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First, he'd talked crap about my scars and insulted my looks. Now he called me untrustworthy andodd?What a dick.
I picked my foot up off the floor, drew my heel back, and kicked the back of the passenger seat with as much force as I could muster up. The seat shook and Liam flew forward. The seatbelt caught him and he slammed back into the seat. He turned around and glared at me. I imagined his eyes hidden behind those aviators were filled with frost and loathing.
Again, what a dick.
I smirked at him and mocked, "It's a good thing you put on your seatbelt or you might have gotten a face full of the dashboard."
Liam had hit my shit list, and I didn't see him earning his way off of it any time soon. It was usually a life sentence.
Raven chuckled as his eyes met mine in the rearview. The look in them didn't match the sound of his quiet laughter. They were boiling with something all too familiar to me. A crazed light that came with a look of hatred and obsession. I bet this man and Quinton would be great friends if they gave it a real shot. Maybe Rain might like him, only if he never looked at me like he wanted to possess me again, like he'd done at the dinner. I smiled a small, secret smile. No, Rain hadn't liked that much at all.
I cleared my throat and looked away. "What happened to the girl?" I couldn't keep my curiosity at bay. "Did she turn out to be a witch or what?"
Isobel was the only one I'd met so far who hadn't turned out to be a wicked bitch, but she was definitely on the crazy, non-normal side. Weren't we all a little crazy though? And I certainly wasn't normal either.
"My father contacted the Council and told them his suspicions about the girl. You see, it wasn't right because she was a good deal younger than me, and even I knew that she belonged with other people who could protect her and had magic. We belong with our own kind, ya know? It wasn't only unsafe for those around her because she wouldn't have had someone to teach her how to control her magic, but it wasn't safe for her either. Instead, she was with a family who seemed relatively normal with no magic to speak of. So, where had the girl come from, right?"
I had a bad, bad feeling about where this whole thing was going.
"The Council showed up the very next day with a small army of their soldiers. The entire family was dragged out of their home by force. We watched from inside the safety of our home as her family was dragged out and tossed into the back of a black van. The little girl, whose name I can't even remember as of today, well, she was brought to Adrian who stood beside an SUV as he watched the show. He took her by the hand and had to physically drag her to the backseat of that SUV. He picked her up and tossed her inside. I can't remember her name, but I'll never be able to forget seeing that. Or the fact my mother had to restrain my father to keep him from running out there and fighting for that little girl. To get her back from the people he'd initially called to rescue her."
My heart sank down into my stomach. I hoped this story ended soon and without me puking my guts up all over the place
"The Council told my father that they were reapers and the girl had been stolen as a baby, her real family murdered. They told him the family across the street had been raising her in hopes of one day being able to use her magic for their own gain. The Council murdered that family and the little girl was never seen again. They said they put her away somewhere safe where she'd be able to grow into her magic in time without worrying about the threat of more reapers."
That bad feeling in my gut did not go away. If anything, it grew worse. I knew there was more to come, and with the Council's involvement it wouldn't be ending well. Ugliness came from everything they were a part of, especially when it had to do with females.
My coven members always talked about how precious female witches were, but then I'd watched even them throw Annabell down to her feet and abuse her. Not that she hadn't done things to deserve it, but still, it never sat well with me.
"The thing was, though, we'd lived in that house since before I was born and my father had practically been raised there. He'd gone to high school with the man who claimed to have been that little girl’s father. If they were reapers and in town because they were looking for a coven of witches, well, then they'd been there for my family and my father's coven. But the man had never even looked at my father or my family with a sideways glance. They were relatively normal, boring even."
He sucked in a sharp breath as the SUV slowed down, and the sound of the turn signal he switched on was the only noise in the vehicle. I looked around and spotted the old gas station a few miles away from the motel. There was nothing else around for miles and miles.
Raven pulled up to the gas pump and shut the SUV down.
"Is this place even open?" I asked, needing a distraction from the horror I knew was yet to come out of Raven's mouth. The story was far from over, I just knew it.
Raven unbuckled his seatbelt and turned around to face me. His eyes practically glowed with the hatred he tried to hide inside.
He ignored my idiotic question.
"They butchered her entire family. After they tortured them for information none of them had because they weren't reapers. My father investigated their lives. They were every day, normal folks. Somewhere way back in their family tree they must have had an ancestor with magic, and those genes had skipped every single generation until the little girl had been born."
Liam unhooked his seatbelt so he could turn around and watch me while his “fearless leader” talked.
"They murdered an entire family, an innocent family, and they were unapologetic about the whole thing, claiming their lies were truth. Even after proof had been brought to light."
Honestly, I wasn't surprised by anything that he'd said so far. I imagined the Council had done much worse things and often. If this was the worst Raven had to offer, then he'd seen nothing yet. One dead family was like a drop in the bucket for the Council. I suspected they had bodies buried all over the place. Hell, they probably tortured babies and kittens on the daily just to get their rocks off.
"When my father demanded to know what they'd done with the girl, the Council got angry. They didn't like being questioned and having their authority challenged." He swallowed thickly and turned away from me.
Interesting.
It would appear the story had taken on a more personal,uncomfortableedge for Raven. As if things hadn't already been uncomfortable before now.
"That's when shit started for my father. His warehouse burned down. The store that had been in his family for years was burglarized and the insurance refused to pay for the damages. My mother got sick, cancer, and it was terminal. Every single person in my father's coven experienced a great deal of misfortune in a very short period of time. It distracted my father from asking any more questions about the missing girl and then my mother died. The business didn’t pick up again for a long, long time, but for that long, long time our lives were completely and utterly destroyed."
If what he said was true, then Raven would make the perfect person to unload all of my burdens and secrets on.
