The Rhiannon Chronicles

by Maggie Shayne

  “I told you, I can’t!”

  “Then I’m sorry.” The tech moved his thumb on the remote, and the little albino mutant stiffened and screamed as a small electric shock was administered to its legs.

  “Now, try again,” the tech said.

  The Offspring looked at him. Its pink eyes almost glowed. “No.”

  “Try again, or I’ll have to hurt you.”

  “I’ll have to hurt you,” the subject said, in precisely the same voice the tech had used.

  “That’s the same skill the other one has!” Dr. Bouchard rose from her chair in alarm.

  “I’ll have to hurt you,” it said again.

  Bouchard felt a cold chill creep up her spine and reached out to a microphone that stood nearby. “Get out of there,” she told the tech, who wore an earpiece and could hear her.

  “Bullshit.” Patterson yanked the mic off the desk and used it himself. “Administer the shock and turn up the juice. We can’t tolerate disobedience.”

  “I’ll have to hurt you,” the mutant repeated, staring hard at the technician, its eyes glowing bright pink now. The tech backed toward the door and then his lab coat began to smoke. A hole opened up in it, its edges cherry red and black. And then it burst into flames.

  “Hurt you, hurt you, hurt you!”

  The tech fell down screaming, trying to roll. The remote he held went flying. The sprinklers came on. The fire alarm went off.

  The door opened and guards swarmed into the room. One manned an extinguisher, blasting its white powder all over the suffering technician. Then they dragged him out and closed the door again.

  The albino looked up at the camera that was mounted in a high corner of the room. It felt to Sarah Bouchard as if it was looking right into her eyes. “I’ll have to hurt you,” it said again.

  The colonel pressed the button on the mic and said. “Gas it. Then put it back in its cell. Make sure it’s out first.”

  He let off the button and jets of mist shot from all four walls, slowly filling the room as the subject choked, coughed and gagged. Tears ran from its eyes, fluid from its nose. It fell to the floor, chair and all, and vomited, and then it finally passed out.

  Bouchard pressed the button and said, “It’s enough. Stop the gas.”

  The gas stopped. She couldn’t look at the screen anymore as men came in to scoop the little mutant from the floor and carry it away.

  “I told you enhanced methods would get results,” the colonel said.

  “That lab tech might not survive,” she said. “Are those the results you were after?”

  “We know what it can do. It gave it up, just as I said it would if we pushed hard enough. Now we just need to find out if that’s all it can do.”

  Sara Bouchard lowered her eyes, almost afraid to ask, but knowing it was expected. Demanded. “What are your orders, sir?”

  He said, “One, get the albino to locate the others for us. Do whatever it takes.” He opened the door to go, not even turning to face her again. “Two, the first opportunity you get, try a command on de Courtemanche to see if it works. And three, find a way to stress Slate enough to blow his heart before they figure out a way to turn him. He’d make one hell of a strong vampire.” He did turn then, looked her right in the eye. “Manage all three and I’ll double your salary.”

  “D-double?”

  He sent her a snappy salute and left the room with a spring in his step.

  Bouchard clicked the monitor off, took off her glasses, and laid her head down on her arms on the table. Torturing seven-year-olds, even non-human seven-year-olds, and killing oversized innocents was not what she had signed up to do. She didn’t like it.

  She hated it, in fact.

  But she was fighting to prevent the extinction of humanity. Vampires would wipe them out. These experiments, the Offspring, would be the best weapon mankind had to defend itself. This was for the greater good.

  But that didn’t make it any less disgusting to her.

  Chapter Nine

  I lay beside my husband in our own bed for the first time since his rescue. Daylight was approaching. But we had a bit of time. I’d coaxed him upstairs far earlier than was necessary. We’d tacked blankets up over the windows for the time being. So the room would remain dark, even through the brightest part of the day.

  Autumn was maturing in Maine. You could feel it in the chill bite of the nighttime air and see it on the vibrantly colored hillsides where some of the maples were already bare. Perhaps human eyes couldn’t yet detect it, but vampire eyes had no problem there. The nights were growing longer. I loved long nights.

  I rolled onto my side and caught Roland staring up at the ceiling, his expression troubled.

