I wanted to shout a warning but I dared not give away my presence. I had cloaked myself as completely as I was capable of doing. I’d cast the Glamourie while I’d been speeding through the night. I’d sealed my mind with the impenetrable wall of my will now that the cottage was near, because that creature lurking inside could incinerate me with a glance if it caught a whiff of my presence.
I knew Bouchard wanted the children alive. To her they were lab rats that needed to be returned to their cages. Once they were again under lock and key, she could get back to her work—creating the perfect weapon to exterminate the Undead. She needed the children healthy and well for her experiments. And yes, they’d blown up The Anemone believing the children still aboard, but they must have known how difficult it was to kill the Offspring. The two older ones, Sheena and Wolf, had been shot point blank in the chest with high powered rifles by DPI forces, only to revive moments later, completely healed. Bouchard must know all of this and more.
I was going to kill that bitch. And I was going to enjoy it.
She smiled down at my children. Gareth darted a nervous glance my way. Did he sense me there? Did he know?
“Your sister is inside,” Bouchard said. She got out more slowly than the children had, her mind completely blocked against mine. She was an ordinary looking, pear-shaped, middle-aged, false blond mortal. She did not look anything like the evil that must be her soul.
“But you should let me speak to her before you get too close. She’s a nervous little thing.”
Their sister? Could this be more than just a ploy to get the children to come to her? Could this sister be the one who was supposed to have died around her second birthday? Was she the fire breather, then?
Before Bouchard took a step toward the cabin, its door opened and a little girl stood within it. I was caught completely off guard. She was so pale, she almost seemed ethereal. Her skin so light it nearly glowed, or perhaps it did glow a little when seen through the supercharged lens of a vampire’s eyes. A little cherub, she was, with fine white-blond hair that had never seen a scissor and rarely a comb. She still had a little bit of her baby cheeks, round and soft, and Cupid’s bow lips of palest rose.
Her eyes were in shadow, but I thought they were violet. She stood in the doorway, and Bouchard held up her hands and said, “It’s all right, Gamma…I mean, Blue.” She laughed, a nervous little titter, and I knew she was very afraid of that little girl. She shot a look at the other children. “Your sister has named herself Blue. You three have names now, too, don’t you?”
Nikki nodded hard and said to the child in the doorway, “Blue is a nice name. I’m called Nikki.” And then she blinked and asked. “Are you really my sister?” And I heard the gruff evidence of emotion in her words.
“We are made of the same parents,” the girl in the doorway said. “That means sister, yes?”
Nikki smiled and started to rush forward. Even as I lunged to stop her, Bouchard caught her shoulders and held her back, and so I relaxed into hiding again, awaiting my opportunity. “Easy now, Nikki. Blue hasn’t been around anyone else in a very long time. She’s–”
But Blue came toward Nikki, her steps short and rapid, but not quite running. She pushed past Bouchard, who seemed to try to block her way, and stood facing my sweet little girl. I leaned nearer, ready to intervene in a flash of speed if necessary, even if it got me incinerated.
And yet I sensed no ill intent from the little girl. She was frightened, she was alone, and she was extremely confused. Lifting a hand, she reached out, perhaps intending to touch Nikki’s face, but Nikki’s hand shot up too and met the pale child’s hand in the air. They stood like that, pressing palm to palm, as if they’d planned it that way. As if it was just what one did when one met a long lost sibling.
Something was happening. Some kind of connection. I felt it crackling in the air, and saw it in the way their eyes met and locked. And then the two girls lifted their other hands as if they were sharing the same brain. They moved in tandem, those two tiny hands, up to chest level, and then they pressed together, palm to palm. The pale child’s violet eyes lightened to near pink.
“All right, girls,” Bouchard said nervously, moving behind them, one hand on little Blue’s shoulder. “All right, that’s enough. Let’s get inside and we can, um....”
But the girls remained as they were, eyes intense, palms pressed together.
“What are you doing?” Bouchard demanded. She sounded alarmed now. She turned to the boys, “What are they doing?”
