LadySmith

by Rhavensfyre

  Rohanna, she’s out there, possibly hurt…and a storm is coming in.

  The thought was sufficient to keep him on point. He glared at his wife. “What kind of game are you playing, Belinda?”

  “No game, John.” Belinda dropped any pretext of being nice. “I never play games…not unless I plan to win.” She smiled and poured herself a drink from the carafe at the liquor bar. “Go, find your precious daughter. You better hurry though, I have a feeling this storm is going to be hellish.”

  John shook his head, looking back at Belinda not once but twice in his confusion. “I don’t really know who you are, do I?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. The storm was coming in fast and he had to make sure Rohanna was safe first…then he would deal with Belinda.

  ***

  Belinda whirled around the minute the front door slammed shut and headed for the basement.

  “Get out here, now.”

  Twelve cowled figures crawled out of the shadows, their backs hunched over as if the verbal lashing caused them actual pain.

  “You were supposed to be watching for him!” she hissed, pointing at one in particular. Tallish and thin, the middle aged woman shook beneath Belinda’s stern glare.

  “I’m sorry, Belinda. The girl ran from me and I was trying to find her. She found another way to the barn and I could not retrieve her before he saw her. By the time I made it back here, he was already inside.”

  Another woman stepped forward. “As to that. How is it that he broke through all the wards in the first place? I thought this problem had been taken care of. You had control of the girl, why not the man?”

  Belinda narrowed her eyes until they were mere slits of hot anger and thought about that. “A good question, Thia. He should not have been able to speak to me so. What are we missing?”

  Thia cleared her throat before speaking again, casting her eyes down diffidently just in case Belinda took umbrage at her suggestion. “Perhaps he has something in his possession that prevents you from dominating him?”

  “A token of some sort?” Belinda turned away from the others. Her wedding ring caught the light from the stairwell and sparked an idea. She huffed, irritated that she hadn’t thought of it before. “Maeve. The woman hasn’t said a thing or made any indication that she knows who I am…but what if she does and has been content with watching from afar—ensuring that we fail with Rohanna?”

  “Because she knows the stories from the old country? That doesn’t make her a threat. Sure, she has Fae blood…but who doesn’t this far out in the backwoods?” Thia spoke more boldly this time.

  Belinda turned on her. “And you would guarantee this with your life, Thia? Hmm?”

  The witch blanched and backed away. Belinda ignored her and closed her eyes so she could think in the pure darkness of her mind. Of course, the woman was right. Maeve was a tired old woman, and if she was an enemy…she wasn’t one Belinda would ever worry about. John, now. He was becoming a problem.

  Belinda sighed and pinched her nose between her fingers at the headache all of this was causing…all for one fool girl who may or may not hold the key to finding her way home.

  “I’m done with this. We have a problem that needs to be taken care of, the sooner the better.”

  “What do you need us to do?” Several eager voices sounded delighted in the coming carnage.

  “He’s protected, what can we do?” The dissenting question overlapped and ran through the first.

  “He may be protected from me, but there are other things in this world that can be quite dangerous. Humans are fragile creatures and a storm is coming.” Belinda smiled. Lightning flashed through her eyes, followed by a rumbling crash outside the house that made the walls around them shudder. “I do so love a good storm.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  A few miles down the road the heavy cloud cover sent the evening racing into night. The sky opened up soon after that, eating up the light from John’s headlamps and reducing his world to the rhythmic squeal of the windshield wipers. The rain ran like a river along the blacktop until it was hard to tell where the road ended and the dirt shoulder began. There was no other light to guide his way and the dummy buttons popping in and out of focus between the overworked windshield wiper blades reminded him of shy rabbits blinking at him before running away into the dark.

  John checked his cellphone, hoping to see a message from Ro, but there was nothing. Disgusted, he tossed the thing down in the passenger seat. The road was familiar, one he drove every day, which was why he felt safe pushing the envelope, driving just below the speed it took for his wheels to start hydroplaning on the slick surface.

