by Sara Reinke
As she stood before him at the top of those stairs, trembling, he’d pulled his sister’s clothes over her head, dressing her as he might have a helpless child. When he gave her the silver chain and Saint Christopher’s medal, she’d simply blinked at it, tearful, terrfied and confused.
“You’ll need it,” he told her, buttoning the front of the dress closed across her breasts, his fingers clumsy, as she blinked, bewildered, down at the pendant. “It’s silver. You can trade it for money, for passage, or food. Here…”
He’d left her for a moment, turning and running back the way they’d come. She shied back, frightened, against the wall, listening to the deceptive good cheer going on only a few feet above her head, the sounds of singing, laughter and dancing. She was so distracted by it, her heart hammering, she didn’t hear Aaron return, and she uttered a frightened cry when he ran around the corner.
“Here…” He had a kerchief cradled between his hands. In it, he’d put a small round loaf of bread, a pair of apples. “I brought a lantern, too. You can light your way through the tunnels. Just keep going to your left, even if the path forks. Julien says that’s the way out.”
"Come with me," she whispered as he handed her the little bundle, and leaned over to tie the kerchief tails snugly together.
His expression grew agonized. "I can't."
"He'll kill you," she pleaded, meaning Lamar. "Please, Aaron. If he finds out what you've done, he'll..."
Her voice cut short as he stroked his hand down the side of her face, sweetly. "Hush now," he whispered. “Everything’s going to be alright. I promise.”
He couldn’t keep that promise, though, and they’d both known it. She’d seized his face between her hands, kissing him fiercely, wanting to remember the taste of him, the warmth of his skin and tongue and breath.
“I love you, Aaron,” she whispered against his mouth.
He smiled for her, but his blue eyes had been filled with sorrow and heartache. “I love you, too,” he breathed as they drew apart. “Hurry now. There isn’t much time.”
In the car, Naima jumped in surprise as something wet fell against the basin of her palm, striking the little medallion—a tear. She glanced up into the rearview mirror, and realized they were streaming down her cheeks, glittering in the dim light, glistening against her skin.
I lost this in the tunnel, she thought, curling her fingers around the pendant and clutching it near. It was the night of the fire, and everything was so crazy. I looked and looked for it after we escaped. Losing it had been like losing him all over again. God, I cried and cried…
Opening her hand, she stared at it again, her gaze blurry with tears, her breath hiccupping softly. You found it somehow, carried it with you, she thought, as if Aaron was there, as if he could hear her somehow. You do remember. I don’t care what Augustus says, or what that son of a bitch Lamar has done to you—you’re still there. You remember what happened. You remember me.
You remember that you loved me.
Naima could see the first hint of new morning sunlight visible as a dusky blush through the trees. Wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand, she took a long, shuddering breath. Time to move.
She shoved everything back into the center console except the necklace, keeping this last in her hand as she opened the driver’s side door and slipped out of the car. The woods around her lay still and silent and cold, but Naima worried that in the brightening light, she would be too visible and vulnerable if she stayed close to the car.
Having been careful to insure that she’d left everything as she found it, including locking the car before closing the door with her hip, Naima started to creep back among the trees. She heard a chirping sound—a car alarm—and jumped in surprise when, unexpectedly, the Infiniti’s headlights and taillights flashed once, the doors on either side of the car unlocking.
Oh, shit…! she thought. Wheeling around, meaning to bolt into the woods, she came instead to a skittering halt as Aaron, using the sound of the car alarm and the flash of its lights to find it, came stumbling out of the trees.
He backpedaled clumsily when he saw her, his eyes flown wide. To that moment, he’d been carrying Mason’s gun in his hand, dangling at his side, but he raised it now, a swift, startled movement, taking aim for the center of her face. His finger was against the trigger.
Naima couldn’t breathe. Her heart jackhammered beneath her breasts. Her entire body shook and she stared at him, her emotions torn all over again, her heart ripped open wide and left emotionally eviscerated.
