The Diabolical Conspiracy (3 page)

“
Shut up.”

Blake fell immediately silent. Mike had to hand it to Nadia. In addition to being possibly the most beautiful woman he had ever seen up close, she was easily the most intimidating. Put this woman in a room full of world leaders and she’d have the gaggle of puffed-up old assholes quaking in their boots within minutes.

“
Tell Mike what happened here tonight, Blake.”

Blake looked at her and said, “I got--”

“
I told you to tell Mike, not me.”

Blake flinched, but he nodded and shifted in his chair to face Mike. “I got put in my place for disrespecting the covenant of the group, and for disrespecting Nadia’s role as leader. Basically, I got what I deserved.”

Getting that said appeared to take a lot out of Blake. His shoulders sagged and he went back to staring at the floor, his longish hair hanging in his face again.

Mike looked at Nadia. “So let me see if I have this straight. Blake got the crap kicked out of him because he’s a member and disrespected your rules. But I can say anything I want and not get the crap kicked out of me because I’m not a member.”

Nadia smiled again. “Not a member…yet. And, yes, that is essentially correct. As I have already said, you may speak freely without fear of retribution.”

Mike nodded and put a hand to his mouth as he cleared his throat. He glanced at Marnie, who was watching him carefully, a very intent look on her face. But there was nothing troubled in that expression. The violence visited upon Blake--her friend--appeared not to have upset her in the least. And Mike again had to question how well he really knew this girl. Nothing in all their countless hours of intimate conversation could have prepared him for her stoic acceptance of what had happened. He remembered feeling like he had never been so open with his thoughts and feelings with anyone else. And he had foolishly imagined it had been the same for her. But it was clear now there were large parts of her true self she had been holding back.

He dropped his hand from his mouth and looked at Nadia again. “Okay. I guess I’ll take your word for it. I can speak freely. Awesome. So let me ask you this--can I just go ahead and leave now? Because this…” He waved his hand around at the circle of seated cult members. “…and again, no offense, but I want nothing to do with it.”

This elicited a softly petulant sound from Marnie.

Mike didn’t look at her, keeping his gaze resolutely focused on Nadia.

To his relief, the group’s gorgeous leader did not seem angry with him. If anything, she appeared faintly amused. “No offense taken, Mike. Speaking just for myself, of course. Marnie, however, seems…displeased.”

Yeah, well, tough shit for her.

“
I feel bad for her, of course.”

Mike frowned. “You do? But…why?”

One corner of Nadia’s mouth quirked slightly. Was that a…smirk? “Because, Mike, she expended so much time and energy cultivating your interest in her. She was so certain you would do absolutely anything for her. Apparently she was wrong about you. She’ll pay a price for that.”

He sensed Marnie leaning closer to him and felt that too-familiar physical tension he experienced any time that happened. His breath caught in his throat and he tried hard not to shake. And then he felt her warm breath against his ear and heard her hushed voice: “Change your mind. Now.
Please
.”

Mike sat forward in the chair. “Whoa. Hold on. What do you mean by that? What kind of ‘price’?”

“
I mean she’ll be punished, of course. Severely.”

“
Because I don’t want to join your group?”

“
Precisely.”

“
Well, that’s some fucked up shit. What are you gonna do to her?”

Marnie sniffled. “Let it go, Mike. It’s too late now. You’re only making it worse for me.”

Mike felt a surge of anger at this. The feeling was intense enough that it at least temporarily vanquished his fear of Nadia. “This is some bullshit. You’re not doing a damn thing to her.”

“
Oh, but I am. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“
We’ll see about that.”

Mike clasped hands with Marnie and began to rise out of his seat, intending to pull her along with him. He meant to get her away from these crazy people and God help anyone who got in his way. He was scared and his heart was going a million miles per hour, but he no longer felt like a coward. Not even the heartbreaking revelation that Marnie had been using and manipulating him all along could break his resolve. It didn’t matter that their ‘friendship’ had essentially been a lie on the most fundamental level. He cared for her anyway and would not allow her to be hurt.

Except that, apparently, she had no interest in being rescued.

She jerked her hand free of his and folded her arms beneath her breasts as she stared up at him. “I belong here, Mike, and I’ll take the punishment I’ve got coming.” Now she looked at Nadia. “I’m sorry I failed you.” She looked around the circle. “Sorry I failed all of you.”

Mike gaped at her, his eyes wide with disbelief. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.” He knelt toward her, pleading at her with his eyes as well as his words. “Come on, Marnie. Leave with me. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want me. Hell, I kind of knew that all along. But you’re better than this, I know you are. You don’t belong with this group of fucking head cases.”

He heard Nadia laugh and turned in her direction. “Something funny?”

“
Yes. It occurs to me I never directly answered your question.”

Mike initially wasn’t sure what she was talking about. He was so caught up in his anger and the desire to prevent any harm from coming to Marnie that everything else had gone right out of his head. “What fucking question?”

“
You asked if you could leave.”

“
Oh. Right.
That
question. Well--”

“
Here is your answer. You can’t leave.”

Mike frowned. “What? Are you fucking serious?”

A nod, followed by another faintly amused quirk of her mouth. “Oh, yes. Deadly serious. You’re not going anywhere.”

“
And why not?”

“
Because you know about the Diabolical Conspiracy.”

