Brothers of the Flame (An Ariel Kimber Novel Book 1)

by Mary Martel

  She shoved me down, down, down and under the water I went. Stupidly, I opened my mouth and screamed. All the air left my lungs in a mass of bubbles that burst from my mouth and rose to the surface. I inhaled water and choked. She let go of my hair, leaned forward and wrapped both her hands around my throat. She squeezed and I found myself choking for a different reason, but still choking all the same.

  I watched my mother’s face from upside down as she tried to choke the life out of me. I kicked out with my legs and bucked my body. I grabbed ahold of the hands wrapped so tightly around my throat and tried to pry them off me. Unbelievably, she squeezed tighter.

  The pressure in my chest was so intense I felt like my chest was going to explode. It was hard to lift my hands when they were so heavy, but I managed to touch the sides of her face. She had no free hand to remove my hands from her body.

  I sunk my nails into her cheeks and dragged them down her face, leaving angry red lines in their wake. Blood immediately began to run down her face as she screamed wordlessly in rage. But she did not let go of my throat.

  I stared into those eyes, the same eyes I saw staring back at me out of my own face every time I looked in the mirror save for the difference in color. This woman, this cold hearted, evil bitch of a woman, was my mother. She took part in creating me and I’d come into this world by leaving her body. And now she was trying to kill me.

  I raked my nails down her throat, ripping the skin open as I went. Still she squeezed my throat.

  My lungs burned and my arms dropped as the fight went out of me.

  I was going to die, and by my own mother’s hands.

  I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to see her face while my world faded to nothing but darkness.

  Suddenly her hands were gone and I was being lifted out of the water. I could breathe again. She’d let me go.

  Sound came rushing back to me at the same time as air did. My mother was screeching hysterically and I heard the deep rumbling of a male voice, but the words were too low for me to hear.

  I focused on breathing and making sense of my mother’s words as hands smoothed my wet hair out of my face. It hurt to breathe through my sore throat and my lungs still burned.

  “She’s my daughter and I’ll do whatever the fuck I want with her. But you, you need to leave. Right the fuck now, or I’ll call the cops on you for breaking into my home.”

  “Lady, we just walked in on you trying to drown your own daughter. Go ahead and call the cops. I want you to. Please, please call the fucking cops. I dare you.”

  That quiet, lethal rumble came from Quinton. Quinton was here.

  Thank god.

  I opened my eyes as my mother screeched, “Get the fuck out of my house.”

  Quinton stood with his back to me, in-between me and my mother. This was the first time I’d been happy to see him.

  Hands smoothed down my bare arms and I realized I was sitting in someone’s lap.

  “It’s okay, Ariel,” Julian whispered in my ear as he wrapped his arms around my chest. It should have been awkward and embarrassing because I was naked and sitting in his lap, but it wasn’t. He’d come with Quinton and they’d saved my life. I could be embarrassed later, for now I just wanted to sit here and breathe. “We got you, you’re safe now. She’s not going to touch you again.”

  Julian stood up with me in his arms as if I weighed nothing. He held me in his arms with one around my shoulders and one under my knees.

  “Get her out of here,” Quinton growled without turning around to look at us.

  “No,” my mother screamed. “Ariel, you’re not going anywhere. You’re my daughter and you’ll damn well do as I say.”

  “You’re not getting anywhere near her ever again, you crazy bitch,” Quinton rumbled at her.

  Julian walked towards the door, putting his back to them. I looked over his broad shoulder in time to see my mother lunge towards us. Quinton blocked her path and put a hand in her chest and shoved her backwards. She stumbled back, tripped over her own two feet and went down.

  I watched in horror as her head hit the corner of the countertop on her way down. There was a sickening thud and then she was sprawled out on the floor. She didn’t even put her hands out to try and break her fall. First her head bounced off the corner of the countertop, then it smacked against the tiled floor.

  “Julian, stop,” I whispered hoarsely.

  “Get her out of here,” Quinton ordered.

