Out of the Dark (The Brethren Series) Page 3

  He was heading uphill, which gave him a definite advantage, because he had on shoes. Her bare feet slipped for purchase against the heavy carpeting of dried pine needles, pine cones and aspen leaves beneath her. The steeper the climb, the slower she had to go to keep from losing her footing, and the further ahead of her his lead became. After several minutes, she lost sight of him altogether, and the sounds of his pounding footsteps, rustling and snapping against the forest floor, had grown faint.

  Dammit, she thought, opening her mind, trying to sense his location. She hated to lower her mental defenses anywhere within his vicinity—those telepathic blasts he’d hit her with had been debilitating, excruciating, and something against which she’d found herself uncharacteristically, and completely, defenseless.

  To her surprise, she couldn’t sense Aaron—which should have proven easy, since he was still close enough proximity-wise to be within telepathic range—but realized she could feel someone else nearby, coming toward them fast.

  Michel!

  Karen had placed a frantic call to him from the medical center as she’d grabbed the office chair and zip ties. His chateau was at least a half-mile away along the winding, narrow, rutted mountain roads; Naima saw the twin spears of headlights thrust through the trees and heard the crash of snapping limbs as his Jeep bounced violently off-road to her right. She estimated he’d driven at least 80 miles an hour to reach them so quickly.

  I see you, she heard him say, as the high beams swung in her direction, pinning her in stark, blinding glare. She saw Aaron in the distance ahead of her, caught by the light for less than a second, his hand pressed to his side. At first, Naima thought he crutched a wound with his palm, but then she caught a wink of reflected glow from Michel’s high beams against metal as Aaron pulled out a hand gun and leveled it squarely at her grandfather’s truck.

  “Michel!” she cried, just as the booming report of gunfire resounded through the trees. There was no telekinesis Naima had ever heard of that could stop a bullet in midflight, and when she saw the Jeep lurch suddenly off-course, she knew Aaron’s had found its mark. “Michel!” she screamed again.

  Aaron tried to scramble out of the way, but the Jeep hit him headlong, the front bumper and grill plowing into his chest and knocking him off his feet. Either Michel’s foot had slipped off the gas pedal, or he’d stomped on the brakes; the Jeep had slowed but was still shooting forward at a good thirty miles an hour or so—lethal force had Aaron been human, and only slight less dramatically so for a Brethren victim. When Aaron hit the ground, he landed hard in the carpeting of dried leaves.

  “Michel…!” Naima gasped, rushing forward. She yanked open the driver’s side door to the Jeep, and only Michel’s seat belt kept him from tumbling out on top of her. With a groan, he pitched sideways, and she caught him clumsily. Karen’s call had roused him from bed; he was barefooted and dressed for sleep, in sweatpants and an old ratty T-shirt that she could see was now soaked with blood. “Oh, my God!”

  “I…I’m alright,” Michel wheezed, pawing blindly, trying to clap his palm against the entry wound just below his collar bone on the right. Grimacing, he struggled to sit up, despite Naima’s frantic efforts to hold him.

  “Keep still,” she said. “You’re bleeding, Michel. You have to be still!”

  The stubborn furrow between his brows deepened, and he tried to shrug away from her. “Is…he one of them?” he seethed—and she didn’t need to ask to know who he referred to. A Davenant.

  “I…I don’t know,” she lied, her voice shaking and hoarse.

  “I…I’ve got a rope…in the back,” Michel said. “Tie him up.” “We have to get you back to the clinic,” Naima said. “Mason’s still at the compound. He can—”

  “Naima.” Michel’s blood-smeared hand clamped heavily against hers, and he locked gazes with her, his eyes shrouded in heavy shadows from his crimped brows. “Forget me. Tie…that son of a bitch up.”

  She had only ever seen a look of intense ferocity in his eyes like that once; had only ever seen him steel his ordinarily gentle face into a mask of granite-like, murderous fury once before. It had been two hundred years ago, October 12, 1815 to be exact.

  The night of the fire.

  “Alright,” she whispered, nodding once.

