Exaltation (Insight #11)(91)

They were making sure she was in Berries’ class and Dagen gave Berries a file on her father, one that had adversaries or something. Berries started to laugh then. River poked him but he laughed harder. She jerked his bandana gag down. “What’s so funny?”

“You’re so stupid. Might be book smart but you don’t know how to come in out of the rain. The boy is playing you. This is a kill or be killed world, and he decided to take you out before you were old enough to figure out what the devil plotted for you to do. Before you slaughtered him like the sadist you are.”

“And I should believe you,” Raven said as she fisted her hands, clenching the phone just so she would not throw it at him.

“Do you want to know why?”

“What does this have to do with my family?” Raven said all too calmly.

“Your father is a vile son of a bitch, spawned of the devil. You’re pure evil. A born killer. A black widow. Who’s playing who? It’s been interesting to watch how you pulled the boy into your web when he was only trying to ward off your family’s list of murders assigned to you. How far have you gotten down your list? Do you even care? Or do just kill them then go out for a dance.”

Raven’s vim assaulted him the second he said that about her father. He tensed but kept his smile.

“Rydell wants you dead because you’re going to kill him. Obviously your daddy was going to help you out so he was eager to help me get what I needed on him. To have him put away, not jail, no, he could get out of that. No, we need to study him. We need to experiment. He was my prize but little did I know that he would come with side dishes,” he said with glare up at River. He chuckled. “Three little daughters.”

Emotion washed down River’s expression, filled with elation and anger, a little fear. Most of all relief.

“All of you are done. You can decide who to kill from your padded cell. That is if you’re lucid enough.” He smirked. “I told Emery she would regret leaving me. Now she will,” he said with a leer. “Because she’s going to lose you all!”

“Awful big words for someone who’s currently tied down,” Raven asserted.

“You broke into my home and tied me up. You’re making this too easy on me. I thought the tapes and books that clearly outlined how your family plots and murders was enough, but you just added to my case. Do you not think someone will notice I didn’t board a plane tonight? Do you think I haven’t made a copy of everything you have seen? That I don’t have more?”

“Why did you steal those books?” River asked, poking him.

“Research. I needed to read the devil’s play book.”

“I’m not a killer,” Raven managed to say.

“Oh, but you are. Black widow.”

River poked him with the stick again.

“Why do you keep calling me that!” Raven yelled. River pulled up his gag before he could speak.

“River!”

“The sister whose lover rests in the grave,” Berries tried to say through his gag.

Raven looked at Ash with wide eyes as he repeated it and she understood what he said.

“It can’t mean that. It’s a parable,” River said in a low tone, meaning she didn’t believe herself.

“The book said that?” Raven gasped as Cashton’s image flashed in her mind. The twins didn’t know about him. They had no idea how close those words struck to home.

“Raven, it said a lot of stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Five kills. We told you that.”

“What about a grave!”

“It says it differently. I don’t get it, but it says you will come into power with a lover from the grave.”

“Grave or Veil.”

Before she could answer Berries broke free. He took the stick from River’s hand and slammed it across her face. Raven screamed and ran toward her but he pushed her back. Ash jumped on his back, beating her fist into his shoulders. Raven’s energy lashed forward causing him to stumble to the ground. Right as she stood she saw the man cower.

Which made no sense. They were not organized. With Soren the three of them were invincible. Right now River was out cold, they were two down and this man was so full of rage Raven doubted he would be easy to take down with all of them there.

Raven advanced, playing her part as a fearless girl. And he crawled backward like she was the devil he thought she was. Then she figured out why.

“Raven come to me,” she heard her Aunt Saige say.

Raven glanced over her shoulder and saw her father glaring down at Berries and Saige just behind him.

River’s body was levitated and sent in Saige’s direction. Ash scrambled to get out of the way. Raven was shell-shocked as she stared down at the man who had ruined her. He had brought forth all her dark untrusting thoughts and threw them in her face.

He called her a killer. He told her the boy she had fallen hard for was plotting to kill her because she was supposed to kill him. He called her father a devil. He had destroyed her with nothing more than his tongue.

In an instant she felt energy encase her and within a breath she was on the front porch of the house. Family and friends were pouring inside. There was a dome of vim around the property, obviously one which shielded it from view. Cars were driving by like they didn’t see hundreds of people in the front yard. The neighbors were playing cards on their porch as if they could not be more bored, and runners were gliding by the drive none the wiser.