Part 14 (1/2)
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 s.h.i.+t 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 m.u.f.fled against the front of his s.h.i.+rt. ”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 d.a.m.n thing she wanted was to rip the throat out of some derelict or prost.i.tute while in the throes of the bloodl.u.s.t.
”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 relations.h.i.+p with Martin. He knew all about it; h.e.l.l, 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 d.a.m.n 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 bulls.h.i.+t, 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 bloodl.u.s.t. ”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 bulls.h.i.+t 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 bloodl.u.s.t-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 gra.s.s 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 bloodl.u.s.t-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 course you can. I'm not special, pischouette. Neither is Brandon. Not like that, anyway.”
Oh, G.o.d, 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.
”What we need is a nice, raw porterhouse,” Rene had remarked as he'd presented it to her. When she'd looked at him, puzzled, he'd told her that raw meat helped ease bruising and swelling, particularly black eyes. ”And you, pischouette, are sporting one h.e.l.l of a s.h.i.+ner.”
”That's absolutely disgusting. Where do you come up with these things?”
”The school of hard knocks-literally,” he'd said with a shrug. ”I used to get the s.h.i.+t beat out of me all the time as a kid.”
”By who?” she'd asked and he'd shrugged again.
”Lots of different people. Mostly this one a.s.shole, Gordon Maddox.” ”But why?” she'd asked. ”Didn't you fight back?”