Darkbound (The Legacy of Moonset) (3 page)

F
o
u
r

Everyone knew the Denton boys. Cy and Charlie went everywhere together. Before they got older, before all the bad blood, all they had was each other. Charlie adored his big brother.

Elizabeth Holden-Carmichael
Carrow Mill, New York—
From a written account
about Moonset’s development

Kevin’s words rang in my ears when we got back to school. He and Maddy took off for their own Magic 101 class, while I headed in the opposite direction, towards the front of the school. If nothing else, the long walk would allow me time to figure out my next move.

After the morning’s class, I didn’t see any point in showing
up for the second. It was just going to be the same BS all over again. It wasn’t like the adults were forcing me to show up. I’m sure they would all sleep a little easier if there was one Moonset witch not being trained in volatile new magics.

Kevin suggested I find something else, something that gave me an outlet the way that he had football. A chance to laugh and tease and joke around with normal kids my age. Making friends at a new school had never been hard for me before, the hard part was keeping them from getting
too
attached. But after the wraith attack, and then everything that happened with our move to Carrow Mill, I’d forgotten how to be the easygoing friend.

The stories all said that Moonset had a disciple, a man they’d trained to continue all their works after they were gone. A man named Cullen Bridger. The name was whispered around for years, a phantom who laid claim to acts of terrorism that paled in comparison to Moonset’s works. But when the wraith attacked, it had used Bridger’s name. There was a psychopath out there looking for us, and the others weren’t concerned at all.

Maybe Jenna and the others thought I was a pain in the ass, but they were all obsessed with magic and the Covens. It was all they ever wanted to talk about, all they ever seemed to
think
about. Justin and Bailey had always been a little more on my side, the ones who at least
attempted
to have an outside life. But Luca ruined that too. Now Justin’s focus on magic was fevered, and Bailey was wilting away, and I didn’t know how to deal with either of those things. Problems in the coven were Justin’s area. He played mediator. He’d always been good at it.

As I hit the three-way junction that led to the main hallway, I passed a wall of posters, advertisements for fundraisers, school clubs, and a couple of local advertisements. But one of them caught my eye.

The school didn’t have a woodshop program, which had bummed me out when we first enrolled. I always liked the idea of working with my hands, of being able to see what you’re actually creating. Unlike magic, which just forced change into the world whether it liked it or not.

There was a school play, however. And a school play meant sets. I instantly changed directions, heading for the auditorium where the drama classes were held. This could be my fresh start. No more witch drama. Just drama drama.

So of course I walked into the auditorium in the middle of a fight. Not just any fight, but a three-on-one beat-down. Because that was my life now.

At first glance, all I saw was three guys surrounding a younger, smaller guy. The three were obviously athletes, basketball players if I wasn’t mistaken. They certainly had the height for it, although a couple of them also had the width for football.

“What’d you say, you little shit?” one of them growled.

Two of them were just enforcers, I could tell even as I approached. They stood at either side to keep the kid from running. It was the one in the middle, the sullen-looking kid with all-American hair and the viper eyes that was the ringleader.

Their victim wasn’t such a wilting flower, though. First impressions weren’t what they used to be. “Is there even a step below remedial?” he sassed. “Because I don’t know how to dumb it down for you anymore. Get out of my face, Cauley. And take your goons with you.”

“Is that right?” Viper boy smiled. “I saw you at lunch, Hamilton. You really think that’s smart, flirting with my girl? I warned you before.”

“How about I warn you?” I squared my shoulders and finished striding across the auditorium floor. The four of them were so engrossed in each other that they hadn’t even noticed my approach. “Three on one? Those are shitty odds. Three on ‘I’m going to kick your ass’ is a whole lot better, don’t you think?”

Viper barely inclined his head towards me, eyes flicking my way like a serpent’s tongue. “And who the fuck are you?”

“The guy that benches two-twenty-five and
really
wouldn’t mind making you bleed.”

“What are you doing?” the kid at the center of it all asked, then bit down on his lip like he couldn’t believe he’d spoken. The others turned their attention back to him, and that’s when I got involved.

I grabbed Viper by the shoulder, and that was the move he’d been waiting for. He swung around the moment I touched him, fist arced towards my face. Only he must have expected a fragile flower, because the punch was sloppy and wide. I knocked his arm to the side, then swung the other one behind his back, shoving him forward until he slammed into the wall. Then the other two came at me.

Neither one of them was dumb enough to throw a punch, but one tried to shove me, only I didn’t go anywhere. My feet were planted on the ground and I stayed exactly where I was. The other got in my face, nose to nose, like he could force me back with just his forehead.

