Insidious: (The Marked Mage Chronicles, Book 1) Read online

  INSIDIOUS

  THE MARKED MAGE CHRONICLES

  VICTORIA EVERS

  Copyright © 2016 by Victoria Evers

  http://victoriaevers.blogspot.com/

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people, real locales, or historical events are used fictitiously. Other characters, names, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual locales, events, or people, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Animals

  Chapter 2: Bad Moon Rising

  Chapter 3: Mad Hatter

  Chapter 4: People Are Strange

  Chapter 5: The Nobodies

  Chapter 6: Emperor’s New Clothes

  Chapter 7: Don’t Threaten Me With a Good Time

  Chapter 8: Carousel

  Chapter 9: The Wretched

  Chapter 10: Seven Nation Army

  Chapter 11: Angry Angel

  Chapter 12: Rolling in the Deep

  Chapter 13: America’s Suitehearts

  Chapter 14: The Devil Within

  Chapter 15: Alive

  Chapter 16: I Know You

  Chapter 17: Don’t Kill The Magic

  Chapter 18: Teenagers

  Chapter 19: The Kill

  Chapter 20: Before I’m Dead

  Chapter 21: Make Me Wanna Die

  Chapter 22: Raise the Dead

  Chapter 23: By the Way

  Chapter 24: Fallen

  Chapter 25: Broken

  Chapter 26: Love Is Blindness

  Chapter 27: Whispering

  Chapter 28: Tonight

  Chapter 29: Mama

  Chapter 30: This Means War

  Chapter 31: Sucker For Pain

  Chapter 32: Going to Hell

  Chapter 33: Animal I Have Become

  Chapter 34: Until the End

  Chapter 35: Own Little World

  Chapter 36: Bring Me To Life

  Chapter 37: Made Of Stone

  Chapter 38: The Blower’s Daughter

  Epilogue

  PROLOGUE

  The headlights barely penetrated through the blanketing fog as the school bus continued down the winding bends of the forested streets. Visibility was not more than ten feet at best ahead, and the continual groaning from the anxious passengers only grew louder as the minutes ticked by.

  “I can’t take it anymore,” declared Brittany, reaching up and unlatching the top of her window.

  “What are you doing? It’s not even forty degrees outside,” whined the point guard seated behind her.

  The rest of the bus crankily shared in the sentiment.

  Brittany simply settled back in her seat, unrelenting in her decision despite the upheaval.

  “I know it doesn’t take you girls much athletic ability to wave a bunch of pompoms around, but the guys here can’t afford to stiffen up before the game,” remarked another basketball player.

  “Screw you, Travis!” snapped one of Brittany’s fellow cheerleaders. “You could walk on the court after coming right out of a sauna, and it wouldn’t make any difference. You’re still gonna shoot bricks.”

  “Guys, knock it off back there!” Coach Masters finally barked just as the insults and name-calling reached its crescendo.

  “Then tell Britt to close her window!” moaned half the bus to its driver.

  “How about someone tell you guys how to wash your pits,” the brunette shot back. Everyone knew it smelled rank in there. The same bus was used for every sports outing, and it always smelled like stale sweat. Mix that with the hideous combination of perfume from the girls, and the bus was downright sickening. “I’m sorry, but some of us need fresh air here. It’s like a stink bomb went off.”

  Travis threw the hood to his sweatshirt over his head and begrudgingly settled back into the crepe brown leather seat. “How much longer is this gonna take, Coach?”

  “Hard to say. At least another fifteen minutes,” replied Masters from behind the wheel.

  Groans echoed through the bus all over again.

  “Hey, if you guys want to wind up trapped in a ditch, then by all means, I’ll speed up.” The coach kept his eyes fixed on the road, or at least, what could be seen of it. The sun had set an hour ago and streetlights were far and few on this stretch of back roads, leaving nothing but the headlights to guide their way.

  “We should’ve stayed on the highway,” remarked another passenger.

