Wicked Magic (The Royals: Witch Court Book 2)

by Megan Montero

  I opened it up and held it out for us all to see. Tucker snapped his finger, and that hanging flame he’s used in the closest only hours before appeared over the map. I sucked in a breath and locked gazes with him, wondering if he too was thinking about what’d happened. When a flush crept up his cheeks, I knew he was.

  I shook my head, trying to focus on the task at hand. “Where do you think it is?”

  The map showed the prison was broken up into six different wings and was in the shape of a huge asterisk. Grayson pointed to the titles of each of the wings. “I love the choices they’ve given us here: Lock Down, where they were left in their own mess; Quarantine, where they went insane; The Shop, where they used tools to kill each other I’m sure; The Infirmary, where they suffered to death; and the Blood Yard, which sounds like where they put them to riot. Right, and none of this is creepy at all.”

  Nova pressed both her hands to the sides of her head and paced back and forth. “It’s in the Quarantine hall, all the way at the end.”

  My eyes widened. “How do you know?”

  “Because…they’re all talking to me.”

  Chapter 22

  Zinnia

  I crumpled the map up in my hands and shoved it into my back pocket. “Come on, we gotta go.”

  I grabbed Nova’s hand and ran through the lobby into the hallway that would lead further into the prison. Tucker’s flame lit the way ahead of us. The only problem was it only lit up about ten feet in front of us. Beyond that it was pitch blackness. The walls were crumbling down to the ground, with large chunks of white paint flaking off and falling to the ground. The sound of rattling chains echoed around the hall.

  I skidded to a halt in a room that had six hallways shooting off of it. The room was domed with dilapidated wooden posts that where fractured in pieces. “What was that?”

  “I don’t know.” Grayson raced to stand at the front of the pack. “But you two will stay behind me. Got it?”

  I nodded. My pulse raced in my chest, and I fought not to panic. Sweat covered my palms, and I knew Nova could feel it up against hers as I clung her hand tighter. But I couldn’t let go of her, not now. Her skin was white as a sheet, and her dark eyes were as big as saucers. I shoved him forward. “Just remember we aren’t vampires.”

  He nodded and took of down the hall on our right. We followed close behind him. It opened up to a narrow wing with two stories that were open down the middle and sectioned off by rusty railings. Dark doorways lined both floors, and a sliding rail hung above each one where the doors would’ve been to each cell. Though there were no door handles on them, the sound of sliding metal slamming and locking repeated over and over again.

  I tugged on Nova’s arm. “Where is it?”

  “A-at the end of the hall.” Her pace slowed, and I struggled to pull her along.

  Tucker came up on her other side and grabbed her other arm to help me move her forward. “What’s wrong with her, Zin?”

  My breaths came in panicked pants. “Sensory overload.”

  “What?” He tilted his head to the side.

  “They spirits are talking to her—”

  Nova slammed her hands over her ears. “No, they’re yelling at me.”

  “Go, go, go.” I ran headlong. The hanging lights above surged from blinding bright to pitch black. White dots swarmed my vision. With one hand I tugged Nova forward and with the other I rubbed my eyes. “We need to keep going.”

  Nova stopped dead in her tracks and sucked in a breath. “They’re here.”

  Deep cackling echoed off the walls and up and down the hall. “I don’t like this.”

  Tucker sent fireballs flying in front of us and behind us. Shadows swarmed and crawled over the walls and ceiling, heading in our direction, each one moving the way spiders and cockroaches do when the lights go on.

  I grabbed on to the tops of Nova’s arms and shook her. “What do we do to stop them?”

  Tucker fired fireball after fireball at them. They just passed through the shadows without even bothering them. Ashryn drew her bow and held it up, but deep down I knew that wasn’t going to help us.

  Nova shook her head. “I don’t know. There’s too many of them.”

  “Then we keep going. We’re almost to the end.” I jerked my head toward the end of the hall.