“Aaron,” she breathed. She could have used her telekinesis against him, could have disarmed him with only a thought, but didn’t. The impact of his injuries was apparent now; his face was bloody and battered, his posture stooped and limping. Augustus had told her he’d overpowered Rene at the clinic, but she couldn’t imagine how; Aaron looked ready at any moment to crumple to the ground in a dead swoon.
“Get…away…from the car,” he rasped, leaning his shoulder heavily against the nearest tree as his knees threatened to buckle beneath him. The gunpoint wavered, but only for a moment. Brows furrowed, teeth gritted, he leveled the muzzle again at her head. “Get out of my way.”
“You won’t shoot me.”
Naima heard the distinctive snict! as he thumbed the safety off. “You…wanna bet?” he asked.
“Aaron,” she pleaded. “It’s me. It’s Naima.”
Earlier, there had been nothing in his face when she’d said this; he’d stared at her, stoic and impassive as granite. This time, though, something in him cracked; she saw a fleeting but definite hint of pain in his eyes. As quickly as it came, it was gone, however, and his brows furrowed. “I said…get out of my way.”
Moving slowly—because even the most slow, deliberate gesture brought bright panic into his eyes, and caused him to refocus his bleary gaze and aim—she held her hands up, palms facing him. “I know you remember me.” As she uncurled her fingers from her right palm, the St. Christopher medal dropped down, dangling on its silver chain. “I found this in your car.”
His eyes widened as they fixed on the pendant. Again the gun drooped toward the ground and again, sucking in a sharp, wounded breath, he raised it again. “What…what do you know about that?”
“You gave it to me,” Naima told him, stepping forward.
“That’s a lie.” With one hand, he hooked his fingers like claws into the trunk of the tree to keep himself upright.
“No, it’s not,” she said. “On the night of October twelfth, in the year 1815, you gave this to me. Right before you helped me to escape from your father.”
She stepped toward him again, and that bright panic flared in his eyes. “Stop right there,” he gasped, flexing his index finger in and out treacherously against the trigger. “Don’t…don’t come any closer.”
“You won’t shoot me,” she said, taking another step, then another, standing directly in front of him now, close enough to touch him.
“Yes, I will,” he seethed, his chest heaving with every pained, panting breath.
“No, you won’t.” She drew her fingertips lightly against his cheek. Her thumb brushed against his lower lip, and this time, she felt a shudder run through him like a live electrical current. “Don’t you remember, Aaron?”
“I…I can’t…” His eyelids fluttered, his eyes rolling back into his head. He pitched forward, his knees failing him as he passed out, and Naima caught him. Her knees buckled beneath his dead weight, and she cradled him in her arms, using her telepathy to support him as she lowered him to the grass.
CHAPTER SIX
It wasn’t as if Aaron spent the majority of his days obsessing over losing the memories of his early life. He had decades more—centuries, in fact—that had passed since then, with experiences, encounters and escapades that he could clearly recall. If the truth be told, he seldom thought of his limited amnesia at all. Until recently, that is.
Until the package.
It had been an otherwise ordi
nary, if not somewhat boring, Sunday in late March of that year. He’d just returned from a nearly month-long trip to southern France. He’d been there at Lamar’s behest, and had killed a businessman at Lamar’s specific order. Aaron hadn’t known why Lamar wanted the man dead; Lamar hadn’t confided this, and Aaron hadn’t asked. It wasn’t his job to question his father’s edicts. He was simply supposed to obey.
He hadn’t been back to the States long, no more than a couple of days, when he heard his doorbell ring one morning as he was stepping out of the shower. With a frown, he wrapped a towel around his waist and stepped out of the bathroom, following a narrow corridor toward the entrance to his apartment. He paused long enough to grab his pistol from his bedroom bureau; as he walked along, leaving a trail of spattered water droplets on the hardwood floor in his wake, he checked the clip, making sure it was full, before clapping it home once again.
