The Rhiannon Chronicles

by Maggie Shayne

  He let his eyes fall closed. “If you have to kill me—”

  “Roland!” She pulled free of him, as if those words hit her like a blow. Staring at nothing, she blinked her eyes repeatedly, as if she’d been beaten about the head.

  And yet, it had to be said. So he said it. “If you have to kill me, don’t hesitate. Do not allow me to hurt you or those children or Roxy. Or Christian, assuming I could hurt him more than I already have.” She started to argue but he held up a hand. “Promise me you will take my life if necessary to protect the others. If you love me, Rhiannon, you will say it. And you will do it.”

  She stood very still, her gaze still affixed to some invisible spot in mid-air. But then she lifted her chin, turned her head and met his eyes. Her entire body trembled. “You know I will. I will always do what’s best for you, Roland. And allowing some devil to use your body to do harm to those you love would not be best for you. It would destroy you. I know this. You don’t have to explain it. I would feel the same if our situations were reversed. I would ask the same of you. This should not have to be affirmed out loud, Roland. You know this in your heart. And I know in my heart you would do the same for me.”

  His love for her expanded inside him until he thought his chest would burst with it. She was right. He hadn’t needed to ask for her promise. It went without saying. They knew each other so deeply, it was as if they were one soul.

  “I’m sorry. I insulted our sacred bond by asking.”

  “I would probably want it reaffirmed if I were in your shoes,” she said.

  He drank in her beautiful face, her dark eyes, more expressive than a gilded marquee. “I’ll stay until Eric arrives. He should leave Tamara behind. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Of course, he’ll try,” she said.

  He nodded, too heartsick to smile. “Where are the children? Do they know what I—”

  “They’ve been playing in the backyard with Roxanne for the past few hours. They don’t know a thing.”

  He sighed in relief. “And Christian?”

  “In his room, sleeping as my blood transforms him.”

  “Your blood,” he said, nodding slowly. “He already had enhanced strength and power, due to the BDX. With his size and your blood, he’s going to be a formidable vampire.”

  “Yes, he is.” Rhiannon frowned, titling her head slightly to one side. “Perhaps that is why the voice in your head wanted his heart to explode before he could become one. And if that’s the case, Roland, then this has to be some kind of DPI plot. They did something to you there. That has to be the answer. There’s no demon, no spirit possessing you. This is them.”

  Chapter Ten

  I was troubled, traumatized, and murderously furious over what had been done to my love. But those emotions troubled me less than the one that was all but foreign to me. Fear. I was afraid. Not for myself, of course. My Roland couldn’t harm me, and even if he could, I was as strong as he. But I feared for the children. As much as I denied it, there was a cold terror in my heart for what the intruder living inside my husband might attempt to do to them.

  I had meant what I had promised my love. I would take his life if it came to that. And if it did, I would cross that dark valley with him. I would not stay in this world without him. We were one. There was no Rhiannon without Roland. I would never allow there to be. The pain of losing him was simply not something I was willing to suffer.

  Eric Marquand, one time French aristocrat whom Roland had saved from the guillotine, was my husband’s closest friend. His bride Tamara, a product of the modern age, was sweet, insufferably cheerful, and beloved by us both. And when the two of them arrived at our home within hours of Roland’s call, I felt the most immense rush of relief I had ever felt.

  I even hugged the little chit, with her long frizzy curls and her big innocent eyes. Eric, I embraced even harder. “Thank the gods for you both,” I said, and I meant it. Their very presence seemed to relieve a tremendous weight from my shoulders.

  Eric looked past me, though, even before our embrace was complete. I knew why. My Roland sat in a chair, before the fireplace, watching the flames devour the wood in a macabre dance of destruction. I believe he saw in that dance a reflection of his darkest fears. Fears he seemed to believe were manifesting in his mind even now.

  My tormented love! My heart bled for his pain, and it was worse that I could do nothing about it. If there were villains to be eviscerated, cities to be razed, I would’ve been fine. But to sit helpless while he was tortured by an unseen enemy... It was not my way.