“I don’t know,” Ramses said. “And I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”
I lowered my shields the tiniest bit, enough to send a tendril of my consciousness outward, into my Nikki’s mind. And there was the most intense energy there—rapid fire images, flashing at dizzying speeds. Images and words and feelings. Memories.
It’s a data exchange, young Gareth told me mentally. They’re telling each other everything that’s happened since they’ve been apart. Ramses and I can feel all of it, too. They’ve been very cruel to Blue. They hurt her.
I was still processing that when, apparently having reached the same conclusion, Bouchard grabbed each girl’s shoulder and shouted, “Enough!” wrenching them apart so forcefully that Nikki stumbled and fell to the ground.
I surged out of hiding and ran at her, my hands like claws, my fangs bared, a battle cry worthy of the Bean Sidhe mutilating the air. I flew at her, hit her hard, clasping her to me as my momentum carried us twenty feet further. We only just missed colliding with the little house.
I grabbed Bouchard by her neck, holding her between the children and me as I reached behind me for the doorknob. Blue, the pale child, was glaring at me, and one hand flashed upward, but Ramses moved his own hands, whipping up a whirlwind around the girl’s feet. Sand and dust rose to surround her and she lowered her arms to shield her face.
Then Nikki elbowed him and the wind died. She touched the pale child’s cheek and shook her head side to side. “You mustn’t hurt Rhiannon. She is our mother.”
I wrenched the door open. “Hide yourselves in case more DPI troops arrive,” I told the children. “I’ll only be a moment.” I saw Pandora arrive, breathing fast through a slightly open mouth, and told her, “Stay. Guard the children!” Then as she sat down right beside them, I backed into the house, dragging Bouchard with me and kicked the door closed with my booted foot.
My captive hadn’t struggled. She knew enough about our kind to know it would’ve been useless. She’d gone still, not even fighting me.
“You’ve won the battle,” she said to me. “But not the war. You’ll never win the war.”
“I’ll settle for the battle. For now. Before I kill you, Dr. Bouchard, you will tell me exactly what you put inside my husband’s head, and how to get it out.
The door opened, and I whirled, only to see my Roland limping through. “Sorry to interrupt. I didn’t…I didn’t trust myself out there, alone with the children.” He shot a hateful look at Bouchard. “And I too would like the answer to Rhiannon’s question.”
Bouchard shrugged. “No harm in you knowing that,” she said. “There’s nothing you can do to change it anyway. There’s a camera behind your eye, but you obviously figured that out on your own.” This with a nod toward the patch he still wore.
“And what else? What is in the vial? The fluid in the vial?”
“A powerful drug that makes the brain extremely suggestible. Controlled by me, by remote. I push a button, you get a dose of the drug, and then I speak into a microphone and tell you what I want you to do.”
“Where is this button?” His voice was soft. Dangerously soft. Her eyes darted left, and her mind’s pathetic mortal blocks were weakening beneath her fear. Oh, yes, despite her bravado, she was very afraid of us, now that she was in our hands. Entirely at our mercy.
She should be.
“It’s in her handbag,” I said.
Roland approached the woman, and she cringed. His step, tap, step,
tap approach was slow, building the woman’s fear. He was angry. My Roland never treated anyone cruelly. Never.
Reaching out he snatched her bag from her shoulder, rummaged inside and located a small black device that looked much like a miniature television remote control.
He nodded, pocketed it, and said, “Who else has one?”
“No one.”
He looked at me. “She’s lying isn’t she?”
“Yes, she is.” I tilted my head. “Why don’t we let Pandora toy with her for a while, the way a smaller cat would toy with a rat before killing it and eating it. And not necessarily in that order.”
Roland nodded his head, walking away. “I’ll get Pandora,” he said.
“No, wait, wait….don’t bring that animal in here.” She drew a deep breath.
“Stop blocking us from your mind, Bouchard. Let me in,” I told her. “Lower the blocks and let me in.”
She shook her head. “I can’t. I can’t, I won’t. You’ll kill me anyway.”
