Part 7 (2/2)
”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 h.e.l.l 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 t.i.ts, 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 frere, why am I not surprised Caine would try to scare the merde out of you with tales of some creature in your bas.e.m.e.nt?”
”Not the bas.e.m.e.nt. 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 f.u.c.k up.” She laughed, but nodded again. ”You got a weird G.o.dd.a.m.n 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 facade 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 s.h.i.+ver 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 bluegra.s.s 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 inst.i.tuted 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.
”Why isn't my father included?” Rene asked. ”He's here.” He pointed to his grandmother's tree, which Tessa unfolded and spread out beside the Tome on the bedspread. ”See? Arnaud Morin, born July 12, 1818.”
She didn't know the answer to that, and the book didn't provide any other clues.
”I say we hit the hay,” Rene told her. ”It's after two in the morning already, and we've got a long drive ahead of us today.
Hopefully one that's less eventful than yesterday's.”
He said this last with a little wink that made her smile. Things had changed between them since the attack at the rest stop, a subtle but distinctive s.h.i.+ft in the dynamic of their relations.h.i.+p. There was a sweetness about Rene that had caught her by surprise. She'd expected him to make some wisecrack about finding her beside him when he'd woken up earlier, but he hadn't. Instead, it hadn't seemed to bother him at all.
”So you want to call it, heads or tails, to see who gets the bed tonight?” he asked, making a show of reaching into his pocket and digging for a coin.
She laughed, hefting one heavy half of the Tome and plopping it closed. ”That's okay. You take it. You're the one with the bullet hole in him.”
”That?” He laughed, glancing at his hand almost dismissively. ”That's nothing, pischouette. I've had worse bug bites.”
He definitely seemed to be feeling better. Tessa wondered if it was because he'd taken any of the Percodans he'd given to Brandon. Even though they hadn't told Lina and Brandon the truth about what had happened to Rene's hand, when she'd been alone with Tessa, Lina had still expressed concern.
”He wasn't drinking when it happened, was he?” she'd asked, because they'd said that Rene had hurt himself changing a flat tire.
”Sometimes he has a problem with that...and his pills, too. Ever since his leg. He's not drinking while you guys are out on the road, is he?”
”No,” Tessa had replied, shaking her head and managing a laugh. ”No, of course not, Lina. I...why, I haven't seen him touch a drop since we left for New Orleans.”
She still wasn't quite sure why she'd lied, why she hadn't told Lina about the night before, when Rene had gotten drunk and tried to shoot himself, except she'd felt some sudden and fierce need to protect him, even if only from Lina's disapproval. Because he protected me, she thought. Everything is different now. That guy with the gun changed everything.”I'm perfectly fine to sleep on the recliner,” she told Rene as she grunted, hoisting the Tome. ”You just-”
”You take the bed,” Rene said, reaching out and drawing the c.u.mbersome book out of her arms. ”I'll take the book. I need to sit up tonight anyway, so don't worry about it.”
”What do you mean?” she asked as he carried the Tome to the bedside desk. He'd said something the night before about being an insomniac. ”You can sit up in the bed and watch TV. It's not going to-”
”It's all right.” He shook his head, then cut his eyes toward the bathroom, looking suddenly uncomfortable. ”I just...there are some things I need to do with my hand...and my leg and all...” His voice faltered clumsily and he cleared his throat. ”Anyway, it's easier if I just do them sitting up.”
”Oh.” She glanced at his right leg. He hadn't said anything about the prosthetic during their travels together, and she'd never seen him do a lot with it, much less remove it. Is he embarra.s.sed? she wondered. Why? I know he has it. He and Brandon both told me. ”I can help you.”
”That's all right...” he began.
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