Out of the Dark (The Brethren Series)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN



Aaron knew Naima was crying even before he turned off the water in the shower and overheard the soft sounds of her muffled tears from the other room. He wasn’t spying on her; not deliberately, anyway. Ever since they’d reached the motel, he’d kept his mind at least partially open to her, even though she was unaware of it. In part, he maintained this mental “eye on her” because she’d caught him completely off-guard in the truck when he’d kissed her. He’d misread all of her body language, misinterpreted the rapid increase in her heart rate and respirations as passionate interest, had completely misjudged her. He wanted to avoid any such faux pas in the future.

If the truth be told, however, the primary reason he tracked her telepathically was because for some reason, he liked the sensation of her. From the time he’d woke up in Boston, recovering from his accident, to present day, Aaron had spent most of his life alone. He’d always thought he preferred things that way, but all at once, he found himself no longer so certain.

Because Naima feels so damn good in my mind, he thought, wrapping a towel around his waist and using another to mop at his dripping hair. So…right. Like she’s supposed to be there.

He’d sensed her sorrow while he’d been rinsing off, and as he stepped near the door, canting his head slightly, he could hear her weeping. Like before, in her living room, her tears touched someplace visceral within him. The sound of it, the awareness of her pain, caused him to physically ache. It made him want to go to her; some basic, primitive urge to gather her into his arms, comfort and protect her. He had no idea where this compulsion had come from, but it was powerful just the same, almost irresistible.

Thus, wearing only the towel, still pretty much sopping wet, Aaron opened the bathroom door, letting a rush of steam escape. He saw her at the table by the window, her head tucked down on her arms and resting on the table. She didn’t look up when he approached, but her body stiffened, and he heard her sniffle fervently as she struggled to compose herself.

“Are you alright?” he asked, stopping short of actually reaching the table.

She lifted her head, but wouldn’t look at him. Directing her gaze toward the window—despite the fact the curtains were drawn and there was nothing to see—she nodded. Her jaw was clenched so fiercely, he could see the indentation in her cheek. She sat with her spine ram-rod straight, and with the blade of her hand, swiped quickly at her tears. “I…I’m fine,” she said, her voice hoarse.

“Are you sure?” he asked uncertainly. God, the need to go to her was strong, damn near overwhelming. He had to remind himself the last time he’d acted impulsively with this woman, however, she’d nearly castrated him.

“Yes.” Still she stared at the curtains. “Thank you.”

Aaron stepped closer to her, then squatted, lowering himself to her eye level. Cautiously, he reached out and draped his hand against hers, hoping to God she didn’t haul off and clock him or something in response. “You’re thinking about your grandfather,” he said because this was what he sensed foremost in the periphery of her thoughts—a jumbled mass of memories of Michel.

Drawing in a deep, steadying breath, she turned to look at him. But as soon as she met his gaze, any semblance of defiance, denial or composure she may have mustered immediately withered. Her eyes flooded with fresh tears, and her bottom lip trembled in mutiny against the tight, fierce line of her mouth. “Yes,” she whispered, as if afraid to speak louder because if she dared, she’d lose control completely and break down in sobs.

“You told me earlier that he’d helped me once, when I was a boy,” Aaron said, keeping his voice deliberately soft and gentle. When she nodded, he said, “Would you tell me more about that?” With a smile, he added, “You could be my memory.”

She managed a nod and a clumsy smile in return, even though her tears still threatened to fall. When she spoke, her voice was strained and soft at first, but gradually, as her recounting progressed, it grew stronger, less tremulous, less pained.

“You were the sorriest, skinniest white boy I’d ever seen,” she told him with a small laugh. “I never would have thought you were from one of the clans. I remember feeling almost disappointed when you told me your name, because I’d made up this whole fantasy in my mind about you being the son of some distant frontier pioneer who’d been abducted by the Indians.”

He chuckled, brow raised. “Indians?”

“Oh, yeah. I had the whole thing down in my mind—your father had been killed, your mother scalped, and you and your baby sister stolen in an Indian raid.”

“I had a baby sister?”