  She found the length of coarse rope coiled in the Jeep’s rear compartment, beneath a tangle of tarp and tools. Cradling it against the crook of her arm, she hurried across the small clearing. Beneath the canopy of pine crowns, it was too dark for any human eyes to see, but Naima could extend her field of vision by hyperdilating her pupils, letting them expand until they seemingly swallowed all of her visible cornea and irises. By doing so, her sensitivity to even the faintest hint of light was heightened exponentially. In this eerie landscape, which to Naima looked very much like depictions of night-vision goggle viewpoints seen in TV shows or movies, she could see Aaron’s fallen form clearly ahead of her. He hadn’t as much as twitched since he’d hit the dirt, as far as she could tell.

  She nudged him once with her foot, pushing her toes into his hip and giving him an experimental kick. Although he didn’t respond, she still wasn’t entirely convinced, given how swiftly consciousness had returned to him in the clinic. Blood had smeared across his cheek, the right side of his face, trailing from his nose.

  Aaron? she tried hesitantly. There was no reply; there was nothing at all. She couldn’t read his mind. It wasn’t as if he’d closed it off to her; even then, her telepathy allowed her to sense someone’s peripheral thoughts, the most basic imprints in the forefronts of their conscious awareness. She hadn’t been able to sense even this modicum of his presence when she’d chased him through the woods, and she couldn’t now. It was as if he’d turned off his mind somehow; as if he’d simply ceased to be.

  She heard Michel groan from behind her, she pulled against Aaron’s arm, rolling him face-first to the ground, brows narrowing with urgent purpose. Squatting to bind him, she planted one knee against his ass, using her weight to pin him to the ground. He murmured softly, fitfully; she tensed herself, ready to scramble in recoil from any attack, but he remained still.

  He was dressed all in black, a hooded sweatshirt with zipper front over black jeans, a black T-shirt. She took a moment to pat him down, because before, she hadn’t thought to check him for any other weapons than the knife he’d had back at the clinic, and realized now that this error in judgment could well cost Michel his life.

  She felt the empty shoulder holster where he’d kept the pistol just beneath his right arm pit. On the other side, she found a couple of ammunition clips tucked in a separate, three-compartment holster. At the small of his back, she found an empty sheath attached to his belt; small enough to hold a knife, she suspected this had been the one he’d used to attack Tristan at the clinic.

  He looks like he’s come here to fight a war, she thought in dismay, and again, she thought of the boy whose had tried to comfort her in the darkness. God, Aaron, what’s happened to you?

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Tell me your name, you bastard fuck!” Mason Morin roared, drawing his fist back and letting it fly yet again, the bridge of his knuckles ramming brutally into Aaron’s cheek. The force snapped his head to the side, sending blood spraying from his nose, forcing a breathless grunt from the younger man.

  Before shoving smelling salts beneath Aaron’s nose, Mason had rammed a hypodermic syringe into the meat of his bicep. “Midazolam,” he’d explained to Naima. “It’s a benzodiazepine; a sedative. They use it intramuscularly like this to sedate violent mental patients. I’m willing to bet it will drug his ass up enough to keep his telepathy in check.”

  Although he’d regained consciousness, Aaron hadn’t spoken a word, hadn’t made a sound as Mason had beaten him. His silence had only served to fuel her uncle’s rage all the more.

  “Which misbegotten Davenant whelp are you, you miserable…stinking…fuck?” Mason demanded, each of the last three words punctuated with vicious bl
ows. Naima had never known him to be violent, but he’d been brutalized in the same attack that had left Tristan nearly comatose, and although his physical wounds had healed, scars to his psyche clearly remained.

  She’d also never known Mason to drink, but he had been—in excess—as of late. Even from across the room, Naima caught a pungent whiff of Courvoisier on him, and doubted it was from pre-celebratory indulgence alone. Like Naima, he was dressed for the cocktail party in Reno, although by this point, he’d shed the wool jacket of his Armani tuxedo and turned back his shirt cuffs so he could better beat the shit out of Aaron.

  “You think you can come here…” Another punch, and more blood spattered from Aaron’s battered nose. “….come to my home…” Another blow, whipping Aaron’s cheek nearly to his shoulder. “…stalk my family, butcher my kin, and all over some goddamn clan feud over and done with two hundred years ago?”

