Divine by Blood

“Always,” he said. He kissed me and then Myrna. “Rest. I will not be gone long.”

He and Carolan rushed out of the chamber. I could hear him calling orders for the guards to double their watch on me and on the palace, which should have made me feel safe, but all it did was send a terrible wash of cold fear through my body. Myrna began to make restless noises, and I whispered reassurance to her.

“She’s probably hungry, Rhea.”

Thankfully, Alanna was at my side helping to arrange my soft nightdress so that Myrna could find my breast. I tried to relax and concentrate on the sublimely intimate act of nursing my daughter, but my thoughts wouldn’t be still. I had known the exact moment of Rhiannon’s death. The sacred tree that had imprisoned her had been destroyed. And then there were the Goddess’s cryptic words about the power of a mother’s love to heal and redeem.

Rhiannon had been pregnant when she’d been entombed.

“All will be well, Rhea.” Alanna lifted the now full and sleeping Myrna from my arms and placed her in the small cradle within reaching distance of my bed.

“I’m scared, Alanna.”

Alanna took the wide soft brush from my vanity and knelt behind me. Gently, she began brushing my hair in long, slow strokes.

“Epona will not allow you or Myrna to come to harm. You are her Chosen One, her Beloved. The Goddess protects her own. Rest now. You are safe here in the heart of Partholon, protected by all of us who love you. You have nothing to fear, my friend…nothing to fear…”

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…?

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 Rhiannon. 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.