Out of the Dark (The Brethren Series)

by Sara Reinke

  I don’t remember getting out here being this big a pain in the ass, she thought with a frown. The paved blacktop had given way to gravel several miles earlier, and ever since then, she’d had a sinking feeling. Shit. Did I miss a turn or something? Where the hell am I?

  She forgot she was in the cab with a telepath—one who, like her, apparently had no natural inclination to hold his ability in any check.

  “You went right off Bunker Hill Mine Road onto Brunswick Canyon Road,” he remarked. “I think you should have gone left.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you say something before now?”

  “I thought you knew where you were going.”

  “Great,” she muttered. “And it’s getting dark, too. Just great.”

  Leaning over, she tried to find the headlamp switch among all of the knobs and buttons on the dashboard. Because she couldn’t do it and keep an eye out the windshield at the same time, she straightened in her seat and stepped on the brakes, meaning to pull off and park on the narrow shoulder of the road—the side abutting a steeply sloping hill, and not the equally steep drop-off leading to a wide expanse of shallow stream on the other side.

  She felt the usual hydraulic resistance when she pressed against the brake pedal, but all at once, unexpected and surprising, that resistance was gone. The pedal depressed easily all the way to the floorboard, so easily her foot slipped off it. When she stomped again, harder this time, there was no resistance at all; the Escalade continued moving forward, its speed increasing as the downhill angle of the road likewise increased.

  “What’s wrong?” Aaron asked, no doubt observing the sudden alarm in her face—not to mention the fact she was now pounding her foot repeatedly into the brake pedal like she’d seen a nest of spiders camped out there.

  “The brakes aren’t working!”

  “Calm down.” Aaron leaned over, popping the gear shift into neutral. “Use the parking brake. Go slow or you’ll skid us out.”

  She curled her fingers around the emergency brake handle, but when she started to pull it up, expecting to feel resistance as the brake shoes at the rear wheels took hold, again there was nothing. “Aaron!” Eyes flown wide, she glanced at him. “It’s not working.”

  He nodded once, indicating the road ahead of them. “I’ve got it. You drive.”

  As she clamped both hands on the steering wheel, feeling the Escalade accelerating even more beneath them as the downward slope of the road continued, he tried unsuccessfully to pull on the lever and engage the rear brakes as well.

  He glanced up, met her gaze. “It’s not working.”

  “I just told you that!” she exclaimed.

  “Can you stop this thing with your telekinesis?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I can try.”

  Like a person could be endowed with superhuman strength during surges of adrenaline, Naima’s telekinesis would be heightened during one of her feral fugues. During one such state, she’d uprooted a redwood and tried to crush Tristan with it.

  However, her normal degree of strength in terms of telekinesis was significantly less. Michel and Augustus were the only two Brethren she could think of who could telekinetically seize hold of a vehicle as large as the Escalade—a sharply accelerating one at that—and bring it to a stop.

  Again, Aaron apparently read her mind. “Start small,” he said, unfastening his seatbelt and leaning toward her. “Try to stop the wheels. I’ll take over steering.”

  While he held the steering wheel, Naima reached out with her mind. She was able to “feel” the spinning tires through her telekinesis, and even grab hold of them—causing the entire truck to lurch suddenly, violently toward the drop-off by the creek, and Aaron to crank the wheel to get them back toward the center of the road. No matter how hard she tried, however, she couldn’t keep a telekinetic grasp on the wheels for more than a few seconds; her mind would “slip,” and again, the Escalade would momentarily skid, leaving Aaron scrambling to correct them.

  “Damn it!” Naima snapped. “The tires are moving too fast! I can’t keep hold of them.”

  “Let’s try something else then,” Aaron said—and how the hell he was staying so remarkably calm while fighting to keep them on the twisting, turning roadway and not careening the edge of the embankment into the creek, she didn’t know. “How does that shit work, anyway? Do you need to be able to see something to…what did you call it? Keep a hold of it?”

