by Mary Martel
I slid up next to Damien who stood with his arms crossed over his chest, hip resting against the countertop, glowering at Adrian. I wrapped my arms around his waist, resting my head against his shoulder, seeking out the comfort and safety that only my boys could provide for me.
A hand ran up and down my back soothingly. I didn't need to look to know Quinton had come up behind me to offer his support and to touch me, to make sure I was okay.
If I hadn't been draped all over Damien, inhaling his exotic scent into my nose, the urge to turn and wrap myself around Quinton would have been stronger. I was starting to crave them, their touch, their heat. It was exhausting fighting off the need to touch them all the time, and, frankly, a battle I was losing beautifully.
Adrian's sharp, leering gaze drew me out of my thoughts and almost had me pulling away from Damien and shrugging off Quinton's touch. I held steady though, standing firm in my place.
I wasn't about to let the bald version of the boogeyman scare me away from the things I wanted most in my life.
Quinton must have noticed the way Adrian watched me because there was an extra layer of gravel in his voice when he growled for Adrian to get on with it and tell us all what we needed to know about the brothers.
"Well," Adrian trailed his heavily ringed fingers over the deck of tarot cards on the table, "they're fairly destitute. Dirt poor, really. It's a shame. They've never had real jobs and lack any sort of necessary skills that would garner them earning a job on their own. Their whole family has been like that, for generations past. They rely on the female they're sworn to take care of in that regard."
I felt an immediate bond with them because I knew exactly what most of that felt like. Adrian talked like they were beneath him because of it.
"So, what exactly is it that they can do?" Damien snapped.
Adrian smiled indulgently at Damien, seeming amused by his outburst as opposed to upset by it.
"My, my," Adrian purred, "would you look at you. All grown up and no longer your mama’s little plaything. Frankly, I'm astounded to have seen the way you are with our sweet Ariel, I'd always assumed you'd bat for the other team. Not, mind you, that there's anything wrong with that."
Quinton and Julian sucked in sharp, painful breaths. Damien's body froze to solid ice. He was so cold I started to shiver just from the amount of contact I had with him. I clutched him even tighter, not about to let my mind go where Adrian had just insinuated.
"You know what?" I asked in a loud, forced voice. "That's okay, I'd rather you not tell me. It will help me get to know them better if they tell me instead of you. I'm sure Simon and Trenton won't mind at all."
The bell jingled over the door again. The brothers walked into the store, both with a backpack on and a duffle bag in their hands.
"Where's the rest of your stuff?" Quinton inquired in a gruff voice. "Do we need to go out to the motel and get it for you?"
Trenton looked at Quinton in confusion. "This is all of our stuff."
Quinton's lips pursed angrily as he looked down at his cowboy boots. I smiled kindly at the two brothers, there was no shame in owning so little. I knew Quinton wasn't trying to make them feel ashamed, he was angry on their behalf. The man was a bear most of the time, but he had a heart of pure gold when it came down to it.
If they stuck around with this crew it wouldn't be long before Damien had his way with them and filled their closets with a brand new wardrobe. That's how it had gone for me.
Realization struck like a bolt of lightning. Where in the heck were they supposed to live? I couldn't just bring them home with me to Dash's house. There was no room. Besides, it would be rude to invite them without making sure it was okay with Dash first. And, this one time, I had a strong feeling it wouldn't be okay with Dash. There was an empty apartment above the store that had been gutted and completely redone, but, again, I couldn't invite them to just move in up there without asking both Tyson and Rain if it was okay with them.
Then I guess I would have to pay their rent for them? I think my paying their way was insinuated by Adrian and I had never been happier in my life to have money. Rain had set up my accounts for me with money that, had I never been kidnapped by my bitch of an aunt and raised by her, would have been rightfully mine. He tried to give me Vivian's money too, but we had donated it all to charity. But the rest of the money Rain wouldn't allow me to give away and had forced me to keep it. I also had a bank account that Marcus had set up for me and still continued to put money in it every month, even though I had asked him to stop.
I could actually afford to support Trenton and Simon easily. A year ago I hadn't had two nickels to rub together. Now I could not only afford to take care of myself, but two more people as well. And wasn't that a weird feeling.
Adrian stood up and headed my way. Everyone, I noticed, and yes, that included the two newcomers, tensed as if ready to take action if he so much as looked at me wrong.
I let go of Damien and held my hands out to him as he came up to me. I only did it out of fear he might actually try to hug me if I were to allow it. I wasn't much of a hugger.
He took my hands in his and pulled gently on them. I took the hint and bent toward him, with my scarred cheek on display. His lips ghosted over my cheek and he let my hands go, stepping back.
"I will see you next week at Marcus's dinner," he told me, before turning to face the rest of the room. "I'm sure I'll see you all there. No need to walk me out, I know the way."
And with that, he turned on his fancy, expensive loafers that didn't suit him in the slightest, and headed for the exit. The bell above the door jingled on his way out.
