Dark Hunger

by Reinke, Sara

  Rene thought maybe some among the Brethren, like Brandon’s grandfather or the Elders, might have been blocking Brandon’s powers in Kentucky. Now that the kid was away from them, free of their influence, his abilities seemed to be growing on a daily basis. Upon their initial introduction, Brandon had damn near rattled Rene’s skull, plowing past any mental defenses he might have had to keep his thoughts guarded. It wasn’t something the younger man had done on purpose, but Rene wasn’t keen on the idea of tempting fate—or Brandon’s fledgling ability to control himself.

  I told you, petit, Rene thought in reply. We had a flat tire earlier today. I cut myself on the jack trying to change it.

  Brandon looked at him, his brow cocked at a dubious angle as Rene regurgitated this paper-thin line of bullshit. He hadn’t told Brandon or Lina the truth because he hadn’t seen the point. There was nothing that could be done about it now, and both of them had enough weighing on their minds without adding to it. Rene had sworn Tessa to secrecy, too, and had considered it somewhat of a testimony to the tentative and affable peace that had been forged between them that she’d agreed to it, albeit reluctantly.

  “I don’t like keeping secrets from Brandon,” she’d said, but there’d been a look in her eyes, a slight edge to her voice that had clearly imparted that she had before, and would this time, too.

  So what else haven’t you told your brother? Rene had wondered. What other little secrets are you keeping, Tessa?

  Brandon knew Rene was lying, and Rene knew that he did. They both also knew that if Brandon had felt so inclined, he could have just skimmed the contents of Rene’s brain and learned the truth for himself.

  And there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do to stop him.

  “I’m all right, petit,” he told Brandon, holding up his bandaged hand and wiggling his fingers—an act that was growing more easy and less painful by the hour. “Really. How about you?”

  Brandon glanced at his own hands. It’s amazing, he said. This was the first day he’d apparently foregone swaddling them in bandages. It had been almost two weeks since he’d broken his hands, but already the bones had knitted back together, however fragilely.

  It took months for my hands to heal in Kentucky, but they’re almost as good as new now. They still ache sometimes, and I can’t grip things very tightly… He mimed pinching his fingers together but stopped just shy of the tips fully touching. I can’t hold a pencil yet, but it’s getting close. He glanced up at Rene. Amazing.

  “That’s what happens when you feed, petit,” Rene told him with a wink. Even though he could witness such seemingly miraculous healing in his own body, it still amazed him, too. “It accelerates everything—your metabolism, healing, all of that.”

  Like Rene, Brandon was enjoying the effects of having fed twice in rapid succession. That kind of gluttony had heightened his healing ability just as it had Rene’s. Brandon had fed for the first time in his life from Lina. The second time, after he’d shattered his hands, he’d fed from Rene. It had been a desperate gamble to help him, one that had paid off; with only his father being Brethren, Rene had hoped there was enough human in his blood to benefit Brandon.

  Rene took another swig of Coke. So tell me about this book your sister found, he said. This Tome thing of hers. What’s so special about it, anyway? She said you use it to play matchmaker, set up marriages and whatnot?

  Not me. Brandon shook his head. The Elders. No one else is supposed to see the Tomes. They keep them under lock and key at all times. Each clan has its own. As for what’s in them, I don’t really know. I only got a quick look at the one Tessa found. She said you were going to help her translate it?

  Yeah. Rene nodded. Or try to anyway. It’s written in French, at least parts of it. Some of it’s really old. Who knows what the hell language it is.

  What I saw looked like your family tree, Brandon said. Which makes sense. That’s what the Elders use to arrange marriages.

  “My family,” Rene murmured, then he turned so Brandon could read his lips. “So this makes it official, then? My family has one of these Tomes, so they must have been part of the Brethren at some point.”

  Sure looks that way, Brandon said. What I’m wondering is if they were, how did they get the Tome out of Kentucky? The books are kept at the dominant clan’s house. Each family doesn’t keep their own. Like right now, all of the Tomes are locked in my grandfather’s library.