He made a point of being anonymous. He’d never met any of his neighbors; he took the stairs, even though he lived on the fifteenth floor because he didn’t like elevators, and he also didn’t want the people with whom he shared the apartment building to become familiar or accustomed to his face. He didn’t keep a mailbox at the building, so there was no public listing of his name, even though he went by an alias, Aaron Broughman. He also never gave out the apartment address, which meant he never received certified letters, packages, parcels or other deliveries. He paid his lease promptly, upfront, in cash and in full, and his landlord never had reason to bother him.
Thus the ringing doorbell alarmed him more than piqued his curiosity.
Thumbing off the safety on the .45, he cut a glance through the peephole and surveyed the hallway beyond his front door.
He saw nothing.
With a frown, he opened the door. A manila envelope, the kind lined with bubble wrap to protect delicate contents, had apparently been propped against the outside, and fell obligingly in now, slapping lightly against his feet.
His frown deepened. He didn’t avert his gaze, or the barrel of his pistol, from the corridor as he leaned down, hooking the envelope with his free hand. Stepping cautiously past his threshold, he looked left, then right. Still, he saw no one.
He glanced down at the envelope. No clues there. Nothing had been written on it, not his name—or any other—or an apartment number, a return address. Zip. Zilch. Nada.
What the fuck? he thought. Moving swiftly but quietly, the envelope tucked beneath his arm, he followed the hall down toward the elevator bank. No one was there. He opened the nearby stairwell door and paused for a long moment, listening. No footsteps, not even distant ones.
Still frowning, now definitely on edge as well as on guard, Aaron returned to his apartment. Sitting on a black leather sofa in his living room, he tore open the envelope and upended it over his coffee table. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to be inside; it had been lightweight, and although he’d heard something rustling softly inside when he’d given the packet an experimental shake, he hadn’t been able to make out much by way of an outline of the item just by pressing on the outside of the envelope.
To his surprise, a necklace fell out.
He first checked the envelope to make sure that was all, then lifted the necklace in hand and examined it. A silver pendant, no bigger than a nickel, dangled from a slim chain. Circular in shape, it bore the likeness of a man leaning on a walking stick, carrying a little boy on his shoulders. Behold St. Christopher and Go Your Way in Safety had been engraved in a semi-circle above them.
The moment he saw the inscription, his eyes flew wide; his breath tangled in his throat. In that moment, he knew all of the color must have drained from his face; he felt as cold and leaden as a block of ice. He stared, stricken, bewildered, at the necklace.
And remembered.
***
Lamar had seven sons. Victor and Vidal had been the oldest, born little more than a year after one another. Next had come Allistair, then Julien, Jean-Luc, Jerard and Aaron. For some reason, Lamar had always insisted on naming his sons based on the first letter of their mother’s given name. Probably so he can keep straight who is who, and which one of us came from where, Julien had often remarked drily. His, Jerard’s and Jean-Luc’s mother’s name, for example, was Jeanne; Aaron and Allistair’s mother was named Annette, while Victor and Vidal’s mother, Veronique, had been Lamar’s first—and favorite—wife. He’d had daughters, as well—Larissa, Lisette, Lenore, and Lorelle—all given L-names in honor of Lamar.
He remembered a party, some sort of celebratory affair. It had been from his youth; based on the clothing styles, maybe no later than the early 1800s. He remembered standing in a crowded ballroom, watching people hopping back and forth, then twirling around, parading in parallel lines on a closely knit dance floor. Someone somewhere was playing a fiddle, and someone else a fife, while others danced. Voices overlapped, laughter and singing.
He remembered despite the obvious gaiety of the circumstances that he’d been anxious, though about what, he could not recall. Something had been troubling him, enough so that he stood tensely by himself, cutting his gaze this way and that, as if he had been searching desperately for something or someone.
“Oh, Aaron,” he heard his mother exclaim, then Annette waded through the crowd into view. She sounded breathless from dancing, and in her cheeks, he saw a high, glossy glow, one born of too much brandy and merriment. “Here’s one of you at least! Your father and brothers have all seemed to vanish into the woodwork! I know he hates parties, but really, it’s my birthday!”