“In my version, you did,” Naima said, and this time, when he laughed, she laughed with him, more natural, less forced. “I imagined you’d come up with some wily escape plan and made it clear to Michel’s farm without them even having realized you were gone—and that you planned to go back some day to rescue your sister.” She laughed again, then wiped her eyes. “You can imagine my disappointment, then, to learn you were just a plain old Davenant—a Brethren, same as me.”

To his surprise, she spread her fingers beneath his hand, allowing his to slip through the spaces left in between, their hands intertwining. To his even greater surprise, she then gave his fingers a gentle squeeze.

“Michel looked so sad when he saw you,” she murmured, her gaze growing distant and wistful. “I think he must have known…what had happened to you, your father beating you, was nothing new. And you were so polite…I remember that. I think you were scared to death of him, and you were so quiet while he worked, stitching you up. You never cried out, not even once.”

She turned to look at him. “He drank a lot the night he brought you home. When we got back to the great house, I remember it. He stayed up very late, all alone in his study, drinking. My room was on the first floor, near the back, behind the stairs. I shared it with my mother, and after she’d gone to sleep, I got up and tiptoed down the hall to see him. I thought he’d fuss at me for being up, but he didn’t. He…” Again, her eyes took on a far-away sort of cast, and through her mind, he could see her memories clearly.

He didn’t fuss at her. When he saw her in the doorway, he smiled.

“What are you doing up so late, mon lapin?” Aaron heard Michel say through Naima’s mind. “It’s well past time for all little rabbits to be in their beds.”

Aaron could see him, too; a strong, lean, handsome man seated in front of his fireplace, cast in the orange glow of light from the hearth’s well-stoked bed of coals. He wore no jacket or cravat; his shirt sleeves had been turned back to his elbows, and he cradled a half-empty tumbler of amber-colored liquor in his hand.

“Well past time for all big rabbits to be there, too,” Naima had replied pointedly, making him tip his head back and laugh.

“So it is,” Michel conceded, and then he’d patted his thigh in invitation. Naima had scampered across the room to join him, climbing nimbly up into his lap and snuggling herself in comfortably.

“You’re thinking about that little boy, Aaron Davenant,” she said.

“I am, yes,” Michel admitted, his smile growing forlorn.

“Why’d his father beat him so, Papi?” she asked, using a French term of endearment for her grandfather. “Was he bad?”

Aaron flinched at this. From the moment Naima had first told him of this memory, he’d wondered what he had done to piss Lamar off and make him beat him so badly he’d needed stitches.

“Oh, no, petit,” Michel told Naima, setting aside his drink so he could stroke his hand kindly against her headful of tumbled curls. “There’s never just cause for a grown man to hit a child so brutally.”

“You spank me,” Naima said, brows pinching.

“Yes, and you’re naughty when I do, so you have it rightly coming,” Michel replied. “And they’re more for scaring you into proper manners than are meant to hurt you.”

Naima had looked thoughtfully at the smoldering logs in the fireplace at this, because yes, as her young memory had served—and continued to serve—whenever Michel had spanked her, it had scared the wits out of her—more from the anticipation than any true pain.

“Lamar beat that poor boy as he might have an animal,” Michel said softly. “And yet I…I delivered him home.”

Naima had petted his arm with her little hand. “You did your best by the boy,” she told him, recounting words she’d overheard his friend, Auguste Noble, say to him earlier in the evening, when he’d joined Michel for a time in drinking. “Lamar would have just gone to the Council otherwise and they’d have made you give him over.” Then, sadly, she added in a soft voice, “But I wish he could have stayed here.”

“Oui, petit. So do I.” Michel’s gaze, too, had returned to the fireplace, and Aaron sensed that Naima had become nearly forgotten to him; his eyes had taken on a melancholy, distant sort of look. The sudden tears that glistened came as a surprise to Naima—and to Aaron.

He wept for me, he thought, startled, as through Naima’s memories, he watched the slow progression of tears rolling down Michel’s cheeks.

“Que Dieu me pardonne,” Michel had whispered. May God forgive me.