  Rene arched a curious brow. “You think my clan must have been dominant at some point, petit? That’s how they had access to the book?”

  I don’t know, Brandon replied.

  And if that’s true, then what happened? Rene wondered, closing his mind momentarily, his brows furrowed thoughtfully. This was a point that had been niggling at him, the way a mosquito bite will itch—just barely at first, enough so that you’ll reach for it to scratch, and from there, inexorably worsening until it’s absolutely maddening and you’ll claw your flesh open and raw. What happened to my family? Did they leave the Brethren willingly? Were they kicked out somehow? Either way—why?

  Whatever the circumstances, obviously the Brethren had gone to some effort to make sure the Morins were forgotten. But when and why this had happened remained a mystery. Rene’s father, Arnaud, hadn’t offered him any clues. In fact, he had led Rene to believe they were the last of their kind anywhere in the world.

  Did he not realize then? Did he not know? Whatever happened, was it before my father’s lifetime? Or did he know, and just lied to me about it?

  As if he’d been reading Rene’s mind—despite the fact Rene had deliberately closed it—Brandon said, Makes you wonder how your human grandmother wound up with it, huh?

  “My father must have given it to her years ago,” Rene replied. “When he came to find me. That was…1971, I think.”

  The year after Irene left me.

  “He came to our home in Bayou Lafourche,” he said to Brandon. “Maybe he knew I was there all along, maybe it took him that long to find me. I don’t know. Either way, I came home from this factory job I’d taken down in Houma, and there was this fancy car I’d never seen before parked in front of the house. I walked inside to find my mamère sitting in the living room, serving tea and store-bought gingersnap cookies on her best set of bone china to some slick-dressed salaud I’d never seen before, either. She introduces him as Arnaud Morin. ‘This here is your papa,’ she says to me, even though the guy on the couch doesn’t look much older than I did at the time.”

  Rene took another long swallow of Coke, emptying the bottle, and wished his head didn’t ache at even the idea of adding a dollop of Bloodhorse Reserve. Could probably use at least two-fingers’ worth right about now.

  “In retrospect, I think he must have done something to her mind, the way I do now when I go to feed,” he said, and he flapped his bandaged hand at his temple. “I sort of turn them off in a way. Make them do what I want, so they don’t make a fuss.”

  Brandon nodded. The Brethren do that, too, except during bloodletting ceremonies. The rest of the time, it’s really low-key. They keep the humans subdued with their minds.

  “I don’t know if he gave the book to her to hide, then made her forget about it somehow, but she never told me about it at any rate.” He glanced at Brandon. “When I read about him blowing his brains out two days later, I showed the newspaper to Mamère and she didn’t even bat an eye. It was like she didn’t even know who he was, like he hadn’t just spent half a goddamn day parked on her sofa not forty-eight hours earlier.”

  Strangely, though, his grandmother at some point had written out a family tree of her own, one that had traced Arnaud’s side as well as her own, at least back to Rene’s great-grandfather. The dates had all been recorded correctly, which seemed to suggest that Odette had known about Arnaud’s heritage, what he was—and what Rene was. At least at some point, she had. Whether or not Arnaud Morin had walked out of the house that sunny afternoon outside of Thibodaux, Louisiana, and left those memories inta
ct, Rene would never know.

  “Maybe he never meant for me to find that Tome,” he said. “Who the hell knows. Either way, he didn’t do me any favors. All of my goddamn life to that point, I’d felt like I was different than everybody else…not quite in step with the rest of the world. Finding out the truth from him didn’t make much of a difference.” He glanced at Brandon. “I guess you know how that goes, no, petit?”

  I used to, Brandon said. But I don’t anymore. Not since finding you and Lina.

