Dark Vengeance Part 2

by Reinke, Sara

  “I don’t care,” Julien said again. “I don’t want to go to some stuffy old party where I have to make nice and dance with Mercy just to please my father—who’s only going to get drunk and start yowling at all of us for being worthless anyway.” He’d been joking half-heartedly, but his smile faltered now. “He’s been on a rampage lately…my father,” he said. “Drunk all the time, stumbling about, shouting and slamming things.” He closed his eyes. “He’s been hurting Az again.”

  Mason said nothing, but his embrace tightened in proffered comfort.

  “Aaron won’t tell me of it, but I…I’ve seen the marks on his wrists…where Father’s tied him up.” Julien felt the sharp, sudden sting of ashamed tears. “I’ve seen the blood on his clothes…the bruises…” Uttering an anguished gasp, he whispered, “It’s my fault.”

  “No,” Mason soothed, pressing his lips against Julien’s hair.

  “Yes, it is.” Julien nodded. “I’m not there to stop it. Every night I’m here. I’m not…”

  “Hush now.” Mason rolled him onto his back and straddled him, his thighs enveloping Julien’s hips.

  “I feel so guilty,” Julien said. “When I’m here…when I’m with you, I don’t think of anything…anyone else. Not Mercy, or my father…not even Az.”

  His voice broke, and he turned his face away in shame. Mason stroked his cheek lightly, trying without success to coax his gaze. “And if you were home and you tried to stop it, he’d only turn around and take out his sick rage on you.”

  “That’s not my home.” Julien shook his head. “That place…it’s just a house…four walls, a roof. Wherever you are—that’s home.”

  With a soft smile, Mason leaned down and pressed his mouth gently against Julien’s, letting his lips linger. “There’s nothing you can do. You know that.”

  “I can kill him,” Julien whispered, his brows furrowing with pained resolve. “I can shoot the heartless son of a bitch in the head while he’s passed out drunk…”

  “Yes, and then what?” Mason asked. “Then the Council will find you guilty of murder, and see you dead right along with him. And what would I do without you?”

  He kissed Julien again, his tongue slipping past the seam of the younger man’s lips. Julien raised his head and shoulders from the blanket to meet him, deepening the kiss, and Mason uttered a low, hungry groan against his mouth. Julien could feel the stirrings of Mason’s fresh arousal against the flat, muscled plane of his stomach, and reached between them, curling his fingers around the thick, hardening length of his shaft.

  Mason groaned again, his breath growing sharp and ragged against Julien’s ear as Julien’s mouth trailed from his lips to his jawline, and from there, his throat. Julien stroked his cock fully to life in his hand and then Mason caught him by the shoulders, his fingertips digging in with fierce imperative. Mason shifted his weight, pulling Julien up onto his knees, turning him around to face the far wall. As he leaned over from behind, Julien felt the tip of his erection—damp now with saliva as Mason dabbed first his fingertips, then his cock in preparation—prod between his buttocks and lightly press against his threshold. When he slipped past, Julien uttered a hoarse gasp. He clapped his hand against the wall to brace himself as Mason began to move, easing the full length of him inside, and Mason pressed his hand atop, threading his fingers through Julien’s, holding onto him fiercely.

  When they were finished, Mason crumpled against him, kissing his shoulder and shuddering with exhaustion. Keeping his fingers laced through Julien’s with one hand, he wrapped his free arm around Julien’s stomach, holding him.

  “I don’t want to go,” Julien whispered, closing his eyes. “I want to stay with you.”

  “I want that too—with all my heart.” Mason kissed his ear, then lay down again, drawing Julien down beside him.

  After they both had dressed and left the spring house, they walked together into the woods to retrieve their horses. Julien untied his sorrel mare from the trunk of a locust tree, Mason walked up behind him, slipping his arms around his waist and pressing his forehead between Julien’s shoulder blades.

  God above, I love you, he whispered inside Julien’s mind.

  Julien closed his eyes, draping his hands atop Mason’s. I love you, too.

  “Meet me tomorrow.”

  Julien nodded. “I will.”

