Free Darkbound (The Legacy of Moonset) by Scott Tracey Page B

bond survives even death. I can do nothing.” There was something that flashed across her face, a look like remorse. “Even if we could, there is still Moonset’s manipulations to contend with. Understandably, no one wishes to reignite whatever darkness they tied you up into.”
    There was a hiccupping sound from the door. I looked away from Illana to see Bailey standing in front of the others, different shades of the same hurt and disappointment on each of their faces.

e l e v e n
    Charlie Denton took
Moonset harder than anyone.
    Sara Bexington (S) Personal Interview
    I couldn’t say why I ended up at the hospital. After seeing the looks on Justin and Bailey’s faces, I left. Fled, really. I felt like a traitor, maybe because I was a traitor. All of us fought, but I think it was the first time any of us had really expressed how desperately we wanted the bond between us broken.
    I think I was the only one who felt that way and that made it worse.
    I had no intention of following Illana’s orders, but when I left the school, the hospital was where I ended up. Their world wasn’t mine, and I wanted nothing to do with it. So maybe one last job and then I could call it quits.
    Maybe you just want to know how to walk away, my mind supplied.
    The nurse directed me towards a waiting room on the third floor. Instead of the soothing colors of pale blue and yellow on the lower floors, these floors were a stark, unflattering white with mahogany-colored furniture. It looked less like a hospital waiting room and more like a warehouse break room.
    There was only one person in the waiting room, surrounded by a half-dozen empty coffee cups. The television focused on an audience that didn’t have anywhere better to be than a lackluster talk show, while a generic man in a suit interrogated a couple on a stage. The volume was off, so I couldn’t hear whatever fake reality the fake couple was fighting about.
    The man’s head was turned towards the television, and I could see that his eyes were open, but they never moved to follow the action. Had he fallen asleep with his eyes open? Was he dreaming about these strange people with their silent problems and wondering how they’d invaded his mind?
    The man himself looked grizzled—a face that hadn’t shaved in a week, clothes that probably hadn’t been changed in at least that long. At a glance, he reminded me of the crazy Moonset cultist that had popped up when we first moved to Carrow Mill. There was something about him that I couldn’t put my finger on—something off , but the closer I got the more it slipped away.
    “I know who you are,” the man said, stirring from his slumped position. What was that saying, he looked like forty miles of bad roa d ? He was more like forty years spent on those same forty miles, until they’d ground out every bit of hope and light in him, and left him a vagrant in his own skin.
    “Everyone knows who I am,” I replied.
    “Yeah, but I know what you are,” the man said with a slow, cruel smile.
    At least it was exactly the kind of family reunion I’d been expecting. “Nice to meet you too, Uncle Charlie,” I said, keeping my words to a bored monotone.
    “You just going to stand their gawking?” he huffed, fumbling through his obstacle course of coffee cups, trying to find one with that last precious sip still intact.
    “Not exactly how I expected this to go,” I walked around his mess, finding a seat across from him.
    “How’d you think it would go, tough guy?” he asked, squinting down at his cups.
    I leaned back, crossed my leg on my knee, and stared at him. “Well, for one thing, I thought you’d be drunk.”
    I guess I could see the resemblance a little. But if I was going to look like that in twenty years, I might as well hunt the Prince down and get him to put an end to me now.
    He chuffed out a breath that turned into a hacking cough. The tips of his fingers had a yellow, almost orangeish tint to them. Smoker. And from the