  “It’s time to tell me, my love.”

  He quickly schooled his expression into a more relaxed one, but the tension showed all the same. “Tell you what?” he asked.

  “It’s time to tell me what’s happening to you.” I stroked his cheek with my fingertips, gently turning his head toward me in the process. “Was it the captivity? You’ve never told me what happened to you, to your eye. Were you...were you tortured, darling?”

  “No. No, it’s…it’s something else.”

  “Something else like what?”

  He sighed, licked his lips nervously, then gave a nod as if he’d come to some vital conclusion. “Have you ever wondered if our minds are as immortal as our bodies?”

  I blinked, not understanding the question. “Our minds?”

  “Or do they age, do you think? Do they weaken as we get older?”

  Lifting my brows, I sent him a fierce, but false glare. “I’m far older than you, Roland. Are you questioning the condition of my sanity?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “No. But then, some humans live to be a hundred or more. While others die in their seventies. Perhaps it’s the same with the mental faculties of a vampire. Some may last longer than others.”

  I stopped playing with him because he seemed very serious and very troubled. “My love, are you concerned about your sanity?”

  He looked at me, but did not answer.

  “You are, aren’t you?”

  He rolled onto his back again, resumed staring at the ceiling. “I haven’t felt right since The Sentinel. It’s as if something is inside me, some consciousness that is not my own.”

  I sat up in the bed, letting the covers fall to my waist, naked, of course. I slept naked as often as possible. “Tell me more.”

  He nodded, seeming relieved to have finally shared his fears with me. “I’m not sure I can describe it accurately, but...I feel a presence. The way you would feel someone if they were in that closet over there. You’d know.”

  “Well of course I’d know, darling. I’m a vampire.”

  He nodded. “You’d feel them even if you weren’t. Mere mortals sense when they’re being watched. It’s that feeling. Only it’s coming... from within.”

  I suppressed the feeling of ice water filling my spine and ran my hand through his hair from the front, down as far as his pillows would allow, and then down along the side of his head. He’d taken out the band, so his long dark hair was loose. I loved his hair. Loved touching it, stroking it. I loved the feeling of it brushing over my breasts when he made love to me.

  I swung my leg over him, straddling his body, and feeling the stirring of arousal as his sword sensed the nearness of its scabbard.

  Then leaning over him, I held my palms near his temples on either side, but did not touch. “May I?” I asked.

  “I’ve nothing to hide from you, my love.”

  I pressed my hands to the sides of his head, closed my eyes and opened my senses. And the thoughts I felt swirling around inside his mind were of sex, and of love, and of worry, and then others came, dark whispers I wasn’t even sure he could hear. Whispers about the children.

  They’re dangerous.

  Do not trust them.

  Watch them. Observe them. Learn their powers.

  They’
re not normal. You don’t know what they are capable of.

  Learn their weaknesses. In case you need to exploit them to stay alive.

  Keep them close, but don’t let down your guard.

  They could kill you in your sleep for all you know.

  They aren’t human. They aren’t vampire. They aren’t Chosen.

  They’re something else.

  Monsters.

  Dangerous, deadly, monsters

  I took my hands away, averting my eyes and blinking rapidly. My heart seemed to contract in my chest, and my throat went tight. “Is that what you really think?”

  “What? What did you hear?”

  I looked back at him, stabbed his eyes with mine. “That the children can’t be trusted, that they’re monsters who might kill us in our sleep. Is that what you truly believe?”

  Holding my gaze, lifting his head from the pillows, he said. “It’s not what I believe. I’m telling you, those are not my thoughts. And certainly not what I was thinking about just now.”

  “And yet, those thoughts are there,” I told him. I was truly stunned to have discovered it, but it was true. “They’re in you, lurking deep in your mind.”

  He closed his eyes. “Yes. Those and worse. They surface once in a while, but so far I’ve managed to force them back down.”

  I drew a deep breath, nodding slowly as my mind raced in circles for an answer. “If it truly is another consciousness, then I can expel it. I can cast it out as I would a demon or ghost. Perhaps that’s what it is. The Goddess only knows how many non-humans have died in that place where they kept you. Perhaps some unsettled spirit got inside you while you were there.”