  He glanced her way and when she shook her head, he continued. “You know how the front brakes on this thing are set up? No? Okay, listen. Your wheel turns by way of a metal disk called a rotor. There’s one on each side, for each wheel. You got that?”

  “Yeah,” Naima said, stiffening in her seat and sucking in a sharp breath as they veered around a sharp corner. She felt the Escalade shift beneath her, its left side front and rear tires threatening to raise off the ground from the sheer force of their momentum.

  “Okay,” Aaron continued, perfectly unfazed, as if this was an everyday occurrence for him. “The brake fits over the edge of the rotor like a clamp. The sides of the clamp are what’s called brake pads. When the clamp—the brake—closes, those pads close against the rotor. That’s what slows the wheels down.”

  “Can’t we just put it in park?” she asked.

  “Yeah, if we’d like to leave the chassis behind us, and this cab—with us in it—to go flying on at about eighty miles an hour for a good three hundred feet or more,” he replied wanly. Then, more sharply: “Listen to me. Even if you can’t stop a moving object, like the wheel or the rotor, you should be able to still telekinetically control the brake. If you close the brake pads together, we can slow the truck down and stop it safely.” He cut her a glance. “Can you do that?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “There are little pistons that move the brake pads in and out,” he told her. “They’re mounted onto a caliper, and use hydraulic fluid from the master cylinder to—”

  “You’re not helping.”

  “I’ll shut up, then.”

  Naima closed her eyes and tried to picture what he’d described to her, the brake pads pressing against either side of the front wheel rotors. She opened her mind and tried to will them to close, despite the fact she’d never seen them before and didn’t know exactly what they looked like. She felt herself connect with something on the underside of the truck, and when the Escalade suddenly began to slow down, its tires slewing on the gravel road, she uttered a happy little cry. “I think I’ve got them!”

  “Hot damn!” For the first time, Aaron’s voice reflected something other than cool detachment. He sounded pretty pleased. “Go slow now. Don’t squeeze them too hard or we’ll skid out of control. Just slow us down a little at a time…there you go.”

  By the time she was able to stop the Escalade, Aaron steered it gently, grill-first, toward the rocky hillside. She closed her eyes, wincing at the crunch of metal against stone—Mason was going to kill her for messing up his ride—and let out a long, deep, shuddering sigh of relief. It was fully dark outside now, but there was dim illumination inside the cab from the dashboard lights.

  “Nicely done,” Aaron said, draping his hand against hers and giving a squeeze. By that point, he was practically sitting on the center console to best reach the steering wheel. When she opened her eyes, she found him treacherously close to her.

  “Thanks,” she said, returning the squeeze he’d given her fingers, and not immediately pulling away from his grasp. “You…you, too. Good job on the steering.”

  “We make a pretty good team,” Aaron said, turning to her and smiling. In that moment, she remembered that her time as Lamar’s prisoner had not been all horrific or heartbreaking; that there had been moments of genuine happiness and pleasure there.

  Because of you, Aaron, she thought.

  “Yes, we do,” she murmured as he leaned closer, lifting his face toward hers. We always have…

  The thought dissolved as his lips brushed against hers. Nai
ma remembered their first kiss; she remembered their last, and every single one in between. His had always been the kiss by which every other man’s had been measured; no other had ever compared. The warmth of his mouth, his tongue, his breath—she’d dreamed of it, had longed for it—for him—for centuries. In that moment, she didn’t care if he remembered their time together or not—she did, and she had missed him for so long, and with such desperation.

  She whimpered softly and he lifted his hand, grazing the side of her face, her ear, and cupping the back of her head. He pulled her close to him, and she went willingly, letting her lips part as the tip of his tongue pressed lightly against the seam of her mouth. His tongue delved more deeply, the kiss growing fiercer, and he leaned over the center console, shifting his weight as if he meant to slide over and straddle her in the driver’s seat. One hand fell against her breast, his palm warm through the thin Lycra of her tank top, while she reached between them and felt his growing arousal hot and straining through the front of his pants.

