Out of the Dark (The Brethren Series)

CHAPTER TWENTY



Come with me.

Aaron remembered Naima whispering this to him, pleading, as he’d unlocked the gate to the underground Indian tunnels in 1815. His hands had been shaking; it had been hard to get the key into the ancient, rusted lock, but somehow he’d managed. He remembered the screech of the hinges as he’d pulled the heavy gate open. Beyond the threshold, for the first twenty yards or so, the tunnels had been paved with creek stones. After than, just beyond the circumference of light cast by a small oil lamp he’d brought with him, there was nothing but blackness, utter and absolute.

He helped her button up the front of her dress, but despite this, she was still shivering. He shrugged off his jacket—something fancy and velveteen because it was his mother’s birthday, her party was still underway upstairs—and gave it to her, tugging the lapels close against the sweet swell of her bosom to keep her warm.

They raped her. He remembered this now; he’d gone downstairs and found Allistair, Vidal and Jean Luc, all drunk, savagely taking turns with Naima. He’d tried to stop them, but in the end, they’d overpowered him. He hurt all over from the abuse they’d heaped on him, his lower back and belly aching in sharp, shuddering spasms that nearly stripped the breath from him.

None of that mattered. All that mattered was Naima, getting her out of the house, keeping her safe. He’d never had another chance like this before; he knew he’d likely never have another again. Lamar was gone. Aaron didn’t know where, and he didn’t know how long he’d be gone, but the important thing was his absence.

“Come with me,” Naima pleaded again, her beautiful brown eyes swimming with tears. “I can’t,” he said.

“But I’ll never see you again,” she whimpered, and her tears began to fall, gleaming droplets rolling slowly down each of her cheeks.

“Yes, you will.” Cradling her face in his hands, he kissed her. “I promise, Naima. No matter what, I will find you again. We’ll be together.”

For some reason, he thought of her grandfather, of Michel Morin’s voice, soft words echoing through his mind: I expect you’re the sort of man who doesn’t give his word lightly, and when he does, it’s binding then, no?

“I promise,” he whispered to her again.

“He'll kill you," she said, weeping openly now. He didn’t even have to ask; he knew she meant his father. "Please, Aaron. If he finds out what you've done, he'll..."

Her voice cut short as he touched her face again, gently wiping her tears. "Hush now," he breathed. “Everything’s going to be alright. I promise.”

She threw her arms around his neck, leaping against him, crushing her lips against his. He could taste the salty sweetness of her tears, feel the warmth of her body against him through the cotton of her dress. He held her fiercely, clutching at her, gasping against his own unbidden tears. Because even though he’d promised her otherwise, he knew the truth.

I’ll never see her again.

And the pain of that realization—the sheer magnitude of that devastating loss—was almost too much for him to bear.

“I love you, Aaron,” she said.

“I love you, too,” he told her, letting his lips steal against hers one last, lingering time. Then he drew back, ashamed of the tears that burned his eyes, strangled his voice. “Hurry,” he whispered. “There…there isn’t much time.”

He’d watched her hurry past the threshold into the tunnels, but once inside, she went no further. She turned and watched him close the gate, clutching a small bundle of foodhe’d given her against her belly, and carrying the lamp by its handle in her other hand. Her entire body had shuddered from the force of sobs she struggled to control, and her breath hitched and hiccupped piteously.

“Aaron…!” she mewled, curling her fingers around one of the bars.

“Go,” he told her. Closing his eyes, he kissed her fingers. “Naima, you have to go.”

He stumbled back from the gate, then began backing up the earthen stairs toward the main floor of the great house again.

“Aaron,” she begged, weeping. “Aaron!”

But when he turned around and didn’t answer, when he continued up the stairs without looking back, he saw the glow against the cellar walls from her lantern fade, heard the soft but rapid patter of her bare feet against the packed dirt floors as she ran away.