  He opened his eyes slowly. “Do you really think that’s what this is?”

  “It has to be, hasn’t it?” I grabbed hold of the theory, clung to it almost desperately. “It’s certainly not you. It can’t be you. You love the children as much as I.”

  He nodded. I thought I felt a hint of relief in him. “I want it out of me, Rhiannon. Whatever it is.”

  “At sundown, my love. At sundown, when we rise, the first thing I will do is to perform a rite to rid you of unwanted entities. An exorcism.”

  “All right.” He sighed, and I sensed him allowing relief to finally flood him. “Why didn’t I just tell you this from the start?” he asked. “I should’ve known you’d have a solution.”

  “That will teach you to keep things from me,” I told him.

  He reached for me, his hands caressing my breasts, then sliding around my waist to pull me down upon his chest. “Keeping any of me from you is the last thing I want to do.”

  “Some parts even less than others?” I asked.

  “Some parts wish they could live in you, Rhiannon. And other parts already do.”

  I kissed his glorious chest over and over, my mouth moving back and forth and then down his ribcage, and across to his belly, and just below his navel, then back up again.

  He caught my face in his hands when I reached his neck, pulled me in for a kiss that was deep and searching and hungry. I kissed him back. The passion between us had never waned, and never would. I was yearning and ready for him, and he for me when I reached my hand down between our bodies, and clasped him to guide him inside me. And I sat upright and lowered myself over him.

  “You are so beautiful,” he whispered, reaching up to fondle my breasts as I began to move atop him. “Like making love to the Goddess.”

  “If I am the Goddess, my love, then you are the storm on which I ride.” I moved in a slow rhythm, arching my back and rocking forward, as if he were a stallion I would tame. Each time I did so, he thrust his hips upward, sinking himself more deeply into me, driving the breath from my lungs and replacing it with sheer delicious sensual pleasure.

  “Roland,” I whispered, rising up a little.

  He clasped my hips and pulled me back down, holding me to receive him as he increased the pace of his hips and I, my undulations. I moaned, for he was driving me to climax without mercy. No slowness, no gentleness, not this time. This time he buried himself in me, seeking, I sensed, the solace our love had always been able to provide.

  His fingertips drew together on my breasts as the waves of orgasm began crashing over me. I grabbed one of his hands and drew it to my mouth, raking an incisor across his palm, and lapping up the blood I drew. The taste of it, the power of it, drove my release even higher.

  His other hand at the flat of my back, he pulled me down against him, and burying his face against my neck, he bit me, hard and fully and deeply, drinking me into him. The feeling of his fangs in my flesh set my body aflame, and I swallowed the cries of pleasure he was driving from me, as the release took hold, ravaging me.

  He drove one last time, deeply, and then held me there to receive him. And then we clung, trembling in the aftermath, weak and in need of one another.

  He held me there upon his chest for a long time, stroking my hair, my back, my shoulders as my body slowly recovered from the devastation of ultimate bliss. And after a while, he whispered, “Whatever happens, I want you to swear in the name of Isis that you will never let me harm the children. Or you, Rhiannon. Never let me harm you. Do whatever you have to, to prevent it. I’d rather be dead than to live with knowing I had brought you pain. You are my own heart. You know this. You know this.”

  “You would never hurt me, much less a child. Any child.” I tried to sit up, to stare into his eyes and see what was there, but he clung to me, and I relented.

  “Make the vow, Rhiannon. Please, before the dawn takes me into her embrace. Make the vow.”

  I pushed against his chest, and he released me this time. Easing myself from our bed, my bare feet sinking into the plush carpet of our bedroom, I faced east, knowing instinctively where that was. The direction of the morning star of Ishtar, of Innana, of Isis, and of Venus, their descendent. Standing with my legs shoulder width apart, raising my arms out to my sides and up high, I tipped my head back, assuming The Goddess pose. And I said, aloud, “In the name of Isis I vow that I will never allow you to harm me or the children, Roland de Courtemanche. I make this vow with my whole heart, my whole soul, my whole mind. It is a promise I shall not break. So mote it be.”

