Out of the Dark (The Brethren Series)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN



On another tequila-and-beer-inspired whim, Naima volunteered for karaoke. She’d stood at the deejay’s table for a long, indecisive moment while Aaron had excused himself to the restroom. She’d flipped through a three-ring binder listing hundreds of songs, mostly pop and country, before finding one she wanted.

“‘Ain’t Misbehavin’?” The deejay was a tall, skinny black kid with a day-glo T-shirt screenprinted with SAVE THE TA-TAS across the front. He glanced up at Naima and whistled. “Damn, girl. Picking the classics!”

Kid, I’ve been singing that song since your grandparents were gleams in their parents’ eyes, Naima thought with an aloof smile, accepting the microphone from him as he cued the song up on his laptop.

The song’s piano intro began to play, while on a computer monitor facing the stage, the first line of lyrics appeared: No one to talk with, all by myself… No one to walk with, but I'm happy on the shelf…

She didn’t need them. Or the microphone, either, really, but she lifted it in hand anyway and began to sing. At first, business continued as it had been inside the bar, with the hustle and bustle of waitresses bearing trays of drinks, or people hunched and gathered around tables, or a nearby billiard set. But slowly, as the sound of Naima’s voice filtered through the tavern, sonorous, sensual and achingly sweet, one by one, people began to turn around and look at her, to fall silent and listen. Naima didn’t even notice. She closed her eyes, tipped her head back, and with a rhythmic rocking of her hips, lost herself in the song.

As she finished, cooing out the last syllable in a long, lingering note: “Ain’t misbehavin’, saving all my love for yooooouuuu…” she opened her eyes. For a split second, she half-expected to find herself in a Harlem dance hall, waiting to take a bow. Instead, a pair of drunk men at a nearby table began to clap their hands loudly and holler out in approving catcalls—as close to an ovation as she could expect to get, she supposed.

“Girl, that was something else!” raved the deejay as she stepped down from the stage and returned the mic to him.

“Thanks,” she murmured, and as she walked back to the table, she found Aaron waiting for her. He’d been facing the stage, watching her performance, but stood politely as she approached.

“You can sing,” he observed.

She shrugged noncommittally. “I can carry a tune.”

“Fats Waller,” he remarked, naming the song’s composer. “That’s a good tune to carry.”

“You know jazz?” she asked, sliding into the booth again. Fresh drinks had arrived in her absence, and she knocked back a tequila without benefit of lime or salt.

“A little bit,” he admitted as he settled back into his own seat. “I like to listen to it anyway.”

“I used to sing with a band in the early thirties,” she said. “We covered a lot of jazz standards, cut a record or two back in the day. I went by Rachel Young then.”

He cocked his head, as if trying to fit the name to her face. “What do you go by now?”

“Nothing,” she replied. “This is one of my down times.”

When he looked puzzled, she tried to explain. Because they lived for so long without aging, Michel had established a sort of identity cycle for himself and his clan. They were allowed to live freely in the human world under an assumed identity for a reasonable amount of time, usually a few decades. Long enough to enjoy themselves, but not long enough to draw unwarranted attention. After each of these “cycles” of assumed personas, they would then either take on another identity in another part of the country or world, where they stood no chance of being recognized or remembered. Or—as preferred by Michel—they would simply cease to have an identity in the human world. They would live at the clan compound in Lake Tahoe for a decade or two, with no identification such as a Social Security number or name for use among humans. This was the down time. Naima was currently ten years into hers.

“Michel thought it would protect us,” she said. “Especially since so many of us go on to prominent positions in the human world. It doesn’t happen often, but I’ve been told before how much I look like ‘Rachel Young,’ the jazz singer. Most often, though, I’m told how much I look like a model from the nineties.”

Digging her iPhone out, she opened an internet window, and Googled the name Grace Aubrey. When more than 45,000 digital images came up, she passed him the phone. He studied the screen for awhile, then glanced up at her.

“Some guy came up to me on the street in New York,” she said, feeling heat stoke in her cheeks. God, why was she telling him all of this? She blamed the tequila. She never talked about herself, and especially not her past—not even the good things like this that she didn’t necessarily mind to recall. “They call it scouting. Anyway, he talked me into coming by this modeling agency where he worked. They offered me a contract. It’s very flattering to be more than two hundred years old and mistaken for a twenty-something human.”

He laughed. “You really need something like that to let you know you’re beautiful?”

Caught off guard, yet pleased by the comment, she blushed all the more.

“That’s a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue,” Aaron continued, turning the phone around so she could see the image he was looking at. “And that’s you on the cover.”

