The Rhiannon Chronicles

by Maggie Shayne

  I looked at Roxanne. She looked back at me and nodded. “We’ll taxi 'til we hit the far end of the lake and take off from there, so they'll be less likely to see us.”

  “You mean to say you can fly this thing?” I asked her

  “I can. I can fly it all the way to Maine, Rhiannon, with a couple of stops for fuel."

  I looked at her, at the plane, and then back toward the cabin where I had left my heart. Pandora came loping out of the woods. Her speed never failed to amaze me. She stood there, mouth agape, panting softly. Then she came closer and sat down right beside Nikki. Nikki hugged her neck, and Pandora chuffed and rubbed her head against the child. Nikki said. “We can’t go all the way to anyplace, Roxy. Not without Roland. Right, Rhiannon?”

  A cellphone rang. Frowning, Roxy started patting herself down, and eventually pulled out one of the zipper bags she’d shoved into the canvas sack she carried. I presumed she’d prepared one for each of the children, just as she had for the others. She fumbled inside, extracted the phone, looked at the screen. “It’s coming from the phone I gave Lucas,” she said, and she answered and tapped the speaker icon.

  “I saw what happened,” Lucas said. “I had just turned off onto a side road, when I heard choppers heading for the cabin. I headed back in case you needed help."

  "And what did you see, Lucas?" I asked, every cell in my body yearning for his reply.

  "They took Roland prisoner. I think he was wounded. And then tranquilized." Either that, or dead, was what I heard whisper through Lucas's mind. "Did everyone else get away?” he asked

  “For the moment.” My words came out choked and raspy. “Roland sacrificed himself to allow our escape. Do you know where they’re taking him, Lucas?”

  “No, but I hid in the woods near the road, and managed to toss one of those GPS units into the back of the truck they put him into as it pulled away. We can track them.”

  I met Roxanne’s eyes. She read my expression and muted the phone, then nodded at me to say what was on my mind.

  “I haven’t trusted Lucas from the beginning,” I told her. “If he’s working for them, it could be a trap.”

  “I’ve been with you on that, Rhiannon,” Roxanne said. “And I agree, it’s possible, though I’m leaning toward believing in Lucas. I think he’s truly changed his stripes.”

  I wasn’t so sure. “Either way, I have to go back. Will you take the children to safety in the plane?”

  “I will,” she promised.

  “No!” Nikki stomped her little foot. “I won’t leave without Roland. What if they put him in a cage on some stupid boat out in that stupid water?”

  I gripped her tiny shoulders and stared into her eyes, and even with all that had happened, it wasn’t lost on me that she was showing emotion. Anger. “You will listen to me and do exactly as I tell you for once, little one. I love you beyond reason, but that man is my world. I cannot help him and protect you at the same time. If you care for him at all, you will go with Roxanne and Christian and do as they tell you.”

  She gaped at me, shocked, I’m sure, that I was being this firm with her, when I hadn’t yet. Then Christian said, “I can come with you, Rhiannon.”

  “And risk your heart exploding in battle? No, Christian. And I have no more time to argue. Take the children and get aboard the plane. Do it now.”

  Nodding, Christian rushed to obey, and for once, Nikki didn’t argue or resist, nor did the boys. To my shock and surprise, Gareth came to me, wrapped his arms around my waist, and hugged me awkwardly. Ramses stood a few feet away, staring hard at me, and I heard him clearly inside my mind. Get him back.

  I will, I promised, and I saw from the flash in his eyes that he heard me.

  I nodded at the phone Roxanne held. She pressed the mute button again and handed it to me, then she turned and climbed onto the yellow pontoon plane.

  “I’m coming back, Lucas,” I said as Christian helped the children up into the craft, though they could easily have done it on their own. Pandora looked at me, then at the children, clearly upset.

  “You have to stay with me, girl. We’ll get them later. They’ll be all right,” I told the cat.