She’s safe now, he told himself, even though that didn’t stop that awful, rending ache deep inside of him. She’s safe at last, and he can never hurt her again. None of them can.

He’d just settled his foot on the top of the last riser, when he heard a sharp whistle of wind from his right. He started to turn, startled, but then something heavy smashed into the side of his head. The blow knocked the wits from him; he staggered sideways, then crumpled to the floor, catching himself on his hands and knees, and blinking against a dizzying array of stars. His nose tickled, and then blood spattered down against the oak floorboards between his hands in a steady stream.

With a groan, he looked up. His head was swimming, his vision fading and out of focus. His first thought was that Vidal had survived; that he’d somehow lived through Naima’s attack and had returned to the great house to enact his revenge, or maybe Jean Luc or Allistair. But instead, he saw his father towering above him, still dressed for riding in his heavy great coat and boots. Jean Luc stood behind him on one side, Allistair on the other, both cowering behind his coat tails, both grinning with malicious glee at Aaron.

In his gloved hand, Lamar held his walking cane—the one with the handle that had been carved to look like a snarling dog. Only now the pale ivory of the dog’s snarling snout had been smeared with blood—Aaron’s blood.

“You have betrayed me for the last time, boy,” Lamar said, his voice strangely cold and devoid of any tone, even rage. And when he raised the cane aloft to strike him again, Aaron knew better than to cry out or try to beg for mercy, because there would be none.

There never had been.

***

“Gunnnnnghh!” With a breathless cry, Aaron tried to sit up. For a moment, he nearly expected to find himself back in the nineteenth century, back in Boston again, with Julien reading from the New England Courant and patiently keeping vigil at his bedside.

Instead, he found himself in what appeared to be a hospital room. Outside of having his CT scan performed, he’d actually never been on the patient side of one before. Lamar’s idea of recuperation from injuries involved being left on the floor of the room in which they’d been inflicted, until such time as one could summon the strength to get up and limp to one’s own bed for further healing. At first, the sight of the intravenous tubes running from the inner crooks of his elbows alarmed him, as did the strange rubber tubing he felt bisecting his face just beneath his nose.

“It’s oxygen,” he heard Naima say, as she draped her hand against his to prevent him from yanking the cannula away. “It’s to help you breathe, Aaron. Leave it alone.”

She sat beside his bed, a book in her lap. She wore a pair of blue jeans and a colorful peasant blouse. Her feet were bare, propped up against the side of his bed.

“Where…am I…?” he croaked.

“You’re safe,” she said gently, kicking her feet down and leaning toward him. With a smile, she brushed his hair back from his brow.

“As my younger brother might say, you’re in a highly specialized medical facility—the only one of its kind in the entire world dedicated to the care and treatment of our species,” Mason said, stepping into view.

Unlike their last occasion to meet, this time, Mason was clean shaven, his eyes bright and sober. He walked over to a machine beside the bed from which two bags of clear fluid dangled, connected to Aaron’s arm by those intertwining tubes. As Aaron watched in mounting alarm, Mason lifted a syringe in hand, connecting it to a port in one of the lines.

“What is that?” Aaron asked, stiffening reflexively, trying to sit up as Mason slowly depressed the syringe plunger. “What the f*ck did you just stick me with?”

“It’s morphine,” Mason replied, seeming unbothered by Aaron’s hostility. “It will help with your pain.”

“I’m not having any pain,” Aaron said with a frown.

Mason smiled. “You’re welcome.”

He dropped a wink at Naima and then walked away, heading out of the room through a nearby door that he closed behind him.

“What the hell is going on?” Aaron asked Naima.

She stood, leaning over the bedrail to stroke his hair again. “You almost died, Aaron. Mason saved your life.”

Aaron groaned as the sudden rush of morphine in his brain—like a warm blanket drooping over his mind, clouding his senses. “I saved his first,” he muttered, feeling like he stood on a surfboard, riding one hell of a steep wave in toward shore.

