11. Reunion
When they arrived at Tulle, France, Rhiannon got them a room at the Hôtel du Réglage Sun, or 'Hotel of the Setting Sun', which catered to vampires. She opened the window to let in the white owl and scowled at him as he altered form.
"I think you get grumpier every day," he told her.
"Do you not realize just how much attention white animals attract? You should choose some other color while we're not 'scaring vampires'." She said it snidely, since 'scaring vampires' was his pet name for the very, very dangerous 'game' they were playing.
She sat down to the complimentary computer the hotel offered and ordered a tailor and a 'nightcap'. Young and male, since she had the sinking feeling that Andrew wouldn't be able to resist a girl. He'd gotten quite excited seeing some of them walking around earlier that night. And the sex appeal that was a natural result of her blood was working on him still.
"There is a convention tomorrow. It will be the perfect opportunity for me to carry out a single ploy, rather than requiring us to singularly visit each of them. So far as I can tell, they should all three be there. And it's a fairly large convention, because getting this room required a substantial bribe."
She leaned back on the—no surprise—red sofa and stretched.
Andrew ducked into the bedroom as a discreet knock came on the door.
When Rhiannon opened it, she found a young man standing there. "Room service," he said, pitching his voice low. Rhiannon almost sighed. Somehow these arrangements always made her feel dirty.
"Come inside," she responded, closing the door behind him.
"Bonjour madame, j'ai mangé seulement agrumes pour plusieurs semaines. J'espère que la saveur satisfait," he said, meaning 'Hello madam, I have eaten only citrus for several weeks. I hope the flavor satisfies.'
"I don't believe that's healthy," she muttered. When he looked puzzled by her English, she said, "Rien, très chers. Asseyez-vous." Or, 'Nothing, my dear. Have a seat.'
She drank from him and glamored him. She knew it was common practice to engage in sexual activity with them, even though it wasn't strictly legal. They were generally eager to be used in such a manner, and thus nothing was ever said of it by any of the involved parties.
"Sommeil, et rêve de faire l'amour pour moi." She finished the glamor, 'Sleep, and dream of making love to me.'
She went into the other room. "You speak French?" Andrew asked.
"I speak thousands of languages. Most of them dead ones."
He looked surprised, then thoughtful. "You could translate ancient tablets and stuff, then, huh."
"The tablets will always say what those in power want them to say. The ones that do not are destroyed."
"You've got a bad attitude, you know that?"
"Dawn arrives soon. Be certain he leaves. Tomorrow night I will inspect the venue of the convention and the night after will be the confrontation."
"Did you think of anything for me to do?"
"Yes. But first we must see the venue and be certain it will work."
She rested that day, and the next night went to inspect the area the vampires would be meeting at. It was a large outdoor pavilion, to her surprise. The pavilion's roof was solid enough, high and arching. For her plan, it should work perfectly.
She launched up into the sky, landing on the top of the elegant, domed arch of the pavilion's top.
She nearly fell back off, realizing she wasn't alone.
"What took you so long?" the vampire sitting on one of the fluffy decorative upper domes asked.
"What made you think I would be here?" she asked.
"It's a perfect opportunity to screw with the Authority. I can't imagine you missing such a chance after they captured you and tried to put you on trial."
"Is that what you think this is about?"
He flitted and was inches from her. "Isn't it? How much revenge is enough?"
"It isn't about revenge, Eric. It's about protection."
He scoffed. "You don't need protection."
She cocked her head at him. "Are you so blind that you cannot see the true purpose of this?" She wanted to touch him. She wanted to do more than touch him.
He stood looking at her, saying nothing for long moments. "You are going to get yourself killed if you try something tonight. They want you badly."
"They always have," she answered. "Now that I have a druid offspring, I'm certain they will be that much more determined. And that is why this is that much more important."
"They don't know," he said softly. "I hid a faerie, I am certainly not in a position to judge you for hiding your Progeny."
"You didn't tell them?"
"I don't tell them everything, Rhiannon."
"But you sent me away." She was puzzled. Why would he keep her secret? It was clear that he was enraged with her.
"You glamored me." He scowled as he said it.
"I was protecting myself."
"From me," he said it tersely, impatiently.
"From the vampire Sheriff who had just discovered me and knew I was old and undocumented," she argued. "There's a difference."
"Only once, then?"
She looked away. He growled.
He closed the inches between them, but did not wrap an arm around her. He spoke softly in her ear, "You lived with me. You laid in my bed. You laid in my arms. Not once did you tell me who you were or what you had done."
"You would have sent me away," she whispered.
"You'll never know now, will you."
He was gone and she was left swaying in the breeze of his passing. A chill crossed her heart, and she shivered.
She looked over the pavilion further, until she was certain that she had covered every angle. Eric's lack of faith in her was disheartening, but it meant little in the bigger picture.
She went to Elizabeth's ancient castle and searched the grounds. Then she set herself up on a ledge to wait. It was extremely close to dawn when the female member of the Authority arrived home in her limo. The gates opened and closed, and security came out in force.
Rhiannon smiled, but it was not a pleasant smile. When Elizabeth entered the building, Rhiannon dropped the chains on her, her black gloves protecting her from her own silver. She picked Elizabeth up and flitted out the same window she had entered through, making it back to her hotel and closing the door to her room just in time for the need to rest to steal over her.
With Andrew in the form of a wolf to watch over Elizabeth, Rhiannon slept.