I wasn't sorry to see the back of him.
"Dinner?" Julian huffed. "What dinner is he talking about?"
"Is there something else you've conveniently forgotten to share with us, Ariel?" Quinton asked in a dry, sarcastic voice.
I shrugged, having no idea what the hell Adrian had been talking about.
"Not this time, Uncle Quinton," I shot back, mimicking the voice he'd used on me. "I'm sure that whatever it is, Marcus will fill me in when the time is right."
"We'll see about that," he muttered irately as he pulled his cell phone out of the back pocket of his jeans. He stormed off toward the back of the shop as he put the phone to his ear. I felt bad for Marcus and if I thought it would make any difference, I would have ran around the counter and shot off a text to him in warning.
Instead of doing what I really wanted to do, which would have been running out the door and far away from my new responsibilities, I turned to face them head on. And I wasn't surprised to see both Damien and Julian with their arms crossed over their chests, watching me with expectation.
Guess I had some explaining to do.
I scratched the back of my neck nervously.
This wasn't exactly how I had expected my day to go.
Chapter Ten
Rain Kimber
I sat in the apartment above Fortune's for the Unfortunate and watched every move made on the screens playing out in front of me.
Ariel, my daughter in the flesh, so fucking beautiful she stole my breath away, faced down that atrocious fat man, Adrian, with a bravado and will of steel. It amazed me.
She was everything I had dreamed and hoped for her to be and so much more.
However, it wasn't my beautiful daughter or the obnoxiously bald man who'd belonged to the Council who held my attention. No, that went to the two young men who'd come in behind him. I'd recognize them anywhere, they looked exactly like their father had before he'd been murdered.
They were descendants of the Brothers of the Maidens. Their father had been the last of a very long line of guardians, protectors of the female race of witches. Most of them had died out or gone underground after the witch trials, and with good reason, because they'd failed miserably at their jobs. After that there were so few females that nobody bothered to join ranks with the Brothers of the Maidens and it just sort of fizzled out.
&nb
sp; All except for one family. A family shrouded in tragedy and shame.
I couldn't believe the two living members were standing there with my daughter. It had been years since I'd seen them, but I knew they'd remember me. Just like I would never forget them.
The screams hit me first. Then the smell. Both meant something along the lines of death, carnage, and gore. I felt like I'd been here before.
I should have never picked up the phone and instead stayed home with my wife and baby girl.
Honor and loyalty were funny things, demanding I come at the desperate calls for help I'd received from a long-lost friend.
I regretted my noble actions as soon as I set foot through the door.
Hunters had come and they'd done what they did best—slaughtered.
All throughout the kitchen, which I'd walked into from the door at the back of the house, were mutilated bodies. Pieces garishly strewn across the room, clashing against the stark white cupboards and marble floor.
The smell of copper and raw meat assaulted my nose, almost enough to make me gag. There was no one left breathing in this room and, slumped on the floor against the refrigerator, I found the one who'd called me for help, the one I'd come here for.
His right arm had been severed from his body, sliced clean off. It lay in a pool of warm blood on the white marble beside him. His eyes were missing, which was typical. The hunters would take the eyes as some sort of sick trophy. All the bodies on the floor in this room would be forever sightless and not simply because they were dead.
A masculine scream of pain and horror rang out from farther in the house, demanding I follow the sound of it, almost like the call of a siren.
I left the room, leaving the body of my dead friend behind. I'd come back to it later to take care of his remains, to take care of the remains for all of them. I'd call my father in to help me with that mess, it was too big a job for one man.
As I moved through the house on silent feet the tattoos on my arms, the swirls of magic, breathed to life once again. There was a slight burning before twin, steel blades appeared in my hands. They were hand forged steel, beautifully crafted, and had been in my family for several generations, passed down from father to son. My wife couldn't have any more children so I would be breaking that tradition and one day passing them on to my beautiful daughter.
The door I came up to was partially open, I could see through the crack. A man stood with his back to me, a hood pulled up over his head. I knew from past experiences he'd have a mask on, covering his entire face, except for his eyes, from view. Head to toe, his body was covered in black. I knew from the wide set of the shoulders that it was a male I'd be facing down.
A flick of my wrist had a gentle stream of magic riding through the air, silently opening the door the rest of the way.
The sight before me had my heart lurching in my chest and my stomach dropping horribly.
The walls of the nursery were painted a pale yellow, the wallpaper that ran around the middle safari themed. I couldn't tell if it was meant for a boy or a girl, yellow seemed to be a neutral color when it came to babies.
A female, with a heavily pregnant belly, sat slumped forward in her chair, her throat slashed open, blood still raining down the front of her body.
The body of a young boy lay at her feet, part of his face and throat sliced open. His chest, thankfully, still moved, indicating he wasn't dead. Yet.
Another boy, younger than the one on the floor, let out another ear piercing scream as he launched himself at the hunter. I had missed him when I'd opened the door because he'd been crouched at the feet of the hunter.
