Dark Vengeance Part 2

by Reinke, Sara

  She threw her arms around his neck so tightly, she almost strangled him, but in that moment, as he’d closed his eyes and breathed in the sweet comfort of her scent, he hadn’t cared. There were worse ways a man could die, he figured, than in the arms of the woman he loved.

  “I’ll come back for you,” he breathed. “I promise.”

  “Here. Take my phone, too.”

  Brandon blinked in surprise, snapping out of Aaron’s mind as the older man pressed something against his hand—an iPhone. “Give your grandfather a call once you’re on the road,” he suggested with a gentle smile. “He’s out looking for you.”

  Bewildered, Brandon shook his head. Wait a minute. I can help you.

  Aaron walked back to the elevator disguised by a false panel in one of Julien’s bookcases. No offense, but you’ll only slow me down. If you could do that telekinesis shit like the Morins, you might be of some use to me, but I’m figuring Julianne’s got you doped up so you can’t do much of anything. Right? And besides… He glanced back at Brandon and smiled. You talk too goddamn much.

  But… Brandon said helplessly. What about you?

  I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. The elevator doors slid open and Aaron stepped inside, dropping Brandon a final wink. I’m just going to go spend a little quality time with my old man.

  * * *

  Bewildered and torn, Brandon remained rooted in place once the elevator doors had closed and Aaron was gone. He felt exhausted, hurting, every nerve ending in his body scraped raw and left bloody.

  What do I do now? He looked down at the car keys in one hand, the phone in the other. The Davenant farm lay within ten miles of the Noble family lands. I could be home in less than fifteen minutes. I could be on the phone with my grandfather…or Lina…

  He glanced toward the door. But what about Aaron?

  Despite his best attempts at bravado, one thing had been clear to Brandon from Aaron’s body language, his facial expression, the tension in his entire frame.

  He’s scared shitless. And he doesn’t expect to survive this.

  So what? a part of his mind hissed. He’ll take Lamar down with him, then there will be two less Davenants in the world to deal with.

  But another part of his mind, one not so filled with furious venom, interjected. Aaron saved my life twice. He burned himself with the branding irons when it could’ve been me—was supposed to be me. He helped me rescue Kobayashi’s son.

  Brandon’s brows narrowed, his resolve thus mustered. Davenant or not, I owe you, Aaron, he thought. And like I told you before—I have to be able to live with myself when this is all said and done.

  * * *

  Although Brandon wasn’t 100 percent positive where Aaron had gone, he remembered the other man quipping that Lamar had kept the “penthouse suite” in the underground complex for himself. Let’s try the uppermost floor, then, he figured. And we’ll go from there.

  At first, as he stepped off the elevator on the first level below, he felt disoriented. Everything looked exactly the same as it had on the floor where he’d been kept prisoner—the same glaringly bright fluorescent lights overhead, the same, nondescript floors and walls in the same industrial shades of white and grey. Unlike the floor where Brandon had been held, however, this one was eerily vacant. There were no humans in their ubiquitous scrub suits working in the labs or hustling about; no signs of activity or life whatsoever.

  And more importantly—no sign of Aaron or Lamar.

  Brandon tried to open his mind experimentally, but felt nothing. But where his psionic senses failed him, his physical ones did not. Closing his eyes, he drew in a long, deep breath through his nose. Aaron had been shot; he was bleeding. The scent of his blood would still be in the air, even after he’d passed, and as a Brethren—as instinctively tuned to that scent as any wolf—Brandon could detect it.

  There you are, he thought, as over the acrid smell of disinfecting cleansers used to mop and polish the floors, he picked up on Aaron’s blood trail. He began to walk in the direction in which the unmistakable scent led him, following the corridor to his left past featureless windows and countless unmarked doors.

  It wasn’t long before he smelled something else in the air, sulfur-like and distinctive—the stink of gunpowder. And only moments after that, he rounded a corner and found visual evidence of Aaron’s passage: a half-dozen humans lying sprawled and bloody on the floor, having been dispatched in short, swift, and brutally efficient fashion.

