A half hour later, Rene and Tessa"s twin brother, Brandon, stood together on the landing outside of the motel room, gazing out at lights from the nearby interstate. Brandon and Lina had checked into a room on the first floor, and brought pizza to share for supper. The two men rested their elbows against the wrought iron railing and nursed a bottle of c.o.ke apiece while Tessa and Lina stayed in the room, chatting together.

"Pizza just isn"t the same without beer," Rene remarked, making Brandon laugh. He tipped the bottle back and swallowed a mouthful of soda. "Or at least a shot of whiskey to give this s.h.i.t some flavor."

Good old Lina. She was constantly riding his a.s.s about how much he drank or how many pain pills he"d been popping. Never mind that after the miserable hangover he"d endured earlier that day, he didn"t plan on touching as much as a drop of liquor any time soon. He had asked Brandon for his Percodan back, but hadn"t taken any of the pills-and didn"t plan to, either. Not because he wasn"t in any pain, but because he"d decided he was sick of it-drinking or drugging himself to oblivion.

Weird s.h.i.t happens when I do, he thought, remembering the press of the pistol against his temple, the sound of Irene"s voice, sleepy from the other end of the phone line, and the silken smoothness of Tessa"s thigh against his hand as he"d reached up beneath her gown. Too much weird s.h.i.t.

So what really happened to your hand? Brandon asked in Rene"s mind.

Although Rene didn"t understand American Sign Language, Brandon had originally communicated with him either through the psi- speech he was using at the moment or handwritten notes. His broken hands prohibited this, however, and Rene reluctantly left his mind pretty much wide open to the younger man so they could converse, even though doing so made him uneasy. Not because he disliked Brandon, but because Brandon was an extremely powerful telepath, the likes of which Rene had never seen. He suspected Brandon was the likes of which none of the Brethren had ever seen before, either, and that was part of the reason they were so determined to hunt him down.

Rene thought maybe some among the Brethren, like Brandon"s grandfather or the Elders, might have been blocking Brandon"s powers in Kentucky. Now that the kid was away from them, free of their influence, his abilities seemed to be growing on a daily basis. Upon their initial introduction, Brandon had d.a.m.n near rattled Rene"s skull, plowing past any mental defenses he might have had to keep his thoughts guarded. It wasn"t something the younger man had done on purpose, but Rene wasn"t keen on the idea of tempting fate-or Brandon"s fledgling ability to control himself.

I told you, pet.i.t, Rene thought in reply. We had a flat tire earlier today. I cut myself on the jack trying to change it.Brandon looked at him, his brow c.o.c.ked at a dubious angle as Rene regurgitated this paper-thin line of bulls.h.i.t. He hadn"t told Brandon or Lina the truth because he hadn"t seen the point. There was nothing that could be done about it now, and both of them had enough weighing on their minds without adding to it. Rene had sworn Tessa to secrecy, too, and had considered it somewhat of a testimony to the tentative and affable peace that had been forged between them that she"d agreed to it, albeit reluctantly.

"I don"t like keeping secrets from Brandon," she"d said, but there"d been a look in her eyes, a slight edge to her voice that had clearly imparted that she had before, and would this time, too.

So what else haven"t you told your brother? Rene had wondered. What other little secrets are you keeping, Tessa?

Brandon knew Rene was lying, and Rene knew that he did. They both also knew that if Brandon had felt so inclined, he could have just skimmed the contents of Rene"s brain and learned the truth for himself.

And there wouldn"t be a d.a.m.n thing I could do to stop him.

"I"m all right, pet.i.t," he told Brandon, holding up his bandaged hand and wiggling his fingers-an act that was growing more easy and less painful by the hour. "Really. How about you?"

Brandon glanced at his own hands. It"s amazing, he said. This was the first day he"d apparently foregone swaddling them in bandages. It had been almost two weeks since he"d broken his hands, but already the bones had knitted back together, however fragilely.

It took months for my hands to heal in Kentucky, but they"re almost as good as new now. They still ache sometimes, and I can"t grip things very tightly... He mimed pinching his fingers together but stopped just shy of the tips fully touching. I can"t hold a pencil yet, but it"s getting close. He glanced up at Rene. Amazing.

