SONS of DON

by Brenda L. Harper

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “How many other people know? Does Morgan know?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think he knows everything.”

  “What does he know?”

  “That’s you’re special. He’s been told to watch out for you.”

  “By whom?”

  Rhein didn’t answer.

  Gwen turned to demand something, anything, out of him. To hell with all of this playing games. She didn’t care about his stuff, didn’t care where he lived or who he lived with. She didn’t even care that he had just talked a crazed goddess out of killing her. She just wanted some answers.

  But she didn’t expect them to come from Cei.

  He’d come in without Gwen being aware of it. She stepped back right into Rhein’s office chair, scraping the back of her heel.

  “Gwen…”

  “What is he doing here?”

  “I called him,” Rhein said. “You need to talk to him.”

  “I don’t need to talk to anyone. I need to get the hell out of here.”

  She marched toward the door, but Cei was on her in a second, grabbing her arm and pulling her back against his chest. She jerked her arm free, but he was quicker than she, grabbing her shoulder and pushing her until she slammed against the wall.

  “You’re hurting me.”

  “You’re going to hurt a lot more if you don’t listen to me.”

  “I have no interest in what you have to say.”

  “Then what are you going to do, Gwen? Are you going to run away for the rest of your life? Are you going to pretend you don’t need other people forever?”

  “I don’t need anyone.”

  “You do.” His grip loosened on her shoulder as his other hand moved slowly over the length of her arm. “You need someone who cares enough about you to protect you from what’s coming.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “A war, Gwen,” he groaned against her ear. “There’s a war coming, and you are smack dab in the middle of it.”

  ***

  She stopped fighting him, but she wouldn’t sit next to him when he offered her a place on the edge of the loveseat. She sat in a club chair instead, watching the two boys she was most attracted to sit tensely across from each other on opposite couches.

  “What war?”

  Cei studied her face for a moment before his gaze moved over Rhein. He’d been watching Rhein since they sat down, as though he was trying to read his thoughts, or trying to discern from his behavior how Gwen had come to be in his company in the first place.

  “It began many years ago, before the Battle of the Trees. There was always a little uneasiness between the dark and the light, but they managed to work together to keep the universe balanced. But then Gwydion’s brother stole a couple of dogs from Bran…stupid, really. He only did it as a practical joke, but Bran has no sense of humor and everyone knew it.”

  “A war started over the theft of a couple of dogs?”

  “The feud between the Hatfields and McCoys started over the theft of a pig,” Rhein said.

  Gwen shook her head. “The pettiness of men.”

  Cei shot her a dark look, but chose not to further acknowledge her remark.

  “They went back and forth for a while, little scrimmages here and there. And then the Battle of the Trees. Bran was angry afterward, felt like Gwydion had made a fool of him. He vowed revenge, and that was really the beginning of the war. Things got out of hand very quickly, and they were battling it out on a daily basis, almost.”

  “But that was hundreds of years ago.”

  “Millennia,” Rhein corrected.

  “Millennia,” Gwen conceded. “What does it have to do with now?”

  “Bran cursed the sons of Don. He forced them into Annwn, the Welsh Underworld, with a curse that was so powerful that all the most powerful gods and goddesses left free were unable to find a way to break it. It seemed as though Bran had finally gotten the final victory in the war. The balance of light and darkness began to shift, the world falling into a crazy sort of disarray as dark became the dominant power.”

  “And then they found out the curse could be reversed.”

  Cei nodded. “It was foretold that a demigod, a child born of a god or goddess of light and a human could reverse the curse with the right ritual.”

  “Then why hasn’t it already happened?”

  Rhein snorted as he climbed off the couch and walked over to a minibar Gwen hadn’t noticed tucked into a corner of the room and poured himself a glass of soda.

  “The darkness is stronger than the light. Every time a suitable candidate is born, they find out about it and have it killed.”

  “Fifteen they’ve killed over the last three hundred years,” Rhein offered.

  “Fifteen?”

  Cei nodded, sadness filling his eyes. “We’ve done what we could, but they always managed to outsmart us, somehow.”

  Gwen leaned forward a little, resting her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands. She felt like an eager child listening to a fairy tale at her father’s knee.

  “How many are left?”

  Cei and Rhein exchanged a look.

  “Is it that bad?”

  “It’s bad,” Rhein said.

  “That’s why you’re so important, Gwen. And it’s why we didn’t tell you the truth. We didn’t want to freak you out before it was necessary.”

  “But don’t you think it might have been necessary after the first time Branwen attacked me?”

  Cei glanced at Rhein again, but Rhein shrugged.

  “It wasn’t me. She knew her name before I could tell her.”

  “How did you know her name?”

  “Bran.”

  Alarm registered on Cei’s face. He jumped to his feet and grabbed her wrist, pulling her to her feet.