  And then he sucked in a sharp breath through gritted teeth as she grabbed him firmly by the balls and squeezed.

  “Get off me,” she seethed.

  “Okay,” he said, nodding, easing slowly back toward the passenger seat. “Okay, okay, I’m going…Jesus…!”

  She waited until his ass had met the leather upholstery before turning loose of his crotch. Aaron doubled over toward the dash, gasping for air. “What…the fuck was that for?” he exclaimed somewhat hoarsely.

  “Don’t ever touch me again,” she snapped, turning the key to kill the Escalade’s engine. “You don’t have that right anymore.”

  Furiously, she planted her shoulder against her door and flung it open wide. Hopping down from the cab, she slammed it shut behind her and, in the dark, started tromping off down the road.

  “Hey,” she heard him call, as he opened his door. “Hey! Goddamn it, would you wait a minute?”

  She heard his footsteps in the gravel, but kept on walking, fists balled, baleful glare pointing straight ahead.

  “I’m sorry,” Aaron called after her. “Alright? I’m sorry. I’m an asshole. There—I said it. I’m an asshole and you had every right to try and rupture my testicles. Are you happy? Will you get back in the truck now?”

  Pausing, she turned to face him. “Why should I?”

  “Because we’re out in the middle of nowhere,” he shot back. “It’s the desert. And it’s dark. It’s cold. It’s only going to get colder now that the sun’s gone down. And you don’t have a coat. I doubt your telekinesis can keep you from dying of hypothermia.”

  She glowered at him. He glowered back, still somewhat doubled over, his hands between his thighs.

  “Will you get back in the truck?” he said again. Then after a moment, and with a grimace, as if it pained him tremendously to do so, he added, “Please?”

  “The brakes don’t work,” she said. “How are we going to get out of here?”

  “I have an idea,” Aaron said. “But I can’t do it alone.” Again, as if it hurt him to admit it, he clenched his teeth and said, “I need your help.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Aaron drove the Escalade to South Lake Tahoe, while Naima sat in the front passenger seat and focused on manipulating the brake calipers along the way, controlling both their speed and the truck’s ability to safely stop. Once back in the town proper, she directed him to pull into the parking lot of a Tudor-themed motel called the Heavenly Motor Lodge, where a neon sign that read VACANCY flickered uncertainly by the office door.l

  Craning his head, he looked out the windshield at the low-slung building with its white-washed trim.

  “It’s not the Ritz Carlton or anything,” Naima said somewhat sheepishly.

  Turning the key, he killed the engine, then reached for the door handle. “I’ve stayed in worse.”

  Naima been to the motel not long ago, when she and Eleanor had parked in pretty much that same spot. Tessa, Rene and Lina Jones, a human woman traveling in the company of Eleanor’s grandson, Brandon Noble had been staying there and the pair had been spying on them surreptitiously. It had been a dump then, in Naima’s estimation, and remained a dump now. But it was cheap, and it was a roof under which Aaron could hide for awhile, so she forced a smile at the manager and gave him a week’s worth of rental fees upfront in cash.

  “You kids have fun,” the manager told her with a toothy sort of leer as he passed her a plastic key fob shaped to look like a pine tree. The number 112 had been stamped on it in chipped gold paint, and a solitary key dangled from the ring.

  “Yeah, right,” Aaron muttered, still fidgeting to adjust his sore balls.

  Before they reached the room, he snagged the key out of her hand.

  “Excuse me,” she said with a frown, as he walked on ahead of her and unlocked the door.

  “Wait,” he said, his hand shooting out like a crossing guard’s, staying her in midstride. Annoyed, yet curious, she did as he instructed, watching as he stepped cautiously into the room. The first thing he did was draw the curtains all of the way closed. Next, he switched on a desk lamp, then crossed to the bed, flipped back the comforter and looked underneath. Seeming satisfied to find nothing amiss, he disappeared into the bathroom. She heard a rustle as he drew the shower curtain aside.

