The Rhiannon Chronicles

by Maggie Shayne

  The children lowered her gently to the floor, handling her weight as easily as if she were hollow. Then they ran out the door and sped across the lawn toward the cliffs.

  Fighting to cling to consciousness, Roxy managed to pluck the dart from her own ass. But there was already enough of the drug in her bloodstream to put her down for the count, and fast. She dragged herself past the glass doors and saw the kids reach the edge of the cliff and jump over. She heard the plane’s motor turn over, heard it growl softly, wondered if Rhiannon could feel her, sense the alarm she was trying to emit. But she was so weak, and Rhiannon, so focused on rescuing Roland….

  Oh, God, the little monsters are going to try to stow away in the cargo hold, assuming they survived the jump from the cliffs. It’ll be cold and rough. Dangerous as hell. Lord of mercy, keep those kids safe. Anything happens to them, Rhiannon will hate me forever.

  Weakness washed over her, but she knew she had to get to Christian so he didn’t overdose on DPI’s vampire tranquilizer formula. Her eyes kept falling closed, her head nodding, as she crawled into the next room.

  Christian lay on the floor, a very large, very blurry lump. Just a few more feet, Roxy thought, placing one hand and then one knee in front of the other. Slowly, she inched closer, and finally she could reach the dart she saw sticking out of Christian’s flank. She grabbed it and yanked it out, dropped it from rapidly numbing fingers onto the carpeted floor.

  “Thanks, Roxy. Why did Ramses do that to me?” Christian asked. His words were as slurred as if he’d been drinking whiskey all night.

  “Li’l brats’re stow-stow-stowing away on the plane.”

  “We sh’try’n stop’em”

  “Nuttin’ we can do, buddy.” I just hope we wake up from this shit so I can kick their little asses up and down the street.

  It was her final thought before she surrendered to the darkness.

  * * *

  Lucas landed the plane far from DPI Headquarters, and I focused my senses on Roland. I sought his energy with every cell in my body, straining to feel any sense of him. We had to travel from the landing site to DPI’s so-called Sentinel on foot. It took more time with mortals in tow than it would have taken me alone. It was maddening to me, traipsing through brush and woodlots to remain out of sight, at the snail’s pace that was the fastest the humans could manage. Pandora padded soundlessly beside me, and I sensed she was as impatient as I. Not once was she distracted by the myriad sounds and scents of the east coast woodlands on a late autumn night.

  They were familiar to her, and to me. The northeast was my favorite part of the United States. Its forests were dense with young growth and even the mature trees were saplings when compared to the ones in the northwest. The air was cooler, not as heavy with humidity, and the scents of pine and sugar maple all mingled with those of the brown leaves that created a carpet of softness beneath our feet. Every step we took, released that evocative fragrance of fall.

  It was delicious, that scent. In other circumstances, I would have taken pause to bask in it. But not tonight. Tonight my goal was my husband, and may the gods have mercy on those who held him.

  DPI had placed its headquarters in an out-of-the-way area, back in the days when its work had to remain clandestine. One couldn’t have the general population finding out about vampires, and the government’s research on them, after all. Panic would ensue.

  The general public had found out, though. And panic had indeed followed. Too many had died among my kind as well as among the mortals.

  At last, we arrived atop a hillside far above the DPI building. I stroked my cat and looked down at the place. The entire perimeter was surrounded by a tall fence that was clearly electrified. Every few feet, cameras and possibly motion detectors were perched atop high metal poles. The building itself was made of reddish-brown stone blocks, polished to an artificially high gloss. Neat rows of tinted windows had the same effect as the sunglasses on a federal agent—cold, dark, revealing nothing. The Sentinel stood several stories high, and who knew how many more extended below ground level? That was where my beloved Roland would be. Below, somewhere in the sub-levels of this nightmarish place. It was all I could do not to race down the hill, leap the fence and charge in screaming like the storm god Seth raging across the desert.

  But I knew that would only result in my own capture. I must do this correctly. I must use every possible advantage to get my Roland out alive.

