Dream Dark

CHAPTER 1

The Story No One Ever Heard

Small towns are known for lots of small things, but they’re known for some big things, too. Like stories that start out as small as the town itself, until folks grow them. You can’t grow tales any taller than we do here in Gatlin. Maybe it’s because we’re so close to Charleston, home to more haunted houses than unhaunted ones—each with a story more unbelievable than the next. Why should Gatlin be any different? And why did it take me almost seventeen years to that figure out?

Some of the things that happened to me in the last year—true things—were so big and so impossible, they felt like lies. I discovered my girlfriend was a Supernatural, a Caster with a curse. Lena split her Seventeenth Moon and Claimed herself both Light and Dark. I found myself locked in a battle with supernatural creatures that could rival the ones in any comic book. It was just the icing on the cake that Macon Ravenwood, who had once been an Incubus himself, found his way back from the dead.

That was all before July. When we got back to the Gatlin after our terrifying trip to the Great Barrier, the stories—the truths that should have been lies—got even bigger.

One thing did, anyway. My best friend, Link.

Probably the biggest thing that happened this summer—aside from the heat that wouldn’t stop overheating and the creepy crawlers that wouldn’t stop creeping or crawling—was the introduction of a Linkubus to the unsuspecting world of Gatlin. It was worthy of the whole front page of The Stars and Stripes, the biggest story no one ever heard. Which is a good thing, I guess. Because if anyone had heard it, Mrs. Lincoln would have found herself with a lot of explaining to do. It wasn’t like the Baptists had an official religious stance on Immortals—aside from the heavenly kind—but the word Incubus had some less-than-stellar connotations. Let’s just say it wasn’t exactly something Link’s mom would’ve been anxious to share with the reverend when it was time to give her testimony in church.

Linkubus wouldn’t have gone over much better.

The way Link told it, the whole thing had dropped on his head out of nowhere, like the anvil that always fell on the coyote in those old Road Runner cartoons. When I tried to point out that getting bitten by a hybrid Incubus like John Breed should’ve been Link’s first clue about what was happening, he shrugged it off and said, “You weren’t there, dude. One minute I’m sittin’ in front a my mom’s biscuits ’n’ gravy, lookin’ at half a pig for my second breakfast and thinkin’ about my third. The next minute, everything changed.…”

Okay, I wasn’t there. But the way he told it, it almost felt like I was. Still, I’m getting ahead of myself.

This is the story of Gatlin’s first, and only, Linkubus. You won’t read about it in The Stars and Stripes, and you won’t hear it from anyone but me. Lena said I should write it down, so here goes. Someone ought to know, someday.

It’s the truest tall tale in town.