“It wasn’t long after that I was…taken away,” Naima said as Aaron withdrew from her mind, feeling intrusive all at once. She hadn’t noticed his trespass, however, and again, her hand closed gently against his own. “But he talked about you nearly every day, how he wanted to ride over to your father’s farm to check on your sutures. I always knew he really meant to make sure Lamar hadn’t beaten you anymore. Augustus would talk him out of it every time, told him to let things lie. I think he hoped it would all just sort itself out with time. And maybe Michel hoped for that, too.”

“Did you do that a lot?” Aaron asked. “Sit on his lap? Talk to him like that?”

She looked momentarily puzzled; had she mentioned aloud that she’d sat on Michel’s lap in the library that night? She must have, or at least figured that she had, because she said, “Oh, yes. That was my favorite thing to do. I had him all to myself then. Everyone else was asleep.” She smiled, but had grown tearful again, and blinked down at the table.

“Michel was always more a father to me than a grandfather,” she said. “My real father, Arnaud, he…went away after the fires, when Michel brought the clan west. And before that, on the farm…I never saw much of him. When I did, he was usually drunk. Michel never treated me any different than any other grandchild—not because I was half-human, not because my mother was black. And he never let anyone else treat me differently, either.”

“Do you…” he began hesitantly. Flustered, he studied their hands for a moment, their fingers laced together, then tried again. “Do you know if me and my father…if…if he ever…?”

He couldn’t find the words. What he wanted to know was if his father had always been a sadistic son of a bitch, one whose only interactions with his youngest son had seemed to be violent and angry.

With a clumsy laugh, he glanced up and found Naima looking at him, her expression kind. “My father hates me,” he said.

“I’m sure that’s not true, Aaron,” she said softly, closing her hand against his in comforting reassurance.

“Remember I told you I’d remembered something about Lisette?” he asked, and she nodded. “I remember we were playing in a field near the spring house, and I hid in the grass when he came up to us on his horse. He didn’t see me, not at first. He thought Lisette was out there all alone, so he…he raped her.”

Naima’s eyes had widened as he spoke; he’d heard the sharp intake of her breath. “Oh, Aaron.”

“When he…when he’d finished…” Aaron paused, clearing his voice, which had suddenly grown strained. He found himself having far more difficulty talking about it than he’d anticipated or imagined. “He got back onto his horse. It saw me in the grass, I think, because it spooked and started rearing. My father fell off. He and the horse fell down an embankment and into the spring. It broke his back—you know he always used a cane?”

An icy shadow crept momentarily across her face. “With an ivory handle that looked like a dog’s head. Yes, I remember.”

Flashes of memory darted through her mind, and Aaron saw them: Naima on her knees, and Lamar using the carved handle of that very cane to force her head back, making her look up at him; Lamar using the shaft of that cane to swat her hard on the backside, or shoulders, across the bridges of her knuckles or the soles of her feet.

“It’s my fault,” Aaron said softly, stricken—meaning not just Lamar’s fall, his injury, but the pain he’d inflicted on Naima, as well, with that godforsaken cane. “I made him fall. And while he was lying there in the gulley…bleeding and hurt, he…he looked up the hill and saw me. He knows what I did. He knows it was me.” He closed his eyes and hung his head. “And he’s never forgiven me for it…he’s hated me ever since.”

Naima pressed her free hand against the side of his face, drawing his gaze. Her thumb trailed lightly across his mouth, and he trembled. God, she felt so good—her thoughts, her presence, her touch. It all felt so warm and welcome to him. Like coming home, he thought.

“You know what we need?” she asked him softly.

I know what I need, he thought in unspoken reply. I need you. I never realized how broken I am inside, never knew I had anything missing, not until this moment.

“We need beer.” Naima leaned forward, pressing her lips softly to his, making him smile despite himself. “Lots and lots of beer.”

“Tequila couldn’t hurt, either,” he murmured as she drew away. And God, how he missed her when she did. I think I’ve needed you all along.

