Twilight Guardians

by Maggie Shayne

Rhiannon and Roland waited outside the perimeter fence, near the center of the secret base. Only a few yards of scrub brush and trees stood between them and the place where the road formed a loop around a mound of greenery with a flag pole in its middle. No flag hung from it by night, though.

  The plan was simple, and they’d gone along with it because Killian would’ve come alone if they hadn’t. Killian was supposed to take Charlie out of the camp, with or without her cooperation–he was a vampire, after all–and once he had her in the clear, he was supposed to create a diversion by pushing a tree over on the electrified fence, sending a shower of sparks into the night. The recruits would all rush to the lower end of the base, leaving Rhiannon and Roland free to slip in, unnoticed, find the lab or infirmary where the drug was kept, steal a sample and get out again. Simple.

  Rhiannon was just starting to worry that things were taking a little bit too long, when apparently something happened, because several Jeeps and more soldiers on foot, took off, heading in the direction they had wanted them to head.

  “Odd, I didn’t hear Killian’s diversion,” she whispered to Roland.

  “I didn’t either,” he said, taking her hand. “Too busy reading the thoughts of those still awake in camp. Particularly The Chosen. Nearly all of them, Rhiannon. Except for the medical personnel, but I’ve been eavesdropping on them, too. Let’s go.”

  Together they bent their knees, then pushed off, clearing the electrified fence and landing on the inside. “You know where they’re keeping the drug?” Rhiannon asked excitedly.

  “It’s in the infirmary. There’s a laboratory in the rear.” He still pronounced it la-BORE-a tory, which brought a slight smile to Rhiannon’s lips. “This way,” he said, still holding her hand. They crept through the trees, emerging in the rear of some of the camp’s buildings. Peering around the side of the nearest one, they could see the camp’s center. “We have to cross in the open,” he said. “It’s on the other side of the road.”

  “I’m ready,” she told him.

  He gave a nod, and they released hands and exploded in a burst of speed. When they stopped again, they were behind the infirmary. And there was a door.

  “There are bound to be patients inside.”

  “Sleeping patients,” Roland assured her.

  “And staff.”

  “Human staff,” he said.

  “Human staff that have been treated with a drug that’s supposed to make them super human,” she corrected. “We have no idea whether our powers will work on them.”

  “They’re still The Chosen. We have no choice.”

  Roland tried the doorknob. It turned, unlocked, and he opened it easily. The room they entered was some sort of supply room. Locked cabinets, stocked shelves, boxes and crates lined it. Only a pair of long, light green curtains closed it off from the rest of the building. Moving silently, Rhiannon parted the curtains to peek into the main part of the medical unit, then ducked back again. She spoke to Roland mentally. Beds line both walls. There are two rooms, though, on the other side of this curtain, one to the left and one to the right.

  You take the right, I’ll take the left, Roland told her. He squeezed her hand. The drug we’re looking for is called BDX. Be careful, my love.

  There was something in his voice. Something like nervousness. He was sensing something. Roland...?

  On three. Fast and silent. Get the BDX and get out. One, two, three!

  On three, they both slipped through the curtain, straight to their assigned door. It was dark inside, and they moved without a sound. Rhiannon gripped her doorknob, found it locked, and twisted harder. The lock snapped, and she slipped through the doorway without incident.

  In the utter darkness, she looked around the room. It was an office. No refrigerator. No test tubes or vials. There was, however, an oversized laptop computer on the desk. She picked it up and looked for another exit, but the place had no windows or doors. She’d have to go back the way she’d come.

  She opened the door just a crack, peered out. Roland? I have a computer. No vial.

  Something’s happening. Get out now, Rhiannon.

  Already she heard the vehicles out front, the voices. The front doors of the infirmary burst open, and a man in camouflage fatigues strode in, carrying a woman in his arms. The woman’s scent bore a hint of Roxanne’s DNA. This had to be her granddaughter.

  “Tell them to throw the vampire into the brig!” the man carrying her shouted to a young woman with short dark hair and lean powerful muscle tone who ran along beside him. “Make sure he’s bound good and tight. We want him alive, for now. But keep him sedated. The minute he starts to rouse, you shoot him up again. You hear me, recruit?”

  “Yes, sir, Lieutenant!”

  “Go. Now!”