  Roxy fired up the engines. The propellers whirred, stirring the water around them into a froth and the huge yellow beast began skimming across the lake, slowly at first, then faster. I turned away, not allowing myself even the luxury of watching them move out of sight, and started back through the forest, my cat by my side, but looking behind us over and over. The poor thing was traumatized. We’d separated her from her newfound cubs.

  I brought the cell phone to my ear. “Lucas," I said, "Tell me where to meet you.”

  * * *

  Lucas picked me up, along with my cat, and I let him continue driving, since he was more practiced at it than I. We used autos only when absolutely necessary. Roland detested them.

  Roland.

  I ached for him as strongly as he must ache for his lost limb. He was a part of me. There was nothing in me that had not been shaped and altered by our love for each other. All of his softest parts had been toughened by my grit, and all of my sharpest edges had been buffed down by his tenderness. My temper had been cooled by Roland’s wisdom. My impulsiveness, calmed by his patience.

  And yet I could easily rip his abductors limb from limb with my bare hands. And would, if I caught up to them. No, not if. When. When I caught up to them.

  “He’ll be okay, Rhiannon. He has to be.”

  I looked across at Lucas, one of The Chosen, a man I did not trust but could not harm. He was driving the car while Pandora lay stretched across the large backseat. Lucas might be driving me straight into the hands of those DPI men-in-black for all I knew. They’d always wanted me. Had me once, tortured me with their experiments until I was nearly mad. Perhaps was mad. A lot of them died when I made my escape.

  More would die this time.

  I was beginning to believe that our friend Devlin’s notion of fighting back against humankind with all of our power and minimal mercy might be preferable to Roland’s idea of diplomacy and peaceful coexistence. One could not make peace with a people who wanted to wipe out one's entire race.

  “They’ve stopped,” Lucas said. His face, I noticed, was scruffy with a couple of days’ growth. His eyes were ringed with worry. I’d been feeling him but not truly looking at him for the past few days. I’d been sensing for lies and betrayal. But now that I was using my physical senses, I could see that he was under stress. He looked just the way I felt. Truly haggard.

  He glanced my way, saw me looking at him, and nodded toward the cell phone he had propped up on the dashboard. It was serving as a GPS, tracking the truck that had taken Roland.

  I followed his gaze with alarm.

  “The truck hasn’t moved in the past ten minutes,” Lucas said. “And I seriously doubt they’d take a bathroom break with a thousand-year-old vampire in the back.”

  “Eight hundred sixty-seven,” I said softly.

  He looked at me for a long moment. “And you’ve known him all that time?”

  “Most of it. When he was very young, he saved a little boy from a wolf attack. When he returned the injured, frightened child to his home, his father, a knight called Sir Gareth, rewarded Roland by taking him as squire. Two years later Gareth was cut down in battle. And my Roland, at the tender age of fourteen, donned his master’s armor and fought in his place. He was knighted by the king for his valor.”

  “Gareth,” Lucas said. “That’s why he chose that name for Nikki's brother.”

  I nodded.

  “And how did he become...what he is now?”

  I looked at Lucas, pulling myself out of the depths of my memory. So many years. Centuries. Lifetimes. Neither of us were the same people we’d once been. And yet we’d grown together rather than apart. Our bond had become ever stronger.

  Lucas seemed genuinely interested, not fishing for information. I plumbed his mind a little but found no ill intent there. Though some DPI s
pies were trained in blocking us from their minds, I encountered no barricades.

  “I found him in the dirt after a nasty battle, one of the few he ever lost. He was dying. I loved him even then, though he was a little slower to come around to the fact that I was his destiny.” I smiled softly, remembering how difficult it had been to convince Roland that he loved me. But eventually, love won out. “I could not let him go. Let him die."

  “You were the one who...changed him,” Lucas said, his voice a whisper that felt, perhaps, reverent.

  “I was.” I looked at the road. “You’ve stopped driving.”

  He seemed to snap to attention, realizing he had brought the car to a halt in the middle of a narrow country lane. Then he got it moving again. “DPI teaches its trainees that vampires don’t have feelings. Emotions. That they’re soulless and incapable of love. I’ve always known that was wrong, but now I think it’s more than inaccurate. I think they have it backwards. Maybe your kind loves more deeply than humans can comprehend, much less experience.”