“
So…what? You’re gonna kill me now? Is that what happens? Are you people really that insane? Look, nobody cares about your silly little club. It doesn’t matter if I know about your so-called evil conspiracy or whatever, because no one would ever take it seriously. I mean, you understand that, right?” This all came out in an almost overheated rush. Mike made himself slow down and pushed out each of his next words with deliberate slowness for extra emphasis. “You. Are. All. Fucking.
Ridiculous
.”

Nadia grunted. “You know what, Mike? I think maybe now I
am
offended. You should have kept your mouth shut while you were ahead.”

Mike couldn’t help laughing. “Well, tough shit, you crazy bitch. I’m outta here.”

He turned away from her with the intention of exiting the garage through the open door to his right. The door led back into Nadia’s house. He’d left his keys on the kitchen counter. He meant to retrieve them and depart this place through the front door, then get in his Hyundai and put a whole lot of miles between himself and these whack jobs very quickly. But before he could do that Marnie stood up and placed herself directly in his path.

Mike blinked at her in surprise. “What? You change your mind?”

There was a grim look on her face as she gave her head a slow shake. “No.”

And then her fist crashed into his jaw before he could even begin formulating a response to that. She was a small, slender woman. He was stunned by the power contained in that punch. He staggered backward, feeling his knees go weak as he lost his balance. Then his feet went out from under him and he crashed painfully to the hard, unyielding floor. He cried out in shock as pain exploded throughout his body.

But his suffering was only beginning.

He blinked pain-triggered tears from his eyes and looked up to see them all standing over him, arrayed around him in a close circle. He felt vaguely like a patient on an operating table in Hell with all those people staring down at him. As his vision began to clear, he saw anger in each of those faces. Every one of them. Even Marnie. Even Blake. He had no real friends here. Never had. Any other impression had never been anything more than delusion.

Nadia was standing by his head. When he made eye contact with her, she lifted a foot and placed the sole of a high-heeled shoe against his throat.

She sneered at him, nothing but open disdain in her expression now. “Tell me if this hurts.”

She lifted her other foot off the floor and balanced one-legged on his throat.

Mike tried to let her know.

Yes! Yes, it fucking hurts! Please stop!

But all that came out was a gurgle.

3
.

Nadia only performed her sadistic balancing act for a second or two. Any longer than that and she would have broken his neck. She came near enough to permanently crushing his windpipe. But then she removed her foot from his throat and he was able to drag in a single wheezing breath before the rest of them ganged up on him. They kicked him and kicked him, the points of their shoes connecting with his body from every direction. There was nowhere to go, no way to shield himself from the attack. The only thing he could do was lie there and take it. Which he did until they dragged him to his feet and started tossing him around the garage, using his body as a punching bag. Marnie didn’t hesitate to mete out her fair share of abuse. If anything, she overcompensated, battering him more frequently and more savagely than anyone else. When he was no longer able to remain on his feet, she straddled him on the floor and rained an endless succession of blows down on his face. He felt his face turning puffy, felt blood oozing into his mouth from numerous open gashes. Toward the end, it dimly occurred to him that this was how a palooka must feel after going ten hard rounds with the heavyweight champion of the world. Eventually things turned hazy and he lost consciousness.

When the lights came back on, he was flat on his back and tied to a bed in a dimly lit room. It was a small, sparsely furnished room. A guest bedroom, probably. The only illumination was courtesy of a small lamp on the nightstand to his right. There was something in his mouth. Something made of cloth. A gag. The strip of duct tape stretched taut across the bottom part of his face made spitting it out impossible. His body ached in too many places to count. Moving even a little hurt a hell of a lot, so mostly he stayed still. On the plus side, someone had cleaned up his face. He could feel the little adhesive bandages covering the various cuts. It puzzled him. Why bother tending to his wounds if they didn’t mean to let him go? It could only mean they weren’t done with him yet, a realization that made him queasy with dread.

The bedroom door opened some ten minutes after he regained consciousness. Marnie stood framed in the open doorway for a second, her face expressionless before she came fully into the room and closed the door behind her.

Seeing her provoked a storm of emotions inside him. Before tonight, he had built a wall around his emotions where Marnie was concerned. It was a self-defense mechanism, a means of preparing himself for the inevitable letdown he’d always known would come. He’d known it because it was what always happened. He formed intense friendships with girl after girl and they rarely ever went much of anywhere. And at the beginnings of these things he always knew the end was already in the works, lurking somewhere out there just over the horizon. But he went along for the ride every time because he was hooked on the rush of fresh infatuation. Even so, a part of him had desperately hoped that maybe--just
maybe
--things might turn out differently with Marnie. That wall around his heart was more weakly constructed than usual, and tonight she had torn it down for him…just not in the way he had hoped. He loved her. Loved her more fiercely than he had ever loved anyone else.

And she didn’t care a damn about him.

Not in any way that really counted anyway.

Marnie settled gently onto the bed next to him and leaned over him. Her expression was still a blank as she tilted her head side to side, carefully studying him. Then she sighed. “Look at you, Mike. You’re a fucking mess.”

He grunted.

She shook her head. “All you had to do was go along with it, you know. You could be making love to me right now.”

His puffy eyes opened wide at that remark, the swollen eyelids trembling.

She nodded. “I’m not taunting you. I’m telling you how it is.” She shook her head again. “Or how it
could
have been. If only you’d opened your mind just a little bit. If only you had grasped the possibilities. I thought I knew you, Mike. Thought I understood you.” Her voice softened as she spoke, became tinged with apparently genuine regret. “I never would have brought you into this otherwise.”