  Grayson turned. “Agreed.” He took one step, then was lifted up off the ground and thrown back like a rag doll. His body twisted in the air, spinning toward us. He smacked into Nova and me, knocking us to the ground. I slammed into the cement floor with Gray’s upper body pinning me down. The air left my lungs, and I struggled to suck in a deep breath. Suddenly, his body was thrown straight up in to the air, disappearing into the darkness.

  Tucker crouched down at my side. “We have to get ou—”

  Tucker was thrown sideways and pinned to the wall with his arms and legs spread wide. Shadows froze over him, and his mouth disappeared, as if the skin had knit together. He looked at me with wide eyes. Ashryn was pinned to the opposite wall in the same position. When I stepped up to grab a hold of him, the shadowy figures heads all snapped toward me at once. I held my hands up and took a step back as they hissed at me with long teeth. Their beady glowing red eyes followed my every move.

  I crouched down low next to Nova and whispered, “Nova, I need your help.”

  With her hands pressed to her ears, she sat on the ground, rocking back and forth. “They’re showing me…oh god.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “They’re showing me what they did to get in here. So many deaths, so much blood.”

  Then suddenly, she froze and tilted her head back. Her eyes shot wide open. Her eyes were pure milky white. Think, Zinnia, think! I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth to stop the scream bubbling up my throat. I closed my eyes and held my hands out, tapping into the deepest part of me. I dropped down in front of Nova and crossed my legs. I wasn’t sure why I thought sitting in a prison full of evil spirits was a good idea, but I had to help my crew. It was now or never.

  I focused my gaze on Nova. “Nova, I know you can hear me. I need you to help me.”

  I grabbed her hands in mine and wound our fingers together. Purple sparks shot out of our joined hands. I didn’t know what I was doing or how this was going to work. I’d been reading the book Professor Davis gave me. I couldn’t recall a specific spell to help us here, but I had to try. I opened my magic up to everything around me and spoke the words that appeared in my mind. I summoned a flame with my mind and let it hover between Nova and me. When it started to smoke, I began to speak, “Through the flames of time and smoking desire, I call upon the higher power. Frozen in fear and lacking in sight, I bid you bring her back to rights.”

  Nova’s eyes cleared of the milky white. She gasped and leaned in closer to me. I nodded to her ,giving her the sign not to break my hold on her hands. Halfway there, Zin. “Sins of the past, fate of the present, let them freeze amongst their brethren. Frozen in time and bound by night, let them dwell forever out of sight. I bind thee all here and now, I bind thee all to your personal hell. The cells they call, they beckon thee. The cell will now be forever where you’ll be!”

  Purple sparks shot out from our bound hands, hitting every spirit in the chest. The shadowy figures strained against my spell. Their jagged hands reached out to me. Their mouths opened in high-pitched screams as they were sucked one by one back into the cells they’d spent their human lives in. Tucker dropped from the wall and landed in a crouch. Across from him, Ashryn landed lightly on her feet. Her hand flew up to her mouth, where she pressed her fingers over her lips.

  “Aaaaaahhhhhhh.” Grayson plummeted toward the ground. I held my hands out, trying to think of the spell I’d seen a teacher use on my first day at Evermore Academy. My mind went blank, and I felt exhaustion pulling me under.

  Tucker shot his wings from his back and leapt up into the air and snagged Grayson around his chest. He landed only a foot away from me. Without a word, he dropped Gray at my feet.


  He hit the floor with a thud but quickly sprang back up. His normal slicked-back hair was sticking out in wild tuffs around his face, and his eyes bulged out of his head. “What? What’d you say? I’m fine. Are you fine?” He pulled his sleeves up to his elbow. “Good, we’re good. Let’s go.”

  Grayson ran away, then came right back. He was so hopped up on nervous energy that I suspected he could run a full marathon in minutes. He bounced on the balls of his feet. “By the way, where are they all? What did you do with them?”

  I shrugged. “Sent them back to where prisoners belong. To their cells.”

  “Back to their cells for eternity. That’s cold…but also so cool.” When he began walking down the hall, I let my shoulders sag, and I sucked in a sigh. That spell was one of the hardest I’d ever done, and I couldn’t help but wonder where the words had come from.