  “The best way in will be the loading dock in the back,” Maxine said. She stood beside me on the wooded hillside in the dead of night, unafraid of the myriad sounds of animals, and of the wind moving the limbs of the leafless trees and causing the berry briars to scratch against one another.

  I said nothing.

  “You know this place has always been an obsession of mine,” she went on. Chit-chat had always been one of her most irritating flaws. “I was just a kid the first time I got onto the property to do a little snooping. Research center my ass.”

  I almost smiled. I knew the tale, of course. My kind owed the girl for her conspiracy theorist tendencies. Her perkiness and chattiness were small enough things to tolerate, given her courage, sharp mind, and heroism. She’d have made a wonderful vampiress.

  “I’ve surveilled the place several times since it was rebuilt,” Maxine chattered on. “I don’t know what’s going on in there, but I have figured out the best way in. It’s not going to be easy.”

  She was good at snooping, and she was a friend to the Undead. I trusted her. “Tell me about this loading dock in the back, then.”

  She nodded, her coppery red hair moving with the motion. “Trucks go in through the front gates, then all the way around to the rear. If we circle to the back you can get a look—"

  “Tell me first.”

  She bit her lip, met my eyes, maybe sensed what I was thinking. It would take forever to hike to a good vantage point for surveilling the rear of the building with all these mortals along. Alone, I could do it in minutes. I needed to go in on my own. And I would, by fair means or foul.

  The night wind lifted my hair and carried with it the scents of pine boughs and rotting bark, rapidly crumbling from downed trees to merge with the earth. I closed my eyes and thought of Roland, called out to him with my entire being. Even listened for a reply. But my love couldn’t hear me through the walls of a DPI fortress. They had technology that made telepathy ineffective, had been using it for years.

  “…and then use those elevators to go down to the sub-levels,” Maxine said.

  I blinked and realized I’d missed most of what she’d said. Then I blinked again, because moisture dared to flood my eyes. Whoever said vampires couldn’t cry was an idiot. We wept. I was weeping now on the inside. But I needed to keep it together. I needed to hold my imagination in an iron grip, and not let it conjure images of what might be happening to my Roland in that foul place.

  “Zoned out, didn’t you?” Maxine asked. And when I nodded, she repeated herself. “Trucks go in through the front gate and drive around to the back,” she said softly. “The overhead doors go up, the truck rolls through, the doors come back down. There’s time, while the doors are open, for a vampire to slip inside.”

  I nodded. “For a vampire. Not for a human?”

  Maxine shook her head, her red hair swinging. Her hair, I thought, matched her spirit. Spunky.

  “No human could move fast enough. We’d be seen for sure. I’ve watched those doors go up and down, though, from a distance, using high powered binoculars. There are elevators on the farthest wall from the overhead doors, and a stairwell door too.”

  “Then there’s no point in all of you coming with me.”

  “I think we’ll be more useful serving as backup, providing diversions if necessary. I think one vampire alone is going to have the best chance to get in there undetected.”

  I glanced back at the thicket where her husband Lou and my unwanted sidekick, Lucas, were speaking softly to each other. “They’ll argue against i
t.”

  She shrugged. “Give their brains a little vampiric nudge if you have to. Just don’t leave them too mushy to do what needs doing out here.”

  Sighing, I approached the men. They stopped talking the instant I drew near. As if I couldn’t have heard every whisper, had I wanted to.

  “We’ll need a place to rest for the day,” I told them. “It’s already late and we have no idea how long it will take me to locate Roland and get him out. Or....” I had to lower my lids, conceal my eyes. "Or what kind of condition he'll be in when I do."

  Lou looked at me, frowned, then shifted his gaze to Max, his question in his eyes. She said, “Look, to get inside undetected, we’d have to move too fast for human eyes to see, and we'd also have to not show up on those cameras. There’s only one of us here who can do that.”

  Lou pondered that in silence, but the frown he wore made his opinion of the plan clear.

