by Reinke, Sara
“Yeah,” he said, and he had to tear his eyes away from Tessa and clear the sudden, hoarse strain from his voice. “I’m here, chère. I’m sorry. My cell phone hasn’t been able to get any service all day. This is the first time I’ve been able to get it to work.”
“What about Rillito? We waited for damn near two hours for you guys. We’ve been worried sick.”
“Why?” Again, he feigned a bright tone. “We’re fine. Tessa forgot to stop, that’s all. She was driving and I was sleeping, so we stopped when I woke up and grabbed some tamales at this little roadside Tex-Mex stand. I tried to call and tell you, but like I said, my phone’s been out.”
Lina sputtered for a minute. Clearly she still wanted to be angry with him, but he wasn’t giving her much of a reason. “Besides, la pischouette and I have made a nice day of things,” he said, glancing at the bedside table and grabbing a handful of glossy, trifold brochures someone had left out promoting local attractions. “You know, doing the whole tourist thing. We stopped to see the dinosaurs in Cabazon.”
“The dinosaurs?”
“Uh, yeah,” Rene said, balancing the phone between his shoulder and ear and thumbing open the pamphlet. “Two big concrete dinosaurs. You can see them from the highway. You guys missed them? There’s some kind of brontosaurus or something, one of those big ass things from Jurassic Park. I don’t know.” He skimmed through the literature. “There’s a creationist museum inside its belly.”
Lina was quiet for a moment. “A creationist museum.”
“Yeah. You know, that whole Garden of Eden–ible thing. Man and dinosaurs hanging out together. Don’t eat the apples. That kind of shit.” He threw the brochures on the floor, grimacing. Christ, shut up, Rene.
Another long silence. Lina could smell bullshit a mile away and apparently that keen nose of hers worked over the telephone, too. “I’ll see you tomorrow in Tahoe,” she said, her voice flat.
“What? Come on, chère. Don’t—” he began, but she hung up abruptly on him, leaving him sputtering into dead air.
Terrific. He flipped the phone closed. I can look forward to hearing more about that, I bet.
Tessa moaned softly from the bed. “Il est bien,” he murmured, turning and stroking his hand against her face again. It’s all right. She jerked at his touch this time, her eyes flying wide, her breath tangling in a sharp, frightened breath.
“My baby!” she gasped, her hands darting reflexively for her belly.
“It’s all right, pischouette,” he said again. “You’re safe now.”
She still looked wild-eyed and panicked for a moment, as if it took her sleep-dazed mind a few seconds to fully take in where she was, and who she was with. At last, realization dawned on her, and her eyes flooded with tears. “Rene!” she whimpered, pushing herself to a sitting position. She reached for him, hands outstretched and he drew her into his arms, holding her fiercely. “Oh, God!” She shuddered against him. “You came for me! You…you came…!”
“I’ll always come for you, pischouette,” he whispered, and as she drew back from him, sniffling and struggling visibly against tears, he cradled her face between his hands. “Always,” he promised. “No matter what you do or how much you piss me off, I will come for you.”
She tried to laugh, but wound up crying instead, and he hugged her again, closing his eyes and drawing her near. He held her while she wept, her narrow frame racked with tears, and when at last, she’d quieted, he rose to his feet to get her a cup of water. As he brought it back to the bed, he saw her press her hands against her stomach again, her expression twisted with worry.
“The baby is fine,” he said, and she glanced anxiously up at him. “I felt for it while you were sleeping. I could sense it inside of you, bright like before.”
She must have simultaneously sensed the growing child, too, as he spoke, because her face softened, and she closed her eyes, heaving a long sigh. “He slammed me into the wall,” she whispered. “Threw me across the room. I was so afraid. I thought he would kill my baby.” She looked at him, the fear and anxiety suddenly flashing in her eyes once more. “What happened to Martin?”
“He’s in the trunk of his car,” Rene replied, and when she blinked at him, startled, he added, “Don’t worry. I put a bullet hole in it so he could breathe.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a car key hooked to a remote entry pad. “I couldn’t just leave that Jag sitting around for the Elders to track down and find, so I figured I’d upgrade our ride. They’re not going to think twice if they come across my Audi.”
