The Brethren - Dark Hunger Part 16

You're a G.o.dd.a.m.n lying, stealing n.o.ble wh.o.r.e, Martin had said as he'd tried to strangle her. Just like your s.l.u.t grandmother.

So I guess that makes it only fitting that you f.u.c.king die like Eleanor.

"...but I'm about to try and find out."

Martin looked like h.e.l.l.

The places on his face where bird beaks and talons had torn or pecked him open were beginning to heal, but still, it was hard to look like anything less than warmed-over s.h.i.t when you were hog-tied and gagged in the trunk of your own mid-sized luxury sedan.

He squinted blearily against the abrupt glare of morning sunshine as the trunk swung open. When he caught sight of Tessa, his brows furrowed and he bared his teeth around the wadded up washcloth in his mouth, wriggling and mumbling at her, an inarticulate mess of sounds.

"Good morning, sunshine," Rene said to him. He held up a plastic water bottle, in which he'd dissolved a handful of crushed up Percodan tablets. "Breakfast is served."

The cleft between Martin's brows cleaved more deeply and he muttered and growled around the gag, angry and defiant.

"Now, now," Rene said, setting the bottle down and grabbing Martin roughly by the hair, forcing his head up. "That's no way to talk, what with a lady present." He jerked down the gag and moved to cram the mouth of the bottle between his lips. "Down the hatch."

"Wait," Tessa said, catching him by the arm. He and Martin both blinked at her in mutual surprise.

She stared at her husband, feeling tremulous and frightened, as if he could somehow still hurt her. She stared at him as she would have a rattlesnake curled by her feet; despite the ropes and her proximity to Rene, she still could feel that threatening potential energy surrounding Martin, coming off him in thick, stinking, nearly tangible waves.

"You said something yesterday," she said, her voice choked and quiet. "You told me I was going to die like Eleanor. I want to know what you meant."

He held her gaze, his eyes cold and filled with contempt. "Go f.u.c.k yourself," he croaked, spittle spattering against his cracked, blood-crusted lips.

Rene jerked his head, tearing hair loose from his scalp, and Martin uttered a hoa.r.s.e cry. "You want to join the Hair Club for Men, a.s.shole? Keep up that charming att.i.tude."

"Tell me what you meant," Tessa said, clearing her throat and narrowing her brows. In that moment, as he'd cursed at her, the illusion of intimidation had fallen away and she'd seen him for what he truly was-not the monster who had beaten and terrorized her for the last four years, but something pathetic, battered and helpless, so consumed with greed and jealousy, she doubted he had room in his heart or mind for anything else. "You tried to kill me. You tried to kill my baby. You son of a b.i.t.c.h-did you kill my grandmother, too?"

When he said nothing, turning his eyes away as if bored with her, she felt the same rage that had filled her the day before-that fire that had been Eleanor's-ignite again. Tessa grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and shook him furiously. "You tell me!" she cried. "You son of a b.i.t.c.h, you tell me right now! What happened to my grandmother?"

He locked gazes with her again, the hatred in his eyes spearing into her. "Why don't you ask your grandfather?" he hissed and, startled, Tessa let go of his shirt and drew back. Martin chuckled at her surprise and bewilderment. "Go on. Call him on the phone, you stupid c.u.n.t. Ask him about it. He should know how Eleanor died-he's the one who killed her."

"Liar!" Tessa punched him hard enough to knock him loose from Rene's grasp and send him crashing back to the floor of the trunk. But she wasn't finished. She launched herself after him, all but scrambling into the back of the Jaguar as she began to pummel him, scratching, slapping and pounding his head and face over and over. "Liar! You're a G.o.dd.a.m.n liar!"

"Tessa!" Rene caught her by the waist and hauled her backward.

"You're a liar!" she cried at Martin, squirming against Rene. "My grandfather would never have hurt Eleanor! He loved her!" "Yeah?" Martin spat out a mouthful of fresh blood; her knuckles had sheared open his bottom lip. "My father was there. He saw the whole thing, told me all about it. Augustus n.o.ble crushed her G.o.dd.a.m.n throat with his bare hands, until her eyes bulged out of her G.o.dd.a.m.n skull and she p.i.s.sed her f.u.c.king panties-how's that for love?"

