CHAPTER ELEVEN
Memory was a fragile thing. Aaron had learned this the hard way. Because of his accident, the first thing he really remembered about his life was opening his eyes and looking up to see someone he would later come to know as his older brother, Julien. At the time, his face had summoned no pangs of familiarity; had in essence, meant nothing to him—as had the word brother, in fact, or any other word for that matter.
Two hundred years later and shortly after he’d received the anonymous package on his doorstep, the one with the St. Christopher’s medal enclosed, he’d undergone a CT scan without letting either Julien or his father know.
“You can see punctate foci evident in this slide, along left bilateral infero-medial frontal lobe,” his doctor, a human neurologist named Andrea Coleman, had told him, showing him a black and white film from his procedure, a cross-section of his cranium. “They indicate areas of past capillary hemorrhage.” She walked over to the examination table where he sat, and lifted his chart in hand. Flipping through it, she glanced at him and asked, “Have you ever sustained any kind of head injury?”
“I fell off a horse when I was a kid,” he’d offered, and when her brows had risen in an “a-ha” sort of way, he added, “Sometimes I have trouble with things, faces and names, that sort of stuff from my past.”
This was the closest he would come to admitting why he’d wanted the CT scan in the first place. He didn’t mention that he had no memory whatsoever of the first thirty years of his life, or that the fifteen years immediately following had gone by in a sort of mental blur, as well.
“Retrograde amnesia of the sort you’re describing is very common among head injury patients,” she remarked with a nod.
“In other words, I’m brain damaged,” he said, making her laugh.
“No, in other words you may think you’ve lost memories, but you haven’t. Your brain just can’t get to them the way it would normally.” Returning to the examination table, Dr. Coleman reached out, drawing her fingertips lightly through his hair just above his ear. “The frontal lobe processes memories, but they aren’t stored there. That’s the job of your temporal lobe, here.. Every time your brain creates a memory, it’s because of chemical activity causing cells called neurons to interact with one another. It binds them together so they all work like an electrical circuit. The trigger for recalling the memory is here…”
She tapped her fingertip against his forehead. “…in your frontal lobe. But the memory itself is here…”
Another tap, this time on his temple. “…in the temporal part of your brain. If the circuit between the frontal and temporal lobes gets disrupted or broken somehow, such as in the case of an injury to your brain, it doesn’t mean the storehouse of memories is gone. It means the old triggers don’t work anymore because the circuit has been broken. So you have to try and rewire them.”
“You mean I could still get them back? My memories?” he asked, surprised, and with a smile, she nodded.
“It’s possible. Sometimes patients who have suffered traumatic brain injuries in the same region of the left frontal lobe have been able to regain lost memories by establishing new triggers. They’re all still there.” With another smile, Dr. Coleman tapped his temple with her forefinger again. “Right where you left them. It’s just that your head injury messed up the neural wiring, so to speak.”
***
The demands of Aaron’s accelerated healing left precious little, if any energy reserves, and despite being cramped and uncomfortable in Naima’s bathtub, he also found himself completed exhausted. He tried to stay awake—telling himself the last thing he needed was for one of the Morin clan to come tromping through Naima’s house and find him passed out in the tub—but his poor battered, aching body had other plans.
He slept so hard, when he awoke again, for a long moment, he had no idea where he was, or what had happened to him. He wasn’t even sure what had roused him at first; not until he heard the soft patter of light footsteps and a softer voice—a woman’s—calling for him did her remember.
Naima.
He flexed his mind experimentally, extending his telepathy with caution. To his pleased surprise, it no longer felt taxing to do this, and he was easily able to sweep his immediate surroundings. He sensed Naima even as she hurried into the bathroom; her mind was cluttered with fast-moving, overlapping thoughts, as if she was excited or anxious.
“Aaron?” She yanked open the shower curtain framing the tub and looked down at him, visibly surprised. “Why are you still in here?”
“I fell asleep,” he mumbled. As he sat up, he felt a nasty crick seize in his neck and with a frown, he rubbed at the knotted muscles bridging to his shoulder with his hand. Already he could tell his body had recuperated more as he’d. Even though moving caused his broken ribs to ache, the stabbing pain he’d felt only hours earlier was gone, and he was once again able to draw in a full, deep breath without grimacing or gasping. His eyes no longer felt swollen from where Mason had pummeled him; neither did his lips, and when he touched his nose tentatively, it no longer felt like he was handling a grotesquely swollen, lopsided, overripe tomato.
“We have to go.” Naima stepped back from the tub, a clear but unspoken indication she meant for him to climb out. “Come on.”
