by Mary Martel
Chapter Four
What An A-Hole
My feet skidded to a halt and I stared up at the porch with wide, unbelieving eyes. "Oh my," I whispered in either shock or horror. I couldn't be sure which.
Quinton stood behind Marcus, holding his arms taut behind his back. Marcus struggled against Quinton's hold, but was unable to break free. Rain stood in front of Marcus, delivering blows one after the other.
I watched in horror as Rain nailed Marcus first in the stomach, then his fist landed with a sick crack against Marcus's jaw.
Yup, it was definitely horror and not shock I was feeling.
"Stop!" I screamed.
No one listened to me, of course.
My feet were finally able to move, thank goodness, and I raced around the porch. I sprinted up the stairs two at a time, my boots pounding against the wood of each step.
Trenton and Simon stood at the top of the stairs with their arms spread out wide, trying to stop me from going any further. The idiots were far too loyal to Rain, and on any other day I would have appreciated it.
Today it only served to piss me off greatly.
"Get out of my way or I'm going to hurt you both," I snapped, and this time the threat was actually real and one I had every intention of following through on.
Either the command from me or my tone of voice did the trick, because both of the brothers held up their palms in surrender and stepped aside, allowing me to pass through.
I'd deal with them both later. This shit would not slide, dammit.
I heard the twins thunder up the stairs behind me, sounding like a herd of angry beasts.
Good, I might need them.
Quinton had let Marcus go and now stood slightly removed from the two older men. He watched me warily, almost as if he were afraid of me.
Good, finally he was showing he had a working brain in his head after all. Another person whose ass I would need to kick later for this outrageous bullshit he was pulling.
Rain and Marcus hadn't even noticed my approach and were now grappling with each other. I couldn't tell who had the upper hand, but Marcus looked worse for wear. He had a cut across his left eyebrow that was gaping and bleeding profusely, the blood running down into his eye. The other eye was almost swollen shut and there was a red welt across his left cheekbone that was already starting to swell. His bottom lip was also split open wide and looked incredibly painful.
I'd pity the man if he hadn't spoken to me the way that he had. Still, I didn't think he quite deserved this.
Rain, I noticed, didn't have a single mark on him.
I shot Quinton a nasty look and snapped at him, "Stop this, you idiot. Before it gets any worse."
Quinton eyed me with his lip curled in disgust before he sighed unhappily.
"Fine," he grumbled, and I wanted to smack him.
He flicked his wrist at the two older men and they went sailing. The railing let out a loud, thunderous crack as the wood split when Marcus and Rain crashed through it.
"Dad," I screamed, as I raced to the edge of the porch where the railing was now entirely missing. I looked down and there they were amongst the wood that had once been the railing, sprawled out on the grass and groaning miserably.
They were alive and in one piece, which I suppose is all that mattered at the moment.
I turned my back on them, because I honestly wanted nothing more to do with either of them now that they'd stopped fighting.
"Grab my bag and the shovel," I called out sweetly to the twins. They both nodded in unison, doing their weird twin thing I found so much comfort in because I was a freak. "I'll meet you out front in a minute."
Without a question, argument, or kicking up a fuss of any sort, they headed back down the stairs to do as I asked. Weird for them, but totally appreciated at the moment. We were definitely going to finish what we started later. I couldn't wait.
I walked across the porch to the sliding glass door, ignoring the three people left on the porch with me. Three people whose eyes I felt burning into me.
"Where do you think you're going?" Trenton demanded to know.
God, he was worse than Quinton most of the time now.
I raised my middle finger high and waved it around in his direction. If he didn't get my point then he was a moron. And no way was I allowing him or his idiot brother to join us on our little burial excursion.
Quinton grabbed hold of my wrist, cutting my bird off mid-flight. I jerked my wrist out of his hold, not wanting him to touch me at the moment. Later, when I wasn't so angry, we'd talk this through and it'd be okay for him to touch me again. Right now, I kind of wanted to kick him in the dick, and maybe I would have if I didn't like the stupid appendage so much. Then again, kicking him in the dick wasn't exactly the same as cutting it off. I'm sure it would still work just fine after he iced it down for a few hours.
So very tempting.
"What are you doing digging holes in my yard?"
I gaped at him.
Was he high on drugs right now?
"You..." I sputtered in outrage before whipping around and pointing angrily at the giant-sized hole in his stupid yard. "You want to complain about a tiny hole, one that has been covered up, I might add, when you've got a freaking crater in your backyard?"
He flinched at the your, and I knew my point had come across loud and clear. He'd made such a big deal out of it being my home too, he didn't get to claim the yard all to himself now.
"That's for a pool, and it's for you," he said, his voice so reasonable I want to scream. "You don't get to complain about that. It's going to be a gift. For you. Now, tell me what you buried in the other hole."
"A jar I don't want dug up, so you had better not touch it," I immediately shot back. "If you dig it up, I'm going to be very upset with you. And don't mention it to anyone else."
I eyed him up and down in a not so nice way that made him scowl at me.
