Deadly Morsel: Rosewood Academy of Witches and Mages (Darkly Sweet Book 5)

by Juliann Whicker

  I hissed at him while the world grew green. Penny. I couldn’t give in to the dragon, the possessive jealous rage that threatened to overwhelm me. I had to find her. I had to protect her. I had to love her.

  I climbed into the truck and snapped my fingers, summoning a Darkside map. I had a holograph lollipop sticking out where Zach knew she’d be. Signore took off, grinding gears and shifting down as we headed down the alley towards a building. We left Dayside before impact.

  Chapter 31

  Witch

  I didn’t have anything better to do, so I took apart the phone. There was so much touchy tech in it, I really should have left it alone, but at least it would keep me from getting too bored.

  The energy in the walls was stringy enough by the time I started reassembling the phone that I could connect the woven energy to the phone. It would be completely useless, a phone infused with mage energy from Signore’s brother? What could that possibly do? Still, it was interesting to weave it in with each tiny piece.

  When I was finished. I started calling people. It didn’t work, of course not. It’s not like I’d get reception in a different world. When I called Zach, it rang once and then he hissed, “Don’t call again,” before hanging up.

  I blinked at my phone stupidly before I called him again.

  “Zach, I get that you’re upset that I’m not marrying you, but since this is me giving you my number, I thought you’d put your jerkness aside. Apparently, I was wrong.”

  Zach’s utter silence on the other end went on and on. “Penny? Where are you?”

  “I have no idea. It’s a stone hall, twenty by thirty, no windows, no doors, nothing but stone and energy. How is this phone working?”

  “You did something weird to it, didn’t you? My phone was off. You shouldn’t have been able to call it.”

  “Seriously, my father kidnaps me and you complain about me calling you? Issues, Zach. You’ve got serious issues.”

  “Tell me about it. The thing is, we’re sneaking around in the dark of this big old mansion in Darkside, and I’m pretty sure we’re about to trip several spells, so you calling me, while refreshingly fun is also kind of lethally dangerous.”

  “Whose mansion are you sneaking around in?”

  “Whose do you think? I’ve analyzed the structure, sent little explorer bots through the whole thing, and there’s no stone hall. Not much stone anything. Hold on.”

  “Penny?” Missy’s voice was soft and careful, like she was afraid of waking up a monster.

  “Missy! What are you doing in Darkside with Zach? He’s a completely unstable mage.”

  “Tell me the shape of the stones, Penny.”

  I turned to stare at the wall. “Small, fist-sized mostly. They’re all stuck together with some kind of cement plaster stuff.”

  “Color?”

  “Gray?”

  “Blue-gray or brown-gray?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Blue, I guess.”

  “What do the rocks taste like?”

  “Seriously?” I licked a rock. “Salty and chalky, calcium bicarbonate?”

  “Thanks.” She clicked off and a second later the hall tipped sideways, sending me rolling across the floor and into the wall. I barely landed on my feet. It tipped back the other way and I did not land on my feet. Ow. My poor head. Lucky I had so much hair to cushion it. I ran over the shifting floor to the corner and wedged myself in as well as I could.

  My phone rang but before I could figure out how to answer it while hanging onto the wall and floor, it exploded, and the walls exploded outward in a circle of dust.

  I closed my eyes, coughing until the smoke cleared enough that I could make out three enormous eyes above me. Two were lightning blue. One a smoky gray.

  I pointed up at them. “Zach, you might want to watch what you eat. You’re gaining way too much weight.”

  He put his hand down and I climbed onto his massive palm. I could see every pore, every line. He put me inside the collar of his mech suit before turning and then froze. My father was enormous too. I was starting to feel a little bit small.

  “Give her to me, and I won’t kill you.” He sounded so serious. He was smiling. I hated that smile. That was my smile. It looked so wrong on him.

  “Not a chance.” Zach was so cocky. I loved that about him.

  My dad walked closer, hands opening and closing. “How did you find her?”

  “No idea. Penny did something to the energy wards, hooked them up to her phone or something. She’s fairly terrifying. What about you? How did you shrink her?”