“It’s really not that big a deal,” she began lamely. “My agent knew this guy at the S.I. production office who owed him a…”

“Second African American woman after Tyra Banks to make the cover of the swimsuit issue,” Aaron said, reading from the screen now.

“I’m sure you’ve done your own share of really fascinating things in your lifetime,” Naima said.

He laughed. “Sure. I learned to punch a Kukri blade through a man’s stomach to pierce his descending aorta and bleed him dry, while I trained with Los Chavalos, a mercenary group out of central Mexico.” Handing her the phone, he added, “Probably about the same time you were posing for that bikini shoot. They had me shoot myself in the thigh once, too. A test, they called it. I had to dig the slug out with that same Kukri knife. And then, because the bullet severed my femoral artery, I had to use my belt for a tourniquet and wade across a river—at a shallow spot where the crocodiles like to sun themselves—so I wouldn’t bleed to death before reaching a truck that could take me to a field hospital.”

Dropping her a wink, he tossed back another tequila. “In the nineteen thirties, while you were out crooning, I was working with a guy by the name of Bugsy Siegel—maybe you’ve heard of him?—and a group called the Brownsville Boys, hit men for the organized crime syndicates my father helped to bankroll during and after Prohibition. ‘Enforcers,’ they called us. We were taught to use ice picks to gut our prey. Made for messier crime scenes, bigger headlines in the papers. Fascinating shit.” He made a show of reaching for the phone. “I could Google it for you…”

“No, thanks.” She pulled the phone out of his reach. “I hardly think that’s something I’d go bragging about.”

“I wasn’t bragging.”

“What do you call it, then?”

His brows narrowed. “Making conversation. You were talking about your life, the things you’ve done. I was telling you about mine.”

“And that’s all you’ve done? Kill people?”

“No. I told you before—a lot of them I’ve only maimed. Irreparably.”

“You think that’s funny?” she demanded.

“No, what’s funny is that I almost thought this could work.” He stood up, hands fisted. “Thanks for the drinks. And the memories.”

“Where are you going?” she demanded.

“You’re not the only ride in town,” he assured her. “I’m a pretty good telepath. I think I can convince someone to give me a lift to Reno.”

He started to stomp off, then paused and returned to the table. Planting his hands down heavily enough to startle her, he leaned over, nearly in her face. “You know what the bitch of it all is? You’re getting bent out of shape about the way I’ve spent my life, but because of that, I’m probably the only one who can keep you alive past this time tomorrow.”

As he stalked off again, she scrambled to her feet and hurried after him. Because she had to stop and pay their tab along the way, he was already halfway across the parking lot before she caught up to him.

“What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded, grabbing him telekinetically and spinning him around to face her, making him stumble.

“You know, I’m getting really sick of you doing that,” he told her, brows furrowed.

“I said what are you talking about, ‘keeping me alive?’ Nobody’s trying to kill me. Where in the world would you get an idea like—?”

“Whoever killed Michel cut the brakes on your truck,” he cut in, adding drily, “It’s been my experience that people don’t do that as a friendly sort of gesture.”

He’d started to walk again, and she stormed along beside him, matching him briskly, stride for stride. “You’re crazy! No one cut the brakes.”

“The front brakes going out by chance? Yeah, it happens,” Aaron said. “The rear brakes going out? Sure. But both sets going out at the same time? Little too coincidental. You’ve got four lines that run from your master cylinder to each of your wheels. They supply hydraulic fluid to your brakes—it’s what makes them work. You get a leak and those lines stop getting fluid to the brakes. Your brakes stop working.”

They crossed the street, then headed across the motel parking lot toward their room. “It’s pretty unlikely all four brake lines sprung leaks all at the same time,” he continued. “I think someone got up under the truck before you left and cut them. Probably not all the way—you had enough braking capacity to get off the compound and all of the way to Carson City. But I bet you were hemorrhaging brake fluid the whole time. By the time we turned around on that canyon road, you were completely out.”

“Who would want to kill me?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.” Outside the door to their room now, Aaron paused, arms folded, his brow raised. “Maybe another model you pissed off in the nineties because she thinks you stole her swimsuit cover?”

“Ha, ha, very funny. I don’t have any enemies. I don’t have an identity at the moment, remember? Nobody knows me to want me dead.”

“I don’t know,” he said again. “Maybe someone’s been staking out the compound. They’ve seen you with Michel. They know you’re his granddaughter. Hell, for all I know, this guy could be targeting every single one of your family members. He could be out in the woods right now, taking them out one by one. They’re like fish in a goddamn barrel out there.”

“They can take care of themselves. They have guns.”