  I sighed. “Only enough that if he leaves this life, I will follow him.”

  “But what about the kids? What about Nikki?”

  “I will follow him,” I said. “Now please make this thing go faster.”

  He obeyed, and within a short time, we rounded a very sharp curve, and I saw a large green military-style truck sitting as if abandoned in the middle of a hayfield. There were two clear paths where its tires had flattened the tall golden grass as it had trundled out to where it now rested. And where that path met the road, two armed men wearing the typical black fatigues of DPI forces stood guarding it.

  I opened the door and leapt from the car before Lucas had a chance to bring it to a stop, and I strode toward the men, my steps long and powerful. They shouldered their rifles, aimed them at me and shouted, “Stop where you are! This is—”

  I exploded into motion, and when I stopped again the two of them were on their backsides in the dirt, wondering what had happened. I stood over them, holding their rifles, one in each outstretched arm. The night wind whipped my hair and fury heated my blood. Lucas was on his way to my side, Pandora already there, growling low, crouching and ready to rip out their throats at a flick of my finger. “What have you done with my husband? Where is he?”

  “I don’t—”

  I dropped the weapons to the ground and was on the man before he could finish his lying denial. I closed my hand around his neck and lifted him up off his backside and into the air. The rifles clattered as Lucas picked them up. Beside me, Pandora swished her tail back and forth like a whip, shifting her weight from one haunch to the other as she prepared to spring.

  Staring into the man’s eyes, my own heating with my rage, I commanded his mind with mine. Tell me what you know. Open your mind and show me what is there.

  But there was only a dark emptiness. He’d been trained very well by DPI, to resist the mind control of the vampire.

  “Believe me, Crow, I will fit your weapon entirely inside your body if you do not tell me what I wish to know.”

  “I…I—”

  Before he could speak, the other one, trembling, said, “Don’t say anything, Jim.”

  I slid my gaze toward the second man, who was picking himself up off the ground, and I probed his mind, then recoiled at the sheer hatred I found there. Hatred for me, for my kind, though he knew nothing about us. It was ignorance and bigotry. And more. He wanted to kill me. He wanted me to give him an opportunity to do so. And I would not be his first such victim. And yet, no information. Nothing about Roland, or what DPI had done with him. He too, was a well-trained, black hearted bastard.

  “You won’t tell me anything, will you?" I asked that second man. "No matter how much I might torture you, you’ll never break.”

  He stood erect, lifted his chin, sent a worried glance at Pandora, but even her menacing presence didn't seem to deter him. “No, I won’t. I know what you are."

  “Then you’re of no use to me.” I gave Pandora a nod. It was all she needed. She sprang from where she stood, clamped her jaws around his throat and took him down to the ground. His eyes widened, hands clasping at her fur as she tore at his flesh, shaking him. He screamed and kept on screaming, but not for very long.

  “Rhiannon!” Lucas lunged toward the man as if he would try to save him.

  “Do not interrupt my cat when she’s eating, Lucas, or you will end up as her dessert.”

  I turned my attention to the one I still held, while Pandora enjoyed her meal. The other man’s suffering had been all too brief.

  “Where have they taken my husband?” I asked the one who still lived.

  “East!" he shouted, but his voice was strained by the tightness of my hand around his throat. I lowered him to his feet, eased my grip.

  “Go on.”

  “They—they had a small plane. Took off f-f-five minutes ago.”

  “Bound for where?”

  “White Plains. DPI headquarters.”

  “We burned that place to the ground more than a decade ago.”

  “They rebuilt. They call it The Sentinel now. I swear, I swear, that’s where they’re taking him. Please, please....” He looked past me at what remained of his comrade, an eviscerated, bloody mess that no longer resembled a human being. Pandora was stretched out, gnawing on an arm.

  “Let me probe your mind, so I know whether you’re lying to me.”

  And when I tried again, I found no resistance. He was telling the truth. And I saw more. So much more.