“Where?” he asked, bracing himself with one hand against the tub rim, and the nearest wall with the other while he unfurled the rusted hinges of his knees and stumbled to his feet.
“Carson City. I’m driving Augustus Noble to the airport. It’s the only way I can smuggle you off the compound.”
“Augustus?” He raised his brow as he stepped out over the side of the tub. “Is he aware of this arrangement?”
She shot him a withering glare. It occurred to him that her eyes looked puffy, her corneas glassy and reddened, as if she’d been crying. And then he remembered why she had to go in the first place.
“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 f*cking 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 give 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.”
“Yes.” Naima nodded. “He often spoke of her.”
Phillip had pretty much washed her hands of Lisette following an unfortunate stillbirth of what would have been their first child together. When she had become pregnant with Tristan—Arnaud’s child—Michel had welcomed Lisette to the South Lake Tahoe compound instead of casting her out of the clan. In furious retaliation for this, Phillip had disassociated himself completely from his father and the rest of the family.
“Do you think he realized?” Augustus asked, and when she looked his way, puzzled, he added, “Aaron Davenant. Do you think he realized when he attacked Tristan that he was, in fact, trying to murder his own nephew? Lisette was his sister, you know.”
Naima’s foot nearly slipped off the gas pedal in surprise. “What?”
She’d known Lisette was a Davenant, but no more than this. Lisette had never spoken of her birth family, or her life before joining the Morin clan, and Naima had never asked her. Given the enormous size of the Brethren clans—especially in the early part of the nineteenth century—she’d always assumed Lisette had been a cousin of Aaron’s, once or twice removed along the way.
The corner of Augustus’ mouth hooked in a wry little smile. “She was Lamar’s eldest daughter, betrothed to Phillip by decree of the Tomes shortly after I shot and killed his son Victor in a duel. I think the Elders hoped it would mend the wounds that duel had cleaved among the clans, but instead it only worsened them.”
The smile faltered, then faded. “Michel was my second, and refused to provide Victor medical care personally upon the dueling field so that he could instead tend to me. Lamar promised he’d get revenge against Michel for that unintended insult. ‘A brother for a brother, a son for a son,’ that’s what he swore—a son from Michel, because he walked away…”
“And a brother from Mason, because Mason couldn’t save Victor’s life,” she murmured, not bothering to mention that she’d been present when Lamar had first issued this deranged vow.
“Yes.” Augustus nodded once. He was quiet for a long moment, content to fiddle with the control buttons beside his seat, adjusting the angle of the reclining back more comfortably. “You know Michel was Tristan’s father.”
Now her foot did slide off the gas; Naima tromped on the brakes, and the Escalade skidded to a halt. “What?” she exclaimed, with a bark of hoarse laughter. “Bullshit! He was not.”
“Why else would Jean-Luc Davenant have targeted Tristan in Las Vegas?” Augustus countered pointedly.
A brother for a brother, a son for a son. Lamar’s venom-filled voice echoed in Naima’s mind. That’s what I mean to claim from you, Morin. There will be your recompense for the wrongs you’ve committed, you and your boy. A brother for a brother, a son for a son. I’ll see one of each claimed, and by Christ, I will not rest until I do.
“Oh, my God,” she breathed, stunned.
“Michel loved Lisette very much,” Augustus said, his voice low and sorrowful. Again he turned his head, letting his eyes travel sadly beyond the tinted glass of his window. “Burying her was the hardest thing I think he ever had to do. I take some comfort now in knowing he’s again in her company—where he so dearly yearned to be.”
***
Lisette.
Dr. Coleman had told Aaron that triggers for his lost memories would come unexpectedly, and it sure didn’t come any more so than lying on his back in the rear hatch of the SUV, listening to Augustus and Naima.
He’d known his sister, of course, at least by name. Even though he’d lived separately from the Davenant clan for most of his life after his accident—and continued to do so even now—he’d been acquainted with the names of all his siblings. He had no memories of Lisette that he could recount, because she’d been married and out of their father’s house by the time he’d fallen and struck his head. But Julian had mentioned her from time to time, usually if he’d been knocking back the tequila too hard, and always with a wistful sort of fondness in his voice and on his face.
“She was beautiful, Az,” he’d told Aaron once. “An angel in spirit and form. She loved you—God, Az, you think I dote on you? You should have seen Lisette. She had you spoiled practically rotten, a fat little duckling who followed her everywhere. You were her darling, and you stuck to her like a shadow.”