“Then we’ll do this the old fashioned way.” I slammed her bodily into a chair, then straddled her and pressed her forehead backward with the palm of my hand. Her neck arched. Her blood pulsed through her jugular even faster, making my mouth water in anticipation.
I opened my mouth and leaned in, deliberately blowing my cold breath onto her skin. She shook her head. “Kill me. I’m dead either way.”
“Oh, I’m not going to kill you,” I said. And I bit down.
Her blood rushed into me, and with it, the last of her defenses melted away. As I imbibed her, I scanned her mind, searching for everything she had tried to keep from me, from us. My mind was open wide to Roland’s so that he could experience everything I did.
There was a drug that she could release into my husband’s brain to make him susceptible to her commands. But there was also an explosive fluid that would go off if anyone tried to remove the device from his mind. As I drank from her, I got all of it, absorbing it as it shot rapid fire from her mind to mine. I saw the volatile chemical compound in a diagram that meant nothing to me. I saw the schematics of the device itself, the fuses and the triggers. I saw the ultra-classified documents and got that only she and her superior, one Colonel Patterson, whose face came clearly into my mind, knew about this project to find and recapture the children.
Roland’s hand came to my shoulder. “It’s enough my love. We might need her alive. For the children. She knows more about them than anyone, and if you keep drinking to learn it all, you’ll kill her.”
I withdrew my fangs, and lifted my head, swiping my chin with one hand and meeting my Roland’s eyes. He stared back, his own darkening with despair such as I had never seen.
I nodded, then turning, I looked at the very pale, unconscious woman.
* * *
“Rhiannon.”
Roland put his hand on his beautiful Rhiannon’s shoulder.
“Come, my love. The children are waiting.”
She blinked at him as if she’d never seen him before, and then the heartbreak that shaped her features almost made him join her in her tears. “My Roland, my Roland,” she said, pressing a hand to his cheek.
“It’ll be all right,” he said. “Rhiannon, the children.”
He took her arm and led her through the place, locating the bathroom easily enough. Then he cranked on the taps, adjusted the water warm, and taking Rhiannon’s hands, ran them beneath it. Then he took a soft cloth and washed the blood from her chin and her lips.
Scarlet spirals whirled down the drain. He shut the taps off again, and then impulsively crushed her to his chest and kissed her hair. “I have loved you, my lady, and will love you, always. No matter what else happens. If any part of me goes on—”
“Don’t say it.”
“If any part of me goes on, then so does our love. Because nothing of me can exist without loving you.”
“Roland, don’t….”
He kissed her mouth to quiet her. He knew their time together was coming to an end. He felt it. The device in his brain would kill him if they tried to remove it. And he could not continue to exist while it remained. It made him a danger to all those he loved. And he would not live that way.
The knowledge was almost too painful to bear. But bear it he did, and led her back through the place, past Bouchard, who was going nowhere for the time being. She would linger for a few hours, and then die, unless they got her some transfusions.
For now, she would keep. He took Rhiannon’s shoulder to lead her outside, but she pulled free.
“No, wait. First I must ensure this one gives us no more trouble.” Then she went to Bouchard.
“Darling, you can’t kill her.”
“Oh, I’m not going to kill her,” she whispered. “Not yet, anyway.” She pricked her own forefinger on one of her razor sharp fangs, just a little, then squeezed it until a droplet of blood emerged. Moving back to Bouchard, she pressed that fingertip between the woman’s lips.
“Rhiannon, what are you–”
“A little trick Sarafina taught me. That Shuvani vampiress has many of them.”
Bouchard’s eyes flew open wide, and she tried to grab hold of Rhiannon’s wrist, but Rhiannon just pulled away. “A drop or two a day, and she’ll be ours to command for as long as we wish it. A mindless drone. She’ll be very useful in our ongoing battle against DPI. And of course, in the meantime....” She looked at Bouchard. “You will contact Colonel Patterson in your usual way.”
“Text message,” she muttered, her eyes unfocused and sleepy.