***

There was a bar called The Bright Spot within short distance of the motel, so Aaron threw on his clothes and they walked together. Outside on a large portable sign—the kind with the yellow flashing arrow at the top—the bar promised HAPPY HOUR ALL NITE LONG and KARAOKE WITH DJ SLIM 7 PM TO ?? The parking lot sat about a quarter of the way filled, and a pair of men who appeared to be in their late forties, still dressed in their uniforms from working at nearby casinos, stood by the door smoking cigarettes. Inside, the music was too loud (an overweight, middle-aged woman belting out the lyrics to Shania Twain’s Man! I Feel Like A Woman), the lights were too dim, and the whole place reeked of Miller Genuine Draft and old cooking grease.

It was just about perfect.

Naima found a vacant booth in the far corner of the room and they settled in across from one another on the cracked, aging vinyl seats. Between them, a candle burned in ared glass container. There were cigarette burns on the table top, a leftover reminder from the bygone days when patrons had been allowed to smoke inside the tavern.

“What’s this?” Aaron asked, reaching across the table. He tapped his fingertip against something around her neck: the St. Christopher’s medal. “How’d you fix it?”

Naima shrugged. “I had some needle-nosed pliers at home.” She’d actually forgotten that she’d slipped the necklace on shortly before they’d left the compound. She hadn’t wanted to lose it, if only because it had belonged to Aaron’s mother and she figured he’d want it back. Wearing the necklace had seemed the only practical solution. “You don’t mind, do you?” she asked. Ducking her head, she reached behind her neck for the clasp. “Here, I can…”

“No, it’s alright,” Aaron said, drawing her gaze. “It looks nice on you.”

“It doesn’t mean you’re my boyfriend or anything,” she assured him drily.

“Fair enough,” he conceded. They look at each other, eye to eye, for another moment, and then both broke out laughing simultaneously.

Because of their accelerated metabolisms, it took a lot—and in pretty short order—to get someone of Brethren birth drunk. They ordered a pitcher of beer and a half dozen Cuervo Gold shots.

“To your grandfather,” Aaron said, lifting one of the shot glasses of tequila in a toast.

Naima hesitated, then raised her own glass. What would Michel think, she wondered, if he knew I was sitting here, downing shots in his memory, with the man who shot him?

“To Michel,” she said, tapping her glass against Aaron’s. She wanted to believe that Michel would have understood; that he would have made his peace with Aaron, the way she had.

By the time they’d made their way through the first round and had ordered a second, Naima felt pleasantly lightheaded.

“This is very new for me,” Aaron remarked.

“What is?” Naima asked.

“Seeing this, the pain of your loss. Sensing it through you.” Aaron shook his head, then took a long sip of beer. “I don’t guess I ever thought about it…or let myself, anyway.” He looked at her, eyes mournful. “I didn’t know Lisette had married into the Morins. No one ever told me. She died?”

Naima nodded. “Earlier this year.”

“How?” he asked.

“She was sick. She’d been sick for a long, long time. There was nothing anyone could do for her.”

He blinked down at the table, curling and uncurling his fingers around the handle of his beer mug.

“I wish I could remember more about her. Julien tells me we were close once, when I was younger. She taught me to play piano. She could sing like an angel, he said.”

Naima nodded. “She taught Tristan to play, too,” she said softly. “And yes, she could.”

Aaron told her about waking up in Boston after his accident and head injury, how he’d been left in the care of humans. It had been ten years or more before he had been invited back to the Davenant great house, and he hadn’t stayed more than a few days sporadically in all of the decades since.

“It always seemed like it was this big secret, me being there,” he said. “I wasn’t allowed to see many people. My brothers, of course, and my father.” His expression grew troubled. “But never my sisters or my mother.”

“Your father told everyone you died,” Naima said, drawing his gaze. “Augustus found that out today. He asked his brother to check the Tomes in Kentucky. The night of the fires, when you said you had your horseback riding accident, Lamar told the Council and the Elders you’d been killed.”

If this revelation came as a surprise to him, it didn’t readily show on his face. Instead, he seemed to accept it with a weary sort of resignation, as if instead, it came as no surprise to him.

“Why would he do that?” she asked.