Aaron had held no memories of her that were his own, however. He’d never known what she looked like, this sister he’d once apparently followed so adoringly. But all at once, as he lay beneath the heavy shroud of blankets swathed over his head, it hit him like an electrical shock; he jerked reflexively, uttering a soft gasp as within his mind he saw her clearly.
A warm summer’s day, and she had me into the wooded fields beyond the perimeter of our family yard, where the great house was no longer visible to us for the distance and the trees, and where the grass was so high, she could part it with her hands as she blazed a trail through it—and I could drop to my knees and be fully enveloped, invisible within it.
They had been near the spring house, a place where the rolling fields and forested meadows dropped abruptly off at a steep, cragged angle. At the bottom, a stone hut had been build—the family’s spring house—and from beneath its foundation flowed a babbling, meandering brook.
He and Lisette had been playing hide-and-seek. He remembered her beautiful golden blonde hair alight in the bright afternoon sunshine; it had worked loose from her carefully bundled plaits in long tendrils that flapped around her face in the light, insistent breeze.
He remembered her skin, porcelain pale with sun-kissed cheeks, and her eyes, enormous and blue like his own. When she laughed, her grin would stretch wide, her mouth open, and the sound was like music.
“Where are you, little rabbit?” she called out as she bent over and cut back and forth through the thick grass, sweeping it with her outstretched hands. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
Hunkered down and out of sight in the grass, he’d giggled, but remembered now—the sudden clamor of hoof-beats, the snorting and snuffling of a winded horse, and the jangling of tack as a rider had approached.
Father. Aaron risked a peek out over the swaying tips of blanched grass and saw Lamar approaching them, his large dappled gelding sweat-glossed and whipped to a fierce cantor.
“Hoah, there,” he heard Lamar call out to the steed as he drew it to a skittering halt. For a long moment, there was silence, and Aaron lay pressed against the dirt.
“Who are you, girl?” Lamar asked Lisette. With a grunt, he swung his leg around and dismounted, his muddied riding boots settling heavily against the ground beneath him. It was before his accident, then, Aaron realized in retrospect, the one which had crippled his stride and ruined his spine.
Lamar pulled off one of his gloves and patted the gelding’s gleaming hide with his bare palm as he regarded Lisette, brows narrowed against the sun’s glare. “Answer me, girl.”
Lisette had dropped a curtsey, pinning her eyes to her toes. “I…I’m Lisette, sir. Your daughter.”
By that point, several of Lamar’s brothers still lived with them, along with all of their offspring, so it was not so unusual or insulting for Lamar not to recognize one of his own offspring on sight—especially a daughter, with whom he seldom had little, if any, interaction.
“One of mine?” he asked, and when she nodded, he asked somewhat dubiously, “Who is your mother?”
“Annette, sir,” she replied, her voice little more than a shy mumble as he strode toward her.
Lamar carried a riding crop in hand, and she flinched visibly when he caught her beneath the chin with it, forcing her to lift her eyes to meet his own. “Well,” he said with a harrumph. “So you are. Who’s out here with you?”
He swept his gaze across the grass and among the trees. Aaron flattened himself against the ground, his heart pounding, his breath hitching with bright terror.
“No one, sir,” Lisette said quickly. “I…I was going to look for juniper down by the spring house.”
“Does your mother know you’re out here?”
“No, sir,” Lisette said, shaking her head.
“Does anyone?” Lamar demanded sharply, and her shoulders hunched.
“No, sir.”
His brows narrowed and his mouth turned down in a stern scowl. “Stupid girl,” he admonished. “Anything could happen to you and none of us would be aware. This farm is crawling with Negroes—damn dirty slaves. Any one of them would give his right eye for the chance to plow between your thighs. And there are still rumors of savages about.” Reaching out, he pinched a wayward strand of her yellow hair between his forefinger and thumb, giving it a slight, speculative twist. “They favor the fair-headed for their scalp collections, you know.”
Obviously, Lisette hadn’t known this. She trembled where she stood and tears swam in her eyes. “I…I’m sorry, sir.”
“Pretty little flower, are you not?” Lamar remarked softly, letting his gaze travel slowly from her face toward the burgeoning swell of her bosom, then down, following the line of her skirt. “How old are you, girl?”
“Fourteen, sir.”
“Not a flower at all, then, but a blossom,” he murmured, seeming momentarily distracted. Then his expression hardened again and he frowned all the more. “Stupid girl,” he snapped again. “Niggers and savages alike…any of them and all…they’d love to lay their hands—and other parts besides—on you.”
She didn’t reply, but Aaron could see humiliated flush blooming brightly in her cheeks.
