Moonset (3 page)

The moment the creature landed, sprawled in a broken heap of limbs and iron at the farthest end of the hall, Quinn looked up to the ceiling. “
Lexic vok
,”
he shouted, bringing his fist down. The ceiling, the walls, all of it came tumbling down in a shuddering mass above the wraith, drowning it underneath a tonnage of bricks, stone, and at least fifty years of accumulated dirt.

The collapse lasted for at least a minute before it started to die off. Unlike the wraith’s explosion, Quinn’s was perfectly controlled, a circular hole that was both sharp and precise.

“Still happy you sat around doing nothing?” Quinn demanded, helping Virago to her feet.

“Orders were orders,” she muttered, a tangle of hair in her face.

“We have to get them out of here, now,” Quinn said. “Can you walk?”

“I—I think so,” she said, pulling away from him to test her balance.

“Go,” he said. “Chris and I can hold it off.”

From the far end of the hall, a reverberating crunch interrupted. The wraith was already vertical, standing above a pair of dark-shaped lumps that I didn’t recognize at first.

“Oh, God,” Jenna whispered.

The creature’s hand was a canvas of red, and something crimson and splintered dropped from his grip. The principal, now missing his esophagus, which lay about a foot and a half to his right, stared at the ceiling unblinking. The man in a suit—Chris—was just as much of a bloody mess, though he was still gurgling. Until he, too, shuddered and stopped.

A black tongue licked at decayed lips as the wraith looked at the five of us. “Moonset,” the thing whispered, fighting a smile. “
Mine
.”

The sound of the chains, which were now moving on their own like prehensile limbs, drowned out anything else the wraith whispered.

I saw Quinn’s mouth move, felt the spell shudder into existence around him, but there was nothing but the chains. Hideous ringing, clanging sounds a thousand times more intense than they should have been. The sound was worse now, piercing through me, and at my side I saw Cole and Jenna struggling, too.

Cole was the first to drop, falling to his knees with hands pressed against his ears. His face flushed as he screamed, howled, but I couldn’t hear it. Jenna dropped next, and then me, until the three of us were huddled together. Jenna and I grabbed Cole, shielding him as best we could and trying to help cover his ears with one of our own.

“
Vex dunn
,
” I shouted. “
Vexic dunn
.
Vexa dunn
.
” I screamed out every variation of the only muffling spell that I knew, but though the magic ignited around me, the chains penetrated through.

There was movement—lots of it—around us, but it was everything we could do to stay together. I felt, rather than heard, Jenna continuing to shout spells into existence, but nothing did any good.

My muscles screamed, and I tried to shift only to find they wouldn’t respond. It was like being hit with a stun gun, my body was no longer my own, tucked and frozen in place like an abandoned marionette.

They’re going to die. And it’s all my fault.
Keeping Cole and the others safe was my job, my only job. And I’d failed. I should have done something, should have been smarter, or stronger.

I’m sorry,
I mouthed.

The silence was so sudden it
hurt.
Agony replaced by an empty void so vast I thought it might drive me mad. A pounding sound that resolved itself into my heartbeat, a rattle that became my breath.

Quinn towered above the three of us, a little bloodier for the trouble, and had a knife in his hands.

The echo of what he’d done still hung in the air, creating a poster bed-sized space of safety where sound was normal and even.

“Keep them safe,” Quinn shouted at the redhead before he started his advance on the wraith.

The wraith held out his hand, whispered a word, and a wave of gray rushed out from him. It caught up to Quinn and Virago before either of them could deflect or cast a counterspell, and I couldn’t help but watch in terror. They were all that was standing between us and the wraith.

Quinn
aged
in seconds, his body shifting, changing, stooping forty years in less time than it took me to realize what I was seeing. His skin became sallow, his posture hunched, his hair went platinum, then full on white, then wisps. Pock marks and liver spots lined his skin. Virago had her back to us, but I could see the color draining from her hair until it was a sterling silver.

The spell spread across his body, and Quinn’s arm trembled before he defiantly slashed down with the knife. “
Aret
!”

The effects of the spell dissipated at once, severed somehow
by both the knife and the spell, the aging reversing almost as fast as it had started. Quinn straightened immediately, but Virago dropped to her knees, winded or worse.

“
Witchers
,
” the wraith sneered. “Vermin.”

“Learn how to use a verb, douchebag,” Cole muttered.

I clamped my hand down over his mouth, eyes darting fearfully towards the wraith, who appeared not to have heard, thankfully.

