Scott Tracey - Moonset

• Название: Moonset
• Автор: Scott Tracey
• Жанр: Фэнтези

Moonset, a coven of such promise . . . Until they turned to the darkness.

After the terrorist witch coven known as Moonset was destroyed fifteen years ago—during a secret war against the witch Congress—five children were left behind, saddled with a legacy of darkness. Sixteen-year-old Justin Daggett, son of a powerful Moonset warlock, has been raised alongside the other orphans by the witch Congress, who fear the children will one day continue the destruction their parents started.

A deadly assault by a wraith, claiming to work for Moonset’s most dangerous disciple, Cullen Bridger, forces the five teens to be evacuated to Carrow Mill. But when dark magic wreaks havoc in their new hometown, Justin and his siblings are immediately suspected. Justin sets out to discover if someone is trying to frame the Moonset orphans . . . or if Bridger has finally come out of hiding to reclaim the legacy of Moonset. He learns there are secrets in Carrow Mill connected to Moonset’s origins, and keeping the orphans safe isn’t the only reason the Congress relocated them . . .

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“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.