"What the hell is your problem now?" he snapped at me.
Loaded freaking question, if I’d ever heard one. I'd stick with the most recent of them. Well, one of the most recent ones.
"I can't swim, asshole. I don't want a stupid pool. You should probably just fill the hole back in before I'm tempted to drop your dead body down there and fill it up with cement."
If looks could kill, I'd be a very dead girl right about now.
What an A-hole.
I flung the sliding glass door open with more force than necessary, and the fact one of the glass panes didn't shatter seemed like an absolute miracle. Given my shitty mood, something was liable to break around here.
"You're being a first-rate asshole," I informed Quinton angrily. "You do know that, right?"
Quinton and I did not work very well together when either one of us had a bad attitude. Our fights could get ugly, but we always still loved each other afterwards. Our relationship was weird and very dysfunctional. Even I was willing to admit that.
"Maybe I'm being a first-rate asshole because a member of the Council came into our home and threatened you. And you didn't even bother to call me and tell me about it. Instead, I had to hear about it from your loyal bodyguards and I. Am." He leaned into me until we were nose to nose. "Fucking. Pissed."
I knew that was going to come back to bite me in the ass at some point.
I closed my eyes and sucked in a much needed deep breath in an attempt to calm myself down. Fighting with him wouldn't do me any good, and even though I often felt like I won when I did argue with him, I was smart enough to know I only felt that way because he wanted me to think I’d won.
He was right to be pissed. I hadn't called to let him know what had gone down and had relied on others to do it for me. Even when I damn well knew he needed to hear it from me, if only just to make sure I was okay by hearing the sound of my voice. It was unreasonable of me to not even pick up the phone and call him.
Look who was the A-hole now.
I looked him straight in those beautifully dark brown eyes of h
is and laid out the honesty I knew he wanted from me. "I’m sorry for not telling you myself about what transpired with Adrian. I should have and I'm apologizing for not doing so. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I want you to know that I knew either Trenton or Simon would let you know what was going on and I trust them. Just like you should trust them. I know you do with my safety, so why not with this? I needed some time to myself after what happened and I took it. So sue me. Now, I'm doing my bit to keep us safe while you figure out what to do about Adrian's crazy ass and the rest of the Council. If only you could find a way to do that without helping my father beat up anyone else that I care about, I would really appreciate it."
I walked away from him.
Surprisingly, he let me.
And I slid the sliding glass door shut in his face after I walked through it.
Not a single one of them followed me, not even my guardians. Finally, a smart move on their part. The twins and I were able to drive off so we could go bury the rest of my jars in peace. That didn't stop me from looking over my shoulder the entire time, expecting someone to pop up behind me and wrestle the jars out of my hands.
It never happened and I never relaxed. If the twins noticed, they paid it no mind. They also didn't banter with one another how they usually would have.
Both Julian and Damien were nowhere to be seen when we arrived at their tiny house. One of the twins produced a key to the house and we let ourselves inside and then into the fenced in backyard with ease. We buried the jar safely and without disturbing anything or anyone.
We were in and out in under ten minutes.
Rain's cabin was a little harder to swing so easily because Baxter and Isobel were tucked away safely inside.
Instead of trying to hide our arrival, I got out of the twins’ monster-like truck and walked right up to the front door. I didn't bother with knocking because my dad lived here and he'd told me on multiple occasions that I never needed to knock to enter his home because it would always be a home to me in his eyes as well.
I walked right in, and both Baxter and Isobel greeted me with smiles on their innocent faces. Smiles which they directed at the twins behind me because they found both of them far more lovely than they did me, because they were always quite the good time when they came around.
When I casually mentioned I was there to bury something in the backyard, Isobel flat out laughed at me right before she told me to go ahead and do whatever it was I needed to do.
Invade a girl's dreams once and she suddenly became your friend for life.
Good to know.
She tried to get us to hang around with her, but we got out of there before Rain showed up. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing him anytime soon. What he and Quinton had done to Marcus had not been right.
The twins took me out to lunch where I watched them both eat but didn’t myself, because I’d long since lost my appetite. And then we went back home.
The railing out back had already been replaced and I couldn’t keep the scowl off my face at seeing it.
I needed a damn nap.
Chapter Five
Romero
I’m Coming For You
"You're dead."
That voice, one I'd never heard before. So soft. So sweet. So fucking feminine yet innocent. A voice that did not belong down here in my nightmares.
My eyes, for the first time in years, snapped open.
An angel stood before me. Her blonde hair practically floated around her slim body and her chest heaved as she shuddered out one deep breath after another.
"This can't be real," the angel choked out. "You look... just like him."
I felt nothing but disgust, despite her seeming innocent and sweet. So many people had been sent down to torture me that a pretty little blonde did absolutely nothing for me. Most people would have thought her beautiful, if not for the scar on her face that stood out against the harsh bulb hanging overhead. Her face cast her as an outcast in witch society. I thought it made her look interesting and, oddly enough, it hurt my heart to see. My boy had had scars that I hadn't been able to prevent him from receiving.
