In the Heart of Darkness

by Reinke, Sara

  Tell me who she is, Mason…tell me who’s won your heart…so when I see her out, I might greet her properly. Tell me your lover’s name.

  “I love you, honey,” she said.

  “I…love you, too,” he mumbled into the phone before disconnecting the call. The phone tumbled from his hand and bounced onto the floor as his consciousness waned, his mind drifting deeper and deeper into shadows.

  Julien.

  The name came to him from the depths of his subconscious—the name she’d once demanded of him, that of his lover, his first love. And despite the fact that he’d taken many, many men to his bed since then, and with some—like Andrew—he’d even fancied himself enamored, in his heart, Mason knew that only one would ever be his true love. His only love.

  Julien Davenant.

  It was a name he’d never forget; one that haunted him even now.

  Please don’t do this, he remembered Julien saying, his blue eyes glistening with distraught tears. Those beautiful eyes; the ones that could melt his heart—or break it just as easily—all in a single glance. I’m sorry. I’ll do anything—please! Please don’t go—I love you!

  These words—the last Julien had ever spoken to him—would haunt Mason for the tenure of his days.

  Because I loved him too… I’ve never stopped…never forgiven myself for losing him…

  CHAPTER TWO

  I don’t have time for that shit, Julien Davenant thought with a scowl as the man in front of him rattled on and on about legal jurisdictions, policies and procedures. His name was Marcus Simms and he was a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He was also quickly becoming a pain in Julien’s ass.

  “…it’s my understanding that the Bayshore Police Department has received more than enough in federal funds to establish it as suitable for long-term federal prisoner incarceration as needed,” Simms said. “I wasn’t told of any arrangements that have been made to extradite Vladan Nikolić.”

  “I understand your concerns, Agent,” Julien said, wearing a weary, but what he hoped was still somehow a winning smile. “But like I’ve told you already…several times now…I’m authorized to take charge of Mr. Nikolić and escort him for transport to a treaty country where he’s currently facing international war crimes charges.”

  As he spoke, he held up a paper napkin, one he’d grabbed out of the glove compartment in his rental car shortly before walking into the police department. It was rumpled and grease-spotted, but Agent Simms looked at it for a long moment as if with interest nonetheless. That was because to him, it wasn’t a napkin at all, but the federal identification badge of a U.S. Marshall. Julien had presented him with three such napkins since he’d stepped foot in the man’s office in Bayshore, Florida; Simms had seen each as a various document, form, or warrant.

  “Yeah, I know. I get that,” Simms remarked. “But I still think I need to get my deputy director on the phone to be sure—”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Julien growled as, with a single thought, Simms fell silent. His mouth remained ajar, his gaze fixed on Julien, but he didn’t move, as if frozen in place. Humans didn’t have any of the inherent mental shields in place that his fellow Brethren relied on to guard their minds, and it didn’t take much for Julien to simply shut Simms off. He hadn’t wanted to go that route because it was a lot less work—a lot less taxing on him telepathically—to simply manipulate the one or two minds he’d need to get Nikolić out of jail. However, he hadn’t counted on Simms being so well-versed in federal red tape. Now he’d not only have to sedate the agent, but erase his memories, too.

  And I don’t have time for that shit, he thought again.

  Now on his second trip bisecting the Mason-Dixon line in less than a week—with a net total of less than ten hours of uninterrupted sleep during this same time period—Julien found himself exhausted, irritable, and ready to get the hell back home to Kentucky. Every minute that the guy, Simms, delayed his return with his bureaucratic bullshit only increased that fatigue and anxiety, because it meant more time in which his younger brother, Aaron, was alone with their father.

  Julien hadn’t wanted to leave the Davenant great house for that reason alone. Yeah, Lamar had shifted the focus of his sadistic abuse from Aaron to a fresh victim—Brandon Noble—but that hadn’t guaranteed Aaron’s safety by a long shot. There was no way in hell Lamar would let Aaron off the proverbial hook so easily.

  Or me, either, he thought.

  Nothing with Lamar was ever as clear-cut or simple as it may outwardly seem; the son of a bitch had made a fine art—not to mention his life’s work—out of ruthless, calculated manipulation.