  Is he checking out the tub? she wondered. What the hell is he up to?

  “I think we’re alone,” she said as he stepped out of the bathroom.

  “Never a bad idea to make sure,” he said, heading back toward the doorway. “You go on and get settled. I’ll be right back.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “There’s a payphone outside,” he said. “I need to make a call.”

  ***

  Julien wouldn’t recognize the unfamiliar telephone number on his caller I.D., and thus Aaron had to call him several times, impatiently letting it ring through to his brother’s voice mail, thenhanging up and trying again, before Julien got fed up and answered.

  “Hello, sunshine,” he growled.

  Julien liked to say this, if only in passing, to those people he would eventually kill. He’d told Aaron once that he’d called this out to the rapper he’d shot to save Aaron’s ass in their father’s regard, so that the rapper would turn his head to better face him.

  “It’s about damn time you picked up,” Aaron groused back. He’d pulled the hood of his jacket up and stood with his free hand crammed in his pocket, his shoulders hunched against the cold night air.

  “Az,” Julien exclaimed, sounding pleased. “I didn’t realize it was you! Why aren’t you using your cell phone?”

  “Long story,” Aaron said. “Any chance you’re in the Lake Tahoe area?”

  Julien was the only person he could think of beside himself who could have maneuvered past the alarm systems of the Morin clinic once they’d been armed, as well as cut the brake lines to Naima’s truck. He’d thrown all that bullshit out to Naima about the animal-rights activist group, yeah, but he didn’t give them that much credit. He also knew their leader, Daniel Del Rosa, he of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted, was safely squirreled away in Jaramillo, Mexico, which didn’t leave him at the top of Aaron’s suspect list.

  He couldn’t figure out why in the hell Julien would be deliberately interfering in a job Lamar had assigned to Aaron, unless he thought he was helping his younger brother in some way, as he had with the rapper.

  “What?” Julien laughed. “Are you kidding? No, I’m in Miami. Father sent me down here on some business with that Cervantes fellow—what’s his name? Tejano? Anyway, at the moment, I’m kicked back in my own private poolside cabana at the Acqualina Resort and Spa in South Beach, with my own little cabana boy named Enrique rubbing me down with eucalyptus and peppermint essential oils.” Julien laughed out loud. “I don’t know how essential they really are, but damn, I smell delicious! I’m hoping in a little bit, I can use a couple of Benjamins to persuade my little no-hablo-ingles amigo here to lay his hands on somethin
g a little more essential in my opinion.”

  One of the few memories Aaron had regained from his childhood was that of walking into the stables one sweltering summer afternoon and finding Julien in a back corner stall, leaning against a wall while Mason Morin had knelt on the ground in front of him. Julien’s pants had been open, his eyes closed, his head tipped back as he’d gasped, his fingers coiled in Mason’s hair. Aaron had never known if this had been Julien’s first homosexual encounter—because he’d never summoned the courage to ask—but he’d known and accepted ever since that it hadn’t been the last.

  “Anyway,” Julien said. “What’s up? You sound funny. Not in a funny ha-ha kind of way, either.”

  “I’m alright,” Aaron said.

  “Didn’t Father send you to Lake Tahoe?” Julien asked. “He’s had his Depends all in a twist over Jean Luc. Aren’t you supposed to be…wreaking his vengeance or something like that?”

  Aaron imagined Julien using finger quotes as he said this last and managed a smile. “Something like that, yeah.”

  “Everything okay? I told him I didn’t like the idea of you going up against them all by yourself, even if there’s only a handful of them out there. He kept insisting I take care of this Cervantes thing, though why it’s so urgent, I have no fucking clue.”

  “It’s alright,” Aaron said. “I’ve got it under control.”

  If by ‘under control’ you mean I had the shit beat out of me by your ex-boyfriend, and I’ve gone from a handful of pissed off Morins running through the woods for my ass to more than forty, all of them armed and able to move shit with their minds, he added to himself. Not to mention the matter of Naima.

  He closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingertips.