The Rhiannon Chronicles

by Maggie Shayne

  * * *

  They’d made love the night through, and it was still not enough. Roland almost hoped there was oblivion ahead of him, rather than some afterlife. For any life without Rhiannon in it would be unbearable. Being without Rhiannon would transform heaven into hell for him, and yet, he would not allow her to cross the void by his side. She had to remain, or it had all been for nothing.

  They’d taken the time to shower—together, always together—and then he’d donned one of his finest suits of clothes, along with his favorite cloak. Rhiannon put on a skintight red dress, with a plunging neckline to reveal the swell of her breasts for him, and a slit that went almost to her hip on one side. Hand in hand, they walked outside, beyond the backyard where the children would play, away from the pool area, and they found a green, grassy spot without too many shade trees above it.

  There, Roland spread his cloak on the ground and sat down. He’d carried a bottle of liquid life with him, and two elegant champagne flutes. Rhiannon had borrowed a couple of the tranquilizer darts from Lou Malone’s arsenal. At least it would be painless. She sat on the cloak and laid the darts upon it in front of her.

  Roland poured. Then he took one of the darts, broke it open, and emptied its contents into Rhiannon’s glass. He broke the other one, and pretended to empty its contents into his own.

  Rhiannon lifted her glass and looked down into the ruby red liquid. “We will fall asleep, all entwined around each other. The last thing I’ll feel is your arms around me, and your chest beneath my head. We shall be deeply asleep before the sun rises, and then when it does, our bodies will burn, leaving nothing but ash that will scatter in the breeze. Nothing for the children to find. No trauma for them. And the letters we’ve left behind will explain as well as anything can.”

  “Yes,” he said, waiting, eager for her to drink.

  “Our spirits will fly free. Together, my love. Always together.”

  “Always together,” he said, and he clinked the rim of his glass against hers, drew it to him, and drank. He drank deeply.

  Nodding, her decision made, his beautiful Rhiannon did the same. And then she lay the glass aside and snuggled against him. They were still sitting upright, just wrapped in each other.

  “I love you, Rhiannon. You must always remember how very, very much I love you.”

  She frowned a little, started to lift her head, but only a little. Then it dropped to his shoulder again. “I love you....” she whispered, the words slurred and soft.

  He got to his feet, scooped her up into his arms, and carried her quickly back to the house. When she saw the children’s devastation at losing him, she would understand why she had to stay behind. They needed her. And she needed them.

  He carried her into the house and up the stairs to their bedroom, laid her gently upon the bed where they had made love for the past several hours. And then he bent to kiss her mouth. “Goodbye, my love. Goodbye. Thank you for loving me. You have made my life so precious. You are...everything, Rhiannon. You are everything.”

  It was all he could do to rise from the bed, to leave her, knowing he would never see his beloved again. The pain of that was brutal, and it was the need to escape that pain that gave him the strength to walk away as fast as he possibly could, and make his way back to the spot where his cloak and their empty glasses still lay.

  He refilled his glass. Picked up the dart, and emptied its contents into the red liquid, swirling it with his hand. As he stared at the contents, he knew he had no choice but to follow through. Somewhere a man possessed a remote control that could take command of his brain and cause him to hurt the people he most loved. There was no way to remove the devices implanted inside him. Anyone who tried would die in the effort. And there was no way he could go on living, being a risk to Rhiannon and the children. Nor could he leave them. He would never be able to stay away if he were alive. This was the only way. They both knew it, but Rhiannon was not coming with him into death as she had hoped. He could not allow it.

  He lifted his glass to the sky, and said, “What I do, I do for love. There can be no motivation more pure, and no cause more worthy. If the gods are kind, then one day, I will see my Rhiannon again.”

  Then he drained the glass and flung it against a nearby tree where it shattered. He lowered himself down upon the cloak. Daylight was ten minutes away. He wondered how long it would take the drug to steal away his consciousness, and he put Rhiannon’s face in front of his mind’s eye so it would be the last thing he saw in this life.