  Julian didn’t listen to me and he kept walking. As he walked out of the bathroom I noticed the blood and screamed. Blood was starting to spread out across the white tiled floor around my mother’s head. From achingly familiar eyes she stared out at nothing. This time her eyes really were vacant and dead.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “Why is she naked? Why are you carrying her around while she’s naked?”

  “Where the fuck are her clothes? Put her down and get her some clothes, you fucking pervert.”

  “Where are you taking her?”

  “Why is she all wet?”

  “What… What happened to her face? Who did that to her face? Julian, what the fuck is going on?”

  I whimpered and pressed my battered face into Julian’s soft t-shirt. I didn’t want people looking at my battered face.

  “Where are you taking her?”

  “Where’s my Uncle?”

  “Please, please, Julian,” I begged. “Take me back. Bring me back upstairs. I need to see her. I need… I just… I just need to see her.” I needed to see her dead.

  “Shh…” he murmured. “Quiet, girl. I promise you, you do not want to go back up there and see that. Quint’s going to take care of everything. We’re going next door and I’m going to get you cleaned up.”

  “She’s dead, isn’t she? When she hit her head, it killed her. We need to call the police, it was an accident. He didn’t mean to hurt her, he only wanted to keep her away from me. If not for Quinton, I’d be dead. Dead.”

  “You’re not going anywhere with her until you tell me what in the fuck is going on,” Tyson yelled. “And where in the fuck is my Uncle?”

  I slowly turned my head until I could see him. Tyson, my friend. I didn’t want him to yell. Thankfully, I’d stopped crying again. I was numb inside.

  “My mother is dead,” I said in a quiet voice. I titled my head back and looked up at Julian. “She is dead, right?”

  He stared down at me for a beat while his gentle eyes ran over my messed-up face. Compassion filled his eyes. “Yeah, honey, I think she’s dead.”

  Dead. My mother was dead.

  I nodded. Okay.

  I already knew that, but now I had confirmation.

  “Are you saying Quint killed Ariel’s mother?” Tyson shouted. “He wouldn’t do that. I know he does a lot of crazy shit, but he wouldn’t do that. Not to Ariel.”

  “It was an accident,” I insisted, “and we need to call the police.”

  “We can’t do that, honey,” Julian said in a gentle voice. “Quint’s going to take care of things here. But for now, we have to get you out of here. Someone want to get her a blanket or a towel or something to cover her up with? I don’t want to take her outside like this.”

  I didn’t see why it mattered at this point.

  I closed my eyes and rested my head back against Julian’s hard chest. They talked around me but I didn’t listen. I was naked in a room full of guys. Even the ones that didn’t seem to like me were here. My mother had tried to kill me and once again, my face was all messed-up. Quinton saved me. He stood between me and my mother and when she went to attack me again he stopped her. No one had ever stood between us before. No one had ever tried to stop the abuse. Quinton saved me. And my mother was dead because of it. My mother was dead and we weren’t calling the police. I didn’t understand why, but I had to trust them.

  Something was draped over my body and then we were on the move again. I should have struggled and fought more to stay. I wanted to see my mother one mo
re time and I had an insane urge to hug Quinton and maybe never let him go.

  The air changed, growing warmer, and I knew we were outside. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything. Having magic, what did it matter? Nothing mattered when my own mother had wanted me dead. What had I done to her to make her treat me in such a way? If my own mother couldn’t find it in her to love me it was highly likely no one else ever would.

  “That’s it, honey,” Julian murmured, “you go right ahead and cry. Get it all out.”

  I hadn’t realized I was crying again. Why did I keep crying?

  “Did her mom do that to her face?”

  That was either Dash or Damien, I wasn’t sure which and I didn’t want to open my eyes and find out. They’d been in my house and they’d seen me naked. Two people I had no intention of ever seeing me naked.

  I shoved the thought away. I couldn’t think on that right now. I’d think on it later. I’d been doing that with a lot of things.

  “Didn’t see her mom hit her, but when we showed she was trying to drown Ariel in the bathtub.”

