Free Out of the Dark (The Brethren Series) by Sara Reinke

Naima.”
    Earlier, there had been nothing in his face when she’d said this; he’d stared at her, stoic and impassive as granite. This time, though, something in him cracked; she saw a fleeting but definite hint of pain in his eyes. As quickly as it came, it was gone, however, and his brows furrowed. “I said…get out of my way.”
    Moving slowly—because even the most slow, deliberate gesture brought bright panic into his eyes, and caused him to refocus his bleary gaze and aim—she held her hands up, palms facing him. “I know you remember me.” As she uncurled her fingers from her right palm, the St. Christopher medal dropped down, dangling on its silver chain. “I found this in your car.”
    His eyes widened as they fixed on the pendant. Again the gun drooped toward the ground and again, sucking in a sharp, wounded breath, he raised it again. “What…what do you know about that?”
    “You gave it to me,” Naima told him, stepping forward.
    “That’s a lie.” With one hand, he hooked his fingers like claws into the trunk of the tree to keep himself upright.
    “ No, it’s not,” she said. “On the night of October twelfth, in the year 1815, you gave this to me. Right before you helped me to escape from your father.”
    She stepped toward him again, and that bright panic flared in his eyes. “Stop right there, ” he gasped, flexing his index finger in and out treacherously against the trigger. “Don’t…don’t come any closer.”
    “You won’t shoot me,” she said , taking another step, then another, standing directly in front of him now, close enough to touch him.
    “Yes, I will,” he seethed , his chest heaving with every pained, panting breath.
    “No, you won’t.” She drew her fingertips lightly against his cheek. Her thumb brushed against his lower lip, and this time, she felt a shudder run through him like a live electrical current. “Don’t you remember, Aaron?”
    “I…I can’t…” His eyelids fluttered, his eyes rolling back into his head. He pitched forward, his knees failing him as he passed out, and Naima caught him. Her knees buckled beneath his dead weight, and she cradled him in her arms, using her telepathy to support him as she lowered him to the grass.
     
     
    CHAPTER SIX
     
    It wasn’t as if Aaron spent the majority of his days obsessing over losing the memories of his early life. He had decades more—centuries, in fact—that had passed since then, with experiences, encounters and escapades that he could clearly recall. If the truth be told, he seldom thought of his limited amnesia at all. Until recently, that is.
    Until the package.
    It had been an otherwise ordinary, if not somewhat boring, Sunday in late March of that year. He’d just returned from a nearly month-long trip to southern France. He’d been there at Lamar’s behest, and had killed a businessman at Lamar’s specific order. Aaron hadn’t known why Lamar wanted the man dead; Lamar hadn’t confided this, and Aaron hadn’t asked. It wasn’t his job to question his father’s edicts. He was simply supposed to obey.
    He hadn’t been back to the States long, no more than a couple of days, when he heard his doorbell ring one morning as he was stepping out of the shower. With a frown, he wrapped a towel around his waist and stepped out of the bathroom, following a narrow corridor toward the entrance to his apartment. He paused long enough to grab his pistol from his bedroom bureau; as he walked along, leaving a trail of spattered water droplets on the hardwood floor in his wake, he checked the clip, making sure it was full, before clapping it home once again.
    He made a point of being anonymous. He’d never met any of his neighbors; he took the stairs, even though he lived on the fifteenth floor because he didn’t like elevators, and he also didn’t want the people with whom he shared the apartment building to become familiar or accustomed to his face. He didn’t keep a mailbox at the