Part of me had known what Quinn and Virago were as soon as they arrived. Witchers. Witchers were Navy Seals, Green Berets, and Chuck Norris combined in one. They were trained, heavily, in offensive spells and in counteracting supernatural threats. A single Witcher was about as deadly as the average coven. A group of Witchers, on the other hand, could take down almost anyone. Or anything.

“We need to get away,” Jenna said out of the corner of her mouth, lips barely moving.

“Tell that to the wraith,” I said.

“Justin, Jenna, go,” Quinn said over his shoulder, though he didn’t look away from the creature.

“Stay,” the wraith countered, its rheumy, cataract-
colored eyes trained on us.

“Who sent you?” Quinn demanded.

The wraith laughed, releasing a cloud of dust from somewhere deep in its chest. “Bridger,” it answered, shaping the word like a caress.

If possible, my panic intensified.
Cullen
Bridger?
He’s supposed to be a myth!

No one knew who he really was, where he came from. The stories say he appeared on Moonset’s door, and they took him in. Indoctrinated him. Trained him. During the war, people called him the Disciple. Bridger was the name he created to suit his new role.

When Moonset was captured, Bridger had escaped. He’d been working in secret for over twenty years, and no one had any idea where he was or what he wanted. He was the only living link to Moonset’s dark agenda. Not a single sighting in all those years.

The three of us took a step backward simultaneously, and the wraith’s frozen mouth snarled. “
Ess debok ssen
,”
it hissed, pointing a hand at us.

Quinn threw himself into the path of the spell even before the wraith had finished speaking. “No!” I gasped, waiting for the effect, the fall.

But the spell sailed over him, around him, and past us until it caught the far end of the hall, and repeated in seconds what it had done to the wall it had entered from.

Entropy swept out and around, and the hallway simply started to fall apart. But unlike before, when even the bricks had decomposed down to ash, this time everything stayed solid. Walls fell in, the ceiling collapsed, sparks of electricity flared against the sudden darkness of lost light, and the hallway was swallowed up in ruin.

We threw ourselves to the ground, trying to get out and away from the collapse, but for the first time our synchronicity failed. Jenna and I both hurtled to the left, but Cole broke for the right.

It took me a second to get my bearings, in between coughing through all the new smoke, pulling myself back upright, and figuring out where Cole had landed. A standoff had developed between Quinn and the wraith, and he’d pivoted around until he could safely back up to Cole without losing ground.

“Enough,” the wraith rasped. The chains, which had only writhed around him like serpents until this point, began to shoot forward, striking for Quinn, and behind him, Cole.

Quinn didn’t even hesitate. “
Da lum
,”
he said calmly, making a tiny slicing movement with the knife. One of the broken electric lines, abandoned and voided of energy, surged up into the air, and struck at the chain. Iron links sparked electric blue as a surge of electricity caught the chain, and traveled back up the line to the wraith, who stumbled back.

Quinn used the opportunity to reach down and help Cole to his feet. He murmured something I couldn’t hear, and at first Cole looked at him in utter confusion, but then something clicked, and he smiled and nodded. Looked almost eager.

Another chain flew forward, and another burst of electricity stopped it short. The creature didn’t look slowed by the energy charging through it, but Quinn didn’t look any worse for the wear, either.

“Am I supposed to be scared of you?” Cole laughed—laughed!—at the wraith. “You should see Jenna without makeup.
That’s
scary.”

“Cole, shut up!” Jenna and I shouted as one.

The wraith growled, the next chain flying a little sloppier, a little less fierce.

“You look like Betty White’s grandmother,” Cole called. “And you smell like a Kardashian.”

“I can do this all day,” Quinn added, twisting the knife in his grasp.

Cole’s ability to irritate even the undead was going to his head. “I mean, really? You know this guy’s a virgin, right?” Quinn’s mouth tightened. “And he’s kicking your ass all over the place. All the other ghouls are gonna laugh at you.”

Another volley, another electric shock. But this time, Quinn stepped around Cole, behind him. Using him as a shield. Quinn ducked his head, whispering something. Cole’s face hardened, and he nodded.

The wraiths’ chains were flailing now, rising anger at the impasse channeling out through the metal limbs.

“You throw like my grandma,” Cole snickered, holding out his arms and posing. Making himself a target.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Jenna screamed.

“Cole!” I started running, and things started happening so fast.

Quinn pushed Cole down and then threw himself against the wall, dropping the knife and shouting a spell I didn’t catch. Cole went sliding across the floor, straight towards Jenna.

The wraith snarled, his targets suddenly not where they’d been a moment before.

I was already in motion, and I couldn’t stop myself in time. I heard another spell, and I was thrown into the air, pulled towards Quinn just as the chain lashed out.

It caught me around the arm, burning through my shirt until it decayed and collapsed into ash. The metal was
cold
, burning brands into my skin and even reverberating through my bones.

