Divine by Blood

  Alanna kept up a steady murmur of reassurance. The sweet sound of her voice and the gentle strokes of the brush coupled with the exhaustion of twenty-four hours of laboring and childbirth worked on me like a sleeping pill. My body was aching for rest. And just before I slipped into the comforting darkness, my last thought was that if there were no bodies found in the Sacred Grove in Partholon, then they must be in the mirror version of that grove in Oklahoma. What the hell was going on over there…?

  CHAPTER 4

  Oklahoma

  Richard Parker knew something was wrong long before John Peace Eagle drove slowly down the lane with his grim cargo. He’d been restless all evening. Worse, all six of his dogs, greyhound and Irish wolfhound mixes, had begun to howl just moments after twilight. Despite his threats, they hadn’t shut up for almost a full five minutes.

  He didn’t have to check the calendar to know what day it was. He’d been counting down the months and weeks and days since he’d last seen his daughter in November. Not that the exact date was important. He had no idea of her due date—just a rough estimate. Late April. Today was the thirtieth of April. Shannon’s birthday. In another world, one where she was revered as a goddess’s incarnate, she turned thirty-six today. But remembering the day of his daughter’s birth wasn’t what was giving him an eerie, walking-over-his-grave feeling.

  Had Shannon given birth today in an ancient world somewhere across an unimaginable barrier of time and dimension? No matter how impossible it seemed he wasn’t surprised that she would try to let him know. After all, the whole damn situation was impossible.

  When Shannon had first reappeared on his doorstep in the middle of a god-awful snowstorm looking scared and bedraggled with a man he recognized as Clint Freeman, an ex-fighter pilot hero, he hadn’t wanted to believe her wild story about being switched for Rhiannon, Goddess Incarnate in another world, and then being pulled back to Oklahoma by Clint. But his daughter wasn’t a liar. And the woman who had been running around for the preceding several months acting like a cold, calculating bitch and alienating her friends and family had looked like his daughter, but sure as hell hadn’t acted like her.

  Even before the evil Nuada had almost killed him in the icy pond and he had witnessed his daughter’s Goddess-given powers, he had found it easier to accept the idea of an alternate world than to accept the idea that his daughter had somehow managed a total change of personality.

  He’d known when Shannon had defeated Nuada and left this world, just as surely as he knew the smell of rain and the feel of a horse’s hide under his hands. It was an innate knowledge, something that rang true deep in his soul. He’d also known that Clint had been killed returning her to Partholon, and that knowledge had saddened him almost as much as the loss of his only child. At least Shannon hadn’t died. Actually, it was easier for him to think of it as if she had moved to Europe, or maybe Australia, and that someday they might get to visit one another again.

  Richard sighed and paced restlessly from one side of the concrete patio to the other. Shannon had had to leave. She’d been married in that other world to the father of her unborn child. She loved him. And a child, a daughter, needed her father.

  “…Needs her grandpa, too,” he muttered. He’d hoped that Shannon would be able to communicate with him, even if only briefly, so that he wouldn’t feel as if he’d lost his daughter forever. He did dream of her often. In his dreams she was always happy and surrounded by people who adored her. He’d even seen her centaur husband in his dreams. Richard snorted. “And that had been a damned interesting sight.” He believed Shannon was behind the dreams—or maybe it would be more accurate to say that Shannon’s goddess, Epona, was behind them. Either way, it was almost like getting letters from her, and he’d been content with the small glimpses he had been granted.

  Tonight was different than the dreams, though. This feeling, this terrible foreboding was lodged so firmly in his gut he couldn’t even stand still. Was Shannon trying to communicate more directly with him? It fit. It was the right time for her to be giving birth to his granddaughter, and of course she would want to share the event with him. But why then was the feeling so negative? Why did he have an itchy sense of danger? He stopped pacing as a terrible thought hit him, literally driving the breath from his lungs.

  Was he feeling her death? Had she died in childbirth in that ancient world where they had no hospitals or modern medicine? Was that why he felt such weight in the air around him, such a sense of pending doom?

  “Please, Epona,” he told the wind. “Protect her.”

