Out of the Dark (The Brethren Series)

CHAPTER THREE



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who…who are you?” she whispered.

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

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

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



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

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

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

He didn’t move, didn’t as much as flinch, as she gently drew the pad of her thumb against his bottom lip; even this tender, nearly intimate gesture drew no response.

“Aaron,” she said again, her voice gravelly and choked as she cradled his blood-smeared cheek against the basin of her palm. “Don’t you remember me?"

“Easy, chère,” said a voice from behind her. She turned, startled, and saw her half-brother, Rene Morin, standing in the doorway. He was tall, with dirty blond hair worn wind-swept and pushed back from his face, his jaw dusted with light beard stubble. He was from New Orleans, and had the Big Easy accent to prove it, a combination of French and Southern drawl. He was also an amputee; his right leg, from mid-thigh down was a state-of-the-art prosthetic that allowed him to move so naturally, had Naima not known of his handicap, she never would have guessed it.

“Save some of him for the rest of us, no?” With a crooked smile, Rene walked into the lab. Obviously he thought she had either just struck Aaron, or was about to, and either way, she stood up and backed away quickly before he suspected anything otherwise.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, wiping her hand against her pant leg as if she could brush away the warmth of Aaron’s skin and the memories of him—of her past—so easily. “I…I thought you and Tessa were in Kentucky.”

“We heard about what’s been going on with Tristan and decided to cut the trip short. Wanted to see if there was anything we could do to help,” Rene replied easily. “Besides, Eleanor was worried about you.”

Movement from the doorway attracted Naima’s attention, and she turned to find a tall, slender woman standing there. Eleanor Noble was beautiful, with a fall of dark waist-length hair and large, doe-like eyes. She held her arms around herself, as if in an embrace, and studied Naima, her expression unreadable.

“Karen told us you’d been hurt,” she said at length.

Rene brushed his fingertips against Naima’s brow, where a sore knot had formed, thanks to Aaron’s headbutt. She found herself ducking reflexively, with a frown. “I’m alright.”

“You sure about that?” he asked. “You got a goose egg the size of a ping pong ball coming up there.”

Naima’s frown deepened. “I’m alright,” she said again.

“Why don’t you come with me, darling?” Eleanor offered. “We can go back to the chateau. I’ll make you some tea.”

“I have to stay here,” Naima said. “Mason said to.”

“This belong to him?” Rene had found the pistol and lifted it in hand, curling his fingers lightly, comfortably about the stock and admiring the heft. When Naima nodded, he arched his brow. “Damn. This is right nice. Wouldn’t have thought Doc Fancy Pants had this kind of good taste in firearms.” He glanced at Naima. “Why don’t you go on with Eleanor? Some ice on that bump of yours won’t do you any harm. I’ll keep here with our friend, no? I used to be a cop, after all.” Cracking the knuckles of his right fist in the basin of his left palm, he added with a wink, “I’ve handled my fair share of interrogations before.”

Naima glanced over her shoulder. Aaron’s head had dropped again, but he was awake; she had no doubt of that.

“Come on.” Eleanor slipped her arm through Naima’s, giving a gentle but imperative tug. “The hell with tea. We’ll have cognac. Michel has a nice bottle of Croizet Cuvée Léonie…1858, I think it is.”

Naima looked at her, and the other woman met her gaze. Her eyes were kind, filled with a gentle sympathy. She was the only soul Naima to whom had ever told anything of her time in the Beneath—and after that, in the hellish prison Lamar Davenant had devised for her. She hadn’t told her everything—not the whole truth, especially about Aaron—but Eleanor had clearly realized who he was, and what his presence at the compound was undoubtedly doing to Naima.

It’s breaking me…shattering me like glass.

“Go on, chère,” Rene told her gently. “I got this.” They’d had their share of differences in the past—hell, Naima had damn near telekinetically thrown him through the engine compartment of his car—but all at once, she was grateful to him, grateful for him, and the escape he was offering that she so desperately needed.

“Alright,” Naima whispered, nodding. With a smile, Eleanor drew an arm about her, a kind embrace, and Naima struggled against the unexpected and uncharacteristic urge to burst into tears. “Alright.”

***

Naima sat in the passenger seat of Eleanor’s SUV as the other woman drove to the guest cottage she and Augustus had been sharing while in California. Naima sat still and quiet, her gaze drifting dazedly between the light-bathed pine boughs and foliage ahead of them and her own reflection—haunted, shaken and nearly unrecognizable to her—in the side-view mirror to her right. From the feel of things, Eleanor had the heat blasting, every vent in the cab apparently aimed in her direction, but it didn’t help. She couldn’t stop shivering.