"Liar!" Tessa yelled again, but she couldn't get to him to punch him anymore, not with Rene holding on to her. He hoisted her aloft, leaving her feet to pedal in the open air, and carried her forcibly back from the car.

"That's enough, pischouette," he said against her ear. He dropped her unceremoniously against the curb and gave her a warning look from beneath crimped brows. "Let me finish with him."

"But I need to-" she began, objecting.

"You need to sit tight and be quiet before you wake up the entire place and have cops crawling all over my a.s.s, wondering why I've got your husband cinched up in the trunk," Rene said in a low voice. "Now stand still and stop it, G.o.dd.a.m.n it."

He returned to the car and leaned over the trunk. Martin uttered a choked, gurgling cry that cut off quickly. When Rene finished forcing him to drink the contents of the bottle, he stood again, looked about warily, then slammed the trunk down.

For a moment, she thought he'd be angry with her, but as he approached, his expression softened and he touched her face with a gentle hand. "You better now?"

She nodded, looking away, sullen and upset. "He's lying."

He canted his head to catch her gaze. "He's trying to push your b.u.t.tons, pischouette," he said, leaning forward to kiss her. "And you let him. Come on. Let's get on the road."

"My grandfather didn't kill Eleanor." Tessa turned, following him back to the motel room. Here, she began to collect her things, shoving them with angry emphasis into a bag as she continued to speak. "He adored her, would have done anything to make her happy. They were everything I grew up thinking love was supposed to be."

He loved her like I love you, Rene, she thought, closing her mind and mouth. He couldn't have hurt Eleanor any more than I could you.

Rene made a strange little coughing sound and she paused, glancing over at him. "What?"

"Nothing, pischouette," he said, shaking his head and shouldering his traveling bag. "It's just..."

His voice faded and he shrugged, making her frown. "What, Rene?"

He met her gaze, his brow raised slightly. "To hear you and Brandon talk about your grandfather, it doesn't seem to me like you're describing the same person at all. I'm not saying anything one way or the other, but this great man you keep mentioning, the one who loved your mamere so much...he's the same son of a b.i.t.c.h who broke Brandon's hands, punished him for wanting to go to school."

She blinked at him. "I'm not saying the Grandfather was a great man. I'm not saying that at all. I didn't live in the great house after Eleanor died. I don't know what things were like for Brandon then. I-"

"Sounds to me like things were bad off for Brandon for a long time before your grandmother died," Rene remarked.

"What the h.e.l.l are you saying, Rene?" she asked, her voice growing sharp.

He shrugged again. "Rien," he said. Nothing. "Just making an observation, that's all."

He walked out the door, leaving her to stand in the middle of the room, blinking after him.

He's right. She had long struggled to reconcile within her mind the Augustus n.o.ble who had so doted on Eleanor-the loving and adoring husband Eleanor had always described, who had smiled easily, laughed often and shown nothing but warmth to his wife-and the domineering patriarch who had so cruelly ostracized and abused her twin brother, offering Brandon nothing but icy contempt and condemnation.

She'd tried to tell herself that he hadn't been cruel before Eleanor died, that the bitter malice in his heart had come about in the aftermath of that loss. But that was a lie.

Because he was always cruel. Brandon was always afraid of him.

She slipped the strap of her bag over her shoulder and pressed her lips together in a thin, troubled line. I've never wanted to believe that. I still don't want to. Because if that's true...if the Grandfather really is that kind of monster...

"It means Martin's right," she whispered. "He murdered my grandmother."

Chapter Twenty.

Lake Tahoe was twenty-two miles long and twelve miles across, encompa.s.sing a surface area of more than 190 square miles and bridging the outermost edges of California's eastern snowcapped Sierra Nevada mountains and the high desert plains of western Nevada.