  The female looked worriedly toward Charlotte, but obeyed, turning and running back the way she had come, nearly colliding with an all but albino mortal in a white coat who was on his way in. The lieutenant lay the girl on a bed as Rhiannon got her first look at Charlotte O’Malley. She was a beautiful creature—hair the color of copper, falling in soft waves onto the pillows. Skin as porcelain as if she’d already been transformed. She was small, everywhere. Short in stature, slight in build, even her nose was tiny, but her eyes, when they opened wide in panic, were huge.

  “What’s happening? What’s happening to me?”

  Rhiannon could feel Charlotte’s heart beating at a dangerously powerful rate.

  “It’s fine, you’ll be fine, Charlie,” the lieutenant said. “It’s a side effect of the BDX. You got too excited, that’s all. Doc?”

  The doctor looked grim as he hurried from the bedside toward Rhiannon. He’s coming this way, Roland! Hide!

  She ducked back into the office, backed into a shadowy corner between a bookcase and a wall, and visualized herself blending into the darkness. But the doctor didn’t come in. He entered the room across the hall. The room where Roland might still be. He was concealing his energy from anyone who might be able to sense it. She wished he would answer her.

  She held her breath, listening, waiting, sending her power out to cloak her love from eyes unworthy of looking upon him. And in a moment, the door across the hall closed again and the doctor’s footsteps returned to the girl’s bedside.

  Cautiously, Rhiannon opened the door again to watch what was happening without. She could still feel Charlotte’s heartbeat. It was pounding more rapidly, and more powerfully than she’d ever heard a human heart pound.

  Roland, where are you?

  Still in the lab. Across the hall from you. He didn’t see me.

  Do you have the drug?

  Yes. But they have Killian. And Charlotte.

  There’s something terribly wrong with her, Roland.

  I know.

  She watched the doctor inject Charlotte with something. Within a few seconds, her heartbeat began to slow. To soften. To ease. The girl herself slipped into unconsciousness, and Rhiannon was surprised to see genuine relief on the face of the so-called Lieutenant. The man’s back bowed with it as he sank into a chair and took hold of her hand. It wasn’t false. She could feel it in him.

  Did you see what drug he took from the lab just now, Roland? Get some of it, if you can.

  “We need to talk,” said the doctor.

  The Lieutenant nodded. “In the office,” he said.

  Bloody Hell. Hide, Rhiannon.

  Rhiannon put the laptop back on the desk where she’d found it, and returned to her shadowy corner. Invisibility was not a physical state, but a mental one. She had to believe it and see her body vanishing, becoming a part of the wall behind her, a part of the bookcase beside her, a part of the shadowy darkness. It wasn’t hard. But it did require her constant focus to maintain. She was not an inanimate object. Living energy was harder to conceal. But she knew how. She’d trained with priestesses of Isis, after all, from the age of five. She knew about magic.

  While they’re in here with me, Roland, you have the ch
ance to slip out. Find this brig where they’ve taken Killian. I’ll keep my eye on Charlotte while you do, and as soon as they leave the office, I’ll make my own exit.

  If they see you....

  Darling, really? How long have we been married?

  She felt, rather than saw his sexy smile, then quickly had to refocus her energies as the two men came into the office.

  Killian came awake to some kind of acid trip. Everything around him was wavy and out of focus, and he could hear a million voices, some physical and some mental, all talking at once and none of them making any sense. He was on a hard surface. He saw people standing outside a wall that he could see through. Bars. It was a wall made of bars. Okay, he was in a cell. And the people were guards, and there might be two of them or six or eight. They kept multiplying and then unifying again.

  They’d shot him with the same damned tranquilizer as before, then, hadn’t they? And there was no Roxy standing nearby with an antidote, this time.

  A female voice said, “LT says to shoot him up again if he starts to come around. Those darts we shot him with were practice loads. Not the full dosage. Here, these ones are more potent.”

  He was a prisoner. He wondered about the side effects of repeated use of their tranquilizer, but figured he probably wouldn’t live long enough to find out.

  Where was Charlie? Something had happened to her out there. Something about her heart....

  He searched his scrambled up mind and told himself not to move, or moan, or do anything to reveal that he was slowly regaining his senses. He needed to stay perfectly still and give his strength time to return. And then he had to find Charlie in this maze of super-soldiers who would do everything they could to stop him. All of them, The Chosen. He could not fight back, not effectively anyway.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it?” the girl said softly. “He looks just like an ordinary guy. Not a bad looking one, either, aside from being a little pale.”

