In the Heart of Darkness

by Reinke, Sara

  “I’m not an imp.” Aaron jabbed Julien in the side with his elbow, scowling. Then, as his expression softened to a smile, he offered his hand to Mason. “Pleased to meet you, monsieur.”

  “The pleasure is all mine,” Mason replied warmly, his hand large enough to nearly cover the boy’s in full as he accepted the shake.

  “And this delicate flower to my left is my darling sister, Lisette. Lissie, this is—”

  As he spoke, he poked her pointedly with his elbow, and she slapped him in the ass. “We’ve already taken the liberty of introducing ourselves,” she said. “Even if you’re not going to have anything by way of good manners, you at least associate with proper young gentlemen who do.”

  With this, she awarded Mason a radiant smile that undoubtedly would have made any man so inclined fall hopelessly, head over heels in love with her. Julien tipped his head back and laughed. The chortle faded almost as soon as it had started, however, and his eyes widened in something akin to marveling surprise.

  “Lis, look.” Reaching out, he caught Lisette by the arm, then pointed up into the tree above them to direct her gaze. Mason tilted his head back, following the line of Julien’s arm, and saw a remarkable sight on one of the larger boughs overhead about fifteen or twenty feet: a large, dense object at least the size of a milk pail or more, nearly hidden among the leaves. It appeared to be hanging from the underside of the limb, affixed somehow to the bark, and Mason thought he heard a slight but distinctive hum over the soft crackle of the fire.

  “A beehive?” he asked, puzzled, and Julien nodded.

  “Honey!” he exclaimed, scrambling to his feet. Turning to Lisette, who was also getting up, he said, “Quick—grab some green limbs, some grass. Get some smoke going. I’ll climb up and get it.”

  “Be careful, Julien,” Lisette said, her smooth brow wrinkling slightly with a doting, nearly maternal sort of worry.

  “It’s fine,” he said. “Hurry now. We need more smoke.” With a glance at Mason, he said, “Why don’t you take Aaron and move back a bit? In case, you know, I knock the hive down by accident or something.”

  “What are you going to do?” Mason asked, suddenly sharing in Lisette’s concern as Julien turned around to face the tree. As he watched, Julien hooked his fingertips into the cragged bark and, as nimble as a squirrel, began to climb up the trunk. “I don’t think this is such a good idea…”

  “Sure it is,” Julien insisted, somewhat breathless with distraction as he climbed. With a glance down and the sort of reckless smile that melted Mason’s heart—not to mention made his cock suddenly ache with momentary longing—he added, “No fair peeking up my skirt.”

  Aaron laughed at this. “Come on, Mason,” he said, rising to his feet. “Over here.”

  Mason followed the boy about ten feet away from the fire. “If that hive falls, those bees are going to be all stirred up,” he remarked.

  Aaron shook his head, all round and adulating eyes as he turned to follow his brother’s progress up the tree. “Julien won’t knock it down. Don’t worry.”

  Mason turned to follow his gaze. He had to admit, Julien made it look easy to scale the broad length of the venerable old maple. Lisette had started adding green limbs and handfuls of ripened grass to the blaze below, and the smoke cloud rising toward the hive had thickened.

  “My father says you’re the reason my brother died,” Aaron said suddenly. Blinking in aghast surprise, Mason looked down and found the boy had turned his attention toward him, his expression somber, his blue eyes—nearly identical to Julien’s—unreadable. “Victor, I mean. He said you and your father killed him just the same as Augustus Noble.”

  “I…I don’t…” Mason stammered helplessly. He wasn’t sure how to defend himself in this argument against an adult, never mind a child.

  “It’s alright,” Aaron said after a moment. “Victor was an ass. I’m glad he’s dead.” He looked toward Julien again. “He used to hit Julien a lot. He’d try to hit me, but Julien would get in his way, call him names, make Victor mad at him.”

  “He must be very brave,” Mason said softly, following the boy’s adoring gaze with his own.

  Aaron nodded. “He does that with our father, too, whenever he gets his lash out. He tells me and my younger brothers, our little sisters, to hide. Then he’ll do something stupid, like spill Father’s brandy, or knock over a lamp so Father goes after him instead.”

