Out of the Dark (The Brethren Series)

CHAPTER NINETEEN



I can’t believe I’ve been shot by a human, Aaron thought, leaning his head back against the driver’s seat and closing his eyes, his consciousness an ebbing and flowing tide within his skull. He’d known from the moment the human woman had fired that she had him pretty much dead to rights. It was a blessing she hadn’t been a better shot, he supposed, but as it was, she’d gotten him pretty damn good. It could have been worse—a millimeter or two lower, and she would have punched through his subclavian artery, in which case he would have already bled out—Brethren healing or not. But he’d still lost a lot of blood. And he suspected the round had either ricocheted off his collar bone or fragmented inside of him, clipping his lung, because he kept coughing up blood in ever-increasing quantities.

I’m no doctor, but that can’t be a good sign, he thought dazedly.

He also knew he couldn’t let Naima go by herself. In his mind, it wasn’t a question of if Julien was going after Mason; it was when. And if he happened to decide to take Mason out while Naima was there, and got in his way, then Aaron knew the outcome all too well, despite Naima’s bravado.

He pawed clumsily at the door handle. When the door opened, he practically tumbled out of the driver’s seat, landing on his hands and knees in the carpet of pine needles covering the forest floor. Pain swelled through him the moment he put weight down on his injured arm and shoulder, and he crouched on the ground for a long moment, gasping for breath, struggling to keep himself from blacking out.

He’d been shot before. And pain was definitely nothing new to him. It was all a matter of wrapping his mind around it, not letting it overwhelm him. Brows furrowed, teeth clenched, Aaron forced himself to stagger to his feet. He’d dropped his pistol when he fell, but lifted it in hand now. The heft of the Heckler and Kock—familiar and comforting—in his hand helped him to focus. That gun had seen him through a lot of shit during their years of association.

Mason’s house is just around the bend, Naima had told him. She’d pulled the truck off the road shortly thereafter, however, and Aaron found himself turning in a slow, floundering circle. The Escalade may not be visible from the road anymore, but he realized he couldn’t see the road, either. Which made figuring out which direction to go in a bitch.

F*ck, he thought. He tried to sense her, opening his mind telepathically, but there were a lot of people in the woods now—most of them Morins, and most of them ready to shoot him. He was too bleary from blood loss to concentrate and distinguish Naima from among the apparent crowd.

F*ck, he thought again.

The grill of the truck still seemed to be pointing in the general direction in which they’d been heading; he didn’t recall Naima having to steer it too much as they’d pulled off the shoulder. Leaning heavily from tree to tree as he passed, he started to move, stumbling along toward what he hoped was Mason’s house—and Naima.

***

Mason lived in one of the larger chateaus Michel had built specifically for each of his sons. It was a beautiful A-frame, two-story house with a wrap-around front porch, floor-to-ceiling windows on the lakefront side to award a sweeping, panoramic view, and an enormous creek-stone fireplace and chimney. As Naima made her way down the gravel drive approaching the house, she could see no signs of life from inside—no smoke curling out of the chimney, no lights on, no cars in the drive.

The front door, however, was standing slightly ajar, and at this realization, Naima felt her heart give a sudden, terrified shudder. She immediately broke into a run, her feet slapping a light but rapid cadence on the ground as she sprinted for the house. She opened her mind, scanning for Mason inside, but couldn’t sense him. There was only an ominous sort of emptiness about the entire house, a heavy and overwhelming telepathic silence.

“Mason?” she called, pushing open the door all of the way and rushing inside. She tried to remember what Augustus had been saying to her about telepathic black holes when they’d arrived at the airport in Carson City.

An absence of psionic energy so absolute and utter, it seems almost…unnatural, he’d called it. A spot of complete darkness where there’s otherwise a haze of residual telepathic awareness…as if someone is trying so hard to prevent my notice…they in fact draw it.

He’d meant Aaron; Aaron had been blocking him while hiding in the back of the truck, and she, too, had sensed this same, uncanny phenomenon when she’d first stumbled upon Aaron trying to cut Tristan’s throat. As she stood in the foyer of Mason’s house, listening to that oppressive silence—broken only by the faint, soft, mechanical click of a clock—she tried to decide if what she was sensing, or not sensing as the case may be, was the same thing.

