Out of the Dark (The Brethren Series) (16 page)

“If you try to leave here on your own,
you’re as good as dead,” she told him. “You want to take your chances with that—against the entire Morin clan, all armed and pissed at you with a fucking vengeance—you go right ahead. I can’t block you against all of them. I don’t even know if I can block you from Augustus, not for long anyway. But I’d rather take my chances with him than against my whole family.” She stepped to the side, leaving his path to the doorway clear and unobstructed. “The choice is yours, Aaron.”

He didn’t move, save to lift his hands, palms facing in her, in concession. His body had healed somewhat and had strengthened, as had his mind and telepathy. He had every confidence he could handle himself against Augustus Noble—at least long enough to get away—or any other member of the Morin family, at least one on one. Possibly two or three at a time. But more than that? Unarmed and operating at
half his normal, healthy capacity?

Dead on arrival,
he thought.
Me, that is.

When she realized he’d agreed with her, if only
wordlessly, she nodded once, seemingly satisfied, then turned and left the bathroom. “Your shoes are upstairs,” he heard her say. “Your jacket, too.”

“Thanks,” he murmured as he followed her toward the living room. Taking the steps two at a time on the spiral staircase, he returned to the loft bedroom where he’d first come to. As she’d said, he found his
mountain-climbing sneakers in a corner by the bed, his black hoodie draped over the back of a nearby chair. As he shrugged the jacket on, he tugged his T-shirt down in the back, his fingers grazing against the rough-hewn scars Naima had taken notice of earlier.

He did that to you, didn’t he?
she’d said.
Lamar, I mean…your father.

The truth was, most of the scars had been self-inflicted, though at Lamar’s command. Because Lamar was unable to experience any kind of sexual arousal or release, he used sadism as a means of achieving personal gratification. Flagellation, or “mortification of the flesh,” as Lamar called it, was a favorite past-time that he’d forced upon Aaron over the centuries. Most often, Aaron would strip to the waist and kneel within his father’s line of sight. He’d then jerk a knot into his belt and use it to beat himself, with the buckle being on the striking end for maximum brutal impact. On more than one occasion, he’d beaten himself to the point where he’d passed out, with Lamar squealing all the while inside his head:
More, goddammit! More, more, more!

Aaron pinched the bridge of his nose hard enough to leave him seeing little pinpoints of dazzling light dancing in his line of sight
, snapping himself from the past to the present. Sometimes he felt certain it wasn’t such a bad thing, his amnesia. Sometimes memories were more trouble—and more unpleasant—than they were worth.

Zipping up the jacket, he hurried back downstairs
andfound Naima sitting on her sofa, cradling a framed photograph between her hands. She didn’t even seem to notice him until he came to stand behind her. As she glanced over her shoulder at him, he saw the photo was of her and Michel.

“I’m sorry about your grandfather,” he said quietly, clumsily, because that was what you said when someone lost a loved one. He tried not to think about the fact that he’d shot the man less than twelve hours earlier
. Even though he hadn’t been the one to kill Michel, he damn well could have been.

“He helped you once,” she
said softly. “The first time I ever met you. Your father had beaten you. I found you hiding in our barn, and Michel brought you back to your father’s house. But first, he cleaned up your wounds, stitched the whip marks on your back. He knew you were a Davenant, but he helped you anyway.”

Her voice grew choked, and he saw tears glistening in her eyes before she turned her head quickly away. “I know you don’t remember that,” she said hoarsely. “That you don’t giv
e a shit, but it matters to me. Michel’s a good man. He…he…”

The hardened fury
faded as tears suddenly flooded her eyes. He watched her struggle proudly not to let them fall, her lips drawing together in a defiant, quivering line. When one slipped past the line of her lashes, she uttered a soft, hurting sound and drew her hand to her mouth.

“Hey,” he said gently, moving to stand in front of her. When she shook his head and wouldn’t look at him, her arms folded tightly across her chest, he squatted, resting his weight on his toes. “I’m sorry.”