  The air changed again, growing colder, and I knew we were inside once more. We were in Tyson and Quinton’s house. The change in the air had been because of the heat outside and the central air inside.

  “Why are we here?” I asked. “I want Tyson. Where’s Tyson?”

  “He stayed with Quinton, but if you want me to call him and get him over here I can do that. He’ll come, but someone else will have to go back over there because Quint shouldn’t be alone over there.”

  It wasn’t lost on me that Julian failed to answer my first question.

  “You can’t bring her down there,” One of the twins said. “We agreed she wasn’t ready for that yet.”

  Julian shifted my body closer to his as he lifted me higher up on his chest. I opened my eyes to see us descend some black carpeted stairs into a basement I hadn’t known existed.

  At least they weren’t Chucky stairs. You know what I’m talking about, that creepy little red headed doll that’s a serial killer who grabs your ankles when you’re on your way down some open backed stairs in some creepy, dank basement.

  Chucky, now there was another topic for avoidance. I needed to not think about him ever again.

  At the bottom of the stairs there was another one of those weirdly empty rooms this house seemed to be full of. Like the top floor, there were two hallways, one on the left and one on the right.

  Julian moved towards the right side. What was going on? Did Julian have a room down here in the basement?

  “If her mom is really dead, then what are we going to do with the body?” Asked Dash or Damien, making me flinch.

  Yes, the body. What were we going to do with my mother’s body? Her dead, dead body.

  Oh god.

  I sucked in a shaky breath and let out a broken sob. I wasn’t feeling so numb any more. Orphan, I was an orphan.

  “Go ahead and cry, honey,” Julian murmured.

  “She doesn’t need to cry over that bitch,” one of the twins snapped. Probably Addison. Abel would have never said something like that, at least not in front of me while I was upset and borderline hysterical. “That lady was an abusive drunk who, if what you just said is true, tried to drown her in the goddamned bathtub after she beat on her face. For fuck’s sake, you don’t cry over people like that.”

  “You do when they’re your mother,” said Dash or Damien. I really needed to learn the differences in their voices. I could maybe like this one. Maybe. Probably not.

  I couldn’t think straight.

  There was only one door at the end of this short hallway. Abel stepped in front of Julian and pushed open the door. We followed on his heels.

  I didn’t want to be around this many people, not in my current state. I was fine with the twins who’d clearly followed me home from school with Tyson. And I was fine with Julian. But, the other two needed to go. I didn’t know why they were even here to begin with. Their presence made me uncomfortable.

  “Do we all need to be here for whatever this is?” I whispered to Julian. My words were so quiet I wasn’t sure he heard me, but I didn’t want the other two to hear me.

  Julian heard. And he knew what I meant because he said, “Hey, Dash, Damien, why don’t the two of you go see if Quint needs any help. The twins and I got Ariel. We’ll let you know if she needs anything you can help with.”

  I didn’t like the way he worded that. Why would I ever need anything from those two? I felt like they were only here to gawk at me.

  “Fine,” one of them grumbled. “But I want it known that I think this is bullshit.”

  “I second that,” said the other one. “Bullshit and unfair.”

  “Unfair,” one of the twins snarled, and from his angry tone I knew him to be Addison, my salt twin. “Unfair? What the fuck do you know about unfair?”

  “This isn’t the time, twin,” Abel tried to reason with his brother. “Don’t do this with Ariel here. We have more important shit to deal with right now than being petty. Save it for later.”

  Why did none of them seem to care that my mother was dead and Quinton had accidently killed her? Why didn’t they care? Shouldn’t someone care? Shouldn’t I care? Why didn’t I care?

  Julian sat me carefully down on top of a table and I finally got my first look around, taking in the room we were in.

  “Umm…” I mumbled, at a loss for words. This room was not a normal room. Or, at least, it didn’t fit in with what I’d seen of the rest of the house. For one, the floor was dirt. Dirt. The walls were painted black. The room itself was very narrow, but long. A tall table ran along the entire length of one long wall. Different plants sat atop the table, covering the surface in a sea of green. Bright lights hung down from the ceiling above the plants. The other side of the room had another tall table that ran the length of the room. Atop this table sat glass beakers, glass vials, and glass jars. Some were full, some half empty, others simply empty. They held a variety of things and liquids that I had no knowledge of. And they were a multitude of different colors.