“Mason?” she called out again, more sharply this time. As she walked down the front corridor toward the living room and kitchen, she kept her mind open, her eyes and ears sharp. Her nostrils flared as she sniffed experimentally, trying to detect any odors that might be out of the ordinary, like gun smoke or blood.

Ahead of her in the hallway, she saw a small decorative table. A large vase that had once rested atop it now lay shattered on the floor, surrounded by a puddle of water and a tangle of flowers. The framed painting that hung in a gilded frame above the table also hung askew.

She didn’t call for her uncle aloud anymore. Stepping carefully over the broken pottery and water, Naima continued down the hall. In the living room, she found an overturned lamp, and some framed photographs that had fallen from a shelf, the glass breaking in hundreds of glittering shards on the hardwood floor. Two barstools lining the breakfast bar separating the kitchen and living room lay on their sides; a bowl of fresh fruit that had presumably been on the bar itself now lay on the floor upside down, with apples, peaches and pears spilled in all directions. In the kitchen itself, she saw cabinet doors listing open, drawers pulled out, a scattered litter of papers and unopened mail all across the stone tile floor.

Mason? she thought hesitantly. Despite all of the evidence of a struggle in his house, of her uncle, she saw—and sensed—no sign.

But if he’s dead, she thought with a shiver, I wouldn’t sense him. It would feel like this.

She checked the dining room adjoining the kitchen, and the downstairs bathroom, but didn’t find Mason. As she hurried up the stairs to the chateau’s second floor, she tried to push away images in her mind of Michel’s body, his throat cut, his ghastly, waxen pallor.

Please don’t let me find Mason like that, she thought. God, please, don’t let me be too late. I wasn’t here for Michel. I’ll never forgive myself if I’m too late to save Mason, too.

***

I’m hallucinating, Aaron thought, and he couldn’t help himself but laugh. He would have leaned against a pine tree or something to support himself in his failing strength, but he’d stumbled upon a clearing in the woods where all of the trees had been cut back, and the ground swept clean of any woodland debris. Instead, there was lush green grass, closely shorn, and gravestones. Everywhere he looked, dozens of them, in neat and tidy rows.

Maureen Morin, read one closest to him. July 12, 1812-August 9, 1957.

Another nearby was inscribed in memory of Frederick Morin, who had apparently been beloved son, brother, father and friend to one or more people in his life. Near that, the earthly remains of Mavis Johnston-Morin had been interred.

A cemetery, Aaron thought. A cemetery in the middle of the goddamn woods. I have to be hallucinating.

But as he stumbled forward, he caught sight of an enormous monument, larger than any of the others. Carved from white granite, it seemed to glisten in a wide spill of sunshine. It was fashioned in the Greco-Roman architectural style, with the relief of an angel, arms and wings extending wide open, as if welcoming, in the center.

Lisette Elisabeth Davenant Morin, the inscription read. Beneath the angel, in a gilded script: “She walks in beauty, like the night, of cloudless climes and starry skies. And all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes.”

It felt for all the world like someone had just taken a sledgehammer and driven it into Aaron’s stomach, plowing from him not only his breath, but whatever strength he had yet remaining. He crashed to his knees, staring at the headstone, stricken and breathless.

He remembered her smile on that sunny afternoon, and for that moment at least, the melodic sound of her laughter echoed in his mind. He remembered the gleam of sunlight in her golden hair, the wink of it in the blue depths of her eyes, the sound of her voice.

Where are you, little rabbit? Come out, come out, wherever you are

His hand trembling, Aaron reached out and touched his sister’s name. He’d been clutching at his chest, trying to hold Naima’s shirt over his wound, and his fingers were smeared with blood.

“I didn’t know,” he whispered, as if she could somehow hear him, even beyond death; as if this chunk of white stone could somehow channel his words from his lips to her ear even now; as if he could make her understand, or at least beg for her forgiveness. “I didn’t know he was your son. I never would have hurt him…”

His voice grew strained, and for the first time in his life, he felt the sting of unbidden tears in his eyes. “I wouldn’t have, Lisette. I didn’t know he was yours. I’m sorry…”

His fingertips slipped away from the stone, leaving bloodstains on the stark granite.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed again.