  “I believe you. And you’ll be rewarded for your cooperation.” I pulled him closer, just enough to reach his throat with my mouth. And then I bit in and drank him.

  Lucas was shouting, arguing that I should show mercy, perhaps, but to me it was only a faint din. I was feeling the man’s ecstasy as I imbibed him, and more. I was seeing the vampires he had killed, the ones who’d been tortured while he stood guard, the ones he’d helped to throw into cages, the ones he’d hunted down and executed, the ones he’d burned in a vigilant rage before he’d joined the DPI Crows. I drained the man until he was no more than a husk, filling myself with the power and strength that only came from fresh, living, human blood. Then I tossed his lightweight shell into the field and pressed a fingertip to the corners of my lips.

  Calmer now, my cat came and sat down beside me when I called, though I knew she would have preferred to continue feeding.

  “No time, my pet,” I said as the red haze slowly cleared from my vision, but my eyes still glowed.

  Lucas was staring at me with horror in his eyes.

  Ignoring him, I tugged out the cell phone Roxanne had given me and sent her a text message, hoping her small plane was near enough a tower for her to receive it.

  Return for me. DPI taking Roland to NY.

  I waited, tapping my foot impatiently. At last, came the reply.

  On my way. Same place.

  Pocketing the phone, I headed toward the car.

  Lucas stepped into my path and met my eyes, which had by now ceased their glowing. I felt them cool and regulate themselves. “That was—that was—”

  “What?” I demanded, preparing myself for his condemnation. “What you did to those men....that was....”

  “Inhuman?” I asked.

  “Inhumane,” he replied.

  “Those men were killers. They’ve done far worse to my kind than I did to them.”

  “How do you know that? Just because they wear those black uniforms? I wore one, once.”

  I gazed steadily into his eyes. “You’re one of the The Chosen, Lucas. I can’t kill you. If I could, you’d likely already be dead.”

  He stumbled backward as if the words were blows.

  "Pandora, come." I turned to continue to the car, or back to the lake on foot if need be. But then I stopped, my back to Lucas. I felt an unusual stab of guilt. Rolling my eyes I spoke again. “That is untrue, what I just said. Even though you were once with them, you have helped us when you needn�
��t have. Those two....” I tilted my head toward the field. “They were not like you, Lucas. They were evil. And I am angry.”

  “I got that.”

  Turning, I looked him in the eye. He had a conscience. I respected that, because my Roland had one too. As much of a hindrance as it was, it was also part of what made me love him. And he would not have approved of me letting this young man think I had murdered two men in cold blood.

  “They were not innocent men misled into serving. They were killers with hearts as black as tar. They've murdered innocents, and took pleasure in it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I am. I saw their crimes. That is the truth.”

  He took a deep breath, nodded once. “Then they deserved what they got.”

  Lucas walked to the car without another word, got behind the wheel, and started the engine. I opened the rear door for Pandora, pointed at the backseat, and she leapt obediently inside, stretched out across the seat, and began licking her paws in utter contentment.

  “Where to?” Lucas asked, as I got into the passenger seat beside him.

  “There’s a lake at the base of the mountain on which the cabin rested. We need to make our way to the far end of it. Roxanne will meet us there in a small yellow airplane. The children and Christian are with her.”

  He nodded. “And then what?”

  “And then we’re going to the East Coast to find Roland, free him, and mutilate his captors.”

  * * *

  There were only flashes of awareness for Roland as the tranquilizer must have begun to wear off. In them, he was not in an airplane, but in a room with brilliant white light and white coated humans all around him. There were sounds like drills or saws, and muted voices, but those were soon obliterated by excruciating pain that permeated his entire being, but seemed to radiate outward from his head.

  After three or more such nightmarish flashes, he experienced the sensation of motion again. He was lying on his back on a flat surface that moved. He heard squeaking wheels, smelled manmade chemicals, cleansers and such, and the energies of humans permeated his surroundings. His head was screaming, one eye felt as if it was trying to pop out of its socket from some kind of pressure that made him want to scream.