He laughed, fishing the key from his jacket pocket and turning around to unlock the door. “So? They’re also a bunch of hippies, plastic surgeons and accountants. Give me three hours and my sniper rifle, and I’ll clear at least two-thirds of them out of those hills, one shot apiece.”

That was the wrong thing to say. Despite her natural tolerance to alcohol, Naima seldom drank as a rule, and the tequila and beer had hit her fast and hard. She felt herself teetering on the brink of one of her brown-outs, a fugue state provoked by the decrease in impulsivity the alcohol caused. That Aaron was deliberately provoking her, and as a result, pissing her off, did nothing to help matters.

She’d come to rely on the deep breathing exercises Michel had taught her to calm and quiet her heart and mind and divert her attention from whatever contributing stressors were at hand. She knew she shouldn’t fall for Aaron’s goading; knew she needed to step back and calm down, collect herself before she slipped altogether, but she couldn’t.

“Stay away from my family,” she snarled. She hooked him by the elbow, yanking hard enough to spin him around to face her. Then she punched him in the face. She was a strong woman and put some weight behind the blow; it snapped his head toward his shoulder and left him blinking stupidly against pinpoints of twinkling lights.

“I’m not the one you have to worry about.” He touched his nose, his fingertips coming away spotted with scarlet, and she smelled the distinctive metallic aroma of blood. “I keep telling you that.”

That smell—tantalizing and sweet—was all it took to push her over that tenuous, dangerous edge. She had one last coherent thought—oh, shit—and then her mind was gone, lost in a fog, submerged in sudden shadows.

***

“Don’t do that again.” With a frown, Aaron canted his head and spat blood onto the sidewalk.

When he turned back to face her, her hand whipped around, fist bared. She punched him again, sending him floundering sideways into the door. He’d already unlocked it, and it swung open wide. He danced clumsily across the threshold and into the room, toppling to his knees.

Naima walked in behind him, her stride leisurely, and using her telekinesis, she swung the door shut behind her.

“I mean it, Naima,” he said, grabbing hold of the nearby bureau so he could get to his feet. “You hit me again, and I’m going to hit you back. Fair warning.”

He felt a tickle deep inside his left nostril, and then a warm rivulet of blood slid down from his nose toward his lip. Her eyes were riveted on it, and as he watched, the dark onyx of her pupils began to widen, seeming to slowly but steadily engulf the whites of her corneas in glistening, inky darkness. All at once he remembered something important he’d foolishly forgotten—Naima and the Morins hadn’t come by their telekinesis through accident. It was the result of their feeding habits—ones Lamar and other Brethren in Kentucky considered abominable.

They fed from each other.

Oh, shit, he thought.

Her canine teeth had started to descend from the recessed grooves in her upper palate. His blood excited her, the sight and scent of it; he could sense this in the sudden quickening of her heartbeat and breathing. It had summoned the blood lust within her.

“Naima,” he said, holding out his hand. “Wait a minute.”

He didn’t want to fight her, even though he now felt he’d recovered enough strength to summon a psionic bolt that could easily incapacitate her.

“Listen to me,” he said, keeping his voice deliberately calm. “You don’t want to do this.”

In response, her eyes flashed and he felt the now-familiar sensation of pressure increasing in the air as she used her telekinesis. It felt like someone kicked his knees out from under him; with a grunt, he fell to the floor again.

“Or maybe you do,” he croaked, biting back a choked cry as she wrenched his head back.

He tried to move, but couldn’t. She reached out, drawing her fingertip against his chin. Catching some of his blood on her finger, she then slipped it into her mouth, tasting it. Then she leaned toward him, bringing her face within inches of his own. Her nostrils flared slightly as she drew the scent of him—the fragrance of his blood—in, savoring it.

He should have been alarmed. Very, very alarmed. If he’d had any sense, he’d be panicking out of his damn fool mind in that moment. Instead, ridiculous and inexplicable though it was, he found his heart racing not with fear—but with anticipation. The idea that she wanted to feed from him—that she might bury those elongated teeth deep into the meat of his throat—turned him on.

He closed his eyes, his body reflexively tensing as he awaited her strike, but instead, he felt the warm, wet tip of her tongue drag against the shelf of his chin, up toward his mouth, lapping the blood that had smeared on his skin. He opened his eyes again, then winced as she clamped her hand against his jaw. Her tongue brushed against his bottom lip and he uttered a soft, breathless sound. He tried to kiss her, but she hissed at him like a cat, as if outraged by his audacity, and that unseen force keeping a fierce hold of his hair abruptly tightened, leaving him to suck in a sharp, pained breath through his teeth.