  The entire valley was a dead zone, it was stupid for him to try the damn thing, but sometimes a message would make it through. He hadn’t bothered calling Maeve, she refused to keep a cell phone or much of anything else electrical at the old cabin. He should have called from the house phone, but he hadn’t been thinking straight at the time. He had initially thought to take the gravel road that followed some of the horse trails winding through the farm, but with the rain coming in, it had become too risky. Ro was smart. She would have gone to safety in something like this, and the safest place she would run to was her grandmother’s. He headed for his mother’s cabin, crossing his fingers that he had guessed right and would find them sitting in front of the old wood stove, trying to dry out and Maeve forcing a cup of something hot in Ro’s hand for her troubles.

  Going home meant travelling back to a simpler time. Maeve seemed to prefer working within the natural rhythms of the farm around her, waking up with the dawn and retiring at sundown. The breezes were all she used to cool the cabin in the summer and a solid wood stove heated the place and cooked her meals in the winter. He was surprised she didn’t use one of the horses to ride into town for supplies, instead of her familiar old pickup truck. Father had bought the darn thing a year before he died, and she had kept it since then…never trading it in for a newer model. Knowing how often she drove, it probably still had less than 100,000 miles on the engine.

  John’s jaw tightened against the old memories. The year his father died was the same year his mother sat him down and told him he was a grown man now…that he should call her Maeve and not Mother. It felt strange at the time, but he got used to it. Then after Ro arrived, she had simply become Grandma and everyone left it at that.

  He didn’t realize he had sped up until he felt the tires slipping. Tapping the breaks as carefully as he could, he managed to slow down a bit before hitting one of the nastier curves on the way down to Maeve’s cabin. Lightning flashed, whiting out the windshield and blinding him temporarily. Blinking the afterimage away, he didn’t even have to count to one before the thunder struck so close it rattled the truck doors.

  “Damn, Ro. This was a hell of a night to take off,” John muttered, wishing that she had trusted him enough to tell him what happened rather than run away. Now she was out in this crap with only Perseus to keep her safe.

  The next curve came up sooner than he expected. The lightning struck again, even closer…only this time it illuminated the entire road ahead of him. A figure stood in the middle of the road, arms raised, palms forward and thrust out in front of them. “What the..?” John cried out, cranking hard on the steering wheel. The truck skidded out, then hit the mud embankment and tumbled down the hillside. Something huge and dark reached out and grabbed the truck and all of a sudden it wasn’t moving. The windshield cracked against his forehead and he was thrown back into the seat. Something hot and wet ran down his face and all he could think of was that it couldn’t be raining inside the truck.

  “Belinda?” he gasped, not out of love but out of fear. Oh, God. What have I done? In the clarity that persists in the moment between life and death, John remembered a dozen, a hundred times silver grey eyes stared at him with barely concealed contempt…the words she had spoken and his inability to stand against them. Those eyes had passed through him on the way down the embankment, much like hi
s truck had somehow passed through an image of a person who was there yet not there. I’ve left my daughter in the hands of a monster and I can do nothing to protect her.

  He managed to force his fingers to do as he bid, pushing past the pain to fumble around in his chest pocket for the small packet Maeve had given him. The truck door was twisted partially open. It only took a nudge to force it farther. The pain was excruciating, but that wasn’t what frightened him most. A creeping numbness was taking over his body stealing what little warmth was left in him. A second before he passed out, giving into the inevitable, he managed to push the envelope out of the cab. He felt the rain then, joining the red blood running down his hand to pour into the carved ground beneath him. He didn’t question why he could see the envelope, or why it shined like a beacon when everything else dimmed and faded away. He felt, rather than watched, it slip away as the rain fell and made small rivers of mud and blood that joined a dozen other rivulets.

  It’s safe now, he thought, and smiled. She won’t find it.

  But Ro will.