“Justin!”

“Justin!”

Twin shouts, seconds apart.

I could feel the wraith’s power ripping through me. It tore at me, at the part of me that wasn’t skin and blood and bone. Draining me. A vortex pulling away the part of me that was living, the spark that kept my heart pumping and my fear rising.

A switch flipped.

Polarity reversed. Life became death became life again.

The vortex became a geyser, and everything that was mine returned in a flash flood of light and life.

“No,” the wraith hissed. “No!”

A dark pall burst into murky light around me, like an aura made from shadowed half-truths and eclipse light. It wasn’t magic, not exactly. Parts were, scraps that felt like something I should recognize, but they were threads in a much larger tapestry.

“Justin! Grab the chain!” Quinn gestured to my arm, and the iron that was already trying to unravel itself from my skin.

I twisted my forearm, grabbed the chain, and refused to let go. The chain shook, contorted, and tried to break free, but I wouldn’t let go.

The aura grew darker, like storm clouds summoned above my head. I could feel
something
, an invisible pressure that settled against my skin like a shirt that was too tight. It swept around me, a presence and a power that dwarfed anything I’d ever seen.

The wraiths’ eyes had looked like they were incapable of emotion, but there was one there now: fear. “You were to be rescued,” it hissed at me.

The aura swept forward from me, slicing through the air like a scythe, and cut the wraith down like it was the firstborn son, and this was a plague.

Shadows swallowed up the wraith, until there was a portal of tangible darkness where it had once stood.

I squinted, feeling the pressure around me ease. The light in the room was more intense than it had been a moment ago.

“What’s going on?” Cole asked, worried.

“Just relax,” Quinn directed. “Close your eyes.”

Close our ey—oh. The light continued to intensify, coupled with a ringing sound that sounded exactly like electronic feedback, a high-pitched whining that was just as intense as the corona of light that blurred everything.

The light grew too intense, the sounds too loud. The humming got so loud, but after our experience with the chains, it was very nearly nothing.

When it faded, the wraith was gone.

Three

“There is a presence over them. Some
call it a binding, some a curse. Those that
threaten them, or try to separate them … ”

Simon Meers
Case Report,
The Moonset Legacy

When Virago walked through the motel room door two days later, the reaction was incendiary, to say the least.

Jenna lunged for her immediately, murder in her eyes.
“That thing could have killed us, you stupid bitch!”

We were god-only-knew where, dropped off in the middle of the night, and forty-eight hours cooped up in one small room was enough for cabin fever to set in. I spent the majority of my time mediating between Cole’s hyper need for attention and Jenna’s restless irritation.

We hadn’t been able to take anything with us when we fled the city. It wasn’t until sometime the next morning that we stopped long enough for Quinn to pick up new outfits for us at the nearest Walmart. He’d taken the clothes we’d been wearing when we arrived and disappeared, most likely taking them to be burnt.

Leaving town wasn’t normally this intense, but there was a lot of extra crazy to go around because of the wraith. Virago’s reappearance, with Malcolm and Bailey in tow, was just the excuse Jenna needed to put that irritation to bad use.

I grabbed Jenna, even as Malcolm darted around Virago to catch our sister from the other side and prevent a catastrophe.

“Jenna, think!” I pulled on her arm, but fury had her adrenaline flowing and it was more of a struggle than it should have been.

“So predictable,” Virago yawned, feigning boredom. But I could see her eyes darting around, the nervous tightening of her fist.

“I’m
thinking
I’ll break her nose,” Jenna snarled.

Between Malcolm and I, we were able to hold her back. Well, mostly Malcolm. He was the one built like a pro wrestler.

It was hard not to live in Mal’s shadow since he towered over all of us. Jenna and I were neck and neck, but Mal had at least four or five inches on me. I stopped comparing when I realized I’d never catch up.

Mal was the “-est” sibling. Oldest. Tallest. Calmest. Biggest. We couldn’t exactly join sports teams when we arrived in a new school, but that didn’t stop him from working out like it was his job. Football and wrestling coaches started salivating the moment Mal walked into a new school, but he always turned them down. Everyone probably would have held him up as the perfect child but for being the spawn of terrorists.

It helped that he was gay. It kept me from having the world’s largest inferiority complex.

“Told you Jenna’d stay out of trouble,” Mal called over his shoulder, casual as can be.

Bailey hesitated in the doorway, dwarfed in a white faux fur jacket she must have insisted on. Bailey, in contrast to Mal, was the youngest and tiniest.

Jenna lunged forward again, and this time Malcolm caught her fully, grabbing her by the waist and scooping her up off the ground like she weighed nothing. To him, she probably did.