“What are you looking at?” the guy snarled.

“Your pretty mouth.” And then I flashed a grin. “Hey there, sailor.”

The guy growled and moved back, half in shock and half to reposition for the inevitable swing. But I didn’t just go to the gym to work out. I’d done years of self-defense and martial arts training. I knew how to handle myself in a fight. I just didn’t like to. So when he swung, I ducked, and then darted back out of his reach. He swung again, and I leaned back, his fist missing my chin by inches. Each failed attempt only made him growl louder in frustration. Each subsequent swing became more and more reckless, until I was barely doing any work at all.

“You think this is some kind of joke? You really that stupid?” Viper was back on his feet and stalking towards us. “I can have you expelled like
that,
” he snapped his fingers. “Picking a fight with us, freak? Bad move.”

“The worst,” I agreed. “You want me out of your school so bad? Try it. Please.
Begging
you. But you lay a hand on this kid again, I’m going to hunt you down. And I’ll definitely get expelled, but they’ll have to follow it up with assault charges after I’m done with you. Understand?”

There was a stalemate then, three of them staring at one of me. Not that I was worried. Even in a three-on-one I figured I’d give at least as good as I got.

When they walked away a minute later, I made sure to blank my face while they muttered their threats. The other kid was still on the ground. I offered him a hand.

I wasn’t expecting the murderous glare the boy turned my way. “Are you kidding me? Seriously, tell me that the three of those Neanderthals gave me a concussion and this is all some sort of fever dream.” He lunged to his feet on his own, shoving past me hard enough that he managed to make me step back when the others didn’t. Then again, I didn’t expect quite that reaction out of
him.

“You’re welcome?”

He spun around like he’d been waiting for the opportunity. “For what? For reminding Zach Cauley that beating the crap out of me never goes out of style? Today might have been a one-off, but now that you’re involved, he’s going to be lurking around all the time. Just waiting to take it out on me. So thanks. I’m sure I, and my therapy bills, will be much more gracious about it in the future.”

Now that I got a better look at him, I saw what had made him a target. High school was about conforming, about finding the lowest-common denominator and making sure you were in tune with it. This Hamilton kid wore a pair of maroon skinny jeans and a gray fitted cardigan, hipster black glasses, and hair that said he didn’t give a shit.

I cleared my throat. “You know how people say ignore it and it’ll go away? It doesn’t. But what they should be saying is ‘if you talk a lot of shit, then someone’s going to take it out of your ass.’ So maybe shut your mouth once or twice, and you won’t
have
Neanderthals like that trying to kick the crap out of you.”

There was a moment’s pause before the kid started fighting a mocking smile. “Shit. Ass. Crap.” The tension eased out of him like a squeezed sponge. “Someone’s got an anal fixation.”

The word had its desired effect on me, and I dropped my eyes, focusing on my irritation if only to suppress the flush I could feel spreading to my cheeks. “And again, about that whole ‘shutting your mouth’ thing,” I growled.

“Nope,” he said instead, fixing me with a surly expression and a slow gaze that started at my feet and worked all the way up to my head. “Go to hell. I’m not getting saved by someone that looks like
you.
With the face and the eyes and the … Jesus, you know it’s okay to have a little fat on your bones, right?” He shook his head like his thoughts needed to be restored to the factory settings. “Not happening, dickbag. Go be someone else’s Disney prince.”

“You’re a little late with this epiphany. You realize that, right? Bullies gone?” I made a running gesture with my fingers, and then I opened my palm and swept it towards him like a silver platter. “Moron safe to run his mouth once more. Since it clearly bears repeating: you’re welcome.”

“I’m not thanking you,” he insisted, his face going red with a frustrated energy he’d lacked in the face of a beatdown. “So go on and work your shitty good mood on someone who needs it. Because I don’t.”

This is the universe’s way of punishing me,
I realized. Avoiding the rest of my siblings should have given me some peace, but the universe couldn’t have that. So it supplied me with a seventeen-year-old bottle of sarcasm, aged to condescension.

“Are you always this charming?” I asked through my teeth. We were quickly veering off into a scenario where a kid gets rescued from bullies only to make his rescuer so angry he becomes a bully himself. Because, seriously. I wanted to punch this kid if he said one more—

“—Are you always this egotistical? Who waits around after saving the day to be thanked? A dickbag, that’s who.”

“Stop calling me a dickbag!”

“Stop being a dick in a bag, dickbag!”