  “Who’s there?” He coughed, then laughed weakly. There was nobody there with him. He looked up just as another bolt of lightning struck close, illuminating the gnarled limbs of a giant oak looming above his head. A great crack followed, followed by the smell of burning wood.

  He felt the warmth and smiled past eyes too tired to open. “That’s nice. I was getting cold. A good fire fixes everything.”

  “John? John, can you hear me?” The voice came from far away, jolting him out of his nice cozy nest. He shivered against the sudden cold.

  “Maeve? Mother?”

  “Yes. Stay still, the fire department’s on its way.”

  “No, wait. You have to find Ro,” John whispered, grasping at Maeve’s shawl and pulling her close to him.

  “She’s in danger, Mother. Find her.”

  “Where, what happened?”

  John waved his hand weakly. Speaking was becoming difficult. “Perseus. Out there. She took off. In the storm.”

  Maeve watched the spark die in John’s eyes.

  “Nooo.” She raised her chin and screamed her rage into the storm. The stone, where’s the fairie stone?

  “Maeve?”

  A gentle hand pulled her away from the wreckage, from her frantic search for the Fairie stone.

  “What do we do now?” Shyann asked. Maeve’s eyes were wild, her loose silver hair plastered flat against her face.

  “The stone, the stone is gone.” Maeve plucked at her shawl.

  “And Ro might have it…” Shyann reminded her.

  “Ro! Oh, Goddess, Shyann!” Maeve turned and clutched at Shyann’s collar. “Go! Find her, make sure she’s safe. Bring her back here.”

  Shyann hesitated. She’d never seen Maeve so distraught. She had to make sure Maeve knew what the consequences were. Ro didn’t know her on sight…had not met her on Maeve’s insistence. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, yes,” Maeve muttered, turning her attention back to the wrecked truck. “How am I going to tell her that her father is dead?”

  The woop-woop of an emergency vehicle brought Shyann’s head up. Flashing red lights and the sounds of men yelling was her warning to leave.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I find her,” she said, leaving Maeve to the noise and controlled chaos. The cabin was barely a quarter mile away from where they stood now. She would start there and backtrack. Shyann cast one last worried look back at Maeve before she took off running. I hope they don’t notice that she’s standing in her bare feet, or ask how she got there so fast.

  She ran until the storm stopped and then she ran faster, following trails into the dead of night that were barely visible beneath the dark canopy of trees…and nothing more than a muddy creek where the land lay open to the thin moonlight that showed up late for the search.

  She returned to Maeve’s cabin just before the sun came up. A lone rooster crowed, announcing the coming dawn a minute before the first rays slipped above the horizon. This time Maeve didn’t hear her slip inside the door, nor did she seem to notice her sit down at the table across from her. Red rimmed eyes stared blankly at a cold cup of tea, and for once, Maeve looked as tired and worn as the body she had lived in for so many years.

  “You didn’t find her.”

  “I did not,” Shyann said. “But I know where she is.”

  “Tell me.”

  Maeve’s gaze hardened as Shyann told her story, then she bowed her head and hid her face in her hands. “I have failed her.”

  “You haven’t, and she is safe…for now,” Shyann argued. “Perseus…now. He had a great soul. He fought to protect her, all the signs were there. I couldn’t just leave him like that.”

  She held out her hands and bid Maeve to look. Cupped within her palms was a small light, a firefly like thing that pulsed with life. “I could have left him. Let him go to the Summerland, but I don’t think his story is finished yet. I can do for him what I did for you. All I need is a vessel.”

  Maeve wiped her face and sniffled. It was such a very human thing to do, but it warmed Shyann’s heart that she had managed to do something to ease her pain.

  “We can do that. As soon as the sun rises fully, introduce John’s filly to the stallion. I can’t risk giving her John’s gift now, but that filly will help bring Perseus back to her.”

  “Yes, M’Lady. We can do that.”

  ***

  Rohanna woke from a terrible nightmare and tried to sit up. Her head exploded the minute it left the pillow, and she cried out against the sudden pain. She grabbed at her head, then moaned when her fingers accidentally dug into the bandages wound across her forehead. A more tentative exploration discovered another bandage taped to her cheek. That one itched.