  He turned and watched as Mason hooked his foot in the stirrup, then swung himself gracefully astride his gelding. The horse snuffled, its nostrils flaring, its front hooves pawing at the loam as it danced nervously in place. Mason smiled with a tender sort of fondness as he regarded Julien from the vantage of his saddle.

  “Those eyes,” he remarked, digging his heels into the horse’s flank to spur it into motion. “You’re going to break my heart some day with those beautiful blue eyes.”

  As Julien rode for the Davenant great house—the opposite direction from which Mason rode—he couldn’t help but notice that his own horse seemed somewhat skittish, as had Mason’s—uncharacteristically so. It cantered with its ears drawn back, its lips fluttering as it chewed restlessly against the metal plate of its bit, and more than once, he had to draw back hard on the reins to slow its pace down before it broke into a full gallop of its own accord.

  “What’s the matter, girl?” he murmured, as he reined her to a halt and patted the side of the mare’s muscled neck—although he thought he knew. He could still smell smoke; the odor seemed to ebb and flow with the wind, strong and pungent in one moment, and barely discernible the next. Pivoting in the saddle, he looked behind him across the night-draped field. The wind came from that direction, bringing the smoke with it. But he couldn’t see any point of origin for the smell, no orange glow among the trees or beyond the distant hills that might hint at a fire.

  Strange, he thought, giving the mare a little kick to put her in motion again.

  As he approached the Davenant great house, he saw the windows of the second story all aglow with cheery light from Annette’s birthday celebration. The entire family would be gathered in the upstairs ballroom, dancing and making merry—and undoubtedly drunk, the lot of them, by now. Especially Lamar, although Julien doubted his father would be upstairs. He despised social gatherings of any sort—and especially those of a joyous nature. Why in the hell he’d consented to allow Annette’s celebration was a mystery to Julien.

  He approached the house from the back so that he could return his horse to the barn. Curiously, he found four horses out of their stalls and loosely fettered by the reins to different posts within the stables—all of them sweat-glossed, as if fresh from hard runs, and all of them still wearing full tack.

  What the fuck? he wondered, frowning as he dismounted from the mare. He’d planned to strip her of saddle and bridle, brushing her down well before turning her out to graze, but settled now for returning her to her stall. It wasn’t just the sight of the other horses that troubled him—it was the smell of them. The odor of wood smoke he’d kept catching in the wind was especially strong, emanating from the horses’ sweaty coats and gear.

  What the fuck? he wondered again, as he hurried across the yard toward to the back stoop. That insistent, uneasy feeling he’d had all evening had returned, this time stronger than ever, and Julien had the distinct sense that something was very, very wrong. Enough that he took the steps two per stride in his haste to reach the back door—only when he reached for the knob, he drew back in wide-eyed surprise as it swung suddenly inward. To his bewildered start, he saw his father at the threshold, Lamar with his cane in hand—the one with an ivory handle carved to look like a snarling dog. His brothers, Allistair and Jean Luc, stood behind him, all dressed in dark coats with tri-cornered hats pulled low upon their brows, all poised apparently to leave the house.

  “Father…!” Julien gasped, stumbling backwards and nearly falling down the steps and onto his eyes.

  “There you are,” Lamar growled, his voice low and mean. “I’ve been looking for you.”

 
; “I…I just…I was…” Julien stammered helplessly, so certain he’d been caught, so sure that Lamar knew exactly where he’d been and who he’d been with, that he nearly turned on his boot heel and fled.

  “Get your ass inside, boy,” Lamar said. “There’s a mess behind the stairwell. Get it cleaned up before any of the women see.”

  With that, he strode briskly down the stairs, his boot soles hitting each heavily enough to shake the entire stoop. Jean Luc and Allistair hurried along behind him, their shoulders hunched, their faces curiously ashen, their eyes darting nervously from Julien to the ground. Julien smelled that strong stink of smoke on their coats and clothes, too.

  “Y-yes, sir,” he said, nodding. He watched the trio march toward the barn, then turned and hurried inside. He didn’t know what kind of mess Lamar might have left near the stairs—because if he was drunk, it could have meant anything from spilling his brandy to dropping his trousers and taking a shit on the floor.

  What he found was a thousand-fold worse.