  “The boy is of no use to us if he’s dead, mon ami,” said a voice from the doorway. Wearing black silk pajamas, hisfeet bare, his waist-length sheaf of pale hair streaming behind him, Augustus Noble strode into the room.

  Once upon a time, Mason might have been cowed at this gentle but firm rebuke from one of the Brethren’s most venerable leaders. At the least, he would have respectfully stepped aside. But Mason had changed since his assault, and now he did not even cut his gaze from Aaron at the sound of Augustus’s voice. “He’s of no use to us now,” he seethed, rearing his fist back to pummel Aaron again.

  “I beg to differ.” Reaching out, Augustus caught Mason’s wrist in his hand, drawing his murderous gaze. “With all that Benoît has told us of what’s come to pass within the Council, I think it would be to our benefit if we didn’t bludgeon him to death just yet. Don’t you agree? And besides…” Augustus pressed gently, his voice low, nearly a murmur. “Your father needs you now, Mason.”

  At last, some of that brutal tension in Mason’s arm slackened. “Oui,” he said through gritted teeth. His brows remained furrowed, his mouth twisted in a furious snarl, but he shrugged himself loose of Augustus’s grasp.

  Augustus hooked his fingertips beneath Aaron’s chin. With a frown, he appeared to study the younger man’s face for a long moment.

  “Who is he?” Karen asked. She sat in a nearby chair, holding an ice pack gingerly against the side of her face. Aaron had hit her hard enough to leave a fat lip and busted nose for a souvenir, and she’d watched Mason return the favor in spades with a cold, uncharacteristic sort of detachment. “Is he a Davenant?”

  ”He bears more than a passing resemblance,” Augustus admitted as he drew his hand away, letting Aaron’s head fall back. “But I do not recognize him.”

  Mason managed a bark of dry, humorless laughter. “You want me to clean him up a bit? Though the broken nose, the blood smears, they add a certain je ne sais quoi, I think…”

  “That won’t make a difference,” Augustus interjected mildly, his expression solemn. “I’ve never seen this man in my life.”

  ”What do you mean?” Karen said. “You've been dominant Elder all these years. I would've thought you'd know them all.”

  "As would I," Augustus remarked with a frown. “I never let my guard down, not for one moment, not within ten miles of a Davenant. Especially a Davenant male. It meant the difference between life and death—for me and my clan. I knew them all, by face, by scent, by telepathic sense. I could pick them out in a darkened room, with my hands tied behind my back.” Again, he studied Aaron, his dark eyes boring like diamond-tipped drill bits. “Yet you are a stranger to me, boy,” he murmured, sounding perplexed.

  After a long moment, his granite-like expression softened, and he turned to Mason. “Michel is waiting in the surgical suite,” he said. “We can unravel this mystery later. For now, he’s most important.”

  “You’re right.” Mason nodded again, then glanced at Karen. “Will you help me?”

  Karen rose to her feet. “You don’t even have to ask.”

  “That leaves you on guard duty, mon bijou,” Mason said to Naima. “Whoever the hell this is, watch him. If he moves, be a love, would you?” To her surprise, he pulled a pistol out from the back of his slacks, a black 9-millimeter automatic with a thick stock he’d carried tucked beneath his waistband. Handing it to her, he continued: “Blow his fucking brains out.”

  ***

  After they’d gone, shutting the door behind them, Naima found herself unable to move. Half of the overhead fluorescent lights had not been turned on; every other illuminated panel above her was dark, casting the room in alternating stripes of shadow. The sink in the corner was dripping. She could hear it, a soft, disharmonic plink! each time a droplet spattered down into the stainless steel basin. It wasn’t until her lungs started to ache, a tightness growing beneath her ribs, that she realized she’d been holding her breath all the while.

  Mason’s gun felt heavy, clumsy and foreign in her hand, ridiculous somehow and out of place. With a frown, she set it aside on a nearby counter. She’d never had fondness or use for firearms, and had no intention of starting that night.

  Aaron remained very still, his face bloodied and blood-smeared; so motionless, she wondered if he had passed out again, falling unconscious against his bonds. But when she stepped forward, he looked up at her, those sharp eyes boring into her, bright and alert. He watched with a guarded expression as she knelt in front of him, as if expecting her to pick up where Mason had left off in beating him.

