The Rhiannon Chronicles

by Maggie Shayne

  “I believe you’re turning into a pirate my love.” I glanced at his prosthetic leg, and then at his eye patch. “All you need is a parrot for your shoulder.”

  He smiled at me, and I saw the relief in his eyes, the hope. He hadn’t had that before when he’d believed his sanity had reached its end. He was much better than he had been when he’d left my side earlier. Even knowing now how difficult removing this device might be, at least we knew it was possible. We had a plan of action, we knew what to do. Calling Eric Marquand was surely the right move.

  “Dawn approaches, my wench. And I’m quite eager to take you to bed.”

  I smiled slowly, took his hand and drew him up the stairs.

  * * *

  At sunset, after waking, after showering and dressing for the night ahead, I went to Christian’s room, tapped the door, and then went inside. “Hello my dear friend. How are you feeling?”

  He was up. Dressed. I saw the empty pitcher, tinted red, on the nightstand and knew by the scent it was fresh. Roxanne was spoiling him, and I was glad of that. He deserved it.

  He didn’t answer me, so I went to his bed and sat down, patting a spot beside me. He only stood there, near his dressing table, looking at me. “I wasn’t ready.”

  “You would have died.”

  “Not if Roland hadn’t...hadn’t....” His eyes welled up.

  “Yes, even if Roland hadn’t done what he did, you would have died. You know that. A spider on your arm in the bath could have startled you enough. Or a snake, slithering through the grass and across your bare toes. Anything could have trigged your heart to explode, Christian. At any time. Waiting was risking your life. It had to be done.”

  He lowered his head. “So it’s okay with you, what he did?”

  “I threw him bodily across the room so hard that he hit the bookcase and split it in half.”

  His eyebrows rose first, then slowly his head followed, baby blue eyes widening in surprise. “You did?”

  “I did. But I want you to know, it wasn’t his fault, what he did.”

  He nodded. “That’s what Roxy said. She told me something’s wrong with him.”

  I nodded. “The good news is, we now know what. DPI put some kind of machine into his brain while they held him captive. They can give him commands, and they can see what he sees. We’re not sure what else it can do, but we do know we have to get it out of him. And until we do, the children are not safe here.”

  Christian blinked. “You want me and Roxy to take them back to Max and Lou’s place?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.” We were still unsure whether DPI might have tracked us to that location, but since they’d seen no sign of anyone watching the place it seemed a safe enough first step. I’d spoken to Maxine, who told me she did, indeed, have a device that could tell us within a few seconds whether there was a GPS hidden inside my husband’s brain.

  “But last time–” Christian began.

  “You’ll have more help this time. You, my friend, are going to get to meet a very important vampire, and Roland’s best friend. Eric Marquand. He’s come to help us.”

  “He has?”

  “Um-hm. His wife is here too. Her name is Tamara and you’re going to love her. She’s going to help you with the children.”

  He nodded slowly, but still looked like a broken man. I ran a hand over his hair and said, “I’m so very sorry for what Roland did to you, Christian. But he was not in control of himself. DPI was pulling his strings as if he were a puppet. And he feels terrible.”

  “Worse than terrible.” Roland’s voice came from the hall. I’d left the door open, and he stood there now, his face a picture of remorse aside from the patch on his eye, which to me, looked sexy and vaguely menacing. “Christian, I am more sorry for attacking you, for frightening you that way, than I’ve ever been for anything in recent memory. I can’t apologize deeply enough. But I’m going to make it up to you, somehow. I promise, I will.”

  Christian looked at Roland for a long moment, and then he said, “Are you going to be okay?”

  “I hope so,” he said. “But either way, what happened between us will never ever happen again. I can guarantee you that.” Roland came further into the room, approached Christian, offered his hand. “Can you ever forgive me?”

  Christian stared at his hand for a moment, then his lips quivering, he swung his big arms around Roland and hugged him hard enough to break him in two.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Roland grunted, wobbling a bit.