She pressed something into his hands, and he looked down to find a silver necklace there—the same Saint Christopher’s medal and chain that had been mysteriously delivered to his apartment.
“My necklace is broken,” his mother lamented. “The clasp won’t work, and I’m afraid to lose it. It was my mother’s, you know—your grandmother, bless her. Be a dear and put it in your fob, won’t you?”
“Of course, Mother,” he said, slipping the necklace into a small pocket on the front hip of his breeches.
She smiled brightly, cradling his face between her hands. “You’re a darling love!” she declared, planting a kiss squarely on his lips that tasted stoutly of liquor. She looked nearly tearful as she regarded him a long, almost wistful moment. “What a handsome man you are becoming, Aaron,” she remarked. Shifting her grasp from his cheeks to his hands, she tugged at him. “Dance with your mum. Come on now. It’s been far too long.”
***
He woke with a start, expecting to find himself back in his flat in New York, sitting on his sofa, staring at that enigmatic but hauntingly familiar necklace. There was more to it than the simple memory of his mother asking him to hold it; he knew that. Even while groggy, he could sense this—could feel more memories associated with it tickling at his mind, submerged just beyond his grasp of recall within the murky depths of his past.
However, he did not find himself at home. His surprise and disorientation were short-lived and fleeting, though, as the events since that day came rushing back to him with conscious awareness.
His mission.
Make him answer for it. Tear open his throat, leave the mark of our vengeance in blood on the floor around him. Take your blade and carve out his heart—I want to hold it in my hand, crush it with whatever strength I have yet to call my own.
In that instant, Aaron went from sleepily dazed to bright, alert and alarmed. His entire body tensed, and his brows narrowed, his eyes sweeping the unfamiliar bedroom in which he found himself. Open and spacious, with skylights and windows to allow in a spill of muted sunlight, it was sparsely decorated with prairie-style furnishings and simple black-and-white photographs framed on the walls. The bed was large but otherwise empty save for him, draped in white bedding with black trim. The entire room lay heavily with the fragrance of woman—and not just any woman.
Naima.
From somewhere below him, through the floorboards, he heard her voice. Because he heard n
o one answering, and she seemed to pause intermittently between muffled phrases he couldn’t quite discern, he gathered she was on the telephone. Pushing aside the heavy down-filled comforter that had covered him, he swung his legs around, letting his feet settle silently against the cool, smooth wooden floor.
As Aaron stood, he crutched his side with the palm of his hand, feeling a spasm of pain.
Feels like a few broken ribs in there, he thought , and he closed his eyes, swaying unsteadily on his feet, waiting for the sudden swell of molten agony to subside. Maybe more than a few.
She’d taken his gun; he had no weapon now, but it didn’t matter. His psionic strength had returned; not much, but enough so that he could summon at least one of his telepathic blades and at least get her out of his way, if not outright kill her.
Although he wasn’t so sure he wanted to kill her.
Padding softly, he limped toward the top of a staircase, a spiral set of metal steps leading down from what he realized was a loft-styled bedroom. As he approached, he could see the walls here were only waist-high, awarding a broad view of the main floor below. The house was A-framed, the far wall comprised of towering windows, with interior walls and exposed ceiling timbers of rustic, fragrant cedar. A broad creek-stone chimney graced the far left wall, and he could smell wood smoke, could hear the soft crackle of flames.
“I know.”
He heard Naima’s voice from immediately beneath him, as if she stood at the foot of the stairs. There was something so familiar in the sound, something that caused such a confusing and uncontrollable swell of emotion inside of him, he couldn’t move.
“I know,” she said again, and her voice had moved. If Aaron cocked his head and ducked a bit, he could see her through the spaces between the metal risers as she walked past the stairs and into the living room. She was no longer wearing the sheer gold dress she’d had on earlier, having changed into a pair of black leggings and a grey T-shirt. Sure enough, she cradled a cell phone against her ear. In her free hand, she carried a coffee mug; he closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath, discerning a hint of fragrance: chamomile tea.