“I’m … not.” I gaped, momentarily floored by the way the conversation had devolved. “Just … shut up. Listen for a minute. Are you here for the drama class or not?”

His sneer widened. “There
isn’t
a drama class right now. But I want to start auditions this week, so I figured I’d start setting up. Those other dickbags interrupted first.”

“Wait,” I had a sinking feeling, “you’re not in charge of the play, are you?” Because that would be
all of the luck.

The kid rolled his eyes. “Of course not.” I relaxed. “I’m the student director. Mr. Pollack is the man in charge. The school got tired of me playing the lead in everything, and it’ll look good on my college apps.”

“Oh,” because I didn’t have anything else to say.

The curtains at the edge of the stage fluttered, and I looked away from him, both feeling the charged moment surrounding us pass and wondering suddenly at the surge of paranoia deep in the way back parts of my brain.
Was someone there? Were we being watched?
Fingers in chitinous armor climbed up my spine, slow and precise.

I shook my head and willed the worry away. If anything, it was probably Justin or one of the others. No reason to act ridiculous.

“I’m Brice,” he said finally. He looked a moment away from tapping his foot against the ground, and I was struck by the realization that he was an impatient college professor trapped in a high schooler’s body. The fitted gray cardigan, the glasses, the mop of unruly hair like he’d been up late grading exams from idiot freshmen and didn’t own a comb.

I looked away from the curtains, huffed out a breath that said I was going to regret this, and then said, “I wanted to see if you needed help with the stagehand stuff. Set building, construction, whatever. I was told to talk to you.”

The words acted like a password, stripping away the acerbic exterior and revealing an actual, genuine smile. Or at least what I perceived as one. “Why didn’t you say so?” Brice beamed in my direction. “There’s a stage meeting here tonight at seven. We probably won’t start any actual construction until after the cast is chosen, but you can help out in the meantime.” The fact that he was basically commandeering my service didn’t occur to him. The dark curve of his mouth returned. “Unless that interferes with practice or a game or something?”

“No,” I said slowly, “I don’t play any sports.” He opened his mouth again, and I rushed to continue before he could elevate the sass levels higher than they already were. “I don’t have a job, I’m not part of any clubs or activities, and I’m not dating anyone. So I can be there.”

“Good,” Brice said, his tone sharp.
Making my own path. Not a bad start,
I thought, chancing another look at the boy. Maybe this could work after all.

f
i
v
e

It was strange to see little Cyrus in love. He and Savannah had hated each other at first sight, and then a few months later were groping in every dark corner of the school they could find.
Everyone thought they’d be together forever.

Sara Bexington (S)
Personal Interview

I walked through my front door after school, only to find that I wasn’t home alone. Illana Bryer was in my dining room.

You’ve got to be kidding me.
I skipped through the room on my way to the kitchen, didn’t even stop to acknowledge that I’d seen her.

It was hard to say how old Illana was, because even though she was a grandmother, her skin was nearly free of lines from a life lived hard. Iron-gray hair was knotted up in a bun, and even her wardrobe was hard to pin down. One day it was flowing skirts and jackets, and then today she was business professional. Suit, skirt, heels. There was a cup of tea tucked between her hands—a fancy piece of blue and gray china that I was pretty sure didn’t come from our house.

She’d angled her chair away from its typical spot at the head of the table and I followed her eye-line to see what it was that she was looking for. With the wall at her back as it was now, Illana had a perfect view of both the front door, back door, and garage entrance to the house.

There was no sign of Nick, my guardian. I was the only one of us who had a guardian, and a house, to himself. Justin and Jenna shared, same as Cole and Bailey. But I liked the solitude, and Nick was the relaxed, unconcerned type. We got along more like roommates than warden and inmate.

Nick had a scholarship to play soccer for Indiana before he’d decided to go through D.C. and train to become a Witcher. We both understood the appeal of a normal life. We also understood how unlikely it was that we would ever have one.

No Nick meant Illana wasn’t here to discuss Council business. She was here to see me.

My procrastination didn’t bother her. She sipped at her tea and pretended to ignore me just as I was ignoring her. It was hard to recognize this woman with who she really was. What she really represented.

She was the leader of the Fallingbrook Coven.

She was part of the Invisible Congress, the governing body that kept all witches in line.

She killed my parents.

She might yet kill me.

“It’s about time,” she said, her tone sharp as knives. “I don’t like to be kept waiting.”

I feigned looking down at my watch and shrugged out of my coat. “Really? Hell must have frozen over ahead of schedule. Been happening an awful lot lately. You’d think they would get that fixed.”