  When Christian finally released him, he was smiling. “I’m ready to do whatever you guys need me to. Whatever you need. I want to help.”

  “Thank you, Christian,” Roland told him. “You are a part of this, you know. A part of our family. I hope you realize that.”

  Christian blinked as if stunned. “I didn’t. But...” Then his lips split into a huge smile. “But I do now.” And he hugged Roland again.

  If he squeezed my husband any harder, I thought the device might simply pop out of his brain.

  I left the two to continue their conversation and went to place a telephone call to Lucas on the cell phone that was supposed to be a secure line. He didn’t answer, so I left a message. “I need the name of the surgeon who operated on my husband during our brief separation.” I said no more. It would be enough.

  Lucas was back in the military by now, reassuming his position as a lieutenant in the DPI. He would have access to information that we did not.

  If he kept his word. If he wasn’t lying when he said he intended to work from within as a spy for our kind. If he wasn’t truly waiting for a chance to march us at gunpoint into a blazing sunrise.

  Only time would tell.

  * * *

  The hardest part of the entire night was breaking the news to the children. I had so wanted to give them a normal life.

  No, not a normal life, exactly. We were not normal people, nor were they normal children. But I wanted to give them a home, stability, security, and love. I wanted them to have a childhood filled with fun and wonder and spoiling now and then. And now, no sooner had they settled in and begun to feel secure, than we had to uproot them yet again.

  Furthermore, I had no reason to expect them to cooperate with us any more than they had the last time I’d left them in the care of others to help my Roland.

  As Maxine and Lou Malone waited in the driveway in a large van with their company logo on the side, Nikki cried and wrapped herself around me. She begged and pleaded with me not to send her away.

  I set her down, dried her tears, and crouched low. Her brothers stood on either side of her, trying to be stoic. “Look at you, all three of you. You’re feeling emotions. You’re feeling sad, and that is such a good thing. Not a good feeling, I know that. I’m feeling it too, and not enjoying it at all. But it’s good to be able to feel. It’s very good.”

  “It doesn’t feel good,” Gareth said softly.

  “I know. I’m going to be honest with you now. So I want you to listen. Those DPI people put something inside Roland’s head. They’ve been watching us through his eyes, and they could come at any time and find you here. That’s what they wanted the whole time. That’s why they didn’t chase us when we broke him out. Because they wanted him to be with you, so they could watch you, and learn your secrets, and when they are ready, they will come and try to take you back. You must agree, none of us want that.”

  “I could fix Roland,” Gareth said. “I could fix him if only he wasn’t a vampire.”

  “I know you would help him if you could, darling.” I put my hands on his shoulders, met his eyes. “The things are in his brain. They have to come out very carefully. Even if you could fix him yourself, we would need a surgeon or we could do more damage, and we’ve learned the hard way that not every injury a vampire suffers, repairs itself during the day sleep. Haven’t we?”

  He sighed, lowered his head.

  “We won’t be apart for very long, darlings. Two nights, perhaps three. We need
to find the surgeon and make him perform the operation, and then we’ll be together again. All right?”

  “I don’t want to go. I love my room.” Nikki stomped a foot.

  “Roxy and Christian have packed piles of your things to go with you. You’ll have a room at Maxine and Lou’s, all your own, and you can fill it with your own things. It’s only for a few days at most. I promise.”

  Then I hooked a finger under her chin and made her look at me. “And you must not run away. No matter what, you must not run away. We are doing all of this to protect you, to make sure you never return to those cages you hated so much.”

  “I know,” she said, sighing heavily.

  “And I want you, all three of you, to remember the talk we had about hurting people who are our friends.”

  She nodded. The boys did as well.

  “I’m putting you in the safest place I can think of. I need to know you will be all right, or I cannot help Roland. And I’ll report in every day to tell you how things are going. All right?”

  “Where is this doctor?” Ramses asked. “Where is Roland?”