Aaron shook his head. “I don’t know.” Tilting his head back, he polished off his beer, then reached for the pitcher between them to pour another. “He probably thought I’d die in the beginning. Or hoped for it anyway. Then as time went by, and I started to heal, he figured out he could…use me for stuff, I guess. Things he couldn’t do because he couldn’t leave the farms in Kentucky.”

“Like what?”

“I told you my father uses Diadem Global to invest in different ventures around the world? I’m usually the one who scopes them out for him, who makes the connections he needs, and then keeps things running smoothly. Some of his investments are legal. Others…?” He smirked. “Not so much. It doesn’t really matter to him, the legality of things, as long as the return on his investment is strong. I travel a lot on his behalf.”

“And you kill for him.”

“If he needs that, yes,” he admitted quietly.

“How many people have you killed?” She didn’t want to know the answer to that, but at the same time felt like she had to. Because even though the boy she’d known and loved was still inside of Aaron—and she could see more and more of him coming out of hiding with every passing moment together—she knew there was also the other side of him she didn’t know, and couldn’t understand.

“I don’t…” He looked uncomfortable, his eyes cutting toward the small stage where the karaoke had been set up, and a pair of twenty-something girls now howled disharmonically along with Taylor Swift. “I don’t know.”

“Ten?” she asked. “Twenty? Fifty?” He wouldn’t look at her. “A hundred?” she pressed. “Talk to me, Aaron—five hundred? A thousand?”

“At least.” He looked up at her. “Alright? At least a thousand. And sometimes I don’t kill them, because that’s not what Father wants. Sometimes I do things to them, things that make them wish they were dead…things that make them beg me to kill them.”

Stricken, Naima stared at him, until at last he shrank in his seat, his eyes filled with sorrow. Sighing heavily, he forked his fingers through his hair. “I’m not proud of what I’ve done,” he said. “I never had a choice.”

“There’s always a choice, Aaron.”

He managed an unhappy laugh. “You’ve met Lamar. You know how he is. You’ve seen the scars on my back.”

Naima said nothing because he was right. She’d suffered countless nightmares over the centuries, dreams in which she relived Lamar’s hellish torment. But for Aaron, the nightmares and suffering—two hundred years of relentless misery—had continued unabated. He wasn’t a killer; he was a survivor. He’d done what he needed to—however desperate or horrific—in order to stay alive.

When he reached across the table and caught her by the hand, slipping it lightly against his, she didn’t draw away. To be honest, Naima found herself enjoying the warmth of his skin, the sensation of his skin against hers. It brought pleasant memories to her mind; being with him made her feel comfortable and safe in a way she’d never felt with any other man but him in her entire life.

On a tequila-and-beer-inspired whim, she lifted his hand. Leaving the rest of his fingers curled lightly in toward his palm, she unfolded his index finger and, as he watched, slipped it into her mouth.

She sensed the sudden jolt of adrenaline this released within him, the sudden rush of blood that accompanied the quickening of his heart. She heard him gasp softly as she slipped her tongue in slow, deliberate circles, drawing him into her mouth to his knuckle.

What are you doing? he asked.

She’d been spoken to telepathically countless times, by countless members of her family. But to that moment, Aaron hadn’t opened his mind to her; she hadn’t been able to as much as glean his most peripheral or passing of thoughts. He was too strong, his telepathic shields so impenetrable, not even Augustus had been able to breach them.

Startled—and admittedly touched because she realized he’d lowered his defenses, had allowed her inside—she blinked at him.

I didn’t mean you had to stop, he told her pointedly, the corner of his lips lifting slightly.

She hadn’t realized she sat still with his finger caught in her mouth until that moment, and as he laughed, she drew it out from between her lips. You’re talking to me, she said.

I’ve been talking to you all along.

Not like this, she replied. Not with your mind.

He shrugged. I don’t talk to anyone this way.

Why not? she asked, and it occurred to her how lonely that must be, to be as tremendously gifted a telepath as Aaron was, and yet to have never opened his mind and fully shared his talents, or himself, with anyone else.

He shrugged again. There’s never been anyone around to listen, he replied, adding with a soft smile. Until now.