“She’s a Witcher,” Mal said. “Just let it go.”

Virago’s childish, snide expression only lasted a moment.

“Meghan!” Quinn said sharply, speaking to Virago, “Let’s go. Give them some privacy.”

The added tension left with the two adults, so even with the five of us crammed in a two-bed motel room, it didn’t seem as bad as it had before.

“We saw a wraith,” Cole announced happily to Bailey, who didn’t look as thrilled.

“Figures she’s a Meghan,” Jenna muttered, once Mal put her down. “I’ve never met one that wasn’t a raging bitch.”

Bailey shrugged out of her coat, folded it carefully, and set it over the motel room chair. “You guys are okay, right? Miss Virago said that Cole got hurt.”

Cole turned his head and pointed to the side of his jaw. But the only remnant of the cut he’d suffered was a penciled red line. “Quinn used his athame on me; it was cool. All the blood went
slurp
right back inside!”

Jenna rolled her shoulders, and just like that, her mood changed. “Thank god you’re here,” she said to Bailey, claiming one of the beds. “I’m so bored.”

Malcolm eyed the pair of them, then walked over to me while Cole went back to playing with the television remote. “A wraith? We knew something happened, but they wouldn’t tell us anything.”

“A wraith,” I confirmed. “We’re lucky to be alive. Or … here, I guess.” The wraith hadn’t been there to kill us; it had come to
collect
us. The wraith said it had come to rescue us. What was the plan? Bring us to Cullen Bridger?

But I couldn’t tell Malcolm that. Not with four other pairs of eager ears in the room. Information had to be compartmentalized. I trusted the four of them more than anyone in this world, but I also
knew
them. Knew Cole’s tendency to blab, Jenna’s ways of making trouble, and even how Bailey got attached to things she shouldn’t.

It was dangerous for them to know everything all the time.

“So what happened? I heard Quinn’s a badass blah blah blah,” Malcolm said.

I shook my head. “It was the curse.”

The room instantly quieted.

The truth was that none of us knew what the curse was. Only that it was chained around all of our necks, an invisible albatross that protected us.

It hadn’t been enough to just be the children of Moonset. We had to be freaks, too. Before they surrendered, our parents had
done
things to us. Something beyond simple magic. When we were threatened, or when we were separated for too long, Bad Things started to happen.

I’d never seen it in action (that I could remember) until the other day.

I recited the story for Mal, well aware that everyone else was listening just as intently. Jenna and Cole were
there
,
and yet they were still hanging on every word. I explained it the way I understood it in hindsight—the way Quinn had used Cole to antagonize the wraith, knowing full well that one of us would jump to his defense. Quinn had apologized, but as much as I wanted to be mad, he
had
saved us.

“What’d it feel like?” Jenna asked, once I was done. We’d made a point of
not talking
for the last two days. At least not about anything important.

I had to think for a few minutes. “Heavy. It felt heavy. Like there was this
thing
around me all the time, but I just couldn’t feel it before.”

“Can you still feel it now?” Mal asked.

I shook my head. “But I remember it. You know how you go to the dentist, and even a few days later, you remember how it felt? It’s like that. Kind of claustrophobic, knowing that there’s a room full of dark magic around me all the time.”

“You’re sure it’s dark?” Jenna asked pensively.

I shrugged. “What else would it be?”

She stared up at the ceiling, but didn’t share whatever she was thinking. Jenna could read my thoughts at a glance, but the connection wasn’t two sided. Most of the time I had no idea what was going through her head. Especially now.

“I’m glad you guys are okay,” Mal said, but I could hear something in his tone, like the rumblings of train tracks before the inevitable collision. Bailey bit down on her lip, and Cole stared through his sneakers. “But what the hell were you thinking, Jenna? You’re lucky no one died.”

“They were going to take us away regardless,” Jenna said dismissively. “Does it really matter?”

“What if Bailey got caught in the crossfire? Or Cole? He was throwing himself right in the thick of it.”

Jenna pushed herself up. “That’s what you’re there for, Mal. Ride in and be the white knight,” she said sweetly. “How else can you feel superior to us mere mortals?”

Somehow nearly dying at the hands of a wraith had become about Malcolm and Jenna’s long-standing issues. As everything did, given enough time.

I did my best to cut it off at the pass. I really did. “I think what Mal’s trying to say—”

Jenna didn’t let me finish. “I
know
what he’s trying to say. So how about you actually let
him
say it.”

“How about you drop the rebel badass act for five minutes?” Mal fired back. “You’re not the one that has to pick up the pieces. Do you have any idea what this has been like for Bailey the last couple of days? She
liked
that school.”