  “You saw the traffic. With all the construction going on, we would’ve been stuck out there forever,” Travis admitted. The young man put his ear buds in, trying to let Saliva’s “Ladies and Gentlemen” get him back into the zone. He rested the side of his head on the window, heaving out an aggravated sigh.

  Just as he shut his eyes, a thunderous eruption blasted over the power of the music and his head thumped against the window as the bus suddenly shimmied. Everyone yelped, gripping onto whatever they could find. Yanking out the headphones, Travis snapped up to his feet, seeing the vehicle slow to a stop.

  “What the hell was that?” he demanded.

  “Everybody, just stay calm,” ordered Coach. “I think we just blew a tire.” Once the bus was placed in Park, he pulled the lever to open the door and climbed out with a service flashlight in hand.

  Curses resonated across the bus as everyone took out their phones.

  “Is there someone we can call to tell them what happened?” asked a power forward. “They can’t call a forfeit on us if we’re stuck, can they?”

  “We’re about to find out,” said Travis, scrolling through his contact list.

  “I don’t have service. Do you?” queried Brittany, holding up her cell and moving it around in vain.

  “I’ve got nothin’,” said a player.

  “Me neither,” confirmed another.

  The whole bus groaned as everyone else shook their heads.

  “Say goodbye to our record,” grunted the point guard.

  “Now what?” asked Brittany. “We haven’t come across another car on this road for the last ten minutes.”

  “’Cause no one else is stupid enough to drive in this,” confirmed Travis, pointing out the window.

  Brittany took notice to the dense fog that now gently billowed into the cabin from her cracked window. “Are we even safe in here? I mean, what if another car does come along? Even with the hazards on, it’d be almost impossible for them to see us.”

  Paleness washed over everyone’s faces at the acknowledgement.

  “Coach?” called out Travis, sticking his mouth up to Brittany’s opened window. “Coach?”

  “Everybody, shut up!” demanded Brittany, straining her ears to hear Masters’ reply. Nothing.

  “Coach?” she yelled. Her voice echoed off into the mass of trees surrounding the street, but no one returned her plea.

  “Where the hell is he?” Travis climbed over his friend seated beside him and made his way to the back of the bus, scanning the scenery outside. “Anyone see Coach?”

  When no one confirmed, he hastened to the front end, heading down the stairs to the base of the door. “Masters!”

  Unease tightened around his nerves as his feet dropped to the gravelly shoulder of the road. His sneakers grinded against the worn, pebble-coated blacktop, and the sound seemed all the more amplified now that everyone had gone wholly silent onboard. He made his way to the back tire, seeing the whole wheel stripped of rubber. Travis knelt down and peered beneath the
undercarriage, finding nothing but a black rod tucked behind the blown tire.

  He strained to reach the object, but finally managed to grip his fingers on the very end. A small shard of glass clanked to the ground as he pulled it out, and he turned over the object to see the broken screen of the service flashlight. The sweat layering his palms almost made him drop it as he rose to his feet. He quickly wiped his hands on his sweatpants, but the flashlight still felt slick in his grasp.

  “T-Travis,” stammered Brittany.

  He looked up to see the brunette’s eyes trained below his waist and instinctively dropped his own gaze. “Shit!”

  His grip immediately loosened and the flashlight fell to the ground as a low growl fixed behind him. Fear whirled the shooting guard around, but nothing could be made out through the dense fog. He shot off to the front of the bus and practically fell inside the cabin, barely managing to pry the door shut with his grimy hands.

  The boy collapsed on the slated flooring of the aisle, and everybody froze as they observed the red smears painted across the side of his white pant leg.

  “That’s not what I think it is…” muttered one of his teammates.

  Travis raised his hand, seeing more of the mucky liquid staining his skin. “There’s something out there.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s something out there,” he reiterated shakily, pulling himself up.