  Eric lowered his head, seemed to gather himself, then surged across the room with a full voiced and confident “Hello, old friend.”

  Roland rose only, I knew, because it was the polite thing to do, and Eric clasped his hand hard, pulled him in close and clapped him on the back. “You look like hell.” It sounded almost lighthearted.

  “I feel worse,” Roland said. Their eyes met and locked. Tamara clasped my hand in her smaller one and gave a squeeze that I supposed was meant to be reassuring. It was a good thing she was a vampire, I thought. Otherwise, her bird-sized bones would break like fine china. I caught her eyes, huge and heartsick for Roland and for me.

  Then Roxanne came in, the children trailing behind her like the fractious, noisy tails of a comet.

  “Roxy!” Tamara cried, opening her arms. “Oh, it’s been too long.” She embraced the redhead wholeheartedly, looking her up and down, and paying close attention to her face.

  She wondered, as we all did, why Roxanne was still alive. She was one of the Chosen. They died by forty, as a rule. She’d seen forty at least a decade ago. Possibly two. Perhaps more. It was impossible to tell and she guarded her age like an ancient divine secret. She was as healthy as she had ever been. Not a single symptom of the weakening and waning of a Chosen one’s lifetime had troubled her, and I had my doubts they ever would.

  “Good to see you both,” Roxanne said. “We’ve got some catching up to do.”

  I moved to the children, my chin lifting a bit in pride. “Eric, Tamara, may I present our three children, Ramses, Nikki, and Gareth.”

  Smiling, Eric came to us and dropped into a crouch, forearms resting across his thighs, bringing himself to their level. “I’ve heard a bit about you three. I’m Eric. Roland and I have been friends for...” he shot Roland a smile. “Well, for a long time.”

  “Centuries,” Roland said softly.

  Eric nodded. “And this is my bride, Tamara.”

  “Very nice to meet you,” Nikki said, just as I had instructed her. Then she beamed up at me, and I nodded my approval.

  “She looks enough like you to be yours by blood, Rhiannon,” Tamara said.

  “You don’t suppose it’s the haircut, do you?” Roxy asked with a wink in my direction. “Get in here and sit down. Just leave your bags by the stairs for now. I’d have Christian get them, but he’s still sleeping in his room.”

  “Christian?” Tam sent me a questioning look.

  “He was one of the BDXers. Those Chosen who were given the chemical cocktail dubbed BDX.”

  “Right, the super soldiers,” Tam said, nodding as Eric carried two cases to the stairway and set them down.

  “He wasn’t ready for the change. But I had no choice,” I said. I did not elaborate. I would fill in the details later. No doubt Eric, a physician, a surgeon, and a scientist who’d had centuries to perfect his skills, would want every detail.

  Eric lifted his brows. “He’s one of us now?”

  I nodded.

  “I’d like to meet him when he’s ready,” Eric said.

  “But in the meantime,” Tamara was rubbing her palms together and looking at the room around her. “This place you’ve found is wonderful, and I’m ready for the grand tour.”

  Roland got up slowly, and then he took charge of his thoughts. I saw the moment it happened. He lifted his head first, straightened his spine, and a determined look came into his eyes. He led the way with a strong, even
stride, thanks to the new prosthetic leg Killian had sent to him. My admiration for my husband grew. I hadn’t known it still could.

  We went through the entire house with the children providing commentary the whole time. Then we went outside, into the beauty of the night. The sky was a deep blue, backlit by a pregnant moon. It was warm for an October night in Maine, and the scent of the decaying leaves seemed to fill the air with the very essence of fall. Gray-blue squashes and orange and yellow pumpkins lined every dying field, and many such fields surrounded us. Sunflowers were just passing the peak of their lives, with gaps in their pedals like missing teeth in the face of a smiling old man.

  Roxanne had enlisted the children to help her make our secluded home more seasonal, as she had put it. Bright orange pumpkins lined the front steps, and a pair of scarecrows, made of burlap bags and old clothing stuffed with straw, stood on either side, like sentries guarding the door.

