Black as Midnight

by Mary Martel

One by one, all around the table, people started coughing and slumping forward in their seats. The only one who remained sitting upright outside of my coven members and Marcus was the man with the goatee.

  And I had no idea what was going on.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  "Well, Raven," Julian drawled, "It looks like it's just you and us, tonight."

  "Are they..." I sputtered into the now quiet yard, my voice growing louder and more hysterical with each word. "Are they dead?" I ended on an embarrassing shriek.

  The bald man with the goatee, whom I was assuming was this Raven person, sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest.

  "Calm down, honey," he said to me in a gentle voice. "I'm sure they aren't all dead."

  How could he be so blasé about the whole thing was lost on me.

  "None of them are dead," Julian said cheerfully. "Tell me, Raven, what do you have against my magical mix of vodka and hocus pocus? Hmm?"

  I gaped at him. "What the hell did you put in that drink, Julian?" I ran my hand up and down the column of my throat and had never been more thankful in my life when the urge to cough didn't come over me. "What's going to happen to the rest of us? I drank that crap as well."

  "Yeah, baby, you did," Quinton commented in an amused voice. "You drank the whole damn thing. But you also drank that purple shit he forced on us earlier. You're gonna be just fine."

  I sat down in my chair, hard, and flopped back. That was a relief, but...

  "And they're not dead, you're sure?" I asked cautiously.

  "Nobody's dead, yet."

  "We have to hurry," Marcus said as he stood up. "There's only so much time and the motel is big enough that it's going to take a while to search."

  "Search for what?" I questioned. "And what are you going to do when they wake up angry and upset because they know you drugged them or whatever it was that you did?"

  Now that was a terrifying thought, and the relief I had felt just moments before was gone in an instant. This was one of the worst things that could happen. It was very disturbing to be sitting at a table full of people who were face down in their food and looking dead.

  "Why are you all standing around here looking like assholes and why is my daughter still here when she should have been taken home by now?" Rain asked from behind me, and I jumped to my feet and whirled around.

  There he stood, with his trench coat flaring out behind him, looking dangerous. I wasn't sure what surprised me more, his sudden appearance or the death grip he had on a scared looking Annabell's bicep. Her feet were dangling in the air, her pretty face turned up to him, and she whimpered.

  Rain shook Annabell as if she were a rag doll, making her cry out in pain. For the second time tonight I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

  "I caught this little firecracker trying to make a run for it. Boy does she got a mouth on her." He shook her roughly again. "You can't have any witnesses though. Not to tell the tale when your Council wakes up."

  "Rain," Quinton hissed as several of the others cursed under their breath. "You cannot be here right now."

  Rain's face went cold, dead, and he threw Annabell down at Quinton's feet. "Don't you dare tell me what I can and cannot do. Not while you're off with my daughter. Scratch that, not ever."

  "Quinton," Annabell cried in a pathetic voice. "Help me." She grabbed the front of his jeans and clung to him.

  Quinton looked down at her in disgust. "Get your filthy hands off me, Annabell," he snarled, "before I'm forced to remove them myself, and we both know you don't want that."

  She jerked away from him and landed sprawled out on her back on the grass, her red hair fanned out all around her. The barely there, teal dress she had on rode high up her thighs, exposing things I did not need to see. It was no surprise to me that Annabell had not worn underwear to this event.

  A wave of magic flickered over her face, like a cloud before fizzling out. Her scars were exposed to us all.

  "Why do you cover your face up and hide your scars?" Quinton asked in a harsh voice. He raised a finger and pointed harshly at me. "You see our beautiful Ariel? She has a scar on her face and she doesn't hide if from the world and she's never tried to. Then again, she didn't earn hers the way you did."

  "I bet Ariel," she sneered my name, "didn't get hers by being viciously attacked by a fucking madman."

  "Actually," I put in, "I did. But, unlike you, I was physically attacked. Yours was physical in a sense that you were physically harmed, permanently so, but it's not the same thing at all."