  “I don’t like it.” Lucas was apparently his opposite, speaking too loudly, too emphatically and too immediately. “Suppose you get yourself captured too, Rhiannon?”

  “Getting myself captured is far more likely if I have mortals to look after. Especially you, since you're one of The Chosen.”

  “Right," Maxine said to her husband. "Cause she has no choice but to help him. Us, she could leave to die.” The comment was an effort at levity that fell flat. No one laughed nor even cracked a smile.

  “I couldn’t leave any of you behind,” I said. “Unfortunately, that makes each of you a liability.”

  Lou nodded, not liking it but unable to argue against my logic. I'd always liked the man's slow-walking, slow-talking, deep-thinking ways. They reminded me of Roland's.

  “Maxine, I’ll leave it to you and Lou to find us a safe place to spend the coming day in case we don’t have time for the flight home before dawn," I said. "I will meet you there with Roland.”

  “If you can get him out. What if you can’t?” Lucas argued.

  “If I can’t get him out, I won’t be coming out either, Lucas. I’ll either die trying or join him in captivity. Leaving him there is not an option.”

  "Rhiannon, you can't mean that!" Lucas grabbed my arm.

  I jerked it free, rounding to face him. "Oh, I mean it, Lucas. When you find your life mate, you'll understand. Until then, do not deign to advise me on the lengths to which I should or should not go for mine."

  Maxine said, "She's right. I'd do the same if Lou was in there."

  "And I'd kick your ass for it," Lou said softly, but the way he looked at her took the sting from his words.

  Their love for each other only made my heartache that much more pronounced. I wanted my Roland. I wanted the man who looked at me the way Lou was looking at his Mad Max just then. I had to avert my eyes. “I’d appreciate it if you all would help Roxanne, Christian, and the children as much as you can, should I fail to re-emerge from this place.”

  Maxine rolled her eyes. “Jeeze, Rhiannon. Morbid much? If you don’t come back out, we’ll descend on that place with the biggest, ugliest horde of blood-drinkers we can find. For us, leaving you in there is not an option.”

  I stared at her, admiring her just as I always had, in spite of myself. Spunk irritated me. And yet, on this one, it fit.

  She thinned her lips, but nodded. “And yeah, sure, you know we’ll see to the kids if anything goes wrong. Right, Lou?”

  “Or course we will,” he said. “But listen, Rhiannon, even if you have to go in alone, someone should be outside. In case you need a diversion or…something.”

  Lucas pulled his backpack around, opened the flap, and pulled out a hand grenade. “I’ve got that covered,” he said. “I brought along a dozen of these babies, and some other goodies as well.”

  I nodded, approving of his preparedness, neither knowing nor caring where he'd come by the arsenal. “I only wish I could speak to you all mentally. It would make this much easier.”

  “Who needs telepathy when you've got technology?” Max dipped into a pocket and brought out a cell phone, handing it to me. “Lou’s number is on there. Call it if you need us. We’ll text you the location of the hideout the minute we’re sure it’s secure.”

  “Text me, too,” Lucas said. “Give me your phone, Lou.”

  Lou handed it over, and Lucas programmed his number in. He held out his hand for the phone I held.

  I handed it to him, feeling so impatient I could barely stand still. He poked at the screen with what felt like agonizing slowness, and then finally handed the phone back to me. All told, the operation had taken perhaps five seconds. But five more seconds away from my Roland was the same as an eternity to me.

  “Are we ready then?” I asked.

  They all nodded, grim faced.

  “All right, then. Pandora, go with Lucas.” I said it firmly, adding a mental command and pointing at Lucas as I did. My cat hung her head, but she obeyed.

  Maxine lunged at me, her arms going around my neck and squeezing. "Please be careful, Rhiannon. Don't get dead." Then she released me, and she and Lou headed off to find us shelter. I smoothed my blouse, unused to such shows of affection from mortals.

  Lucas was watching me, trying hard not to smile at my discomfort. He gave me a nod, then he and Pandora began looking for a good vantage point from which to observe what happened below.