  At least…at first, Brandon thought they were human. They smelled human, in any case. But then he felt the light, tickling sensation that being near another Brethren automatically provoked. While Aaron was close enough to have plowed his way through the small contingent of workers recently, Brandon doubted he’d stuck around close enough or long enough for Brandon to physically feel his proximity.

  So what the hell? he thought with a puzzled frown.

  These were no ordinary humans, no simple lab workers; he could tell that upon closer inspection. They looked a hell of a lot like the same sort who had forced the feeding tube down his throat, all built like silverback gorillas—burly, stocky, and unquestionably strong. Most bore unfamiliar tattoos—a trio of S’s on the backs of their hands, or unusual coats of arms that depicted a two-headed eagle with a Cyrillic inscription over it. In fact, the curious symbols from the Russian alphabet appeared in numerous tattoos on nearly every single one of the men Brandon saw.

  They’d also been armed—a scattered array of automatic rifles lay strewn among them, half-hidden from immediate view beneath tangled arms and outstretched legs. Brandon saw pockmarks in the walls, punctures in the plaster in erratic, sweeping patterns that suggested at least one of them, if not more, had opened fire upon a moving target in the hallway. Several of the light fixtures overhead had been shot out, too, and the haze of gun smoke remained visible in the flickering glow.

  Who are these guys? Brandon wondered—because although his nose told him they were human, that tickling, electrical sensation that said they were Brethren grew stronger and stronger as he picked his way among them. He glimpsed a small glass vial on the floor beside one of them, having fallen out of a pocket perhaps, and curious, he squatted to retrieve it.

  There was liquid inside, something oily and white, maybe a teaspoonful at best. The vial had been sealed with a black plastic cap. Brandon unscrewed it and drew the bottle to his nose, sniffing cautiously. To his surprise, the substance had a familiar smell to it, not only because of the metallic quality that he immediately recognized as blood, but also because of who that scent had come from—because he’d been following that same trail since he’d stepped off the elevator.

  Aaron.

  He remembered something Julien had mentioned earlier—“juice,” a drug Lamar had been producing in the labs, made from Aaron’s blood.

  It doesn’t change them into us, he’d said. But it allows them to experience the bloodlust, at least for a time. Their senses are heightened, their reflexes, their strength. Makes them impervious to pain, makes them want to fuck like rabbits. All the things we feel.

  Was this the “juice” Julien had talked about? Had these men with the Russian tattoos been using it?

  If you could do that telekinesis shit like the Morins, you might be of some use to me, Aaron had told him. But I’m figuring Julianne’s got you doped up so you can’t do much of anything. Right?

  Julianne had admitted as much to Brandon herself—she’d given him an antidepressant, mirtazapine, that he suspected was the reason he’d been unable to summon the bloodlust or his telepathy.

  So if one drug makes a Brethren more like a human… He glanced at the vial in his hand, feeling idiotically like Alice in Wonderland trying to figure out how to grow bigger, and wishing he had a goddamn caterpillar around to tell him the answer. And the other makes a human more like a Brethren…

  Brandon stood, frowning as he looked down the remaining length of corridor ahead of him. There were no signs of movement—not of A
aron, or anyone else—but several of the lights farther along must have taken gunshot hits, too, because they were noticeably dark, leaving patches of heavy shadows beneath.

  What the fuck, he thought, drawing the vial of juice to his lips. Tipping his head back, he swallowed. It tasted strange, not exactly like blood, but close—the way artificial sweeteners make something taste good, but not nearly as much as real sugar.

  When he’d finished, he dropped the vial to the floor and started walking again. He didn’t feel any differently, but knew he didn’t have time to dick around and wait. Aaron had taken out the pack of bloodlust-infused humans—armed ones, at that—who had matched him in strength and agility, all on his own, with only a pistol. If he was enough of a bad-ass to do that, but was still terrified by the prospect of going up against his father—a withered old man in a wheelchair—then Brandon knew whatever Lamar could muster in his own defense was going to be bad.

  Really bad.

  * * *

  Around the next corner, the hallway dead-ended at a pair of closed doors. Fashioned from panels of painted steel, they looked heavy and imposing, with no windows or labels to give even the faintest hint of what may be waiting on the other side.

