The Rhiannon Chronicles

by Maggie Shayne

  “Bring everything you want, Charlotte,” Roxy said. “Anything you leave behind, we’ll replace.”

  Charlie shook her head. “You can’t make me go anywhere. I’m an adult, I can make my own decisions.”

  Her mother didn’t look her in the eye. So they were back to that, were they? “She’s right, Charlie. It’s for the best. You have to go.”

  “I won’t. You don’t want me here, fine. I’ll get my own place. I’ll bunk with a friend till my promotion comes through, but I am not going with her.”

  “Yes, Charlie,” her mother said. She lifted her head, met her eyes, looked stronger than Charlie remembered ever seeing her look. There was determination in those eyes, and resignation and insistence. “You are.”

  She got to her feet again, rising slowly, facing them both, trying to make her voice as firm as her mother’s had been. “I am not letting anyone take control of my life from me,” she said slowly. “Especially not now that I know how little of it I have left.”

  Roxy’s eyes turned sad. “So you know about the side effects of Belladonna.”

  “Only because I read the letter,” Charlie said. “It’s not like anyone seemed to think this was information I might have a right to know.”

  “She’s still in shock,” Trish pointed out. “She only found out a few minutes ago.”

  “You must be reeling, then.” Her grandmother reached out, as if to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, but Charlie dodged it. Shrugging, Roxy dropped her hand to her side. “Don’t be so sure your time is short, Charlotte. I have the antigen too.”

  Charlie frowned at her. “How have you managed not to die?”

  She shrugged. “Clean living? Yoga? Or maybe it’s genetic. I hope for your sake that’s the case. I am the oldest living member of The Chosen, Charlotte.”

  “The Chosen? What the hell are The Chosen?”

  “You are. I am. Everyone with Belladonna is. If you trust me, maybe there’s a slim chance I can keep you alive long enough to become the second oldest.”

  At sundown, Killian woke to the startling absence of Charlie’s essence.

  That sense of nearness, that feeling that he was closer to her than he’d been since he’d started following her siren’s call, was gone. It was just gone.

  He’d jumped to his feet in the cave where he’d spent the day, and for a few seconds, he panicked, pacing in circles like a crazy person, hands in his hair. And then he stopped himself, realized what he was doing. He was the most laid back person he knew. He didn’t freak out.

  I have to get to her. I have to.

  Still, he forced himself to take a few deep breaths, stop acting like a human and use what he had. He didn’t often have to. Oh, once in a while to avoid humans. Never to find one.

  He moved out of the cave, out of the woods, onto the road where it was open and he could feel more. Then he stood there, closed his eyes and opened his mind.

  Charlie. Charlie. I know you’re out there somewhere. Charlie O’Malley. Make yourself known to me.

  Suddenly he stopped, because he felt her. Not near. Far away and getting farther, but he felt her. She was still there, inside his head, just not as strongly as she’d been before.

  Are you real? she whispered inside his head. If you are, come and find me. I want to see you. Touch you. Know that I’m not losing my mind.

  Killian was stunned. Never had any human being ever spoken to him telepathically. He hadn’t thought it was possible.

  I’m coming, he told her, though he had no idea if she could hear him.

  Now, hours later, he was following his sense of her along a mostly deserted stretch of forgotten road that ran more or less adjacent to I-84. He stopped in a spot where the trees thinned out and exposed the vast expanse of sky. There were crickets chirping like a symphony, birds calling out here and there. He heard an owl hoot, then a nighthawk’s triumphant cry and the squeak of the mouse it had captured. He felt the breeze on his face and smelled a dozen piney scents and a thousand others. Tipping his head back, he looked at the stars. Galaxies upon galaxies.They made him feel small. And they made him feel alone. More alone than any person could ever have been.

  He’d never been this lonely before her. He’d been so close...so close to her, only to have her run away.

  But he was close again now.

  A car door slammed, and a girl’s voice, raised in what felt like frustration more than anger said, “Are you kidding me? This is the middle of nowhere.”

  And then he felt that very familiar buzz of awareness vibrating through his psyche, the one that was jacked up, more powerful than any he’d felt before.