“You favor her, you know,” he heard someone say from behind him.

It was hard to whirl around when kneeling on the ground even in the best of health. Aaron was not, and as a result, he wound up sitting hard on his ass and scrambling feebly backwards, his eyes flown wide in surprise. He still carried pistol, and held it out now, his finger on the trigger, his thumb instinctively switching off the safety.

Mason Morin stood nearby. He looked unsteady on his feet, and appeared to be wearing the same clothes he’d had on the day before, when he’d beat the shit out of Aaron. His chin was covered in a dense overgrowth of unkempt beard. Dark shadows ringed his eyes, and his cheeks had a sunken, haggard look. The stink of alcohol around him was thick and hot.

“Your sister, I mean,” Mason said. “You have the same eyes. She had such lovely blue eyes.”

He had a pistol in his hand—the 9-millimeter Aaron had stolen from Rene in the clinic. As he regarded Aaron now, he lifted it up, taking unsteady aim. “You killed my father, you son of a bitch.”

“No.” Aaron shook his head, his finger twitching against the trigger, his heart pounding. “I didn’t.”

“Liar!” Mason shouted, his voice sharp enough to reverberate off surrounding tree crowns, sending doves scattering anxiously skyward. “He’s dead now—why not brag about it? Why aren’t you and your sick f*ck of a father dancing for joy?”

He staggered forward, letting the gun lead, never averting his murderous glare—or his aim—from the center of Aaron’s forehead. He cut a glance at Aaron’s pistol, and immediately, the gun whipped out of his hand, yanked telekinetically from his grasp. It flew across the cemetery, clattering against headstones.

“Why are you even still here?” Mason demanded. “What more does Lamar want? What else can he take from me?”

Aaron felt the air collapse around him as Mason caught him telekinetically, pinning his arms to his sides. Mason grabbed him by the hair with one hand, jerking his head back, and forced the muzzle of his 9-millimeter against Aaron’s brow with the other.

“Is it Tristan? Is that why you’re still around? Well, forget it, you f*ck,” he seethed, spraying Aaron’s face with spittle as he leaned over, his brows furrowed. “I won’t let you hurt him—not ever again. I couldn’t protect him from Jean Luc, but by Christ, I’ll die before one of you touches him again. Do you hear me? Go home and tell Lamar his sick f*cking vendetta is over. He may have taken my father but he can’t have Tristan. I will kill each and every one of you—one at a time, or all of you at once, you sick, demented f*cks—before I let you draw a breath near my brother again.”

“I didn’t know…!” Aaron gasped. When Mason had wrenched his head back, it had ripped the bullet wound in his shoulder open more; he could feel a fresh, hot flood coursing down his chest, seeping through his shirt. “I didn’t know he was Lisette’s son. I wouldn’t have come if I’d known. I would have never…!” His voice cut short as he began to cough, choking up blood, nearly strangling on it.

Mason glared at him for a long moment, his face flushed with rage, his eyes glazed with a manic sort of light. Then something in him softened; his brows lifted, his face filling with an exhausted sort of sorrow. He released Aaron’s hair, giving him a little shove as he staggered away. The barrel of the gun drooped down toward the ground as he at last lowered his furious aim.

“I didn’t know,” Aaron wheezed, clutching at his shoulder, gasping for breath. “I didn’t know she’d died…never even knew she was here.” He looked up at Mason, pleading. “I loved her!”

The tears that had welled when he’d first come upon Lisette’s grave suddenly escaped him in an anguished rush. He uttered a hoarse, choked cry, then began to weep, clapping his blood-smeared hands to his face and doubling over in the grass.

“I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “God forgive me, I didn’t know…!”

***

Naima checked the bedrooms upstairs in Mason’s house, but still found no sign of her uncle. With a frown, she returned to the first floor and again surveyed the damage she’d found upon first entering the house. On the floor in the kitchen, she found a small puddle of fluid she hadn’t noticed before—vomit. Mason was here. Something happened to him—but what?

