Leverage, the voice whispered and Rene had glanced across the room at Tessa, who lay on the floor, unconscious. She"s got a monkey on her back, mon ami. Ten of them, in fact-the Elders. They"re coming for her and Brandon and maybe this guy"s the ticket for getting rid of them once and for all.
His finger had eased against the trigger, his aim wavering. How?
I don"t know yet, the little voice said. But we"ll see. Besides, if you wait to kill him, your hand will be healed and you won"t need Brandon to beat the s.h.i.t out of him. You can do it yourself.
That"s a very good point, mon ami, he"d conceded, and he"d thumbed the safety back on.
"I...I don"t want Brandon to see me like this," Tessa said, her voice m.u.f.fled against the front of his shirt. "Please, Rene. I don"t want him to know...not about this...about any of it...the way Martin is." She looked up at him, tearful and battered. "Please."
"All right," he said, cupping her face between his hands and using the pad of his thumb to lightly stroke away her tears. She could have asked anything of him-cut off his remaining leg with a pair of hedge clippers, rip out his own heart, kill someone, kill himself-and he would have in that moment. Anything for you, Tessa, he thought. Anything.
Chapter Seventeen.
"You need to feed," Rene said, but even though she knew he was right, Tessa still shook her head in protest. The last d.a.m.n thing she wanted was to rip the throat out of some derelict or prost.i.tute while in the throes of the bloodl.u.s.t.
"No," she said with a wince. Shaking her head hurt. Everything hurt. She felt like she"d bruised, strained, sprained or otherwise injured every visible part of her body. And some invisible ones, too, she thought ruefully.
"Tessa, listen to me," Rene said. She was mortified that he"d seen her beaten up and battered but there was nothing she could do about it now, no point in trying to cover her face or hide it from him somehow. He"d seen it-the ugly, shameful truth of her relationship with Martin. He knew all about it; h.e.l.l, it was laid bare and in stark, apparent detail all over her face.
"I know you don"t want Brandon to know about Martin hitting you," Rene said. "But we"re going to be d.a.m.n pressed to keep it from him when we"re supposed to be meeting him and Lina tomorrow afternoon in Lake Tahoe."
She could see herself in the bathroom mirror over his shoulder, the ruined mess that was her face. Just looking at her reflection was enough to make fresh tears well in her eyes, and she jerked her gaze away.She remembered being fifteen years old, standing in one of the bathrooms at the great house, using the corner of a damp washcloth to blot at a busted lip Brandon had gained during one of his seemingly never-ending altercations with their brother Caine.
"Why don"t you just stand up to him, Brandon?" she"d asked. She"d felt sorry for him, but exasperated, too. "Jackson taught you all of that aikido. Why don"t you use it?"
It would be years yet until she married Martin and endured her own litany of abuse, learning firsthand that sometimes things were much more easily said than done. Brandon had eventually stood up to Caine, indeed, only weeks earlier. While he wouldn"t say much about it, Lina had told Tessa plenty. Brandon had beaten Caine"s face to a mashed and b.l.o.o.d.y pulp. All those years of shame and intimidation had exploded out of him with brutal force.
I wish I could have fought back against Martin like that, she thought. I wish I"d been as brave as you, Brandon.
"You need to feed, pischouette," Rene said again, hooking his fingertips beneath her chin and directing her gaze to his face. "I can buy us another day, tell Lina and Brandon we can"t meet them until the day after tomorrow, but after that, the whole sightseeing line isn"t going to fly anymore. Lina"s not real patient when it comes to bulls.h.i.t, and she smelled mine a mile away. She just hasn"t called me on it yet. If you feed, it will help you heal, make the bruises fade so maybe they won"t notice."
Tessa pulled away from him and sat down against the foot of the bed. She didn"t want to kill anybody because no matter what he said now, Rene would be angry with her for it. He didn"t understand. She wasn"t like him; she couldn"t control her bloodl.u.s.t. "I can"t, Rene. There"s no one I can feed from, and I can"t just go out and..."
"Yes, there is," he said quietly and she looked up at him, puzzled. "Me, pischouette."
Her eyes flew wide. "What?"
"I"m half human."