  “Shush, child, you’ll hurt yourself moving like that.” Gentle hands helped her back down, then tucked the blankets around her. Ro watched in silence, trying to gather her thoughts around her. She was having trouble remembering anything past breakfast with her father this morning.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ll go get your mother. She’ll be glad to hear that you’re awake.” The woman clucked at her, then smoothed down the front of her plain white uniform before turning to leave.

  “Awake? What do you mean? What happened?” Rohanna undid the nurse’s neat work by throwing the blankets aside again and trying to stand up. She gave up, huffing and puffing from the exertion, after only a few seconds of trying. She was as weak as a kitten.

  “You should talk to your mother, but from what I was told…you were thrown from your horse a few days ago…took quite a tumble. Hit your head.” The woman shook her head, obviously not happy with Rohanna’s irresponsible ways. “Your mother’s been beside herself and I don’t blame her. Riding off like that? You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck. I can’t say as much for that poor horse. I hear they had to put him down.”

  “Perseus!” Rohanna roared. The woman’s eyes crinkled around a terrible smile. She had enjoyed telling her that, of that Rohanna had no doubt. Leave it to Belinda to find a nurse as callous and cruel as she was, she thought.

  “I don’t believe you! Let me see my horse, now!” Rohanna did manage to get up this time, the room swayed dangerously beneath her feet, then she felt the cool wood floor beneath her cheek and then the pain in her head blossomed and sent her back into darkness.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The long grey ribbon of driveway wound its way through a thick veil of militant trees, thick trunks capped by heavy green and gold canopies. A line of straight-backed sentinels that marked their passing as if they were marching past the slow moving vehicle. Their even spacing mirrored their counterparts, left and right…an honor guard of soldiers armored in rough bark, as unnatural in their placement as Rohanna felt. An immense stone building that looked more like an ancient castle rather than a boarding school slipped into view between each passing tree in a marked cadence, only to disappear behind verdant leaves again.

/>   The stress of the last few weeks had left Rohanna’s finely chiseled face gaunt, her high cheekbones standing out sharply against pale, almost translucent skin. Dark circles beneath her eyes made them appear bright in contrast to her eyelids, which remained swollen and red. They were evidence of how many tears she had shed in private, as well as the ones she had publicly and unashamedly shed at her father’s funeral.

  Ro gazed blindly out the window at the raindrops sliding across the glass, lost in her own thoughts. The overcast sky and dreary landscape suited Rohanna’s mood just fine. Fair weather on this day would have felt like the world was mocking her.

  Too much had happened, and she felt lost and alone. Her head throbbed painfully, even with her forehead pressed against the cool hard glass of the car window. The view of her future home became unfocused in time with her breath, the window fogging against her hot breath, revealing two overlapping handprints pressed along its surface. Was someone trying to get in or get out? The odd thought intruded on Rohanna’s grief, sadness welling up yet again to flood out the numbness she preferred. Numb didn’t hurt, it was just…numb. Much more comfortable than thinking or feeling. Thinking and feeling led to anger, and she was too tired to be angry right now.

  Unfortunately for Ro, her mind rebelled against her enforced lethargy, and she found herself thrown back into memories so fresh and painful, she felt like she was bleeding from them. Maybe inside she was.

  Rohanna couldn’t believe what was happening. Even the death of her beloved father became a social event lorded over by her stepmother Belinda. Somehow, she managed to create an aura of loss so convincing that most of the guests spent their time fawning over the “grieving widow” instead of honoring the man who had died. Rohanna sat quietly in a corner, suffering the long afternoon while she silently observed the milling crowd. She couldn’t differentiate the buzzing in her head from the low murmur of the guests as they walked about the great hall. Their grief didn’t seem to affect their hunger. Most of them spent a good deal of time sampling the expensive catered food that Belinda had brought in.