From her vantage in the kitchen, when she turned back to face the living room, she found something else that had escaped her earlier notice: one of the sliding glass doors leading out onto the rear deck of the house had been left partially open. She leaned her head out onto the patio, feeling the cool press of breeze against her face, but saw nothing. The deck was empty. A steep flight of steps on her left led down to the ground level, but there was nothing there but forest.

Had Julien Davenant used this as his point of entry into the house? Had Mason used it to escape somehow? Neither explanation accounted for the fact the front door had been likewise left standing ajar.

“I think I’ve found something that belongs to you, mon bijou,” Mason said from behind her.

At his voice, she spun to face the living room again, uttering a small cry of both surprise and abject relief. The sound cut short, however, when she saw him in the corridor leading from the front foyer to the living room. He dragged Aaron in tow, with one of Aaron’s arms draped across his shoulders, and his own arm hooked around Aaron’s waist, supporting most of his weight from the looks of things. Aaron’s face was ashen, and there was blood smeared on his chin and cheek.

“Aaron…!” she gasped.

Mason’s brows were furrowed, his mouth turned in a disagreeable line. With a snort of disgust, he ducked his head from beneath Aaron’s arm, then gave Aaron a shove, sending him staggering forward. Aaron’s eyes rolled back and he crumpled, his knees failing him.

“He was in the cemetery,” Mason said. Naima could smell the liquor on him even from across the room. All at once, the scenario she’d pictured to explain the mess in his house changed.

He did this himself, she realized. He wasn’t attacked—he’s drunk. He was probably staggering around, blundering into things, digging through his kitchen for more alcohol.

But even so, there was a granite-like severity in Mason’s face, the shadow of a sober but murderous fury that only the most diligent of self-control could keep tamped down and tamed. “I found him by Lisette’s grave…like the poor bastard fancied he had the right to be there.”

“He’s her brother,” Naima said quietly, because she’d never seen this side to Mason before, this barely contained rage that simmered in his eyes. But she recognized it nonetheless—from personal experience.

He’s ready to break, she thought. From stress, from grief, from the alcohol—it’s all overwhelming him. Just like with me, when I fall into a fugue.

“He lost that right!” Mason snapped at her. “They all did—the whole goddamn Davenant clan!”

He reached for the small of his back and pulled a pistol out from the waistband of his pants. Grabbing Aaron by the crown of his hair, he jerked the younger man’s head back, mashing the muzzle of the 9-millimeter against the top of his skull.

“They lost any right to claim Lisette as their own!” he shouted hoarsely, his expression anguished. “Not a goddamn one of them knows anything about kinship, friendship…or love!”

“Mason,” she pressed. “Listen to me.”

She could have used her telekinesis to take the gun away from him, but didn’t. She was afraid if she tried, he’d panic; that he’d see it as an attack and that this would push him fully over the edge of a psychotic break. Mason had telepathy of his own; he could wield it against her or Aaron with no more than a thought, and Aaron was in no shape to defend himself.

“He knows about love.” Her eyes cut to Aaron, and he met her gaze, the tendons in his neck taut and straining as Mason wrenched his head back all the more. “Because he loves me. And I love him.”

“Are you crazy?” Mason exclaimed, eyes flown wide.

“That’s why he’s here,” Naima insisted. “He’d left the compound—he could be a thousand miles from here by now, but he came back instead—because of me. Because I asked him to help me protect you.”

“What are you talking about?” Mason shook his head. “The only one we need protection from is him.”

“He didn’t kill Michel.”

Michel stared at her, disbelieving. “Of course he did. Who else would have? Could have?”

“My thoughts exactly,” Phillip said as he came striding briskly down the corridor from the foyer. The front door was open wide behind him, and Naima caught a glimpse of the four-wheeled ATV bike he’s ridden to the house parked at a crazy angle in the drive outside. When Mason glanced over his shoulder at his brother’s approach—and Phillip realized he had a gun shoved against Aaron’s scalp—he raised his brows, visibly impressed. “I guess congratulations are in order, Mason. Wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.”

“Phillip, listen to me…” Naima began.

“I think you’ve said more than enough, Naima,” he cut in with a glare. “Judging from what I just heard, in any case.” To Mason, he added, “I’ve got a dozen more at least right behind me. They’ll be here any minute. Ethan found us at the gate post.” With a pointed glance at Naima, he added, “He said Davenant had just killed his grandmother and Karen Pierce.”