"But...but..." She was so stunned by his offer, for a moment, she could do nothing but sputter. "But you"re half Brethren, too."
She shook her head. "I can"t do that, Rene. It...it"s an abomination. It"s not allowed. It"s-"
"A bunch of bulls.h.i.t from your family," Rene interjected. "Yeah. I know. Look, Brandon fed from me before we left the city, and there wasn"t any kind of plague of locusts afterward or-"
"No!" Tessa shot to her feet, her eyes round and alarmed. On the night of her bloodletting four years ago, she had all but blacked out, her mind clouded and consumed by the bloodl.u.s.t-just as it had been at Rene"s old house in Thibodaux. She didn"t remember anything except the smell of blood, the bittersweet taste of it, the heat of it as it flooded her mouth.
The next morning, she had slipped out of the great house early, wrapping a long overcoat atop her nightgown and plodding across the cool, dew-draped gra.s.s in her bare feet. She"d walked through the fields, ducking around the white-painted slats of fences until she found herself deep in the property, far away from any road or prying eyes. Here, the farm workers lived in rows and rows of small, neat, tended little cottages, bunkhouses that slept ten to twelve farmhands apiece.
The hunting grounds, she had thought, because this was where the bloodlettings were held, where the Brethren converged in a blood-crazed wave during the indoctrination ceremonies. Ordinarily the Brethren fed in discreet fashion, but during bloodlettings, they killed with brutal abandon, tearing open throats, thighs, groins-sometimes three and four Brethren at a time ripping into a single body, gorging themselves wherever and however they could.
Tessa had stood at the crest of a pasture hillock and watched the Kinsfolk humans as they hauled the bodies of those slain toward waiting pickup trucks. The corpses would be burned, then buried elsewhere on the farm. There were hundreds of them, mostly illegal immigrants from Mexico who would never be missed or sought; during bloodlettings, every man, woman and child not of the Kinsfolk were hunted down and slaughtered, and they lay strewn in all directions, ashen corpses with their bodies torn open, their mouths hanging ajar in terrified, eternal shrieks.
"They are cattle," Eleanor had told her with a gentle smile, when Tessa had gone to her, troubled by what she"d seen. Neither could have known that the older woman had less than a week to live past that moment. "Fresh meat for the celebration of slaughter."
Tessa thought of coming to, snapping out of some bloodl.u.s.t-induced reverie to find Rene lying sprawled on the motel room floor, the flesh of his neck torn back in a gruesome flap to expose meat and tendons, blood vessels and bone, his face frozen in an unflinching mask of terror.
Fresh meat for the celebration of slaughter.
It made her stomach knot at the idea; more than this, it made some visceral place within her heart ache.
"No, Rene, I am not feeding from you," she said. "I"m not like you. I can"t do the things you and Brandon can do. I...I just can"t!"
He looked bewildered. "Of course you can. I"m not special, pischouette. Neither is Brandon. Not like that, anyway."
Oh, G.o.d, yes you are, Rene, she thought desperately, thinking back to that morning in Louisiana, of the old man struggling and screaming beneath her, the gurgling as he"d sucked in his last, feeble breaths. You"re half human and Brandon had never fed before. Maybe that"s what made it easy for him, what keeps it easy for you. But I"ve fed before-killed lots of times-and I don"t know how to stop myself. That"s all I know how to do.
"Tessa..." Rene stepped toward her, his hand outstretched. "Listen to me."
"No. You"re not going to talk me into this," she said, as he caressed the side of her face, his fingers slipping into her hair. "Stop it, Rene." She tried to swat him away, but he touched her again anyway, his palm warm and comforting as it pressed against her cheek. Eleanor"s words kept echoing in her mind, overlapping with the sodden sounds of the dying old man in Thibodaux.
Fresh meat for the celebration of slaughter.
"Stop it, I said!" she exclaimed, giving him a push.
"Tessa, you need to feed if you want to heal fast. There"s no other way to do it but this."
"Then I"ll just have to tell Brandon the truth," she replied. Rene was looking at her like she was crazy, a mixture of confusion and hurt on his face, and she wanted to explain somehow, make him understand. I love you, Rene, she thought, her mind closed so he couldn"t overhear. I don"t know what I"d do if I hurt you or...or worse...! I could never forgive myself. Never.