“Try to rest,” she said, and when she brushed her lips against his, he lifted his head unconsciously to meet her, responding to her as if to do so was an inherent and undeniable component of his very nature.

“I remember that night,” he said. “The night of the fires…what my brothers did to you…” He looked up at her, even though it was hard for him to see clearly now, and his eyelids kept wanting to droop closed, his mind slipping into shadows. “I’m sorry I didn’t stop them in time…I didn’t…”

“Hush,” she soothed.

“There…was no riding accident,” he said. “I never fell off my horse. It…it was my father. I remember now. He hit me with his cane…over and over. He knew…what I’d done…that I…I had helped you escape…”

“Aaron,” she said gently, caressing his face.

He turned his face into the palm of her hand, closing his eyes. “He wanted me dead,” he whispered helplessly.

“It’s alright,” she told him, her lips lighting against his brow. “He can’t hurt you anymore, Aaron. Never again. You’re safe now…safe here with me.”

I love you, he thought to her as his mind drifted off with a morphine-induced tide.

I love you, too, he heard her say, and then he slept again.

***

Naima left Aaron to rest, and followed Mason across the hall to Tristan’s room. Not everyone in the clan was happy to know that Aaron remained in the clinic for care—or that Naima, who had helped him, was allowed to stay, for that matter—but Mason was their leader now, patriarch of the Morin clan, and his word was their law.

“How is he?” she asked Mason hesitantly in the doorway.

Mason had been leaning over Tristan’s bed, but straightened now and smiled. “Better. His last set of labs came back nearly normal. His infection is just about clear.”

One of the primary reasons Naima suspected no one in the family had objected too loudly about Aaron’s presence was because everyone still seemed to be collectively reeling over Phillip’s betrayal. True, Phillip had never been close to most of his siblings or kin, but he had still been the first-born son. Tradition had always instilled among the Brethren a sort of respectful deference to him because of that, if nothing else. No one had ever suspected the true depths of his hatred for his fatheror Mason for what Phillip had felt was an usurpation of his rightful place in the clan’s hierarchy.

“By sending first Jean Luc, then Aaron against us, Lamar gave Phillip an opportunity he’d probably waited centuries for,” Mason remarked, as if reading Naima’s mind and sensing the train of her thoughts—which, in all likelihood, he had. “He had someone to blame if we both turned up dead, an explanation for why someone would hate us—Michel and me—so much.”

“But why?” Naima asked. “Why would he want to kill Michel? I know they had their differences, that Michel could be pretty bullheaded when he put his mind to it, but…”

“I think this was the final straw,” Mason said quietly, slipping his hand against his brother’s to clearly indicate Tristan was the this he referred to. “Phillip never had any children, you know, although he took several wives over the years. Father always feared he was sterile. It runs in our family, you know.”

When Naima shook her head, surprised by this, he continued. “It’s called Y-chromosomal microdeletion, a genetic abnormality that leads to significantly decreased—and even completely absent—sperm production. About one in every ten males born in the clan is affected to some degree or another. Michel pressed for years for us all to consent to genetic testing, but Phillip never would. Anyway, Phillip was able to impregnate Lisette, and he always used that as proof that Father was full of shit.”

Mason’s glanced at Naima, sadly. “The pregnancy wasn’t viable, though. She lost the baby within the first term. Phillip pretty much pushed her aside after that. He wouldn’t have anything to do with her. Here she was, shunned from her birth family because of her marriage to a Morin—because God knows Lamar wouldn’t have any more to do with her after that—plus no real friends in the clan she’s wed into because of the ongoing feud with the Davenants. And now her husband won’t as much as look at her. She was devastated.”

He managed a soft smile as he gazed down at Tristan. “They were good together, Lisette and Father. I, for one, was pleased to realize they’d fallen in love, but you know Father…he wanted to spare Phillip’s feelings, so they kept it as much of a secret as they could. When Tristan came into the picture, that became more difficult to manage.”