And what a surface it is, Rene thought, looking down the steep slope of mountainside toward the plane of dusk-draped cerulean below. The sun was sinking beneath the Sierra Nevada peaks behind him but even without the full benefit of daylight, the view was extraordinary, d.a.m.n-near breathtaking.

They'd followed Interstate 10 to the outskirts of Los Angeles, then turned north to take highway 395 to Carson City, Nevada.

From there, he'd taken highway 50 and hugged the southern sh.o.r.eline of Lake Tahoe's impressive and expansive circ.u.mference until hitting state route 89 west toward Emerald Bay. He'd have to double back along 89 in another hour or so to meet Lina and Brandon at a local restaurant for dinner.

"What is this place?" Tessa asked. Her voice was small, her eyes enormous as she took in the sweeping vista of dense pine forests, rocky peaks and that stunning view below. It was at least ten degrees cooler in the mountains than at lower elevations as a general rule of thumb; after sunset, you could notch that down another ten degrees at least. He'd stopped in the town of Stateline and bought a coat for her; it was always either ski season at Lake Tahoe, or d.a.m.n near it, so finding something stylish enough to suit her and warm enough to be practical hadn't been a problem. The lightweight pink parka had cost him almost three hundred dollars, but it was quilted and down-filled, and she seemed grateful for it now as she tugged the collar flaps up toward her face and stuffed her hands into her pockets. The wind flapped dark strands of hair across her cheeks as she followed his gaze down to the water.

"It belonged to my father," Rene said, turning away from the edge of the slope and walking around the front of a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. He'd stowed the Jaguar sedan at a hotel in South Lake Tahoe when he'd checked in, and rented the Jeep to better navigate the rough-hewn terrain. "And now it's mine. Come on, pischouette. I'll give you the grand tour."

They were north of Emerald Bay, looking down upon the expansive inlet, on twenty-five acres of relatively untouched wilderness accessible only by four-wheel drive. Rene didn't know why or how the property had come to be among his father's a.s.sets; the deed had been included among the doc.u.ments left to him upon Arnaud's suicide, but the origin remained a mystery.

A loud, rustling crash from somewhere in the woods startled Tessa and she jumped, wide-eyed. "What was that?"

"Probably just a pinecone falling out of a tree." There were black bears in the forests surrounding the lake, enough to warrant them being considered an official nuisance by most area residents, but Rene decided now was probably neither the best time nor place to point this out to Tessa.

"A pinecone?" He leaned down, hefting one from the thick carpeting of dried pine needles on the ground. Not your run-of-the-mill, residential variety of conifer seed cl.u.s.ter, it was as big as a softball at the circ.u.mference of its base, thick and heavy with sap. He tossed it to her and she caught it with both hands, her eyes widening again at the surprising heft.

"Pinecone," he said again, chuckling at her. "Watch your head when you're under the trees."

Although the land itself was extremely valuable, it was relatively vacant. Surrounded on either side by state park acreage, the area was virtually undeveloped, and the only building on Arnaud's property had been what Rene had surmised to be some kind of fire lookout about 900 square feet in circ.u.mference, with windows on all sides to award a panoramic view. The windows were hidden beneath hinged shutters that could be propped up and open, but were closed and padlocked in place otherwise. There was no plumbing, phone service or electricity, although there was room in a crawl s.p.a.ce beneath the house to install a generator if Rene had ever wanted. Which had been his plan, once upon a time.

"The road up here from the highway is pretty much impa.s.sable in the winter, but I used to come every year in the summer," he remarked, fishing a set of keys from the pocket of his own down-filled ski jacket. "I don't know what it is, but I've always felt something...like I'm supposed to be here, like I'm home." He glanced over his shoulder at Tessa and smiled. "Once upon a time, I was going to retire from the police force and move here. Of course, then I got shot. Kind of messed up the whole idea."

"Are we going to stay?" Tessa asked, a bit apprehensively as he led her up a rickety flight of wooden steps to the plank porch that wrapped around the entire breadth of the house.