And, just like that, I hated this girl. She was no angel, but the devil himself.
"What's... what's your name?" the devil croaked out. "I've never been told your name before."
There was something very off about her. She didn't fit the normal bill for the women that had previously been sent down here to tempt me so many years ago.
I licked cracked, broken lips. Did my voice even still work after all this time? It had been so long since I’d used it.
"Ro—" I coughed. "Romero. Romero Flynn." There. It did work, and after coughing it didn't even hurt much to speak.
I had never uttered a word since having been locked in here. The last person I'd spoken to had been my son, and I couldn't even remember how long ago that had been. I didn't know why this girl pulled the words out of me, but maybe they would be what finally signed my death warrant after all this time. Speaking to this girl and breaking my years of silence could finally be my suicide.
However, I didn't want to die, if you could believe that. But living without my son had finally become so unbearable I didn't think I had any other choice.
The Council had finally broken me. And, fuck me, that hurt just to think about.
My mind just wasn't what it used to be.
"Go away, girl. And don't come back down here. I don't want to see you again. Leave me here to rot like all the rest," I spat out.
And rot I would, with the Council's blessings. That whore who'd birthed my son and her disgusting, vile mother had made sure of it. Some women got away with everything by allowing demons between their legs.
I hated them all.
Wetness hit my cheeks. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd cried and I didn't want to be doing it now.
"Rain!" The blonde girl screamed at the top of her lungs. The sound of her voice shredded my insides, there was so much pain inside it.
Stupidly, I tilted my face up, expecting water to come falling down on my face. Nothing came and I was instantly pissed at this little girl who got my hopes up just to smash them to pieces.
She was crueler than most.
"Get out of here, bitch," I snarled at her. "Go back and tell your Council that you had your fun with me, but I told you nothing."
Tears started falling freely down her fucked up face. I couldn't get past how different she was to the perfect little princesses that had been sent down here before. A new development I refused to find interesting.
"Rain!" she screamed again, sounding shrill and unstable. Coming from me, I thought that said a lot.
"Bitch, it isn't going to rain down here. We're inside and underground. Shut up."
Her entire body shuddered and the tears instantly stopped. "Stop calling me a bitch," she snapped. "If you don't stop, I'm going to have to start calling you a dickwad or something stupid like that, and it'll make me feel like a jerk later after I have to leave you behind in this place."
My eyebrows shot up in surprise, this was new to me as well. They had never so much as raised their voices to me before.
"I know it's not going to rain in here. I'm calling for my dad and putting my emotions behind it, hoping he'll hear me. I haven't quite mastered the skill of dream walking yet and I need him." Unbelievably, she blushed a pretty shade of pink. "There's someone else I could call out to, and for some stupid reason I feel like he'd hear me even if he was dead, but I don't think we want him to know about you just yet. He'd lose his mind and things would be destroyed, I'm sure of it. There's also, you know, someone else..." She hesitated, refusing to look at me. "But I don't want him to know about this either. We're attached in a different way, and I'm not going to be able to stay here for much longer, just in case."
I cocked my head to the side and studied her. She had to be lying, at least about the part I could understand. Still, I couldn't help but ask, "This is a dream, you say?"
L
ie to me some more, girl. Come on, I thought, let the bullshit out past your lips and set it free for me so I can call you out on it and laugh in your face.
She nodded as she chewed on her bottom lip and the black ring stuck through it. I’d never honestly understood the appeal of poking holes in your face for the sake of shoving jewelry through. Just like I’d never understood getting tattoos when there was no magical purpose behind them.
Did my son now have tattoos and facial piercings? I wondered. He'd be a grown man now, I had enough sense left about me to know at least that much time had gone by. I hoped not, but if so I would still love him all the same, he was my son.
Fuck, would this girl never leave me the fuck alone? She was ruining what was left of my pathetic life.
"Yeah," she said, nodding her head. "I fell asleep somewhere other than my own bed and under my dream catcher like I'm supposed to. This time I guess it's been for the best, though, because it led me to you. There's no way the guys can be upset about that."
I had no idea what in the hell she was talking about, or why she was even talking in the first place. Before, they always came in and when I refused to respond they would drop down to their knees before me and attempt to suck me off. Only problem with that was my dick never got hard for them, and I would close my eyes and pretend like they weren't there and doing what they were doing so my body wouldn't physically react.
I knew what the Council had been about. I had gotten a woman pregnant and fathered a son who'd been born with magic. The Council had found this intriguing because my baby mama—a woman I had never intended to sleep with in the first place, and only had after I'd been drugged—did not have an ounce of magic coursing through her veins. Neither had her mother. Though, her mother's father had been a witch and had been a big deal to the Council. He had personally handpicked the man who had impregnated his daughter and the disappointment when she'd given birth to a little baby girl who had no magic had created a freaking monster.
The monster had been unleashed on me and I'd lost in a really big way, but my son, he'd lost the most, and I'd ended up here, wherever the fuck this was.