  “So mote it be,” Roland repeated softly.

  I lowered my arms and watched his eyes feasting on my body as I moved, catlike, back toward the bed and slid beneath the covers. Then I curled around him, resting my head on his chest, and I felt the sunrise kissing the eastern sky.

  “I’ll exorcise you when we wake, my love.”

  “Thank you, Rhiannon.”

  I brushed my lips across his chest. He stroked my hair with his strong hand. And my eyes fell closed.

  * * *

  That night when we rose, we joined the children, Roxanne and Christian for dinner at our elegant dining table. Just because we had very different dietary needs than they did, did not mean we should not spend time together around the table. Roxanne had cooked up a veritable feast, and the children were making fine progress with their table manners. As was Christian.

  Roland seemed troubled. Or perhaps he was only worried for what was to come. It wasn’t every day one was the subject of an exorcism, after all.

  “Rhiannon, Roxanne said I should ask you to tell me about Halloween,” Nikki said. And she did well, having chewed, swallowed, and even dabbed her mouth with a cloth napkin before speaking.

  I smiled. “The Celts called it Samhain. In Egypt, it was the time of year when the Great Goddess Isis began searching for her husband Osirus, who had been murdered by his evil brother and hidden away from her. Always, in every culture, it has been a time to acknowledge the connection between this life, and the life that comes after, for it is the start of the darkest part of the year. It’s customary to remember our dear ones who have died, and to reaffirm our belief that the soul lives on even after the body is dead.”

  Nikki frowned very deeply, then turned and shot an accusing look at Roxanne. “You said it was for
dressing up in costumes and stealing candy from the neighbors!”

  I felt my brows rise, and Roland pretended to cough to cover his laughter. He met my eyes, and we shared our amusement.

  “Not stealing, little one,” Roxanne said. “Trick-or-treating. There’s a very big difference.”

  She then glanced my way and Roland’s. “You have to take them trick-or-treating. You realize that, right?”

  I tilted my head to one side. “This is not our first experience with children, Roxanne. We had a large part in raising Jameson, after all.”

  “Just sayin,” Roxanne went on. “It won’t even be an effort. You can wear your normal attire and go as Gomez and Morticia.”

  Christian released a bark of laughter, then started pounding his own chest because he’d choked on his food. When he contained himself again, he looked at Roland and smiled. “If you’re not too old for a costume, then I’m not either,” he said.

  “Certainly not,” Roland agreed. “What will you be?”

  “A scientist. Like Albert Einstein.”

  “Hmm,” I said. “Or perhaps, Dr. Frankenstein.”

  “Or Frankie himself!” Christian said.

  “And what Roxy said about the pumpkins?” Gareth asked. “Are we going to make faces in pumpkins and light them up at night, too?”

  I felt my soul growing lighter. “Of course we are, darling. We’ll do all of that and more.”

  The children smiled, even Ramses, and they launched into a discussion of costumes and what sorts they might want to wear. Still no laughter, but emotion. Yes, there was definite excitement in their voices, in their faces, in their hearts.

  I looked at Roland, telling him with my eyes how wonderful this was. And without a word, he celebrated with me.

  A couple of hours later, we were once again alone.

  Roxanne and Christian had taken the children outside. I’d explained to Roxanne what had to be done, and she had assured me we wouldn’t be disturbed. That was essential.

  Roland lay on the carpeted floor in the center of the room I had chosen to be my temple. I kept a temple room in every house I owned. It was sacred space to me. My statues of Isis, Hathor, Osiris, Anubis, Bast, and the eye of Ra lined the room. My herbs in labeled jars and rows of semi-precious gemstones filled what had been intended as bookshelves. On an antique table in the east, lay my wand, my dagger, my mortar and pestle, my crystal ball, my Gypsy goblet, a gift from my friend Sarafina, and pink colored chunk of raw salt, mined from the earth herself. These items had been in storage since we’d fled the US several years ago, and I’d had them shipped to me here the moment I’d found the house. It was like reuniting with old friends to have them back again. My pendulums were here, my pentacles, my sword and my staff, my tarot cards and divination stones. And my cauldrons, all four of them.