"We're not, no." He couldn't remember which key was which. It had been at least three years since he'd been out here. The last vestiges of daylight were rapidly dwindling, too, and he handed her a large Maglite he'd been carrying beneath his arm. "Here, pischouette. Do me a favor, no? Shine that light over here so I can sort through these keys."

She did and after several clumsy attempts, he found the right one for the front door. It opened on rusty, creaking hinges into a solitary room; the air inside smelled musty and stale. It was spa.r.s.ely furnished: a twin-sized cot in one corner with a bare, lumpy mattress; a small, propane-powered one-burner stove on a wooden table in another corner, along with a dust-covered box containing pots, pans and other household items. No sink or toilet.

He glanced at Tessa again, offering a feeble smile. "Be it ever so humble," he remarked, sidestepping across the threshold so she could follow him inside.

"You were going to live here?" Tessa panned the flashlight around, sweeping its wide yellow beam across the wooden floor, the stark white walls. The only fixture was a single vertical beam, a post in the center of the room spanning from floor to ceiling. "But there's nothing here. No rooms."

"I don't need them," Rene said, walking slowly toward the center of the room, listening to the soft crunch of dust and grit beneath his shoe soles. "Or walls, either. Never have liked them much."

"Why?" Tessa asked.

With a laugh, he shrugged. "I don't know. I'm claustrophobic. Can't stand to feel shut in for too long."

"I didn't know that," Tessa said, looking surprised.

"It started when I came home from my tour of duty in Vietnam," he said. "We used to go humping around in the middle of the night through some of the densest G.o.dd.a.m.n jungle you can imagine. You could never relax because as soon as you did, someone would take a potshot at you. I remember always feeling smothered, like everything was closing in on me and I was suffocating. I guess that just stayed with me."

Dark places were particularly bothersome for him, maybe because light-particularly from windows-helped lend the illusion of s.p.a.ce. He always kept the lights on at his loft in the city; a restored Victorian gaslight burned perpetually in the center of his living s.p.a.ce. If he had no light to see by, he'd become disoriented, panic-stricken, suffering nearly full-fledged anxiety attacks. Sometimes in his mind, he'd even have flashbacks to his time in Vietnam, delusions that were realistically intense, even down to the remembered fragrance of mud and rain, the stink of his own ripe, pungent fear. In fact, being in that dark room, with only the flashlight's glow to orient him, was making him feel a bit edgy. Should have thought to open the windows first, he thought.

Not that he intended to stay long enough for it to matter.

"Good thing our sort don't really have to camp out in coffins, no?" he said with a wink. "I'd be in real trouble."

She smiled, and he watched as she traced little concentric circles on the top of the mattress with the flashlight beam. "You want to break that in or something?" he asked.

She swung the light directly into his face, blinding him. "No," she said, laughing.

He laughed, too, groping against the glare, shoving the light aside. "No?" He caught her by the wrists and pulled her against him, making her dance momentarily on her tiptoes. The simple prospect of making love to her-even in the dark in these close quarters-was enough to get his heart pounding, and the fly of his jeans to suddenly feel tight and strained. "You sure about that, pischouette?"

She could feel his arousal against her; he could tell by the mischievous reflection of light in her dark eyes. When he reached between them, sliding his hands deliberately, firmly against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, reaching for the zipper of her coat, she giggled, pushing his hand away. "Don't even think about it. It's freezing in here."

He hooked his brow, smiling wryly. "Don't worry about that," he said. "I'll keep you warm."

She laughed against his mouth as he kissed her, walking her back toward the bed. "There's no way that mattress is going to hold both of us," she told him, m.u.f.fled against his lips.

He glanced over her shoulder, then steered her to the right, crossing the room. "Fair enough."

Tessa laughed again as he knocked the stove and box of pans off the tabletop, sending them clattering to the floor. He lifted her up, hooking his hands beneath her a.s.s and hoisting her atop the table. As he laid her back, her face was draped in yellow glow and heavy shadows from the fallen flashlight and he unb.u.t.toned the front of her slacks.