  At first, all he saw was blood—a large pool of it, with more splattered high along the walls. Then he saw that someone was lying in the middle of all of it, although it wasn’t until he’d reached out uncertainly, rolling the figure from his side onto his back that he realized.

  “Az?” Julien whispered, all of the strength escaping him, draining abruptly into his feet, and from there into the floor. With a soft moan, he crumpled to his knees, heedless of the blood that soaked through his breeches. “Oh…oh my God…”

  Aaron had been beaten so badly, his face was nearly unrecognizable. The right side of his head looked misshapen, sunken somewhat, the rest of his face gruesomely bloated. His nose was little more than a mashed, discolored blob, his lips split and crusted with blood. His eyes had swelled shut, sealed with pouches of black and purple bruising. His hair looked matted with blood, his scalp lacerated so badly in places, it had peeled back in bloody sheets to reveal the stark white glint of skull bone beneath.

  “Aaron,” Julien whimpered. “Aaron…oh…oh, God, no, no, no, please…Az…!”

  His stomach heaved, and he barely had time to scramble aside before he began to vomit. Again and again, his gut twisted in agonizing, wrenching knots, and he braced himself against the wall with one hand, grimacing at each vile, violent spasm. When he finished, he crumpled forward, pressing his head to the wall, trembling and unable to turn around.

  He’s dead, he thought, anguished. Even without opening his mind, he knew; there was no way anyone could have survived such a brutal assault—Brethren or not.

  He’s dead because of me, Julien thought. Because I wasn’t here to protect him. Because I wasn’t here.

  Clapping his hand to his face, he uttered a low, grief-stricken cry and began to sob. His entire body shuddered from the force of his tears, and if he hadn’t been trying so hard to keep the sound muffled, his lips pressed together, his hand clamped over his mouth, lest he alert any of the partygoers upstairs, he never would have heard the faint, piteous sound of Aaron moaning.

  “Az?” Stunned, Julien turned to look back at his brother. He could see Aaron’s chest rise, and heard the soft, whistling intake of his breath as again, he somehow summoned his voice enough to groan. “Oh, my God!”

  On his hands and knees, he scrambled back to Aaron’s side, and cradled his brother’s battered face between his hands. He drew Aaron’s head into the nest of his lap, then folded himself over his broken, beaten form, rocking back and forth.

  “Aaron,” he wept, stroking Aaron’s face. When he seized Aaron by the hand, he felt his brother’s fingers move feebly, as if trying to return his desperate grasp. “Oh, God, Az, I’m here, I’m right here. I’ll never leave again. Please, I’ll never let him hurt you again…please, God…please…”

  He felt Aaron’s fingers go lax against his own, his hand slipping limply out of his grasp. More tears came, spilling like raindrops onto Aaron’s face. With a cry, he stumbled to his feet. He raced upstairs, then into the ballroom, pushing and shoving his way past many of the very same people who, years earlier, had blocked his view of his father when Lamar had fallen off his horse. He found Annette among the crowd by nothing less than blind luck. Grabbing her by the shoulders and all but collapsing against her in his shock, he gave her a rough shake.

  “Where’s your necklace?” he cried—because he’d meant to rip it off of her neck and bring it back downstairs with him. He still had no idea if the black ichor he’d spilled on the floor of Lamar’s library so long ago had been real or imagined—and if it was still somehow inside of the pendant’s hollow compartment if it was. But in that moment, in his absolute heartbreak and despair, he had no other ideas, no other options.

  “Julien?” Stiffening in disgusted surprise, staring in aghast at his disheveled hair, and rumpled, bloodstained clothes, Annette tried to pull away from him. “What on earth has happened to—?”

  “Your necklace, goddamn it!” he shouted, spraying her with spittle. “The locket you had on tonight—where is it? Answer me!”

  He shook her again for emphasis, more violently this time, his voice loud and sharp enough to warrant bewildered stares and murmurs from other members of his clan standing nearby.

  “The clasp is broken,” Annette hiccupped, her eyes wide with fright. “I gave it to Aaron earlier to put in his fob pocket. I—”

  She yelped as he shoved her away, turning on his heel and running back toward the door. He physically pushed and threw aside anyone in his path, then tore down the stairs, his boot heels striking like hammer blows on the risers.