That scream, filled with so much agony, a whole world of pain I would one day understand all on my own, would haunt me for many nights to come.
The boy never made it to the hunter because the hunter swiped out with a vicious looking blade, slicing the boy open from shoulder to elbow. The boy cried out before dropping to the ground, clutching at his arm.
I had been too slow to stop the hunter, but I was on him now. With brutal force and skill honed from many years of practice, I palmed my blades so they were angled just right before thrusting them both into the sides of the hunter’s neck. They ripped through the fabric of his mask and sunk deep into his flesh. His body jerked violently against mine as his hands went uselessly to his throat.
I pulled my blades out in one swift move and stepped back. The hunter dropped to his knees while clutching his throat and making grotesque gurgling noises from underneath his mask.
He'd be dead soon enough if I left him like that, but after seeing the carnage in this house, and I hadn't even seen the half of it yet, I wasn't willing to take any chances.
I kicked him in the back and sent him sailing forward. His arms left his throat to catch his fall before his face could slam into the carpeted floor.
I knelt down beside him, reached around to the front and sunk my blade up through his ribs, piercing his heart.
I slid my blade, now covered in slippery, wet, warmth out of his flesh and shoved him face first into the carpet.
The threat in this room now eliminated, I left the boys where they were on the floor while I checked the rest of the house to make sure there were no more hunters. I found two of them dead in the basement. The person whom I assumed took them out was a female who lay broken and dead at their feet. One of the few who still had her eyes.
The rest of the house was empty, but that didn't put me at ease. There could be more hunters out in the woods surrounding the house, waiting for their friends to join them or ready to come back and lend an ever so helpful hand if need be.
I wasn't taking any chances.
I slipped my cell phone out of my jacket pocket and made a call to my father. He'd come and help me clean up the mess and he'd know what to do with the boys.
After ending my call I slid my phone back into my pocket and, with a heavy heart, headed back toward the nursery.
The hunters had evolved over time and, somewhere along the line, they'd gotten their hands on a witch who had no problems betraying their own kind. The hunters now came equipped with their very own magical tattoos that made it impossible to use magic against them. It was the only reason massacres like this were successful. If the people in this house had been able to use their magic to defend themselves, they wouldn’t have been slaughtered in such a way. No, it would have been the other way around.
I closed the eyes on the pregnant mother, there was something about the blankness there, the lack of life, that I found disturbing, which was odd, considering I had seen it so many times before. Maybe it was because she was pregnant that it bothered me so much, since my wife had looked that round in the belly not that long ago and it made looking at this dead woman all the harder now, because it wasn't just her light that had been snuffed out. Her round belly had been stabbed multiple times.
Very gently, I closed her eyes and placed her hands over her bloody belly.
I easily scooped up both boys in my arms, the one was a lot younger than he had looked when he'd bravely launched himself at the hunter. All rage and balls and brawn, he'd eventually be just fine if he didn't let his rage at the injustice of it all swallow him whole. The other boy was slightly older and would unfortunately wear the marks of this night forever carved into his face.
I carried them down to the blessedly body free living room and laid them out on the couch.
For the first time in my life, as I looked down at them, I wished I had been born a healer and not a warrior, because it hurt my heart to see them lying there injured and know there wasn't much I could do for them outside of trying to stop the bleeding and hoping like hell they didn't bleed out and die on me.
It was one of the longest nights of my life so far and a part of my heart broke a little when one of my father’s associates drove off with the boys, promising them safety.
My father and I had been left behind to take care of the bodies.
Eventually, the bald, fat, pompous little pri
ck named Adrian left and the Brothers of the Maidens remained. I couldn't believe what I'd seen going down.
They were here for my Ariel and they were staying with her. This was a miracle, something I could never have planned or hoped for, much like everything that involved my beautiful daughter.
My mouth moved in an unfamiliar, foreign gesture as my lips parted and I smiled at nothing in particular.
Things around here were looking up. I didn't even care that douchebag Marcus was going for sainthood and had done something I would have done if the opportunity had been presented to me. I was all for righting the injustices of our world, or at least I used to be back before my whole entire world had been ripped out from underneath my feet.
The smile slipped from my face and a familiar emptiness sunk in.
I pushed my chair away from the desk in front of me and stood up. The only thing that could possibly fill me with anything outside of misery was downstairs with strangers and people who knew nothing about those strangers outside of the fact they were there for their girl. They were bound to be upset by these strangers and my daughter likely needed me.
Never as much as I needed her.
I headed downstairs toward the only ray of sunshine I had left in my life. Without her, my world was pitch-black and a place no one should ever be forced to live in.
Chapter Eleven
"Do you both have your driver’s licenses?" I asked into the awkward silence.
I crossed my legs at the knee and shifted my weight, my butt already going numb from the hard surface of the countertop I'd hefted myself up on. The room was tense and I was trying to act as normal as I could in hopes my guys might loosen up just a little bit.