  She sighed and then he heard her footsteps moving away. Then there was a soft sound from her, like a little squeak of alarm, and a voice that said, “There now, just do as you’re told, and I won’t have to snap your pretty neck.”

  Roland!

  The guards, however many there were, jumped into motion, but in a second they were still again, and Roland, or three Rolands, stood there with the girl held to his chest. “Gentlemen, if you’d be so kind as to unlock the cell, I’ll leave you alive.”

  He couldn’t hurt them, and he knew it. Fortunately, though, they did not, and the sight of him standing there with his dark hair slicked back, in a suit with a freaking black cloak of all things, was enough to scare them half out of their wits. He could feel their fear.

  “Not gonna happen, sir,” said one of them, but there was a tremor beneath the words. The guards aimed their weapons. No, one of them did. Just one, while the other one stood there looking from his comrade to Roland over and over. No one was paying any attention to Killian. “Let her go, or I’ll shoot,” the first guy told Roland. “It’s point blank range. I won’t miss.”

  Roland flung the girl aside, lunged forward and yanked the weapon from the recruit’s hand before he could blink. His eyes probably hadn’t even followed the movements. Roland whirled around, cloak flying dramatically, hit the other guard with the rifle butt, sending him to the floor, then bent the weapon’s barrel into a kinked right angle.

  He reached for the bars, but the soldiers, who should have been unconscious, if not dead, sprang to their feet again, the female included.

  “Impressive,” Roland said. It wasn’t. Killian knew Roland could barely bring himself to shove them around, much less actually hurt them.

  They attacked, and he defended himself. Weapons were drawn, and Roland knocked them away, punches were thrown, kicks. Roland blocked and dodged, but his return blows were deliberately mild.

  Killian couldn’t believe Roland was having as much trouble as he was with three mere mortals, even if he couldn’t hurt them much. He pushed himself up onto his feet, tried to move quietly, one hand on the wall for balance, and got up close to the bars. He met Roland’s eyes. Throw one my way, Rolly.

  No one calls me Rolly. But Roland half-heartedly plowed a fist into the chest of one of the men, sending him reeling until his back slammed against the cell bars. Killian snapped his arms around the mortal’s neck, and squeezed, but then suddenly, he couldn’t keep squeezing. He had to let go. He couldn’t hurt the guy.

  Dammit, I can’t hurt them even now!

  They’re unnaturally strong, Roland replied silently. Just disable them, if you can even manage that.

  I’m trying!

  It took a supreme act of will, but he managed to choke the young man until he lost consciousness and slumped to the floor. Then he gripped the bars and tried to bend them apart.

  Roland shoved his two attackers off him yet again. The male hit the block wall, and his head took a blow. Then he, too, slumped to the floor. Roland surged to the bars, then, gripping them, helped to pull them apart. The girl scrambled to her feet and made to run for it, but Killian lunged out of the cell and grabbed her, clapping a hand over her mouth.

  “What the hell are we going to do with her?” he asked as she struggled in his arms, amazingly strong and hard for him to hold.

  “Take her with us,” Roland said. “I’d take them all, if we could.” Bending, he picked up one of the darts the girl had dropped to the floor.

  Her eyes widened, and she struggled hard in Killian’s arms, as he strained to hold her. “I heard her say that was full strength, Roland. Be careful.”

  He brought the needle to her arm, gritted his teeth, grimaced in effort, but in the end, flung the dart to the floor. “I can’t. Dammit, I can’t do something that could harm one of The Chosen, no matter how I try.”

  The girl frowned, but Killian still had his hand over her mouth.

  Roland gripped her chin angrily. “Look into my eyes,” he told her.

  She closed her eyes hard.

  Killian rolled his. “Look into his eyes, woman, or I’m going to have to bite you and drain enough blood to make you pass out. That I think I can manage.”

  She shook her head. Killian moved her hair off her neck and snapped his finger against her skin like a nurse in search of a good vein for an IV.

  She muttered what sounded like an urgent “okay, okay” behind his hand and opened her eyes, staring straight into Roland’s.

  Roland, his voice deep and low, said, “No harm will come to you in our care. Sleep, woman. And do not wake until I command it.”

  And she went. Just like that. Out like a light.

  “I have got to learn how to do that,” Killian said. “Where is Charlie? Did you see her?”