“He…he’s here?” Tessa’s posture grew stiff, her eyes wide like a deer pinned by oncoming high beams. “He’s outside in the parking lot?”
“It’s all right.”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand. When the bloodlust comes on him, he’s really strong. He…”
Rene smiled crookedly, and her voice faltered, fading. “Trust me, pischouette,” he told her. “Your husband isn’t going to be bothering anyone again for awhile yet to come. Least of all you and that baby.”
He’d dug out the bottle of Percodan that Brandon had given back to him and crushed a handful of the pills into a fine powder he’d then dissolved in a glass of tap water. The blow to the head from where he’d pistol-whipped Martin hadn’t kept the other man out long, but by the time Martin had started stirring again, Rene had already used the electrical cord from a lamp in the other motel room to hog-tie his hands and feet.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Rene had muttered, wrenching Martin’s head back by the hair and forcing him to drink the cup of drugged water. Martin had sputtered and tried to cough it up, but Rene had clapped a hand over his mouth and forced him to choke down nearly every damn drop. Even with Martin’s accelerated Brethren metabolism, Rene figured he had put enough narcotics in to dope a baby elephant. And he had plenty more where that came from. Martin Davenant wasn’t going to enjoy the business end of conscious awareness for quite a while.
“What are we going to do with him?” Tessa asked. Obviously the idea that her abusive husband was alive and well and still within close proximity left her uneasy, despite his reassurances.
Rene shrugged. “For starters, I thought we might let Brandon have a few minutes alone with him. I thought your frere might appreciate first dibs on the son of a bitch who knocked his sister around like—”
“No!” Tessa grabbed hold of his arm, stricken. “No, Rene, no, you can’t tell Brandon!” She looked frantic, nearly desperate, her fingers hooked deeply into the meat of his elbow. “Please, Rene. Please don’t.”
As he watched, she rose slowly to her feet, her brows twisted, her breath caught between her teeth with pain. When he tried to help her, slipping his arm around the narrow margin of her waist, she shook her head, limping away from him. She went to the bathroom and turned on the lights, flooding the tiny room with stark illumination. He could see her as she leaned over the sink, staring aghast at her reflection in the overhanging mirror.
“Oh…” she whispered, round-eyed and trembling, as her hands fluttered toward her face, her fingertips lighting hesitantly against the bruises on her cheeks and throat. “Oh, my God.”
She pressed her hand to her mouth and closed her eyes as tears spilled, and Rene went to her, drawing her into his arms again. “Pischouette,” he whispered, because it killed him to see her like this, to know how much pain she had to be in and to imagine how horribly she must have suffered.
It had taken all that he had not to kill Martin Davenant. There had been a long, uncertain moment in the other motel room in which he’d stood over Davenant’s fallen form, the barrel of the pistol pressed against the other man’s temple. Tessa had fainted, and he’d knocked Martin out; there was no one and nothing to stop him from flexing his finger against the Sig Sauer’s light trigger and sending a nine-millimeter round through the son of a bitch’s corpus callosum and into the floorboards beneath him.
He’d told her that he’d kept Martin alive so that Br
andon could have the first crack at him, but that was only partially true. He imagined that the younger man would indeed have appreciated some quality time alone, just Martin Davenant and Brandon’s decidedly impressive aikido skills. But there had been another reason.
As he’d stood there, staring down the barrel of the Sig Sauer at Davenant’s face in chiseled profile, that little voice inside of his head spoke up.
You might need him alive.
Yeah? he thought in reply. What the fuck for?
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 shit 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 muffled 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 damn thing she wanted was to rip the throat out of some derelict or prostitute while in the throes of the bloodlust.
“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; hell, 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 damn 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 bloody 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 bullshit, 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 bloodlust. “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 bullshit 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 bloodlust—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 grass 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 bloodlust-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 cour
se you can. I’m not special, pischouette. Neither is Brandon. Not like that, anyway.”
Oh, God, 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.