  “Hon, what is it?” Patricia Parker, Mama Parker to the legions of football players he’d coached, called from just inside the open screen door behind him.

  “Nothin’.” He realized his tone had been harsher than he’d intended and smiled an apology at her over his shoulder. “Just restless tonight.”

  Her kind face instantly looked worried. “It’s not…not…that again, is it?”

  Patricia had been out of town visiting her only sister in Phoenix when Shannon had returned and Nuada had attacked him, but she’d seen the aftermath. And he had, of course, told her everything. Ironically, Mama Parker had been relieved to learn about the Rhiannon/Shannon switch. It had meant that the woman she’d raised and loved as if she was really her biological daughter, hadn’t turned on her. That the nasty things she’d said and done had been Rhiannon, and not Shannon.

  “Nope, nope, nope,” he said gruffly, sorry his imaginings had upset her. He didn’t really know that anything terrible had happened. Hell, it might be that the jalapeños he’d had with dinner were disagreeing with him. “Everything’s fine. I’ll be in soon.”

  “Well, okay then, hon. I’ll just finish up the dishes.”

  She had begun to turn away when they heard the sound of the truck start up the lane. Richard glanced at his watch. After ten-thirty. Late for a social call. Ice crawled up his spine again as he watched the old blue Chevy move slowly toward him and cough to a stop behind the other two trucks already parked in the drive. An old Indian slowly got out of the cab to face him.

  “Evenin’, Richard Parker.” Richard automatically extended his hand. The old man met his gaze steadily and returned his handshake with a firm one of his own. “John Peace Eagle. Sorry to disturb you so late.”

  “No problem. What can I do for you?”

  “Rhiannon asked that I bring her home.”

  Richard felt a jolt of surprise. “Rhiannon!” When he’d had no news of her after he felt Shannon leave this world, he had assumed that she had taken Rhiannon with her, probably so that she could face the consequences of abandoning her world and her duties as Epona’s Chosen in Partholon. Now she was here? Saying this was her home? He set his broad shoulders. No matter how much she looked like his daughter, Rhiannon was not Shannon, and he would not allow her to masquerade as his daughter again. But that was not something he would discuss in front of a stranger. It would wait until they were alone. Then he’d take her to town or the airport or where-the-hell-ever. Anywhere was fine, as long as it was away from Oklahoma. “Well, where is she?” He narrowed his eyes back at the cab of the truck. Someone was sitting there, but it was too dark for him to make out her features. He snorted. She should be afraid to come out here and face him.

  “She is here.”

  The old man didn’t go to the cab, but walked around behind the truck. With the sound of complaining hinges, he yanked open the tailgate. Richard followed him and then frowned. There was only one thing in the bed of the truck. At first he thought his eyes and the dim light from the pole lamp were playing tricks on him. The thing looked like a body, wrapped head to toe in a Native American blanket. John Peace Eagle climbed into the truck bed with surprising agility. He crouched down and gently pulled the blanket free. Richard felt as if something had slammed into his gut when he saw her face.

  “Shannon!” He jumped into the truck bed, ignoring the stiffness in his knees.

  “Not Shannon. This is Rhiann
on. It was her wish that I bring her here to you, and that I also give her child into your keeping.”

  There was a buzzing in his ears and it was hard for him to concentrate on what the old man was saying.

  “She’s dead,” Richard said.

  Peace Eagle nodded. “She died giving birth. But not before love for her daughter healed what was dark in her spirit.”

  Richard forced his gaze from the dead face that mirrored his daughter’s so exactly. “You know about her? About Partholon?”

  “Yes, I was there when the White Shaman vanquished the evil one and sacrificed himself to return Shannon to that world. I was also there this evening, when evil freed Rhiannon from the sacred tree in which she had been imprisoned.”

  Richard’s eyes peered sharply into the surrounding shadows. “Did it follow you here?”

  “No evil accompanies me. The Elders and I banished the dark god from the Sacred Grove, and then Epona’s appearance made the last of the lurking darkness flee, as well as severing the ties that that god had to Rhiannon’s soul.”

  “Epona forgave Rhiannon?”