  As we walked together, Eric and Tamara filled us in on some of the other friends we’d lost contact with. Jameson, the first child Roland and I had taken a hand in raising many decades ago, and his wife Angelica were living an idyllic existence in the Canadian wilderness. This news came as a great relief to me, and to Roland, who loved Jameson like a son.

  As the night wore on, the children grew tired and Roxanne took them off to their beds. As soon as they vanished up the stairs, we went to the pool area and sat beneath the stars in the teak lawn chairs that had been left in the storage shed behind the house. Roxy and Christian had discovered them and spent an afternoon reclaiming them from the dust of time. We sat in the four chairs, their square matching table between us. Tamara waited, knowing it was time to broach the reason for our call.

  I looked at Roland. It was his tale to tell, after all.

  He said, “There’s something inside me that is foreign.”

  Eric frowned, leaning forward in his seat. “Explain,” he said.

  Nodding Roland said, “I was held by DPI for a very brief time.”

  “He was taken while trying to distract them,” I interrupted, “in order to allow me to escape with the children.”

  “I did what any man would’ve done,” he said.

  “You sell yourself short, my friend.” The admiration in Eric’s eyes was genuine. “But go on. What did those bastards do to you?”

  “I don’t remember them doing anything to me, but since I’ve been free, I’ve been experiencing...a presence. I’ve been feeling watched. All the time.”

  I nodded. “I put him under, hoping to call forth the entity and expel it,” I said.

  “Entity?” Tamara tipped her head sideways. “You think it’s a spirit or something?”

  “I did at first. What else would I think?”

  “Gee, I don’t know. Anything?” Tamara’s skepticism was not lost on me. Eric nudged her and she said, “What? I don’t believe in demonic possession. I’m a modern woman.”

  “Most modern women didn’t believe in vampires either,” I told her. “Until recently, that is.”

  “You two can argue this later, if you don’t mind.” Eric shifted his attention to Roland, listening with his entire being. “So you tried to exorcise the intruder. And what happened?”

  “I don’t remember,” Roland said, but he nodded at me as he lowered his forehead into his hand, making small circles in his temples with his thumb and middle finger.

  “Christian interrupted us.” I slid my hand onto Roland’s thigh, and he brought his free one up to cover it. “And I clearly sensed a feminine energy commanding Roland to attack him.”

  Eric’s eyes widened. “To attack Christian?” And then he seemed to see the rest in his mind. “And you did, didn’t you?” he asked his best friend. “That’s why Rhiannon had to change the poor lad.”

  Roland nodded, regret in his entire demeanor.

  “Where did this woman’s voice come from, Rhiannon?” Tamara asked.

  “Not voice,” I said. “Thought. Energy, if you prefer. I heard her the way we can hear each other. And her thoughts came to me from inside Roland’s mind. As if he were the one thinking them. And yet, it was clearly not his energy. Clearly female.”

  Eric looked extremely troubled as he stared at Roland’s face. “Did it feel to you like a spirit, Rhiannon? When you were working on exorcising it?”

  I shook my head slowly. “No. It felt like nothing was there at all, until there was.” I leaned back in my seat, tipping my head up to stare at the night sky. The stars glittered above us like diamonds on velvet.

  “Rhiannon had to physically restrain me, Eric. She had to drag Christian from the room, change him, cast a spell to keep me contained....” Roland was shaking his head. “I could’ve hurt her. And I did hurt Christian.”

  “You did not hurt him,” I argued. “I stopped you before you even got close.”

  “I frightened him. And that fear caused the time bomb that was his heart to start ticking. Racing. I made it necessary for him to take the Dark Gift long before he was ready. That’s harm.”

  “He had to come over anyway, my love,” I told him for the thousandth time. “It was something we would have had to do very soon or risk losing him to some random fright or close call. A mouse running across the kitchen floor could’ve done as much harm as you did.”

  “That doesn’t excuse—”

  “All right.” Eric rose to his feet, holding up his hands and looking from one of us to the other. Tamara too was wide-eyed.