  My father laughed, short, sharp then moved, lunging forward and spearing a spell towards Zach. The spell was pale blue with orange sparks. It never hit Zach. Missy stepped in front of him and held out a piece of paper. The sparks struck that and recoiled, wrapping around my father instead.

  He clenched his teeth, face going all white and bulging while he stared at her.

  “You’ve broken a law,” she said in a sing-song voice. “You must pay for your crimes.”

  A wind rose, nearly blowing me out of Zach’s mech collar. Figures swirled around then solidified, cloaked men and women that surrounded my father.

  “The creation of an aberration is strictly forbidden. You must pay the price with your life.”

  It was almost a rhyme. He rolled his eyes and glared at Missy. “You’re Narcollo’s little pet. You will die very soon.”

  Missy shrugged and turned to look at me with a peculiar quirk of her eyebrows. She mouthed. “Come here,” and then turned back to smile at my father.

  Zach walked close to her. I slid out of his collar, down the plates of his suit, running until I reached his fingertips and leapt, barely catching hold of Missy’s hair. It was too silky. I threaded through to the collar of her dress. I had to get my father to touch me. Right. We could salvage the plan. Maybe.

  My father looked between the two of them. “You came here alone? What an arrogant cur.” His tone would have been more condescending if he wasn’t being jabbed and poked by fingers that made him flinch. They weren’t actual flesh and blood probably. What were they going to do, follow him around, poking him with ghost fingers for the rest of his life? That would be incredibly annoying. You couldn’t get anything done.

  “Enough!” He chanted, swirled around gracefully and brought his arms down. The figures melted away, leaving him with a smile that I really, really hated. Missy shouldn’t be here. We could not sacrifice her to save me. Nope.

  My dad muttered a short spell and things got really weird for a minute, until I slid off Missy full-sized.

  I pushed her behind me and turned into smoke and ashes. I would have killed him, but Zach dragged me away from him, using these energy beams to hold Pitch.

  “If you kill him, you die, Penny.”

  My father laughed while I struggled against Zach’s hold.

  “Your little mage is quite right.”

  The little mage pointed at him and pulled the trigger. The explosion around my father was very pretty. Zach grabbed Missy and me, and then the rockets on his boots went whoosh and he went zooming towards the wall.

  Then the boots went out, we all crashed on the ground, my cheek getting nice and splintered from the very poorly sanded floor.

  So the room was covered in shelves with knick knacks. Apparently I’d been inside one of them. It was a wonder they’d been able to find me at all in that mess. It was messier after Zach, Missy and I took out a shelf holding incredibly ugly ceramic teapots.

  Zach came up with a roar, shooting spells and tech spiders at my father. Missy was still, her pretty pale wrist flung out on the floor. Missy. I straightened and ripped my dress down the front while the tool flickered in my hand. Black spilled over me, Darkness that breathed like a live thing, flickering and humming as I stood and stretched. My father? I wouldn’t kill him, I’d just rip him apart and turn him inside out.

  I slashed across his stomach, ripping through his clothes. Zachary Stoneburrow wouldn’t sta
nd a chance against a Sorcerer in his house. But me? I was his flesh. I was his blood. And I was Serene’s precious baby.

  Forget about getting him to touch me. I made him bleed, the smell sweet in the air as he spun to face me. I wasn’t anything he could face. I opened my mouth wide and bit off his face.

  Ew. A tiny part of me flinched from the blood on my tongue, but that laughing, that part wanted to dance in his blood until it filled this room to the brim.

  He fought me, bringing up a sword, moving like water, spelling me, but his spells couldn’t catch, not with the protection spell on me. “You can’t destroy me without destroying yourself.”

  “Is that what you told Poppy?” I slashed through his face, energy and darkness ripping deeper into him. I would pay for that. I would feel it. But not now.

  “I never met your friend.” He gasped and stepped back, raising his hands. The spell didn’t hit me, but Zach. He rose in the air screaming while ropes of pale light strangled him, squeezed the life out of him.