Bailey’s stained cheeks and pursed lips were her only response. She stared straight ahead, like she was trying to ignore it all. More likely, she was trying to keep from crying.

Jenna’s eyes flicked across the room, long enough to see for herself, and she sighed. “Look—”

“No, you look,” Mal snapped. “It’s not like they can just split us up and send us to wherever we want. One of us goes, we all do. The curse, remember?” None of us were exactly certain how that worked, either. They could move us separately, ten or twenty miles apart on the journey, and things were fine. But if anyone tried to separate us, like take one and leave the rest, it was bad. Dark clouds and explosions bad.

“At least we won’t have to take midterms,” Cole said brightly.

“Unless they make us start homeschooling,” I pointed
out.

“I heard they’ve got a detention center somewhere,” Mal added, “for kids that can’t keep it together. They call it the Priory, but it’s more like jail. No contact with
anyone.
”

“They wouldn’t really do that, would they?” Bailey asked softly.

“Sooner or later they will,” Mal said, “especially when they have to keep moving us to a new school.”

“For the last time, they were going to move us anyway,” Jenna shouted, hands grabbing at the duvet and squeezing for all she was worth. “They knew the wraith was coming and they sat on their hands waiting. Probably hoping it would have killed us.”

“
Actually, Quinn said they were waiting on you. They knew we were up to something,” Cole, ever helpful, pointed out.

“Waiting for you to make us all look bad again,” Mal added.

Jenna wouldn’t make eye contact. “Look, the spells just got a little out of hand. I didn’t mean for it to get that in-tense.”

But Malcolm wasn’t buying it. “You can’t just throw out a half-assed apology and think that makes everything all right again!”

“Hey, come on,” I jumped in, turning on Mal. “Calm down.”

But Jenna didn’t need anyone to take her side. “Then what do you want from me? Sorry I’m not perfect like you, afraid to learn any magic because, God forbid, you find a spell to grow a personality!”

Within thirty seconds, Jenna and Mal were shouting over one another, and even Bailey and Cole were jumping into the fray. I couldn’t even hear what
one
of them was saying, let alone all four of them.

“ENOUGH!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.

Four pairs of eyes turned on me, instantly quiet.

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” I pointed out, “and I don’t want to spend the rest of the day with a headache.”

“You can’t keep letting her off the hook, Justin,” Mal chided. “It’s getting out of hand.”

“I know that. There’s no one in this room who
doesn’t
know that.” I took a deep breath, exhaling slowly before I continued. “But ganging up on her isn’t helping.”

“So what?” he challenged, “We all back away and stick our heads in the sand? We did that the last time, and the time before that.”

“I didn’t notice an intervention the time Malcolm got us thrown out,” Jenna chimed in spitefully. “But I suppose the golden boy gets a pass, right?”

That started the furor up all over again. Mal started to go red in the face, and even Bailey and Cole were jumping in, getting angry and animated in turn. Jenna was the only one who looked composed, but then again, she was used to this.

“Hey! Hey!” But no matter how loud I yelled, I couldn’t make a dent in the chaos. I’d have to do something else.

“
Cen fal la
,” I whispered, eyeing the wall sconce on the far side of the room. It wasn’t a sanctioned spell, but a hodgepodge of words I’d glued together when I was still in grade school. It had only one real effect.

The light bulbs in the sconce popped—loud enough to cut through the noise—one after another, a tiny fizzle of sparks accompanying each tiny explosion.

“Jesus, Justin,” Mal cried, swatting at the back of his head. He wasn’t close enough to actually get burned, but that didn’t stop him from overreacting. “What the hell?”

“Mal, can you guys give us a minute?” I asked. Maybe I would have a better chance at getting through to Jenna if it was just one on one.

There was some grumbling, and some dirty looks, but eventually Mal and the kids went outside. Either to one of the other motel rooms the Witchers had rented—because they could shove three of us into one room, but god forbid any of
them
have to share—or to go harass the vending machines.

“I’m not the only one you should be mad at,” Jenna started immediately. “We almost
died
there. That thing started wagging his chains all over the place, and I thought for sure that we … ”

“But we didn’t,” I pointed out as gently as I could. “Quinn was there.”

“But he didn’t have to be,” she insisted, looking me full in the face. “We don’t know how to protect ourselves. We
can’t
protect ourselves. And you saw the way Virago was. She was basically useless. The other one died before he could even do anything. If Quinn didn’t have half a brain, that thing would have taken us.”

There was something she wasn’t saying. Her words cut off too quickly, and I could
feel
the unfinished thought in the air. “And … ?” I asked, pushing her.