile.

“
This
is your long-lost uncle?” Jenna’s skepticism was well deserved. Charlie looked more like someone’s long-lost homeless person than family.

“I’m calling the Witchers,” Kevin, the boy scout, said immediately. But he barely had his phone out and in his hand before Charlie snarled a drunken word and the phone went flying. He made a gun with his hand and fired, and the phone exploded into a ball of green fireworks.

Jenna and Maddy were a half second away from starting a fight they wouldn’t win. I stepped in front of the others and held out my hands to either side, fingers spread and pointed towards the ground. Everyone hesitated, like they expected some great big magic show of force. I probably could have done something, tapped into the darkbond and pulled out a bit of fancy ubermagic to knock everyone in line.

But that wasn’t who I was.

“How long before Illana figures it out?” I asked him.

Charlie squinted at me. He still had the finger pistol for-med, only now it was halfway towards me. “Not long. Never really thought it would last as long as it did, though.”

Seeing the token in his house, finding out that Moonset had ties to the amusement park, knowing what I did about Luca’s mother. Charlie had even told me the truth from the first time I met him.
Bad blood is bad, no matter how hard you pray.

Charlie
had been the one who summoned the Abyssal Prince to Carrow Mill.
Charlie
got his girlfriend possessed. Killed, really.
Charlie
who hated his brother beyond all reason. Not because Cy joined Moonset and became a monster, but because even as a monster, he’d protected his brother. I had no doubt that Cyrus knew what his brother had done, and yet he’d covered it up. No one had ever questioned what really happened to the Abyssal Prince, or one insignificant girl.

“She’s still down there, waiting for a Prince to wake her up again. Even dead’s better than the Abyss,” Charlie said. “Sometimes, when I’m here, she talks to me in my dreams. Roots around my head and makes me suffer.” His lips widened in a smile, and I saw the crazy up front for once. Charlie
liked
it. Whatever happened to him here, whatever the Abyssal Prince could still do in death, whatever torture she put him through was a relief to him. She was like maggots to the poison in his head.

“I thought Moonset killed the last one,” Jenna whispered at my side. “If she’s alive, then what’s she still doing here?”

Charlie heard, though, and he laughed. “You think it’s that easy? That there’s only two kinds of people: living and worm-meat? Some things don’t die the same way you will, little girl. Oh yeah, I see you, Diana’s little demon. The dead don’t do
quiet
. They scream, and shout, and rattle their chains. Ain’t nothing left but a need to be heard. You’d best remember that.”

“I’d text myself a reminder,” she said sweetly, “but you nuked my friend’s phone.”

Charlie lifted up the bottle of clear fluid. Vodka or gin, I was pretty sure. He only got really talkative when there were a few drinks in him. “Ain’t that the truth,” Charlie crowed, lifting the bottle towards her in a salute. “You dig her up, you’ll see what I mean. Bitch ain’t dead. Clawed her way into my baby and won’t give it up no matter what. Savannah always loved horses. Best place for her.”

“They buried her alive,” Jenna said slowly. “Jesus.”

“
He
ain’t got nothing to do with it.” Charlie drained the rest of the bottle and then tossed it away. It clattered and spun on the dirt after bouncing off the ground, but managed not to break.

“So what are you doing?” Maddy called out. “Why wait out here? You think she’s going to come back?”

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 att
itude 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.

t
h
i
r
t
y
-o
n
e

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 compared 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.