  * * *

  I did not understand what was happening when small hands clasped my shoulders, pulling me upright and shaking me.

  I was supposed to be on the other side with my Roland by now. But this did not feel like the afterlife.

  “Rhiannon, wake up!” Nikki cried. She was shaking me, shouting at me. “Where is he? Where is Roland?”

  I pried my eyes open. Her little face swum before me, and my head fell sideways, as if my neck were too weak to hold it. And then I saw Gareth, beside her, and Ramses and Blue at the foot of the bed.

  I was aware of being in our bedroom, and that the sky beyond the window was a deep shade of gray. “Is it night again?”

  “It’s not morning yet. Where is he?”

  I frowned, then, trying to make sense of it all. “Why am I here? I’m supposed to be outside...in the grove with my love.”

  “The grove,” Eric’s voice shouted. “Hurry!”

  I didn’t know who he was talking to, but when the children released me, my body fell back onto my bed, and my eyes fell closed again. Nikki crawled up into the bed beside me. I felt her curl into my arms, her head on my chest, and she whispered, “You can’t go and leave us, Rhiannon. You are our mother, and we won’t let you go.”

  * * *

  When my senses returned to me once again with the setting of the sun, I knew it was night. I felt the arrival of night as I had always done, and I felt my beloved lying close beside me. I sat up suddenly, waking all at once, and I looked down at him. His beautiful face, his chiseled jawline and noble nose, and those eyes of his, which blinked open while I gazed at him in love.

  “Heaven is apparently much like home,” I told him.

  Frowning, he sat up quickly, looking around. “What happened?”

  I shrugged. “I have a vague recollection of....” I blinked. “Of the children. And Eric.”

  Roland looked shocked. He flung off his covers, surged out of the bed, and went running out of the bedroom, his limp more pronounced than ever. He even sucked air through his teeth at the first steps. “Eric, where the hell are you? I know you’re here, I feel you!”

  “Easy, man, you’ll wake the household.” Eric’s voice was casual, and came from further down the hall.

  I quickly got up to go and see what had happened, although I was already piecing it together. Eric had figured out our plan and had thwarted it. That much made sense. What did not was that he had involved the children. We’d wanted to spare them. What if they’d arrived too late only to see us die?

  “How dare you?” Roland asked.

  In the hallway, I saw him advancing on his best friend. His tone was furious. “You have no idea how difficult it was to take this step. It was my decision to make, my life to end. You had no right.”

  “I might say the same to you, Roland,” I said softly. “Tell me, my love, how did I get back into the house? Back into our bed”

  He ignored me. Eric said, “It was a bone-headed decision, and you were in no condition to make it. You’ve got enough hardware in your head to screw up anyone’s thinking. You,” he added, looking at me, “have no such excuse. Thank goodness the children knew what you were up to and came after you here.”

  “The...the children?” Roland asked, turning to meet my stunned eyes.

  “Yes, the children. I didn’t even know what they were up to, but I had to come after them. By the time I arrived, Roland, they were already dragging you up the stairs, feet first.” He smiled a
little. “It was quite the sight, actually.”

  “It won’t matter,” Roland said. “There’s no other option for me.”

  “And I will not live without you. Leave me and I will follow the very next sunrise, I promise you that, Roland. You cannot–”

  “Oh for crying out loud, will you tell them already?” Tamara shouted while racing up the stairs to join us in the hall outside our bedroom. “The melodrama in here is going to reach toxic levels soon.”

  I moved up beside my Roland, unwilling to be furious with him for trying to prevent my death. I was furious with myself for not anticipating he would do something like this.

  “Tell us what?” Roland asked softly, sliding his arm around me and holding me close.

  “Roxanne flew Max and Lou and Christian back there last night,” Tamara said. “To DPI’s Sentinel. They got that stupid remote from Colonel Patterson’s desk, wiped all the computers including the backup servers, and got a little something else, too.”