She glared at him, as if appalled by his audacity, that he’d dare to try and empathize with her pain when he’d come to South Lake Tahoe with pretty much the same goal of death and pain to her family in mind.

He reached for her, brushing his fingertips against her cheek to wipe away the tear. Something about it troubled him deeply; seeing her cry left his heart feeling suddenly scraped hollow and raw. She’d put a white blouse on over her black tank top, but hadn’t buttoned it closed. The buttons were small and spherical, made of an opaque plastic designed to look like pearls. Aaron stared at these for a long moment before his hand strayed from her face so he could touch one
, pinching it lightly between his fingertips and watching the play of light against its surface.

His human neurologist, Andrea Coleman, had told him it would be possible to reclaim his lost memories if his brain learned new associations, new triggers to reach them. To that point, nothing except for the St. Christopher’s medal had proven such a trigger—but all at once, the combination of Naima’s tears, her soft, fluttering breath, and that imitation pearl button struck him so powerfully, so abruptly, it was as if he blacked out.

My sister’s dress,
he thought dazedly, because he remembered ducking into the room that Larissa, Lenore, and Lorelle shared on the first floor of his father’s great house on the night of his mother’s birthday—the same night she’d given him her St. Christopher’s medal to hold in his pocket because the clasp on the filigree chain was broken. His sisters had all been upstairs in the ballroom celebrating; he remembered hearing the pounding rhythm of dancing footsteps overhead, the faint refrains of fiddle music.

He yanked open the large wardrobe his sisters had shared, and had shoved flouncy, ruffled skirts and gowns aside before finding a simple day dress, something wrought of olive-colored calico cotton. Throwing it over his arm, he’d turned and darted back into the corridor.

I remember,
he thought, eyes widening.
Naima was there in the hallway, waiting for me. She was crying.

In his mind, he could see her: inexplicably naked, shivering in the corridor, her arms wrapped fiercely around herself. When he’d caught her by the hand, pulling her in tow, she came with him willingly. She stood back, her chest hitching, her breath hiccupping as she watched him squat, then pull open a hinged trap door behind the main staircase. Beneath it was a set of steps fashioned from creek stones that descended into the cold darkness of the cellar.

And at the bottom of those stairs is a heavy iron gate,
he thought.
The key’s hanging on a hook nearby. It’s the old Indian tunnels—the Beneath.

He remembered turning to Naima, who still openly wept
, then dipping his hand into the fob pocket of his breeches.

“Take this,” he breathed, pressing something into her trembling hands—his mother’s necklace. She blinked at him in frightened bewilderment. “You’ll need it. It’s silver. You can trade it for money, for passage, or food.”

She was terrified. She couldn’t stop trembling, and when she tried to pull the dress on over her head, she kept stumbling. He helped tug the heavy folds of skirt down past her hips, then drew the front of the bodice closed over her breasts. She stood still, arms dangling at her sides, as lax and unresisting as a ragdoll while he buttoned the dress.

The buttons.

These had been small and round, imitation pearls made from ivory, not plastic. But they had looked the same, and he’d carried with him a small lamp to light their way, one he’d set on the floor to help dress her. The way the light had infused in the buttons as he’d worked clumsily to close them…

That’s what made me remember. The buttons.

Naima draped her hand lightly against his, startling him from his reverie. “Aaron?” she whispered.

I remember,
he thought.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

He blinked at her. “I think I just remembered.”

***

“I must admit, I was surprised by your offer to drive me today,” Augustus remarked.

“Trust me,” Naima growled, keeping her eyes pinned out the windshield in front of her. “It wasn’t my first choice of arrangements, either.”

