A woman of magic could never have too many cauldrons.
I had lowered the lights. Roland was dressed in soft clothing, white, loose fitting cotton pants and shirt much like one would wear to practice the martial arts. Soft, music played. Mozart, his favorite. I had candles burning around the room, and the smell of rare and exotic incense I’d purchased on our last trip to India, filled the air with fragrance and purified the space.
“And are you relaxed?” I asked, speaking softly, my cadence slow and my tones deep.
“I am.”
“Sink deeper, then. Deeper. Follow my voice into the depths of your soul. Swim through the velvet folds of night. Deeper. All is well. There is nothing to fear. You are at peace. And safe. And you trust me completely.”
“I do.”
“Then surrender, my love. Surrender and sleep.”
I felt it when he let go. His resistance released like knots coming untied. He relaxed open, and I knew he was resting, barely conscious, and in a highly suggestible state.
“Good. Very good. Sleep and I will converse with the presence you sense within. Sleep, relax, and let it come to the fore.”
He tensed a little.
I placed my hands on his shoulders, used my will just a little bit, to nudge him back into complete relaxation. “All is well. You are in my hands. You are safe.”
Beneath my palms, his muscles loosened, softened.
“And now,” I whispered. “I call upon any entity who lives in this body. Any soul, any being who is not Roland de Courtemanche. I call you forth. Come to the surface, and face me.”
He lay still, very still. I watched him for a long moment, waiting expectantly, but nothing happened.
“Speak to me, spirit who inhabits this man. Speak to me now. I command you by the power of Isis.”
And still, he lay there.
I was puzzled. The candlelight cast dancing shadows on the walls around us. Now and then one of the flames would stretch a little taller than the rest, but there was nothing in them to indicate an entity among us. No spirit. No ghost. No demon. I didn’t feel any other presence at all.
“Roland, can you hear me?”
“I can,” he said, his voice deep and lazy, almost drunk.
“You are completely safe my love. I want you to tell me what happened to you while you were held captive at The Sentinel.”
“I...was asleep.”
“You were asleep when?”
“When they did it.”
“Did what, Roland?”
He began to pant, rapid, short little breaths he did not need to take. His head turned back and forth on the pillow.
“Calm,” I said, tracing his forehead with my fingertip. “Calm, my love. You’re not there now. You’re here, with me, in our home, safe from all harm.”
“No. Not safe. Not safe.”
“Calm, my love. Calm, I command it.” I sent my will into his mind to ease him back into a relaxed state.
It didn’t work. He pressed his hands to either side of his skull and moaned, “My head, my head, my head.”
“Are you in pain, Roland?”
The door opened, and I recognized the heavy steps even before Christian said, “What are you guys doing?”
And I heard a voice coming from Roland. Not from his lips, from his head, as if I were hearing his thoughts. But this was not him. It was a stranger, and it said, Attack! He’s come to kill you all!
“What in the name of–”
Roland’s eyes flew open wide and he came to his feet with a terrible growl, like a wounded bear. He shoved me aside so hard I stumbled, and barely caught myself on the altar, knocking several stones and tools to the floor. Roland ran at Christian, teeth bared, fangs gleaming, eyes glowing red.
Christian froze and emitted a strangled cry like a trapped rabbit. Roland gripped his shoulders. He was going to devour Christian! I lunged, grabbed my love from behind and flung him bodily across the room. He hit a bookshelf and it broke, pouring gemstones onto his head as he sank to the floor.
He tried to get up, but I flung out my arms and focused every ounce of power I possessed upon him. “Stay down!” I told him, commanding him with my mind, my will.
There was a very heavy thud behind me, and I turned. And there was poor Christian, fallen to his knees, clutching his chest, clawing at it, his fingers tearing the fabric of his shirt. By the gods, his heart was going to explode!
I went to him, gripped him under his arms and pulled him out of the room and into the hallway, quickly closing the door behind me.
Christian only had minutes, if that. He was gazing up at me, his eyes wide with terror and swimming with hurt, his heart pounding.
“Come, darling, let me help you. You trust me, don’t you?”
“Wh-wh-why is Roland mad at m-me?” He let me help him to his feet, but he was trembling, and I could hear his heart hammering rapidly. This was bad. I had minutes. Seconds, perhaps.
“He’s sick, something’s wrong with his head. They did something to him when he was a prisoner.” He was walking beside me, limping, panting as I tried to hurry him along.
“Christian, do you trust me?”
He met my eyes, nodded.
“I’m going to save you. All right?”
Again, he nodded. His pupils were pinpricks, his pulse like the beat of a hummingbird’s wings. “W-will it h-h-hurt?”
“No, love. Not one bit, I promise.” I got him through the doorway into his own bedroom, closed the door and cast a magical lock upon it—one that I hoped would keep Roland out, should he manage to escape the containment spell I’d hastily conjured around him there in the temple room. Then, taking hold of Christian’s arms, I pulled him into his adjoining bathroom, and urged him to kneel on the floor beside his giant tub. We’d chosen this room for him because it had a bathtub that would accommodate his size.