She remembered the soft, scraping sounds as Aaron had pried and dug at the pine planks above her dark prison beneath the library floor, sending dust and grit spattering down into the narrow cleft of earth that had served as her home for so long. Sometimes, she’d fallen asleep to the noise, comforted by it in a strange sort of way, if only because it meant she wasn’t alone, that there was somebody close by who cared about her, who wanted to help her.

When he’d torn open a section of floor wide enough to wedge his hand through, Aaron would reach down, stroking her hair in the darkness while she cried. She would clutch at him, cling to him, bury her tear-soaked face against his fingers.

It’s alright, he’d whisper to her. I’m here. I’m right here.

The Jeep stopped and Naima slid forward in her seat, startled from her memories.

“The man at the clinic,” Eleanor remarked at last. She’d turned the engine off, and the two of them sat in a prolonged, heavy silence. When she spoke, Eleanor didn’t look at Naima, but rather straight ahead, out the windshield. “He’s Aaron Davenant, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

Another long pause, and then Eleanor turned to her. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.” Naima hooked her hand against the latch and swung her door open wide. As she stepped out onto the gravel drive, her breath wafted out in a thin haze around her face, and goosebumps rose immediately along her arms. The ground was cold, and she hurried for the wooden stairs leading up to the cottage’s deck.

At the top of the stairs, she found Eleanor’s granddaughter, Tessa Noble, waiting. She was nearly five months pregnant, her lower abdomen a gently protruding outward swell beneath the thin cotton of her nightgown. Naima felt a pang of envy she might not have ordinarily allowed herself; seeing Aaron again had left her emotionally vulnerable. She couldn’t have children of her own. Lamar had seen to that.

“Tessa, darling, what are you doing out here?” Eleanor asked, walking up the stairs behind Naima. “I thought you were sleeping. All of this excitement and traveling—you must be exhausted.”

“I’m fine, Grandmother,” Tessa said, and when her hands dropped unconsciously to the slope of her belly, Naima again felt that wicked little pang. “I couldn’t sleep.” As Naima walked toward her, she shied back a step, her eyes round and wary. “Is Michel alright? Did…did they catch the one who…?”

“Michel’s been shot,” Naima said flatly, brushing past Tessa and stepping through the sliding glass patio door. A small, tended fire had been left to smolder in the creek stone fireplace, and the interior of the cottage was thick with heady warmth. “He’s in surgery now.”

“But yes, darling, they caught the man who shot him,” Eleanor added swiftly, sweeping an arm about her granddaughter and ushering her into the house.

“It was one of the Davenants, wasn’t it?” Tessa asked. “You told me the one who hurt Tristan and Mason, he’d been here in the woods, at the compound. They know where we are. They know how to find us now.”

“They think it was one of the Davenants, yes,” Eleanor said. “But they caught him. There’s nothing more to fear.”

Tessa shrugged away from Eleanor’s embrace, her brows narrowing. “There could be more of them out there,” she said. “Plenty more! And plenty more besides that on their way as we speak.” She was worried about her baby. She’d been married to Martin Davenant, one of Aaron’s nephews. Martin was dead now, but that didn’t mean Lamar wouldn’t still want his unborn heir. Naima knew this. And judging by the glossy fright she could see in Tessa’s eyes, could feel radiating off the girl in veritable waves, Tessa knew it, too. “You don’t know them. You don’t know how they are, how they think…”

“I do,” Naima said, and even though Tessa knew nothing of her past, her own encounters with the Davenant clan, there must have been something fierce enough in her face, blunt enough in her gaze, to draw the younger woman to abrupt, gulping silence.

“Naima, stop,” Eleanor said, holding out her hands as if she felt she had to physically separate them. “Both of you. Please. Let’s just sit. There’s already been enough—”

“No. Tessa’s right,” Naima said, and she damn near kicked herself mentally in the ass for not having considered it sooner. She’d been so bewildered, so shocked and upset at Aaron’s presence, she’d forgotten common sense, the instincts upon which she ordinarily relied. “There could be more of them out there.” She nodded once, indicating beyond the windows, the dark-draped forest. “I need to scout the woods and see.”

“Auguste can do that,” Eleanor said.

“Not on his own, he can’t. There’s too much ground to cover. And he doesn’t know these hills like I do. I can do it in half the time it would take him.”

Eleanor frowned, her eyes flashing hotly. She opened her mouth to argue some more, but apparently couldn’t think of anything to say. Because I’m right, and you know it, Naima thought, folding her arms across her chest in feigned patience.

“Call him and tell him to scope out the southern slope, down to Emerald Bay,” she told Eleanor. “I’ll take the north, then work my way down from there to meet him.”

It would be good, she told herself. Good to have something else to focus her attention on, target her mind toward. Something to distract me, she thought. From my memories, from the past…God help me, from the man in that medical clinic less than five miles from where I’m standing.