Out of the Dark (The Brethren Series)

CHAPTER NINE



Hiding in Naima’s bathroom hadn’t been Aaron’s first choice, but it had been the closest proximity to shelter he’d been able to find. Once in the bathroom, he’d had no recourse but to duck into the bathtub, an enormous, antique claw-footed type with a deep basin and a flimsy white nylon curtain suspended from a circular bar above it. The curtain was opaque, but not enough to keep him hidden, and he found himself forced to lie down in the tub, turned awkwardly onto his side at an uncomfortable angle—one that would also prove impractical, he knew, if he needed to scramble up quickly and defend himself.

He could hear the bearded hippie-looking guy who’d stormed into Naima’s house ranting and raving from the other room. Aaron hadn’t recognized him from any of the photographic dossiers Lamar had put together for him of Michel and his sons, but the Morin family resemblance had been too apparent to ignore. He couldn’t discern what was being said, but heard repeated references to his surname, Davenant, usually accompanied by goddamn son of a bitch, or cowardly bastard or low-down piece of shit.

Aaron bristled at the repeated furious mentions. You want to show someone how they clean a buck in the back country—isn’t that what you said earlier? he thought with a scowl. Give me a day to get my strength back up, you f*ck, and hand me a knife—we’ll see who walks out of these woods with their internal organs still in place.

He heard the bathroom door squeak on its hinges at it opened, then a loud click as it swung shut. He froze, his entire body going rigid in the basin of the tub, his breath caught in an alarmed tangle in the back of his throat. Soft footsteps, hurried but light, fell against the tiled floor. Before he could open his mind and risk a quick scan, he heard Naima’s voice, little more than a hush: “Aaron?”

He didn’t know why he should feel so relieved that it was her, but nonetheless, he released the breath he’d been holding to that point in a low, long sigh. “Here.”

She drew the curtain back enough to peek in. “I have to go,” she whispered.

Something was wrong. He could see it in her face. Her eyes were glassy and round, shell-shocked in appearance.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, trying to sit up—and why did he feel this inexplicable urge to reach for her, to touch her face, to offer her comfort?

She shook her head, turning to walk away. Then she paused, glancing back at him. “Michel’s dead,” she said in a soft voice.

Oh, shit, Aaron thought. Because that would complicate matters considerably. He’d shot Michel through the windshield of his SUV, but only because Michel had been actively trying to run him over. He’d been defending himself. Killing Michel had not been part of Lamar’s orders to Aaron; indeed, Lamar enjoyed the prospect of keeping his once-believed long-lost enemy alive for many years to come, and tormenting him all the while, killing his kith and kin one by one, starting with the boy, Tristan.

The Morins would be gunning for him more furiously than ever, he realized in dismay, but that would be nothing compared to what Lamar would do once he found out. Worst of all, though, was the realization of what Naima would think. He didn’t know why he should give a shit at all about the woman, or what she thought or felt, but for some reason, he did.

Naima was still talking: “…somehow got into the clinic this morning after sunrise and slit his throat.”

“What?” Aaron blinked at her. “What did you just say?”

“I said my cousin Elliott’s out there, and he told me they think you got past the search party in the woods somehow, that you doubled back and made it back to the clinic by sunrise today. They found Michel dead shortly after that—his throat was slit.”

Aaron shook his head. “I didn’t do that.”

“I know,” she replied.

“I was here with you,” he insisted.

“I know. But they think you did it.” She cut a glance toward the bathroom door, clearly indicating not just the two people waiting beyond it, but the rest of her family as well. Then, with a frown, she leaned down over him in the tub. “Who else came with you to the mountains last night?”

“No one,” he said.

“You came here alone?” She looked doubtful at this.

“I go everywhere alone.” Wincing, he shifted his position, sitting up more. “I don’t need anyone’s help.”

“Could someone have followed you without you knowing it? Someone from your family? Someone Lamar sent?”

“Lamar doesn’t want your grandfather dead,” Aaron told her drily. “If he did, I would have aimed better when I put a round through his windshield.”

He uttered a breathless gulp as she collapsed the air around his neck, crushing his windpipe abruptly, completely. For a long moment—too goddamn long—she left him like that, watching him struggle, clawing at his throat, his face flushed and plum-colored, his eyes bulging as he gagged for breath.

