Demon's Vengeance The Complete - Jocelynn Drake Page 0,64
good day. It was only made worse by the fact that he had been a warlock, giving him carte blanche to raise whatever the hell he wanted without fear of retribution.
“If their screams are anything to go by, then yes, they’re all dead.”
Sighing, I leaned my head back against the wall and stared up at the sliver of sky I could see between the buildings. It was an ugly orangish black as the lights of the city hit against the heavy black clouds overhead, leaving you with a claustrophobic feeling like you were trapped in a bell jar with all the other insects.
I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of going back to the Towers in the first place, particularly the Dresden Tower, since that’s where all the horrors of my life actually took place. But I needed to research Death Magic, not to mention a few other things that Gideon and the council didn’t need to know about.
Adding to my dilemma was the fact that if anyone could get into Simon Thorn’s rooms, it was most likely going to be me. I had studied under the bastard. I knew the spells and wards that he favored. Hell, I used half of them to this day. I learned to unravel most of them so they wouldn’t kill me in my sleep each night. The only concern was whether Simon had bothered to change all his spells after I left the Towers when I was a teenager. If he hadn’t, there was a good chance I could get in quite easily. If he had, I was so fucked.
But what choice did I have?
“Let me head home and get changed into something Towers appropriate,” I said with a sneer as I turned back toward the main street and my car.
“You don’t have to do this,” Gideon said, catching me with a hand on my shoulder.
“We both know I do,” I grumbled. “If it’s not this, then it’ll be for some other reason. Everyone knows I’m their best shot at getting in there, and I’m sure there are some nosy pricks who are dying to know what the hell Simon was up to.”
“Then we go now.” As he spoke, a biting chill swept down my body like icy hands sliding over my flesh from my shoulders to my feet. I tried to jerk away but Gideon held tight to my shoulder. Glancing down at myself, I found that I was now wearing the uniform of the guardians, leaving behind the guise of the mild-mannered tattoo artist with the charming disposition.
“Warn me next time,” I snapped before one last shiver claimed me.
I thought I heard Gideon give a derisive snort, but the world blinked out and there was no sound at all — only the all-consuming silence of the nothing we traveled through to get to Germany in the blink of an eye. A rise of panic had me clenching my teeth because it felt like there was no air to breathe in the emptiness, but even as that frantic thought formed in my brain, we were in Germany. I had to shield my eyes for a second against the glare of the moonlight coming off the snow after the darkness that had consumed me.
The Dresden Ivory Tower rose up like a pale, bony finger against the thick velvet night sky. The forest that surrounded the structure had been pushed back as if even nature feared to draw too close to the witches and warlocks that lived inside. My heart gave a couple hard thumps at the sight of the structure and my breathing grew ragged around the lump that had formed in my throat.
The last time I had seen this Tower I had stood before the council waiting to hear if I was to be killed for my rebellion against my mentor and my attempts to escape. Obviously, I was allowed to live, but there had been a price. And in the end, whatever concessions I thought I had won proved to be false because I was right back here ten years later. Only this time, I had asked for entrance into their bloodstained halls.
“I brought us in this way because I wasn’t sure if Master Thorn had a secret entrance that you could use,” Gideon said when I no longer sounded like I was at risk of hyperventilating. There was no missing the note of hope in his tone.
“If he did, I don’t know about it.” My voice sounded like it had been