  Which probably means nothing but trouble, Brandon figured as he walked toward them, his footsteps light and wary. Brows narrowing, he tried opening his mind, extending his telepathy, but the juice didn’t seem to be working for him. He still felt nothing except for that heavy, static-like sensation inside his mind.

  Aaron? he thought cautiously, because the scent of Aaron’s blood definitely led in that direction—and grew stronger, more heady the closer Brandon got to those doors. As if he was also getting closer to Aaron. Or Aaron’s bleeding more now because something’s happened to him.

  Brandon paused at the double doors. As someone who had spent the majority of his life deaf, he seldom missed being able to hear, but in that moment, he wished like all hell that he could, if only to get a sense of what might be going on past that threshold. He couldn’t smell spent gunpowder, which would’ve suggested Aaron had fired his pistol, but the smell of Aaron’s blood was very strong now.

  Goddamn it, he’s in there, Brandon thought. But that didn’t mean that Lamar was, too. Those Russian guys were shooting at him. Maybe he got hit. Maybe this is as far as he made it before he crashed from blood loss, and he’s lying in there, bleeding out, needing help. He helped me escape—he went back into that conference room to haul my ass out of the fire. I can’t just stand here like some chickenshit kid.

  The furrow between his brows deepened, and thus resolved, Brandon pushed against one of the doors, opening it.

  * * *

  Brandon slipped cautiously inside, catching the door behind him against his hand so that it shut as quietly as possible. He couldn’t see much because the lights in the enormous room beyond the door had been dimmed. Only a few of the dozens of overhead fluorescent panels remained on, offering more shadows than any real illumination.

  What the hell is this place? he wondered because there was nothing there. The room seemed more like an empty warehouse. Literally as long and broad as a football field with a ceiling a good twenty feet or so overhead, it was completely devoid of furniture or furnishings, only the ubiquitous grey concrete-block walls and a tiled floor that stretched out, glossy in sporadic patches where the overhead lights reflected off its surface.

  It was within one of these ragged perimeters of dim glow that Brandon saw a shadow-draped form sprawled on the floor, unmoving.

  Aaron! With a gasp, Brandon rushed toward him. Aaron lay on his belly, his face turned to one side, a small pool of blood glinting around his head. Brandon could see where something had struck him hard, knocking him out cold—above his ear, his hair was matted heavily with blood.

  Aaron? Even though he still couldn’t project telepathically, Brandon called out as he grabbed Aaron by the shoulder and tried to roll him over, hoping that the other man could hear him. Aaron was nothing but dead weight, completely limp and unresponsive, and he crashed onto his back like a sack of grain. Of the pistol he’d been carrying when he’d left the Davenant mansion upstairs, Brandon saw no sign.

  Aaron, can you hear me? Brandon thought, leaning over and giving him a rough shake. Aaron, wake up!

  Again, he felt the nape of his neck tingle slightly, a curious sort of sensation he might have passed off as being with Aaron had he not been on his guard and without his telepathy, relying on his other senses to cue him to possible danger. His gaze cut from Aaron to the reflected glow of the overhead lights on the floor around him—and the sudden shift in shadows that were not his own.

  Whirling, he swung his arm up, catching the base of a heavy fire extinguisher against his palm split seconds before it made brutal contact with the back of his head. Julianne clasped the other end between her hands and her blue eyes flashed in frightened surprise.

  Brandon…! she hiccupped, then she yelped aloud as he wrenched the fire extinguisher out of her grasp. She backpedaled out of the circumference of light in mounting alarm as he rose to his feet. Cutting her gaze between the fire extinguisher in his hands and his face, his furious expression, she struggled to smile, a patently sweet and misleading sort. “Brandon, I…I didn’t realize it was you. Why, I…you know I’d never…”

  Shut up, Julianne, he seethed. No more bullshit. No more lies.

  She blinked at him as if wounded. “I didn’t know it was you,” she said again. “I promise, Brandon. I swear I didn’t. I love you. I’d never—”

  I said no more lies! Brandon threw the fire extinguisher, swinging his arm wide and letting it fly. He couldn’t hear it clatter against the floor, but she did, and jumped at the sound, her eyes widening with fright.

  “I’m not lying,” she pleaded.

  Shut up, he snapped. Just shut your fucking mouth!