  Oh, yeah. There’s another shoe somewhere that’s about to drop. Julien just didn’t want it to drop while he was away…when he couldn’t protect Aaron from it.

  He skimmed through Simms’s mind, sorting through the usual clutter of human thoughts in order to glean the information he needed about Vladan Nikolić’s whereabouts. Multitasking as he did this, he also physically sifted through the files on Simms’s desk, the documents opened on his computer.

  To his surprise, he found a series of still images taken from what appeared to be surveillance videos. These in particular were of his recent visit to the intensive care unit at the Bayshore Regional Medical Center, where he’d paid a young man named Téo Ruiz Madera a visit. The photos had been enlarged, showing fuzzy but discernable images of Julien walking into and out of Téo’s ICU bay. A uniformed police officer sat outside the door in each of the frames, and several doctors and nurses could be seen passing within an arm’s length or less of Julien. However none of them seemed to notice him whatsoever, as if oblivious to his presence.

  Which had been Julien’s intentions precisely.

  He didn’t like taking out kids as a general rule; a kid on a ventilator—like Téo had been—seemed pretty chickenshit in his estimation. But he’d received implicit instructions from his father then—as now—and then—as now—he didn’t question them. Dutifully, robotically, Julien appeased Lamar’s every edict and whim. This subservience had become second nature to him over the centuries; he seldom, if ever, really thought about why anymore.

  Through Simms’s memories, he learned that Nikolić was being held in solitary confinement in the adjacent jail building. He also learned the fastest way to get there, the codes he’d need to get through a pair of locked security gates along the way, and the names of the officers pulling desk duty he could expect to meet once there. He also discovered that Simms had a set of keys to manually open each of the cell doors; he carried them in the front pocket of his Perry Ellis suit pants.

  “Toss me those, would you?” he asked, cutting a glance across the room where Simms still stood, slack-jawed and unmoving.

  “Sure,” Simms murmured, his hand moving clumsily, pawing at his hip as he reached for the keys. Out of the corner of his eye, Julien caught the movement as he threw them; without looking up from the printed reports he’d been skimming, he reached up, catching them against his palm.

  “Thanks,” he said. Simms’s mind had been cluttered with thoughts of a woman—young, long-legged, black, and pretty. Her name, Julien could see, was Angelina Jones—“Lina” for short—and she was a detective on the Bayshore police force. Simms had apparently been giving her a lot of thought of the mental-masturbatory variety lately, imagining her in various stages of undress, in different, provocative poses, or performing any number of sex acts that Julien had to admit, were kinkier than he’d have expected from someone as outwardly straight-laced as Simms.

  “Why don’t you sit down and go to sleep?” Julien suggested with a wry smile as he walked toward the office door. “Have that dream again…the one with Lina and the anal beads.”

  “Can do,” Simms said, shuffling toward the nearest chair.

  * * *

  “Ja ću biti kuchkin sin,” Vladan Nikolić exclaimed, the corners of his thick lips curling up in a thin smile as he caught sight of Julien approaching along t
he cell block. I’ll be a son of a bitch!

  Jesus, Julien thought and it was all he could do not to stumble to a surprised halt. He’s bigger than I remember.

  As Nikolić unfurled his thick legs and rose from his cot to his full height—nearly six and a half feet tall—the front of his bright orange jumpsuit stretched even more tautly across the broad swath of his chest.

  A lot bigger.

  “Look who’s here.” Nikolić moved with surprising grace for a man built like a Freightliner truck and he approached Julien from the opposing side of the cell gate with the long, languid stride of a tiger casing prospective prey. “You’re shorter than I recall.” He held up his index finger and thumb as if pinching something, indicating a margin of space no wider than an inch. “Like a mišiću.”

  “Yeah.” The word meant little mouse, and Julien bristled, glowering through the cell bars at the larger man. “You’ve grown.”

  Nikolić tipped his head back on the beefy axis of his neck and chuckled. “A little. It’s been a long time.” He curled his fingers around the cell bars. “The starac…the old man…he sent you here to kill me?”