"Raise your hips," he told her, and she did, letting him slide the pants and her underlying panties down her legs, bunching them around her ankles. Goose b.u.mps immediately raised along her skin at the chilled air, and he leaned over, kissing her lightly on her belly, huffing a warm, soft breath against her groin. G.o.d, he was tempted to taste her there; he let the blade of his tongue flick lightly, quickly against her, delving ever so slightly between her folds, and she jerked in surprise. He wanted to spread her legs wide and explore her with his mouth, but he knew there wasn't time. The idea of it left him throbbing with painful, urgent need; that aside, he'd promised to meet Lina and Brandon at a specific time, and he was in deep enough s.h.i.t by Lina's estimation without adding to it further. He'd have to settle for the proverbial quickie.

He unzipped his jeans and lifted her legs, propping them against his shoulders, hooking her pants around his neck and raising her b.u.t.tocks slightly off the table. He turned his head, kissing the creamy, silken flesh along the side of her knee, stroking his hand against her skin. My G.o.d, I love this woman, he thought, gazing down, admiring her in the dim light.

Her breath was already hitching with antic.i.p.ation; her eyelids fluttered closed, her fingernails hooked into the tabletop. She was wet and ready for him; he could feel it as he prodded lightly against her. He could smell her eagerness, the light fragrance of her arousal and he couldn't contain himself, even if he'd wanted to. He groaned her name, his voice husky with need, and buried himself inside of her.

The height of the table was perfect for his long legs, the angle it provided even more so, keeping Tessa tight around him. They didn't have time for anything slow or sweet; he took her hard, fast and fierce, making her moan aloud. She arched her back and he ripped open the zipper on her coat, shoving her shirt and bra up toward her neck to expose her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the cold-hardened points of her nipples as they bounced with each thrust. He folded himself atop her, drawing one rose-colored nub lightly between his teeth and the tip of his tongue. She closed her fingers in his hair, holding him there, urging him on.

"Rene...oh, G.o.d..." she whimpered, and when she came, her legs tightened against his neck, her entire body tensing, her voice cutting short in a sharp, fluttering gasp.

Christ, I will never get tired of making love to this woman, he thought, shuddering with his own release. He gripped her b.u.t.tocks with his hands and grinded against her, closing his eyes and uttering a hoa.r.s.e cry.

He winced to pull away from her, to feel the biting chill of the air against parts of his body that had been enveloped by her warmth only moments earlier. "Saint merde," he whispered shakily.

"You say that a lot," she said as she sat up to kiss him. "What does it mean?"

"Holy s.h.i.t," he replied by way of translation, making her laugh. "It's a compliment. I promise."

After redressing, they walked back outside onto the porch together. "So why did we come here?" Tessa asked, hooking her arm through his and sidling beside him. She looked up, smiling winsomely at him. "Besides so you could have your way with me on the table."

"Have my way?" He laughed. "Woman, you haven't let me have my way on a d.a.m.n thing since I met you!"

She laughed, too, and when she leaned against his shoulder, he kissed the crown of her dark hair. "I figure this is as good a place as any to keep Martin out of trouble," he told her, and she immediately grew tense and wary.

"What do you mean?"

"You'll see," he replied.

They went back to the Jeep and he opened the rear hatch. Martin was unconscious, still bound and gagged, but he stirred, groaning lightly as Rene hauled him out by the arm. He'd adjusted the bonds so that Martin's hands were tied behind his back, his ankles unfettered, and forced the other man to walk now in stumbling, dazed tow for the house.

Martin grumbled around the gag, bleary and disoriented, and grunted in pain when Rene shoved him through the front door, knocking him to his knees.

"Can we freeze to death?" Rene asked Tessa, dragging Martin over to the vertical post in the center of the room. He squatted, loosening the electrical cord around Martin's wrist long enough to cross his arms behind him around the beam, then lash them together again.

"What?" She stood hesitantly nearby, angling the flashlight so he could see what he was doing by its swath of illumination.