“Here, now,” Lamar said, his tone softening as he stepped closer to her. “Look at me now. Up, up, up with those eyes—there’s a girl.” With a kindly smile, he leaned over and kissed her forehead. “You’re a beautiful lamb, Lisette. I only speak sharply because I mean to protect what’s mine.”
Lisette smiled clumsily, and sniffled a bit. “Thank you, sir,” she said, stiffening uncomfortably as Lamar kissed her again, this time on the cheek.
“And you are, you know, child,” Lamar murmured, draping his hands against her shoulders. When he kissed her again on the opposite cheek—closer to the corner of her mouth, in fact, from the looks of things—she shuddered.
“Mine.” He moved to let his lips brush hers, his hands sliding down the front of her bodice to cup the outward swells of her breasts.
Lisette recoiled, stumbling back in the grass. “Please don’t…!” she hiccupped.
Lamar seized her roughly by the crook of the elbow, and when she again tried to shy away, he struck her, swinging his hand wide and hitting the side of her face. He whipped his hand around the opposite way and slapped her again, then repeated this over and over, at least a dozen times, until Lisette’s nose and mouth were bloody, her knees were buckling, and she sobbed helplessly, piteously.
Lamar said nothing else, and neither did she. He shoved her down into the grass, and as Aaron watched, stricken and horrified, he squatted alongside her, jerking open the front ties of his breeches.
Lisette’s hands came up from the grass, pawing at him in feeble protest as he leaned over her. Aaron could hear her mewling; after Lamar struck her several more times, her hands drooped back toward the ground, and her muffled cries ceased. Aaron could hear his father breathing heavily, nearly panting, and the sound of Lisette weeping.
When at last it was over, Aaron looked out over the tops of the windswept grass and watched as Lamar staggered to his feet. His shirt tails had pulled loose of his breeches, and he shoved them back into place. His wig had fallen askew, and he straightened this as well before refastening his fly.
“Get your ass back home,” he growled at his daughter, striding over to where his gelding had wandered off to graze closer to the steep embankment leading down to the spring house—and less than five feet away from Aaron’s hiding place in the grass. “I want to know where to find it lest I have want or need of it again.”
Hooking his foot in the stirrup, and seizing hold of the reins at the horse’s withers, Lamar swung himself back into the saddle. It was at about this time that the gelding lifted its head, perhaps annoyed that it had been disturbed, especially since it had just discovered a thick growth of sweet clover hidden among the tall grass. As it looked up, the horse caught sight of Aaron and frighted. Its nostrils flared; its lips drew back as it bared its teeth against the restraint of the bit, and with a sharp whinny, it began to stomp its hooves, dancing anxiously backward.
“Whoa!” Lamar didn’t Aaron among the weeds. He said it again, jerking the reins hard and forcing the horse’s chin toward its shoulder—“Whoa, I say!”—and then the gelding reared, its front hooves flailing in the air.
Lamar uttered a startled yelp as he fell from his saddle. He landed on his back, hitting the ground hard, and then pitched, ass over elbows, down the embankment. In its backpedaling, the gelding had drawn too close to the drop-off’s edge, and its back hooves slid in the loose soil and pebbles. With a screech, it, too, toppled off the hill. Aaron heard the sickening, moist crunch of bones breaking—first its legs and then its neck—and his father’s shriek as the heavy beast plowed over him.
Aaron scrambled to his feet and watched their tumbling ascent. Lamar landed face-up in the creek, sprawled across the rocks, with water swirling and bubbling around his outstretched limbs. The horse crashed atop him, and he appeared grotesquely bisected beneath; as if his hips and legs had decided to go in one direction, while his shoulders and arms had pursued another. His face was bloodied, battered, but he was conscious, at least somewhat so, at least for a moment. His eyes were open, and he stared up the embankment at Aaron. He lifted his hand feebly, trembling, at his son, then opened his mouth; blood spewed out in a heavy flood, streaming down the contours of his cheek and chin.
Aaron shrank back, terrified, and Lisette grabbed him by the arm.
“Is he dead?” she whispered. Her hair was a mess, framing her face in a tangled halo strewn with broken bits of grass and twigs. Her nose was swollen, her lips puffed up, her eye turning purple. Her dress was torn and blood-splattered.
“I don’t know,” Aaron replied. He didn’t want to look anymore, but Lisette had crept close to the edge, so he followed, hiding in her skirt. He risked a peep and saw his father’s eyes were closed now. They both clearly heard Lamar groan, however, his voice soft and agonized, from the gulley below.
“Oh, God,” Lisette gasped, scrambling back and dragging Aaron in tow. “We have to get help! Come on!”