  “Roland is going to come downstairs to see you before you leave. But we don’t know if DPI can hear what he hears, or even read his thoughts. So you have to settle for a hug, and not say any words that might give it away. We don’t want to give them a clue where you are going. Or even that you’re leaving at all.”

  I would not tell them any more. If they knew we were heading back to The Sentinel, they would be there with us. Especially Ramses. Of all of them, he was the most like me, despite that everyone thought it was Nikki. It was Ramses. He was furious right now. And I saw through his questions. “Two days, Ramses. Give me two days to make this right. And we can resume our lives together.”

  His jaw was clenched in a hard line, but it softened when I whispered, “You can take Pandora with you.”

  He and my cat had bonded quite thoroughly. In fact, she was sitting beside the children in a way that seemed to state emphatically that she was on their side, not mine, in whatever conflict we might be having.

  Still, I felt Ramses surrender and my muscles seemed to unclench.

  “Roland?” I called.

  He came down the stairs, limping a bit more than he had been the night before, his eye patch in place.

  Gareth broke free of the other two and ran to him, and Roland scooped him up and held him close. The other two went to join them, wrapping their arms around his legs until they all fell over, hitting the floor in a tangle of limbs and one prosthetic. He hugged them and said, “Two nights from now we are going to carve those pumpkins into fine Halloween Jack-o-Lanterns.”

  “To scare the demons away?” Nikki asked.

  Roland sat up, holding the children close. Nikki was on his lap, and he had an arm around Gareth on one side and Ramses on the other. “To scare anything and everything away. We’ll light them with candles, and set them on the front porch to frighten anyone who happens by.”

  “Who would be scared of a pumpkin?” Ramses asked.

  “That’s just the beginning,” Roland went on. “We’ll put on costumes. Disguise ourselves as ghosts or goblins or ghouls...or even vampires.” He bared his fangs and the kids grinned. “And then on All Hallow’s Eve, we, all of us, will prowl the nearest village, visiting one house after another, knocking on doors. And when those doors open, do you know what happens?”

  “We bite them!” Nikki shouted.

  Roland laughed, a deep chuckle. “We say the magic words. ‘Trick-or-treat.’”

  “I knew that,” Gareth said. “Roxy told us.”

  “Did Roxy mention the bags? We carry bags or buckets with us. The bigger the better. And as we say the magic words...what were they again?”

  “Trick-or-treat!” they all shouted at once.

  “Yes. Trick-or-treat. As we say them, we hold up our bags or buckets. And people put treats into them.”

  “That’s what Roxy said.” Nikki frowned. “But she didn’t say what treats are.”

  “Treats,” Roland said, “are candy.”

  Her brows lifted. “Candy? Like chocolate?”

  “Chocolate bars and candy corn, and popcorn balls all coated in caramel. Lollipops and chewing gum. Sweets and confections galore.”

  “Wow,” Gareth whispered. “Why haven’t we done this before?”

  “Because it only works on one special night of the year. Halloween night. And do you know when Halloween night is?” He pulled out a phone, tapped its screen to show them the calendar. “It’s in two weeks.”

  “How many nights is that?” Gareth asked.

  “Fourteen nights.”

  “That’s too long,” Nikki said.

  “It’s just long enough. It takes time to come up with the perfect costume, after all. For the next couple of nights, I would like you to give some thought to what you would like to wear. You can dress up as anything you want to be on Halloween. Anything at all. A gorilla or a princess. An angel or a devil. So give it some thought. I found you this, to give you some ideas.” Reaching behind him, he pulled a rolled up catalogue from where he’d tucked it into the back of his trousers. It was a two-inch thick book of Halloween costumes for children.

  “And in a couple of days, when you’ve decided, we’ll start creating your costumes. All right?”

  “All right,” Nikki said.

  “Okay,” Gareth said.

  Ramses shrugged, but took the catalogue and began leafing through it.