  Tucker hooked his finger under my chin and lifted my face to meet his eyes. “You did amazing.”

  “Yeah, Zinnia. Thank you.” Nova placed her hand on my shoulder for just a second before she walked past me.

  Tucker winked at me, then tilted his head to point down the hall. “Shall we?”

  I wanted to tell him I’d follow him wherever he went, but I was too tired to even speak.

  “Oye, you lot, I think I’ve found it,” Grayson called from the darkness.

  I followed closely behind Tucker. My eyelids felt dry and heavy, almost ready to close at any moment. At the back of the hall was a small room with a single chair sitting in it. “I don’t even want to know what this room is for.”

  Nova shook her head. “No, you really don’t.” When she looked at me, I could see the strain behind her eyes. She’d said the spirits showed her things. Part of me wanted to know exactly what she’d seen behind those milky white eyes, and the other part of me had seen enough of the inside of this prison to last me a lifetime. The moment she reached the back wall, she placed her hand on it and closed her eyes and whispered, “Open.”

  The wall fell away piece by piece, opening up into a black hole of nothing. Nova glanced over her shoulder. “No offense, but I want out of here.” She stepped through and disappeared. Ashryn followed close behind her, followed by Gray.

  Tucker stepped to the side and waved for me to go through. “You first.”

  As I passed by him, I felt the tips of his fingers brush over the back of my hand. “I’ll see you on the other side.” I took one step through the opening to the underworld, and the floor dropped out from under me.

  My stomach shot up into my throat, and then I fell into an abyss.

  Chapter 23

  Tucker

  I woke with my face suctioned to some kind of horrible pink pool float. When I placed my hands up near my face and pushed off of it, all the air shifted toward my legs and my face plummeted forward. The plastic creaked as I righted myself and returned to lying flat on my stomach. “What the hell happened?”

  “Well, not hell exactly, but close enough,” a deep rumbling voice answered my question.

  I clumsily rolled to the side and flopped onto the hard-packed dirt. I lay there for just a moment, looking toward the sky—only, there was no sky. I was in some kind of underground cave. Realization hit me, and I sprang to my feet. “Shit, I’m in the underworld.”

  “You would be correct.” Again, that voice smoothly answered my question.

  I whirled around and drew my swords. Flames exploded down my arms and all the way to the tips of my blades. “Where are they?”

  “Easy there, kid.” A man stood towering over me. He was at least six inches taller than I was, with black wavy hair that was combed back from his face. His violet eyes wavered from the darkest purple to the lightest pastel. A thick black goatee surrounded the large smile he was giving me. His skin held a summer tan, like he’d been lying on the beach for weeks. When he held his well-muscled arms out wide, I hesitated.

  “Hades?” I didn’t drop my swords. “God of the underworld?”

  “Ah, well, we both know I’m not really a god…although…” He snapped his fingers, and four other chairs appeared next to the large plastic couch one I’d been lying on before. He motioned to the chairs. “Here are the rest of your friends.”

  There they all were peacefully sleeping, on an array of hideous furniture. “What’s wrong with them?”

  “What do you mean?” Hades tilted his head to the side and scanned them all.

  Zinnia lay curled on her side across an old leather sofa with large cracks across the brown leather arms. On the top of the back, stuffing floated out of the tip, as if the couch had been chewed by a large dog. Her long black hair fell around her face and down her shoulder in a tangled mess. Beside her, Ashryn slept flat on her back on a bright red recliner. The chair tilted to the side as though broken in all different places. Nova was slumped over in a high back wooden chair. How she sat like that, I didn’t know, with her arms hanging limply at her sides and her head slumped down to her chest.

  But the best of all, Grayson lay with his arms crossed over his chest like the dead…on a fluffy pink day bed, complete with lace pillows, a floral print comforter, and pink satin sheets. A wide smile spread across his face, and the tips of his fangs peeked out over his bottom lip.