  Alone, I started down the hill toward the enemy stronghold. The way I felt just then, I was certain I could kill every human in the place without much trouble at all.

  Overconfidence, Roland would tell me, could be a fatal mistake.

  I hoped he’d be able to lecture me for it thoroughly before this night had ended.

  Chapter Six

  Alone, I raced to the fence, jumped it, and sped around the building whose large and impressive sign pronounced it “The Sentinel” in shiny red-brown granite. DPI had a new name for its headquarters. I’d have come up with a different one. Center for Imprisonment and Torture, perhaps. Or Genocide Central. Oh, I knew what went on beyond the stone walls and tinted glass windows. I knew.

  My Roland was in there now.

  It was as dark as ink around the building, despite that there were spotlights on the ground at intervals that seemed to be for the purpose of lighting the grounds and the building itself. There were lights above on poles, as well. That DPI had left the lights off, possibly in anticipation of my arrival, did not trouble me. I neither knew nor cared what their reasons were. I just wanted my husband back.

  I sped around to the rear of the building, too fast for human eyes to detect, much less identify. Trucks came and went, rolling slowly in and out of tall overhead doors manned by armed guards. That was going to be my way in. It was the most vulnerable portal in the entire building.

  As I crouched low, my back pressed to the cool red stone wall, a truck came rumbling by, and at the same time, I caught the scent of another vampire—no, two of them!

  The overhead door rose slowly, emitting a mechanical hum. I thought it must have captives onboard, and focused my senses more sharply, feeling inside the rear of the vehicle.

  But there were no vampires inside the truck. Something else was being taken prisoner by DPI this night, something I’d encountered only a handful of times in all my years of existence. Unconscious. Probably drugged. My God, DPI had discovered their existence, then. It stunned me. Lycanthropes were rare and tended to be the most elusive of creatures. They were so seldom seen that most vampires didn’t even know they were real. But I knew. I had little experience with them, zero trust of them, and even less use for them, uncivilized wild things that they were. But they were there, in that truck.

  The two vampires I’d sensed, however, were beyond the truck, just on the other side of the big door, doing exactly what I was doing. Waiting for a chance to get inside. I aimed my senses at them and felt a familiar energy. Devlin. A vampire I’d wanted to kill once. More than once. And then he’d saved my Roland’s life and put me forever into his debt. He had been blocking heavily. I had not, s
o he sensed my presence first. I felt him drop his guard just slightly to let me sense him and understood that he was going inside.

  I did not know what had brought Devlin all the way across the country to this hellish place. He’d been planning to build a resistance, an Undead force to fight back against man. But I didn’t think it possible he’d done so this fast. It had been only weeks since I’d seen him.

  And yet I hoped. I hoped with all my might that he had an army of vampires lurking in the woods, ready to rain down hell upon this place.

  He didn’t, of course. An army of vampires could hardly have escaped my notice. But whatever Devlin was up to, I trusted that he had his reasons.

  The truck rolled inside, and Devlin and his companion, a newborn fledgling female, flashed inside after it. I stood there a moment, unsure whether to join them or give them a head start and then enter the next time the door opened. As the door began to descend, I was torn, and then Devlin spoke to me mentally. We need a distraction, Rhiannon. If you’re still out there–

  They have Roland, I replied. Bring him out in case I cannot.

  The truck was already reversing, the door closing again. I pulled my favorite dagger from my tall black boot, held it at the ready, and aimed my energy at the truck’s fuel tank. I could start fires, light candles. I’d never attempted to ignite gasoline before, but it would only take a small spark, surely.

  There was a whoosh, an explosion, and I sailed backward and landed hard, my head cracking against the side of the building with so much force that it split one of the stone blocks. The door closed before I could get up and get beneath it. An alarm began to sound, deafening and intermittent blasts coming from some deep, earsplitting horn. Spotlights flashed on from the roof, and men surged onto the rooftop, wielding rifles.