Maggie Shayne - Twilight Prophecy

“Good to see you, too, Rhiannon,” he said. “It’s been a while.” He glanced at the cat. “Hello, Pandora.”

Rhiannon made a dismissive sound like a set of air brakes releasing a brief spurt of excess pressure. “You walked away from us, J.W. Not the other way around. Don’t expect a warm welcome when you finally deign to honor us with your presence.”

“Rhiannon, he’s—” Brigit began.

“Where is the professor?” the arrogant one asked again, and this time her tone brooked no argument. No discussion.

“She got away,” Brigit said softly.

“She got away?”

“She was taken, actually.” Brigit lowered neither her head nor her eyes. She held the regal Rhiannon’s gaze firmly and strongly, and for just a moment James was amazed and impressed by his sister’s moxie. She’d grown up just as tough as everyone had known she would. And even though she’d been Rhiannon’s favorite, he hadn’t expected her to be able to stand up to, much less hold her own against, the most feared vampiress of them all. He could do so, always had. But that was because he didn’t particularly care whether or not he gained her elusive approval.

“Taken by whom?” Rhiannon asked, taking a step nearer, so the two women stood nearly nose-to-nose on the imported Italian marble floor. Black with swirls of silver. Pandora tensed, her sharp cat’s eyes watching every move, as her tail twitched.

“DPI,” Brigit said, not backing down a single inch. “Or that’s my best guess. There’s more going on here, Aunt Rhiannon. A lot more.”

“Such as?”

Leaning still closer, looking as if she was either going to kiss Rhiannon on the mouth or bite her nose off, Brigit said, her tone dangerously soft, “Why don’t you back up out of my face and I’ll tell you?”

Rhiannon’s eyes narrowed. “You’re treading on dangerous ground, Brigit.”

“Just like you taught me to do.”

Rhiannon’s scowl lasted a few more seemingly endless ticks of the clock. Pandora flattened her ears and a deep, soft growl emanated from her chest. And then, finally, Rhiannon rolled her eyes and paced away, almost gliding, despite the four-inch stiletto heels she wore. “Fine. Talk. Take your time about it, too. It’s not as if our entire race is at stake, after all.”

“Drama queen,” Brigit muttered.

Rhiannon whirled. “Excuse me?”

They stared at each other across the room for a long moment, and James tensed, wondering if the great Rhiannon, formerly known as Rianikki, the daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh who never let anyone forget her rank, was going to try to annihilate his twin sister. He was about to step between the two women when Rhiannon smiled. It was a slow, gradual smile, but a smile nonetheless.

“You are extremely fortunate that I love you as I do, firecracker.”

“And I know it,” Brigit replied. But her own face and voice softened, as well. “All right, come sit. Here’s the deal.” Moving to the nearby sofa, the two sat down, and Brigit began recapping everything that had happened. Relaxing, the large cat curled up at Rhiannon’s feet and closed her eyes lazily.

James ignored them, for the most part. He hadn’t been home in a very long time, and while this was not his parents’ place, he had spent a large portion of his childhood here. “Aunt” Rhiannon had insisted on having a hand in raising him and Brigit. And he’d always been secretly glad of that, too, because while he, already adored by all, hadn’t needed the extra attention, his sister had thrived on it.

After all, to everyone else, she was the bad twin. Oh, no one ever said it that way. Not out loud. But she’d been born with the power of destruction, and she’d spent her entire life having to listen to her parents and every other role model in her life telling her that her power was bad. That it was dangerous and must be controlled, contained, kept on a tight leash. While he had been born with the power to heal, with everyone always oohing and ahhing over it, telling him how special he was, how someday he would do great things with his powers. How he was meant for something very special.

No one had ever blatantly compared the twins, called him the good one and her the bad one. But it was still the impression they’d both received from the adults in their lives. And it was an impression that ran deep. It had filled him with a perhaps unwarranted sense of pride and of goodness that had eventually led him to leave his people in search of meaning. While it had, he sensed, left his sister with a feeling of unworthiness. Or would have, if it hadn’t been for Rhiannon.

She alone praised Brigit’s ability as something special, something worthy, something good. She was constantly telling Brigit how there could be no creation without destruction. How goddesses of death were also goddesses of rebirth. How sacred her power was, how holy. And how James’s talent meant nothing without Brigit’s to balance it.

He’d never really believed any of that. He’d figured Aunt Rhi was probably just trying to make Brigit feel better, feel worthy. And he loved her for it. He’d never liked thinking that his sister’s feelings were hurt just because he was born with the gift of healing, even restoring life, and all she got was the ability to blow things up.

“Did the healing take?”

It was a beat before James realized the two-thousand-year-old vampiress was addressing him. “Yeah. I think so.”

“You think so?” she asked.

“I can’t be sure. They took her away before I had the chance to—”

Rhiannon was glaring at him, her full lips as thin as they could get, arms slowly crossing over her chest, forcing her breasts together.

He looked away, sighed. “Yes. It took.”

“Are you sure?”

He thought back, relived it all in his mind, and then got stuck in remembering those eyes. Those doe-brown eyes, and the fear and confusion in them when they’d opened up and stared so deeply into his.

I know you .

What the hell was up with that?

“J.W….” Rhiannon prompted.

“Yes.” He knew the light and the heat flowing from his hands had peaked, then just begun to ebb when he’d been forced away from her. “I’m sure. The professor was fine.”

“ Was being the operative word,” Brigit said. “We can’t be sure of anything now that those bastards have her.”

“You’re sure it wasn’t an ordinary team of paramedics?” Rhiannon asked.

“Men in black were giving the orders. We both saw it.” Brigit glanced at James, who nodded in confirmation. “We’re going to have to plan and execute a rescue,” she said.

“What could the DPI want with her?” James asked, trying to force his focus to stay on the matter at hand.

Rhiannon leaned forward to stroke her panther. “They must know about the prophecy, and that it applies to us. Our race. The descendants of Utanapishtim. The tablet says our race will be no more. And believe me, nothing would make the DPI happier than that. They see us as a threat. They’ve been hoping to get the green light to wipe us out for as long as they’ve known of our existence.”

“Why haven’t they gotten it?” James asked.

Rhiannon leaned back on the sofa, which was as ostentatious as everything else in her homes. Red velvet, with gold braid and fringe. “There are a few leaders wise enough to know that war with our kind might not be easily won. By keeping our existence secret, they’ve managed to maintain a tense but fragile, and entirely unspoken, truce. Now, though …” She lowered her head with a sigh.

James had never seen Rhiannon this worried before, and it got his attention. He moved to the sofa and sat down beside her. “Now?” he prompted.

She lifted her head, looked him right in the eyes. “Now, thanks to Lester Folsom and his book, the entire world knows we exist.”