Texts from Roxy!
Tamara was rapping on the huge double doors of Rhiannon and Roland’s suite, while sending her thoughts directly through them. Rhiannon rolled her eyes and imagined the curly haired wife of her husband’s best friend Eric Marquand, bouncing up and down in her excitement. Tamara was not a fledgling, exactly. But she was childlike, exuberant and joyous enough to make Rhiannon gag from time to time. Family, though. She was family.
The sun had gone down half an hour ago, but Rhiannon had been in the mood to lie naked in Roland’s strong arms for as long as possible before getting up to face another boring night in exile.
A message from one of her favorite mortals would at least break up the monotony. She slid out of bed, putting her bare feet on the freezing floor. As she stood and reached for her red satin robe, she felt Roland’s eyes on her, felt his desire rising yet again, and smiled down at him.
“I love that you’re such an insatiable beast,” she whispered.
His smile was slow and sexy. “It’s good I’m a vampire. You’d be the death of a mortal man.”
“And have been. Repeatedly.” She winked at him and walked into the suite’s living room. Pandora got lazily out of her bed, a miniature of Rhiannon’s own, canopy and all. She arched in a long and luxurious stretch, then padded along behind her. With a wave of her hand, Rhiannon opened the doors. “Come in, fledgling. We were hoping someone would interrupt our morning of sexual bliss with news from the mortal world.”
Tamara took two steps into the suite, then stopped, her big eyes going rounder. “I’m sorry. I can come back later, if–”
“She’s teasing you,” Roland said, coming out of the bedroom himself, tying his own robe around him. “Come in. You too, Eric,” he added, since Tamara’s mate stood just behind her in the ornate hall.
Roland crossed to the French doors and opened them, then stepped out onto the stone balcony. “It’s a beautiful night.”
“It is.” Tamara and Eric joined him, and Rhiannon followed last of all. Eric had an iPad in his hand and as he tapped its screen repeatedly, Roland caught Rhiannon’s eyes and rolled his own, making her smile. She knew he’d prefer an actual tablet, the kind with paper, to the modern electronic devices called by the same name.
“Here it is,” Eric said, handing the device to Roland. “The entire conversation.”
“I reached her just before dawn, as we were lying down for the day sleep,” Tamara explained. “Or I’d have brought it sooner. “She’s in Oregon.”
“Ten hours earlier there,” Eric said, probably because he knew it from memory. The man was a genius.
Roland took the iPad, but carefully set it on the stone table. Then he read through the exchange, and Rhiannon read over his shoulder. Roland frowned, lifting his head. “Roxy has a granddaughter?”
“Apparently so. Though this is the first I’ve heard of it,” Eric said. “Read on, Roland.”
Nodding, Roland continued. “She thinks the girl doesn’t trust her.”
“Doesn’t say why,” Eric went on. “I believe the granddaughter must be by her deceased son Charles who died of Belladonna Syndrome at twenty-nine. I can only surmise that she’s kept the girl’s existence secret in order to protect her.”
“It makes sense,” Tamara said. “Roxy’s helped us so many times, she’s on the government’s radar.”
Rhiannon reached past her beloved to scroll lower, grinning inwardly that he probably had thought there was no more to see. “The government is trying to entice The Chosen into their care,” Roland said. “Roxy has heard rumors they’re even claiming they have a cure for the ravages of Belladonna.”
“So do we,” Rhiannon said softly.
Tamara obeyed Pandora’s insistent head butting and pet the large cat. “We have to go back,” she said. “If The Chosen are being targeted again, we have to–”
“Something’s wrong!” Rhiannon went to the stone railing, bracing her hands on its surface and leaning into the wind. Sensations of fear, of agony, of death, reached into her senses, plucking discordant notes in the strings of her mind. She closed her eyes. “Do you feel it?”
Roland came to stand beside her just as the voices came into her awareness. Human voices, screaming in pain and in fear, and a rush of bloodlust, not her own, but that of others of her kind. Vampires in ecstasy, gorging themselves on mortal blood.
“It’s a massacre,” Roland whispered.
Pandora growled deep and low, picking up on the energy of violence and death, and the smell of smoke rising now on the night wind.
“It’s Devlin and his band of rebels,” Rhiannon said. “They’re attacking the village!”
Within minutes, they had dressed and raced on foot, at preternatural speeds, down from the mountains to the tiny village below. But there was no life left there. Others of their band were following behind them. But the four of them and Pandora arrived first. Rhiannon knew what she would find before she ever got there. Her senses told her there was fire and death. And that the vampires who had wrought it were already long gone.
The six or eight little houses along the winding, narrow street of the primitive village were going up in flames. Rhiannon shielded her face with her arms against the deadly heat of the fires and pressed on, walking amid the bodies that littered the unpaved road. Pale skin, poor clothes, gaping wounds in their throats. More than twenty, perhaps close to thirty innocent humans, dead. Devlin and his gang of vampires must have ravaged the poor villagers as they emerged from their burning houses. They lay in the dirt track of a road, their eyes wide and unseeing. They had not died in peace, but in terror.
