Out of the Dark (The Brethren Series) Read Online Free Page A

blow, Karen struck him with the broad base of a fire extinguisher, connecting solidly with his head, and knocking him immediately out cold.
     
     
    CHAPTER TWO
     
    “Who is he?” Karen asked as Naima Morin wrestled the man’s limp, unconscious form into an office chair.
    “I don’t know.” Naima shook her head, teeth gritted as she supported his dead weight, while Karen squatted behind the chair to bind his hands with a plastic zip tie.
    Less than ten minutes earlier, she’d been waiting for her uncle Mason to arrive so they could drive together to Reno, Nevada, for a cocktail party. Mason was partial owner of the Nevada Mustangs, a minor-league baseball team, and the party celebrated their recent advancement in the Pacific Northern division championships. They’d planned to arrive fashionably late and stay overnight, and Naima had been standing out on her balcony, watching for the approaching headlights from her uncle’s Cadillac Escalade, wearing a sheer, sleeveless cocktail dress made of gold tulle and a treacherously high pair of Jimmy Choo stilettos. When she’d caught sight of a shadowy figure cutting stealthily through the trees below, she’d kicked off her shoes and followed, barefoot through the woods. Her initial curiosity had changed to alarm when she’d realized the hooded man’s ultimate destination—the compound’s medical clinic, and her younger brother’s bedside.
    “He was after Tristan,” Karen said. “Is he one of the Davenants?”
    “I don’t know,” Naima said again, planting her hands on the man’s shoulders. Before she could shove him back in the seat, he groaned in her ear, his face drooped toward his sternum. “Look out. I think he’s coming to,” she warned, drawing back just as his eyelids fluttered open. “His telepathy’s strong, like nothing I’ve ever felt before. He…”
    He looked up at her, blinking dazedly, and she recoiled, her voice faltering, her eyes flown wide.
    Oh, my God …! she thought. It can’t be him. It can’t!
    Because i t had been centuries since she’d last seen Aaron Davenant…but his eyes—the distinctive blue of his irises—were unmistakable. And yet it was so impossible that it could be him that for an instant, she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. It felt like the last two hundred years had just been slapped out of her; like all of the strength in her body had abruptly sapped through her feet and flooded the floor beneath her.
    “Aaron ?” she breathed. She would have said more, except for the fact that he abruptly head-butted her, smashing his brow forcefully into hers, knocking her backwards and momentarily witless.
    Blinking against stars, she landed hard on her ass, and heard Karen yelp in frightened start. Her gaze was blurred, hazy with sudden tears, her head spinning, but she saw Aaron snap the taut strap of the zip tie cinched around his wrists, freeing his hands , then leap to his feet.
    “Naima—!” Karen cried as Aaron swung toward her, his fist hooking around, connecting swiftly, solidly with her jaw. Her voice cut short as she dropped to the floor, out cold.
    Naima tried to catch him telekinetically, thrusting her hand forward, fingers splayed, and managed to collapse the air around him in a sudden, firm grasp. Before she could do more than this, he swung to level his blue eyes—now mostly black, as his pupils had enlarged reflexively—at her.
    Aaron, she thought, opening her mind to him. Stop! It’s me. It’s—
    Her entire body convulsed in a violent, agonizing seizure, and she crashed to the floor, gasping and shuddering uncontrollably. She’d never met anyone with that kind of psionic power—like a singular, concentrated blow, almost blade-like and brutal. Not even her grandfather, Michel, who was the most powerful telepath in the Morin clan, had ever demonstrated such a devastating ability.
    Aaron darted past her. Ducking his head toward his shoulder, he leapt forward, crashing through