  Rene smiled, thinking of how good it had felt to wake up in bed with Tessa curled up beside him; right somehow. He had Brandon to thank for that, for the day only weeks earlier in which Rene had sensed the younger man outside of the dilapidated high-rise he called home. It had been the first time since Arnaud that Rene had experienced the peculiar, tickling sensation inside his mind that had alerted him to the presence of another just like him. Rene could still call the birds, just as he had when he’d been young, and he’d summoned them to him, sending them in sweeping paths around the building, seeing through their eyes as Brandon had walked away from the front entrance, his shoulders hunched against a steady rain. Brandon had been robbed and shot in a nearby alley, and would have been murdered if Rene hadn’t witnessed the crime in time to save him; if he hadn’t sent the birds swooping down at the gunmen, attacking them, driving them away. He’d brought Brandon inside and tried to nurse him back to health, a part of him so elated, he could hardly breathe. Like me, he’d thought, in dumbstruck wonder. Like me. Saint merde, this boy is just like me.

  He could have been Rene’s brother, for all he’d known; a cousin or nephew, anything. It hadn’t mattered. He was like Rene and that was all that had counted. I’m not the only one after all.

  Rene reached out and tousled Brandon’s hair with a fond smile. “You know what, petit?” he asked. “I don’t feel so alone anymore, either.”

  Chapter Ten

  Tessa stifled a yawn against the back of her hand as she sat cross-legged on the king-sized bed. Rene glanced at her, sitting next to her, his legs dangling over the side of the mattress. “Past your bedtime, pischouette?” he asked with a wry smirk.

  “I’m fine,” she said, and to prove it, she settled herself more comfortably, tucking her hair behind her ears and leaning forward to peer down at the opened Tome before them.

  “Well, it’s past mine, then, how about that?” he said with a laugh, grimacing as he stood, unfurling his legs slowly and stretching his back. “Mon Dieu, I think my ass has gone numb.”

  Lina and Brandon had left several hours earlier and they’d been awake ever since, poring through the voluminous old book page by brittle, yellowed page. Rene had hauled in a notebook computer with wireless Internet capability from the car, and between the two of them, they’d been able to tentatively identify the dialect in which portions of the book were written. Unfortunately, neither had been able to translate it.

  Langues d’oïl, Rene had called it. “Old French, influenced by Latin and some Celtic way of speaking called Gaulish.” He’d glanced up from the laptop. “Wikipedia says it was spoken from around one thousand to thirteen hundred. Also says there was no one specific language, that it varied from region to region.”

  In addition to being an archaic dialect, the transcriptions were also written in a tiny script, old ink set to brittle parchment, and nearly illegible. He’d been able to read some of the words, but not enough to make much sense of the entire text. Together, they’d settled for trying to make sense of the pictures, the wealth of ornate but enigmatic illustrations adorning the pages.

  “Abominacion,” Rene read, his voice low and thoughtful as he stared down at the peculiar painting of the armored knight and the bald, snaggle-toothed creature. “Abomination. What the hell do you suppose this is?” He glanced at her and arched his brow wryly. “Distant relation, perhaps? A mother-in-law no one much cared for?”

  “Ha, ha.” Tessa slapped his shoulder. “Must be a relative of yours.”

  “Oh, come on, pischouette. She’s not so bad. Sure, someone’s whacked her a time or two with the ugly stick, but maybe she has a sparkling personality, no?”

  Tessa hit him again, laughing. “Why do you think it’s a she anyway?”

  He tapped his fingertip against the page, pointing out something she’d failed to notice before. “Because she has tits, pischouette. Saggy, oui, and nothing I’d find appealing, but still…either a femme or a really, really, really old man.”

  Tessa laughed again, giving him a playful shove. “You’re terrible.”

  She told him about her brother Caine, the stories he fed them as children about the Abomination.

  “Lovely,” Rene murmured. “After everything you and Brandon have told me about your frère, why am I not surprised Caine would try to scare the merde out of you with tales of some creature in your basement?”

  “Not the basement. The Beneath. It’s supposedly this network of tunnels that run all beneath the Brethren farms, under the houses and fields, everywhere.”

  “The Beneath,” he repeated and she nodded. “And the Abomination lives down there, just waiting to eat you if you fuck up.” She laughed, but nodded again. “You got a weird goddamn family, pischouette.”