The attack had been ruthless and savage, and it looked as if no one had been spared.
But then Rhiannon felt something. Life. There was fear, devastation, too, but mainly, there was life. She held a finger to her lips and the others went still and silent, following her as she moved away from the blazing village, toward the source of those feelings. The road was packed dirt. There was no sidewalk. The houses were mostly thatch-roofed cottages that could’ve come from another time. There were woods beyond the village, and the next one was miles away. But word would get out, if any had survived. Mortals would be coming. And soon.
Rhiannon moved silently, homing in on the life force that drew her into the trees, around the base of one, to a hollow formed by a big arching root. Quivering inside that hollow was a little girl, hugging her knees to her chest and shivering in the darkness.
The child didn’t look up or sense her there, and Rhiannon didn’t want her to. Though her heart was tightening into a hard little knot, she knew she was not the best person for this child to see when she opened her eyes again. Sometimes, her one and only regret stabbed deeply, and this was one of those times. She would never have a child of her own. A little girl to raise in her own image. It was a ridiculous regret. She’d have made a terrible mother.
Silently, she called Tamara, who looked more like a modern day teenager than a relatively young vampiress. Tam came to her side, saw what she saw, and made a soft “Oh!”
And then she was on her knees, gathering the little girl into her arms. “It’s all right, honey. It’s all right, I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
The girl babbled in a Romanian dialect. Rhiannon knew every word, not because she spoke the language, but because she could read the emotions behind it. Monsters came. They killed everyone. But they didn’t kill me and I don’t know why.
Everything in her wanted to hold that little girl close, to comfort her the way Tamara was doing. But that sort of thing was best left to the tender hearted. Not the fierce.
“She’s one of The Chosen,” Rhiannon whispered. “That’s why.”
Tamara nodded, holding the child close. “We have to take care of her, get her to some family, something.”
Take her home, clean her up, raise her as our own, Rhiannon thought. But she pushed those thoughts aside. “What we have to do is go after Devlin and his gang. They’ve gone rogue. They will not
stop at this.”
“Yes, but first we must eliminate the evidence of vampire attack on this village, before other mortals arrive on the scene,” Roland said.
Always the voice of reason, her Roland.
Eric nodded in agreement, encouraging Roland to go on. So he did. “Tamara, take the child back to the nearest human village, erase this nightmarish memory and plant something less frightening in its place. Yet something that would explain this. A storm. A freak lightning bolt. But erase the memories of the screams, the violence, the death.”
“She’ll remember a storm, being afraid and running away to hide. She’ll remember lightning and no more,” Tamara promised, stroking the little girl’s hair.
“Eric, please remain here.” Roland looked at the other vampires, arriving now from the castle, shaking their heads at the devastation. “Take charge. Have everyone throw the bodies into the burning houses, and make sure they are completely destroyed. We cannot have any mortals found bloodless with their jugulars torn open, or our haven will be a haven no longer.”
Then he turned to Rhiannon. “You and I will go–”
“Wait.” She held up a palm to stop him, because someone was speaking inside her mind. She pressed her fingertips to her temple. “Listen.” Then she opened her mind to her beloved and to Eric and Tamara as well, and replied mentally to the young vampiress who was speaking to her from far away, her emanations weak due to the distance. A younger vampire might not have picked them up at all.
Larissa, isn’t it? Rhiannon thought.
Yes, came the reply. I left the castle with Devlin, but I swear I had no idea what he was going to do. If I try to leave now, I’m afraid he’ll kill me. I need help.
Rhiannon smiled slowly. Actually, child, you are going to be the one helping us. Stay with Devlin and his rogues–
“Rhiannon,” Roland said, but she shook her head at him.
Stay with them and report to me, so that I can find them, rescue you, and stop them from killing any more of the innocent. Can you do that, Larissa?
I...I don’t know.
Will you try?
Yes. I’ll try. Right now we’re traveling by car to the coast. The vehicles were stolen from that village. There are seventeen of us, including Devlin and me. Devlin says he’ll gather more once we get back to the United States. Portland, he said.
Why Portland? Rhiannon asked, alarmed. That was near where Roxanne was. Could he know?
It’s where those seven mortals were murdered. He says it’s where DPI must be operating. He says we’re going to wipe them out. We’re traveling by cargo ship to New York and then by plane to Portland. We should arrive there in five days.
Good. Keep me fully informed. Do not try to stop him alone, Larissa. You’re too young. He has a century on you. Pretend to go along, or pretend to be too terrified to act, but do not try to stop him. If you have to participate in order to survive, then do what you must. If you can last until we catch up to him in Portland, you will be plucked from his reach before I kill him. In the meantime, be very careful to shield your mind from all but mine when you contact me. Do you know how to do that?
Yes.
And keep it either shielded or occupied with other thoughts at all times in his presence, or he’ll read you. Understand?
Yes, Rhiannon. I’ll try.
Do more than try, fledgling. Do it. Your life depends on it.
Chapter Five