  Mason thought of all the times he’d seen whip marks and lacerations criss-crossing Julien’s shoulders, spine, and buttocks. Julien had always tried to laugh these off, but there had been more than once, long after they’d finished making love and Julien had drifted off to sleep beside Mason, that he’d brushed his fingertips and lips across these cruel, brutal marks and hated Lamar Davenant with a passion so fierce and murderous, it left him nearly breathless.

  As if Mason had left his mind open, psionically unguarded, and Aaron had sensed these thoughts, he said quietly, “I wish it had been my father right along with Victor. I wish they both were dead.”

  Mason looked down at him, but his eyes were distant, as if seeing beyond the smoke and trees, at something Mason himself could not discern.

  “He keeps a little girl locked up beneath his library,” Aaron said. “I hear her crying sometimes at night.”

  Julien had told him of a similar discovery when he’d been a boy—when Lamar had wrenched his shoulder out of socket for the first time. He’s kept several of them down there over the years, he’d said. Slave girls, mostly, the ones he takes a fancy to. He likes to lock himself in there late at night and bring them out…play with them a bit.

  Years would pass before Mason realized that in Aaron’s case, the slave girl had in fact been his own family, Naima Morin, trapped beneath Lamar’s library. She was the illegitimate daughter of his brother, Arnaud, and a human woman—the same half-bred child who had caused Arnaud to be flogged in front of the Brethren Council. Mason had been aware of Naima’s existence since her birth—the entire Morin clan had—but she’d been kept a closely guarded secret among them. Michel had adored the child as much as any of his kin, and when Lamar had discovered her, when as the dominant Elder, he’d ordered her banished to the labyrinth of tunnels beneath their farmlands known as the Beneath, it had broken Michel’s heart. None of them had realized that Lamar had taken her from the tunnels shortly after her incarceration there—and had spent the next twenty or more years physically, sexually, and psychologically abusing her for his own sadistic pleasure.

  At the time of Aaron’s disclosure, Mason hadn’t understood that he meant Naima, however. He’d only again felt an overwhelming sorrow to realize the full and horrific extent of what he felt sure was Lamar’s madness. No man in his right mind could do the cruel, savage things Lamar did time and again—to his own family, no less.

  “I’m sorry, lad,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to offer the boy. He draped his hand in what he hoped was a comforting fashion against Aaron’s shoulder.

  “Julien says there’s nothing to be done about it,” Aaron murmured, not averting his gaze from that distant, unseen focal point. His brows crimped and for a moment, Mason caught a glimpse of that same granite-like hardness that would come over Julien sometimes. “But I’m going to get her out somehow.”

  “Hot damn!”

  Julien had managed to reach the hive, having stretched himself out along the bough like a sun-basking cat, then using his legs to anchor himself as he flipped upside down, dangling head-long toward the hive. Using his knife, he managed to saw off a large chunk of honeycomb, which he scraped free of bees with his blade, then tossed down to Lisette. Then, as he called out now, he unfurled his legs. He held onto the limb momentarily with his hands, the knife between his clenched teeth, and then let go. Mason felt a thrill of alarm as he dropped like a stone toward the ground—and a surge of sudden relief when he landed on his feet, nimble and lithe, his knees flexing to bear the brunt of the impact.

  “Were y
ou stung?” he asked, following Aaron as the boy rushed forward, returning to the fire.

  “Of course not.” Julien laughed, wiping his knife clean on his damp shirt tail. “You’re as bad as Lissie, the way you worry, you know that?” He turned to his sister, hand outstretched. “Have you ever tasted it straight from the comb?”

  “I don’t think so,” Mason said, watching with undisguised fascination as Julien broke apart the delicate comb, sodden and dripping with fat, golden globules of rich, fresh honey.

  “Here.” Smiling, Julien offered him a piece. “You suckle it until the honey’s gone. Then you can chew the comb.”

  He held Mason’s gaze, a mischievous glint in his blue eyes as he slipped the honeycomb between Mason’s lips. As the sweet flavor graced his tongue, filling his mouth, Mason had to fight the urge to let his tongue catch the runaway drops and rivulets of honey that clung to Julien’s fingers, and had spattered onto his chest.