  “Where did you meet Bran?”

  She jerked her arm back, stumbling backward when he let her go unexpectedly. She fell into the chair.

  “I don’t think you have room for demands right now,” she said. “You’re the one who’s been lying to me since the day we met.”

  “I haven’t lied. I’ve just omitted a few things.”

  “You lied.” She looked up at him, pulling herself up to a respectable position to offer maybe a little dignity. “You said you didn’t know much about Gwydion. But you do. He’s your boss.”

  Cei’s face turned to stone, but that was the only sign of the emotional war going on inside of him. And the thing was, Gwen had an idea what that war was. It was the same way she felt when she looked at Paul and realized he had lied to her. It was love and a sense of betrayal all mixed up into a single ball of anger.

  “Do you realize the danger you placed yourself in when you set eyes on Bran? Do you realize he could have called his minions to you and had them dispose of you?”

  “He can’t hurt me.”

  “He can’t. But that won’t stop his sister or the many other dark lords that roam this world.”

  Despite her earlier nonchalance on the subject, the idea suddenly didn’t set well with Gwen. She kind of liked breathing.

  “Let’s get back on topic,” Rhein called from across the room. “Tell the girl why she must save the sons of Don.”

  “To restore the light.” Cei settled on the couch beside her, his hand on the armrest of the chair, but not touching her. “To restore harmony to this world.”

  “Why should I care about that?”

  Cei tilted his head slightly, as though he was trying to see how she couldn’t comprehend the obviousness of his statement. “Have you not noticed the war raging in the Middle East? The plane crashes that seem more numerous every year? The domestic violence in this country, the hatred against minorities, against gays and blacks and women? The darkness that runs under everything?”

  “That’s just human nature.”

  “But it doesn’t have to be. With light restored, humanity would be balanced again. People would be kinder
, they would be more understanding, less selfish. Wars would end, discrimination would be worked out. It wouldn’t be a perfect world, but it would be better.”

  “Not to mention the fact that,” Rhein called from the minibar, “if you release the curse and free Gwydion, he might be grateful enough to free your mother from her curse.”

  “My mother?”

  Cei glanced at Rhein, a warning look in his eyes.

  “Cei, you know who my mother is?”

  He slowly turned back to her and she could see the truth in his eyes. “This is much bigger than any one person, or goddess, Gwen.”

  “But you know.”

  He inclined his head slightly. “I know her quite well.”

  Gwen slid forward, anxiously, perching on the edge of her chair. “Who is she?”

  “Gwen, you have to promise me that you’ll let us protect you, that you won’t run off on your own again, that you won’t refuse to do what we’re asking.”

  “Will he free my mother if I free him?”

  Cei looked over at Rhein again, irritation clear on his face. But when he turned back to Gwen, his features had softened a little.

  “Will you trust me and do all that I say?”

  She studied his face for a long moment. She hated to admit it to herself, but she knew she had to trust someone. And Cei…a piece of her soul already trusted him. Had trusted him from the moment she set eyes on him.

  “I will.”

  He inclined his head slightly. “I can’t make any promises, but Gwydion is a good man. I’m sure after everything is said and done, after he hears what you’ve done for him, he will have no problem freeing Blodeuwedd.”

  “Blodeuwedd?”

  “Yes.” Cei looked her in the eye, his clear blue eyes filled with sincerity. “Blodeuwedd is your mother, Gwen.”

  It was the first truth she knew in her heart that he had spoken to her.

  An image of a pretty woman in a simple, drab dress filled her mind. The scene played out again, the woman writing in a book, a man coming through the door.

  “I’m ready,” she said, bowing her head slightly.

  He lifted a wand and waved it over her head. She disappeared. But in her place sat a tiny little bird, the color of cinnamon and snow.

  An elf owl. The same owl Gwen rescued from the floor of Theresa’s bedroom.

  “My mother.”

  Traitor

  Chapter 1

  It was like the movie ET.

  Gwen Reese lay in bed and watched a dead flower suddenly fill with life, the dried, yellowed petals becoming vibrant pink as the flower’s stem stood tall for the first time in more than a week.

  This flower was in a vase and had died a normal death. But it reminded her of the flower at the end of ET that comes back to life when the alien learns his people have gotten his call for help and are on their way to pick him up.

  Gwen didn’t expect her ‘people’ to come for her.

  She didn’t even know who her people were, really.

  A week ago, her foster brother, Cei Crewe, had told her half of the one thing she had wanted—and not wanted—to know since she was a small child: the identity of her biological parents, the same parents who abandoned her when she was three. The answer he had for her, though, was nothing like what she had expected.

  Her mother, apparently, was a mythological Welsh goddess who was cursed by her uncle-in-law for plotting the attempted murder of her husband.