  She stared up at me with eyes filled with hate.

  "Are you really trying to argue with me right now on whose experience was worse?" she asked incredulously.

  I shrugged. I really wasn't trying to argue with her at all. Just stating facts. I didn't think she'd care either way, so I kept my mouth shut.

  "I think she wears the mask sometimes because it gives off an air of mystery," Tyson said quietly, as he stepped up to my side. "People find her interesting because of it and they want to know what’s really beyond the mask. How much damage is there really? And Annabell likes it because it's Annabell, and the only things she loves more than herself are male attention and power."

  There was no sadness, no anger, no nothing in his voice. Tyson sounded completely devoid of emotion, as if he were speaking of something that he cared absolutely nothing about and talking about a complete stranger. There was a time where that would worry me and I'd wonder what he was really feeling in there. That time had long since passed and I knew he really did feel nothing for the woman he'd once loved more than anything.

  I wasn't sure if I should feel sad or relieved for him.

  "We're going to have to do something with her," Dash said, and there was something in his voice that had me turning to him. There was something a lot like glee mixed with malice on his face. He was enjoying this.

  "I've already got that covered," Julian added cheerfully, as he rounded the table. An unconscious Rachel was flung over his shoulder and I was happy to see that her dress hadn't ridden up the same way Annabell's had. Then again, hers was see-through, so she didn't really need it going anywhere to show off her merchandise.

  Without preamble, Julian shifted forward and dropped Rachel from his shoulder. She landed on top of Annabell with a sickening thud. Annabell shrieked, and none to nicely shoved Rachel's prone body off of hers.

  "Well, that wasn't too nice," I said before turning to Julian. "And here I thought the two of you were friends now."

  He grinned at me. "Oh, we got friendly earlier, alright. She told me she's been banging Adrian and she promised to hit on all of us tonight to try and get us to turn away from you. Her parents kept her locked up and hidden from people out of fear of what might possibly happen to her. They died when the hunters raided their house, but they missed her because she was hidden away in their little hidey hole. She's been with the Council ever since, and I'm telling you she is loving all of the attention and promises they are handing over to her. But, she's young and doesn't want to spend the rest of her life with a bunch of old dudes. Adrian promised her she could meet some other covens just to see if she liked something else better, you know, like shopping around."

  All of that was really disturbing and made me feel sorry for her when I knew I shouldn't, because she was ready to replace me in a heartbeat if my guys had allowed her to.

  "Okay," I replied, as I gestured down toward her body. "But that doesn't mean you should go around abusing her. What happened to treating female witches like the precious treasures you all talk about them being?"

  Raven and Marcus moved around the table, joining our little group. Marcus was staring down at the two women with a sad look on his face. Raven, however, was looking back and forth between Rain and myself, likely putting two and two together and getting four. This night just kept getting worse and worse by the second.

  I shot a panicked look around and noticed something I missed before. We were missing people. Damien
, the twins, and both my bodyguards were missing in action. I whirled around, searching for them, but they were no longer in the backyard.

  "Where are—"

  "We can't have witnesses for this," Rain interjected. He was eyeballing Raven in a way that said he clearly did not trust him and was willing to do whatever it took to keep his, our, secrets safe. Rain's scary side was about to come out to play and I really didn't want to see it. Not with so many other people around who seemed to be fighting off the same thing. I'd seen it in Dash's eyes just minutes ago. The difference between Rain and most people was that they actually tried to fight it. Rain did no such thing.

  "I'll take care of this one," Julian said, as he gestured down toward a now quietly crying Annabell. The gleeful tone was gone, replaced by a blankness that had matched Tyson's earlier tone. Julian and I weren't as tight as Tyson and I were, but I knew him well enough to know that he no longer had romantic feelings toward the woman anymore. No, his feelings ran a different sort of way now.