  Eric pulled a tiny black notebook from his breast pocket, flipped its pages, and then, holding it open, handed it to Roland. It was filled with schematics, drawings, and they were very familiar to me. “I saw all of this when I drank from Bouchard,” I said. “This is everything she knew about the device. How did you get it?”

  “Christian drew it for us. Right after he drank Colonel Patterson dry.”

  “Christian?” My eyes felt wide enough to pop.

  “He was determined that man would never come after the children again,” Tamara said. “He really loves those kids.”

  Roland took the book and we both gazed down at the pages.

  Eric said, “The explosive liquid will not go off at extremely low temperatures, and according to Ramses, he can bring about extremely low temperatures.”

  “I can’t believe–” Roland began.

  “Believe this, my friend,” Eric went on. This is our answer. I’m going to operate on your brain. Gareth is going to keep you from bleeding out while I do and Ramses is going to keep the explosive so chilled that it can’t go off.”

  Roland looked at me, and I stared back at him, hope sparking to life in my chest. He gave his head a subtle shake, not yet ready to believe. “If the children are close to me, and it goes off–”

  “Roland, it’s not going to go off. I wouldn’t risk the children any more than you would. Ramses can chill the explosive down to absolute zero if need be, and we only need it to hit minus twelve.”

  Tamara slipped a hand over Eric’s shoulder. “Don’t you two get it? Thanks to those amazing kids of yours, you’re still alive, and we can take the stupid machinery out of your head and keep you that way. You guys need to work on cultivating a more positive attitude, for crying out loud.”

  There came then, the unmistakable sound of children, banging into the house below and racing through it.

  “Come on, Blue, you have to see the pool!” Nikki shouted.

  My heart, it seemed, was healed by the stampeding of small feet through the house. I felt Roxanne come in behind them, walking slowly with help from Christian, and then I heard Christian’s huge feet pound over the floor after the children, shouting, “Wait for me!”

  I stared into Roland’s eyes. He held my gaze, solemn, and then, slowly, his lips pulled into a smile. I smiled back and then I laughed. “It’s going to be all right,” I said. “It’s truly going to be all right.”

  He laughed too, sweeping me into his arms and picking me up off my feet to twirl me in a circle, but he stumbled a bit, and we both wound up on the floor, laughing all the way down.

  I sat up, running my hands over his hair and feeling weightless and light in a way I don’t think I ever had before. “Thank you, all of you. Thank you for stopping us.” But I couldn’t look away from my beloved husband’s eyes. I loved him so much I ached with it.

  “Yes, my friends. Thank you,” Roland said, his eyes devouring mine.

  I sniffed, brushed away a tear, and got to my feet, reaching down a hand for my love. But he didn’t take it. Instead, still smiling he began unlatching the buckles of his ingenious prosthetic. Taking it off, he held it up. “Perhaps, Eric, you can apply your genius to this device of mine. Something is making it chafe me terribly.”

  Eric took the device as Roland peeled off the sock he wore beneath it, and rubbed the sore spot gently.

  The house had gone quiet as the children raced out the back, but they soon came crashing back inside. “Now you should pick your own room,” Nikki was saying loudly. “You can take the one right next to mine. Or we can share!”

  They came bounding up the stairs as Roland got to his feet, taking my hand and letting me help him.

  The children ran through the hall, spotted us and waved hello, then kept right on going into Nikki’s bedroom, all four of them talking at once about bedrooms, and Halloween, and how they were going to put on disguises and go ‘round saying ‘trick-or-treat’ to get candy from the people in the nearby town.

  The children vanished into Nikki’s room, but then Ramses stepped back out into the hallway again, and he met my eyes.

  Never try to leave us again, those eyes told mine. And then the words that nearly did me in. We need you. And...we love you.