“Why?” Aaron looked up at her, frightened and confused. “He hurt you, Lisette. He made you cry. You…you’re bleeding.” Tears had been welling up for awhile now, and all at once, he let them come. His lip quivered and he began to weep.
“Oh, mon lapin,” she murmured, calling him my rabbit in French. Kneeling before him, she hugged him fiercely. “Please don’t cry. It’s alright. He…he didn’t hurt me. I’m fine. See?” Cupping his face between her hands, she made him look at her as she forced a smile. “I’m just fine. Come on now. Father’s hurt. We have to get help.”
“I hate him,” Aaron whispered, trembling.
Lisette slapped him in the face. “Don’t you say that,” she hissed, grabbing his shoulders now and giving him a firm little shake. “Don’t you ever say that again, Aaron Davenant. No matter what he says, no matter what he does—he’s your father. He’s your father and he’s mine and we…we must honor and respect him…and obey…”
All at once, with a little sob, she burst into tears, too. Yanking him close, she hugged him again, burying her face in his shoulder. They stood together like that, weeping and shivering, for a few minutes more, until the wind carried the sounds of Lamar’s hoarse, feeble cries up the steep embankment slope to their ears.
“Come on,” she whispered, stumbling to her feet and dragging her hand against her cheeks to dry her tears. “Come on, rabbit. Back to the great house. Hurry!”
Out of the Dark (The Brethren Series)
Sara Reinke's books
- Bad Mouth
- Not Without Juliet
- Out of the Depths
- Outlaw
- Southern Beauty
- What's Life Without the Sprinkles
- True Things About Me
- Written in My Own Heart's Blood (Outlander)
- Flat-Out Celeste(Flat-Out Love II)
- Being Me(Inside Out 02)
- Down and Out
- If I Were You(Inside Out 01)
- Collide
- Blue Dahlia
- A Man for Amanda
- All the Possibilities
- Bed of Roses
- Best Laid Plans
- Black Rose
- Blood Brothers
- Carnal Innocence
- Dance Upon the Air
- Face the Fire
- High Noon
- Holding the Dream
- Lawless
- Sacred Sins
- The Hollow
- The Pagan Stone
- Tribute
- Vampire Games(Vampire Destiny Book 6)
- Moon Island(Vampire Destiny Book 7)
- Illusion(The Vampire Destiny Book 2)
- Fated(The Vampire Destiny Book 1)
- Upon A Midnight Clear
- Burn
- The way Home
- Son Of The Morning
- Sarah's child(Spencer-Nyle Co. series #1)
- Overload
- White lies(Rescues (Kell Sabin) series #4)
- Heartbreaker(Rescues (Kell Sabin) series #3)
- Diamond Bay(Rescues (Kell Sabin) series #2)
- Midnight rainbow(Rescues (Kell Sabin) series #1)
- A game of chance(MacKenzie Family Saga series #5)
- MacKenzie's magic(MacKenzie Family Saga series #4)
- MacKenzie's mission(MacKenzie Family Saga #2)
- Cover Of Night
- Death Angel
- Loving Evangeline(Patterson-Cannon Family series #1)
- A Billionaire's Redemption
- A Beautiful Forever
- A Bad Boy is Good to Find
- A Calculated Seduction
- A Changing Land
- A Christmas Night to Remember
- A Clandestine Corporate Affair
- A Convenient Proposal
- A Cowboy in Manhattan
- A Cowgirl's Secret
- A Daddy for Jacoby
- A Daring Liaison
- A Dark Sicilian Secret
- A Dash of Scandal
- A Different Kind of Forever
- A Facade to Shatter
- A Family of Their Own
- A Father's Name
- A Forever Christmas
- A Dishonorable Knight
- A Gentleman Never Tells
- A Greek Escape
- A Headstrong Woman
- A Hunger for the Forbidden
- A Knight in Central Park
- A Knight of Passion
- A Lady Under Siege
- A Legacy of Secrets
- A Life More Complete
- A Lily Among Thorns
- A Masquerade in the Moonlight
- At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories)
- A Little Bit Sinful
- A Rich Man's Whim
- A Price Worth Paying
- An Inheritance of Shame
- A Shadow of Guilt
- After Hours (InterMix)
- A Whisper of Disgrace
- A Scandal in the Headlines
- All the Right Moves
- A Summer to Remember
- A Wedding In Springtime
- Affairs of State
- A Midsummer Night's Demon
- A Passion for Pleasure
- A Touch of Notoriety
- A Profiler's Case for Seduction
- A Very Exclusive Engagement
- After the Fall