  “She did. I witnessed it.” In the deep, rhythmic voice of an experienced storyteller, Peace Eagle recited all that had happened with Rhiannon in the Sacred Grove.

  “She finally found the good within her.” Slowly, Richard brushed Rhiannon’s cold, pale cheek with his hand.

  “Oh, God! Shannon!”

  Richard looked up to see his wife standing at the tailgate of the truck, eyes wide with shock, hand pressed against her mouth.

  “No, Mama Parker, no.” He scooted down so that he sat on the tailgate and took her in his arms. “It’s not Shannon. It’s Rhiannon. Hush, don’t cry.” He rubbed her back while she sobbed into his shoulder. He was too busy comforting his wife to notice when the old shaman left the bed of the truck, but he certainly noticed when he returned because in his arms he held a newborn.

  “This is Morrigan. Your granddaughter.”

  The old man held the child out and Mama Parker automatically took the infant. With trembling hands, she opened the blanket and unwrapped the baby.

  Richard Parker peered over his wife’s shoulder, and fell instantly, irrevocably in love.

  “She looks exactly like Shannon did when she was born,” he said, and laughed through the unexpected tears that burned his eyes. “Just like a little bug.”

  “Oh, hon, how can you say that?” Mama Parker’s voice was breathless with emotion. “She is too beautiful to be a bug.”

  Richard looked at his wife. They’d been married for almost thirty years, since Shannon was just a little girl. Patricia Parker couldn’t have children of her own, but she’d loved and raised Shannon as if she had given birth to her. And now she was fifty-five and he was fifty-seven—too damn old to raise a baby.

  But his eyes were drawn back to Morrigan, who was so much like his Shannon, his Bugsy.

  “She has no one but you in this world,” John Peace Eagle said. “Rhiannon said to tell you that she believed in you and knew you would do the right thing.” He paused for an instant, as if he needed to consider his words, and then added, “I have a feeling about this child. I sense a great power within her. Whether that will be power for good or for evil is yet to be discovered. The darkness that haunted her mother will very likely stalk Morrigan, too. If you turn the child away I fear that the darkness may gain an upper hand with her.”

  “Turn her away!” Richard felt his wife’s arms tighten around the baby. “Oh, no. We couldn’t turn her away.”

  “Pat, you have to be sure about this. We’re not young anymore.”

  Smiling, she looked up into her husband’s eyes. “Morrigan will keep us young. And she needs us, hon. Plus, she is all of Shannon we may ever have.”

  Unable to speak, Richard nodded and kissed his wife’s forehead.

  “My daughter, Mary, is in the cab. She brought some things for the child—diapers, formula, bottles. Such as will get you by for tonight.”

  “Thank you.” Pat Parker turned her luminous smile on him. “We appreciate that.”

  “Why don’t you and Mary take the baby things into the house? John and I will finish up here,” Richard said.

  Pat nodded, but before she walked away she gave Rhiannon’s body one more look. “It’s hard to believe she’s not Shannon.”

  “She’s not Shannon,” Richard said with finality. “Shannon is alive and safe in another world.”

  The baby started to fret, and Pat’s attention went instantly from the corpse to the child. Cooing to her softly, she hurried around to the cab of the truck. Richard waited until the women and the few sacks of baby supplies disappeared into the house. Then he turned to the old Indian.

  “I’m not taking her into town. This is no one’s business but ours.”

  John Peace Eagle nodded slowly. “It is good that the modern world does not touch her any longer. She belongs to a different time—a different place.”

  “I’d like to bury her down by the pond under the willow trees.” He looked out at the dark pond. “Those trees have always seemed sad to me.”

  “Now it will be as if they are crying for her.”

  Richard grunted and nodded. “Will you help me?”

  “I will.” Together they started for the barn to get what they’d need. “What will you tell Morrigan of her mother?” Peace Eagle asked.

  “The truth,” he said automatically, and then added, “eventually.” He wished he knew how the hell he was going to do that.