  “Infirmary, last I saw. As was Rhiannon. Now we need to find them and make our way out of this den of super-charged Chosen. If we can,” Roland said. “Tie this one up and leave her near the fence. We’ll pick her up on the way out.”

  Rhiannon was pressed into the shadowy corner, completely relaxed, feeling herself meld with the wall and the wood and the shadows. Until the doctor said, “Like everything else, the side effects of the BDX are exaggerated in her.”

  That drew her attention away from the invisibility meditation, not a good thing. She tried to relax back into the spell while keeping herself mildly attuned to what the men were saying.

  “Then treat her.” The lieutenant replied. “Just the way you do the others.”

  “I have and I am. I’m just warning you that it might not work as well with her to postpone the inevitable. Especially if she goes into battle. But this is the fate that awaits them all. You know this.”

  The lieutenant lowered his head. “I was hoping it would be different with her. She’s so much stronger.”

  “It is different with her. It’s more severe. While the others last six to eight months, this one will be lucky to make it through one. But it’s not about them. It’s never been about them. It’s about the off
spring. You know that, Lieutenant.”

  “I know.”

  The doctor said, “They should all be injected with Protectol. They won’t survive the stress of combat without being properly prepared.”

  “I don’t think there’s time for that. The vampires have found us.”

  A radio crackled. A voice spoke rapid, static laced words. Vampire. Break. Brigg.

  The lieutenant picked up a handset. “Repeat that, and key your mike appropriately this time.”

  “Sorry, sir. The vampire has escaped the brig. There was another one helping him. And they’ve taken Mariah–I mean, Recruit Senate.”

  “Has anyone gone after them?”

  “Three recruits are trailing them, sir.”

  “Good. Sound the call. Wake the recruits. I want them armed and assembled in three minutes. Two if possible. Tell them this is not a drill.”

  “Yes, sir, Lieutenant!”

  He clipped the radio to his hip, got to his feet. “Doctor Mariner, this base has been compromised. We’re initiating Bug Out Protocol One.”

  “Sir?” The medic looked puzzled.

  The lieutenant was already heading for the door. “Gather every trace of what you’ve been working on here, pile it into a Jeep, take two armed recruits, and get yourself directly to Site B. Do not stop anywhere or go anywhere else. And do not be followed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The lieutenant slammed out of the room.

  The scrawny doctor grabbed the laptop from his desk, opened and closed several drawers, taking things out of them, an external hard drive, a couple of notepads, a thumb drive or two. He shoved all of it into a small black satchel that had been sitting nearby. Then he went out the door, leaving it wide open behind him. Rhiannon could see him as he headed straight across the hall and into the lab.

  Now was her chance. She emerged from her corner and moved silently to the door. He was in plain sight of her, but not looking at her as he took racks of capped vials from a glass-doored refrigerator and stacked them carefully in a styrofoam picnic cooler.

  She stepped out of the office. He looked up. “You! Stop!”

  “I think not,” she said, and she ran into the infirmary where three mortals occupied beds. They were wide awake, the lights were on, and they saw her and shouted at her to stop. She ignored them, heading straight for the still unconscious Charlotte. She slipped the IV line from the girl’s arm and covered the pierced flesh with a piece of adhesive tape from a nearby stand. Then she bent to scoop her out of the bed.

  Two of the three patients came charging from their beds at her, and when she spun around to face them, ready to do murder, she realized she could not. They were Chosen.

  They paused in a ready-to-fight crouch right in front of her, only Charlie’s bed between her and them. Behind them, coming closer, shaking like a dead leaf in a strong wind, was the doctor.

  “You’re not taking her anywhere, vampire. Just back off,” said one patient.

  She titled her head slightly to one side. “You’ve been deceived, misled, and you’re being used. I’d take you too, if I could.” Then she launched herself over the bed so fast, she was but a blur to their eyes. She landed between them, grabbed each by the nape, and picked them right up off their feet. They kicked and fought, but they were no challenge for her. She strode toward the office, where the doctor blocked her path.

  “I can’t harm these two, doctor, as I’m sure you know, you lying piece of refuse. But you? You, I can shred. And I will. Get into the office. Now!”

  He backed into the office. She strode in behind him with the lads in tow, then dropped them. “I’ll just take this,” she said, snatching the black satchel. Then she withdrew like the wind, closing and locking the door behind her. She ducked quickly into the lab, opening the cooler and removing a rack of vials, because she didn’t have room to abscond with the whole cooler full. She got some vials labeled BDX, and some labeled “Protectol.” Adding them to the black bag, she raced back into the infirmary.