“I would have killed you myself if you had,” she snarled. “And I’ll kill you yet if I find out you had anything to do with this.”

She released his throat, and he slumped down into the tub, his chest heaving as he panted for air. He could have stopped her with even a mild psionic bolt if he’d simply concentrate enough, but somehow couldn’t summon the resolve to fight back against her. “I didn’t kill him,” he panted instead. “I give you my word I don’t know anything about it.”

Again, he could see an emotional war going on behind her eyes. He could sense it, too, even without extending his telepathy far; her thoughts were racing, frantic, anguished, like dark thunderheads collecting across the landscape of her mind.

“I give you my word,” he said again.

For a long moment, she simply glared at him, tears hovering on the edges of her lashes and threatening to cascade down her cheeks. Then she seethed: “Stay here.” Standing fully upright again, she snapped the shower curtain closed on him, and he watched her slim silhouette through the gauzy fabric as she walked away. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

***

It’s not possible, Naima told herself. The idea that Michel was dead seemed so impossible to her, she’d been more likely to believe that Jesus Christ Himself had stopped by and asked to borrow the shitter.

As she drove toward the clinic with Elliott riding shotgun and Kate in the back seat, she just kept thinking this over and over: It’s not possible. Not Michel. There’s no way.

Michel had come to assume dominance over his clan long before Naima had been born, and he’d held it ever since. He’d been the glue that had kept them all together despite the horrors of the fires in 1815; he’d been the one to get them all resettled and safe and to have rebuilt their lost family fortune—often through his own blood, sweat and tears. He’d proven to be as brilliant a business man as he ever had a physician, and his investments in both the oil industry and more recently, in pharmaceutical research had insured that the entire Morin clan—more than a hundred and fifty all together, all scattered around the world—would be financially set for the rest of their lives, and for countless generations yet to come. He was the Morin clan’s patriarch; their most stalwart defender, the one they all turned to for comfort, guidance and wisdom. When he had picked the shores of Lake Tahoe, the veritable edge of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, as the place where the family compound would be built—a place where the clan could regroup as a whole, no matter where in the world they roamed—it had made bittersweet sense to Naima.

Because he’s like a mountain to us. Strong, sturdy, unbendable—unbreakable.

When she pulled into the clinic, she saw the normally vacant parking lot crammed with vehicles, most of them haphazardly parked, as if they had been abandoned by drivers in tremendous hurries. Elliott didn’t even wait for her to cut off the engine; when she dropped the car in park, he unsnapped his seat belt with one hand and threw the door wide with the other. By the time Naima and Kate had stepped out of the car, he was barreling up the front steps two at a time, racing for the front entrance.

“He just…he loves Michel so much,” Kate said softly, her voice cracking with tears. “He’s like a hero to Elliott…”

Or a mountain, Naima thought again. He’s our mountain. This family would fall apart without Michel.

A large patio deck wrapped around the front exterior of the clinic, and as Naima climbed the stairs, she saw familiar faces everywhere, family members—many of whom she hadn’t seen in decades—clustered together. Past the glass doors and inside the clinic foyer, she could see more of the same—kith and kin pressed shoulder to shoulder, many of them embracing one another, clinging together, like shipwreck survivors on the morning after their offending tragedy.

It’s not possible, she told herself, even as she waded through this heavy throng, all-too aware of just how silent everything was, and how heavy and suffocating that silence felt. It’s not possible. Not Michel.

And then she saw Augustus near the nurse’s station. He was on his knees, cradling his face in his hands. Eleanor had knelt beside him, her arms wrapped around him. When Naima approached, they both looked up at him. Gone was the superior smugness she thought she had seen in his face as they’d stood together along the shores of Emerald Bay. She’d hated him in those moments—and for many long years before that. But when Augustus looked up at her, his eyes filled with a desperate sort of anguish that told her more than any words ever could, she found she no longer could.

And she understood that Michel, her grandfather—her mountain—was gone.

With a strangled cry, Naima rushed away. She heard Eleanor call out after her, but she ignored her friend’s pleas, her proffered comfort. She saw where many of the men in the clan had gathered together, near the door to one of the patient rooms, and she knew Michel would be there.

“Get out of my way,” she snarled, and she used her arms and hands, along with her telekinesis to shove a path through them. “I said get out of my way!”