"That"s what happens when you feed, pet.i.t," Rene told him with a wink. Even though he could witness such seemingly miraculous healing in his own body, it still amazed him, too. "It accelerates everything-your metabolism, healing, all of that."

Like Rene, Brandon was enjoying the effects of having fed twice in rapid succession. That kind of gluttony had heightened his healing ability just as it had Rene"s. Brandon had fed for the first time in his life from Lina. The second time, after he"d shattered his hands, he"d fed from Rene. It had been a desperate gamble to help him, one that had paid off; with only his father being Brethren, Rene had hoped there was enough human in his blood to benefit Brandon.

Rene took another swig of c.o.ke. So tell me about this book your sister found, he said. This Tome thing of hers. What"s so special about it, anyway? She said you use it to play matchmaker, set up marriages and whatnot?

Not me. Brandon shook his head. The Elders. No one else is supposed to see the Tomes. They keep them under lock and key at all times. Each clan has its own. As for what"s in them, I don"t really know. I only got a quick look at the one Tessa found. She said you were going to help her translate it?

Yeah. Rene nodded. Or try to anyway. It"s written in French, at least parts of it. Some of it"s really old. Who knows what the h.e.l.l language it is.

What I saw looked like your family tree, Brandon said. Which makes sense. That"s what the Elders use to arrange marriages.

"My family," Rene murmured, then he turned so Brandon could read his lips. "So this makes it official, then? My family has one of these Tomes, so they must have been part of the Brethren at some point."

Sure looks that way, Brandon said. What I"m wondering is if they were, how did they get the Tome out of Kentucky? The books are kept at the dominant clan"s house. Each family doesn"t keep their own. Like right now, all of the Tomes are locked in my grandfather"s library.

Rene arched a curious brow. "You think my clan must have been dominant at some point, pet.i.t? That"s how they had access to the book?"

I don"t know, Brandon replied.

And if that"s true, then what happened? Rene wondered, closing his mind momentarily, his brows furrowed thoughtfully. This was a point that had been niggling at him, the way a mosquito bite will itch-just barely at first, enough so that you"ll reach for it to scratch, and from there, inexorably worsening until it"s absolutely maddening and you"ll claw your flesh open and raw. What happened to my family? Did they leave the Brethren willingly? Were they kicked out somehow? Either way-why?

Whatever the circ.u.mstances, obviously the Brethren had gone to some effort to make sure the Morins were forgotten. But when and why this had happened remained a mystery. Rene"s father, Arnaud, hadn"t offered him any clues. In fact, he had led Rene to believe they were the last of their kind anywhere in the world.

Did he not realize then? Did he not know? Whatever happened, was it before my father"s lifetime? Or did he know, and just lied to me about it?

As if he"d been reading Rene"s mind-despite the fact Rene had deliberately closed it-Brandon said, Makes you wonder how your human grandmother wound up with it, huh?

"My father must have given it to her years ago," Rene replied. "When he came to find me. That was...1971, I think."

The year after Irene left me.

"He came to our home in Bayou Lafourche," he said to Brandon. "Maybe he knew I was there all along, maybe it took him that long to find me. I don"t know. Either way, I came home from this factory job I"d taken down in Houma, and there was this fancy car I"d never seen before parked in front of the house. I walked inside to find my mamere sitting in the living room, serving tea and store-bought gingersnap cookies on her best set of bone china to some slick-dressed salaud I"d never seen before, either. She introduces him as Arnaud Morin. "This here is your papa," she says to me, even though the guy on the couch doesn"t look much older than I did at the time."

Rene took another long swallow of c.o.ke, emptying the bottle, and wished his head didn"t ache at even the idea of adding a dollop of Bloodhorse Reserve. Could probably use at least two-fingers" worth right about now.

"In retrospect, I think he must have done something to her mind, the way I do now when I go to feed," he said, and he flapped his bandaged hand at his temple. "I sort of turn them off in a way. Make them do what I want, so they don"t make a fuss."

Brandon nodded. The Brethren do that, too, except during bloodletting ceremonies. The rest of the time, it"s really low-key.

They keep the humans subdued with their minds.