  Annabell scrambled backward on her hands in some sort of crab walk, but didn't make it far before she crashed into Dash who'd moved behind her. Her arms went out from under her and her back slammed into the grass.

  Julian prowled toward her and kneeled down in the grass beside her. She was sobbing now and quietly begging him to get away from her. Any normal girl and I would have been fighting to get them away from her. With this girl I just didn't give a shit.

  Dash held her arms as Julian pried open her mouth. She squealed but didn't fight them off. Her body went limp and she just lay there on the grass looking sad and pathetic. Julian put the jug to her mouth and poured it in there. She tried to spit it out, but he set the jug down in the grass and held her mouth shut while he pinned her nose closed. Her body bucked violently but they both held on tight to her. Eventually, she was forced to swallow the bitter liquid and the whole show started all over again when he put the jug back to her lips a second time.

  I turned to Tyson and murmured, "This is familiar."

  I'd once watched Tyson pour something down Annabell's throat, only she'd put up a better fight that time. I assumed the potion he'd given her had worked wonders because she had never mentioned it to anyone, and her obsession with him and the others had seemed to have faded away entirely.

  Tyson wrapped his arm around my shoulders and I leaned my head on his chest as we both watched the show.

  "I'm happy that happened before," he told me. "It worked out well for us. Totally worth it."

  "We're okay, right?" I asked in a quiet voice. The timing was completely inappropriate and it made me an a-hole for bringing it up right now, but I didn't care.

  I had been caring less and less about a lot of things lately and that thought was kind of terrifying. The more I came into my magic and the life I now lived, was I losing pieces of myself? I sure hoped not. I used to be a nice girl, a sweet girl, and I knew I'd lost a little bit of that, but I never wanted to be someone who just didn't give a crap about everything. I actually liked being nice to people. I didn't want the bad shit that had happened to me to ruin any part of my personality or make me some sort of bitter, angry shrew to the rest of the world.

  "We're okay, always," Tyson whispered so that none of the others could hear our conversation. "But, are you good? You look sad all of a sudden."

  "I don't want to be a bad person," I told him honestly. "I don't want to look at what's going on with Annabell and know that I don't care that it's happening. Shouldn't I care? Shouldn't I want to try and stop it? What kind of person just doesn't care and sits back and watches? This is the second time I've watched something like this happen to her. I shouldn't care that she's a bad person, a horrible person even. I feel like if I want to be a decent human being and someone I can live with, then I feel like I should care and try to do something to stop it. Yet, here I am, standing beside you and watching the show like everyone else."

  Someone cleared their throat, closer to our little bubble than I was expecting, and I looked away from Julian to see that Raven had moved into our personal space and now stood close to Tyson's side, so close they were almost touching. He wasn't looking at Ty though, his eyes were only for me.

  I was getting real sick and tired of him watching me like that. At least this time he wasn't watching me like I was his prey. Instead, he appeared to be studying me and he looked confused. At least there was that.

  "Do you know why I haven't stepped in to stop this?" he asked me in that sweet voice of his, a voice so at odds with his appearance it wasn't even funny. I didn't want to like anything about him and certainly not something like his voice.

  I shook my head. "No," I said, shifting uncomfortably. "Was I supposed to?"

  My guys hadn't told me much about the other covens except to tell me about some of the women before. I would like to think that they might have told me the key points if they'd known we were going to be ambushed by them tonight. I thought I might be fooling myself with that one though, because they liked to keep me in the dark as much as possible.

  Raven looked away from me as he crossed his thick arms over his chest. He watched as Julian dragged a seemingly unconscious Annabell by her ankles off toward the swing she'd been on earlier when I'd first noticed her.

  "She came to visit my coven before she went to stay with the one you're with now. I didn't fall for her tricks and knew immediately that I didn't want anything to do with her. Some of my guys fell though, and they fell hard. She does good work, I'll give her that much. She only stayed with us for about two months off and on, and my coven wanted to keep her, like, really keep her and have her join our family. I was opposed to it and tried to warn them off from her. They didn't listen and when the time came to ask her to stay she laughed in their faces."