  “That’s amazing,” he murmured, forced to stifle an inward groan as Julien drew his finger into his mouth and made an obvious point to drag his tongue around it in a slow, sweeping circle, cleaning up the honey.

  “Good stuff, oui?” Julien asked innocently, his brow arched in what Mason hoped was an invitation for anything but innocence later.

  “Oui,” he murmured, his voice coming out low and husky all at once.

  “It’s the best,” Aaron exclaimed, clutching a chunk of honeycomb in his hands and sucking greedily. With a toothy grin—and with honey smeared all over his cheeks and chin—he added, “This is the best day ever!”

  Years later, after Lisette had been married off to Mason’s brother Phillip and the Morin clan had moved in exile to Lake Tahoe, California, she had often recounted that afternoon with Mason. There had not been much at that time to make her smile—her marriage to Phillip had been anything but happy, and she’d started suffering the initial symptoms of the disease that would eventually incapacitate and kill her—but her face would always light up at these memories, her smile as glorious and lovely as that sun-kissed afternoon.

  “He loved you so,” she tell him of Julien, and sorrow would fill her blue eyes—eyes that had never failed to powerfully, poignantly remind him of her brother’s. “He wouldn’t admit it, of course, not even to me and Az, but I knew. I could see it in his face, his eyes, the way he looked at you. The way he couldn’t seem to look at anyone but you. He was so in love.” With a knowing sort of glance, she’d touched his face and added, “And you were, too, with him.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Get up, pičko.”

  With a groan, Mason stirred and opened his eyes, squinting blearily against an unexpected glare. He tried to lift his hand and block his face from the light, but frowned, bewildered, to discover they’d been bound together behind his back. He twisted his arms and felt the coarse fibers of thick ropes cut into his skin.

  “What the…?” he murmured, then he felt a large hand clasp him roughly beneath the arm, jerking at him.

  “I said get up,” a man growled.

  As he sat up, Mason realized he’d been lying on his side inside the trunk of a car. At six feet, two inches tall, he’d have been hard pressed to lie comfortably in the back of a pickup truck, never mind the older Cadillac two men now dragged him from. He had no idea how long he’d been in there, but by the way his knees were screaming like rusted screen door hinges as he tried to unfurl his legs, he guessed it had been awhile.

  “Bring him this way,” he heard another man say. “Over here.”

  On his feet and dragged in stumbling tow, Mason struggled to clear his mind and get his bearings. They were in an alley or driveway, with thick tangles of weeds growing through cracks and holes in the concrete. The men were leading him toward an old, dilapidated-looking house, a four-story brick monstrosity with boarded up windows, crumbling mortar, and a sagging roof. He saw other homes in similar states of disrepair on either side of him, and around them, the looming towers of tall buildings.

  A city, he realized. I’m in a city—but it’s sure as hell isn’t Miami.

  The last thing he remembered was…

  Scarred Guy and his friends busting down my door,,,beating the shit out of me.

  He looked to his left and found the scarred man with the Cyrillic tattoos walking alongside him, one of his thick, muscled arms clapped firmly around Mason’s waist to keep him upright and in forward motion. Another man flanked them on the right; if he was one from the hotel, however, Mason couldn’t tell. His telepathy felt stifled, as if it had somehow been switched off, and he could no longer open his mind psionically or telekinetically.

  “Where…are you taking me?” he groaned as they led him up the crumbling back steps and through a narrow doorway into the house. His voice sounded funny; his nose felt swollen and sore. His lips were battered, split open in places, and moving his mouth hurt. His belly ached from where the goons had pummeled and punted him, and he staggered along doubled over, unable to bear the pain of straightening his posture in full.

  Scarred Guy didn’t answer, but that may have been because they’d reached their destination. Just beyond the back door was the kitchen. The linoleum was chipped and dingy, the countertops grease-spotted and grimy. An old gas range listed in one corner, the oven door partially ajar, and a dented refrigerator stood in another. The smell of garbage, mildew, and decay was immediate and overpowering, wafting in a nearly palpable cloud from the heaps of dirty dishes, spent pizza boxes, empty beer cans and liquor bottles that littered the floor and cabinets.

  Scarred Guy gave Mason a shove and he stumbled across the threshold. With a cry, he floundered forward, then crashed to his knees, saving himself from a face-plant on the floor by catching the back of a chair around a battered, circa-1960s dinette table.

