Page 40 of Wicked Warlock
I walked around the room, looking at all the chairs and contraptions used to hold people down and do cruel, unimaginable things to them. People who didn’t hold the same tyrannical beliefs as Alataris and my father. I stopped at a table and looked down at all the contraptions. Was I going to torture him? No. Did he need to know that? No. “Yes.”
“You can’t do anything to me that I haven’t tried on myself.” He ducked his bald head and folded his hands in front of him.
I plucked up a small silver ball from the table. I knew exactly what it did. “Even this?”
His face paled and he swallowed hard. Beads of sweat began to gather on his forehead and run down the sides of his face.
I shook the ball at him. “Shall we try it.”
I’d seen one of these before. The victim would be forced to swallow the ball and slowly the ball would open up and begin to cut the person open from the inside out. The problem (or the torture) was it was done slowly over hours of waiting, and the ball took on a direction of its own. There was no telling where it would come out.
“I have hours.” Again, I lied. I didn’t have hours or want to waste it on him. Stooping to his level was not an option.
“You are a disappointment to your father.” He spat on the floor. “And all warlocks.”
He drew a dagger from inside his robes and charged at me, raising it high over his head and bringing it down toward my chest. I took a single step to the side, grabbed his hand, and twisted it at a hard angle, snapping his wrist. He cried out as I wrapped my hand in the front of his robes and lifted him off the ground. I spun around and hurled him headfirst into the thick brick wall. The sound of cracking bone filled the air, and Jiovanni slumped to the ground in a heap. I walked over to him and kicked his body over. His head fell at an odd angle and a massive dent formed in the center of his forehead.
Kylian strolled to my side. “Didn’t this dude torture thousands to death?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Broke neck seems too good for him.”
Staring down at his vacant eyes and broken body, I couldn’t agree more. “It is.”
“Why not use some of this shit on this dude? If anyone deserved it, he did.” Kylian motioned to the chamber of tortures. “It was all at your fingertips.”
Because I’m not my father. “Because I am not like them.”
One less thing…
Chapter 18
Beckett
“You’re just going to knock on the door?” Kylian stared at the plum-colored door in the center of a lime green colonial-style house. The neighborhood was so mundane with each house looking like the one next to it. All but hers. It was a regular suburban neighborhood and quiet this time of morning. It was the type of place a serial killer would live, which is exactly what Cora Ferguson was. I wondered if she, too, had bodies in her basement, the same as Jiovanni.
“Yes.”
“And she’s going to let you in?” We stood across the street on the sidewalk just looking at the house. Birds chirped in the distance and squirrels skittered up and down the trees lining the street. At any moment, a mom with three kids would come running out of one of the houses to load them all up in her van. And Cora, a member of the council, responsible for using her magic against the warlock community, lived here among the humans.
“In theory.” I shrugged.
I walked across the street and up the slate pathway that led to her front door. A ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ sign stood next to her door. “You sure this is the right house?”
“I’m sure.”
I pointed to the sign. “Psychopaths know how to mimic to blend in.”
Kylian motioned to the other houses with similar signs sitting outside as Thanksgiving decorations wound around their porches. Pumpkins and fake leaves were a staple in this neighborhood. “All psychos?”
“Yup.”
I pressed my finger to the doorbell, and it chimed a tinkering bell that I would not associate with Cora. The door peeked open slowly, and she backed away, opening it widely. Her face fell into that bullfrog-like scowl, and she turned and walked farther into the house without saying a word.
We entered the foyer and walked past a dining room with dark purple walls and bright green furniture. To my left was a set of stairs leading up the second floor… carpeted in purple with swirls of green running through it. She walked through a small archway that led into an alcove lined with shelves. Each shelf held multiple vials of all shapes, sizes, and colors. Some bubbled all on their own; others glowed bright neon colors. I knew what each of them was and not a single one could be used in a helpful way.
Cora took a seat at the round table in the center of the room. “Dustwick.”