He"d already done so much for her, risked everything, including his life to protect her. Now it"s my turn, she thought. I have to protect you this time, Rene-from me.
An hour later, they sat together on the bed, and she watched uneasily as Rene went through the contents of Martin"s suitcase, which he"d apparently pulled out of the Jaguar"s trunk when he"d deposited Martin inside. She pressed a cold pack against her cheek, ice cubes wrapped in a little plastic waist-paper bag, then tucked inside one of the motel hand towels.
"What we need is a nice, raw porterhouse," Rene had remarked as he"d presented it to her. When she"d looked at him, puzzled, he"d told her that raw meat helped ease bruising and swelling, particularly black eyes. "And you, pischouette, are sporting one h.e.l.l of a shiner."
"That"s absolutely disgusting. Where do you come up with these things?"
"The school of hard knocks-literally," he"d said with a shrug. "I used to get the s.h.i.t beat out of me all the time as a kid."
"By who?" she"d asked and he"d shrugged again.
"Lots of different people. Mostly this one a.s.shole, Gordon Maddox." "But why?" she"d asked. "Didn"t you fight back?"
"I guess because I was poor. My mamere worked at the local Piggly Wiggly and that was all we had to live on besides the good graces of Uncle Sam, on account of the fact my grandpa hurt his back working a shrimp boat, gimped himself to where he couldn"t do much of anything except sit around and get drunk. And yeah, I fought back. But it doesn"t do you much good when the guy gunning for your a.s.s is twice your size."
It was one of the first times Rene had told her much about himself, outside of the occasions when he"d talked about his wife, Irene, and he"d said this last with a long, pointed look in her direction, as if he knew she was still berating herself for not fighting more against Martin.
"No," she"d murmured, shaking her head, touched not only that he would confide in her, but try to empathize, too. "It doesn"t."
"So what is Broughman and a.s.sociates?" Rene asked. He"d been sifting through the invoices and records Martin had tucked inside the mysterious ledger, a thoughtful pinch cleaving his brows.
Tessa shook her head. "I don"t know. But I think it must be something important." She told him about how furious Martin had been with her for taking the ledger, how frantic he"d been to get it back, and about how his first wife, Monica, had apparently shared these sentiments based on the phone call she"d overheard. "He asked her something about keeping the status quo for chump change-that"s how he put it-or becoming the dominant family. But I don"t know what he meant. He has a credit card for them, too. I heard him mention that to Monica on the phone. He told her to use it if she needed."
Rene"s pensive frown deepened as he scanned the papers again. "You said he"s an accountant or something for your grandfather?"
"At the Bloodhorse Distillery, yes," she said. "For all of the Brethren, not just the Grandfather."
"But your grandpa holds the Brethren purse strings, no?" Rene asked, and she nodded. "My guess, then, would be your husband"s been skimming off the top of the family till, so to speak. You know, stealing."
"What?" Tessa blinked in surprise. "How could he do that? Those payments are to a company, that Broughman and a.s.sociates, not Martin."
Rene dropped her a wink. "He can do that, pischouette, because Martin is Broughman and a.s.sociates."
She must have looked like a fish, her mouth dropped open and gaping, her eyes suddenly flying wide, because he took one look at her and laughed. "It"s easy, really. All done on a computer." He waggled his fingers demonstratively, as if at a keyboard. "He figured since he handles some of the bills, why not pay himself through one, too? So he sets up a bank account in the name of this pretend company, gets a couple of credit cards in its name-one for him, one for Monica-then mocks up invoices he processes himself and deposits the money electronically to the account every time. n.o.body notices. n.o.body knows. Bloodhorse Distillery probably gets bills left and right for all sorts of s.h.i.t. Who"s going to pay attention to one extra?"
"He could get away with that?"
"Sure," Rene said. "As long as no one goes snooping around too much, finds the financial records or double-checks his books. It happens all the time."
Tessa couldn"t believe Martin had the b.a.l.l.s to steal from the Brethren. From the Grandfather, no less. My G.o.d, he"d be killed if the Grandfather found out about it. What the h.e.l.l would make him take that kind of risk?