  Further into the book, they found old photographs and yellowing daguerreotypes tucked or pasted among the pages—one of a woman, her dark hair caught back in a bun, her clothing antiquated and modest. Another was of two children, a boy and a girl posed together, stern-faced and stoic. In another, a handsome but solemn young man gazed at the camera, while in another, this same man stood outside of an old brick house, eerily reminiscent in design and façade to the old great house in which Tessa’s grandfather had once been photographed. Michel Morin had been written on the back, underscored with July 12, 1815.

  “That’s your grandfather, Rene,” Tessa said softly. Rene didn’t say anything; he gazed down at the photograph for a long time, wordless, his expression unreadable.

  “We had a picture like this in the study at home,” she said. “That’s one of the original great houses. They tore them all down in the late eighteen hundreds and built the ones we live in now.”

  “You think this was my family’s great house?” Rene asked.

  “I don’t know,” Tessa said. “That’s sure what it looks like to me.”

  They flipped ahead to the pages that traced the Morin family tree. Though interesting, what they’d perused thus far hadn’t offered them any clues as to what might have happened to the Morin clan, or why they were no longer part of the Brethren.

  “I have an attorney by that name—Gregory Lambert,” Rene had remarked, pointing out the notations that had so intrigued her: Lambert, Durand, Ellinger, Averay. When she’d looked momentarily excited, he’d shaken his head and laughed. “Trust me, pischouette. He’s a lawyer not a bloodsucker…although the two are often mistaken.”

  After studying the names again, he’d frowned. “Some of these others look sort of familiar, too, now that I think about it.”

  He hadn’t been able to place any of them as easily as he had Lambert, however, and Tessa had been moderately disappointed. She’d been fascinated by the prospect of so many other potential Brethren families out there in the world. Because if Rene’s family had survived, even if only to him, then surely if there had been others, they could have, as well.

  “It’s probably nothing,” he’d said. “I would have known if I’d ever run across another Brethren. I would have sensed that, no? I mean, like I did Brandon that first time in the city.”

  The only notation they’d found of even moderate interest had been scrawled in the margin on the last page of the extensive family tree. October 12, 1815, followed by le feu in French, words scrawled so heavily against the paper, the quill point had nearly torn through the page.

  “Fire,” Rene had said, although Tessa hadn’t needed translation. She spoke enough French to understand it on her own. “You know of any fires on that date?”


  She shook her head again. “No, but that’s my birthday, mine and Brandon’s. October twelfth.” She felt a peculiar little shiver go through her. “That’s a weird coincidence.”

  Was it a barn fire? she wondered. It wouldn’t have been unheard of. The Brethren had been involved with horses since colonial times. From the little bit she’d learned of the Brethren’s origins, she knew they’d originally left France to live in Virginia just prior to the French revolution. Here, they had been forced to live among humans, at least for a time—a fate Tessa imagined they would have found detestable.

  They’d been acquainted with a man named William Whitley who had gone on to explore and establish a settlement in Kentucky. The area had been unpopulated at the time, still very much considered the frontier. It had been Whitley who had inspired the Brethren to move west into what would one day become the bluegrass state. The promise of wilderness solitude, a place where they could build their own isolated developments and live free from the prying eyes of humans—much as they must have in France for centuries—had been too appealing to resist.

  William Whitley had also had a penchant for horse breeding and racing, something else the Brethren had been introduced to through him. Whitley had instituted counterclockwise horse racing in America, in fact; a deliberate opposite of the British way of doing things. Among the Brethren, it was said that Andrew Giscard, Elder of the clan, had proposed the idea to Whitley over drinks one night while still in Virginia. Giscard had once built a turf racetrack on the Brethren lands in Kentucky, much as Whitley had on his own. So the Brethren would have owned valuable horses, even in 1815. A barn fire, which could have theoretically killed the animals inside, would have been a catastrophic enough event to note in the Tome.

  Rene’s grandfather, Michel Morin, was the last name noted in the book, born in 1707. Before that was the listing for his great-grandfather, Remy, and his marriage to Marguerite Davenant that Tessa had seen before in the family tree Rene’s human grandmother had made.