  I understood. We were arguing. It was something few had ever seen. Certainly we engaged in good natured bickering from time to time, but for the most part, only in fun. This was different. I was arguing with passion. I felt I was fighting for his life. And it frustrated me to feel as if he was my opponent in that battle.

  “Tell me you have an idea, Eric. I’m too close to this to think clearly and Roland’s mind has been compromised. We need that genius brain of yours to help us fix this before....” I let my words trail off there. But he knew what I was going to say. Before it’s too late.

  Tamara thumped a small fist onto her palm and said, “We need to figure out which scientists are in charge over there at DPI Central, and go get them. We need to put them into a room with one of us and get some answers. That’s what I think.”

  I tilted my head sideways and noted the anger on her face. She was so small and so soft that it was touching and a bit amusing to see her this infuriated.

  “We could do that,” Eric said, speaking slowly and watching his wife the way he would watch a lit fuse burning its way toward a barrel of fuel. “Or we could begin by getting Roland’s head examined.” Roland shot him a look that said this was no time for jokes, but Eric went on. “I’m talking about an X-Ray, my friend.”

  “An X-ray?” Roland’s brows lifted, his eyes suddenly alert, the gears behind them turning. “You think they put something physical into my brain? Some kind of gadget capable of controlling my actions, rather than a spell or some sort of powerful post-hypnotic suggestion?”

  “I’m a man of science, my friend. And therefore, yes. That’s what I think.”

  Roland shook his head in doubt, but in his eyes I saw the desire to be convinced. “Don’t you think I would know if I had undergone brain surgery, Eric?”

  “No, Roland, I don’t. If they did it by day, you would have been completely oblivious. And the incision would’ve healed before you woke again. You know the healing power of the day sleep.”

  “I thought I did.” Roland said it with a longing look at his leg. Then, refusing to indulge in even a moment of self-pity, he looked at me, silently asking my opinion. I stared back at him, communicating only with a look. It was all we needed after so long together.

  “Would an X-ray even work on our kind, Eric?” Roland asked, and for the first time, I heard hope in his voice.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never performed one on a vampire. But I do know how to operate the apparatus. I can run a CT Scanner too, if needs be.”

  “Of
course you can,” Roland said, a hint of sarcasm in his tone. That he could tease his friend, even that little bit, made my heart lighter.

  Eric grinned and gave a nod of self-deprecating concession, then turned serious once again. “Even if you don’t show up on X-ray film, any foreign object inside you would.”

  Roland’s eyes lit. “Yes,” he said, nodding harder. Then he repeated the word, smacked his hand on the table and bounded to his feet. “Yes, by the Gods, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll get an X-Ray!” Then he frowned for a second. “But...if they put something into my head, then they might be able to track me here. Surely whatever it might be, it would’ve included that.”

  Alarm rippled through me, but I pressed my hand to my chest, quieted my fears, and allowed logic to speak above their clamor. “If they could track you, my love, they would have by now. We’ve been here long enough.”

  “True,” he said. “But we cannot be sure. It might be malfunctioning, or perhaps they have some reason for waiting.”

  Eric nodded. “Let’s begin with the X-ray. Perhaps we can find out whether some kind of device is even what we’re dealing with. And I hope to the gods it is, my friend.”

  “You prefer fighting technology over demons, Eric?” I asked. For frankly, I’d have preferred the latter. Demons, I could handle.

  “I don’t believe in demons. I believe in science. And I’d rather fight a technological demon than one as irrational and illogical as madness.” He held Roland’s eyes for a long moment, and said, “Especially in my closest friend.” There was a catch in his voice.

  My chest clenched as if to block the tide of emotion rushing through me, but of course, it could not. “There are still a few hours of darkness remaining,” I said. “If at all possible, I’d like you to do this now, tonight.”

  Eric pursed his lips, nodded three times, and turned to Tamara. “We’ll need to know the names of nearby medical imaging facilities.”

  “No prob,” she said, turning to me. “How fast is your internet?”