They sat side by side in the front seats of Mason’s black Cadillac Escalade, an overpriced monstrosity that featured heated leather seats, GPS navigation, power sunroof and a chrome-framed vanity plate that read
TOP DOC.
She’d taken it because it was bigger than her own vehicle, which meant Aaron could hide more comfortably in the back, but had borrowed it without asking Mason first. This was only because when she’d crept into the clinic office again, having knocked repeatedly with no response at the door, she’d found him passed out, face-down and sprawled on a leather couch inside. The now-empty bottle of cognac had been lying on the floor within his limp, lifeless reach. She’d slipped the keys from his pocket, kissed him gently on the brow and left.

Aaron lay in the rear compartment, tucked inconspicuously beneath a tumble of emergency blankets. He’d told her he was regaining his strength, and not to worry; he’d be able to protect himself from Augustus’ telepathic notice.

She
knew
he was in the truck, but no matter how hard she tried, she was unable to sense him with her mind—not his thoughts, his presence, or even the very essence of his Brethren nature, which normally should have stimulated a tingling response in her central nervous system. It was as if he had the ability to cloak himself completely from psionic detection. Which, she had to admit, was pretty damn impressive, particularly when dealing with someone as powerful and skilled as Augustus Noble.

“No one knows the roads around here better than me, Tristan or…” Her voice faltered; she caught herself before saying
Michel.
She stiffened in her seat, tightening her grip against the molded steering wheel, then, with a deep breath, she continued. “…or Mason. And since neither of them is in any shape at the moment to drive anyone anywhere, that kind of leaves it my responsibility.”

As she pulled up to the electronic gate blocking the entrance to the Morin property, she saw a pair of armed men standing guard
—Phillip and one of his cousins, Adrien. Phillip met her gaze through the windshield glass, then cut his eyes toward Augustus in an obvious glare as she reached for the remote control that was clipped to her overhead sun visor to open the gate.

“Phillip’s not happy about you leaving,” she said, pushing a button and watching as the heavy gate began to roll on its tracks. “Something about he thinks you owe it to Michel to stay, considering all of the help and treatment he’s given Eleanor over the years.”

“Phillip is in no position to judge anyone on their degree of loyalty or obligation to the Morin clan,” Augustus assured her drily, meeting Phillip’s stare through the glass, his expression icy. “As he’s failed to demonstrate either for more than one hundred years.”

The gate drew all of the way open, but at first, Naima didn’t think either Phillip or Adrien would get out of the way. She lifted her foot off the brake, tapping the gas pedal enough to send the enormous SUV rumbling slowly forward—a hint. When they still didn’t move, she felt a momentary panic.
Can they sense Aaron somehow? Do they suspect what I’m up to?

She huffed out a sharp breath and frowned as she smacked the center of the steering column, blatting the horn—another hint, this time not so subtle. Phillip scowled at her, but
he and Adrien stepped aside, moving to stand among the underbrush and fallen pine needles at the shoulder of the rutted gravel road.

“Thank you,” she muttered, not bothering to be mindful when stomping down on the gas, and kicking up a spray of loose gravel and grit at them as the Escalade
drove off.

“You’ll pardon the observation,” Augustus said, curling his fingers a bit more tightly against the door handle bar on the passenger side as the big truck skidded for purchase. “But there doesn’t seem to be much by way of love lost between you and your uncle.”

“Phillip?” She glanced first at Augustus, then out her side-view mirror, where she could see Phillip, a shrinking figure, behind them. “No. There’s not.”

One night, when well into his bourbon, Michel had told her he’d long suspected it had been Phillip who had alerted the Brethren Council to her presence, that it had been Phillip who had directed one of their human farm-hands to report “discovering” her in the midst of tearing open a live chicken to feed—which had been an outright lie—and thus leading to her horrific imprisonment.

Augustus didn’t press further, which led her to suspect that he knew about this belief of Michel’s as well.

“Phillip was never one much to enjoy sharing in his father’s attention,” he remarked idly, his gaze traveling out the passenger side window as pine trees blurred past. “Be that competition in the form of siblings, or grandchildren…” He said this last with a pointed glance in Naima’s direction before returning his attention out his window. “
Even his wives. Or at least his first one, Lisette. Michel was very fond of her, you know.”