“Naima…” She felt someone catch her by the arm—Rene. Like everyone else, he looked stunned, his eyes glassy and shadow-rimmed, his face pale and haggard. “Hold on, chère. You don’t want to go in there.”

“Yes, I do,” she snapped, wrenching herself free.

His brows lifted, pleading. “Listen to me,” he said. “Naima, please. You don’t want to remember him like this.”

He reached for her again, and she uttered another furious cry, blasting out with her telekinesis and knocking Rene—and everyone else in her immediate vicinity—out of her path. She was so close to losing it, she literally felt herself teetering, as if on the physical brink of a fugue. Her head was spinning, her breath hitching, nearly hyperventilating. Fists balled, brows furrowed, heart jackhammering beneath her breasts, she stormed through the doorway and into the small room beyond.

It had been set up for postoperative care with a bevy of IV machines like inept sentries around the bed. The overhead lights were on, flooding the room with stark, pale light; against this backdrop, the blood on the white linens and tile floor stood out in gruesome contrast.

Someone had covered his face, but blood had soaked through the sheet in a grisly swath. By the time she reached the bedside, Naima was shaking uncontrollably, like she had a live electrical current running through her. She could hear voices behind her, telling her to stop as she reached out, fingers trembling, and pulled aside the sheet.

Breathe for me, she remembered Michel saying, and he’d drawn in a long breath in tandem with hers. She remembered the warmth of his hands, the gentle heaviness of them pressed against her shoulders, and the brush of his breath as he’d exhaled near her ear.

Just breathe, she told herself.

Michel’s eyes were closed. It occurred to her that he’d never open them again, and for a ridiculous moment, she couldn’t recall what color they were. Just breathe, she thought again—as much a plea to her grandfather as herself, because his skin was the greyish color of putty, his cheeks and eye sockets sunken and hollow. Beneath the shelf of his chin, past where a thick plastic tube ran from his mouth and down his throat to a nearby ventilator, she could see the wound, deep, pale-rimmed and terrible, with bright red meat visible between the deeply sliced margins.

Breathe for me, Michel, she thought, and the tears that had been burning her eyes ever since she’d seen Augustus suddenly spilled, cascading down her cheeks in a hot, stinging flood. Breathe for me, goddamn it, because you can’t be gone…you can’t be…!

She felt someone grab her roughly from behind, dragging her backwards, but she found she had no further fight left to offer in resistance. To her surprise, it was Rene who defended her, Rene who shoved aside whichever brother, cousin, nephew or son had tried to remove her.

“Get your f*cking hands off her,” she heard him shout as he enfolded her in his arms. He was warm, the palm of his hand strong and kind against the back of her head as he pulled her against his shoulder, and she could hear his heart beating through the thin fabric of his shirt. “Leave her alone, for f*ck’s sake, you salaud!”

He tucked his face down, his nose brushing her cheek and when she looked up, she saw his eyes were green. Just like Michel’s. “I’ve got you,” Rene murmured, leading her from the room. “I’ve got you, chère.”

***

He brought her into an empty patient room and helped her sit in a chair. He knelt in front of her, holding her hands between his, rubbing them gently.

“Hey,” he said. “Look at me. You alright, chère? You good?”

Rene knew better than anyone about her fugues. It had been during one recent episode that she’d telekinetically hurled him into the hood of his car. But there wasn’t fear in his eyes as he asked her this. There was only heartfelt concern.

“Yes,” she whispered with a nod, closing her eyes.

Rene cupped her face between his hands, making her look at him. “Don’t you think of him like that. Don’t remember him that way, chère. You hear me? He wouldn’t want that, Naima—not for you. Not for anybody. He’d want you to remember all the good things that have happened, all the good times you’ve shared.”

He hugged her again. “Don’t let the son of a bitch who did that take your memories away, too,” he whispered. “Don’t let that be the way you remember your granddaddy.”

She nodded again. An anguished little mewl escaped her lips, and she clapped her hand over her mouth, more tears spilling.

“Is she alright?” came a voice from the doorway.

Naima looked past Rene’s shoulder and was surprised to see a tall, thin man standing there. His long, thin, nearly prim features belied his Morin heritage; Michel had always remarked that his oldest son, Phillip, looked more like his mother than Michel’s side of the gene pool.