Mason laughed. “Can you believe some of our clan actually believed I was Tristan’s father? I used to bring him with me when he was a boy, and I’d go on one of my whirlwind traveling adventures—do you remember? Lisette would come, too. My God, she was a dear friend to me. And everyone thought we were sleeping together. I don’t know who Phillip hated more—me, when he caught wind of that rumor, or Michel, when he finally figured out the truth.”

He sighed unhappily. “Either way, he hated us both enough to want us dead, it seems. That he’d come to realize Father had left me his primary beneficiary—not him—probably only made things worse. And like I said—your boy gave him the perfect scapegoat to pin our untimely demises upon. Not to mention the rifle.”

Naima laughed. “I wouldn’t call Aaron my boy.”

“He looks like Lisette,” Mason said. “I told him that at the cemetery.” He slipped his hand away from Tristan’s, then adjusted the blankets as if he’d imagined a crease in their otherwise pristine, faultless drape. “But my God, he favors his brother, too. It’s been ages since I’ve seen Julien. But they could pass for twins, the last I knew of him. The Davenants and those heartbreaking blue eyes.”

She opened her mouth to ask him about Julien, because at his house on the afternoon when Phillip had died, he’d seemed startled—no, stunned—when she’d told him she thought that was who was trying to murder him. And just now, even with this fleeting mention, the same kind of softness came over Mason’s face that she’d seen when he’d talked about the young baseball player, Andrew Taylor, and had gazed with obvious fondness at his photograph.

How exactly do you know Julien Davenant? she wanted to ask, but she bit back the question and watched him walk out of the room. Mason had known that Tristan was Michel’s son long before any of the rest of the clan—including her. He’d known about his father’s love affair with Lisette, and had kept quiet about it for decades. The man obviously had a knack for keeping secrets close to the vest.

And maybe sometimes it’s better that way, she thought.

***

When she returned to Aaron’s room, to her surprise—and alarm—he was gone. The IV lines that had been connected to his arm had been pulled out, catheters and all; they lay in a little pile, with a small bloodstain on the sheets beneath them. He’d yanked off his telemetry monitoring pads and wires, his oxygen cannula and his pulse oximetry gauge. He’d left all of these in a tangle among his bedclothes, then apparently changed out of his hospital gown, back into his street clothes and—judging by the opened window on the far side of the room—jumped out.

Goddamn it, she fumed, brows furrowing as she climbed up onto the window ledge and swept her gaze, and her telepathy, through the yard below. She couldn’t sense him but that was no big surprise. Aaron was another one who was good at keeping secrets—namely, his present whereabouts and frame of mind.

Goddamn it, Naima thought again, leaping down the two-story drop. She grunted softly as she landed on her feet, then paused, again looking all around for any hint of where he might have gone. He’d metabolized the morphine fast; clearly whatever sedating effect it had had on him had been too short-lived for anyone’s good—including his own.

She heard the sudden revving of a car engine, and bit back another swear as she sprinted for the parking lot in front of the clinic. She raced up onto the asphalt in time to see his rented gold Infiniti G35 sport coupe squawling its tires as it pealed out of the lot.

“Aaron!” she shouted, running after him. “Aaron, goddamn it!”

She couldn’t keep pace with the car, and didn’t try. Staggering to a halt, gasping for breath, she focused her telekinesis and reached out, clamping the calipers of the car’s front brakes together. Abruptly, the wheels locked, and the Infiniti slalomed crazily before bouncing off the shoulder of the road, and rolling to a stop against the trunk of a tree.

As she crested the small hill, she saw him shove the driver’s side door open and stumble out.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he yelled, turning around and catching sight of her. “This is a rental, for Christ’s sake!”

She punched him in the nose, and he sat down hard, clapping his hands to his face. “Ow!” he yelped, muffled. Glaring up at her, he said, “What the f*ck was that for?”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she demanded. “You’re just going to leave? Without even saying good-bye?”