“Sarcasm,” she murmured, a predator’s smile on her face, “is the lowest form of wit, you know.”

“I don’t like to set the bar too high,” I admitted. “Makes it harder for everyone else to keep up.”

She studied me for a few seconds, her finger tapping a steady rhythm against the lip of the cup before she set it back down onto the matching saucer. “Quick-witted too. I don’t think I like that much.”

There was a tiny, sunflower seed–sized bit of hope that Illana simply had the wrong house. She always dealt with Justin—made sense, he was the group parent. If she controlled him, she could control us. “I’m not interested. Go ask Justin.”

“Ahh, but this isn’t a task suited to your brother’s skills. This is something for you, and you alone.”

Something Justin couldn’t handle? I knew half of the Congress wasn’t much impressed with him, but he
had
managed a victory against them recently. Justin was the reason our leashes had been loosened. So what did she need me for? I was no one. In spite of myself, I was curious. “What is it?”

“I want to know
why.
”

She didn’t follow it up. Didn’t finish her thought. It took a few seconds to realize that was my cue. “‘Why?’”

“Luca. Why him? Why Maleficia? How? Why now? He’s at the center of the web, and I want to know
why
.”

Oh. Curiosity soured in my chest. This wasn’t about me at all. I was just a container for what Illana was really after. The Denton family tree was a disease-riddled monstrosity. First my father, Cyrus, turned out to be one of the deadliest warlocks around, and now his nephew was channeling the same black arts twenty years later.

“Orphan” was a word that chased us all growing up, one of the many legacies handed down to us by the monsters in our blood. Meeting Luca was a shock I hadn’t wanted to deal with: finding relatives where I’d never expected them.

My father had a brother, and that brother had a son. A son who had grown up haunted by crimes that weren’t his; punished for monstrosities that happened before his birth. No surprise that Luca wanted nothing to do with me. The feeling was mutual. It was easier to ignore him than it would have been to sort through something complicated and stressful.

“He won’t talk to me,” I said, wishing for a glass of water but reluctant to turn my back to her.

“More accurate to say that he
can’t
. The boy is catatonic.”

That was news. “Still? Since the night at the farmhouse?” A sharp nod. “Then I don’t understand.”

Illana produced a tiny spoon from somewhere and set to stirring her tea counterclockwise. “Charles Denton, like you, loathes the place he came from. He lost his first girlfriend, Savannah, because of your father. When Moonset revealed themselves, Charles stood up against his brother’s actions, but Cyrus’s crimes still took everything from him. His wife was weak, and ran, but Charles was stubborn. This was his home, and he would not be run off. But he did turn his back on our world, and gave up his magic completely. Now he’s refusing to speak with us, or help us understand what happened to his son.”

It was like someone had run their finger up my spine.
You could do that? Just walk away?
I licked my lips. “He didn’t have a coven, though. Did he? He wasn’t bound up with someone else’s fate?”

Illana sat back, the spoon being swallowed up into her palm and spirited away like a magician’s sleight of hand. Something in my expression made the tension in her mouth evaporate. “He’s alone,” she confirmed.

Then our situations weren’t the same at all. It wasn’t just the Coven bond, but the curse laid over the top of it that kept the five of us together. Splitting up only put other people in danger. The others would never let me go—even if they could.

“You have an opportunity here.” Illana rose up with her teacup and saucer still in hand and walked into the kitchen. I got up and followed her, unsure of what else to do. She stood at the sink, carefully washing the cup out. “It’s natural to have questions. But how many people really know what they were like before they were Moonset? The men behind the monsters. Aren’t you curious?”

“And in exchange you want me to interrogate him about why Luca went psychotic?”

“Luca was in his right mind,” Illana said, turning. She was tall enough that she could look down on almost anyone, but she had to lift her chin to look at me. I couldn’t shake the feeling
that my response had let her down in some way. I didn’t owe the woman anything. She killed my parents. She’d played puppet master with my life since I was a kid. She wasn’t the kindly grandmother.

“They’re not my family,” I pointed out. “We just share a last name.”

“Family isn’t about what’s easy. It’s about what you do with the hard moments. How you surmount them,” Illana responded easily, like she expected my reticence all along. “You can try to run from this as long as you want, Malcolm, but you
are
one of them. It may be exactly the kind of shock that Charles needs to shake himself out of his … devolution.”

I huffed out a breath, leaned against the counter and grunted. “What do you
want
from me? All your files and notes about me, and not one of them told you how much I hate all of this?”

