Page 39 of Wicked Warlock
Beckett
“This better be the right place.” I glanced down a long empty hall with thick burgundy carpeting and plain beige walls.
Kylian gave a slight glance but said nothing. He walked past me, silently making his way down the hall. A few yards down, he stopped, motioning for me to follow. We didn’t have time to be looking at pictures. I was on the hunt… not shopping.
“Right place.” Kylian pointed at the portrait of the skinny worm-like man with a bald head and wrinkled skin. His beady eyes stared out at me from the portrait, and I snickered to myself.
“Right place.”
Voices came from the end of the hall where a set of double doors stood closed up tightly. Jiovanni was a man of many perversions and violations. And I, I was the one to put it to an end. We’d tried to unseat them the right way. Now I would do it my way. The clean way.
Kylian stopped at the door and nodded toward it. Open it. Why not? I tilted my head toward the door, and Kylian grabbed the doorknobs and threw the doors wide open. They smacked into the wall. The plaster cracked, holding them there. Kylian froze at the scene before him. A single black rectangular table sat in the middle of the room surrounded by six hooded figures. A girl with long wavy brown hair and an elfin face lay on top of the table in a pure white dress. Her body convulsed wildly and foam trickled from the corner of her mouth.
The man at the head of the table pulled back his hood. “What is the meaning of this?”
“This the one?” Kylian motioned to Jiovanni.
I nodded, unable to take my eyes off him.
Kylian looked around the room, taking in the black candles, the smell of burning flesh, and dark magic. “I can see why you want him dead.”
Jiovanni snickered. “Beckett Dustwick, your father—”
“Is dead.” My words dropped like a bomb in the room.
Jiovanni’s face paled and he waved in our direction. All at once, the hooded warlock swarmed toward us. Energy balls filled their hands, and I stood still as stone. They were between me and my target… simple solution. Kylian leaned to the side and placed his hand on the door. Long needle-like splinters formed in the panel of the door. He didn’t look at me, didn’t say a word. I threw out my hands. Power exploded forward, and I ripped those needles from the door and fired them like darts through the air. One by one, the figures dropped to the ground with those needles protruding from their jugulars.
Jiovanni’s mouth gaped wide open and closed. “Leave now.”
I strolled around the table to where the girl lay, struggling to breath. She was young—no older than sixteen—and her lips were a deep purple color that spoke of poison. I waved my hand and opened a portal right beneath her. I dropped her into the infirmary at Evermore Academy. Jiovanni backed away from the table as Kylian moved in on the other side.
“What should we do with him?”
Smoke poured from Jiovanni’s hands and drifted over the floor toward me. I lifted my hand using my own power to gather his into a ball. It floated up in front of me and I squeezed my hand into a fist, squishing his power like a bug under my shoe.
“Taste of his own medicine comes to mind.”
I marched up to him and grabbed him by the back of his neck and shoved him toward the door. “Where’s the basement?”
“Basement?” Kylian stepped in front of me and began walking back down the hallway. “Why the basement?”
I shook Jiovanni like a rag doll. His body swayed beneath my grip, and I shoved him behind Kylian. “He’s famous for it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jiovanni’s lying words were like acid in my ears.
I kicked him in the back, and he stumbled forward just as Kylian turned to the right, going toward the back of the house. Then he took a left, where he stopped in front of a towering metal door with one large lock on it. I palmed the back of Jiovanni’s head and shoved him toward the lock.
“Open it.”
He squared his shoulders and clamped his mouth shut and curled his hands behind his back. “No.”
Kylian placed his hand on the wall and it glowed a dark crimson red under his touch. A sharp plaster dagger appeared in his hand, and he held it up to the light not saying a word. Jiovanni staggered forward and placed his hand on the lock. The sound of grinding metal sounded and the slide of bolts filled the air. The door popped open and air hissed out from below. The smell of decay and death hit my nose, and I wanted for him to feel the fear he inflicted on so many others. It was what my father would’ve done. But I wasn’t him.
Kylian pushed the door wide open, and I didn’t wait. I flicked my wrist and shot a puff of my magic into him. Jiovanni tumbled forward and rolled down the stairs. He smacked into the walls and hit each stair on his way down. I quickly followed behind him with Kylian hot on my heels. At the bottom of the steps, I sucked in a sharp breath. This was worse than anything I could’ve imagined.
All around the basement were cages and hay spread on the floor like he was keeping animals. But the skeletal human remains told me it wasn’t animals he was trapping down here. To my right, there was a long board that looked like a teeter-totter with wrist and legs straps. An empty bucket sat next to it. On the other side was a giant vat with some kind of thick liquid boiling at furious rate. Yet another skeleton hung off the side of it with both of its arms draped into the boiling liquid. The entire back wall was covered in weapons and knives in various stages of blood spatter. Some were thick and crusted, others were rusted, but none of them shined like they were new. Flies swarmed over them, attracted to the blood and gore.
Jiovanni lurched to his feet and pressed his hand to his ribs, wincing. “Are you going to torture me now that you’re here?”