  “If he had, you’d already be dead,” Julien replied. “You’re lucky he’s not letting them ship your sorry ass back to Serbia. I’m sure they’ve got a cell all ready and waiting for you at Sremska Mitrovica prison.”

  The corner of Nikolić’s mouth twitched up. “You’re funny, mišiću.”

  “Call me a mouse again and you’ll be laughing out of the other side of your goddamn face,” Julien growled as he pulled out Simms’s key ring. Locking gazes with the larger man, his brows furrowed all the more deeply. “Now back the fuck up.”

  * * *

  Nikolić turned his face up to the sky as they walked out of the police station, smiling almost wistfully in the blazing midafternoon sun. “Ah,” he said, heaving a sigh of contented relief. “It feels good to be free again.”

  This from the Socialist, Julien thought, pinching the bridge of his nose lightly. He had a headache; it had taken a great deal of psionic energy to deal with Agent Simms. He’d nearly exhausted his reserves altogether by masking him and Nikolić from the more than a dozen police officers they’d passed between the jail and the exit doors. Aaron could bounce back almost instantaneously from that kind of telepathic strain, but he had the first blood in him, waning or not. Julien had to make do with the constraints of his Brethren birthright.

  “My car’s over here.” He jabbed his elbow into Nikolić’s broad side. “Let’s keep moving.”

  Killing Nikolić in the jail would have been easier by far, but it would also have been way too convenient to not have aroused suspicion. With Agent Simms sniffing around, there was already too much federal interest in Nikolić for Julien’s liking—never mind Lamar’s. Fortunately the road between Bayshore and Miami, where Julien had parked his father’s jet, was literally paved in swampland—the Everglades.

  More than 730 miles of potential places for someone to disappear, Julien thought, thumbing the key fob to his rented Infiniti to unlock the doors. How convenient for me.

  “You’re driving a black car in this heat?” Nikolić raised his brows.

  “It’s a rental. Get in.”

  “Still…” Nikolić opened the passenger side door and grimaced as a blast of hot air hit him in the face. “They didn’t have white ones? Or silver?”

  Julien glowered at him from over the roof of the car. “I can put you back in your cell, you know.”

  Nikolić laughed, ducking his head—and his shoulders, not to mention half his spine—to wedge himself into the car. As he fiddled with the controls to move the seat back, freeing his knees from his sternum, he watched Julien open the driver’s door and settle in. More specifically, he eyed the double shoulder holsters Julien wore, visible as the lapels of his jacket shifted—and the pair of Nighthawk Custom T4 9-millimeter handguns he carried.

  “Lep,” he said, reaching out and tugging at Julien’s coat to get a better view. Nice. “Vrlo lepo.” Very nice.

  In a flash, one of those chrome-plated Nighthawks was in Julien’s hand, the muzzle leveled within inches of Nikolić’s face, the safety disengaged with a flick of his thumb. Aaron had given him the pistols several years ago. They were worth more than gold to Julien. “Don’t even think about it.”

  Nikolić blinked at him in feigned innocence. “Why would I? Like you said—if starac wanted me dead, I’d be dead. But tell me, then, mišiću…” He buckled his seatbelt and, as Julien returned the gun to its holster, fiddled with his dash vents. “What does he want?”

  Julien dropped the car in reverse and eased out of the parking space. “To see you. Talk awhile. I’m going to drive us to Miami, and from there, we fly north to Kentucky.”

  Nikolić frowned. “What happened with the statue…that wasn’t my fault.” When Julien said nothing, his frown deepened, the tendons bridging his shoulders and neck growing taut. “The starica—the old lady—she wouldn’t talk.”

  You didn’t shoot her in the liver? Julien was tempted to quip, but kept his mouth shut. When they’d first met, Nikolić had been a gangly kid, too dangerously overeager to prove his manhood for anyone’s good. He’d fired a .45-caliber round into the side of a terrified woman in full view of her equally terrified thirteen-year-old son, then explained that if you shot someone in the liver, it didn’t kill them right away.

  But it hurts like a bitch, he’d said in Serbian, and at the time, his front teeth had been capped in gold, an adornment he seemed to have foregone in more than two decades since. She’ll talk now—you watch and see.