  “Aaron, it’s me,” she whispered. “It’s Naima.”

  She saw no hint of recognition in his face, his blue eyes as cool and fathomless as a quarry pond, his mind peculiarly closed to her, clamped off tight, like the heavy iron door of a bank vault slammed shut.

  Or a trap door locked down over a pit dug out of the floor.

  ***

  She remembered the first night spent in her grave-like prison beneath Lamar’s library. Being forced before the Brethren Council and then thrown into the dank, dark tunnels of the Beneath had been horrible enough, but at least she’d been with her mother. The real nightmare had started after only a few hours in the underground passageways, because Lamar had come for. Naima remembered the glow of lamplight against the rough-hewn dirt walls as he and his sons—Vidal, Allistair and Jean Luc, the same ones she’d have even more reason to hate years later—had approached. They’d grabbed her by the arms and dragged her, kicking and screaming, out of her mother’s desperate grasp. She’d listened to the sounds of her mother’s anguished sobs fading into silence behind them as they’d left her alone in the darkness.

  They’d brought her to the Davenant great house. Here, Lamar had ripped her clothes from her. He hadn’t raped her, though she doubted it was from any sense of decency or charity on his part. He’d molested her, his hands clumsy and rough against her, but she’d been too young at the time to understand what he was doing. He’d been drunk; she’d smelled the stink of brandy on his breath. When he’d finished, he unlocked a hatch built into the floor of his library. A small, hollowed out cell had been dug beneath, and he shoved her down into it, locking the door above her and leaving her there, alone and cold in the dark to weep.

  From overhead, she’d heard a soft sound, a tapping, and she froze. Eyes wide, breath bated with terror—because she was certain it was Lamar coming for her again—she lay like a baby rabbit, frozen with fear.

  Again, she heard the sound, a soft rapping against the pine planks overhead. With it came a voice, hushed and hesitant: “Who’s there?”

  She didn’t answer. Another knock, and again the voice—a young boy’s—whispered, “Hello? I can hear you crying. Who’s there?”

  From above her, just off to her left, she saw a sudden dim glow, a faint beam of light breaking through the otherwise impenetrable darkness. For the first time, she noticed a knot-hole in one of the floor boards, a hollow depression no bigger in circumference than the pad of her thumb. It must have been covered by something overhead, a rug perhaps, that the boy in the room
above her had moved, allowing lamplight to filter through.

  All at once, the light winked out again as something blocked it—the silhouette of a human figure, the boy, leaning into view. With a frightened mewl, Naima shrank back, scuttling in the loose soil and grit.

  “It’s alright,” the boy said, leaning over, obscuring the light even more. “Don’t be scared. I won’t hurt you.”

  “Who…who are you?” she whispered.

  “My name is Aaron,” the boy said. “Aaron Davenant.”

  And because she remembered him—the little boy whose father had beaten him so savagely—she’d burst into fresh, new tears and pleaded for his help. “I want to go home,” she sobbed, slapping against the boards above her. “Please, I want my momma!”

  “I’ll get you out,” Aaron had told her. He’d stuck his finger through the knot hole in the wood, as if reaching for her, offering her whatever fragile comfort he could. “I’ll find a way. I promise.”

  “Aaron,” she said again in the clinic. “It’s Naima.” Tears welled in her eyes and her voice grew strained. She reached out, caressing his face. In that moment, she was frightened of him, afraid that he’d strike her with one of those vicious telepathic blows again, but there was no way she could prevent herself. She had to touch him, if only to prove to herself that he was real, that it was him, that it wasn’t some cruel illusion, a trick her mind played on her. She couldn’t count all of the times the simple warmth of his skin had comforted her; didn’t want to remember, but was helpless to forget.

  You saved me from that godforsaken place, she. In more ways than one…more than I can measure.

  Even now, she could remember how afraid and alone she’d felt, how despair and panic had knotted in her belly, tightening with every passing breath because she thought she’d been forgotten, buried alive in the shallow, dirty depression beneath Lamar’s library. She hadn’t known at the time—couldn’t have even imagined—the breadth of the horrors that were yet to come.