  I motioned to them. “I mean, why are they all still asleep?”

  “Oh, well, that. I think it’s exhaustion setting in. Tell me, are the rumors true? I hear you all survived a drowning and a fight with spirits. Seems like a lot.” He shrugged, then wrapped his arms over his chest.

  I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.” As I glanced around, I noticed we all stood on the side of a long dirt road that had no end and no beginning. In the distance, the sound of wailing echoed from pits that glowed like magma. Sheer rock faces rose up like mountains on every side. If we veered off the high path for even a moment, any one of us would fall into those. What was at the bottom of those pits?

  “You don’t want to know, kid. Trust me.”

  Did I just talk out loud?

  “Yeah you did and it’s getting kind of weird.” Hades drew my attention back to my sleeping crew.

  I shifted from one foot to the other wanting to change the subject. “How do I wake them up?”

  “Like this.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Wake up!”

  They all shot wide awake with a start. Zinnia slammed upright and threw her hand out. A stream of silver magic shot from her palm like a bullet straight at Hades’ torso. He crossed his arms over his chest and took the hit head on. It sent him skidding back at least thirty feet. He dug his feet into the ground. Dust and pebbles shot up around him, and a muscle in his jaw flexed as he gritted his teeth. Purple lightning forked out from his eyes. When he finally skidded to a halt, he started marching back with quick, determined steps.

  Zinnia looked at her hand, as if it acted of its own accord. “Damn it.” Her eyes flashed to mine. “I’m so sorry…I-I didn’t know.”

  I rushed to step in front of her. I held my swords up, ready to fight him off. “Hades! You’ll have to go through me.”

  Hades slowed his pace, then sucked in a deep breath and straightened his stance to a trudge. “Don’t worry, phoenix, your girl is safe…for now.”

  Chapter 24

  Zinnia

  “Oh my god, I’m so sorry.” The last thing I remembered was falling through the doorway to the underworld then suddenly being startled awake.

  “Again, not a god…. Ah, what the hell.” The man spread his arms out wide and smiled at me. “I am Hades, god of the underworld. And you are?”

  God? I was under the impression they weren’t gods, yet here he was calling himself a god. The air was suppressive, humid and smelled of burning…like everything just burning. Though it was dim and cave-like, the walls glowed with veins of lava. When I gave it a closer look, I jumped back. Definitely not lava. There were faces amongst the flames, each of them crying out or reaching for something. Sweat began to run down my body, and I tried to focus on any
thing, but the souls trapped down here. I felt as though it was the beginning of summer and I was dressed for the middle of winter.

  I pulled my jacket off and tied it around my hips. “Um, I’m Zinnia.”

  He raised his eyebrows at me. “Ah, the notorious Siphon Witch.” He gave a slight bow. “A pleasure to meet you.”

  Was this guy for real? This was not what I expected to encounter in the underworld. I expected more ghosts, zombies, maybe even some demons. But Hades of the Greeks, most definitely not.

  I gave a tentative wave. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Right, okay.” He clapped his hands together, then rubbed them back and forth. “Shall we go see some Furies about a man?”

  Grayson shot up with a start and looked around, then held up a pink fluffy pillow with lace all around it. “What am I doing in a pink frilly bed?” He wrinkled his nose in disgust and tossed the pillow away. It landed off to the side, and a puff of dried dirt drifted up into the air.

  Hades rocked back on his heels. “See, what had happened was, when you all fell into the underworld you landed hundreds of thousands of miles away from where you needed to be. I got a call from Taliam. He demanded that I find you and bring you to the Furies, or at least, that’s what a woman named Niche was screaming in the background when I spoke to him. So here I am, your official tour guide of the underworld.”

  Tucker straightened his stance in front of me and extinguished his swords. “Still doesn’t explain why we all passed out.”

  Hades shrugged. “What can I say? Time and space work differently down here. Or I could’ve put you all in a sleep trance and then summoned you all where you needed to be at the exact right moment to avoid days of this conversation with teenagers or you might’ve been tired…So are we going or not?”