  “Mason…?” he heard a voice say—a woman’s voice, familiar and frightened.

  He looked up and saw a man sitting at the table across from him, bald and covered in tattoos. If Scarred Guy and his goons were grizzly bears, then this guy was a fucking Tyrannosaurus Rex, possibly the biggest, brawniest man Mason had ever seen. Next to him, her eyes wide and stricken, was…

  “Edith?” he gasped.

  She was still dressed for bed in a pale pink tank top and flannel pajama bottoms, her feet bare, her honey-blonde hair unbound and hanging lankly to her shoulders, her face unmade-up and pale. Her eyes flooded with tears when he met her gaze. “Oh, Mason…!” she whispered.

  “Are you alright? Did they hurt you?” Mason seethed, his brows furrowing as he turned to level his gaze at the bald, tattooed man beside her—Vladan Nikolić, he was more than willing to bet. “Nikolić, you son of a bitch, if you’ve touched her, I’ll—”

  “I’m alright, Mason,” Edith said. “They haven’t hurt me. Not yet anyway.”

  Nikolić tipped his head back and laughed. “No need for introductions, I see,” he said. “Dr. Averay is your wife, is she not, Dr. Morin? Or you ex-wife, rather. How does that work, anyway? I’m afraid the ways of your kind are sometimes confusing to me.”

  Mason blinked, caught off guard, and Nikolić tipped his head back, chuckling. “Oh, yes, Dr. Morin,” he said. “I’m aware of what you and Dr. Averay are. I’ve known of your kind for many years now.”

  “I…” Mason shot Edith an uncertain glance. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Nikolić arched his brow, then nodded once to Scarred Guy, who promptly reached beneath the front of his flak vest. Mason took a hedging step back, alarmed that he’d pull out a weapon, but instead, the man pulled out a plastic pouch used for intravenous infusions. The contents were bright red; it squelched loudly when Scarred Guy tossed it onto the table.

  Blood.

  “Can you smell it?” Nikolić asked, still smiling wanly. “Here…this may help.”

  Drawing a folding knife from the hip pocket of his cargo pants, he flipped back the blade, then drove it suddenly, fiercely into the middle of the bag. The point of the knife sa
nk with a heavy thud into the cheap Formica tabletop and suddenly blood began pooling out in a widening circumference. The aroma of it—thick, heady, bittersweet and strong—struck Mason immediately, and he was as helpless to prevent his visceral, instinctive reaction as Edith was. Their pupils widened reflexively, the black orbs widening to encompass first their irises, and then as the smell intensified, the whites of their corneas beyond. Mason felt his upper gum tingle, but where Edith’s fangs began to slip down from their hidden recesses, pushing out against her upper lip, his did not—because his couldn’t. Jean Luc had seen to that; had ruined him.

  “Strigoi,” Nikolić said. “In my language, that means vampire. And as I said, good doctors, I know that’s what you are.”

  Mason might not have had fangs any more, but the bloodlust still imbued his body with preternatural strength and enhanced reflexes beyond that of any human. With a snarl, he sprang forward, shoving the table aside and lunging for Nikolić, his fists bared. “You son of a bitch…!”

  Once upon a time—hell, not even six months ago—he’d have never summoned the balls for such a reaction. He’d always relied on his wits, his charm, his intelligence to get himself out of threatening situations. He’d been a scholar, not a fighter, but as with his fangs, Jean Luc had changed that; he’d changed everything.

  To his shock, Nikolić reacted with a speed and agility no human could have possessed—but a Brethren would have easily. In an instant, he was out of his chair, his hand closing in Edith’s hair. She screamed as he jerked her out of her seat, and Mason couldn’t figure out why she wouldn’t fight back. She was stronger than a human male—even a big one like Nikolić—by nature, and with the bloodlust in her, that strength was only amplified. And yet, when Nikolić shoved the barrel of a nine-millimeter handgun against the side of her head—a gun he’d jerked with impossible speed from a holster at his side—she did nothing but cower, her eyes wide and frightened.

  “Let her go,” Mason said to Nikolić. “Whatever you want—whatever sick fucking game you’re playing, Nikolić, leave her out of it. It’s me you want.”