“Mmm.” Rhiannon looked around the cottage, spotting Bouchard’s handbag on the floor and took her phone from it. She handed it to her. “Tell him all is well. You’ve acquired the children, and you will be returning to The Sentinel in the morning.”
“Yes,” she said, and her fingers tapped out the message on the screen as Rhiannon looked over her shoulder, nodding, and then taking the phone from her.
“Do you have any other way to contact him?”
“No,” she whispered.
“Good. Then you will remain here. You will not open your door or speak to anyone until we return for you. Understood?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Roland did not like what he saw, believed it immoral and indecent to make a mindless slave of a human being. And yet, how could he criticize? This woman had done so much evil. And he knew, too, that Rhiannon’s precautions would keep Colonel Patterson from doing anything drastic, at least for what remained of the night.
He took Rhiannon’s arm. She picked up the remote control device and added it to a deep pocket where she’d already dropped Bouchard’s phone. They went outside to the four children who rose from where they’d been crouching behind a large dark boulder. Pandora was with them, so close she was always touching one or another of them. They stood together, a little group of four siblings, and the resemblance was obvious except for the coloring.
“Go on,” Nikki said to Blue, nudging her forward.
Blue looked at Rhiannon and Roland. “I know….I know everything that has happened.”
Rhiannon said, “Then you know we would never harm you, or your siblings. That we only want to give them a good life, and raise them to be good people, in freedom, never enslaved.”
“Yes,” she said softly.
Nikki nudged her again. “Say the rest, Blue.”
Blue nodded. “I promise not to set you on fire. Not even if you make me mad. I would like….I’d like to stay with…with Nikki and Gareth and Ramses.”
Roland looked to Rhiannon, and she understood his gaze and nodded. “We’ll make sure the four of you remain together. I promise,” she told them. But he heard the catch in her voice. The heartache. It might not be with them, that was what she was thinking. And it was killing her.
“But we must hurry now,” Rhiannon said. “Our friends need us. Come on, get into the car, let’s go.”
“We should take Bouchard somewhere else and burn th
is place, Rhiannon,” Roland said softly. “We must leave no trace that we were ever here.”
“I can do that for you,” the little girl said. And she waved her arm, like a television witch casting a spell. The window smashed, as if she’d thrown something physical through it and the beach house exploded into an instant conflagration. Bouchard didn’t make a sound, not a scream, nothing. It must have been over very quickly for her.
“Hell,” Rhiannon said. “I wasn’t finished with her yet.”
Sighing, she got behind the wheel of Bouchard’s vehicle. “Buckle up, children. We need to go fast.”
* * *
I filled the children in on the way, as gently as I could saying that Roxanne had been hurt very badly. I didn’t tell them it was Roland who had done it to her. I just couldn’t. It hadn’t been him, not really. It had been Bouchard, and justice had been served sizzling hot.
I also told them that their dear Tamara had been burned.
Blue blinked, realizing that was her doing. “I did not know she was good. Dr. Bouchard told me to do it to any vampire who came close, or they would kill me. “
“It’s all right, Blue,” Roland told her. “We know you were misled. All is forgiven.”
I brought the car to a stop near the front door of the Malones’ and we all piled out. “Nikki, I’d like you to take Blue upstairs to your guest room. You children have a lot to catch up on, after all.”
I hustled the children inside. No one was downstairs. I called, “Eric! Tamara?”
“Upstairs!” Maxine bellowed, and we all rushed up there in an almost stampede, Roland hobbling rapidly, only a step or two behind. At the top we turned left, heading toward the sound of Maxine’s voice, but stopping sooner, at Roxanne’s bedroom. Its door stood open, and I gazed inside.
She lay in her bed, eyes closed, peaceful and beautiful. Sitting in a chair beside her was Lou Malone, his shirtsleeves rolled up past his elbow. A small plastic tube ran from his arm to hers, and blood filled the entire length of it.
I felt my brows draw together. “Is she…?”
The Rhiannon Chronicles Page 21