"I don"t know if he gave the book to her to hide, then made her forget about it somehow, but she never told me about it at any rate." He glanced at Brandon. "When I read about him blowing his brains out two days later, I showed the newspaper to Mamere and she didn"t even bat an eye. It was like she didn"t even know who he was, like he hadn"t just spent half a G.o.dd.a.m.n day parked on her sofa not forty-eight hours earlier."

Strangely, though, his grandmother at some point had written out a family tree of her own, one that had traced Arnaud"s side as well as her own, at least back to Rene"s great-grandfather. The dates had all been recorded correctly, which seemed to suggest that Odette had known about Arnaud"s heritage, what he was-and what Rene was. At least at some point, she had. Whether or not Arnaud Morin had walked out of the house that sunny afternoon outside of Thibodaux, Louisiana, and left those memories intact, Rene would never know.

"Maybe he never meant for me to find that Tome," he said. "Who the h.e.l.l knows. Either way, he didn"t do me any favors. All of my G.o.dd.a.m.n life to that point, I"d felt like I was different than everybody else...not quite in step with the rest of the world. Finding out the truth from him didn"t make much of a difference." He glanced at Brandon. "I guess you know how that goes, no, pet.i.t?"

I used to, Brandon said. But I don"t anymore. Not since finding you and Lina. Rene smiled, thinking of how good it had felt to wake up in bed with Tessa curled up beside him; right somehow. He had Brandon to thank for that, for the day only weeks earlier in which Rene had sensed the younger man outside of the dilapidated high-rise he called home. It had been the first time since Arnaud that Rene had experienced the peculiar, tickling sensation inside his mind that had alerted him to the presence of another just like him. Rene could still call the birds, just as he had when he"d been young, and he"d summoned them to him, sending them in sweeping paths around the building, seeing through their eyes as Brandon had walked away from the front entrance, his shoulders hunched against a steady rain. Brandon had been robbed and shot in a nearby alley, and would have been murdered if Rene hadn"t witnessed the crime in time to save him; if he hadn"t sent the birds swooping down at the gunmen, attacking them, driving them away. He"d brought Brandon inside and tried to nurse him back to health, a part of him so elated, he could hardly breathe. Like me, he"d thought, in dumbstruck wonder. Like me. Saint merde, this boy is just like me.

He could have been Rene"s brother, for all he"d known; a cousin or nephew, anything. It hadn"t mattered. He was like Rene and that was all that had counted. I"m not the only one after all.

Rene reached out and tousled Brandon"s hair with a fond smile. "You know what, pet.i.t?" he asked. "I don"t feel so alone anymore, either."

Chapter Ten.

Tessa stifled a yawn against the back of her hand as she sat cross-legged on the king-sized bed. Rene glanced at her, sitting next to her, his legs dangling over the side of the mattress. "Past your bedtime, pischouette?" he asked with a wry smirk.

"I"m fine," she said, and to prove it, she settled herself more comfortably, tucking her hair behind her ears and leaning forward to peer down at the opened Tome before them.

"Well, it"s past mine, then, how about that?" he said with a laugh, grimacing as he stood, unfurling his legs slowly and stretching his back. "Mon Dieu, I think my a.s.s has gone numb."

Lina and Brandon had left several hours earlier and they"d been awake ever since, poring through the voluminous old book page by brittle, yellowed page. Rene had hauled in a notebook computer with wireless Internet capability from the car, and between the two of them, they"d been able to tentatively identify the dialect in which portions of the book were written. Unfortunately, neither had been able to translate it.

Langues d"oil, Rene had called it. "Old French, influenced by Latin and some Celtic way of speaking called Gaulish." He"d glanced up from the laptop. "Wikipedia says it was spoken from around one thousand to thirteen hundred. Also says there was no one specific language, that it varied from region to region."

In addition to being an archaic dialect, the transcriptions were also written in a tiny script, old ink set to brittle parchment, and nearly illegible. He"d been able to read some of the words, but not enough to make much sense of the entire text. Together, they"d settled for trying to make sense of the pictures, the wealth of ornate but enigmatic ill.u.s.trations adorning the pages.

"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 shiver 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 shift in the dynamic of their relationship. 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.