After a moment, she forced him to turn his head, keeping her fingers hooked into his cheek. This time, her tongue toyed with him, dancing lightly across the seam of his lips, making his cock strain, rock hard, through the front of his pants.

God, you’re beautiful, he said, opening his mind to her again; the only person besides his father and brother with whom he’d ever allowed himself the luxury of such vulnerability. In response, her brows furrowed, and she reared back, her lips drawn in a snarl. All at once, he felt himself being jerked up from his knees. She seized him telekinetically, hoisted him aloft, and then flung him across the room with a hoarse, furious cry. He felt the sharp whip of wind, and then crashed down hard on top of the bed. Naima grabbed him again telekinetically, pinning him on his back against the mattress, and then shoved him up toward the headboard, the blankets wrinkling and bunching beneath him.

Having no control of his body whatsoever was a peculiar and unsettling sensation. At her telekinetic command, he sat up, as clumsy as a rag doll. He felt the hem of his shirt rise up, tugging loose from his pants by unseen hands, and as his arms shot skyward, the shirt whipped up the length of his torso and over his head. It flew into the air, then fluttered down, and she shoved him onto his back again. He couldn’t move, as immobilized as if baby elephant had just decided to plant its ass atop him.

Startled, he flinched when a lamp flew off the nightstand beside the bed, the cord snapping out of the wall, its small circumference of yellow light abruptly distinguished. Across the room, another lamp leaped from the chest of drawers, and with the exception of the dim sliver of light coming from beneath the bathroom door, the motel room was plunged into darkness.

“Naima?” He tried to lift his head, to see her in the darkness. “Naima, are you—?”

His voice cut short as she telekinetically muffled him, forcing his mouth shut. He felt the air around his hands collapse in her telekinetic hold, and then his arms were stretched wide across the headboard, a cruciform pose. When he felt the stinging slap of electrical cords wrapping suddenly, constrictor-like and swift, against his wrists, binding him to the bedposts, he understood why she’d wanted the lamps.

After that, again there was only silence. He lay in bed, his heart still pounding. He tugged uselessly against the cords at his wrists; they had been cinched tightly enough to damn near cut off the circulation to his hands, and had absolutely no give to them whatsoever. He was strong enough; with concerted effort, he could have broken them. But in truth, he didn’t want to break free. Adrenaline was surging through his body like an electrical current, and he wanted to see where this game of hers would take them.

Things are either about to get really, really bad… he thought. Or really, really good.

As his own pupils expanded, he could make out Naima standing in the far corner of the room, a slim silhouette watching him in the darkness.

Do you want to f*ck me? Her voice, icy and low, shivered through his mind.

In a single, silent leap, she sailed the more than twenty feet from motel doorway to queen-sized bed, landing atop the mattress as lightly and lithely as any panther. She’d stripped off her clothes as she’d stood in the shadows, and dropped to her knees, straddling him now, long, lean, beautiful and completely naked.

“What are you doing?” he breathed.

Naima leaned toward him, her face so close to his, when she spoke next, he could smell his own blood on her breath.

“Do you want to f*ck me?” she purred. Her groin had settled against his, the soft nest of curls between her thighs resting lightly against the outward swell of his now-agonizing arousal. She cocked her head, her lips turned in a nearly coy-like smile as she slowly moved her hips against him, generating friction that made him bite back a groan.

“Yes.” He nodded his head quickly, desperately. “Yes, God, yes.”

This time, she used her hand, not her telekinesis, to grab him by the hair. Jerking his head back, she pressed her mouth fiercely against his. He returned the kiss hungrily, lifting his shoulders from the mattress and straining against the ligatures around his wrists as he tried to meet her.

Planting her hands against his chest, she shoved him back against the bed. Still straddling him, rocking her hips back and forth now, she cupped her breasts in her hands. Do you want to taste them? she asked, the tone of her telepathic voice lending itself to a challenge.

Yes. He nodded again.

The soft smile that had been tugging the corner of her mouth widened. Say it. Tell me what you want, Aaron.

I want you, he answered helplessly. She leaned toward him, tugging at her nipples lightly with her fingertips, pinching and rolling the dark brown nubs into thick, hardened bullet points. He groaned again as she dragged one nipple against his lips, so fast he could do no more than offer a grazing sweep with his tongue.

I want to taste you, he pleaded, watching, entranced, as she slid her index finger into her mouth, dampening her skin, and then rubbed against her nipple. When she moved against him again, grinding into his aching erection, he thought he’d come on the spot. God, Naima, please…!