  Roxy and Christian were outside, waiting with Max and Lou in the van. Roland hugged each of the children tenderly, and then turned to go back up the stairs. When he was behind a closed door, I sniffled, stiffened my spine, and said, “All right my loves. It’s time to go. Be good children. We’ll be together again very soon.”

  And then I gathered them together and led them out to the waiting car, though it broke my heart to do so.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sarah Bouchard had been awakened by a phone call an hour before her alarm would’ve gone off. Muttering under her breath, she rolled over in her bed, and looked at the caller ID. Colonel Patterson. Of course it was. There wasn’t anyone else likely to phone her before sunrise. She brought the phone to her ear, and he spoke before she could even say hello.

  “We have a problem. Are you near your computer?”

  “I don’t sleep with it, sir.” Damn, that was insubordinate. She cleared her throat and added. “Sorry, sir. Half asleep. Give me a minute.” She slid out of bed and winced at the chill. Nights were getting colder and she figured it was time to turn up the heat. It had probably been time for a few weeks now, she just hadn’t remembered to do it. Too much else going on.

  She yanked a heavy robe around her, a spa robe in a French vanilla kind of color. It was heavy and like new after five years of wear. She’d bought it from the hotel spa during her last vacation.

  Shoving her bare feet into a pair slippers, she headed into the living room to take her heavy duty, military-grade laptop out of the locked gun safe where she kept it. Her ID was in a lock box in the den and she went after that next. She had to insert the card to activate the computer, so she didn’t keep them in the same place.

  She didn’t mind the extraordinary precautions. The projects she worked on for DPI were sensitive and extremely classified. She had the highest security level the government issued. Higher than the president’s. She wasn’t even sure the president knew it existed. But her work was important. She was trying to save the human race. No matter what all the bleeding heart liberals out there called it. They didn’t have a clue. And they didn’t need one, either. They just needed their government to keep them in the dark, feed them a lot of shit, and let them grow like mushrooms in blissful ignorance.

  They didn’t know that’s what they needed, but that’s what they needed. Idiots.

  Setting the laptop on the kitchen counter and turning it on, she put a K-cup on to brew. The phone tucked between her ear and shoulder, she fixed her coffee
while the computer booted up and connected.

  “Okay I’m online. What am I looking for?”

  “Last night’s surveillance,” he said.

  She lifted her brow. The surveillance was by way of a remote camera implanted behind the vampire Roland de Courtemanche’s eye. She quickly pulled up the feed, which was silent. A microphone would’ve been too easily discovered. Put it near another mic or a speaker and the vampire would get that screeching feedback noise, which was hard to mistake for anything else. Even for an antique like de Courtemanche.

  Watching the night’s surveillance feed was like watching an old horror flick. Vampires didn’t show up in video, so there were a lot of shots of doors opening and closing by themselves, furniture sinking beneath the weight of an invisible backside, wine glasses full of blood rising in unseen hands. The wine glass would pour itself into empty space, and the contents would vanish. Like a magic trick.

  “What am I looking for, boss?” she asked.

  “Go to oh-three-hundred. About ten after, actually.”

  She sped to that point, then stopped, leaned forward, stared at the screen. “Is that a…is that a medical clinic?” She was seeing through the vampire’s eyes, but what she saw looked an awful lot like…. “Is he having an X-ray?” She was about to point out that there was no one behind the glass partition to run the machine but she bit off the stupid comment. There was someone there all right. Someone who didn’t show up on video. And she seriously doubted it was his wife. The self-proclaimed queen of the Undead—bitch-queen if you asked Sarah—was a product of a time and culture that no longer existed.

  There was a lot of nothing after that. The view of the clinic’s hallway as de Courtemanche walked through it, the view of a dashboard as he rode in a car’s passenger side. Occasional glimpses of the empty driver’s seat and a steering wheel that moved as if all by itself. He hardly ever looked up to give her a hint of the scenery outside the car. But she kept watching, praying he would.

  Then there was the front of an all-night drug store. And finally, an eye patch, floating toward her from within the monitor screen, growing larger until it blocked everything. Complete blackout.