But she knew.
Augustus sits at the head of the Brethren Elders, puts his sons in all of the choice positions with the farms and distillery, and what does he leave for the rest of you? she"d overheard Monica complain to Martin. Grunt work and mid-level management. Why doesn"t he put you out with the Kinsfolk or the laborers shoveling s.h.i.t in the barns? It"s not fair. For as much as she had hated Eleanor for her fine clothes and exquisite jewels, all of the elaborate gifts the Grandfather bestowed upon her, Monica had also coveted them. She was a spiteful b.i.t.c.h whose jealousy toward Eleanor had spilled over to Tessa, as well. Tessa could still remember the momentary bite of chain links against the back of her neck as Monica had s.n.a.t.c.hed the green sapphire necklace from about her throat.
"I had an accountant try the same thing with me a couple of years ago," Rene said. "Only I"m not nearly as f.u.c.king stupid as he thought. I like my money." He tapped his brow with his fingertip. "I keep an eye on my money."
"What did you do when you found out?" Tessa asked.
"I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chi-anti," Rene replied solemnly, then laughed. "What the h.e.l.l do you think I did, pischouette? I had the salaud arrested. He"s serving four years in prison now for embezzlement and fraud."
He folded the records neatly together and tucked them back into the ledger. "What are you going to do with them?" she asked, and he laughed again.
"I don"t know, but I"m going to hang on to them, that"s for d.a.m.n sure. I bet we can find ourselves a good use for them."
He glanced over and caught her touching her stomach again. She"d been doing this almost nonstop, either pressing, stroking or rubbing her hand against the slight slope of her belly. She had also kept her mind open, a mental eye of sorts on the baby, with the irrational but unshakable fear that somehow, it wouldn"t be all right; that if she broke her mental connection with it, even for a fleeting moment, something might happen, some residual damage from where Martin had hurt her, and the baby would be lost.
I don"t know what I"d do if that happened. She"d suffered a maelstrom of emotions since learning that she was pregnant months earlier, a mixture of exuberance and trepidation; joy because of the promise of motherhood, and by that same promise, reservation and fear. But while she"d doubted her own abilities to be a good mother, and she"d been tormented by the idea of raising the baby under Martin and Monica"s roof, one thing had always been unquestioned in her mind and heart-she loved the baby. She dreamed of the baby, holding it in her arms, nestled against her breast. She imagined its warmth and softness, the sound of its voice, the fragrance of its skin.
In her mind, she"d imagine the child-a daughter sometimes, a son in others-walking with her on the farm in Kentucky, following the rutted roads that bisected the Grandfather"s land. "Do you know how much I love you?" she"d ask.
It was a game Eleanor used to play with her and Brandon, usually right before she would leave on one of her adventures beyond the farm with the Grandfather. While he"d wait, stern-faced and stoically impatient in the foyer, surrounded by luggage, Eleanor would scoop the twins up and kiss them, making them squeal with giggles. "Do you know how much I love you?" she"d say to them, and Brandon, like the son in Tessa"s dreams would answer: "To the moon and back again!"
Tessa, like her imaginary daughter would always cry, "More than all of the fishes in the sea!"
She"d daydream about these things, fond games with her child, but had never imagined a father because Martin wasn"t one, not like Tessa"s had been to her, someone nurturing, protective and caring. Martin had taken after his father, Allistair. She"d lived in the Davenant house; she"d seen Allistair with his children-the incident in which he"d grabbed Martin by the b.a.l.l.s in the foyer being par for the course-and Martin had spared his own offspring no similar disdain.
"Tessa?"
She looked up, Rene"s voice drawing her from her thoughts. His brows were lifted with concern, and he reached for her, draping his hand lightly against her wrist. "The bebe," he said. "It"s all right still, no?"
She managed a feeble smile. "It"s fine. I just...I want to keep checking, that"s all. Just to be sure."
Martin had never given a s.h.i.t about her or, apparently, their baby. And while half the time, Rene seemed exasperated, p.i.s.sed off or otherwise put out with her, he had still cared enough to take a gunshot to the hand to protect her, not to mention track her somehow across the breadth of New Mexico and come to her rescue. Rene cared about her, as well as the baby, even though he had no right to, and she sure as h.e.l.l hadn"t given him much of a reason to. I wish you were my baby"s father, Rene, she thought.