  Towards the other end of the room was a circle on the dirt floor created of tall, fat, white candles. That circle made me nervous for some reason.

  The far wall at the end of the long room was made entirely of brick and would have looked out of place if not for the weird white chalk markings that covered it. The chalk reminded me of the rug under Tyson’s bed in his room.

  I wrapped the towel they’d used to cover my nudity with around my body, not caring that I flashed everyone in the room as I did so. They’d already seen me naked, what was the point in modesty now?

  I looked around the room with wide eyes and wondered what secrets the other hallway held.

  A glass jar was placed on the table beside my exposed thigh. It thumped loudly against the wooden table, making me jump.

  “Easy, honey,” Julian said. “You’ve got nothing to be afraid of here. I promise.”

  I sighed. Here was another one with promises. I wondered if he’d take it back if I told him how stupid I thought promises to be.

  Julian unscrewed the cap of the jar and stuck two fingers inside. He came out with a big drop of some kind of light pink thick cream.

  “Tilt your head back and close your eyes for me,” he ordered gently.

  I thought about asking questions but the look in his eyes told me not to bother. His gentle tone of voice didn’t match the hard determination in his eyes.

  I tilted my head back and closed my eyes like a good girl.

  He smeared the surprisingly warm goop all over my face and neck, having to go back several times to scoop out more of the pink cream. He was careful with his touch and I knew he was trying to avoid causing me further pain. I appreciated the gesture, but everywhere he touched stung and I fought flinching.

  “She really did a number on your pretty face,” he said as his fingers ran across my neck in a soft caress. “There. All done. Your face and your neck should be back
to normal in a few hours. Well, except for the mark on your temple. It only works on fresh marks and wounds.”

  I opened my eyes and noticed the twins standing behind Julian. Both stood tall, with their arms crossed over their chests, their burning, furious eyes locked on me. I think they were mad at me.

  “What-”

  I was cut off by the door bursting open and slamming into the wall. I jumped and turned to see what was going on.

  My body started to shake uncontrollably as I watched Quinton and Tyson walk through the door with my mother. Tyson came in first with his back to the room. He had ahold of my mother by the legs. Quinton held her by the underarms.

  They dropped her prone body unceremoniously on the dirt floor beside the table I sat on. She flopped to the ground, and her eyes stared up at the ceiling, unseeing.

  Her hair was wet, covered in blood and clung to half of her face. Her dark, expertly applied eye liner was smudged under her eyes, leaving dark, raccoon like circles. Her bright red lipstick looked like someone had taken the back of their hand to her mouth and wiped it across her cheek, smearing her lipstick and making her look like a clown.

  My mother would have been utterly humiliated.

  She wore expensive looking black stilettos with a heel so high it was downright scary. The tight dress she wore was on the shorter side of what she’d been wearing since we moved in with Mr. Cole. She was showing more thigh in her dress than I was in my skimpy bath towel. The dress was sleeveless and way too much of her breasts were displayed.

  From the way they’d dropped her, her thighs were left wide open, letting us all know she wasn’t wearing any underwear.

  Wonderful.

  Even in death she was still a piece of work.

  Why didn’t I feel bad about her being dead now that I was looking down at her dead body?

  “What are we going to do with her?” Dash asked harshly, and I realized he was the one who’d been making all the A-hole comments. “I mean, it’s not like we can keep her down here like some dead pet or something. Eventually, she’ll start to smell. What are we going to do with some dead, smelly bitch we’ve got stored in the basement? I mean, come one, get real here guys. We should just leave her in the woods somewhere for some random hiker to find.” He waved a hand down at my mother’s body. “Look at her. She looks exactly like the kind of woman whose dead body you’d find stashed in the woods somewhere after some dude picked her up because he’d mistaken her for a hooker.”