  “Brandon, please.” Julianne stepped back into the light, closer to him, her eyes glossy with tears. “I…I’m sorry. Please don’t be angry.”

  ‘Don’t be…’? Brandon managed a ragged bark of laughter. Are you kidding me, Julianne? You helped your uncle kidnap me! You let your cousin beat the fucking shit out of me! You let them drill holes into my fucking bones, burn me with branding irons! You chained me up like a dog and put a goddamn tube down my throat!

  “I had to do all of that,” Julianne said—to which he laughed again. “Brandon, please, listen to me. I had to. I had nowhere else to go. I…I had nothing left.” Her bottom lip quivered, and her tears began to spill. “Augustus left me. He left all of us—all of his wives—to be with Eleanor. He wrote me a letter, told me I was free of my obligations to him. My obligations! And I…I loved him so!”

  Her hand fluttered to her mouth and she gasped for miserable breath. “All of those years I’d taken care of him,” she whispered. “His house and family—our house and family. Eleanor wasn’t there. I took care of it all. I did it because I loved him. I loved you all!”

  She stared at him, imploring. “I had nowhere to go but back here, back to my uncle. I had to beg him for help, for a place to stay. I was so ashamed—I’m still so ashamed, Brandon, but I had no choice!”

  You could have stayed at the great house, Brandon said, but she shook her head. Some of his anger had dissolved at the sight of her tears. After all, it was Julianne—the one who’d always bandaged all of his cuts and scrapes, who had always shared candy with him from the secret stash she kept hidden in the kitchen, and who’d given him a copy of Treasure Island because she’d known how much he enjoyed reading it. Despite everything that had happened, she’d been his favorite grandmother and even now, he loved her. Moved with pity, he stepped forward, hand outstretched. Of course you could have.

  “How?” she exclaimed, looking up at him. “How…how could I have faced you all after Augustus released me like that? After all of you found out? What would you have thought of me? What…what would…”

  Her voice dissolved into sobs and she clapped her han
ds over her face.

  We wouldn’t have thought anything, Brandon said, hooking her gently by the back of the neck and drawing her into an embrace. Except that we love you, Julianne.

  That was all he had time to think, because it felt like the inside of his skull suddenly became ground zero in a nuclear testing zone, and an atom bomb had just detonated in his brain. He convulsed, jerking violently against Julianne as all of his muscles abruptly seized. He was only dimly aware of crumpling to the floor in a shuddering, writhing heap, because the pain as his arms and legs twisted and contorted was so immense, so excruciating, it drowned out any other sensory awareness he possessed.

  His throat felt like it had constricted down to a pin hole; his chest felt like it had collapsed in on itself, threatening to suffocate him. He thrashed against the floor for what felt like an eternity—until he felt himself starting to black out, his consciousness wavering on that tenuous brink between alert and unconscious—until at last, Julianne made it stop.

  Stupid boy, she said inside his mind, her voice cold, her face swimming murkily in and out of his tear-smeared view. You don’t know anything about love…just like that whore Eleanor.

  She kicked him in the belly, drawing her leg back and driving her foot with brutal force into the vulnerable plane of his gut. Brandon twisted weakly against the floor, gasping for breath. When she closed her fist in his hair and wrenched his head back, he gritted his teeth, pain ripping through his scalp.

  Eleanor doesn’t know anything—except how to make men fall in love with her, she seethed. All so she can turn around and destroy them in the end. She ruined my cousin Victor. She used her beauty to seduce him—he went mad for wanting her. She played with his heart, like a cat with a cornered mouse, and when she saw something else that caught her eye—my Augustus—she threw Victor aside like garbage to try and claim him!

  Augustus…wasn’t yours, Brandon whispered, because Eleanor had been his first wife. She’d originally been promised to Victor Davenant, it was true; by the edict of the Tomes, they were to have been married. But Brandon’s grandfather had fallen in love with her—and she with him—and Augustus had challenged Victor to a duel, with the winner to have Eleanor as his bride. Augustus had killed Victor in that duel—he’d damn near died himself. Julianne hadn’t married into the Noble clan until several years later, a gesture meant to establish peace between the clans over the matter of Victor’s death. One that hadn’t worked.