  I screamed and attacked my father, my vicious, evil, wicked father. His skin melted away but Zach’s screams were louder than mine.

  “He’ll die for you,” he said with a smile beneath his dripping flesh and blood.

  The smile made me hesitate. I turned to see Zach. The bonds of light were piercing through his skin, growing through him like vines. I screamed and whirled on my father, but I somehow managed not to touch him.

  “Let him go or I swear I will destroy you. I don’t care if it kills me. I don’t care so long as you’re dead.”

  He snapped his fingers and Zach fell to the ground, bleeding, unconscious, his mech suit completely mangled. I pried off plates that were crushing him, buried into his skin and flesh.

  I kept flickering in and out of existence. Anger. Rage. Grief. I screamed at my father for a long, long time while I ran my hands over Zach, pulling out the pain, the damage that my father had inflicted so easily, crushing his flesh like it was inside a tin can.

  “So many talents, sweet child,” he crooned.

  I hissed at him.

  “Now then…”

  That’s when the walls broke and a horde of zombies came in. When I say horde, not one or two hundred, thousands, thousands of thousands of creatures that weren’t just moaning gurgling reanimated corpses, no, these were formerly dead mages who could cast spells. Not particularly good ones, but the kind that made walls shatter. I grabbed Zach and Missy, channeling Pitch to do something useful as I headed through the zombie horde. For some reason desiccated flesh was less revolting than my darling daddy.

  There was Carl on a hill in the gloomy reddish light. He wore a long coat that fluttered in the breeze, but he seemed to be reading a newspaper while he waited for us. The zombie horde split, letting us through, but holding my father back.

  He hadn’t expected zombies. Neither had I, come to think of it. But, I’d take them. Zach came to and blinked at me where I held him upside down over my shoulder.

  He flipped off me, landed on a zombie that crunched kind of disgustingly.

  “Sorry,” he muttered as he shook off the rest of his mech suit and then hit a button or cast a spell and voila was in a brand new one. Or old one. I don’t keep track of all his mech suits.

  “What happened?”

  I didn’t answer him. I was still Pitch, but if I started thinking, really noticing Missy’s limp body beneath my other arm, I’d leak Pitch and collapse. I was going to be angry and strong until my father was dead. I ran faster. Finally, I reached Carl, swung Missy down then turned to see my father throw his arms wide and knock all those zombies back in an epic explosion. The ground beneath my feet shuddered.

  “Zach, take us home.”

  He shook his head. “We’re in his domain. He won’t let me step Throughside, not with you. I keep trying.”

  I bit my bottom lip until it started bleeding.

  “Can you take Missy?”

  Zach glared at me before he shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Take her. I don’t think she’s dead.”

  “She’s not,” Carl said with a nod. “I’d have reanimated her already if she was.”

  That was so ew, I couldn’t even.

  “Great. Go.” I handed her to Zach.

  He stared at me, eyes flickering blue before he whirled around and vanished, leaving me with the Necromancer.

  “Are you hungry? I brought some jerky.”

  I shook my head, focused on channeling Pitch. I had to fight him. I didn’t have anyone but Carl left.

  “Can you escape?”

  “Sure. We’re close to Deadside.”

  I nodded, took a deep breath then turned to smoke and ashes. I was going to end the plague that was my father.

  I ran through the zombies, twisting among them, reveling in their darkness, their single-minded death. My father was waiting for me. I screamed and charged him then pulled up as a brown truck apparated right in front of my nose. It smelled like flowers, roses and carnations. I leapt to the top then ran along the length of it, slid down the windshield towards my father, but Signore’s fingers were on my wrist, yanking me back while Drake stalked forward, his eyes on my father, like he didn’t see me.

  No. My father would rip him apart. Drake couldn’t fight that much magic, not in his own domain.

  “You owe me.” Drake’s voice was a growl that sent a trembling rush through my bones. Drake.

  I gasped as I twisted, trying to loosen Signore’s grip, but he knew Darkness. He was the Prince, and I wore his brother’s ashes. I hissed at him.

  “Cara mia, you can’t destroy him, not like this.”