  He turned back to me with gleaming eyes and a look so brutal that I almost took a step back, even when I knew that look had absolutely nothing to do with me.

  "You see," he rasped out, "my coven isn't abundantly wealthy. We have money because we work hard for it and have a business we run amongst us. That wasn't good enough for her and she called my coven peasants as she laughed at us. She got them to fall in love with her, tried to manipulate them into doing her bidding and, when they didn't, she laughed in their faces as she broke their hearts. They're so closed off now from people that the thought of inviting someone new into our coven would not go over well amongst them."

  I could believe that of Annabell.

  Unceremoniously, Julian dropped Annabell onto the swing. Her back landed hard and the side of her head smacked against the wooden arm. She was definitely going to have a lump there tomorrow and a wicked headache. Dash was right behind him with Rachel and he tossed her on to the swing beside Annabell. Rachel's head fell into the other woman's lap as her feet landed on the grass.

  I turned away from them.

  "Then why are you here?" I asked in an accusing voice. "If you know your coven is so against the idea of someone new, then why are you here? You made it sound like earlier that you're here for me. Why? That makes no sense to me."

  "Me either," Tyson said under his breath.

  "Because you're different."

  "How would you know that?" I shot back.

  "Everyone is talking about you," he answered. "Didn't you know that? Adrian has been spreading stories about you far and wide to anyone who will listen. We're just the first of the covens who are going to come and see you, who are going to want more than just to take a peek at you. The way Adrian tells it, you're something incredibly special, the likes of which we've never seen before. He claims you're different because of how you were raised and that because you've been forced to suffer so much abuse that you're a survivor now, and stronger than the rest of our females. He says you're sweet too, not a bitch who demands everything be handed to her on a silver platter like that one over there. He says you're like our women of old before we watched them all die, went into hiding, and everything about our culture changed."

  My hear
t rate sped up the more he spoke. He had to be wrong. There was absolutely no way Adrian had been saying those things to people about me. No fucking way.

  "You're lying," I croaked out past a suddenly dry throat.

  If he wasn't lying then my life would never be the same again. I'd always be on display, and they'd all come to look at me like I was some kind of freak and they'd all want something from me.

  Raven turned his big body to face mine as his hands dropped from his chest down to his sides. Tyson's arm lowered from where it'd been wrapped around me and he moved to stand slightly in front of me, between Raven and myself. I was grateful for his presence and that he'd put himself in the middle.

  "I'm not a liar," he said softly," and Adrian, as it turns out, wasn't lying about you either. You are different and special. There's something very refreshing about you and I know if the rest of the others of my coven got to meet you, they would see it right away as well. I'll be sticking around for the next few weeks and I'm going to make it a point to visit with you often. I'm just being honest and putting it out there because I'm not an asshole, and I'm not going to hide anything from you or your current coven. I'm telling you right now, I want you to join my coven and I'm going to put in the effort to get to know you and you to know me, so that you can make an informed decision." He shrugged his thick shoulders. "If, in the end, you say no, I will accept that and hope we can part as friends... Good friends, of course."

  He grinned at me, big and slightly manic.

  This conversation had taken a turn for the worst and I was done with it.

  Rain stepped up behind Raven, his dead eyes filled with rage and a nasty snarl on his face. He raised his hand and plunged the needle in it into the side of Raven's neck. He pushed the plunger down, pulled the needle free, and stepped back.

  Raven's eyes rolled back into his head and he went down like a sack of potatoes. Neither Tyson or Rain moved to grab him before he hit the ground.

  Marcus moved in to our little huddle and bent over to pick Raven up from under his arms. He dragged him around the side of the table and sat him up on the seat he'd occupied during dinner. Marcus took a step back, and we all stood there in silence as we watched Raven tip to the side and fall to the ground.