Waking that evening, she blindfolded Elizabeth and left the room. She ate, glamoring multiple humans until she was sated. She paid each one of them well in Euros and then returned to her hotel room. The convention would start in an hour.
She picked the other woman up and, ignoring her grunting complaints, flew with her and Andrew to the venue. She set Andrew down, he in his rat form, and waited for the vampires to arrive. When Elizabeth tried to mumble and catch the attention of the keen eared vampires below, Rhiannon choked her into silence.
Below, the vampires rattled on about progressive human-vampire policies in the USA and how to bring them to Europe.
When she felt the time was right, Rhiannon nodded at Andrew. He changed forms and clung to her. Rhiannon broke the roof of the pavillion and dropped Elizabeth through it. She dropped with her, stopping in the center of the pavilion with the squirming Elizabeth dangling from her hand.
She dropped her, then said, "The Authority has betrayed you! They have turned you into sheep for the slaughter! They have provoked an ancient legend, and you shall pay the price!" first in English, then in French. "If they are not convinced to end their persecution of me and mine, I shall begin killing every vampire I see!"
At the words, a prearranged signal, Andrew let go of her and she flitted with such great speed that she 'disappeared'. In her place was a giant white vampire bat, which gave a cry and fluttered through the hole Rhiannon had made in the roof. She grabbed it and flitted away, looking back to see several confused vampires fly up onto the roof, searching and shouting to each other.
Back at their hotel room, Andrew whooped and danced. "That was the best moment of my entire life! Man, you should have seen the looks on their faces when they thought you turned into a bat! Holy shit! That was fantastic!"
"You're insane." Eric hovered outside the window.
Rhiannon was taken aback. "You followed me?" It was impossible that he had matched her speed.
"Yesterday," he answered. "You took Elizabeth right from her own stronghold. I could never have imagined that was possible."
"She wasn't very careful. I think they got complacent." She changed the subject, "Have they done anything to harm you?"
He shrugged negligently. "A few. A fire at my summer house in Brazil. Some stock market games. Veiled threats. Why?"
"If it doesn't stop, I will kill them all."
He chuckled and ducked inside. "Do you think I need your help?" Then he stopped and looked at Andrew. "So you are living with your Progeny now? He smells delicious."
"His blood is poison," Rhiannon warned.
"His flesh is not," Eric replied, snapping his fangs out.
"You're scaring him. That's very rude."
"Now that your prank on the Authority is finished, what will you do? Without your petty vengeance, won't you be bored?"
"I'll go home, where there is peace and solitude. All I ever wanted was to be left alone."
"Then why did you come back and present yourself to me?"
"It was the courteous thing to do," she answered, turning away and flicking imaginary lint off of her white dress.
"Oh, bullshit. You didn't worry about courtesy when you glamored me."
"That was to protect myself. And you! I didn't want to do it."
"I want some honesty from you," Eric told her. "If you want my forgiveness, I want some honesty. How old are you, really?"
She stiffened. "Please don't ask me that, Eric. Anything but that-"
"She's eighteen thousand. She told me."
"Andrew!" Rhiannon barked.
"What? You and he..." Andrew made mashing together gestures with his hands, "... I think he kind of should know how old you are!"
Eric was staring at her with the horrified look she'd expected. "You really could snap me like a twig," he said. "You're not just Rhiannon, you're the Immortal."
Rhiannon sank to her knees. "I didn't choose to be this, Eric. It wasn't my fault."
"What is it? What happened? Who's the Immortal?" Andrew demanded.
"Vampire apocalypse," Eric answered. "The worst killing of vampires in known history. The vampires came together to hunt the Immortal. They chained her in the abyss."
"The Grand Canyon," Rhiannon supplied.
"They intended for her to meet the sun. But she... she got loose. She killed everyone in the abyss. Not a single vampire was spared. When others who hadn't made it there for the subduing arrived, they found not a single living thing of any kind in the abyss."
"Wow," Andrew said. "Brutal."
A bloody tear sparkled through the air with exquisite slowness to land on her white dress and bounce, leaving a trail of death behind it.
"I've pretty much just met the Hitler of vampires," Eric told Andrew.
"And slept with her," Andrew helpfully pointed out.
"Yes, thank you, Andrew. Shut up. Please," Rhiannon said, her voice low and choked.
"Oh! Shit. I'm sorry. You're right." He went into the bedroom and shut the door.
"Fifteen thousand vampires were slaughtered in the abyss," Eric said, stepping back to lean, disbelieving, against the windowsill.
"They aren't entirely honest about that, either," she whispered.
"How many?"
"Twice that."
"You murdered thirty thousand vampires in a single night, and you didn't think that might be a detail I'd want to know before we...?" he mockingly imitated Andrew's gesture.
"They brutally tore apart my lover and my Progeny while they made me watch. I lost it. I just snapped and I started killing and devouring them... I... I didn't mean to do it. I just couldn't stop." Another tear, painfully slow, fell from her face and tracked down her dress. "I had never hurt any of them. He had never hurt any of them. But they tortured and devoured him. We just wanted to be left alone!"
"For one life, you took thirty thousand?" he asked.
"For one such life, I would take a million of theirs!" She leaped to her feet, fangs snapping out. "Every one of them that died took glee in ending his life, and they wanted to end mine as well. They mocked and laughed as I wept for him. It was my life or theirs. Any vampire who had the ability to do it would have killed them all. You hate me for what I am, but every one of them would have done the same, for far less reason!"
She flitted out the window, running from the accusation on his face with such speed that it created a sonic boom.