  My heart seemed to swell to bursting. I love you, too, Ramses. We both do. We love you all. And yes, I promise never to try to leave you again.

  Ramses nodded once, then vanished into the bedroom to join his boisterous siblings.

  Eric was examining Roland’s prosthetic and saying, “I don’t see anything wrong with it, Roland,” and then he dropped down into a crouch and looked at the stump that remained of Roland’s long-lost leg. “Oh, now I see the um...problem.”

  He rose again, clapped Roland on the shoulder, and said, “The prosthetic no longer fits, my friend.”

  “You’re mistaken. It fits fine.”

  “It did,” Eric said. “And now, it doesn’t. Roland, your leg is re-growing.”

  Roland was silent. He opened his mouth, closed it, looked down, looked up again. “It’s...growing?”

  Eric nodded and his grin was so wide I thought it could have lit a small city.

  Roland hopped upright on one leg, and hugged me in celebration, and I bounced up and down in his arms and said, “It’s growing! Oh, Roland, you’ll have your leg back!”

  He stepped back from me just enough to stare into my eyes.

  “Everything is going to be all right,” he said softly. “It truly is.”

  “It truly is,” I replied.

  And then he kissed me, and I clung to him as if I would never let him go. Because the truth is, I never will.

  Epilogue

  I stood on the edge of a suburban street in the outskirts of the village of Cornucopia while the children raced to the very first door, rang the bell and shouted “Trick-or-Treat” in unison when it opened.

  A smiling woman, an ordinary mortal, praised their costumes, and dropped candy into their hollow plastic pumpkins.

  Don’t forget to say thank you, I thought at them. And they all obeyed and raced away from the door, heading immediately to the next one.

  Roland and I, dressed as Gomez and Morticia Addams, which really hadn’t involved much creativity aside from drawing a thin mustache on Roland’s upper lip, walked to the next house at a slightly slower pace, never letting the children out of our sight.

  “It’s a relief to have that hardware out of me,” Roland said. “The headaches are gone, and I’m almost feeling like my old self again.”

  “You almost are your old self again,” I told him. He had six inches of new growth on his leg, including a newly formed knee that seemed perfect in every way. “At this rate, you’ll be as good as new by Thanksgiving.”

  I watched the children. They remembered to say thank you on their own this time, and raced to the next house. It was fully dark, of course, and most of the other trick-or-treaters had completed their rounds and returned home by now, but there were a few stragglers. I noticed how
our children avoided interacting with the others, but also how they watched them, curious and wary.

  “Eric has completed his hack into the DPI computers,” Roland said. “He’s convinced Bouchard never recorded anything about where we lived, nor Max and Lou either. She made me track you, but by then you were on that back road in the woods.

  “Which works out very well for us,” I said.

  Ramses and Gareth took a break after five houses to sit on a stump and sample some of their treats. We joined them there. Watching them devour chocolate made me almost envious that I couldn’t imbibe.

  But what I had was ever so much better than chocolate. More precious than diamonds. More rare than snow in the desert. And more vital to me than my own heart.

  What I had was a love that was deep and strong and very old, a love that continued growing bigger and broader with every day of my existence.

  And now it had expanded to include four special children, with powers we still didn’t fully understand and hearts that were like fallow fields. They needed love to fill them. And Roland and I had enough to spare. Enough to fill their little hearts until those vessels were overflowing with it.

  If they could love the way we did, then they would need nothing else in life. If they could love the way we did, then they too, would be the most blessed beings in existence. Just like my Roland and me.

  THE END

  For now....

  Wings in the Night: Reborn

  If you missed the first installment of Wings in the Night: Reborn,

  continue reading for an excerpt from:

  Twilight Guardians

  Or see what other types of immortal creatures

  are part of Maggie Shayne’s world in:

  Eternity (The Immortal Witches, Book 1)

  Twilight Guardians

  Killian Garone was the last of his kind. So yeah, he was lonely. But he’d had no idea what lonely was until her.