“They’re not dead. They’re just stunned,” Naima said hotly.

“Really? And how would you know that?” Phillip challenged. “Oh, that’s right—Ethan said you were with him. You’ve been helping the son of a bitch all along, haven’t you?”

Mason blinked at her, wounded and stunned, and she shook her head.

“No. No, that’s not true. Mason, listen to me. You know that’s not—”

“Did you help him get onto the compound the night he tried to cut Tristan’s throat?” Phillip snapped.

“No!” Eyes flown wide, she shook her head. “What the hell are you—?”

“Convenient that you’re the one who discovered him there,” Phillip continued. “The one who supposedly stopped his attack…especially to hear you claim now, only a day later, that the two of you are in love.” He sneered at this, his mouth twisting as if he’d tasted something bitter. “Was it all just a ruse, Naima?”

“No,” she snapped back, fists bared. She could feel her gums tingling, her fangs wanted to drop in her sudden, bright outrage. “You son of a bitch, that’s not how it—”

“Has this all been just a set up so he could get to Michel more easily?” Phillip demanded.

“Aaron didn’t kill Michel!” Naima shouted. “I know, because he was with me when it happened. He was in my house when Michel was killed!”

“If he didn’t do it, then who did?” Mason asked. Although he kept the gun pressed to the top of Aaron’s head, some of the ferocity had drained from his face. Meeting her gaze, locking eyes with her, he asked in her mind: Who did you think he could protect me from?

Julien, she said, the name sending a visible shock of recognition through Mason.

From outside, drifting in through the front door, came the sounds of approaching engines, high-pitched and whining.

“Looks like we’re about to have company,” Phillip said.

Aaron had been quiet for most of the exchange, trying to concentrate on keeping calm, on trying to keep his breathing slow and shallow, so that he didn’t hemorrhage further and bleed to death. But when Phillip ratcheted a round into the rifle he carried, Aaron opened his eyes. Straining against Mason’s fist-hold in his hair, he craned his neck to look over at Phillip.

“Nice…gun,” he murmured. “What is that? A…a 98-Bravo…?”

To Naima, he shot a single, imperative thought: It’s him.

She didn’t understand, however, until Phillip hoisted to rifle to his shoulder and swung the length of the barrel toward Mason, standing within point-blank range.

“Mason!” Naima screamed. As Phillip’s finger folded inward on the trigger, Aaron reached up, clasping the wrist of Mason’s gun arm between his hands. Gritting his teeth, he twisted sharply, and gave a furious yank, both diverting the aim of the pistol away from his head, and making Mason pitch sideways in a stumbling, clumsy fall. The sharp clap of gunfire from the Bravo was overlapped by that of the 9-millimeter pistol as, still grasping Mason by the arm, his fingers laced over Mason’s around the gun stock and trigger, Aaron returned fire.

The rifle shot went wide as Mason fell, but Aaron’s shot hit home--the center of Phillip’s forehead. The rifle fell from his hands as he crashed backwards, gracelessly to the floor, a thin trail of blood hovering momentarily in the air to mark his wake.

Naima had instinctively crouched at the gunshots. “Aaron!” she cried, scrambling to her feet. “Mason!”

Heavy footsteps suddenly shuddered through the floorboards as the proverbial cavalry arrived. Elliott burst into the living room, rifle in hands, his cheeks flushed, his eyes wild. At least a dozen other Morin men rushed in behind him. Elliott had about a half-second to take in the scene—Phillip lying dead, sprawled on the floor, and Mason nearby, with Aaron beside him, still holding the gun.

“No!” Naima screamed as, brows furrowed, Elliott raised his rifle, taking aim for Aaron’s face. She threw herself in front of Aaron, crashing onto her knees, her arms spread wide. “No, don’t shoot him! Elliott, don’t shoot!”

Elliott stared at her like she’d gone nuts. “Naima, what the hell are you doing?” he cried.

“If I’m not mistaken…” Mason murmured, pushing himself into a seated position. “She’s trying to protect the man she loves.” With a glance at Aaron, he added, “Not to mention the one who just saved my life.”