“No,” he snapped back as he stumbled to his feet. “I was just going to go up to the main road and see if I could get a decent signal on my cell phone. I can’t get shit for reception here.”

“You’re lying.”

He glared at her for a defiant moment, then rolled his eyes and sighed. “Okay, fine. Yes, I am. I was really leaving, but it wasn’t for good. I need to try and buy myself some more time.”

“Time for what?” Naima asked, planting her hands petulantly on her hips.

“This, for starters,” he replied, grabbing her by the front of her blouse and yanking her forward. With a yelp, she stumbled into his chest, then his hand clamped against the back of her head. When he kissed her, he kissed her fiercely, his tongue pushing past the seam of her lips and into her mouth.

“God, I could get used to that,” he whispered as they drew apart, leaning his forehead against hers.

“Then do it,” she whispered back, looking into his eyes—heartbreakingly blue, Mason had called them—and melting into him, body, mind and soul. “Stay here, Aaron.”

His brows lifted. “Naima…”

She caught his face between her hands, muffling him with another kiss. “Stay with me,” she begged.

Sighing heavily, he hung his head. “You know I can’t. My father’s got to be wondering what the hell I’m doing, what’s taking so long to—”

“Are you kidding?” she exclaimed, incredulous. “You mean the man who beat you with his cane, crushing your skull, who made you forget the part of your life? The one who failed to mention that the guy he’d sent you out here to kill was in fact your nephew—son of your older sister, who he raped when she was a child?”

“Yes, him,” Aaron growled. “He’s also the guy who owns Diadem Global, which subcontracts with most of the world’s developed countries for arms development and militia services—as well as ninety percent of the organized crime market in the western hemisphere. The guy with about a thousand satellite spy-scopes up in the atmosphere as we speak, damn likely listening in on our conversation right now. The guy who doesn’t just have hit men like me on his payroll—he’s got entire armies he can call in favors from, anytime, day or night—anywhere. You have no idea how much power he has in the human world. None of you do—not even Augustus Noble could touch him anymore.”

“It took him this long to find us,” Naima argued. “And we’ve been out here for ages. There are plenty of places just like this, Morin clan compounds all over the country—the world—where we could—”

“He never found you because he wasn’t looking for you. He thought you were all dead. He could have tracked you down in a matter of minutes if he’d known.” Aaron pressed his hand against her cheek and stared at her, pleading. “Moving across the country, changing my name—hell, dropping my identity altogether for thirty, forty years—that won’t make a difference, Naima. Once he figures out something’s wrong—any he probably has already—then he’s going to send out his hired guns, guys who make me look like a p-ssy schoolgirl.”

“I’m not afraid of Lamar,” she said, her brows narrowing.

“But I am,” Aaron said. “Not of what he’ll do to me when he finds me, but what he’ll do to you, to your clan. Trust me, a posse of your cousins with hunting rifles isn’t going to make a difference. Not against what he’d sic on you. As long as I’m alive, he’s going to hunt for me.”

“Then we convince him you’re dead,” she said.

He sighed, raking his fingers through his hair. “Naima…”

“What? It could work. It did before—he thought my family was killed off in the fires.”

“I’m not willing to take that chance,” he said.

For a man with amnesia, there was a world of memories swimming suddenly swimming within his eyes, she realized; ghosts of his past offering painful, terrifying reminders of just what he’d be facing—what they’d all be facing—if he betrayed Lamar. She knew what she asked of him was impossible, that it placed not only him at a tremendous risk, but as he’d said, her entire family, as well.

If we thought the war with the Davenants was brutal before now, just wait until Lamar learns about Aaron defecting to the Morin camp.

“I’ll come back for you,” he whispered in promise.