She leaned over again and he caught her nipple lightly in his teeth. As he drew it between his lips, he swept his tongue around it in heavy circles, savoring the salty sweetness of her skin. Reaching between them, she opened his front of his pants, then jerked them telekinetically down from his hips. Sitting upright, pulling her lush breast out of his reach yet again, she shifted her weight. He felt the swollen, throbbing head of his cock slip between her hot, wet outer folds and settle against her threshold. Tell me what you want, she said.

“You,” he begged, breathless and hoarse. He tried to raise his hips, to slide inside of her, but she moved away each time, teasing him, driving him nearly mad with need.

Tell me, she said again, lowering herself ever so slightly, letting him steal ever-so slightly into the slick warmth of her sheath. When she drew away again, he groaned miserably. Say it, Aaron.

You! he pleaded again. I want you!

Naima abruptly lowered herself against his cock, falling into a swift, strident rhythm, sinking her nails into the skin of his chest as she rode him hard. Her breasts bounced with every furious thrust, her shoulders thrown back, her spine gracefully arched, her eyes riveted on him. She watched him as if fascinated by both his pleasure and helplessness.

What else do you want? she asked. With a single thought, she caught his face telekinetically and forced his head to the side, leaving his throat vulnerably exposed. When she leaned down, raking the tips of her canine teeth against his neck, he understood what she meant.

Do you want this? she purred, the razor-keen tips of her fangs first pressing lightly into his flesh, then digging more deeply, threatening to punch through flesh.

Yes, he said, twisting his hands helplessly against the cords. The tip of her tongue flicked against his skin, teasing him, and all the while, she rode him hard, keeping up a strident pace.

Do you want me to feed from you?

Yes. He nodded, gasping for breath. Whatever you want…anything, Naima—it’s yours. I’m yours.

“Take it,” he whispered.

She lunged forward, her fangs punching deeply into his throat. He jerked against her, gasping sharply, but within seconds, the numbing qualities in her saliva dulled his senses to the pain. Her lips pressed fiercely against his skin, and he heard her utter a soft, satisfied moan as his blood flooded into her mouth.

She stretched her arms out wide, lacing her fingers through his at either side of the headboard. Come for me, she murmured in his mind. His heart continued to hammer out a frantic rhythm, sending blood racing through his body, coursing into her mouth. She matched the tempo with her hips, driving him more deeply into her, stroke for stroke. With every beat, every furious thrust, her lips pushed more urgently against him, her feeding growing increasingly greedy.

“Don’t stop,” he gasped, meaning the sex, the feeding, the complete domination--all of it. He could feel release building inside him, visceral, massive and deep, threatening to overwhelm him, and all he could think of was how goddamn terrifying and beautiful and fierce she was—and how aroused he was in that moment, completely at her mercy.

Come for me, Aaron, she urged.

He felt her body shudder with sudden pleasure, inside and out, and the sensation of it—her hands clenching tightly against his, her climax tightening rhythmically, powerfully, against his cock—was enough to push him over the edge. He came hard, lifting his hips off the mattress, driving himself deep inside her with one last, powerful thrust.

He felt lightheaded from blood loss, but somehow the sensation of this—of Naima feeding from him, bringing him to the brink of unconsciousness and hypovolemic shock—only intensified the magnitude of his release. It was like nothing he’d ever felt; like no other experience or sensation he’d suffered or enjoyed in his entire life. He cried out her name, pulling so hard against the ligatures around his wrists, he tore open his skin.

In the aftermath, he collapsed back against the tangled bedclothes, utterly and completely spent. He felt Naima’s mouth draw away from his neck; the chill once the warmth of her lips, her breath and his own blood were gone, was immediate and shocking. His arms remained bound, but he no longer had the strength to tug against the cords, and slumped limply, gasping for exhausted breath.

Naima remained astride him, but folded herself over his chest, resting her cheek against his heart. The warmth of her body pressed to his own, the tickle of her breath against his skin, the cadence of her heart falling in rhythmic tandem with his own—it was all luxurious to him.

He’d never had sex like that before. Never had a woman thrown him down—or through the doorway, or across the room, as in this case—and f*cked his brains out with the wild, reckless, aggressive abandon, like Naima had. And even though he’d often dreamed of what it would be like to make love to a woman of his own kind, he’d never imagined the exquisite, excruciating pleasure that could come from having her feed from him in the process, taking from his body everything that he physically had to give—literally. If Lamar ever found out what they had done, he’d likely kill them both, but in that moment, Aaron didn’t care. Surrendering control to Naima—having her physically wrestle it away from him—had been both unexpected and exhilarating.

I could get used to this—and to her, he thought, as he drifted off to sleep. I could get used to belonging to Naima.