Out of the Dark (The Brethren Series) (29 page)

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.

Fuck,
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.

Fuck,
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 fuck 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 fuck,” 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 fucking 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
fucks—
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?