  Brittany laid a hand on his shoulder, and he startled at the touch. “Travis, what did you see?”

  He wordlessly plowed past her and the other members on the bus, heading toward the backend.

  “What did you see, man?” begged his friend.

  “Nothing.”

  “Will you just tell us?” bellowed Brittany.

  “Nothing!” snapped Travis, peering out the large rear window. “I didn’t see anything. It’s what I heard.”

  “What?”

  “It’s some kind of animal,” he muttered, more to himself.

  “Like what? A coyote?”

  Travis shot the cheerleader a dirty look. “You honestly think a forty pound coyote attacked Coach and managed to drag his body away?”

  The bus fell silent again.

  “Did you actually see his body?” asked Brittany. “I mean, we don’t know what happened to him. Right?”

  “What? You think he got mauled by a rabid dog and then decided to ditch us to go play Animal Echo in the woods?” remarked a player.

  “Can we still drive with a flat?” queried a small forward. “There could be a gas station or something just down the road for all we know. We get there, we can call for help.”

  The team’s point guard went to the front and plopped into the driver’s seat and sighed in relief that Coach had left the keys in the ignition. He turned the engine over and put the vehicle into gear, letting the bus slowly coast down the stretch.

  One of the girls suddenly screamed, and not a second later did the vehicle suddenly jolt at the annihilating impact that registered on the left side. A sharp shudder followed and the point guard could hear the other rear tire blowout. The backend buckled down, scraping along the asphalt before the bus came to an eventual halt. It didn’t matter how hard the point guard pushed down on the accelerator. The bus wouldn’t move.

  “Anyone hurt?” called out the point guard, turning to look back at the rest of the passengers.

  “What the hell is this thing?” demanded Travis, looking at the concaved siding of the bus that received the impact. The collision even managed to break several of the windows.

  An aching howl erupted outside, and the whole bus was met with another blow. The backend slid off the pavement, and the cabin tilted down toward the deep trench. Everyone tried scrambling over, hoping to rebalance the vehicle, but another ram hit, sending the bus toppling off the road. The helpless passengers crashed onto the roof as their world turned upside-down.

  Buried beneath a mound of her classmates’ limbs, Brittany achingly tried prying herself up, but fear paralyzed her as heavy breathing stirred her untidy brunette locks. She only managed to shift her eyes over to the broken window beside her head, seeing an enormous, long muzzle and snarling white teeth just inches from her face. A scream lodged in the poor girl’s throat as the monstrous creature lunged into the cabin.

  ~*~Kat~*~

  Chapter 1

  Animals

  “I’m on the verge of eating notebook paper,” Carly declared, eyeing the composition journal in my hands.

  I laughed. “I believe that’s a sign of iron deficiency.”

  “Or just extreme hunger.”

  We both stood on our tiptoes, trying to gauge an estimate of how many more people were still ahead of us in line.

  “Okay, keep my mind off my ravenous appetite by spilling some goods. Is it true you’re seeing Blaine Ryder?” Carly urged.

  Feeling my cheeks blush at the mention, I turned from her, and she gasped.

  “Ooooh, I take that as a big, fat YES!”

  “No, no. I wouldn’t say ‘seeing,’ per se. We’re taking things slow,” I clarified.

  “You and the Golden Boy, huh? Me likey.” Carly couldn’t wipe the Cheshire smile now glued to her face. “So, where’s Prince Charming? Shouldn’t he be here?”

  “He had a family thing to take care of. He’ll be meeting us at the bonfire though,” I confirmed.

  “That’s so adorable!” She was downright giddy. Sadly, I couldn’t share in the sentiment. Not as long as Becky Sorensen kept throwing visual daggers at me.

  Carly turned, taking note of my annoyance. “Just ignore her.”

  “That’d be easy if it was just her. I’m public enemy number one. Hunted like Dillinger and loathed like a Kardashian.” I should have known better. I was fresh meat to Belleview High. An outsider. Sure, I’d been here a year, but you still can’t just roll into town and snatch up the golden boy. “And just when I thought public schools would be more laid back than boarding ones.”