Her face hardened into a dark mask of fury and ice. She could very well be the queen of the Courted Fae like this, pronouncing judgments from her throne of wrought shadows. “I
want
to know why. The boy didn’t simply stumble upon a grimoire of Maleficia by accident. It was provided to him. Someone set all this into motion. And I will not allow history to repeat itself!”

“So I’m still bait,” I said flatly. “You’re still using us.”

“What would you have me do?” she demanded. “Your brother fought for knowledge. Everything has a cost, my boy, and the cost of learning to defend yourselves is that you do something for
me.
You may hate me, Malcolm, and everything that I stand for, but I have been fighting for the five of you since you came into our care all those years ago.”

“Do you even care about what I want?” I asked quietly.

She turned and dried the saucer with the blue terrycloth hanging over the edge of the sink. “It may not be what you want, Malcolm, but it is something only you can do. Someone exploited Luca, no doubt because of what his last name is. No one, not even you, hates our world the way his father does. Our window to find out what really happened here might not be open for long.”

Nothing she said was an outright lie, I was sure. And there was no doubt that she was right about Luca. If someone had smuggled him the grimoire of Maleficia, they’d done it knowing exactly who he was. Which also explained why she needed me—if Luca’s dad wouldn’t talk to the Covens, maybe he would talk to me.

It was only moments after Illana left before Justin came surging through the front door. I wondered if he’d seen her car and had been lurking on the front porch waiting for her to leave.

“Why was she here?” he asked, barging in without knocking.

I grunted, but went back to making a protein shake. I’d skipped out on lunch and just needed something to tide me over until dinner. What I ate was one of the few things about my life I
could
control, and at least I knew the shake would be better than eating something heavy or bad for me. I pulled one of the frozen bananas out of the freezer and tossed it into the blender.

“Mal, what’d she want?”

Another grunt, but that wouldn’t stave him off for long.

“I keep trying to get Quinn to let me talk to her, but he keeps saying she’s too busy,” Justin added. “But she shows up at your house? What’s going on?”

He was acting like the meeting was my idea. All the earlier frustration came surging back. They couldn’t ever just leave something alone. “She didn’t come over looking for makeup tutorials,” I said sharply. “She’s looking into what happened with Luca. She thinks his dad might talk to me.”

There was a weird look in Justin’s eyes, something I didn’t typically see turned my way. Normally, it was Jenna who got those flashes of hurt and betrayal. Which was insane, because we all knew that cooperating with the Covens was a terrible idea. The last time we’d tried, they wanted to frame us for what Luca had done.

“She didn’t really leave me much of a choice,” I said, thinking back over the conversation, “but I never exactly said I would either. She just assumed it was a done deal. That it’s part of my ‘destiny’ or something.”

Justin didn’t like that either. His eyes narrowed and his stance shifted as he squared his shoulders. “Why would she go to
you
? You hate magic.”

I expected contempt like that from Jenna, but not from Justin. He was usually a lot more levelheaded than that. “Because he’s my cousin? What’s your damage?”

Justin ducked his head and shrugged. “Nothing. It’s fine. Just weird, that’s all.”

“Hey, I didn’t ask for any of this,” I snapped. “You want to play hero? Fine by me. But don’t act like I’m somehow screwing you over by all this. She came to me. I didn’t go to her.”

Justin’s face flushed, and he opened his mouth to protest, but kept sputtering out his words.

“Instead of running around all butt hurt, why don’t you look at this from my perspective for once,” I continued on, unable to stop now that I started. I could feel my body growing hot. “I don’t want any of this shit, but the rest of you keep dragging me into it. I just want to graduate, maybe go to college, and forget that there’s anything but a real life out there. I don’t even bother making friends in these towns anymore because I know Jenna’s just going to ruin it for the rest of us.”

“Mal … ” Justin looked ashamed of himself, which he should.

“No, screw that. Maybe the rest of you hate the fact that you’ve got monsters for parents, but I hate the fact that no matter what I do, I can’t ever escape all of this. I’m locked up with all of you for the rest of my life, and all any of you care about is yourselves. Who cares if Malcolm has to sacrifice what he wants—again!—as long as we get to learn magic, or move out of the Midwest, or don’t have to take finals.”

My outburst had effectively shut down whatever had been building up behind Justin’s eyes. His skin was white and splotchy, the way he got when he was horribly embarrassed or upset.

“Go home, Justin,” I said, looking pointedly towards the front door. He tried to say something else, but I crossed my arms over my chest until he finally took the hint.