  Falling to his knees beside his brother, Julien thrust his fingers down inside the pocket at Aaron’s hip. It was meant to hold something small, like a pocket watch or, in this case, a broken necklace, but to his dismay, it was empty. So were all of Aaron’s other pockets, which Julien pawed at and groped, each in turn, each in mounting desperation.

  “Az.” Julien leaned over, shaking Aaron by the shoulders. “Az, wake up. Please!” His voice grew strained, and he choked back tears. “You have to wake up. You have to tell me where the necklace is…your mother’s locket. What did you do with it? Aaron, please!”

  Aaron didn’t answer; he didn’t move. The dim light that was Julien’s awareness of his brother’s psionic presence was fading fast, and, clasping Aaron’s ruined face in his hands, he did the only thing he could think of: he pushed himself into Aaron’s mind, shoving past his brother’s natural mental defenses and forcing himself into his memories.

  Show me, Aaron, he begged. Show me what you did with it. Show me the necklace.

  “Take this,” he saw Aaron say as he pressed something into a woman’s hands—Annette’s necklace. She was young and black, a beautiful slave girl their father had stolen, and through Aaron, Julien knew her name.

  Naima.

  “You’ll need it,” Aaron had told her. “It’s silver. You can trade it for money, for passage, or food.”

  That’s why Lamar had nearly bludgeoned him to death—he’d helped the slave girl escape, ushering her to the secret entrance to the Indian tunnels beneath the house.

  And that’s where I’ll find the locket, Julien realized, again scrambling to his feet.

  He took a lantern and went down into the tunnels, but hadn’t gone more than a hundred feet or so before the orange glow of his lamp had winked off something small and metallic lying on the ground. When he saw it was Annette’s necklace, the little St. Christopher’s locket, Julien nearly burst into tears. Clutching it tightly in his fist, he made his way back to the house—back to his brother’s would-be deathbed.

  As he fell to his knees at Aaron’s side, he realized, to his horror, that he could no longer see the slow but rhythmic rise and fall of his chest that only earlier had brought Julien such abject relief.

  “Oh, God,” he gasped, thrusting his hand into his coat pocket and fumbling for Annette’s necklace and pendant. “No, no, please—Aaron!”

  I can’t be too late, he
thought in despair. Oh, God, no, please, don’t let me be too late!

  When the top of the locket popped open, Julien stared in tearful shock at what lay beneath—a glistening black bead of fluid, no more than a teaspoonful, thick like molten wax.

  Just like I remember, he thought. It wasn’t a dream after all, and it’s there, even after all this time. If the ichor wasn’t a dream…

  He dipped the tip of his index finger into the basin of the locket, scooping up the black, oily blob and feeling it cling to his skin, unnaturally cold. If it hadn’t been imagined, then Lamar drinking it hadn’t been, either—and neither had been his seemingly miraculous revival and recovery.

  And that means it could work for Aaron, too, Julien thought, pushing his fingertip between Aaron’s lips, forcing the oily substance onto his tongue.

  “Please, Az,” he whispered, drawing his hand away and watching his brother’s face for any sign of life, however fleeting or faint. Stroking his hand against Aaron’s blood-soaked hair, he began to cry again. “Please don’t go. Please…don’t leave me…”

  He waited. And waited. And waited. Huddled over his brother, he waited helplessly for what felt to him like an agonizing eternity for even the faintest hint of life. But there was nothing.

  “No,” he pleaded—because if he hadn’t dreamed the ichor; if the black ooze hadn’t been some figment of an overactive childhood imagination, then the fact that by drinking it, Lamar had somehow survived what otherwise should have been fatal injuries had to be real, too.

  It has to, he thought desperately, rubbing his fingers one by one inside the locket’s now-empty basin, and pushing them past Aaron’s slack lips. It has to work, it just has to!

  Mason, he thought, gathering his brother in his arms. He was the only person Julien could think of, the only one left he could turn to for help. Mason had studied medicine and surgery under his father, who himself had trained as a surgical apprentice decades earlier before the clans had left their native France. He would know what to do.