His expression softened, the worry fading. "You do what you need to, pischouette," he told her with a smile. "Whatever makes you feel safe."
He leaned across the bed and kissed her, pressing his lips gently against the corner of her mouth. It was a tender gesture, nothing s.e.xual or pa.s.sionate; just a gentle empathy that might have once surprised her coming from him. But no longer.
She closed her eyes as he pulled away, letting the scruff of his beard stubble rub coa.r.s.ely against her cheek, drawing the light fragrance of him-warm, pleasant and familiar-fill her nose. You make me feel safe, she thought. You"re what I need, Rene.
Chapter Eighteen.
Rene waited until Tessa was asleep before going out to the car. He popped the trunk and stood there, looking down at Martin, still hog-tied and gagged. The other man had roused at the rush of fresh air coming into the trunk, the dim orange glow from the light on the underside of the door. He moved feebly, uttering a low, m.u.f.fled groan around the wadded up washcloth Rene had shoved between his teeth and fettered in place with a torn strip of bedsheet.
"Bon jour," Rene said, closing his hand roughly in Martin"s hair. He jerked the man"s head up and pulled down the gag.
"You...son of a b.i.t.c.h..." Martin gasped hoa.r.s.ely, squinting up at him. His face was a mess of oozing pockmarks and scab-lined scratches from where the birds had attacked and there was dried bird s.h.i.t and feather down visible in his hair.
"Yeah. f.u.c.k you, too," Rene said. "Tell me, when you slap your wife around, does it make you feel like a man?"
He shoved a plastic bottle to Martin"s lips, spilling tainted water into his mouth again. "I mean, do you get off on it, hitting someone half your size? Does it make your d.i.c.k hard to beat up on a woman, you sick, twisted f.u.c.k?"
After Martin"s initial gag reflex left some of the drink splashed and slopped, Rene managed to force the rest down his throat. "I really want to know, Davenant." He wrenched Martin"s head back farther, forcing a strangled cry from him. "What does it feel like to hit a woman?"
He opened his hand, letting Martin"s head drop back to the floor of the trunk. He promptly folded his fingers in toward his palm and sent his knuckles careening brutally into Martin"s cheek. He punched the s.h.i.t out of Martin, hard enough to rattle a tooth loose from the feel of things, the moist, sickening crunch he heard at impact.
"Oh," he said, stepping back, shaking his hand out, his knuckles stinging. "That"s how."
Martin choked and sputtered around the washcloth as Rene crammed it unceremoniously back between his teeth, cinching the sc.r.a.p of sheet tightly against the back of Martin"s head. He slammed the trunk closed on Martin"s garbled protest, then went around to the backseat and pulled out his folding shower chair.
Birds had relatively short digestive tracts and no sphincters, which meant they pretty much s.h.i.t anywhere and everywhere without really meaning to. And when you had more than two dozen of them flapping around in close confines, like Martin"s motel room, sooner or later, you were going to get dumped on, telepathic control over them or not. Rene had changed his shirt since finding Tessa, but he still felt decidedly grimy. He wasn"t a vain man by any stretch of the imagination, but bird s.h.i.t was bird s.h.i.t no matter how you looked at it. And since he didn"t feel like taking another accidental, graceless swan dive in the tub, it was time to swallow his pride and get out the chair.
Keeping a wary eye on Tessa, he brought it back into the motel room and carried it into the bathroom. He unfolded it, extending and locking the aluminum legs into proper place, along with the molded plastic backrest. The seat was wide and contoured, roomy enough to accommodate his a.s.s while leaving plenty of elbow room to either side. It was comfortable enough, but Rene hated it; hated the way sitting in it made him feel old and crippled and G.o.dd.a.m.n useless.But bird s.h.i.t was bird s.h.i.t, and so into the shower he went, leaving his prosthetic leg propped against the toilet, his clothes in a heap on the floor. He closed his eyes and reached blindly for the soap as hot water, nearly scalding, hit his head in a stinging spray.