  Blodeuwedd.

  It made no sense to Gwen.

  How could a mythical character be her mother? And not just any mythical creature, but one who was cursed to live out eternity in the form of an owl?

  How did that work, exactly?

  Not only was her mother a Welsh goddess, but Gwen was destined to break some curse that had held the sons of Don—these gods of light magic—in the Welsh underworld, Annwn, for hundreds of years. That’s what Cei and Rhein—another of her classmates who also, it turns out, was immortal—told her.

  Immortal. She never would have imagined that was within the realm of her reality until Cei told her. And then showed her.

  You become a believer pretty quick when someone cuts his throat in front of you and it heals as you watch.

  That’s what Cei did.

  The way they explained it to her—Cei and Rhein—was that they were born normal humans, like her or anyone else, but that they pledged themselves to the service of the sons of Don. By doing this, the gods—or the Druid priests, she wasn’t quite sure which—made them immortal. They had no special powers. They simply could not be killed.

  Which seemed like a pretty special power all in its own.

  It was no accident that Cei happened to live in the same foster home where Gwen had recently come to live in order to attend a private school in the neighborhood. He was here waiting for her.

  Somehow he had known she was coming before she did.

  Talk about creepy. It almost felt stalker-ish.

  But, then again, Cei wasn’t the only one aware of her.

  There was another group of gods and goddesses, the gods of dark magic. They were known as the sons of Llyr. The eldest, Bran, was also the leader of Annwn—and part of the reason for the feud with the sons of Don in the first place. Bran—also known as Bendigeidfran in some of the legends—had some dogs that one of the sons of Don stole. This lead to a battle in which Bran was humiliated in his defeat.

  Same old story.

  But somehow Gwen was now drawn into it, and Bran’s sister, Branwen—this family had little imagination when it came to names!—was intent on killing her. Branwen had already attacked her twice and was waylaid once by Rhein. Bran, apparently, couldn’t touch Gwen himself because of the rules of the curse—who knew a curse could have rules? Gwen hadn’t—but his family members could. So now Cei was teaching her how to defend herself in case she was attacked again when he wasn’t around.

  Cei was her self-appointed protector, but he never seemed to be around when Branwen was.

  Some protector.

  The only cool thing about this whole situation was the fact that Gwen now knew the powers that had begun to manifest themselves over the past month or so were real, not figments of her psychologically unbalanced mind.

  She wasn’t insane.

  She was able to heal dying plants, speak to trees, and manifest objects out of soil. Not exactly mind-reading or flying, but cool just the same.

  And she wasn’t insane.

  It was so much to wrap her mind around. Theresa, her foster mother, tried to help. She knew about all this—she was married to another immortal, after all—but there wasn’t much she could say that made any of it easier to understand. Tony, Theresa’s husband, was so focused on breaking the curse that he was little help, either.

  They both wanted her to talk to her social worker. Paul Forrester.

  But Paul…he knew some of this, too. He could have known it all, she wasn’t really sure. Maybe he was immortal like Cei and Tony and Rhein. Maybe he was just a human who happened to have information he shouldn’t have, like Theresa. It didn’t matter.

  He was the only person Gwen had ever truly trusted, and he had lied to her.

  That was all she needed to know.

  Gwen pushed herself to a sitting position and carried the reinvigorated flower to the window. Now she knew why standing in the open window always made her feel renewed, almost like that flower. Why touching soil or walking in a garden always made her feel peaceful no matter what her mood. It was the essence of who she was. Her mother’s powers—her own powers—were all based in nature.

  Now she knew what it was like to understand herself in the context of where she came from. She’d never had that before.

  It was funny then, with all this new information, with all this surrealism going on around her, that there was one question on which she was caught, on which her thought processes were caught.

  She thought once she learned who one of her parents was, it would end the c
ycle of when, why, how, why, why, why…

  It didn’t. It only opened up more questions.

  Like, who was her father?

  Like, which of them abandoned her?

  Like, did her father know who her mother really was? Did he know what role they were all playing in this drama? Or was he just some loser her mother used for his genetic material?

  Like, would she ever have real, solid answers to all the questions that had swirled in her head since before she could form the questions?

  She felt like, despite the fact that Cei and Rhein had answered so many questions she had never thought anyone could answer for her, they had all overlooked the one, most important question.

  Who was she?

  Chapter 2

  A knock pulled Gwen from her thoughts. She crossed the room and opened the door just wide enough to peek around the edge.

  “We need to talk.”

  Gwen bit her bottom lip, still not quite immune to Cei’s closeness. Even after a week, she could still taste his kiss on her lips. He let her come to his bed and he kissed her—kisses like nothing she had ever felt before. Kisses that spoke of trust and affection and all the things Gwen had never known in a childhood that moved her from foster home to foster home.