  “That’s the thing about the public school system. They bring out the worst in everyone. Sweet girls become nice girls. Nice girls become bitches. Bitches become Queen Bees. And Queen Bees become See-You-Next-Tuesdays.”

  “People are acting like I clubbed a baby seal using a freaking panda. I broke up with Adam weeks ago, yet Becky’s still fuming from the ears. If she wants him that bad, he’s free!”

  “She wanted him to break up with you. Not the other way around. If she went out with him now, she’d just be getting your sloppy seconds,” clarified Carly. “And a whole new batch of trouble is brewing now that Blaine’s putting the moves on you. Ava Ashford has been trying to sink her claws into him since freshman year, and she’s not gonna go away quietly.” My friend’s stomach growled so angrily that I could hear it even over all the chatter. “I knew I shouldn’t have listened to you.”

  I’d convinced Carly to hold off getting in line before the basketball game, because the crowds around the concessions usually plummeted after tip-off. Thanks to the visiting team being a no-show though, boredom sent everyone to the refreshment stand, leaving us at the end of a very long line.

  “I said I was sorry,” I lamented, “but I still don’t get why you didn’t just eat before we came here.”

  “Because, my mom ordered all this gourmet food earlier for her dinner party, and there’s no way in hell I’m trying any of that crap again. Remember last time? Her caviar tasted like ass.”

  “What’s this I hear about tasting some ass?” A burly set of arms rested on each of our shoulders from behind.

  “Oh, God help us,” groaned Carly as Mark stepped between the two of us.

  “Is this an offer by any chance?” He winked at my friend, igniting an immediate eye roll from her end.

  “You forget I’m dating your best friend?” she retorted, pointing to Daniel, the handsome point guard sitting on the bleachers inside the gym.

  Mark pouted exaggeratedly before turning to me. “What about you, Kitty Kat?
Interested in letting me toss your salad?”

  Carly outright gagged and slugged him in the shoulder. “Well, there goes my appetite.”

  “I’m not hearing any objections.” He beamed a charming smile at me that seemed to work on all the clueless girls of my class. Thank the Lord I knew better.

  “Carly would have a better chance getting with me than you,” I countered.

  My blonde bestie grinned wickedly, gently vibrating her tongue to make a sarcastically sexy purr directed at me.

  “You start playing for the other team all of the sudden?” Mark retorted.

  “No, but at the off chance you were the last guy on the planet, I’d strongly consider it. Or celibacy,” I clarified.

  “Ouch, Montgomery. You little spitfire.”

  Carly squirmed under his hold, fanning her nose. “Jeez, Mark, you start boycotting showers?”

  “It’s a part of my scoring strategy,” he laughed. “No one wants to guard someone who smells rank.”

  “Well, you achieved your goal admirably. Onions make me tear up less,” I remarked.

  “Please, just do us all a favor and shower after the game. I’m not spending the whole night around Pepé Le Pew.”

  A high-pitch whistle blared, bringing the gym to a standstill, and the pudgy referee waddled to the middle of the basketball court. “Due to Hersey High’s absence, we have no other choice but to rule this as a forfeit on their behalf.”

  Mark quietly rejoiced, and no one could blame him. Sure, we wanted to win the old-fashioned way, but Hersey’s team was our biggest competition and the easy triumph only helped our record.

  Daniel came up and shared his trademark handshake with Mark. “Look at that. Triumph, and we didn’t even have to break a sweat.”

  “Yeah, but now what do we do? The bonfire doesn’t start ‘til nine,” said Carly.

  Mischief painted her boyfriend’s face. “Oh, I have an idea. But we’re gonna need to call in the whole troop for this one.”

  ***

  “Everybody ready?” called out Eric as he rolled the van to a stop behind a thick set of bushes.