  “Is there even cell service out here?” asked the girl. It was Charlie. He was closer than he’d ever been, hearing her actual voice for the first time. The buzzing intensified, high pitched and vibrating in the base of his skull. He tipped his head back and shivered. What the hell was this?

  Killian opened his senses wide, smelling, tasting the air, feeling her energy and honing in on it to the exclusion of everything else. He knew he’d be better off staying far from her, far from every human. But he couldn’t help himself. Her emanations were racing up and down his spine in a rush of awareness that was sensual. Delicious. Arousing. Even more than they had already been, because he was so much closer now.

  He followed his sense of her off the road and across a field of buttercups and Indian paintbrushes and tall lush grasses that brushed the legs of his jeans and sent puffs of pollen into the night air as he passed. Then he headed through a copse of small evergreens. Red pine, he thought. Their scent was so powerful, and his sense of smell so expanded that it nearly overwhelmed him—that redolence, that tang. He could taste it, the smell was so potent. But it was her smell that drew him.

  He kept moving forward, but he was far from stealthy as the essence of her grew stronger the closer he got, until suddenly, she was everywhere around him and all through him. Her scent. The sound of her voice. The frequency of her soul, like a radio signal he was tuning in to. He was driven, like a hound on the scent, ignorant of everything else around him, walking through briars and not feeling their thorns, plowing through undergrowth instead of picking his way around it. He had to get closer. To see her. To touch her.

  To taste her.

  The bloodlust came to life inside him, so closely tied to sexual arousal in his kind that there was no separating the two. Feeding was an orgasmic experience for a vampire. Drinking blood from her, that would be explosive. And so he crept nearer to get a look at her and, he told himself, that was all he would do. But it felt like a lie.

  * * *

  Find Twilight Guardians on Smashwords.

  * * *

  Eternity

  I always knew I was a witch.

  The definition of the word has since broadened somewhat, and rightly so, I imagine. Today anyone with the determination to learn and practice the Craft of the Wise can call herself—and deservedly—a witch. But in my time there were no books written to guide a seeker, save the books of the witches themselves, but the grimoires were kept secret. Back then one was only a witch if one was born to, or adopted by, another witch. And even then the young one wasn’t told all of the secrets. Some of them I didn’t learn until much later.

  My mother was a wise woman, a witch, and from the time I was very young I was taught the ways of drawing on the power of the sun and the moon and the stars and of nature itself. Above all else, I was taught the importance of keeping all that I learned secret. For the penalty meted out to practitioners of the Craft in those days was harsh. Mother never told me just how harsh. I learned that when I was twenty and one, in a lesson so cruel its memory remains burned in my mind, though three full centuries have passed. And yet it was because of that cruelty that I first set eyes upon Duncan Wallace.

  The key to my mother’s ruin was her kindness. My father had died only a fortnight before, of a plague her simple folk magic could not fight. Many lives were lost in our small English villa
ge that brutal winter of 1689, and perhaps my mother simply could not bear to see one more death after so much grief.

  At any rate, it was Matilda, the sister of my dead father, who came pounding on our door that dark wintry night. Looking startled at Aunt Matilda’s state—wild hair and wilder eyes and not so much as a cloak about her shoulders—Mother drew her inside and bade her take the rocking chair beside the hearth to warm herself. I offered tea to calm her. But Aunt Matilda seemed crazed and refused to sit down. Instead, she paced in agitated strides, her skirts swishing about her legs, her thin slippers leaving damp footprints on our wood floor.

  “No time to sit an’ sip tea,” she told us. “Not now. ‘Tis my youngest, my little Johnny, named for my own dear brother who has gone to his reward. My Johnny has taken ill!” She whirled and grabbed my mother, gripping the front of her dress in white-knuckled fists. “I know you can help him. I know, I tell you! An’ if you refuse me now, Lily St. James, I vow–”

  “Matilda, calm yourself!” My mother’s firm voice quieted the woman, though only for a moment, I feared. “I would never refuse to help Johnny in any way I can. You know that.”