  * * *

  It was almost dawn before John Peace Eagle and his daughter left. Richard was exhausted. He rubbed his right hand slowly with his left, trying to work out the stiffness that always bothered him if he used it too much. He wondered if the injury would ever truly heal, and then reminded himself that it had been only five months since he’d split it open trying to claw his way out of a hole in the icy pond—a hole made by the evil Nuada as he tried to follow through on his threat to kill everyone Shannon loved. Richard’s skin shivered and twitched, like a horse being harassed by a biting blackfly. He didn’t like to remember that day.

  The mewing of the baby pulled his concentration across the dimly lit bedroom. Quietly he got up, walked around to his wife’s side of the bed and peered down at the wriggling bundle. The child was in the old cradle Mama Parker had managed to get from the attic. Shannon’s old cradle. He’d forgotten he’d kept it. Christ, it must have been in that attic for thirty-plus years. Without hesitation, he picked up Morrigan. Patting her back only a little awkwardly, he hurried from the room before she could wake Mama Parker.

  “Shh,” he soothed. She was probably hungry. Newborns ate constantly—he did remember that. As he heated up a bottle of formula, the weight and scent of the baby caused even more memories to surface. He’d forgotten that holding his newborn daughter had seemed to him a religious experience. And he wasn’t a religious man. He had no time for the stuffiness and hypocrisy of organized religion. All his life he’d wondered how people could so readily believe God could be contained in buildings and overly translated and dissected words. He found his god, or goddess he mentally corrected with a silent laugh, in rolling pastures of sweet hay, in the warm smell of a well-worked quarter horse, in the loyalty of his dogs. So when he thought of holding this new baby girl in his arms as religious, he didn’t mean that it brought to mind church and such. He meant it brought to mind the perfection of beauty, of the miracle of nature at its finest. He sat down in the rocking recliner with a sigh at the cracking of his knees and the stiffness in his back and shoulders, but his gaze on the baby as she sucked at the bottle and made soft, puppy-like noises wasn’t that of an old man. It was that of a man who was seeing anew the magic of life and birth and love reborn.

  “I think we’ll do fine together,” he told the baby girl. “Mama Parker and I aren’t young anymore, but we’re also not stupid as damn knot-headed twenty-somethings. And I’ve had some practice with this father thing. I think if Shannon were
here she would tell you that I did just fine with her.”

  Thinking of Shannon made him sad, as it always did. He missed her. But tonight, with the warm, sweet weight of the sleepy newborn in his arms he found that he felt his daughter’s loss less sharply. The missing her would never go away, but maybe the pain of it could be eased by this child that was so like her.

  He lifted the baby to his shoulder when she was through with the bottle, and chuckled when she belched like a little sailor. “Just like Shannon,” he said. Then he nestled her securely back in the crook of his strong arm and began rocking her. And from the recesses of his memory came lines from a book he’d read to Shannon over and over again when she was a little girl. “‘Johnny Go Round is a tan tom cat. Would you like to know why we called him that?’” The baby blinked up at him and smiled. Richard’s heart, which had felt somehow heavier since the day his daughter disappeared from his world, lifted suddenly as if it had grown wings. He had to clear his throat and blink his eyes before he could continue the story. “‘Well, Johnny goes round when…’”

  CHAPTER 5

  Partholon/Oklahoma

  DreamLand is my favorite place. Yeah, I like it better than Epona’s Temple (which I adore), Tuscany (which I drank my way through whilst a group of my students tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to chaperon me) or even Ireland (again, students attempted to keep me in line on our educational pub tour; thankfully they failed). I’ve always been able to control my dreams, even before I came to Partholon and became Epona’s Chosen. As a child growing up in Oklahoma, I thought it was normal to be able to control my dreams. I hadn’t realized there was anything weird about it till I was in third grade and one of my friends said she’d had a terrible nightmare the night before. I’d laughed and said something like, “Well, why didn’t you just tell your dreams to take you somewhere happy?” She’d looked at me like I was totally nuts and told me that people couldn’t control their dreams. I’d (uncharacteristically) kept my mouth shut until I could get home and ask Dad about it. Dad had explained that people usually couldn’t control their dreams and that maybe I should keep it to myself that I could. Which I pretty much did after that, although the weirdness of my ability didn’t dampen my DreamLand enjoyment.