  The third patient still remained in his bed, looking conflicted and scared. He was young, early twenties, with blond hair cut close to his head, military style. Rhiannon gathered Charlotte out of her bed, sent him a quick look. “Come with me if you want to know the truth about what you are, and what it means.”

  He blinked rapidly then got out of the bed and grabbed his clothes from a drawer. He was a big fellow, powerfully built and taller than Roland. Rhiannon carried Charlotte to the back while he was pulling his clothes on, then through the curtains, past the storage unit, and outside.

  Roland and Killian appeared from the shadows, both of them breathless. “We gave them the slip,” Killian said, “But they’re after us.” He took Charlotte from Rhiannon’s arms, staring down into her face, his own twisted in worry. “Charlie? Charlie?”

  “She’s unconscious and would probably fight us otherwise. It’s to our benefit.” Rhiannon lifted the satchel. “I have everything we came for,” she said.

  “So do I.” Roland took the satchel, adding vials from his pocket to the rest.

  “And this one is coming with us,” Rhiannon went on.

  The big blond patient, just now pulling on a shirt and stumbling out of the infirmary, looked terrified. “You-you’re all vampires?”

  “And you are one of The Chosen,” Roland said.

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means, you ignorant child, that you have the Belladonna Antigen. We couldn’t harm you if we wanted to,” Rhiannon explained. “Which is why not one of you has been harmed since we’ve been here. Don’t you know we could’ve wiped you all out by now? BDX or no?”

  Recruits came around the building, guns leveled. “Run,” Roland shouted. “Go that way, leap the fence and get clear. Killian, don’t forget the package we left on the other side. Go, now! Get the drug to Eric!”

  Before Rhiannon could voice her objections, Roland ran toward the recruits, arms in the air. “I surrender! Don’t shoot!” he called, and Rhiannon felt him willing them not to fire.

  She nudged the others into motion, and they melted into the trees and weeds, heading for the perimeter fence. There was not a moment’s hesitation. Rhiannon handed the escaped mortal recruit the satchel, wrapped her arms around the patient’s waist, and jumped. Right beside her, Killian did the same, clinging to Charlotte. They both landed safely on the other side. “Get them out of here,” she said. “Go to the farmhouse. Roland and I will join you there.”

  “I can’t leave you–”

  “Contact Eric Marquand. There’s a number in my phone. Go, now, or your woman will die! And don’t forget my cat!”

  “Rhiannon, I can’t leave you and Roland to–”

  “Go now, or I’ll kill you myself! And get Pandora!” She ran, top speed, leaping the fence again in a different spot, hoping and praying Killian would do as she told him. Then she crept around the mess hall, peering into the center of the camp.

  Roland was surrounded. His hands were raised high. The recruits all aiming weapons at him were The Chosen, every last one of them. He could not harm them. He couldn’t fight back, and neither, she realized, could she.

  Lowering her head, she closed her eyes. “By the horns of Isis, how am I to save him? Is there even time to cast a decent glamourie?”

  Something stung her left hip, and she spun around to see a dart sticking out of her flesh. “Oh, for the love of the Gods, this again?” She plucked it out, it had barely penetrated and she doubted any of the drug had made its way into her, but the lieutenant was the one standing nearby, holding his gun, ready to plug her again, if need be.

  She dropped to her knees, acting weak and dizzy. He came and stood over her. “Tell me your name, vampire.”

  “Tell me yours,” she whispered. She didn’t contact Roland, blocked him, in fact, so he wouldn’t get himself killed trying to save her. She was the one who would save him, she thought.

  “Lieutenant Lucas Townsend,” he said.r />
  “You are one of The Chosen,” she whispered. “Yet you have not partaken of this drug you’re giving to the others. Why?”

  “How do you know that?”

  She shrugged. “They give off a different energy. I can sense it. But you haven’t answered my question. Why them and not you?”

  “Because those are my orders.”

  She let her head fall forward, hair curtaining her face. She lifted her eyes again, finding his. “You’re wrong about us, Lucas. We are not your enemy. We are your....”

  He came to her, put his hand under her chin and lifted it. “What? Finish the sentence? What are you to me?”

  “Protectors,” she whispered. “We are your guardians.”

  Chapter Fifteen