“She’s shook up, is all,” Rene said, wincing a little as he stood; she heard the soft, mechanical whine of hydraulic hinges in his prosthetic leg. “Can’t really blame her for that, though, no?”

“I…I didn’t know you were here, Phillip,” Naima said, clearing her throat and dragging the side of her hand across her cheeks to dry her tears. Why it would embarrass her to weep in front of Phillip, but not Rene, she didn’t know. “Elliott said you weren’t coming.”

“My father was shot.” Phillip looked mildly insulted. “And now he’s been murdered. I’m the oldest son. There’s no other place I should be but here.”

Nice sentiment, considering I haven’t seen you in at least seventy years, Naima thought drily, but she bit back this comment aloud. Like everyone else, Phillip looked genuinely grief-stricken and stunned by Michel’s murder. Now would neither be the time nor the place for squabbling.

“Where’s Mason?” she asked.

“He’s locked himself in the office across the hall,” Phillip replied, the corners of his mouth turning down in a frown. “He’s probably passed out drunk by now.” Turning his attention to Rene, he said, “Will you be ready in about fifteen? We’ll be tracking through the woods again, teams of four this time.”

“Yeah.” Rene nodded. “I’m in.” With a glance down at Naima, he added, “How about it, chère? Up for a little hunting?”

“You don’t even know who you’re hunting for,” Naima said.

Because if it wasn’t Aaron, that means someone else is out there—someone who killed my grandfather.

“We do now,” said Phillip grimly. He opened his mouth to say more, but then glanced over his shoulder and stepped aside as Augustus strode into the room. He’d apparently collected himself somewhat; his expression was no longer grief-stricken or pained, but rather stonily cold, like a piece of statuary carved out of granite.

“His name is Aaron Davenant,” Augustus said, locking gazes with Naima.

She struggled not to let her surprise—and dismay—outwardly show. You’ve been talking to Eleanor, she said, in her mind this time, her brows narrowing.

At your earlier suggestion, yes,, he countered with a curt nod. And with circumstances being as they currently are, she decided to tell me what she knew. I doubt Phillip and the rest of your family would be as understanding as I have been. Perhaps you should be grateful that I’m so…how did you put it? ‘Good at keeping secrets.’

Naima glared at him.

Any other secrets I should know about, child? he asked. Such as Aaron Davenant’s current whereabouts? You wouldn’t be privy to that information, now would you?

Go f*ck yourself, Augustus, she told him hotly.

“I found Aaron listed in the Morin clan Tome that my granddaughter discovered hidden in Louisiana,” Augustus continued aloud. “However, it was not a name with which I was readily familiar, as I can tell you from the best of my own recollection, it no longer appears in any other records I’ve seen. However, I remember Lamar having a son who died at a relatively young age. I called my brother Benoît and asked him to verify in the Noble Tome in Kentucky. It was indeed Aaron Davenant.”

This time, Naima couldn’t hide her surprise, and was glad both Rene and Phillip happened to be looking at Augustus, and not in her direction.

What? she thought in stricken disbelief. Lamar told them Aaron was dead?

“It’s no secret Lamar and Allistair Davenant orchestrated the fires that drove your clan from Kentucky in 1815,” Augustus said grimly. “After that, they always contended that Aaron was killed during the raids, that his horse was spooked by the smoke and reared, throwing him headlong into a stone retaining wall. They said he was killed instantly from the impact.”

That’s not true, Naima thought. That’s impossible—Aaron wasn’t with his father on the night of the fires. He was at the Davenant great house. He helped me escape!

“If he’s supposedly been dead for two hundred years, what makes you think he’s our guy?” Rene asked with a frown. “And if he’s not dead, why would the Davenants hide that from the rest of the clans? That’s how you decide who’s King of the Mountain out there in Kentucky, isn’t it? The clan with the most sons wins? As big into dominance as you’ve always claimed the Davenants to be, I find it hard to believe they’d have kept him a secret for so long—not when it could’ve made the difference in them having control of the Brethren.”

“I find it hard to believe, too,” Augustus conceded, and though she was loathe to admit it, so did Naima. “There must have been some advantage to them to do so…one Lamar considered even greater than dominance.”

In Naima’s mind, she heard him add coolly: Perhaps you should ask him and find out.