  “I don’t know it!” my aunt shrieked. “Not when you let your own husband die of the same ailment! Pray, Lily, why didn’t you save him? Why didn’t you save my brother?’’

  My mother’s head lowered, and I saw the pain flare anew in her eyes—a pain that sometimes dulled but never died away.

  “I tried everything I knew to help Jonathon. But I couldn’t save him,” she whispered.

  “Perhaps because you brought the illness on him from the start.”

  “Aunt Matilda!” I stepped between the two, forgetting to respect my elders and tugging my aunt’s arm until she faced me, rather than my mother. “You know better. My parents shared a love such as few people ever know, and I’ll not stand by and hear you sully its memory.”

  “Raven, don’t,” Mother began.

  But I rushed on. “No one can bring on such a plague as this, and well you know it!”

  “No one but a witch, you mean, don’t you, Raven? Raven. She even named you for some dark carrion bird. Are you practicing the black arts as well, girl?” Aunt Matilda gripped my shoulders, shook me. “Are you? Are you?”

  I could only blink in shock and stagger backward, pulling free of her chilled hands. My aunt knew. But how? How could she know the secret that had been only between my mother and me? Even my father had been unaware....

  “What makes you say such a thing?” my mother asked gently. “How can you accuse your own sister?”

  “Sister-in-law and not by blood,” Matilda reminded my mother. “And I know. I’ve always been suspicious of you and your Pagan ways, Lily. From the time you helped me birth my firstborn and somehow took away the pain. And later, when you nursed me through the influenza that should have killed me. You with your herbs and brews.” She waved a hand at the drying herbs that hung upside down in bunches from our walls, and at the jars filled with philters and powders, lining the roughly hewn wooden shelves. “No physician could ease my suffering the way you did.” She said it unkindly, made it an accusation.

  Slowly my mother nodded, her serene expression never changing. “Herbs and plants are given by God, Matilda. Knowing how to use His gifts can surely be no sin.”

  “I saw you last full moon.”

  The words lay there, dropped like blows, as we stared at one another, my mother and I, both remembering our ritual beneath the full moon, when we chanted sacred words ‘round a balefire at midnight.

  “I know you have...powers. And I don’t care if they’re sinful or not. Not now. I need you to help Johnny. If you didn’t conjure this plague, then prove it. Cure him, Lily. If you refuse....” Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t finish.

  “If I refuse, you’ll do what, dear sister? Bear witness against me to the magistrate? See me tried for witchery?”

  Matilda didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. I saw her answer in her eyes, and my mother saw it as well.

  “You’ve no need of such threats,” Mother told her. “All you had to do was ask for my help. I’ll try my best for your son, just as I did for Jonathon. But witchery or no, I may not be strong enough to help him.”

  “If he dies, I vow, I’ll see you hang!” Aunt Matilda lurched toward the plank door, tugging it open on its rawhide hinges. “Gather what you need and come at once. I must make haste back to his bedside.”

  She left us in a swirl of snow, not bothering to close the door. I went and shut out the weather, then stood for a long moment, my hand on the door. I had a terrible premonition that the events of the past few moments would somehow change our lives forever. I didn’t know how, or why, but I felt it to my bones. Drawing a deep breath, I turned to face my mother. I knelt before her, taking her hands in mine, staring up into eyes as black as my own. “Don’t go to him,” I begged her. “You cannot help him any more than you could help Father. And when he passes, she’ll blame you.”

  “He is my own nephew,” she whispered. She tugged her hands away, got to her feet, and began to make ready, taking sprigs of herbs from the dried bunches hanging on the wall, pouring a bit of this powder and a bit of that into her special cauldron. The one with the hand-painted red rose adorning its squat belly. She added steamy water from the larger cast-iron pot that hung in the fireplace to the brew.

  “We should leave this village,” I pleaded as I worked at her side, measuring, stirring, holding my hands above each concoction to push magical energy and healing light into it. “We should leave tonight, Mother. Our secret is known, and you’ve told me how dangerous that can be.”