“No, you won’t.” Angry and hurt, she pushed at him, shoving him away from her. “He’s going to kill you. He’s going to punish you because Tristan’s still alive, and this time he…” Her voice choked, and she blinked against anguished tears. “This time, he’ll kill you.”

Aaron caught her by the hand. “Not if I kill him first.”

Startled, she blinked at him. “You…would do that?” she whispered.

“I’m probably the only person in the world who can. He hates me, yeah, and damn likely wants me dead, at least on some level, but still, he trusts me. I can get close to him. Close enough, at any rate, to do what needs to be done.”

He still cradled her hand in his own, and lifted it now, brushing his lips against her knuckles. “Give me a week. Two at the most. I’ll come back, Naima. I promise. And when I do, Lamar Davenant won’t be able to hurt us—or anyone else—ever again.”

He wouldn’t be dissuaded from it. She could see it in his eyes. He’d remembered a terrible truth about his father—one he’d likely suspected all along—and he meant to put an end to it. At long last, the man who had instilled such callous brutality in his son, who had tried through every type of abuse and torment imaginable to break him, would be made to answer for his crimes—and his sins.

Oh, God, she thought helplessly, terrified for Aaron. She flung her arms around his neck, and for a moment, she was a child again, a teenaged girl standing at the gated entrance to a long, dark tunnel, clinging to the young man she loved—the man she’d fight and die for.

“I’ll come back for you,” he whispered into her ear, his arms strong and warm as they encircled her, crushing her against him, lifting her off her feet. “I promise.”

I expect you’re the sort of man who doesn’t give his word lightly, and when he does, it’s binding, she almost heard Michel say, as if somehow, some way, he was granting his blessing to what was about to take place; as if granting his approval to the man his granddaughter loved.

She kissed Aaron’s mouth, tasting her own tears on his lips, then stepped aside and watched, trembling with heartache and chill as he climbed back behind the wheel of the Infiniti. He fired up the engine, then backed up onto the road once again.

“Aaron!” she cried out as he started to pull away. “Aaron, wait!”

The brake lights flared, then the reverse lights came on. He backed the car alongside her, and the driver’s window slid down.

“Take this.” From around her neck, Naima unclasped the St. Christopher’s medal. He blinked in surprise when she offered it to him, pressing it into his hand. “You…you might need need it,” she whispered, her voice warbling.

He pushed the driver’s side door open and rushed from the car. Clasping her face between his hands, he kissed her fiercely. She began to cry, clutching at him, and he held her, his forehead pressed to hers, for what seemed like an eternity—but at the same time, all-too painfully brief. When her tears had waned, and she trembled against him, her breath hitching, he brushed the tip of her nose with his.

“Why don’t you hold onto it for me?” he said softly, letting the medallion fall back into her palm. With a smile that both melted and broke her heart, all in one fell swoop, he added, “Doesn’t mean I’m your boyfriend or anything.”

Naima laughed and nodded. “O-okay.”

He stroked the side of her face again, and she turned her cheek into his palm.

“Stay safe,” she said as he drew away, ducking back into the Infiniti.

He closed the door. “I will.”

The window remained down, and he reached for her, hooking her fingers with his own.

As the car rolled slowly away, his hand slipped free. For a moment, she considered running after him, like a fool in the end of one of those stupid love stories. But ultimately, she stood, rooted in place, and watched him drive away. He’d promised he’d come back. And, she’d come to understand, he wasn’t a man who gave his word lightly—and when he did, he was bound by it.

I love you, Aaron, she thought, opening her mind and keeping a portion of herself—heart and soul—open to him.

I love you, too, she heard him say within her mind. Always, Naima. And forever.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“Definitely an author to watch.” That's how Romantic Times Book Reviews magazine describes Sara Reinke. New York Times bestselling author Karen Robards calls Reinke “a new paranormal star” and Love Romances and More hails her as “a fresh new voice to a genre that has grown stale.” Find out more about Reinke and her books at: www.sarareinke.com.