  “Is that why you didn’t kill me, because I’m your brother’s energy? Are you going to eat my heart?”

  “I don’t have to eat your heart when you gave it to me. I feasted on your love for years and years. Stop trying to hurt me. It will only hurt you. He is the enemy, not me, not to you. Never again.”

  I snarled at him, but I couldn’t escape, and I was about to lose Pitch. I had to fight beside Drake. But Signore wouldn’t release me.

  “Huntsman,” my father said with a smile. So creepy. “Welcome to my home. I apologize for the mess.” He turned and lopped off the head of a zombie who had somehow come around him, through the shards of broken pottery and other kitschy stuff.

  “Don’t apologize. It’s our fault for dropping in uninvited.” Drake whirled around with his arms crossed then brought them around in a complicated pattern.

  My father stiffened up as paper chains wrapped around him. He raised his eyebrows, slightly surprised as he was bound by the debts. He took a step away from Drake then was dragged back by the paper chains.

  “So many debts.” He smiled at Drake. “I really enjoyed working with you. Are you certain you don’t wish to be my ally? I could let you have her. And you, Signore, that’s what she calls you, isn’t it? Big brother? Really? I suppose parts of her resonate that way. You want me to take the energy out of her? Do you want me to give it back to you? That’s what you’re here for, isn’t that right?”

  Signore growled and his grip tightened. Ow. Pitch. Don’t think. Fight. Too late. Pitch was dripping out of me until I felt my face slash apart. Signore pulled me close, and stole the pain as easily as if he were blowing out a candle.

  “Don’t heal her so quickly, Signore.”

  Signore growled at my father, showing fangs. They were so sharp.

  “Huntsman, do you agree to ally with me? You haven’t swung your little sword at me. Oh, you think you’ve caught me.”

  My father yanked on the paper chains and then stepped out of his body, leaving the husk behind. He shook out his jacket before smoothing his hair with his hand. For a moment his skin was translucent before it was once more fully flesh and blood.

  I looked from the sorcerer wrapped in paper chains to the one who stood flexing his fingers.

  Well that sucked. I put the ring on my finger and suddenly my father froze. He swung around to stare at me. H
is eyes burned icy and sharp.

  “What did you do, witch?”

  Wow, someone calling me a witch like it was an insult. Also like I wasn’t mostly not a witch.

  I lifted my hand showing him my ring finger. “I got married. Congratulate me.”

  The world swirled around, and the paper chains blew off the false sorcerer, blowing around my father instead, along with more papers, more and more and more that drifted through the zombie horde like flocks of pale birds.

  The sickly green horizon spread towards us, a figure outlined in that swelling wave of gangrene. My Darkside husband’s rack took shape against the sky as he came closer.

  He was bringing Hale with him, pushing into my father’s domain. Soon, we’d all be at his mercy.

  I dragged Signore closer to my father where he stood, papers plastered to him while the chains crept over his ankles and wrists.

  “Dad, release the curse.”

  He focused on me. “Why should I do that?”

  “Otherwise, I’ll torture you,” Drake said with a lazy smile. “I’ll shrink you, and dress you up in adorable outfits. He’d look so nice in pink, don’t you think, Penny?” His hands shook as he held the sword. Why was that? Was he afraid?

  He glanced at me and the anger in his eyes stole my breath. So beautiful.

  “Wife.” Hale’s Son’s voice was a rumbling roar that rustled the papers that threatened to bury my father. Only his head was poking out.

  Signore put his palm over my stomach. “You may not claim the prize without settling with me.”

  I scowled at him. Seriously?

  He winked at me and smiled slightly, showing his fangs.

  I elbowed him in his stomach. Ow, rocks. He had the nerve to pull that pain out of me.

  “You married her behind my back?” My father laughed. “She must have been desperate. Very well. I admit when I’ve been outmaneuvered. Know this, green mage. Even after I remove the curse and return her magic, you won’t be able to kill me without killing her. The making of an aberration ties us irrevocably.”

  He started humming terribly out of tune then I felt sunshine spread through my stomach, dripping down my back as the curse finally shook free and disappeared.