  “I can’t break my vows,” she said. “You know that. When someone needs help, asks me for help, I am bound by oath and by blood to try. And try I will.” She looked into my eyes. “You should pack a bag and go to London. Take the horse. Leave tonight. I’ll send for you when—”

  “I won’t leave you to face this alone,” I whispered, and I flung myself into her arms, stroking her raven hair, so like my own, though hers was knotted up in back while mine hung loose to my waist. “Don’t ask me to, Mother.”

  Her mouth curved in the first smile I’d seen cross her lips since my father’s death. “So strong,” she said softly. “And always, so very stubborn. All right, then. Come, let us hasten to Johnny.”

  We quickly packed our potions and some crystals and candles into a bag, pulled our worn homespun cloaks over our heads and shoulders, and stepped out into the brutal winter’s night.

  But my cousin was dead before we even arrived at my aunt’s house. And we were greeted by a wild-eyed woman who’d once claimed us as kin, and the group of citizens she’d roused from slumber, all bearing torches and shouting, “Arrest them! Arrest the witches!”

  Cruel hands gripped my arms, even as I turned to flee. Accusations rang out in the night, and people stood round watching as my mother and I were surrounded, and then dragged over the frozen mud of the rutted streets. I cried out to my neighbors, begging for help, but none was forthcoming. And my heart turned cold with fear. As cold as the wind-driven snow that wet my face.

  ‘Twas a long walk, the longest walk of my life. The poor shacks of the village fell away behind us as we were pulled and pushed along, and we emerged onto the cobbled streets that ran between the fine homes of the wealthy in the neighboring town. At last we stood before the house of the magistrate himself, trembling in the icy wind while our accusers pounded upon his door.

  The man emerged in his nightclothes after a time, looking rumpled and irritated. “What’s all this?” he demanded, white whiskers twitching.

  Two witches!” shouted the man who gripped my mother’s arms tightly. The ones who brought this plague on us all, Honor.”

  The old man’s eyes widened, then narrowed again as he perused us. Beyond him I could see the glow of a fire in a large hearth, and feel its heat on my face. I longed to go warm my hands by that fire. My fingers were already numb from the cold. />
  “What evidence have you against them?” the magistrate asked.

  The word of this one’s own sister,” said another, pointing at my mother.

  “Matilda is not my sister,” my mother said, her voice ever calm, despite the madness around her. I would never forget her face, beautiful and serene. Her eyes, so brave, no hint of fear in them. “She is the sister of my husband.”

  “Your husband who died of the plague!” the man cried out. “And now your nephew is taken as well.”

  “Many have been lost to the plague, sir. Surely you wouldn’t accuse every bereaved family of witchery?”

  The man glared at my mother. “Matilda St. James bears witness, Honor. She’s seen them practicing their dark rites with her own eyes.”

  “‘Tis a lie!” I shouted. “My aunt is maddened with grief! She knows not what she says!”

  “Silence.” The magistrate’s command sent shivers down my spine. He stepped forward, glancing down at the woven sack my mother still clutched in her hands. “What have you there, woman?”

  Mother lifted her chin, meeting his gaze. I could see the thoughts moving behind his eyes, the way he looked at us, judging us, though we were strangers to him.

  “‘Tis only some herbs,” she said softly, “brewed in a tea.”

  “She lies,” the man said. “Matilda St. James said this woman was bringing a potion to cure her young son. But she feared the witch would deliberately wait until it was too late to help the lad, and her fear proved true. A witch’s brew lies in that sack, Honor. Nothing less, I vow.”

  “‘Tis no potion nor brew,” my mother told him. “‘Tis simply some medicinal tea, I tell you.”

  “Are you a physician, wench?” the magistrate demanded.

  “You know that I am not.”

  “Give me the sack.”

  The hands holding my mother’s arms eased their grip, and she gave her sack over. The magistrate opened it, pawing its contents, and I shuddered recalling the stones we’d put inside. Glittering amethyst and deep blue lapis, for healing. And the candles, made by our own hands and carved with magical symbols to aid in Johnny’s recovery. We would have set them around his bed, where they would have burned all night to protect him from the ravages of the plague.