He knelt and I knelt beside him. “Come here, Christian.” I opened my arms.
The big man leaned against me, knowing just as I did what had to be done. I exerted my will over him, knowing he didn’t have the capacity to block or to resist me.
Sleep, my friend, and feel no pain. No pain.
As his eyes fell heavily, I sank my fangs into his throat, my mind soothing him the entire time, my fingers stroking his hair gently.
A sigh stuttered out of him as I tore a larger hole in his jugular, and then I pulled back, and tipped his body sideways, leaning him over the tub as the blood pulsed from him. I could not drink his blood as I should. DPI had poisoned it, a trap for any vampire who might try to help him. His heartbeat sped even faster. I held his chest hard against mine so I could feel its pace. We were out of time. I could feel that powerful organ expanding in his chest. Seconds, only seconds. I watched the blood flow, and prayed it would be fast enough.
And finally, his heartbeat began to slow. I nearly sagged in relief. But the big man had a lot of blood in him. I sensed Roland trying to get up onto his feet in the temple room, and without taking my arms from around Christian, I hammered him hard with my will. I heard him hit the floor, or perhaps the wall, and hoped I hadn’t hurt him too badly.
But I had no time to check, for this task must be completed right now, or there was a risk I might lose this innocent, childlike man. My children would lose him, and I would not permit them to feel the pain of that. He was like an older brother to them.
And so I held him to me as his pulse slowed, and his heart calmed and settled, and the force of the flow became a trickle. Christian’s heart skipped, paused, beat once more, and then....silence. I laid him gently on the floor.
Roland was on his feet again and nearer than was safe. I realized it, turned away from Christian only to hear the bedroom door burst open, and even before I leapt to my feet, the bathroom door did the same.
The man who stood there was not my Roland. He was a monster, his eyes glowing more fiercely than I had ever seen them. He stared at me as if he did not know me, and then his gaze fell on Christian an
d he took a single step forward. I reacted in the only way I could. I balled up my fist and swung, putting my entire body into the blow. My knuckles hit Roland’s jaw, and he sailed back into the bedroom, hitting the wall, and then the floor. I stomped out after him, and bending, grabbed him by his collar and lifted him, dragging him out of the bedroom into the hall. And then I swung my arm like a bowler and sent him skidding back through the temple room door.
“Stay down, Roland!” I slammed the door, locked it, and raced back to Christian. He would not come back if too many minutes ticked by. Quickly, I nicked a vein in my wrist with one of my incisors and pressed it to Christian’s mouth. No response.
“Drink, Christian. Drink, damn you!” I sent my will into his mind, into his soul if need be.
His lips moved. Thank the gods! He swallowed. And then, at last, latched onto my arm and drank wholeheartedly.
When he’d had enough, which was a lot, I pulled free, tugged a sash from my bloodstained dress, and wrapped my wrist tightly. And then I picked up the giant of a man. We must have made quite the picture—me, carrying him out of the bathroom, across his bedroom, placing him gently upon his bed.
It was night. He would sleep through it, and through tomorrow as well, waking tomorrow night to a new life he wasn’t yet ready to live, as a being he wasn’t yet ready to be.
Never again would he have to worry about his heart exploding from his big chest.
Weak now, and in desperate need of sustenance myself, I left him, closed his door, stepped into the hallway and walked back to my temple room. For a moment, I stood there, facing its door and wondering what had happened to my beloved Roland. What had they done to make him into this cruel being who would frighten a boy like Christian almost to death?
* * *
Roland’s head was pounding as if it would explode. He forced his eyes open, though he anticipated it would make the pain worse. Then squinting against the pain, he looked around the room where he found himself, realizing that he was on the floor, and that the room was in shambles.
Rhiannon’s temple room, he realized, getting slowly to his feet. Sacred space. There were books, broken jars and spilled herbs on the floor all around him, and he turned to see the shelf they’d once occupied split in half. Frowning, he took in the rest: the toppled chair, the spilled candles, and the wax they’d dripped onto the carpet, hardened now.
Something bad had happened here. Why couldn’t he remember?
He pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, and stumbled toward the door, calling out mentally, Rhiannon, where are you? Are you all right? Where are the children? What happened here?
He reached for the doorknob, only to see it turn before he could touch it. And then it opened, and his beloved came inside. And there was something off about her— the way she looked at him, her eyes wary and searching, her entire being on guard. Almost as if...as if she were afraid of him.
His stomach convulsed. “Rhiannon? Tell me what happened here. Was it DPI?”
She stared deeply into his eyes. “You don’t remember?”
He frowned, searching inwardly, thinking back. “You brought me here to try to exorcise whatever spirit or demon might to be inhabiting my brain.” He swayed a little. She reached out, quick as a cobra, caught him, steadied him, then righting a nearby chair, she eased him into it.
“I took you into a very deep state of relaxation, but I couldn’t make contact with the entity. Then Christian interrupted us, and I heard it. I heard it very clearly, as if I were hearing your thoughts. But it wasn’t you. The energy of the message was female and hostile.”
He looked at her, his gaze roaming her beautiful face, flawless skin, those full lips like ripe berries whose juice he required to survive. “What did it say?”
“It said Christian would kill us all and commanded you to attack him.”
He felt his eyes widen, jumped to his feet, knocking the chair over and nearly falling over with it. But he caught himself on the edge of the wooden table that served as his priestess’s altar. “Did I...is he...?”
He couldn’t bear to complete the question.
“He’s all right. I intervened.”
Roland looked around the room again with fresh eyes. The way the bookshelf was split down its center, he could see how his body might have hit it there and caused that exact damage. Then he sought out Rhiannon’s eyes again. “I’m sorry, my love. I’m so sorry. Christian, is he–”
“I had to turn him, Roland. His heart was too near the breaking point. He’d have died if I hadn’t.”
“But...how?”
“Drained him into his tub. Fed him from my veins.” She sighed heavily, seeming both heartbroken and exhausted. “I’ve fed, but not enough. And I cleaned up the mess. so the children wouldn’t see and become frightened.” As she said it, she looked around her wrecked room, sorrow in her eyes.
He let his head fall forward, bracing both hands on the table. The remorse that rose up in him was almost too much to bear.
“It wasn’t you,” Rhiannon said. She came close to him, but he noticed she did not touch him. “It wasn’t you, it was something else.”
“Something you could neither summon, nor evict,” he said. Then shaking his head slowly, he went on. “I cannot be around you and the children. It’s not safe.”
“It wasn’t you, Roland.” She went to a small mini-fridge disguised to look like a wooden stand, and removed a decanter. Its scarlet fluid glinted in the light of the one candle that was still burning low. She poured a glassful and handed it to him. “You were in a deep state of hypnosis, open and extremely vulnerable to suggestion.” He drank deeply from the glass. “I took a huge risk by putting you into such a state. It made you susceptible to this...this whatever it is. In your normal state, you would never have obeyed its command.”
He drained the glass, held it out to her, and she refilled it, then put the decanter away. He drank again, relishing the feel of the blood filling his body, electrifying his cells, infusing him with strength. His head cleared, the headache eased. His body stopped sagging.
“Roland, I will not let you leave us. You’re no danger to any of us. This only happened because of what I did.”
“Do not try to take the blame for this travesty, my love.”
“I will not let you leave us.”
“The children....”
“You would never hurt them. If you hadn’t been under—”
“Rhiannon, if I’m not sure of that, then how in the names of the gods can you be?” He set his glass down hard, noticed that his hand was trembling. “I cannot stay here.”
She gripped his wrist fiercely. “We face things together, Roland. We do not go our separate ways when times are difficult. We will find an answer to this. We will. But only together.”
“I can’t risk—”
“I have help now. Christian, that giant of a man is one of us now. He can help me.”
“A fledgling is going to control a vampire as old as I?” He shook his head. “I’d break him like a toothpick, and you know it.”
“Perhaps. But you couldn’t break me, Roland.”
“I could. And it would kill me.” He went quiet then, looking her up and down more carefully as his blood seemed to turn to ice in his veins. “Did I? Did I hurt you?”
“Pssh. You… hurt me? You flatter yourself, my love.”
He grabbed her then, pulling her against him, snapping his arms around her and holding her, rocking her, kissing her hair. “If I hurt you, gods, if I hurt you, Rhiannon–”
“You didn’t. And you won’t.”
“I can’t trust in that.”
She took a breath she didn’t need to take. A stuttering, tear-laden breath. Then she said, “I’ll get us more help.” And it was but a choked whisper. “I’ll get the one you trust above all others. I’ll get Eric here, darling. He’ll come if we inform him of what’s happening. And he would be the first to tell you if he thought you were a danger to the children and me.”<
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“It will take time.”
“A day, a night, perhaps. The blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things.”
“Long enough for me to hurt you. To hurt the children.”
“They heal, Roland. They heal faster than we do. You know this from what Devlin told us about Sheena and Wolf. They don’t die.”
“Everything dies,” he said softly. “Sooner or later...even us.” He lifted his head, met her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Rhiannon. I’m so sorry for this.”
She pushed her hands through his hair over and over, cradling the back of his head, her face close to his, her eyes pouring her plea into his. “You’ve nothing to apologize for. It wasn’t you. It was something else.” She kissed his face, his nose, his chin. “Hear me now, my love, and doubt me not. I will find her, whoever she is, and I will make her pay.”
He closed his eyes, his pain almost unbearable. To think he had attacked Christian, an innocent. The most innocent being Roland had ever known, and the kindest as well. To think he could have killed that gem of a man, and that his own Rhiannon had to physically restrain him—it was beyond enduring.
He clasped her nape, his forehead resting against hers. “There’s no spirit haunting me, no demon possessing my soul. I fear I’m losing my mind, my love.”
“You are not losing anything. This is not coming from you, but rather it’s being done to you, by someone else. We will solve this, Roland. One way or another, we will solve this. And we’ll do it together.”
The Rhiannon Chronicles Page 13