  “…then a man came,” Nikolić continued. “He threw me like a kid’s toy—only he never touched me.”

  At this, Julien blinked, snapping from his distracted thoughts. “What?”

  “He did this…” Nikolić held his hand out toward the dashboard, his fingers spread apart. “That’s all. But I felt something hit my chest. Nothing I could see—but I felt it.”

  Julien felt his stomach slowly tighten. “What did this man look like?”

  “Long hair. Plavokos,” Nikolić said.

  “He was strigoi?” Julien asked and when Nikolić nodded, he felt the knot in his gut constrict all the more. Strigoi meant vampire, or, in this case, one of the Brethren or Nahual, as Tejano Cervantes and his kind from south of the border called themselves. Plavokos meant fair-haired, either blond or white. That description matched only one Brethren Julien knew of.

  Augustus Noble.

  Fuck me.

  Had Augustus come to Florida searching for Brandon? If he knew about Nikolić, then he might know about Cervantes, too—and the juice. From there, it was only a matter of putting two and two together, and Augustus wasn’t a stupid man. Not by anyone’s stretch of the imagination. He was also a very dangerous man, one Julien had no desire to cross swords with—proverbially or otherwise.

  “I tell you, he threw me like I’m lutka—a doll. I hit the ground so hard, I busted my ribs inside.” With a grimace that Julien felt sure was feigned, Nikolić pressed his hand against his right side.

  Feeling decidedly more anxious than ever to get the hell out of Dodge, he merged onto the section of U.S. Highway 41 known as the Tamiami Trail toward Miami. Their route would take them through the heart of the Everglades, a sparsely populated area, and traffic would be light, as most travelers preferred the major interstates and more tourist-friendly areas. Julien eased the gas pedal down and the Infiniti picked up speed. The more miles between them and Bayshore—and Augustus—the better.

  “Why you don’t like me, mišiću?” Nikolić asked. “We’ve know each other, worked together now for what? Twenty years?”

  “Twenty-five,” Julien corrected. “And I wouldn’t call it working together. I clean up all the messes you make, everything you and your friends fuck up. I save your uncle a shitload of face.” With a pointed glance, his brow arched, he added, “And it sure as hell isn’t because I like you.”

  Niko
lić studied him for a long moment. “You know what makes us different, you and me?”

  “I can think of any number of things,” Julien muttered.

  “Your father says jump, and you do it. But me? My uncle Draško, he tells me to jump, and I go out, find a ladder. Same outcome. Nobody thinks for me. You? Gud pas—a good little doggie.”

  Julien bristled inwardly but said nothing. I’m not going to let this stupid son of a bitch bait me, he thought, pinning his eyes on the road ahead of them.

  “Like this.” Nikolić swept his hand around, indicating their present circumstances. “My boys—they have izvidnica here for me. How you say it…? Reconnaissance. They use soc to talk inside my head. They want to come…how you say? Guns blazing.” With a wan sort of grin, he added, “Like Clint Eastwood.”

  The idea that Nikolić’s fellow mercenary-rejects from the Serbian Army might have been casing the jail and planning some kind of spaghetti-western-inspired shoot out to liberate their leader came as no surprise to Julien. After all, they were former members of the shock troops known as Psi Rata, or the “Dogs of War,” notorious for their violent, bloody, brutal participation in the Albanian genocide of the 1990s.

  The realization that they’d been able to keep in contact with Nikolić telepathically, even though they were all humans, came as no surprise, either. Through the use of the drug they called soc, or juice, humans were able to experience the same heightened psionic and sensory capabilities as the Brethren.

  “I told them no,” Nikolić continued. “Lamar will say come, and Julien will come.” Julien cut him a look just in time to see him grin broadly. “And here you are, just like I promised. Gud pas. A good little doggie.”

  * * *

  When Nikolić reclined his car seat a few minutes later and started flipping through a weekly news magazine he’d found on the floor, Julien was glad for the silence. He’d bought the magazine at the airport in Kentucky to have something to occupy his time during the short flight to Florida and had hung onto it because of a small brief he’d found near the back, in the “Passages” section: