Tyson: An Ariel Kimber Novella

by Mary Martel

  So, I'd started pouring through books, looking for a spell, anything really, to work in my favor and help me get rid of her. I had locked myself away in my bedroom and tirelessly poured through everything I could get my hands on. I didn't sleep or eat until I found what I'd been looking for. Something that would shut her up for good and get her out of my hair and away from my family.

  I'd promised her sex to take her mind off of Damien, picked up my forced partner in crime and the two of us cruised on over to the motel.

  No big deal, right?

  Wrong.

  Things had gone great with Annabell and she'd choked down the concoction I'd whipped up for her like a good girl. For all my talk of being uncomfortable with harming her, I had really changed my tune. As it turned out, I didn't like it when people, even ones I'd fooled myself into thinking I had once loved, threatened my family then all bets were off and I had no problem with putting my hands on her, holding her down and forcing my potion down her throat. In my eyes, she'd deserved it.

  It had gone so smoothly that I was almost in shock at my good fortune just to walk out the door and straight into yet another problem. That motherfucker Chuck. Who'd taken a serious tumble down to his death, something Ariel seemed to be struggling with.

  I knew Ariel was upset by my lack of concern or care at his death but I didn't have it in me to reassure her when all I felt about him being dead was immense relief that the chapter in my life where I had to worry about him harming my family was finally over and we could all breathe a little easier.

  Add it to the fact Annabell would no longer be a threat and I really shouldn't have found the day to be on my shit list. I should have been celebrating. Instead, I was tense and quiet as I drove my girl, who was probably scared of me now given what she'd seen me do, home so we could get some sleep before we faced the next drama.

  Which came the next day when we faced down the other guys and told them I'd been keeping secrets and had been forced to drag Ariel along with me for the ride.

  Needless to say, they'd been pissed and it had just been one more thing I hadn't enjoyed doing but was seriously relieved when it was all said and done.

  I slept just fine that night for the first time in a long time, but like most good things in my life, it was bound to not last for very long.

  Chapter Eight

  The possibilities were endless

  I fidgeted nervously as I stood in front of the dirty window that could have used about twelve bottles of Windex and some serious elbow grease to cut through the grime so the actual inside of the store could be seen.

  I needed to hire a cleaning crew to get in here and clean the place up. First, everything would need to be gone through, the entire fucking building, and I would need to look into finding employees to work the joint.

  If my family wasn't interested in it, that is. I hoped they wouldn't look at me as if I were a damn crazy person.

  Damien and I were on the mend, fucking finally, and I was hoping Julian wouldn't be too far behind him. I really wanted my family to be whole again, it had been broken long before Annabell had come along, so much so I wasn't sure if we'd ever been whole. Most of us came from broken families, though my immediate one hadn't been broken, the one my father had grown up in had been.

  But, my family now?

  We were a merry band of misfits who'd grown up clinging to each other because we hadn't been allowed out into the real world to play with other kids. Instead, we'd been carefully watched because you never knew when our magic would make it's first appearance and the Council thought our children were better off and better protected when they were around children of their own kind.

  Elitest fucking snobs, the whole lot of them. Where they said they wanted to keep our children safe what they were really saying was that they didn't want the poor humans tainting us. Or, maybe they feared we'd run off with them and never look back. Hell, I was no longer a child and I still wanted to run away and hide from those arrogant, self-serving fuckers.

  After knowing Rain Kimber, Ariel's father, was a hunter and that there were honest-to-goodness people who hid from the Council made me feel slightly validated in my opinions and thoughts.

  "Ty?" Uncle Quint's voice came hesitantly from behind me.

  I flinched at his tone. Hesitancy wasn't something I was used to hearing in his voice. He was always so self-assured and confident. To think he felt anything but because of me made me feel like the worst kind of asshole.

  He was upset with me, I knew, because I'd dragged our girl into unknown situations where she could have potentially come to harm. I was upset with me too, even though she'd practically forced herself on me and the situation. She would not take no for an answer, no matter how hard I'd tried to dissuade her.

  Still, Uncle Quint had barely spoken two words to me since he'd found out about everything and I'd taken the cowards way and texted him with an address and a message that said it was incredibly important he meet me at this address. It was a dick move and I should have met with him face-to-face instead.

  I got my emotions in check, showing nothing more than my blank face that oftentimes came across as unfriendly looking, and turned around to face my much beloved uncle who was mostly my brother and braced for the absolute worst.

  He had every right to be angry with me and I would take whatever he decided to throw my way.

  His face might have been blank, much like my own, but his brown eyes were incredibly kind.

  I shouldn't have been worried. My Uncle, even pissed at me, would never not be there for me when I said I needed him and he'd never abandon me. Not ever.

  I was stupid for forgetting the loyalty that came with his love. He had my back, no matter the circumstances or how angry he was about my previous behavior or actions. We were family and that's what it meant to be family.

  "Uncle Quint," I choked out, cringing at the emotion I'd showed in my voice. It was at odds with the blankness I'd worked so hard to put on my face.

  He arched a dark eyebrow, clearly amused by my rare show of emotion outside of anger.

  Suddenly, I felt the urge to lunge forward and punch him right in the face. Or, maybe a kidney.

  Quint frowned as his eyes roamed over my face. His lips pursed and he looked angry, like he'd somehow read my thoughts and knew I wanted to punch him in the kidney or face. Finally, a normal reaction out of him. I relaxed immediately. I was probably more at home with his anger than he was.

  Still, I was a little nervous. What if he thought I was stupid? I did not want to disappoint my Uncle any more than I already had in the last month.

  He had to get this.

  He had to.

  "Why," Uncle Quint growled, "are we here?"

  "I bought this building," I told him honestly.

  This time, both eyebrows rose as he took in the building in question.

  He didn't look impressed and I wasn't surprised. The building needed a whole lot more than Windex and elbow grease to not look like a dump.

  "Why in the hell would you buy a building?" He asked incredulously. "And especially one that looks like this one? Are you gonna tear it down and put up something else? And, seriously, Ty, what's with this neighborhood? They should have evicted the people in this building years ago because it runs down their property value."

  I ran my fingers back through my hair, gathering it up at the back of my head. I twisted a hair band off of my wrist and pulled my hair into a bun at the back of my head. This was the longest my hair had ever been and I needed a haircut but with everything going on around me all the time, I hadn't had time to get one. But it was driving me crazy and I'd taken to putting it back into a messy bun at the back of my head.

  I had a theory on why the neighborhood hadn't kicked the old lady to the curb and it had everything to do with magic. I wondered what normal humans saw when they looked at the building. Did they see something witches couldn't see? Or, maybe they'd seen a dump too but had just let it be because she'd been a lonely old lady
and it was a dick move to try and kick her ass out.

  "Dad used to bring me here," I blurted out.

  Uncle Quint moved closer to me until we were standing side by side in front of the grimy window. I turned and faced the building proper, staring inside, trying to make out what lay behind the glass.

  "Why?" Quint asked curiously, sounding like he really wanted to know the answer to that one word question and I wasn't surprised to hear it. If it had to do with my dad, then he would want to know it. He loved my dad and I knew we both wished he'd been Quint's dad too instead of his brother.

  "I wasn't entirely sure why he brought me here at first." I told him honestly. "This place has always been run down and, from what I could tell over the years, she'd never made any attempt to make it any better."

  "She?" Quinton asked quietly. There was a growl to his voice that I didn't care for all that much and I figured it was there because we were talking about an unknown female and the only female he cared to talk about was ours.

  I shook my head and smirked at him sadly. I'd never cheat on Ariel, not for anything. Quinton knew me better than to ever question that and if he didn't then I really might go ahead and punch him.

  "A witch owned this building before I did," I told him. Then I went and told him all I knew about her, all my father had told me, which, arguably, wasn't much. He listened in silence while I talked and we stared at our reflections in the window.

  When I was done speaking he turned towards me with bright, almost glowing brown eyes. His mouth was pinched tightly and his cheeks were flushed angrily.

  "How many of them do you think are out there?" He grated out past his clenched teeth.

  "I don't know," I whispered sadly. And that was the truth. But I had a sick feeling there were a whole lot of them and they were all in deep cover, hiding from the rest of us. Who knew what they did for work or how they hid what they were from the general population, but it made me sick to my stomach to think about.

  It made me think it was time for a change and I had a feeling I knew just where to start and his name was Rain Kimber. If he was to be taken at his word then he'd been helping out rogue females for a long time now, or at least his family had been helping them. He'd obviously stopped when Ariel had gone missing as a young child and he'd been all about looking for her for the past however many years. He'd know how we could find them, how we could help them.

  My eyes raked over the run down building with a whole new light, finally seeing the potential in the place. I would need to see the office and the apartment before bringing the topic up with Uncle Quint, but I was hopeful the spaces could be cleaned up just like the shop could and then the possibilities were endless.

  I just hoped Uncle Quint and Rain would think so too. My original reasons behind buying the building had been purely selfish and had riddled me with even more guilt over the old broad being dead. It felt good to have a different agenda where the building was concerned, a chance to slightly do some good for our fucked up community, even though nobody outside of my family needed to ever know about it. And, gods help us all if the Council ever even found out I'd thought about harboring rogue's. They'd kill us all, my entire coven.

  Chapter Nine

  He loved her

  Quinton eyeballed me carefully as I pulled the key out of the lock and twisted the knob, opening up the door that would lead us into the musty shop. My nose twitched from the dust and I wondered if the place had been locked up tight since I'd left with the keys because it badly needed to be aired out.

  "Where's the fucking light switch," Quint bitched from behind me.

  I didn't have the heart to tell him that I had absolutely no freaking clue where the light switch was or if the lights even worked. I'd never been here where there were lights on in place of candles lit up dangerously and strewn all over the place.

  I reached around, feeling the walls anyways, in search of any kind of switch. I made contact with one and flicked the switch up. A buzzing hummed through the room as crappy, florescent lights flickered to life from the ceiling. I cringed, almost preferring the soft glow of candlelight to the harsh brightness of the overhead lights.

  "It'll need new lights," Quint muttered from behind me. "Something not from the Stone Age and a whole lot less harsh on the eye."

  I grunted in consent.

  I shut the door and locked the deadbolt as he wandered further into the room. I laid my back against the door as I watched him silently wander through all five rows of shelves that were in the center of the room. He'd occasionally raise his fingers and trail them over certain objects while keeping his opinions to himself. When he'd wandered through all the rows he walked over to the back wall to stand in front of the floor-to-celieng book shelves that were crammed full of books.

  The books took up the most of his inspection.

  Of course, he'd spend the most of his time in front of the books. He'd inherited a great library from my grandfather and I often times thought books were his first love. He never allowed himself to indulge in anything outside of reading. It was almost sad but I couldn't feel too bad for him because with knowledge came power and my Uncle was one of the smartest people I knew. He was also scary and most other covens would consider him to be powerful and no one dared go against him. Unless you were a family member, that is; we tried his patience as often as we could and said to hell with his beastly side that others pissed their pants when faced with.

  He pulled out several books from each shelf, dusted them off and carefully thumbed through the pages. Some of them he'd gently put back in their original place. Others, he'd place in front of the other books on the shelf.

  I would need to shake him down before he left the building to make sure he didn't steal any of my books without asking. He'd eventually return them, I was sure, but he wouldn't ask before taking them. Since I now owned the building and everything inside of it, he would see it as his right to "borrow" whatever he wanted because he was a firm believer in what's yours is mine when it came to the family. Unless it came to his shit, that is. Then he wasn't about sharing at all and he'd get pissed when I went in there and "borrowed" things. Of course, I rarely returned the things I borrowed from his room so I guess he had reason to feel that way, but, still, we were family so it was all good. Which meant when he stole books from my new building and returned them after he was done with them I wouldn't say shit to him about it and would look the other way.

  Finally, and what looked to be reluctantly, my Uncle wandered away from the books. I counted six he'd pulled out of their places and left on their sides in front of the others. I shook my head but said nothing. If he wanted to take them, I'd let him.

  The overhead lights continued their humming as Quint approached the small table covered in a black cloth where the ancient deck of tarot cards sat on top of it in a neat pile.

  Without hesitation, Uncle Quint picked up the deck of cards, flipped it over and began thumbing through it.

  "These are gorgeous, Ty," he murmured. "Did you look at these?"

  "No," I grunted, regretting the fact I hadn't at least picked the deck up and looked through them. I hadn't really looked at anything in here, only seeing it as a bunch of crap nobody needed.

  "These are handmade, crafted with care and they are absolutely priceless," Quinton said in a hushed voice. "Ty... these... the Council would want these for themselves. Like our ink drawings, they would want them if they knew about them. I know you put yours up in your room and that Ariel has hers up in her room because you put them up, but if the Council were ever to see them they would try and confiscate them from us. There aren't many families left out there with these types of things left over from our history, and the ones who have come out with theirs, they have been taken away from them. I've allowed you to put yours up and to put up ours in Ariel's room because there is no way, no fucking way, Ty, where I would ever allow anyone to take these things from our family. I know you're thinking right now that I allowed it because I would never be a
ble to imagine a time in your lives where the Council would frequent your bedrooms but that is not it. I swear to you, it is not. After what they allowed Annabell to do to so many covens, including ours, they hold no real stock with me because they are broken, corrupt and I will not follow laws and rules that the corrupt try to enforce. I no longer consider them to be our governing force and will not abide by anything they try to force on me or our coven."

  My breath caught in my throat as my body locked into place.

  Was he...

  He couldn't be...

  Was he trying to rebel against the Council, to denounce them? Dethrone them, even?

  I shook my head. This couldn't be happening, this was too dangerous to be happening, especially since we had Ariel to protect and keep safe from them now.

  Why in the hell would he openly start dissing the Council now? What was going on with him and why didn't I already know about it? I mean, yeah, we knew he was pissed about how this whole thing with Ariel was being handled but this... this was an outright verbal declaration of war. That's how serious the Council would take his words.

  He could not mean what I thought he meant, he absolutely could not.

  We had Ariel to think about now. Now was not the time to start a rebellion against the Council, the rebellion his words were stating him to be pronouncing.

  I wanted to grab his shoulders and shake him.

  It was safe to speak such treasonous things with me, we were family and I would never fuck him over or sell him out. No torture would ever surpass my love for my family.

  But...

  This was serious and he shouldn't be speaking of it so openly. What if the Council had been here, or knew this was her place? What if they had known where she'd been the entire time she'd been here and had the place bugged?